Blue What? Meet Huge Spend Requirements With this Trick

**UPDATE**: This method has been ended due to some hard coding policies from Bluebird. There are however current similar ways that we will eventually write about. Google Redbird if you don't want to wait.

With my recent post on 100k AA bonus miles with $10,000 minimum spend within 3 months, many people have asked me how to meet an absurd amount in such a short time. David wrote a good summary on ways to meet spend, but since then, the bulk of our required spend is done with American Express Bluebird. This card allows us to "Manufacture Spend" meaning I can spend $10,000 on my card without really spending it. Confused? Read on!

Bluebird is a like a pseudo-checkings account brought to us by Walmart and American Express. You can sign up HERE, and your card will arrive in 5-7 days. There are a bunch of features that really don't matter to us, so I'll only go over the pertinent ones.

• No fees in the way we use it.
• Low fee ATM withdrawals for foreign transactions.
• Bill Pay feature: Send checks to whoever you want, including yourself, landlords(apartment rent), student loan agencies, and credit card companies. Yes the very same companies that you pay your credit card bill.
• Load up to a max of $1000 a day and $5000 a month

Unfortunately you cannot put money into your Bluebird account via your credit card directly, but you can load your Bluebird account with prepaid cards that you CAN buy with your credit card at certain stores. See the trick yet?

1. Buy prepaid cards at stores with your points earning credit card. 
2. Load those prepaid cards into your Bluebird
3. Use Bluebird to pay off that SAME credit card you used to purchase the prepaid cards

That way we can spend $10,000 in 2 months without really spending it! You didn't really think I spent 20% of my annual income in 2 months did you?

How to Load Your Bluebird

By far the easiest method is buying Vanilla Reload cards

They cost $3.95 and you can load up to $500 to each one. Once bought you turn it over, scratch off the label and follow the directions to load it onto your Bluebird card via their Website. To meet the $10,000 requirement, it would take you 2 months and $80 out of pocket. You can find a list of retailers that sell these HERE. The problem with many of the retailers are they will not accept credit card for these purchases. CVS used to be the go to spot, but they have recently stopped accepting credit cards for the purchase of these cards.

Other retailers that have been reported with intermittent success are Cumberland Farms gas stations, 7-11, shell and Valero. These are very much "Your Miles May Very" YMMV.

The other option is to buy VISA or Mastercard debit gift cards. These may include brands such as "One Vanilla", "My Vanilla" or variable load VISA/Mastercard Giftcards. Each one has their own fees ranging from $3.95-$6.95. You can then add a personal identification number (PIN) onto it and it acts like a debit card. With that, you can then go to a Walmart with a Money Center Kiosk to physically load each card onto your Bluebird Account. Bluebird allows you to load $1000 a day and up to $5000 a month via debit, hence why we buy these gift cards to act like a debit card. This does require you to go to a physical Walmart, and who really wants to do that with people like this there. Since the demise of CVS, these may become my main source of loading Bluebird.

Travel with Grant has a good summary on which cards can be loaded at Walmart.

You can locate a "Moneypass ATM" with this link: Walmart ATM locator. Type in walmart as the bank, then your zip code, to see if there are any around you.

As you can see, Bluebird is an essential tool in our hobby. It has drastically made it easier to hit spend limits and also a great tool for manufacturing spend. It sounds like a lot of work, but when your laying down in your flat bed full off of lobster and Dom Perignon, it will all be worth it.

100k AA miles sign up bonus!

David's last post described the thought process in choosing the right card(s) to get you that trip you've always wanted. It was thorough, detailed—and let's face it—didn't answer the question you asked in the first place: Which card should you get?

I'll cut to the chase I am telling you exactly which card to sign up for.

MOGL - Maximizing your credit swipes with dining rewards!

If you are one of the few people who reads our experiment of a blog, you are:
1: Poor like me and David.
2: One of our friends.
3: Both of the above, which means you probably like eating for cheap like us.

One of the most simplest ways to earn extra miles or cash is to sign up for a "Dining rewards program" in which you earn miles at participating restaurants on top of the normal miles you earn for the credit card charge.

For example, Rewards Network is partnered with multiple airlines. So that if you register your Chase Sapphire Preferred card and use it at a participating restaurant, you earn the normal 2 points per dollar spent, plus whatever bonus points per dollar the Rewards Network gives. This allows you to earn extra miles that you would spend anyways. A card can only be registered once on Rewards Network.

A newer type of dining rewards program I have ran across is called MOGL. Instead of points they offer a straight 10% back onto your card at participating restaurants.

I have already linked all of my cards to various Rewards Network partners such as American Airlines and Southwest, but since this is not part of that network you can double dip!

Three main features of MOGL are:

1. 10% paid back to your card monthly when dining at participating restaurants.
2. Spend over $20 at participating restaurants and they will donate a meal to someone in need. (I have no idea how this work, but you get a good feeling out of it?)
3. You can win a jackpot if you spend the most at one restaurant. (These can possibly negate your spend that month.)

With 650+ locations in the San Diego area and 300+ in Los Angeles, I'm sure many of you can benefit from this!

Sign up through this link and earn $10 dollars for yourself (and me!) after your first dine at a participating restaurant!

MOGL Sign up

"The Great Game" The search for Vanilla retailers

In the Prior post As good as Sherlock I had outlined my cousin and I's detective work which would potentially lead to almost as cheap Ultimate Rewards points as Vanilla Ink Bold strategy. The next step after solving the puzzle was to try and implement it. Below is the journey I mapped out. Read on to find out how I planned this!

Where can you go with 3 people for $778?

Try Australia, with a 3 day stop over in Hawaii, airfare AND hotel included. The flights are in economy, but the hotels are not in your cheap hostels or economy hotel (nothing wrong with these) but Hyatts and Marriotts. Sometimes we get so caught up in collecting miles, we forget the big picture: spending them!

I got my cousin seriously into the miles game back in July when he applied for the Ink card and Sapphire card in November, and it paid off—big time.

Triple Card Churn Part 1: Signing Up (American Airlines and Southwest)

At the time of this writing, I am sitting at Gate 12 of LAX waiting for my (delayed) Southwest flight back to Portland for the weekend. This trip was purchased last minute partly because of Goober's terrible planning, but mostly because I didn't mind spending ten bucks for the roundtrip ticket.

And since this blog is about cheap travel and not fail travel, I guess I won't go into the details of why Goober won't be meeting up with me in Portland or on Mt. Hood for snowboarding. (To be fair, his schedule wasn't entirely within his control. Also, he has admin privileges on this blog, and I don't want him to delete this post.)

I've made a few of these $10 flights this winter, and I'm pretty sure I acquired the taste for inexpensive trips. Unfortunately, my miles are running low, and it's time to get more. I usually work on one card at a time, so I'm stepping out of my spending comfort zone for a triple helping of cards: two American Airline cards (Visa and American Express) and one Southwest card.

Since this blog started, you guys have been reading how we've done this or completed that. Now I'm inviting you to start at beginning of a churn period and see how I'm going to attempt it.

Jump on it!

That feeling on your last day of vacation, realizing you won't be served breakfast in the beach-side cabana tomorrow (pictured above). Worse yet, dreading opening that inbox that you have neglected to the point that it almost disappeared. Just like your vacations, miles deals begin and end quickly, especially the lucrative ones. Recently, there was one deal that lasted less then 24 hours for a AMEX Platinum card that I failed to jump on. Read more about lessons learned on this deal!

Vanilla Cards - A Hard to Find Treasure

Vanilla Reload Network cards are part of the Vanilla Ink Bold strategy. These are sometimes tricky to find due to a couple reasons:

• In larger cities you have competition of other people trying to buy them out.
• Some of the stores will have them but will only allow a cash transaction

Vanilla Ink Bold

Ladies and Gentlemen, how would you like to travel business class to Europe or Asia round trip for $300-$400 dollars? Yes, the price of a cross country domestic flight in economy could get you a much better vacation, but where's the fun in that? This system takes a little reading to understand, a little more work then other deals, but in the end it is easier than it sounds and well worth the trouble. 3 steps to follow!

Chase Ink Bold

The Chase Ink Bold is a business charge card that is the keystone card in the Vanilla Ink Bold strategy. The benefits for this card are:

• The current promotion is 50k Chase Ultimate Rewards (UR) points after you spend $5,000 in the first 3 months. 
• Normally, the promo is a spend of $10,000 in three months, so get it now!
• 50k UR points are basically worth ~$500, but you can always find more efficient ways of spending the points.
• 5x points per dollar spent at office stores or on utilities like cell phone/landlines, internet and cable.
• 2x points for dining and gas. 1 point per dollar for everything else.

If used correctly, you can earn a crazy amount of UR points that can be used on various airlines and hotels.

Presenting... the "King of Cards", Starwood Preferred Guest - American Express

For the past five years, the Starwood Preferred Guest (SPG) American Express (AMEX) has ruled the wallets of travel hackers, knighted savvy spenders to elite status, and allied itself to hotels and airlines alike.

The SPG AMEX comes in two forms: personal and business. The current promotion is at 25k. About two or three times a year, the promotion is at 30k points. (See "Important Note" at the bottom of the post.)

But if its only a measly 25k, why have so many bloggers been calling it the king of cards for the past 5 years?

500 Free AA Miles for Completing Facebook Survey

American Airlines is offering 500 free AAdvantage miles for liking them and completing a survey on Facebook. Promotion valid till Dec. 17th 2012 or the first 200k entrants. Miles post in 6-8 weeks. It is so easy, David might just even do this promo.

This is a great way to pad your account or keep activity up.  Every mile counts. You don't want to be the person booking an award ticket to find they're 2000 miles short and end up paying $50 to get enough miles for that ticket. Its happened to yours truly.

Get the miles here.

Goal oriented miles earning

Once you accumulate enough miles you can redeem them for domestic trips, or the international trip for your dreams. A good hint is to have a goal in mind then finding what programs/miles club allows you to get there the cheapest way.

Chase Sapphire Preferred card

 

Chase Sapphire Preferred

This is a damn sexy card, literally and figuratively. It's dark blue, has a non-embossed front and is much heavier then any other card to the point where ~20% (complete guesstimate) of cashiers will compliment the card (you just might be able to finally score that number of the cute cashier).

The current promo is a bonus 40k Ultimate Rewards points after spending $3,000 in three months. The benefits are so good that this card should become one of your go-to cards for all your purchases even if you have no requirements to meet.

Chase Southwest Rapid Rewards Premier Card

Chase Southwest (SW) Airlines Rapid Rewards Premier Card is probably the best card for the beginner since the card user (you) has the fewest hoops to jump through to get your points.

What you need to do:

1. Spend $2,000 within three months.
2. Pay the annual fee ($99)
3. Annnnnd... that's it.

What you get:

• 50,000 Rapid Rewards points, which is approximately two round trip tickets.
• Anniversary bonus of 6,000 points every year. (which is basically the annual fee in points)

And So It Begins!

Welcome to our new project! We would like to share with you all, our hobby of traveling in style for cheap! You CAN go on the trip of your dreams now—not only when you are retired. But if you're retired, then you have all the free time to take advantage of this! 

If you are new to this concept please check out our Getting Started page to get a general idea. We will to keep updating this with new deals to take advantage of them as they come up as long as David doesn't get lazy editing our blog.

Please feel free to leave comments, questions, and suggestions about posts and the blog! We value your input and will work hard on clarifying things(well david will clarify, I just do content :P).