Update, October 2026
This is from 2016, and the volumes I describe aren’t realistic for most people anymore because the liquidation tools are mostly gone (Amex discontinued Bluebird and Serve in June 2026). One thing to add to the law section below: deliberately splitting cash transactions to stay under the $10,000 reporting threshold is called structuring, and the IRS says it’s illegal even when the money is legitimate, so fill out the form rather than avoid it.
Similarly, people online like to make up all kinds of things when discussing “how much is too much” when it comes to manufacturing spend. It really runs the spectrum. For some people, signing up for multiple credit cards is ludicrous. Some people simply can’t believe that someone would buy $5K in gift cards at one time from a grocery store. Others think it’s ridiculous to ask a Walmart Money Center employee for $10K in money orders, or spend 4 times your credit limit per month on just gift cards.
I’m here to tell all of those people to, essentially, chill. There is no such thing as “too much” manufactured spend. Sure, there is discussion of being a good “steward of the game” so as not to ruin things for yourself others, but that’s a separate conversation that has to do mostly with how much you push store/bank employees (like if I insisted to the Walgreens Manager that I be allowed to purchase those gift cards). In and of itself, manufactured spend really has no limits. All that matters is what you can or cannot do.
How Much Do People Actually Do?
If you follow Tahsir on Twitter and Snapchat and whatever else the kids are using these days, you’ll see that his days are filled with large amounts of manufactured spending. It’s not uncommon for him to buy AND liquidate $20K-$40K in a single day. When I read something about someone saying that him doing $20K was too much, I laughed.
What if I told you that that’s not really even the highest amount some people are doing? There most definitely are people that do $1M-$2M or more per month in manufactured spend. I’ve met them. At least two of them were at the last TravelCon in Vegas, and they showed me their Wells Fargo cash back monthly statements making me question whether I should quit my job to MS full time.
But oh no! They’ll ruin our game!!! Except no, they haven’t. They’ve been doing this for years, have been profiting tremendously in both cash back and miles, and have ruined absolutely nothing for no one. They quietly go along doing their $75K a day, 3 days a week, and make more money in a month than you or I make in 4 months or more working 40+ hours a week in a good job.
So next time you read about or see someone buying $10K, $30K, or even $100K in gift cards or some other item, don’t just claim that “that’s too much!” without having anything to support it. Don’t be worried about the people that scare you by mentioning “this one guy I know,” the police, the IRS, or those “scary forms from Walmart.” Remember when people were worried about letting CVS employees swipe their driver’s license? They thought the government was “onto them,” as if there was something they were doing wrong. Go ahead and fill out every form, talk to every officer you need to, and continue going about your business. If you’re doing it right, you’re not breaking any laws.
What the Law Says
As a reminder, there’s no law against buying gift cards, even if you want $100K of them. There’s no law against depositing more than $10K at a time into a bank, no matter what you think you know or thought you read before. Just don’t break the law, and you have nothing to worry about.
What Actually Gets You Shut Down
Now, whether it’s wise for you personally to spend certain amounts of money is a completely different matter. If you sign up for your first Amex account and get a limit of $5K, then proceed to spend $40K on it the first month with a stated income of $75K, you’ll get shut down by Amex. If you open up your first checking account with Chase and deposit $100K in money orders over the first three months that were purchased by you and then deposited into your own bank account, you’ll get shut down by Chase. If your Walmart Manager says you can only do $10K in money orders and you make a fuss about how you need to do $30K, they won’t exactly be looking to help you out the next time you (or anyone else) comes in.
But if you follow all the laws, know how, where, and when to spend on your credit cards and deposit to your bank accounts, and maintain a good relationship with all the cashiers you come across, you’re golden, and there’s literally no limit to how much you can manufacture spend.
Or, maybe you should just try the legit way to manufacture spend, which may very well be the way of the future.
If what you’re really after is the points, the cheaper route today is a welcome bonus: my best credit card offers page lists the best available bonus on every card I review, and the Card Finder picks one for you.
The only problem with this theory is that you are assuming that by buying 16G in gift cards you aren’t interfering with normal Walmart business. Might be fine if you go on a Tuesday morning at 7am, but if you are doing this on a busy Saturday?
1000 people doing and publicly discussing spending 5k a month with a certain card and method is a lot more damaging to that routine continuing than 20 people quietly and prudently doing 100k each a month, even though 5M is less than 20M.
It’s amazing they got their credit limit that high with Wells Fargo without getting hit with a financial review at some point. Spending 1M-2M is a lot of MS and would surely raise some red flags.
Never said it was all from one account. Suspect multiple accounts across family members.
I can’t imagine doing ANYWHERE near that much in a month!!! Shoot, I can see myself struggling to do $1,000 a month, let alone 10K a month!!!
[…] How Much Manufactured Spend is Too Much? – Amounts are all relative. […]
The few doing that don’t have full time jobs, this is their job and using multiple accounts and smurfs. This method has been around a while and involved other issuers too, but one of those (Am..press) shut it down because too many started doing large numbers. I personally know a few guys that were hitting another deal hard, six figures a month, and that caused it to die when just a few more also started doing those numbers. Now that this kind of level has been unwisely made public, it will inspire more to try it, but they won’t have the skills, organization and location to be as effective in remaining under radar. Hopefully that will only lead to individual shutdowns. Or, will we see an Am..press type reaction. I wish these types of things would be left to private seminars instead of being made public like this. The event was already sold out so I guess they want more interest for their other seminar locations? But at what cost to the few already involved and those of us doing it on a smaller scale? I’m surprised those 2 men didn’t keep that to themselves instead of revealing their success to those who make things public. Was it pride? And, to those revealing the bank in your comments (Jack and Mark)… shame on you. You should know better. Being a good steward is also not revealing too much in public, even in comments.
It’s not these people that are shutting it down, it’s the hundreds of noobs “playing it small scale” that don’t know what they’re doing and ruin it for those that do. The ones doing it large scale are a lot more prudent than these small timers, being as they have much longer term goals and are willing to put in the time to do it right.
Two thumbs up, great write up, really enjoyed reading it over my morning cup of coffee!! So true and on point! Thank you,
PedroNY
[…] How much manufactured spend is too much. Interesting perspective here. The true hobbyists are…quiet You are out of the league of some guys out there…believe me! […]
Hey guys, can someone please help me?
I can’t believe that all these years I haven’t done MS! I always took good cards, just for the bonus, but I always used them for regular purchases. I didn’t even know about MS until a week or two ago… Then, I started reading about it, and I get what the system is about, but it’s very confusing to find info about methods that work now. Also, I can’t find any instruction on how is done exactly, at the moment.
I even looked for a next travel con, hoping that I’ll learn everything there, but there will not be one for a while in Chicago.
Is anyone willing to help me? I really need someone to teach me the stuff! I can pay them or return it any favor that I can.
Then go to one not in Chicago.
The next FTU is coming up in April in Las Vegas. There is a separate schedule for MS that is already sold out. However, there will be a few MS sessions for the main schedule, and most tips/ideas are shared in conversation — not in the talks. Just attending an event can be helpful by meeting new people.
https://ftuniversity.com/events/ftu-signature-las-vegas/
Thank you for the info! I’m trying to get out of work for that weekend and figure out how can I get to Vegas for the FTU event… Since the MS special is sold out, do you think that there may be a chance for purchasing that as a add on, over there?
I think that’s unlikely, but Tahsir, Omar, and I are working on another idea.
Than I will buy the FTU participation and hope that you guys come up with something, since MS is the primary thing I want to learn.
Forget paying these card pimps to give you info. There are plenty of people who know as much or more but don’t sell the info to unsuspecting noobs like you. The Golden Age of MS is long behind us, mostly due to the pimps exposing methods to sell tickets or shill cred cards under the guise of travel experts. So what you’ll be paying for is to learn about the few remaining MS methods that can easily be found on FT or Reddit. Save your money.
The commonly discussed methods are out there, over discussed, and killed more and more every day. The methods kept under cover are worth a lot more than anything you’re willing to pay, and anybody worth his salt isn’t giving you anything useful unless you prove yourself. A convention in Vegas will likely be nice, have lots of noobs, and will be a nice rehash of what’s been on the blogs and FT in the past few months. You’ll meet a lot of noobs interested in the game, and you can ask each other for secrets which none of you know, gripe together about the greedy clique hiding everything they know, and generally have a nice time. If you want to gain any new useful knowledge, it’s probably a waste of time. Nothing like discreet trial and error to learn the terrain and how to play. Then you scale up whatever worked successfully.
Very good advice Gary! I’ll probably do better if I save my money and do exactly as you said in your post!
Thank you very much for your advice! I calculated that going to Vegas, to participate on this convention would cost me $1000+ hard earned money! Since that MS special is “sold out” and these guys pushed the price on the auction of that “lunch” sky high, I’ll probably do better if I stay at home and dig blogs!
I’m on the edge of my seat in case you come up with anything too! You guys are great folks, I’d love to learn from you and ms is the area I’m interested in too.
I agree with all the points in the article, but would like to reiterate your point on stewardship. It’s so important. As someone else mentioned in the comments, there is certainly a tipping point with MS and it can be much easier to reach in certain markets. Be a good steward of the game, and it will benefit you and others.
They are to manufactured spend what Delta force is to the Army. I tip my hat to both.
This is some good info, thanks. I enjoyed a short moment of WF 5% CB, then got shut down by the bank, no reason given, my level of MS was no where close to the mark you mentioned. So, is it just GC -> MO kind of trick they are MS’ing or there are more that only the inner circle people know? If I could do that much volume, I’d quit my day job without a blink, man, those volumes they do are insane.
Yes, its just that basic. Those who can still push volume have found the last few remaining pockets of unsullied MS locations. But they are as rare as hen’s teeth these days.
The CEO of Apple, Google, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, Intel, and many other companies are making lots more than these guys are. So are surgeons, lawyers, bankers, and developers. Why don’t you quit your job and do that instead? Just like that isn’t something you can just walk in and do, neither is this. It sounds easier than it is.
You are compare apples to oranges, IMO, there maybe 100s or 1000s positions collecting more $$ than MS’ers, but, 1. How many jobs do you know that you don’t have to report to someone? 2. How many jobs you can do it at your own pace? For an average Joe, he’s chance to land a high profile, high paying job is much less than 1%, but it’s 50-50 that he can do some level of MS’ing.
You first two points about having to report to someone else and not being able to work at your own pace are ridiculous in this context. If one was offered a job paying millions of dollars a year, but would have to pay taxes and work on schedule, he’d be stupid not to jump on it. Your last point, about how these opportunities aren’t accessible to everyone, was exactly the point I was making. Being a mega MSer isn’t accessible and doable for everyone either. It takes a skillset, just like most well paying jobs do. Much as the bloggers want you to believe that anybody can become get rich quick and be traveling like a millionaire in days from this business (just click click click my affiliate links, and it’s easy as that), it’s not so simple. You’d be better off investing the time necessary into a field that is likely to have a higher payoff. Do this as a hobby. If you find yourself to be such a natural, and everything is going easy, then scale it up until you’re holding by the point of doing it full time. Just don’t quit your day job and rush headlong into it, or you’re likely to be burned, badly.
Well, I agree that theoretically there is no such thing as “too much” MS, but there IS a tipping point for each form of MS as a whole. There will come a time when too many people are doing these ridiculous amounts and the companies will shut us all down. And, yes–I will absolutely blame the greedy (unwilling to go get a real job) parasites who think it’s fine to get all they can as fast as they can, and everyone else be damned. It’s a level of ego-centrism that has become all too common (primarily among under- 35 males).
Legit question: Besides, Tahsir, whose tweets should I be following?
I’d vote for Doctor of Credit.
So these 2 men are spending $750k/month & earning $37500 a month in Wells Fargo cash back based on $1mil evaluation.
Correct.
I thought WF was 5% CB card for only 6 months???
At TravelCon, Tahsir taught everyone how you can get it on an essentially perpetual basis!
until they shut you down
how??? please email me at korrinda dot com
What the ??? 1-2 million per month? Do you know what you can do with that mount of miles? Fly your entire family RTW in F every month!
Do you have to pay taxes in the U.S. on cashbacks?
As a non accountant, my understanding is that there is no tax to be paid on cashback as it is considered a rebate, and rebates are not taxable.
The IRS is extremely unlikely and generally incapable of auditing miles/point redemptions. That said, application of the step transaction doctrine could certainly classify MS transactions as income, and therefore taxable. While rebates are not taxable, they still reduce the basis one has in an asset. This generates taxable income when an asset is sold. As a result, buying an item, receiving a rebate, then selling the item at the original cost does in fact generate a profit, which is taxable income.
Let’s say you buy a $1000 Sharp TV at a Bestbuy store. Sharp offers a $100 rebate, and sends you a check. Is this income? No. However your basis in the television is now $900. If you later sell the TV for $1001, you have $101 in income, which is taxable.
This works the same for MSing. Buy $1000 in VGC, pocket $100 in value, sell and convert to $1000 cash and you have income.
I disagree with that you sell VGC. You redeem them or exchange them. They are not products or services but virtual currency.
Miles? We’re talking cash. Living expenses are up. This isn’t a game to everybody, only the blogger chasing noobs drooling about free flights and hotels and thinking the whole thing is a joke.
Can you shoot me an email so we can chat?
While there are no laws, T&Cs can change to prevent this kind of activity, as in cash back caps. Also enjoy having your name on Suspicious Activity Reports.
Enjoy life being a beta
Do you have anything to add other than personal attacks?
Well technically T&Cs state we shouldn’t earn points on gift cards, but they don’t always choose to enforce it.
And again…what’s wrong with a SAR? I suggest people fill them out without hesitation.
Some people might prefer there name not being examined by the FBI on a regular basis. Some people might. And well you there really isn’t a question of choosing to fill out an SAR.
I agree, some people don’t want to. But I believe they don’t want to out of fear of the unknown. In this case, “being examined by the FBI” definitely sounds scary/ominous but amounts to nothing in reality. At worst, maybe they ask what you’re doing and you explain it to them over a 30 minute conversation. Then you guys laugh about it and they get back to stuff that really matters in life.
kind of a simpleton answer to things.