Since adding gift card churning into my tool bag of manufactured spending, I have found it to be fun to hunt around for a deal. As my friends say, some people make money through FOREX, foreign exchange, I make credit card points through gift card arbitrage.
Of all the mileage earning capabilities, this is probably the easiest thing to explain to everyone on accumulating points. No one seems to understand all the prepaid card routes I use on how or why I do what I do to the points collection.
That being said and before I even received the card, I find accumulating Starwood Preferred Guest points to be very difficult. They do not have any kind of earn extra points for spending in a category outside of staying at their properties. Some great prepaid products are run by American Express and I do not want to mix too much of my activity within their company.
In my last post on average cost, Cost of Chasing The Points, I wrote I was paying 1.07 cents per UR point. As my spreadsheet was expanding, and I was keeping gift card churning and prepaid cards separate it was artificially lowering my cost per point. So I have combined my sheets and now have accurate averages. Between now and then I have dropped it by 99%. Granted, that was when I made 6000 points, I have now manufactured five times that. The manufactured spend is through gift card/prepaid card churning.
The American Express SPG is a brand new card, and like when I originally posted the cost, it was slightly inflated. The SPG I still expect to be fairly high as the earnings are only 1x and no multiplier of any kind.
Overall Goals:
- Make the Ultimate Rewards point cost lower
- Find more creative ways to manufacture spend
- Current method involves 2 steps
- Find more cashback vendors, this would allow me to unload the Nationwide cash and continue to load the Nationwide Visa Buxx for cheap UR points at $.004/point
