For the ease of math, I value every Ultimate Rewards and Thank You points at 1 cent. Due to the flexibility of it being in their respective program and various cards that you can have in your wallet, these points can be worth more. For instance, if you combine the Chase Freedom and Sapphire Preferred, the points from the Freedom can be moved to the Sapphire Preferred and then into any of the Ultimate Rewards partners like United Airlines, Hyatt, et al. On the Citi side, you can take all the points from the Forward and transfer to the Citi Thank You Premier for a 33% bonus when redeeming on airfare.
That being said, here is how I make $50 per hour, buying $1000 worth of Visa/Mastercard prepaid gift cards in an hour while I am chasing the points. Both methods have a cost, at almost $10. The key to earning so much is using a credit card with high rewards in bonus categories.
I use my Citi Forward for 5x Thank You points at the local university Barnes and Nobles to load my AMEX Campus Edition card to the max at $1000, but each load max is $500. That’s 5,040 Thank You points and the cost is ($3.95 x 2) $7.90, in which I profit $42.50 an hour. What’s awesome with this method is being able to use the CE card at an ATM.
My other $50 per hour earnings is going to Office Depot, using my Ink Bold, buying their Vanilla prepaid gift cards at max load, $500 per card. Fee is $4.95. Because of the 5x points in an office supply store, I’d buy $1000 worth a cool 5050 Ultimate Rewards points. After fees, this becomes a profit of $40.60 per hour. I’ve been thinking of using the prepaid gift cards to load the CE card so that I could receive cash from the ATM. However, this would drop the profit per hour to $32.70.
Obviously, the more gift cards you buy within the hour, will raise how much money you would make in an hour. However, there are risks involved. Some folks become greedy and are sacked with a dreaded financial review. You do not want that, no good news come from that because your account may or may not be closed with no recourse of having it opened again.
Why would your profit drop to $32.70 by using the prepaid gc to load the CD card? Also what do you mean by the dreaded financial review? Will my account be closed because I do this too many times? Is there a limit?
It would drop because there’s a $3.95 load fee per $500 on the American Express Campus Edition card.
Financial reviews from what I’ve seen are typically done by American Express and Citibank. FR from AMEX when they see high utilization > credit limit per month. (For their credit card products, not sure on prepaid products) Citibank for applying to new credit.
Some people have walked away unscathed from FR’s while others have not been so lucky and had their accounts closed.
For me, I probably do about $2000 worth of manufactured spend a month and whatever else I charge onto my cards. I take a pretty conservative approach.
I know it’s been awhile but wanted to ask if you still find $500 GCs at Office Depot. I haven’t found them and of course as far as I know Staples never carried them. They only stock $200 max. I bring this up in regards to the Ink cards.
Nope, haven’t seen them in ages