**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?
- Buy prepaid cards at stores with your points earning credit card.
- Load those prepaid cards into your Bluebird
- 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.
