BigHabitat
Level 2 Member
As you may know, I recently obtained a 150k Amex Business Platinum card along with many other folks. I have Vinh over at milesperday.com to thank for that. A few days ago, I saw there was kind of an ad hoc challenge on meeting the minimum spend. Here is the post introducing the contest.
Now I like challenges, and I have to spend the $20k minimum anyway, so in the comments section I invited myself to participate. Now the nice thing about this contest is that for many people hitting minimum spend targets is about hitting the target while losing as little money as possible so you can move on to the next one. And most of the time, the minimum spend targets are pretty nominal, $1k, $3k, $5k, etc. $20k is bigger than most, so it gives people something to work with. Since the Amex Bus Platinum doesn’t have any category bonuses, spending $20k even buying gift visa gift cards would add up, assume a $6 cost per $500 at a grocery store you would be looking at $6*2*20 or $240 plus costs to unload.
Now $240 is a small price to pay for the 170k miles you will get (150k signup plus 20k for the spend). And as Vinh points out, you could even come out ahead if you inserted a step of buying Amex Gift cards first with 1.5% from TopCashBack or other portals, then buying the Visa Gift cards.
But, the premise of this challenge is what if you can do better? Every percent better than breakeven is going to be $200, so if you could get 5%, thats a cool grand. If you can get 10% that’s $2,000, and you’ve nearly doubled the benefit of an already incredible offer… you would be getting well over $4k of total benefits from one sign-up.
My goals
- Make money. Of course
. Buying miles for a good rate is nice… but making money is better - Do what I normally do. The challenge objectives seem to be to maximize returns, but finish fast and with as little time invested as possible. Ok, that’s basically what I would do without a challenge going on.
- Minimize time and effort. I haven’t had a lot of free time lately (if you haven’t noticed from lack of posts). So somebody else may be able to win by searching harder for smaller deals to maximize returns (e.g., place small orders using coupons, etc). The best deals often aren’t scalable. So be it.
Well, as of 2 days ago. I had a potentially decent score at Staples yesterday which isn’t reflected yet. Sorry for the table formatting…
% Return Cost Expected Proceeds Expected Cash CC Points Portal Points Store rewards Other
Totals 13.6% 9,065 10,300 9,907 118 74 131 70
Total Store
8-May Office Depot MS 4.4% 581 607 599 8
8-May Office Depot MS 4.4% 581 607 599 8
8-May Office Depot MS 4.4% 581 607 599 8
11-May Office Depot MS 4.4% 581 607 599 8
13-May BESTBUY.COM Resale (Ipads) 11.1% 1,060 1,178 1,089 14 50 25
13-May Unnamed Merchant Resale (Various) 19.9% 2,103 2,521 2,494 27
13-May Staples (Gift Cards) Resale (Ipads) 22.2% 1,000 1,222 1,089 13 50 70 gas
13-May Staples (on CC) Resale (Ipads) -98.7% 60 1 1
15-May Unnamed Merchant Resale (Various) 15.5% 937 1,082 1,070 12
15-May Unnamed Merchant Resale (Various) 18.8% 638 758 750 8
20-May Sears Resale (Various) 41.4% 182 257 200 2 24 31
20-May Best Buy macbook air 12.0% 762 854 819 10 25
Free $50 from Walmart
Well I signed up for a $1 year subscription to a new free shipping program from Walmart that I saw on slickdeals. Turns out it was an employee link but they ended up giving everyone who signed up a $50 gift card. Score! Too bad it doesn’t count towards the reselling contest…
Free $100 from ebay!
Ebay had a targeted offer for store owners matching the first $100 of sales in video games and consoles. As it happens some of my purchases from the unnamed merchant above were video game consoles, so I should get an easy $100 match from Ebay!. Score a direct hit! And that should could towards the reselling contest….
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