Updated at 9:30am PST on 1/31/2015: the winners of the contest have been chosen. Scroll to the bottom of this post to see who won.
This is an idea that came to me a few weeks ago, but I never gave it much thought until writing my recent tell-all MS posts (Part 1: My Manufactured Spend and Redbird Loading Strategy and Part 2: My Manufactured Spend Strategy with PayPal, Chime, Meetups, Reselling, and More!). If you assumed the miles, points, or cash back posted right away (rather than when the statement closed), could you MS during the week to pay for a weekend trip?
The Rules
To make things more realistic, let’s ignore credit card sign up bonuses and only focus on using the credit cards and prepaid cards you currently have today. Timing is everything, so let’s assume today is the first of the month and all your monthly MS limits have been reset (Bluebird, Serve, Redbird, PayPal, etc.). Your net out of pocket expenses should be $100 or less.
