Since dipping my toes into manufactured spending, I am having a difficult time ‘creating’ SPG and US Airways points. Both programs earn at 1x, but all of my Chase cards have some sort of bonus multiplier either through quarterly, permanent like Sapphire 2x on Dining and Travel, or the Ultimate Rewards mall.
What makes SPG and US Airways difficult:
- I have made a few mistakes along the way with the spend on the SPG like buying the wrong cards
- Places that will not allow me to upgrade, raising my average cost
- Many of my favorite places to load the prepaid cards do not accept AMEX
The easy route:
- Amazon Payments
- Buy AMEX gift cards and liquidate into something like the American Express Campus Edition card
- Buy Vanilla Reloads
The moderate route, which I will be pursuing to sustain generating points, one way I can think of is to buy gift cards at a heavy discount on eBay and sell at break even and earn some eBay Bucks. I’ve been searching the last few days and the gift cards have been priced out of my reach. As I think about this more, I will probably come up with a solution like I have with my Ultimate Rewards.
The only real way to make SPG points affordable is to follow the steps that I outlined in Manufactured Spend with Personal cards.
