Bluebird, Vanilla Reloads and Redbird: My Manufactured Spending Archive (2012–2014)

Update, October 2026: everything on this page is history

The products these methods depended on (Vanilla Reloads, Redbird and Bluebird itself) are all gone, so treat this page as a record of how manufactured spending worked from 2012 to 2014. In October 2026 I combined twelve of my Bluebird-era posts into this one page, each under its original title and date, so the old links now land here.

• Buying Vanilla Reloads with a credit card was already over at CVS by April 2014, and in December 2014 a notice to Bluebird cardholders signaled the reloads were on their way out (View from the Wing).
• Target stopped accepting credit cards to load Redbird on May 6, 2015 (Frequent Miler).
• American Express discontinued Bluebird and Serve on June 2, 2026 (Doctor of Credit).
• Many of the cards, bonus categories and hotel programs named below have changed or no longer exist; the box below lists the renames.

For what still works today, start with my manufactured spending hub.

What’s on this page

• An Introduction to Using Bluebird and Vanilla Reloads (Feb 2014)
• Don’t Abuse Bluebird, but… (Oct 2012)
• If You’re Rich, Then the Points Game is For You! (Jan 2013)
• The Hidden Costs of Earning Miles with Prepaid Cards (Feb 2013)
• Introducing the Bluebird/Chase Ink Award Cost Charts (May 2013)
• The Bluebird/SPG Reward Night Cost Chart (Jun 2013)
• How to Make Money Using Credit Cards (Apr 2014)
• Make Money and Earn Points from Staples! (Apr 2014)
• Manufactured Spending Your Way to the Best Hotels in the World (Sep 2014)
• Manufacturing Club Carlson Rewards Points (Oct 2014)
• Manufacturing Hilton Points (Oct 2014)
• Manufacture Hotel Elite Status (Oct 2014)
• Bluebird vs Redbird (Target Prepaid Redcard) – Which is Better for Manufactured Spend? (Nov 2014)

An Introduction to Using Bluebird and Vanilla Reloads

Originally published February 24, 2014. This was the main post; the sections after it were separate posts until October 2026.

UPDATE: Note that you can no longer purchase Vanilla Reloads from CVS and most other locations using a credit card. Some locations do still allow it, but it’s VERY regional and VERY YMMV. You can still load Bluebird with PIN-enabled gift cards by taking them to any Walmart register – simply ask to reload your Bluebird card with the amount on your gift card.

My long-time readers and the intermediate to advanced audience will not find any use in this post, but I need to write it. I need to write it because I absolutely hate all the other “guides” that I’ve seen bloggers write on this subject because they’re either too complicated or don’t give proper information and explanations. When I didn’t feel like explaining it to a friend, I realized I had no good place to direct them to read about it. That’s why I felt the need to write a “How to Use Bluebird and Vanilla Reloads” post.

What is Bluebird?

Bluebird is a prepaid card created by American Express. It allows points and miles junkies like us to “manufacture” spend, or spend money buying things that we can turn around and liquidate easily. We want to do this because it allows us to easily meet credit card minimum spend requirements or simply generate points for very cheap.

There are no fees that we need to worry about with Bluebird. It is free to sign up for. Even though the registration page asks for your Social Security Number, there are no credit checks…so your credit report is saved from an inquiry. The most important feature of Bluebird is a “Bill Pay” feature, where you can easily pay bills online to a very large number of vendors. For example, my mortgage company and car loan company are both on the vendor list. More importantly to the miles/points group, we can directly pay off our credit card bills.

What is a Vanilla Reload?

A Vanilla Reload, pictured below, is nothing more than a gift card-like piece of paper that contains a secret code. You can buy these at CVS and a variety of other stores in the US. When you take it to the register at CVS, you will be asked how much you’d like to put on the card. You can load anywhere from $20 to $500 on a single card. The cost of a Vanilla Reload is the amount you choose, plus a fixed $3.95 purchase fee. For example, you can buy a $500 Vanilla Reload for $503.95. The “trick” here is to make sure you purchase it with a credit card, otherwise this whole thing is useless.

The Process

Okay, let’s put this together now.

1. Load the VR to your Bluebird card

You can load this $500 VR you just purchased onto your Bluebird card. Simply scratch off the back of the VR to reveal the code, go to Vanillareload.com, type in your code, type in your Bluebird card number, and boom…your Bluebird account will magically have $500 on it.

2. Pay off your Credit Card using Bluebird’s Bill Pay function

Click on “Pay Bills” after logging in to your Bluebird account, find the credit card company you want to pay (“Chase Credit Cards” or “Wells Fargo Credit Card” for example), type in the credit card number of the account you’re trying to pay, enter the amount, and then pay it. Done.

3. Pay off the rest of your credit card

If you forgot, you paid $503.95 for $500 worth of a VR. That means you’ll have to pay the extra $3.95 out of your pocket. This is a very small price to pay, as I’ll explain shortly.

Summary

Did you see what we did there? We created a cycle of transferring money. You pay for a VR with your credit card, then pay off the credit card with that VR, plus a $3.95 fee per $500. You’ve also created 504 points on your credit card in that process; these are the points you’ve manufactured in this process, in addition to any other bonuses you might have earned.

Answers to FAQs

• CVS is the best place to buy VRs. You may have to go to many CVSs before you find them.
• Many CVSs will let you buy $5K of VRs at a time (that’s $5K plus the $39.50 in fees). Others limit you to $1K.
• You can buy $5K of VRs from CVS per 24 hours. They keep track by swiping your ID. No, the government isn’t tracking you.
• You can only load $5K of VRs per Bluebird per calendar month.
• Yes, you can pay off the credit card of your friend from your Bluebird account. Names don’t matter for bill pay.
• DO NOT try transferring money from your Bluebird account to your friend’s account. You will get shut down.
• You can load $1K in VRs to your Bluebird card per day. The day ends at 12am EST. Yes, you can do $1K at 11:59PM and another $1K at 12AM.
• I recommend not manufacturing spend on American Express credit cards, except the Amex SPG card.

Why? What’s the Point?

Seems like a lot of work right? So why would anyone want to do this? A couple of weeks ago I wrote about a 100,000 point credit card offer. That’s a lot of points that can get you a lot of places in the world, but the minimum spend requirement to earn those points is $10,000 within the first 3 months. The average American doesn’t spend $3.3K a month on their credit card, so those people have to “manufacture” the spend. The process above allows you to do that. Buying $10K worth of VRs would cost you just $79 in fees – a very small price to pay for all those points.

Others, like myself, do this on a very large scale because we have access to multiple Bluebird accounts. Let’s say I had access to 6 Bluebird accounts. I could buy $30K of VRs a month, with the fees costing me $237 out of pocket. That’s a lot of money for most people, but this could end up saving me money.

Let’s say I spent that $30K on my SPG credit card. I would then have 30K SPG points. Let’s say I wanted to stay 3 nights in Fiji at the Sheraton Fiji Resort, which costs 10K SPG Points per night. What would the cost of those 3 nights be if I paid in cash? See the image below.

I’ll do the currency conversion for you. FJD 1,590 is equal to $846.20 USD today. And if you didn’t notice, that number doesn’t include the tax either, another 20%. That means you’re looking at over $1,000 for 3 nights at this hotel. Those same nights are available for just 10K points per night, and no cash out of pocket. I paid $237 in fees though, so it’s not completely free, but it’s still about 77% off the daily rate.

THAT’S why we do this.

If you want to have some more fun thinking about the possibilities of how much money you can save, check out my Bluebird/Ink Award Cost Chart post.

Don’t Abuse Bluebird, but…

Originally published October 26, 2012 as a separate post.

There are probably going to be A LOT of people that hate this article. My goal is to get people thinking of the new possibilities Bluebird creates, and I personally believe that showing some extreme examples is the best way. Everyone should read Frequent Miler’s, Million Mile Secret’s, and Scottrick’s (my absolute favorite of the three) articles imploring moderation so you don’t screw yourself or everyone else over unintentionally.

I don’t want Bluebird to get shut down any more than the next guy (especially since I just paid my property tax using it), but this new card presents quite a bit of opportunity for many people. Certain things that weren’t possible before might seem within reach now, and hopefully a few examples can show you how it’s possible, though not necessarily practical, to leverage the new card.

 

ATTAIN SPG PLATINUM STATUS FOR JUST $395 (plus effort)

One of the cool benefits of the SPG program is that all reward nights count towards your elite status qualification. There is no rule that says any part of your 25 stays/50 nights have to be paid, so you can theoretically use your SPG Amex card to earn Platinum status for minimal spend, but lots of effort.

To stay at a Category 1 property, it takes a minimum of 2,000 points. If you have an SPG Amex you’d need to buy 4 Vanilla reload cards at $500 each to get 2,000 SPG points. At $3.95 per reload card, that’s $15.80 for a night at a Category 1 hotel. Now, do that 25 times and you have SPG Platinum status!

That means $395 ($15.80 x 25 nights) gets you SPG Platinum status, assuming you’re able to spend or cash out the money you put on it. Keep in mind this means buying $50,000 worth of Vanilla Reload cards, or 100 of them, so not everyone can or would do this.

Is it even worth it? Only you can decide that. Maybe you’d rather use those 50K SPG points for several nights at a Category 4 (or lower) property. Maybe you’d rather use it for a couple of nights at a top end Category 6 or 7. Either way, you’re almost certain to get more than $395 worth of value out of it!

ATTAIN HILTON DIAMOND STATUS FOR JUST $316 (plus effort)

While Hilton also counts award stays toward elite status, there is a much easier way to get top tier status with them. Spending $40,000 on either the Amex Hilton Surpass card or the Citi Hilton Reserve card will get you Diamond status.

To put $40,000 on a card, you’d need to buy 80 Vanilla Reload packs at $500 each (80 x $500 = $40,000). At $3.95 per Vanilla Reload, that’s just $316 in fees ($3.95 x 80 = $316) in order to attain Hilton Honors Diamond status. You also get 120,000 HHonors points, good for several nights depending on how you use them.

Is it worth it? Well, the difference between Hilton Gold and Diamond status is marginal. I’m Hilton Gold status this year despite staying with them only once, thanks to a rare opportunity to get Gold status for free. But $316 is also pretty cheap, even with all the time and effort involved. Again…you decide if it’s worth it for you.

HYATT AND PRIORITY CLUB

Unfortunately there is currently no way to earn Hyatt elite status via spending to my knowledge, and they don’t allow award nights to count toward stays either. Boo to them.

Priority Club’s program makes it relatively easy to attain top tier status as it is, so I wont bother doing a write-up for it.

ATTAINING AIRLINE ELITE STATUS

Delta is the only program through which you can actually spend your way to airline elite status via credit card spending. Select other programs offer a certain amount of Preferred/Elite Qualifying miles for hitting a certain spending threshold, as long as you have the co-branded credit card.

• Spending $25,000 on the Barclays US Airways card or Barclays Virgin America card will get you 10,000 points/miles in each respective program. It costs $197.50 to get these elite miles via Vanilla Reloads (50 Vanilla Reloads x $3.95 = $197.50).
• Spending $40,000 on the Citi American Airlines Executive card will also get you 10,000 elite AAdvantage miles. It costs $316 to get these elite miles via Vanilla Reloads (80 Vanilla Reloads x $3.95 = $316).
• Spending $10,000 on the Chase Southwest cards gets you an extra 1,500 bonus points. That means that if you spend $100,000 you’ll earn enough points for the coveted Southwest Companion Pass. But that’s a lot of spending. It costs $790 to get these elite miles via Vanilla Reloads (200 Vanilla Reloads x $3.95 = $790).

For a much more efficient breakdown of how “big spenders” can earn these bonuses and much more (and we’re all suddenly big spenders with Bluebird), I highly recommend Million Mile Secrets’ Big Spenders Series. He also wrote this article on how to earn lots of points (not necessarily elite points) via spending.

It’s easy to calculate how many points you need when you’re trying to reach a particular spending goal for whatever purpose (as you saw above). The basic formula is:

Spend Target/$500 x $3.95 = Total Cost. So if you need to hit $25,000 as I noted above: $25,000/$500 x $3.95 = $197.50. If you’re bad at math, don’t worry…order of operations doesn’t apply so multiply and divide however you want!

LIMITATIONS

You’re “only” allowed to load $5,000 per month on your Bluebird card, so $60,000 a year might not cut it for your spending needs. If, however, you were to start today, you could theoretically load/spend $75,000 by the end of 2013. Three calendar months left this year is $15,000, plus all 12 next year is another $60,000 for a total of $75,000.

Oh and don’t forget the good old Amex Prepaid card! You can order 3 of them for yourself and each can hold up to $2,500, reloaded with Vanilla Reloads. It can be cashed out at ATM machines, but there are some fees. It does not have check writing capabilities.

Also, as I’ve tried to note several times above, it’s damn hard to spend or get back all that money efficiently or quickly. It will take time, patience, and in many cases you have to have the ability to “float” several thousand dollars at a time. Again, not everyone can or would want to do this.

Quite frankly, if you went all out like I noted above then Chase or Amex might take a look at your accounts and/or shut you down. Don’t let that happen.

With that being said, I’d like to direct you to an article from the Wall Street Journal that notes how lucrative opportunities like this could be if you go all out and can find a way to avoid having your accounts closed.

If you’re wondering, I’m not going to attempt most of the above options. The one I might consider is the US Airways EQMs. I also might use the SPG card for a few nights here or there.

Just remember, don’t go overboard. Be responsible. Only you can prevent forest fires.

Happy spending!

If You’re Rich, Then the Points Game is For You!

Originally published January 22, 2013 as a separate post.

Do you have access to lots of cash? Do you have lots of time on your hands? Do you enjoy travel?

If you answered “yes” to these three questions, then the points game is for you!

Although I haven’t been part of the points community for a very long time compared to many others, I’ve been around long enough to make an interesting observation: if you have cash, you can seriously turbocharge your points/miles-earning strategy. I find this to be interesting not just for that fact itself, but because most of the travel-blogging websites (including Travel Summary) make a point of explaining how you can travel cheaper and better than you thought possible, all through the use of points and your credit. It’s true, but it’s only part of the story.

Allow me to explain. If you’re a casual traveler, which most of you are, then yes, all you really need are credit card sign-ups. If you sign up for 3+ new cards every 3-4 months, you should have more than enough loyalty points saved up to take at least one and probably two amazing vacations per year with minimal cash spent. This is perfect for most people. Vacation days are hard to come by if you have a real job, so one or two big vacations a year is a very realistic goal that people have.

But people are also greedy by nature. Once you fly Business or First Class, you probably won’t want to go back to the back of the plane. Once you’ve stayed in the heart of Paris or in an over-water room in the Maldives, a regular hotel probably won’t hold the same appeal. You want more. And if you enjoy travel, you want it more often too. That takes a lot more points.

That’s where the “advanced” points-earning schemes come in. I call them advanced because it’s not simply about getting 5x everywhere or just signing up for cards anymore. The game transforms from maximizing points from spending into simply generating points for as little money as possible. These are very different things, and having more money can really allow you to maximize your return.

It sounds obvious, right? We’ve all heard people say that those with lots of money can make more money than people that have less. It’s definitely true in the points world.

For example, I mentioned in my recent Tips & Tricks post that you can earn 50K United, American, or Delta points just by depositing money into a Fidelity account. How much does it take? A cool $100K. You can cycle the same money in and out several times (I did that myself), but if you’re trying with anything less than $15K then I’m sure even you’ll feel a little uneasy about making 6-7 deposits and withdrawals. It’s simply easier and faster if you have more cash.

Lets look at another example. Last year, The Frequent Miler earned a Southwest Companion Pass by buying several tablet computers and then selling them via Amazon. His total cost came to about $400, but he first had to pay off his $3.4K purchase because of the time it takes to sell products. Essentially, you would have to have been able to “float,” or live without, $3.4K for several weeks before you received it back if your replicated that deal.

One more example, this time with Amex Prepaid cards. You can load an Amex prepaid card with $2.5K per month, and withdrawing those funds costs money. You’d be crazy to simply pull all $2.5K out via ATM over just a few days, so once again you’ll likely need to “float” that money (keep it in the account) for several weeks until you can pull that money out without it looking too suspicious.

The point is that the ability to “float” money can potentially earn you a ton more points than someone without a large cash savings normally could. The best example of this is the NetSpend prepaid card. You can earn 15K points by simply loading the maximum amount of $15K over two days, but there’s a 99.99% chance that your account will get shut down for doing so (see the 250+ comments on The Frequent Miler’s post here). That money is rightfully yours so it will be returned to you after a couple of months of arguing with them. So, if you want 15K points and can part with $15K for a few months, it’s easy points.

Similarly, I’m sure you know how hard it is to find Vanilla Reloads sometimes. If you’re like me, you’ve gotten to the point of “Okay, if I find them I’ll buy them, even though I’ve already hit all my limits for the month.” Bluebird’s $5K limit is annoying, and by the 5th of the month I’m already impatiently waiting for the 1st of the next month. But since Vanilla Reloads have been known to be scarce, I still go and buy some. Who knows if they’ll be there next time? You remember what happened with Office Depot, right? They literally disappeared from the stores over night. My mind keeps telling me to stock up now while I still can at CVS.

I know I’m not alone with that feeling. I regularly read tweets about people stocking up in anticipation of the next month’s load. People have literally saved $15K+ worth, just waiting to load them to their Bluebird, their spouse’s Bluebird, and all six of the Amex prepaids (three each). Others have generous family members that allow them to use their Bluebird accounts, so they have tons of avenues for free points.

Oh, and don’t forget to factor in the time as well. First you have to find all those Vanilla Reloads. Since there’s a $1K transaction limit you’ll have to go back a dozen times or go to a dozen different stores. Then you have to make trips to the ATM for the Amex prepaids, and then to your actual bank to deposit your cash. Then you can finally pay off your cards.

Yes, the rich get richer. That’s just how it is, unless you can find a way to cash out quickly and cheaply in order to pay your credit card bill before it’s due. For the record, while I do agree that “people with money can make a lot of money,” I also believe that “if you can’t make money without money, then you probably can’t make money with money either.”

The Hidden Costs of Earning Miles with Prepaid Cards

Originally published February 26, 2013 as a separate post.

Generating miles/points via the use of prepaid cards is all the rage right now, and rightly so. They can greatly reduce the cost of your travels and, when used in conjunction with credit card bonuses, can allow you to travel in relative luxury or earn you elite status for ultra-cheap prices. But prepaid cards and other schemes do not allow you to travel for free, which I think is a mistake that many beginners make when getting started in the points world.

Products like Bluebird and the Amex, Target, and Wells Fargo prepaid cards all have costs in earning earn points/miles. Essentially, you buy reload cards with a credit card and then cash them out to pay your credit card bill. It’s a cycle in which very little money is supposedly lost and points are magically created. This works pretty well for a lot of people, and if you have a lot of cash and time on your hands you can literally earn millions of points every year without signing up for a single credit card.

But at what cost?

Additional Reading

• Don’t Abuse Bluebird, But…
• Beginners Guide Part 5: There are LOT’S of Ways to Earn Points
• If You’re Rich, Then the Points Game is for You!
• Cheap Points via Green Dot Moneypak Reloads at Rite-Aid

Let’s go through some of the more common methods of earning points to see what our cost and points/mile haul will be.

Bluebird has a $5K monthly limit on Vanilla Reload loads. The Amex Prepaid card takes $2.5K per month, and you can have three of them (so $7.5K total per month). The Wells Fargo card can be loaded with $2.5K as well. Amazon payments takes $1K. There are about a dozen other options to earn points, but I’ll stop there so we can count how much we’re looking at on a monthly basis. You’re up to $16K in month if you max out the four methods I just mentioned.

That’s already a minimum of 16K points. If you were earning the consensus most valuable points, SPG points, then those 16K SPG points would be worth roughly $400 if valued at 2.5 cents a piece. But let’s consider the fees. If you’re loading Bluebird and all your Amex Prepaid cards with Vanilla Reloads, then you’d need to buy 25 of them to reach the load limits (10 for Bluebird and 15 for three Amex prepaids). At $3.95 each, that’s a cost of $98.75. Let’s assume the Wells Fargo prepaid card and Amazon payments amounts can be withdrawn completely free (which they can, depending on how you do it).

We know that Bluebird is awesome since we can literally just pay off our credit cards with it; you incur no additional costs. The problem we run in to is with the other prepaid card products. While the Amex prepaid cards allow one ATM withdrawal free per month, the rest cost $2. Then you have to worry about the surcharge at the ATM you’re using to pull money out. Let’s say you use a Costco one that charges $1.25, which is generally one of the cheapest options. If you were to withdraw all $2.5K from each card, you’d need to go to the ATM 6 times since you can only withdraw $400 at a time (I’ll assume you spend the last $100 on normal spend).

The first time you’ll be charged only the $1.25 by the ATM. Trips 2-6 will cost $3.25 each ($2 from Amex and $1.25 from the ATM) for a total of $17.50. That is the cost for cashing out one card, but remember you have 3 cards…so the combined cost to withdraw is $52.50 to get back all your money.

Let’s see what our total costs are. We spent $98.75 on Vanilla Reloads and $52.50 to cash out our Amex Prepaid cards, so we’ve spent $151.25. I’m guessing that’s more than you thought you’d be spending. If you value SPG points at 2.5 cents apiece, those 16K points would be worth $400. But that $400 is now actually $248.75 when you account for costs, which is considerably less but still a “profit” of value.

Don’t forget to factor in all the time and gas as well. First you have to find 25 Vanilla Reloads, which for many people isn’t so easy anymore. Since there’s a $1K transaction limit you’ll have to go back to the store 13 times or go to 13 different stores. Then to cash out your Amex Prepaids you have to make 6 trips to the Costco ATM, and then to your actual bank to deposit your cash. Depending on what you do with your Wells Fargo prepaid cards you might have to go to a different ATM for additional trips. THEN you can finally pay off your cards.

That’s a lot of work.

So is it worth it? let’s say you do that for 5 months in a row and earn 80K SPG points. Using the 5th night free option on SPG, awards, this will entitle you to 5 nights at a Category 6 hotel. It’s not the top-end hotels, but you can still find some good ones like the Westin Paris Vendome, the W Retreat and Spa Bali, The Naka Island Phuket, and the St. Regis Princeville (which will become Category 7 soon). Each of these would likely cost upwards of $500 per night.

We, being smarter than the average traveler, know that it’s unnecessary to pay that much to stay at these hotels. But that doesn’t mean we’ll be staying there free, either. We’d pay $151.25 x 5 = $756.25 for this 5 night stay if we earned our points as described above. That’s still a lot of money, and far from being a free vacation, but much cheaper than it would be if paid with cash outright.

Of course you can get there cheaper by simply signing up for credit cards. If a married couple both sign up for the personal and business versions of the SPG Amex credit cards, they’d have a combined 100K points to spend. THAT’S a free vacation. But you can only do this every couple of years with Amex and SPG since there’s a waiting period when churning cards. Other cards give you more options (including airfare), especially if using a program like Membership Rewards or Ultimate Rewards.

And I’m not saying the SPG card is the best option either. You can definitely earn more points with other cards. The Chase Sapphire, Chase Freedom (with Chase Exclusives), and Amex PRG (with 15K bonus after $30K) could potentially earn you far more points. Heck, even a 2% cash back card would get you back $1,600 on that $80K spend, and could potentially be more valuable to you.

All I’m saying is that point earning from prepaid cards is probably more expensive than it might initially seem. Do the math on your calculations. See if the the cost and time is worth it. If not, maybe you need to adjust your strategy. A few days ago I wrote about fee-free Green Dot Moneypak reloads, and this could help reduce the cost of these prepaid cards.

Note that the Ink cards were special when the $500 gift cards were available because those 16K points a month could have turned into 80K Chase Ultimate Rewards points per month if you decided to go all out. I wouldn’t recommend going all out, but it was an option.

Be mindful when you’re spending money. The potential is there to save you thousands of dollars if you would have paid for that travel anyway, but don’t think it’s free. There’s a cost to prepaid cards, and it’s not always obvious.

Introducing the Bluebird/Chase Ink Award Cost Charts

Originally published May 19, 2013 as a separate post.

Manufactured spend is essentially when one purchases items using a rewards credit card and then liquidates those items (turning them into cash) in order to pay off the credit card bill for the card they used to purchase the item. The desired result is the creation of a lot of points, miles, or cash back on their rewards credit card for minimal fees or other loss.

If you read my blog or any other frequent flyer blog, you likely know that the Bluebird prepaid card is one of the best tools for manufacturing spend. Put simply, you buy Vanilla Reload cards using your credit card, load the funds to your Bluebird prepaid card, then either cash out to pay your credit card bill or pay the bill directly from the Bluebird bill-pay section. Using this method, your loss is $3.95 for every $500 spent.

There was a brief time when Vanilla Reloads could be purchased at Office Depot stores, which gave the benefit of earning a whopping 5 points per dollar when purchasing them using a Chase Ink card. This method is no longer available, and you can’t buy $500 gift cards at Office Supply stores anymore either.

But you can buy $200 gift cards.

Clearly it’s not going to be as lucrative as the $500 gift cards or Vanilla Reloads, but that definitely doesn’t mean they’re useless. Let me do some quick math: There’s a significant $6.95 fee on top of that $200 gift card, meaning using your Ink card yields 1035 points ($207 x 5) for a fee of $6.95. That means the cost-per-point is .006715, or well under a penny each. You can liquidate the cash on the gift card by loading them to your Bluebird card at Walmart.

First off, I want to say that this $6.95 fee is nothing to ignore. I’ve pointed out several times that you shouldn’t ignore the cost of prepaid cards and annual fees just because you’re earning points. See the following posts: The Hidden Cost of Prepaid Cards and Are Credit Card Annual Fees Worth It? With that being said, I also noted that there are some interesting benefits of the Bluebird card.

Points-crazed people will understand that .006715 means tremendous value, but beginners or even intermediates may not really understand what that means, but it’s extremely valuable. To prove it to you, I created what I call the Bluebird/Chase Ink Award Charts.

The two favored redemption options for Chase points are to transfer them either to United or Hyatt. I basically took the award charts for these two loyalty programs and converted them into the real cost for someone that utilizes their Chase Ink and Bluebird cards using the method I described above. Finding the real cost is a simple matter of multiplying the cost-per-point, .006715, by the miles or points required for your particular award.

United Airlines Award Chart

Let’ start by taking a look at the normal United Award Chart. I had to re-create the award chart since United’s published chart is “interactive.” I only listed the Saver award requirements since that’s what you should be redeeming for.

Nothing surprising here – these are the same amounts you see when you search for an award based on United’s Award Chart. To get the real cost of these awards when using the Bluebird/Chase Ink trick, all we need to do is multiply these amounts by our cost-per-point of .006715.

These numbers speak for themselves, but clearly these are ultra-cheap fares. Just look at the round-trip cost of flights to places like Africa and Australia, which are usually the most expensive there are. You can essentially get 75%-90% off the actual fare price!

Hyatt Award/Reward Chart

Hyatt is the other favored transfer partner of Chase. If you’d rather have a hotel room than a free flight, this could be the route for you. I didn’t have to re-create the award chart, but it’s easy anyway with only 6 categories (as of right now, that is).

Again – nothing surprising here. A category 6 hotel will run you 22K points, enough to stay at top end hotels like the Park Hyatt Sydney, Park Hyatt Tokyo or the Park Hyatt Maldives. Rooms at these hotels normally cost $400-$1,000 or more. But let’s get the real cost of these awards when using the Bluebird/Chase Ink trick. Again, all we need to do is multiply these amounts by our cost-per-point of .006715.

Top-end hotels can be had at under $150 per night, and a hotel like the Hyatt Place Las Vegas would run you only $54 per night. You can even book a suite if you’re willing to pay a small premium. Basically, you see that just as with United, you can have savings of 75%-90% on top-end redemptions.

Avios

I decided to throw in the Avios chart as well. This one is unique since it is distance based, but earning 5x can prove to be very lucrative. The only thing you’ll need to keep in mind is that taxes can be very hefty on some of these awards depending on the airline and route.

As I discussed in my Beginner’s Guide to Avios (and Oneworld Alliance), shorter distance flights are much more valuable than longer flights on this award chart. Los Angeles to San Francisco or Phoenix are only 4,500 Avios each way, and Los Angeles to Hawaii is only 12,500 each way. There’s tons of other great values on this chart as well. But let’s see the real cost using the Bluebird/Chase Ink trick.

The gems on this chart are mostly when flying on American Airlines. You can fly from Los Angeles to either New York or Hawaii for $168 round trip in Economy. You can even go Los Angeles to Tokyo round trip for $336 plus some taxes and fees. There are a lot of good, cheap redemptions possible.

Summary

Using Bluebird in conjunction with a Chase Ink card, you can earn a ton of points at a very, very cheap rate. It’s not as good as it used to be, but there are still massive savings to be had as you can see in the award charts above.

While I discussed the cost of the prepaid cards, I didn’t discuss the time commitment or gas required to attain these points. The time required is something that many people simply don’t have. But if you do, you can go anywhere you want!

There are plenty of other deals to be had as well. I didn’t even discuss Southwest awards, but you can save over 60% even on their revenue-based chart. Now that Virgin Atlantic is a transfer partner, you can essentially earn 10X Hilton points (5x on Office stores, transfer to Virgin Atlantic, then transfer to Hilton at 1:2). That almost puts the new category 10 properties within reach once again.

If you don’t have a Bluebird card, you can order one for free online.

Just for Fun

I thought it would be fun to see the cost of these flights or hotel rooms back when it was possible to buy Vanilla Reloads at Office Depot. Buying a $500 Vanilla reload for $3.95 would yield 2,520 points, or a minuscule cost-per-point of .00157. Let’s see what used to be possible.

Not bad, right? Hopefully you were one of the people that got in on it and went big!

The Bluebird/SPG Reward Night Cost Chart

Originally published June 19, 2013 as a separate post.

I got a lot of positive (and some negative) feedback for my Bluebird/Chase Ink Award Cost Chart post, so I decided to do it again for one of my other favorite cards: the SPG Amex card.

The Amex SPG card only earns one point per dollar on all non-SPG spend. No bonuses, ever. And the card also has foreign transaction fees, making it useless when traveling abroad. But the card can still earn points that are very valuable.

SPG points are generally considered a valuable points currency for two reasons: 1) You can often redeem points at a rate of 3 cents per point or more, which is considered very favorable (Cash & Points redemptions in particular can be redeemed for great values); 2) You can transfer SPG points to A LOT of mileage currencies (AA, Singapore, etc.) and get a bonus. Every 20K SPG points gets you 25K miles for most airlines, effectively earning 1.25 points per dollar spent.

But at the same time, SPG properties are pretty darn expensive and cost a lot of points, and it feels like even more considering you can’t earn points by any method aside from the credit card and hotel stays. Amex transfers to SPG, but at a horrible 3:1 ratio.

First some math: if you use your SPG Amex card to buy Vanilla Reloads, you earn 504 points for an effective cost of $3.95. The cost-per-point is .007837 in this case. If you don’t have VRs nearby, you’ll almost definitely have $500 Visa/MasterCard gift cards at CVS or local grocery stores. These will earn you 505 points for an effective cost of $4.95, and a cost-per-point of .009802.

SPG has a convoluted reward chart, so I’ll break it down into 3 sections: Reward Nights during Low Season and Weekdays, Reward Nights during High Season and Weekends (note only Categories 1 and 2 decrease for weekends), and Cash & Points.

 

So with that in mind, let’s look at what it would cost to get a free stay at Category 1-7 hotels. First we’ll start with costs associated with buying Vanilla Reloads.

SPG Reward Chart for Vanilla Reloads

The one thing that pops out immediately is that Cash & Points are NEVER a good value when doing manufactured spend like this. The reason is actually pretty simple: Since you’re paying fewer points for more cash, you can essentially think of it as buying points. For a Category 3 room, instead of paying 7,000 points you pay 3,500 and $55, so you’re buying 3,500 points for $55. That’s a rate of .01571 dollars per point, which is more than twice the rate at which we can manufacture spend (remember we’re buying VRs for .007837 dollars per point).

You can also see the prices rise quickly for high category hotels. It’s generally considered a bad value to redeem SPG points for top-tier, “aspirational” properties because they’re just so damn expensive with points. Heck, it’s expensive even when you manufacture spend! But with that being said, that $275 for a Category 7 is still probably half of what you’d pay in cash for the same room, so you’re still coming out ahead. In my opinion, hotels up to Category 5 are worth looking into for manufactured spend.

SPG Reward Chart for $500 Visa/MC Gift Cards

That extra $1 per $500 makes quite a difference, doesn’t it? A Category 7 hotel in high season goes from $275 with Vanilla Reloads to a whopping $343. But when you think about it, that $1 is a 25% increase ($3.95 vs. $4.95), which is exactly the increase in all these rates from the chart we just saw above.

It’s not ideal, but it’s still likely cheaper than the normal nightly rate.

Five Night Award Stays

One of the interesting redemption benefits with SPG is that your 5th night is free when redeeming nights with points. For example, a Category 4 hotel would cost 40,000 SPG points for 4 nights, but you get a 5th night free. This brings your effective points-per-night rate down to 8,000 points-per-night instead of 10,000 – effectively 20% off. Let’s factor 5 night stays in to the manufactured spend chart for Vanilla Reload purchases. Note that this redemption option is not available for Cash & Points redemptions.

If you’re planning on staying 5 nights at an SPG hotel, your points become a lot more valuable. At the Category 5 level there are five hotels in Hawaii and five St. Regis hotels that you can have for pretty cheap. There are some exceptional Category 6 properties, and maybe even Category 7 properties will become worth it for rare “aspirational” redemptions.

Summary

You can see the values above and decide whether it’s worth it for you to go big with SPG. It’s always worth having a stash of SPG points in my opinion, so I make sure to make the SPG Amex part of my manufactured spend routine. I personally have no plans to ever redeem for a SPG Category 7 property because I’m simply not willing to pay $275 for a night after manufactured spend, but I might consider it if I have the desire to stay 5 nights at one of them.

For high-end properties, I’m much more inclined to stay at Hyatt hotels using the Chase Ink card as I outlined in my previous post. Hyatt hotels are essentially half the price when using manufactured spend. I’d be more than happy to redeem my SPG points at some Category 4 and 5 properties, particularly in Asia.

As a reminder, don’t go overboard and spend too much and earn an Amex Financial Review (or a review from any bank). It wouldn’t be the end of the world, but it would be really annoying.

Happy Travels!

How to Make Money Using Credit Cards

Originally published April 1, 2014 as a separate post.

Many people focus on getting frequent flyer/hotel points for their spending, and there’s definitely a ton of value there for travelers. With the introduction of manufactured spending, however, there are opportunities to not only create points for cheap, but also make money using credit cards. I’ll discuss some of the top options for that in this post.

Note that each of these methods relies on the Vanilla Reload/Bluebird method. If that’s not a possibility for you anymore, you can buy PIN-enabled $500 Visa/MC gift cards from a grocery store and load your Bluebird card at a Walmart (yes that’s an extra step, but wait until you see how much money you can make).

5% Cash Back Cards

If you can get 5% cash back from grocery stores or drug stores, you’re golden. Let’s say you can buy $5K worth of Vanilla Reloads from CVS. It will cost you $5,039.50 including fees to make that purchase. With a 5% cash back card, you’ll earn a whopping $252 back. When you subtract fees, you’re left with a PROFIT of $212. The Visa gift cards from grocery stores will also net you a profit of over $200, but require the extra step of going to Walmart.

If either of these options are available to you, it can be like making $200/hour if you have several Bluebird cards and easy access to VRs/Visa gift cards. If you’re doing better than that at your day job, you probably don’t need to be reading this blog!

Your 5% Cash Back Options:

• Wells Fargo Rewards Visa
• Citizens Bank CashBack Platinum MasterCard
• TD Easy Rewards Visa Card
• Blue Cash from American Express (Use private browsing window if link doesn’t work)

See this post for more information.

Barclays Arrival Card for 2.2% Cash Back on Travel

The Barclays Arrival Card is one of my favorites. The 2.2% cash back for travel purchases (it’s 2% plus a 10% rebate on travel, so effectively 2.2%) is still good value for manufacturing spend.

Let’s take the same $5K example above. You’ll spend $5,039.50 including fees, and at 2.2% cash back you’ll earn back $111. Subtracting the fees, you’ll earn a profit of $71 using the Vanilla Reload method, and slightly less using Visa gift cards. If you don’t plan to use the cash back on travel, you’ll still be earning $61 after fees.

Note that this cash back is in the form of a statement credit, meaning you can use the points to essentially zero-out purchases on your online statement. It’s a very easy process.

2% Cash Back Cards

As mentioned above, the Barclay’s Arrival Card also provides 2% cash back, which is why I recommend it. You get the flexibility of 2% cash back all the time plus the possibility of 2.2% if used for travel. There are, however, several other options that offer the same 2% cash back on all purchases. Again, using the $5,039.50 Vanilla Reload purchase example above, you’ll earn $61 in profit after all fees.

2% Cash Back Options:

• Barclaycard Rewards MasterCard (2% on gas, groceries, and utilities only)
• U.S. Bank Cash+ Visa
• Lots of other options (Google them!)

Notes

First of all, yes I’m well aware that Vanilla Reloads may/have become cash only from CVS for many people. There are other options, and while none are as easy or as lucrative as VRs, they can still be very useful. The grocery store category makes this possible.

If you click on the links above, you’ll notice one thing in common – a lack of sign up bonuses for most of these cards. That’s how cash back cards tend to work, and it’s also why the Arrival Card is an amazing card: it comes with a $440 travel bonus right off the bat. I guess we shouldn’t complain too much if our objective is to make money.

Make Money and Earn Points from Staples!

Originally published April 28, 2014 as a separate post.

 

There’s currently an opportunity to earn Ultimate Rewards points for free and make money, or alternatively just make a good amount of money and not earn points if that’s what you’re interested in. This is brought to you by our good friends at Staples. Here’s what you need:

• An Ink Bold/Plus card from Chase.
• A free Swagbucks account

This opportunity has arisen because Staples has made $200 Visa gift cards available for purchase on their website. These gift cards are PIN-enabled and can be liquidated relatively easily.

1. Go to Swagbucks and click through to Staples, which is currently at 6x points (a temporary increase).
2. Buy $200 Visa gift cards from Staples.com. There is a $6.95 fee. This will earn you 1,200+ Swagbucks and 1,000+ Ultimate Rewards points.
3. Go to Walmart and load the $200 onto a Bluebird card, which you can then use to pay off your Ink card.

Here’s what this earns us:

• 1,200 Swagbucks is equal to $12 in PayPal credit (note that it’s only available in denominations of $25, $50, and $100).
• 1,000 Ultimate rewards points, valued at the worst-case scenario value of 1 cent per point, is worth $10.

If you’re going for the “make money” angle, the total of these is $22. Subtracting the $7 original fee gives us a profit of $15. If you’re going for the “earn points and make money” angle, then do $12 (Swagbucks) minus the $7 fee to make $5, plus you’ll earn 1K Ultimate Rewards points.

Note that you can redeem your Swagbucks for other gift cards (including Amazon) at better rates (roughly 1.1 cents per point instead of 1 cent). I would go for PayPal for its flexibility since it’s basically cash that can be transferred directly to your checking account.

 

You’ll be able to sweeten the deal if you happen to have a Visa Ink Bold/Plus card. Chase previously gave MasterCard versions of these cards but are now providing Visa versions. If you do have a Visa version, I suggest you link your card up to the Visa Savings Edge program. It’s free and gives you cash back – in the example above it would give 1% or $2 back.

Note that the normal Swagbucks rate of 2x would earn only $4 back on the same gift card purchase. While you can still make money by using your Ink card, it wouldn’t be that great of a deal. This method is definitely not for everyone because of the added step of having to go to Walmart to load the Visa onto your Bluebird card, but it’s definitely worth it for others.

Gotta love Staples!

Manufactured Spending Your Way to the Best Hotels in the World

Originally published September 24, 2014 as a separate post.

Many people are of the opinion that it’s not worth spending money on nice hotels. I disagree with that notion slightly; I think there are “tourist” locations where you plan to be out and about most of the day, and for these places it makes sense to me to spend your points or money at a more mid-tier hotel. I also believe that there are other destinations, like the Maldives or Koh Samui to name some popular ones, that are more about the resort or room you’re staying in and thus it’s worth it to spend extra on the hotel.

Let’s take a look at how much it would cost someone if they wanted to use just manufactured spending to achieve free nights at the best hotels for the most popular hotel chains. Note that I’ve included the cost of just the actual spend – gas and your time are not included. I’m assuming you’ll unload these with Bluebird/Serve, which are free.

Starwood Preferred Guest

Any discussion about top-tier hotel redemptions with SPG should start off with a very large caveat. While SPG has 7 categories of hotels that go up to 35K points per night, they also have a list of “special” hotels that they charge roughly double the price for. Unfortunately, this list of hotels includes some of the aspirational properties that SPG has (you can find them in the fine print here).

Effectively, SPG charges you twice for the same thing. They first assign these hotels Category 7, which is already supposed to denote a premium property, but then double the price because they don’t have standard rooms.

I’ll discuss earning 35K points for the purposes of this post (there are still great properties at this price), but keep in mind that you might need to roughly double it for certain hotels.

You’ll need to earn 35K points, and really the only way is from the SPG credit card. That means you’ll need to spend $35K on the card for one free reward night. If you’re buying $500 gift cards at $2.95 apiece, which is the going rate at Simon malls, then you’re buying 70 gift cards for fees totaling $206.50.

For $206.50 plus gas/time, you get a free night at a “regular” Category 7 property.

 

 

Hyatt Gold Passport

Hyatt charges 30K points for a top-tier property, but luckily there are no restrictions like SPG has. The best way to earn Hyatt points is through old reliable: Chase Ink. You’ll need to spend $6K to get to 30K points. By buying $200 gift cards at $6.95 apiece from office supply stores, you’ll need to buy 29 gift cards (total purchases of $6,003) for fees totaling $201.55.

For $201.55 plus gas/time, you get a free night at ANY Hyatt property.

 

 

Hilton HHonors

Hilton charges 95K for their top-tier properties, but they have seasonal pricing and sometimes they drop to 80K. I’ll calculate based on the higher number.

The best way to earn Hilton points is to use the Hilton Amex Surpass card, which earns 6x on grocery store purchases. You’ll need to spend about $16K at grocery stores for a free night. By buying $500 gift cards at $5.95 apiece (the typical price at grocery stores), you’ll need to buy 32 gift cards for fees totaling $190.40.

Note that you can also use the Citi HHonors Reserve card at Simon Malls for 3x purchases, which works out to roughly the same cost but double the amount of gift cards you’ll need to buy.

For $190.40 plus gas/time, you get a free night at ANY Hilton property.

 

 

InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) Rewards Club

IHG charges 50K points for their top tier properties, and thankfully they partner with Chase. Again, using the Chase Ink card, you’ll need to buy 49 gift cards at $206.95 apiece for total fees of $340.55.

This is worse than buying IHG points outright through this current buy points offer, which can be done for $287.50 and which I recommend over manufacturing spend.

But if not, for $340.55 plus gas/time, you get a free night at ANY IHG property.

 

 

Marriott Rewards

Marriott’s program isn’t the best for this type of thing. They charge 70K for a night at their best hotels (Ritz Carlton hotels), but again this program accepts transfers from Chase.

Using Chase Ink, you’d need to buy 68 gift cards at $206.95 apiece for total fees of $472.50. This will rarely be worth it since this is the cash price of most top-tier hotels.

Marriott hotels themselves cost up to 45K per night. This means you’d need to buy 44 gift cards at $206.95 apiece for total fees of $305.80. There are some nice JW Marriott properties around the world that this might make sense for under certain circumstances, but always check the calculations.

For $472.50 plus gas/time, you get a free night at ANY Marriott property, including Ritz Carlton hotels.

 

Cautions and Other

As always, be careful when you manufacture spend. There have been a few reports recently of Chase going after the accounts of heavy manufactured spenders, but in general if you’re not spending huge amounts then you should be fine. Besides – keep in mind that the 5x benefit only applies to $50K/year for each Chase Ink card.

A good habit to keep in mind is to always liquidate your gift cards ASAP. You never know when a deal will die – these opportunities come and go somewhat often – so try not to hold on to gift cards for too long. If your favorite grocery store or Walmart stops taking gift cards, you may have a difficult time making use of them all!

Be careful with American Express. I find the best way to MS with them is to slowly increase your monthly spend and build up to your desired amount. For example, spend $1K the first month, $2K the next, then $4K, then $6K, etc. etc. until you get to your desired monthly amount. This is true for their credit cards only – they’re charge cards (Premier Rewards Gold, Platinum, etc.) are a different story and I recommend you be extremely cautious with those.

Also keep in mind that SPG, Hilton, and Marriott offer a “5th night free” on award redemptions. This will bring your cost basis down by $40-$50 per night if looking at it on a per-night basis.

 

Summary

More often than not, you’ll have to spend some money to earn the points you need for a really great trip. If you want to go “all out” on a really nice hotel property for a honeymoon, anniversary, or just a really nice once-a-year vacation, it can usually be done for much, much less by manufacturing the points than you might otherwise pay for it.

This post was intended as a general guide, to help you with calculations and see how much it would cost using one particular method. Keep in mind there are plenty of cash back credit cards that can make your entire trip free…if you manufacture enough cash back. Always do your own calculations and do what works best for you, and do those calculations before you start to manufacture the spend.

Manufacturing Club Carlson Rewards Points

Originally published October 2, 2014 as a separate post.

1. Manufacturing Club Carlson Rewards Points
2. Manufacturing Hilton Points

I recently wrote a post about manufactured spending your way to the best hotels in the world, a post that contained explanations for SPG, Hyatt, Hilton, IHG, and Marriott. I chose not to include Club Carlson on that list because the program doesn’t have properties that are generally considered to be “aspirational” or truly high-end. A commenter quickly and correctly pointed out that there’s still extreme value to the program, so this post will explain that value.

I’ll also point out that I was told by many people that the Beginner’s Guide to Club Carlson Rewards post was extremely helpful because few people had discussed this program. Again, hopefully this post will give a better idea of how the program works.

Strategy

Manufacturing Club Carlson Rewards points is extremely valuable because of two benefits of the Club Carlson Rewards Card:

1. Earn 5x points on ALL spend.
2. Your last reward night is free on reservations of 2 nights or more (thus always better to redeem for 2 nights to get the most value).

The high earning potential of the credit card combined with the essentially “half off” feature makes for a killer combo of benefits. I’ll point out here that you do not need to have enough Club Carlson points for the second night when redeeming that free night. Here’s an example of me booking a top tier, 70,000 point property.

First, notice I have only 93,000 points in my account but I’m trying to book 2 nights that would normally cost 140,000 total.

 

Once I click through to the next page, prior to confirmation, the discount is taken.

 

My confirmation shows that only 70,000 were debited from my account.

 

So even though I didn’t have enough Club Carlson points in my account for the second night, I was able to redeem for a two night stay because of the second night free benefit. Pretty cool!

Since the free night applies to the last night of a reservation, you’ll get the most value out of 2 night reservations (effectively 50% off). A 3 night reservation would effectively give you an effective 33% off, and so on. Can you game this and do back-to-back 2 night reservations? According to Club Carlson T&Cs, no. There might be ways around this but I haven’t tried personally.

Instead I would recommend booking the first two nights under your account, then the next two under a friend’s/spouse’s account. If needed you can book two more from your account after that. Yes your friend/spouse would need to have the credit card and enough points as well, but that’s the best we can do to legitimately take advantage of this. At the hotel just ask to combine the reservations so you don’t have to change rooms or check-in/out more than once.

 

Manufacturing Club Carlson Rewards Points

As I always do, I’ll break down some math to show how much the true cost of manufacturing nights at Club Carlson would be. I’ll calculate the cost using the standard gift cards I always do: $500 PIN-enabled cards for a $3 fee. Yes, there are better (and worse) ways to manufacture points so adjust these costs as necessary to your own MS habits.

Given the above information about the credit card, we know we need 70,000 Club Carlson points for 2 nights at a top tier hotel like the Radisson Blu Hotel Champs Elysees, Paris. To earn 70,000 points, we’d need to buy 28 gift cards (at $503 each) for a total cost of $14,084 and total points of 70,420.

Assuming you liquidate them for free via Bluebird(s), the total cost of your fees would be just $84 for two nights. That’s a miniscule $42/night average for hotels that can normally cost over $500. Here’s proof:

 

This is the same hotel and the same dates I used in the points reservation earlier in this post. If you paid the cash rate, it would cost a ridiculous 420 Euros per night. For a two night stay, that comes to $1,066 USD at today’s rates, where the dollar happens to be getting stronger versus the Euro.

You effectively saved $982 on this reservation by manufacturing Club Carlson Rewards points. I’d say that’s a pretty good deal! The good news (if it wasn’t good enough yet) is that if the hotel you’re targeting is in a lower tier, it only gets cheaper and cheaper.

At a bottom-tier Category 1 hotel it would cost 9,000 points per night. To manufacture this amount using the same method above, you’d need to buy only 4 gift cards of $503 each. Total fees would come to $12 for a two night stay or just $6 per night!

There may not be many Category 1 hotels you want to stay at, but you simply can’t beat that value. Quite simply, you can’t beat the value of this program when compared to any other hotel program that I know of for manufacturing spend.

 

Why Doesn’t Everyone Do This?!

I just explained how amazing this program could be, so why doesn’t everyone talk about manufacturing Club Carlson points? I mentioned earlier how the program simply doesn’t have any “aspirational” properties. They have really nice ones in excellent locations (hard to beat Champs Elysees for your hotel location in Paris) but there’s no Maldives, Koh Samui, Maui, or any other exotic location of that kind.

That doesn’t mean it’s not useful, of course. Many people don’t care for those destinations and would be much happier traveling through Europe. If that’s you, then Club Carlson is perfect. They have a HUGE presence in Europe including many smaller cities that other programs don’t have hotels in. Some of the Radisson Blu properties are very nice. Not quite St. Regis/Conrad/Park Hyatt/InterContinental-nice, but still very nice.

To add some more hope to the program, Club Carlson has announced a new Quorvus Collection brand that is supposed to be their new top-end brand. They’re rolling out with only 3 locations (Edinburgh, London, Kuwait), but I’m sure they’ll add more over the next year. It’s a new concept for Club Carlson targeted toward millenials that are seeking luxury. Think W Hotels from SPG.

 

Summary

This little-discussed program could be the highest-valued program for people who manufacture spend and want to travel through Europe. At an effective price of $42/night (or less if you’re an MS expert), you simply cannot go wrong with manufacturing Club Carlson Rewards points. I think the credit card is one that’s worth getting and keeping because of it’s benefits, and if you haven’t looked at the hotel portfolio yet, I recommend you do so to see if you can make use of any of them.

Manufacturing Hilton Points

Originally published October 21, 2014 as a separate post.

1. Manufacturing Club Carlson Rewards Points
2. Manufacturing Hilton Points

 

I recently wrote a post about manufactured spending your way to the best hotels in the world, and I wanted to follow that up by taking a deeper dive into some strategies to manufacture Hilton points specifically so this post explores those options. Despite the massive devaluation that occurred recently, Hilton remains one of the best values in manufactured spending.

 

Hilton Credit Cards

There are several different credit cards across multiple banks, but I’ll only discuss the two relevant ones here:

• Hilton HHonors Reserve Card (Citi): 10X on Hilton spend, 5X on airlines & car rentals, 3X everywhere else. Also get a free weekend night after $10K in spend. $95 Annual Fee.
• Hilton HHonors Surpass (Amex): 12X on Hilton spend, 6X on restaurants, supermarkets, and gas stations; 3X everywhere else. $75 annual fee.

Both cards come with free Hilton Gold status and allow you to attain Diamond status with $40K in annual spend.

The key difference is in the bonus categories – the Reserve card doesn’t have any bonus categories that are good for manufacturing points, but the Surpass card earns 6x on grocery store purchases, which could be useful.

Which Card is Better for Manufactured Spending?

Lets look at the cost breakdown of manufacturing points with each of them to determine this. We’ll also take a look at earning top-tier Diamond status through spend as well.

 

Grocery

If you’re buying Visa/MasterCard gift cards from a grocery store, the best value you normally get is a $500 gift card for a $5.95 fee. If you’re using the Surpass card you’re earning 6x, and that means you’ll earn 6 x $506 = 3,036 points for a cost of $5.95/3,036 = .00196 each.

 

Everywhere Else

If you’re buying gift cards from your favorite mall, the most well known value you get is a $500 gift card for a $2.95 fee. Using either the Surpass or Reserve card you’ll earn 3x, and that means you’ll earn 3 x $503 = 1,509 points for a cost of $2.95/1,509 = .00195.

 

So Which is Better???

As you can see by the calculations, it’s pretty much identical on which card is best to use if you manufacture the points the way I described. The decision you make should come down to how much you actually plan to manufacture.

No one wants to deal with more gift cards than they have to, so if everything else was equal, it would be best to use the Surpass card because it would require fewer gift cards and trips to the store(s). But the one benefit of the Reserve card I highlighted above was that you get an annual free night after $10K in spend, which may tilt that scale a bit.

That free night certificate can be used at any Hilton hotel, including those that are priced 80K to the max of 95K a night like the Conrad Koh Samui. To manufacture 95K points with the Surpass card, which would be the equivalent of the free night you get with the Reserve card, you’d need to buy an extra ~$16K in gift cards.

So here’s my recommendation:

• If you’re going to manufacture less than $10K, use the Surpass card.
• If you’re going to manufacture $10K-$31.5K, use the Reserve card.
• If you’re going to manufacture $31.5K+, use the Surpass card.

At around $31.5K, you should be roughly indifferent between the free night and the extra points because the value would be roughly the same. On the reserve card, 3 x $31.5K = 94,500 points plus a free night (valued at up to 95K), so in total worth a value of up to 189,500 . On the Surpass card, 6 x $31.K = 189K points.

The difference here is that having the points will be more flexible for everyone, so for most people I will recommend the Surpass card.

Manufacturing Diamond Status

Remember, to manufacture Diamond status you’ll need o get to $40K on either card. If you’re going of my analysis above, getting to $40K would be a smarter thing to do with the Surpass card. You’ll earn roughly 240K points (6 x $40K). That’s two nights at a top tier hotel (190K) plus another 50K leftover. On the Reserve you’d earn 120K plus a free night, which is enough for 2 nights at a top tier (with one of the nights restricted to the weekend only) and 25K points leftover.

Again, the Surpass card is my recommendation for almost all cases here.

 

When to Manufacture Diamond Status

As with many points-related things, there’s an optimal strategy here to earn Diamond status. When you spend $40K on either card, you earn Diamond status for the rest of that calendar year and the following calendar year. That means that the best strategy then is to achieve the $40K spend as early as possible in the year.

For example, if you completed $40K spend in January 2014, you’d have Diamond status for all of 2014 and all of 2015. The optimal way to complete the spend requirement for Diamond status is to spend $40K as early as possible every 2 years. In this example, that would mean another $40K in January 2016 that would give you status through the end of 2017.

Plan ahead 🙂

You can read more detail about manufacturing Hilton Diamond status in this post from Frequent Miler.

 

Summary

For most manufactured spenders, the Hilton Surpass Amex will be the better option. It has a lower annual fee and also gives you Gold status (and Priority Pass membership to boot), all for a lower annual fee versus the Reserve card.

If, however, you’re only looking to meet the minimum spend requirement and get a good bonus, the Reserve card is the one you want. It will get you two free nights at any hotel, whereas the Surpass only gives you a 75K bonus (offer fluctuates).

Do you manufacture Hilton points?

Manufacture Hotel Elite Status

Originally published October 23, 2014 as a separate post.

Two years ago, almost exactly to this day, I wrote a post titled “Don’t Abuse Bluebird, but…” in which I described how cheap it actually was to attain elite status in various programs. That post is quite dated now considering I talked about things like the Amex Prepaid cards (brings back memories) and Vanilla Reloads (remember those?).

In the two years that passed, we came to learn just how easy it was to utilize our Bluebird(s) to take dream vacations all over the world. Heck, at that time you could buy Vanilla Reloads at Office Depot for 5x Ultimate Rewards points. I took a look at just how lucrative it was to manufacture points by doing that in my Bluebird/Chase Ink Award Cost Charts. A First Class, round trip flight to Australia for $250? A guaranteed suite at the Park Hyatt Paris for $52? Ahhh, those were the days….

Times have changed, but that doesn’t mean you can’t attain any value. It’s not as easy as it was for that brief period of time, but there are still definite uses. Here’s an update of what you can do and what it will cost you.

 

Manufacture Marriott/Ritz Carlton Platinum Status for $450

I didn’t even discuss this option two years ago. The Marriott program isn’t the strongest award program that exists so it’s not often discussed for manufactured spending. Still, it’s a huge hotel chain that I know many people stay at for various reasons. Having Platinum status with them might be helpful to some.

With the Ritz Carlton Rewards Visa, you’d need to spend $75K in a year to earn Platinum status (Marriott and Ritz Carlton basically have the same program so it’s recognized in both hotel chains). To spend $75K using the popular mall gift cards, you’d need to buy 150 of them for $503 including the $3 fee. Your total cost would come to 150 x $3 = $450. Yes, you can have top-tier status with Ritz Carlton/Marriott for $450.

You can read more details on this from Frequent Miler.

 

Manufacture SPG Platinum Status for $276

As it did two years ago, SPG still counts award nights towards elite status. And also like two years ago, there’s absolutely no requirement that you actually spend a penny at their hotels. That means you can achieve SPG Platinum status with 25 award nights.

The cheapest way to do this would be to get 25 non-consecutive nights at a Category 1 hotel. As you know from reading my Beginners Guide to SPG, a weekend night at a Category 1 hotel is only 2,000 SPG points. So in the best case scenario you need only 50,000 SPG points to earn Platinum status.

The easy way to do that would be to sign up for an SPG card and get the 30K bonus points for free, but I’ll assume everyone reading this already has that card.

Instead, let’s manufacture them using that card. The most popular method is to buy the mall gift cards: a $500 costs a fee of $3, for a total of $503. We need 2,000 points for a night so we’ll have to buy 4 of these gift cards for total fees of $12. Loading and unloading it is free using Bluebird as we all know.

But wait, there’s more. If you already have the credit card, which I’m assuming you do for this example, you get a 2 stay credit towards elite status. That means you only actually need 23 nights for Platinum status.

So then, it’s as simple as doing it another 22 times. It costs $12/night and we need 23 nights total, so $12 x 23 = $276. Yes, it’s possible to earn SPG Platinum status for just $276. If you’re already Gold or Platinum, you can do it even cheaper since you earn points for each check-in (even on award stays).

The hardest part in all this is finding a Category 1 hotel since there aren’t that many. I’ve known people that called certain hotels and asked about phantom check-ins, and some eventually get a positive response.

 

 

Manufacture Hilton Diamond Status for $240

It’s actually cheaper to manufacture Hilton Diamond status than it is to manufacture SPG status. A feature of both the Surpass and Reserve cards is that spending $40K annually on each gets you top-tier Diamond status. I discussed Manufacturing Hilton Points just yesterday in case you missed it.

Using either card, I would need to buy 80 gift cards from a mall for $503 each including the $3 fee. That would cost me a grand total of $3 x 80 = $240 to get to $40K in spend and Hilton Diamond status.

I did this myself, and plan to do it again in January when my status is due to reset.

Manufacturing Hyatt Status?

Two years ago it wasn’t possible to manufacture Hyatt status, but now it kind of is possible. While Hyatt still doesn’t count award stays towards elite status, they do count points + cash stays. It’ll be a lot more expensive than the two mentioned above, but let’s see what we get.

From my Beginner’s Guide to Hyatt, we know that a points + cash award for a Category 1 hotel is 2,500 points + $50. As you can already tell, it’s going to be pricey.

To get to 25 nights you need to spend at least $50 x 25 = $1,250 for just the cash portion, then another 2,500 x 25 = 62,500 points along with it. I’ll do the calculation for fun, but don’t recommend you doing this.

You’d need to buy 61 of the $200 gift cards at your office supply store for a fee of $6.95 using your Chase Ink card. Fees would total 61 x $6.95 = $423.95. That puts the total cost for Diamond status at $1,250 + $423.95 = $1,673.95. That’s a lot of money.

You’d be better off doing a Diamond Challenge for 12 nights if you really want status with Hyatt. Note that the Hyatt credit card gives you 2 stay/5 stay credits for spending $20K/$40K annually on the card, but that’s not a good card to manufacture spend on. You’ll earn points for checking in on award stays as well so the actual total will be less than $1,673, but it’ll still be a lot of money.

Summary

It’s quite easy and cheap to manufacture hotel elite status. The hardest piece of work mentioned in this post is finding SPG Category 1 hotels since the others can be achieved by just credit card spend. Whether or not it’s worth it to do this a completely separate discussion that I won’t even discuss here. This post was simply to show how cheaply it can be to manufacture hotel elite status.

I’ve done this myself for Hilton and I manufacture a lot of SPG points for other purposes, but occasionally need a mattress run that I use points for. I completed the Hyatt Diamond challenge and have status with them through that and have no intention of earning Marriott status at this time.

Have you manufactured hotel elite status?

Bluebird vs Redbird (Target Prepaid Redcard) – Which is Better for Manufactured Spend?

Originally published November 21, 2014 as a separate post.

Bluebird vs Redbird

If you haven’t heard about it yet, the Target Prepaid Redcard, which we in the miles/points world now refer to as Redbird, is a brand new product that is very similar to Bluebird but has some key differences. These differences are rather significant for those who manufacture spend, so let’s point out some of the positives and negatives of each so you can decide which product you like better. It might not be a no-brainer as you might have expected.

Bluebird

First, let’s go through a quick refresher for Bluebird:

• Can load up to $5K/month per card.
• Can load up to $2.5K per day at Walmart.
• Can only be loaded with PIN-enabled cards or reload packs, both of which usually charge a fee to obtain.
• Pay off your credit cards (and other bills) directly from your online account.

Redbird

Redbird works similarly. Here’s a list of the important features:

• Can load up to $5K/month per card.
• Can load up to $2.5K/day at Target, BUT only $1K per transaction.
• Can be loaded directly with a credit card for no fee.
• Pay off your credit cards (and other bills) directly from your online account.
• Only available in select states/cities so far.
• See Frequent Miler’s Complete Guide to Redbird if you need more info.

Now let’s take a look at some benefits of one card versus the other. As you read through these, try to determine which factors are important to you so you can decide which of the two products is best for your situation.

Benefits of Redbird/Target over Bluebird/Walmart

1. Load Redbird with a Credit Card for Free

The most important difference is the one I underlined above for Redbird – you can load the card directly with a credit card for no fee. If you did 5 loads of $1K each with your points/miles-earning credit card, you’re earning 5,000 points for $0 in fees. The only thing wasted is your time/effort getting to Target.

2. Target > Walmart…Usually

Another key difference is that you can go to Target instead of Walmart. I know I’m not the only blogger that people have complained to saying “But there’s no Walmart near me!” This problem is somewhat alleviated with the fact that Target stores are more prevalent in certain areas than Walmart. For me in Orange County, CA, There are at least 10 Target stores between my home and the nearest Walmart (which is only about 15 minutes away).

Oh and don’t forget that Target employees are in almost all cases more pleasant to deal with than Walmart ones. Let’s take that a step further and say that even Target customers are more pleasant to be around than those at Walmart. It may be a little less entertaining to look around the store, but I think most people would feel better in a Target than a Walmart.

By most counts, the above two points would put Redbird as the new champion of manufactured spend. It is what Frequent Miler would call a “perpetual points machine” whereby you can continuously earn points for free, albeit with a $5K monthly limit.

Benefits of Bluebird/Walmart over Redbird/Target

So if Redbird is a perpetual points machine, then what possible benefits could Bluebird and Walmart have over it? There are several, and they almost exclusively benefit those that partake in relatively heavy manufactured spend. They will particularly benefit those that have a Walmart with a functioning Money Center machine. Here are some benefits:

1. In Addition to Loading Bluebird, You Can Also Buy Money Orders at Walmart

A well-known limitation of the Walmart Money Center machine is that you can only load $1,999.99 at a time before the machine freezes. After waiting 10 minutes, the machine is good for another $1,999.99. In those 10 minutes you only have a few options – you can roam the store, have a seat at McDonalds, or get in line to MS some more with a cashier (either the Money Center line for money orders and/or Bluebird or regular cashiers for just Bluebird). So instead of dead time, you can MS more.

When loading Redbird, you must see a human. You can go do different cashiers and even load it at the customer service desk to make this less weird, but there are generally far fewer cashiers at Target than at Walmart.

2. You Don’t Have to Interact with a Human if You Have the Money Center Machine

3. If You’re Using the Machine, You Can Load Multiple Bluebirds a Day Without Anyone Raising an Eyebrow

To further along what I wrote above, the machine has some positives/negatives of its own. The positive is that you don’t have to deal with a human, which to me is a rather big positive. The longer this “game” goes on, the more scrutiny our techniques receive. A countless number of people have told me that they were denied a money order or Bluebird load because the Walmart (or other store’s) employee asked to see the card, then denied them from using it because they saw it was a gift card.

I’ve experienced this as well. The right thing to do in this situation is to simply say “OK” and walk away without making an issue of it. Remember that person’s face and try not to get in their line ever again. I’ve also adopted the “ninja” method of showing your real debit card, but swiping the gift card. It takes some sleight of hand, but it’s really not too hard.

Still, all this is avoided by using the machine, which couldn’t care less about what PIN-enabled card you’re using (aside from Vanilla-branded ones of course). That also means you can load 5 or 10 (or more) separate Bluebirds a day because the machine simply doesn’t care.

4. Large MS Purchases are Better Than Small Ones (In My Opinion)

Another benefit of the Walmart/Bluebird method is the way transactions go onto your credit card. For Walmart/Bluebird, you have to already have PIN-enabled cards in hand. You’ve presumably bought a large number of these gift cards at the same time to make your life easier, so the transaction on your credit card account shows as one lump sum of all the gift cards you bought in that transaction – $5K, $10K, etc. I see this as a benefit if you’ve built your MS accounts properly – it saves you time and adds fewer but larger transactions.

At Target, however, you must make multiple transactions of $1K at a time. That means that if you do heavy MS on one particular credit card (say you’re trying to earn Ultimate Rewards or SPG points), then your credit card accounts will show a lot of $1K transactions. If you control 5+ redbirds, that’s 25 separate transactions of $1K each. To me, that looks a lot more suspicious to banks than separate charges of $15K and $10K.

Again – this is only relevant to those that MS relatively heavily. If you’re using only one Redbird per month then you should have no issue with this. Similarly, if you’re not focusing your spend on one particular card or bank then you should be able to comfortably build your balances on each account (for example load one Redbird with an Amex, one with a Citi card, one with a Chase card, etc.).

If you’re trying to accrue Ultimate Rewards points then the easy way to avoid this is to split the charges onto your Freedom, Sapphire Preferred, and Ink cards. They’ll all earn the same points. For others like SPG points, you can split between the personal and business versions of the card. Still not ideal, but better than nothing if you have both versions.

Some might still benefit from using gift cards for Redbird/Target simply because of the lack of Walmarts around them.

Summary

It may be hard to locate a card, but Redbird and Target is a truly wonderful development in the world of MS. Don’t go cancelling all your Bluebirds just yet, however, because chances are that if you have more than a couple of them, Bluebird/Walmart might still be the right choice for you.

Redbird/Target is great if:

• You don’t have a Walmart around you.
• You absolutely hate paying any fees.
• You are a light MSer.

Bluebird/Walmart is great if:

• You have a Walmart with a functioning Money Center machine nearby.
• You manufacture spend at a relatively high rate.
• You control multiple Bluebirds.
• You purchase money orders.

 

Do you prefer Redbird/Target or Bluebird/Walmart?