I hope I was able to open your eyes in your effort of buying cheaper United miles through gift card churning.
Further, there are two more ways to lower the cost basis of earning United miles. The first method, I can’t quantitatively give you results, but if you sign up with MyPoints BonusMail you can be earning more, free United miles. Takes little effort, all you need to do is view the website and each email could earn you 5 to 10 points. We’re looking at 2.1 United Miles to 4.2 miles per email just to visit the site!
The second method, you need to time this. They also have promotions where you will earn extra points for buying gift cards. All of these efforts will give you the chance to lower your cost basis to buy the United miles.
How To Do It:
I can’t give you quantitatively how many emails come in or what the point offers are. But they add up. I’ve been accumulating at least 60 points a week.
Make sure after you sign up this check box is checked:
Then you will receive these emails that look like this:
The Promotions:
As you buy your MyPoints, periodically, they will have this promotion:
Buy 2+ gift cards and a tiered offer of extra points kick in. 2 cards of one type per transaction. It’s a lame promotion because it’s not like if you Buy 5 gift cards you get 1000 points or something like that. Instead it’s incremented by 100 points per 1 gift card.
To further layout more details, in early April, they ran this promotion and I bought 4 of the same gift cards in two separate transactions and was able to earn 400 bonus points as a test.
All of these efforts will lower your cost basis for the United miles.
Why This Combination Works?
This MyPoints + US Bank Cash+ combination works because it doesn’t infringe on bonus categories of many other cards. Therefore, there’s little lost opportunity cost when using the combination. Now you know how I am accumulating cheaper United Miles, pair it up with the MileagePlus Explorer card and it could be a great bundle of benefits.
My favorite MyPoints promotion so far have been the online gaming ones – deposit >$19.99 in some Game Show Network account and get several thousand points. I’ve found a couple that earn enough points to cash out for a $50 Amazon gift card and still have some left over. Free money! (although obviously they’re hoping you become addicted and deposit much more).