Every deal we do in life, be it business or hobby has a potential for either a positive or negative rate of return.
Todays Deal
This morning I’ve driven 20 minutes from my home to the neighboring town’s Staples store. I came here because I can often buy 10 Visa $200 gift cards at once without fees when the promo runs. The Staples closer to home only sells them one at a time. My risk is that they don’t open, go back to only one per customer, or are out of cards.
If I can buy $2000 worth of free gift cards, I will have a positive return on my time. $2000 of staples Visas at no cost will get me 10,000 Ultimate Rewards (5X Ink card) points which I value at $150 minimum.
Twenty minutes out, twenty minutes back and twenty minutes unloading the gift cards to money order, places this max profit at about $150 per hour. I tend to look at all deals on a per hour rate.
What is Your Minimum Hourly Rate?
Obviously applying for a 60,000-mile airline card that takes 15 minutes to apply for and doing just regular organic spending to reach the minimum spend is a home run in hourly rate. But then again, opening a checking account with BB&T last month only took about 30 minutes, including the stop I had to make at the bank.
My only requirements were a $1500 deposit and to make three bill payments to earn a $300 bonus. Maybe one full hour invested for $300. Half the rate of pay as the credit card sign-up, but I’ll work any chance I can get for $300 per hour.
My personal restriction with bank sign-up bonuses is I hate direct deposit requirements and 10 debit card transactions. I won’t go there.
Manufactured Spending
Manufactured spending is a little more complicated calculation. It involves, time to buy gift cards, gift card costs, as well as money order costs. I’ve recently being earning 5% in cash with my Amex Gold card combined with my Schwab Platinum card minus card fees and money order, but adding back DOSH income for shopping at one of my favorite stores.
The number of cards I’d buy per trip greatly impacted my rate of return. If I bought one gift card, I’d earn about $18 on the card. But if I bought two on my card and two on my wife’s (using self-checkout), the return increases dramatically.
Now that I’m done with the Amex Gold play and can only use a 2.625% cash back card, after expenses my total return is about $42 and it takes an hour to do so. I liked $72 per hour much better than $42 per hour. But $42 an hour still works for me. But is close to my lower level.
Every deal is different. Everyone’s level of participation is unique and only you can determine what works for you. You may be fine with direct deposit requirements. Don’t let anyone tell you what’s right for you. If they do, ask them how they could make your deal a better deal.
My Trip to Staples
So how did my trip to another town’s Staples go? I got to buy $2000 worth of $200 Visa gift cards (which I hate to unload). And the grocery store next door that usually sells money orders for 46 cents and gives me no problem, this time gave me a problem. The new clerk insisted on seeing the card used and would not do more than one gift card.
So my time factor is now greatly increased as I now need to go to two more outlets to buy money orders (I don’t like to do more than 5 in one spot). My costs increased as the other places charge $0.99 per money order.
So instead of my money order cost being covered by my DOSH earnings, I’m now out $5. In the last step of the process I went from a net of $150 in one hour to a net of $145 in maybe two hours. Still acceptable at $72.50 per hour.
Have fun gauging you hourly rate on all your deals
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Is it worth it to drive an hour for these? Just to have for future spend, knowing you are getting 5x points on CIC…
That’s each person’s individual call. If you mean an hour out and an hour back plus liquidation time, that’s pretty slim. I’m using an Ink Business Plus Card that I get 5 Ultimate Rewards points per dollar or 10K points for an hours worth of time total. That’s worth it to me. I’m retired so have got the time. Otherwise, I’d be sitting around drinking coffee 😉
Yeah kind of thought it to be an opinion thing. But I guess if I can get 2-3 on that trip that may make it worth it.
Alternatively you can spend time with your favorite blogger, TBB.
Or start your own blog.
At least for me worth it, I have 10 Staples around town and I have done more than 10k this week. If you count 5x I have gotten 50k miles since Sunday, plus $5 back in Dosh. I also have 10 WM a round town and it’s a challenge to convince people for MOs. The worst rate I’ve gotten redeeming with Chase is 2 cents, so now you can calculate if worth driving a little bit. Also, i got points for grocery shopping in my local market and only pay $0,80 per gallon.
I rarely find the $200 Visa cards at Staples during these promotions. There are 2 Staples relatively near me. I went on Sunday and got the last two cards. Later today I’ll try the other one. At least OD is offering $10 off and I’m able to get a couple of $200 ones for a total of $3.95.
One trick I used in the past was to take the gift cards from an unfriendly store, unactivated, and then activate them at the store that is friendly to load. That way there is always a supply that you have.
Also you need to discuss the TVM, time value of money. I keep preaching you can make a lot of $ if you invest the float and have a repeatable system to keep a float of $50-100k. Future post…..
What are your thoughts on using a GoBank account to load VGC’s onto rather than buying MO’s? Ariana has posted about this subject and I’m still on the fence because it still requires a trip to WMT to load them. I’ve been able to get $2,000 worth of VGC’s every day this week at my Staples that is only 5 minutes away and $400 every day at the OD across the street with my Ink Cash card, so it’s been a good week so far. I can get MO’s at a local grocery store for 78¢, so it takes me about 30 minutes a day plus depositing the MO’s with my bank’s mobile app, but I’ve already hit the weekly rolling limit on deposits doing it that way which is why I’m thinking of opening a GoBank account.
I’ve earned 54,000 Ultimate Rewards points so far this week for about 2 hours of work (I’m also retired, so….).
Hopefully Ariana can chip in. I’ve never done GoBank but would love to learn?
Way to Crush It.
When you say you “don’t like to do more than 5 in one spot” do you mean 5 MO’s or 5 VGC?
MO’s
Newbie here but all my cards are amex
How do you do 5 MOs at the same location at one shot? I can use 4x$500 VGCs to buy 2x$1000 MOs at Walmart and that’s it for the day. Of course I can come back later if there is a new clerk to buy new set of MOs, but that would be considered as separate trip.
Has anyone have luck with churning with amex cards? Im working on a minimum on the gold card but worried i wont get the credit? How much would alert them that im getting gift cards?
Do NOT do minimum spend on Amex cards with gift cards. Do Not!
Amex will pull back sign up bonuses if you buy gift cards – needs to be organic spend.
What about Chase cards? My daughter just got the CSP and was going to buy VGC’s at a local Simon Mall to meet the minimum spend to get her 60,000 point bonus. Should she just stick to organic spending to be on the safe side?
Don’t use it at Simon Mall and also, don’t complete the minimum spend with MS.
So after i do the minimum om regular spending, can i churn with no problem after that?
YES
Reasonably, yes. But don’t use it at Simon Mall. You won’t earn points.
I heard amex was cracking down on MS is there a certain limit i should stay under or certain sites or establisments i shouldnt buy from to avoid tip amex off on MS
Amex is far-and-away the best for MS once you’ve met signup bonus spend organically. They tolerate multiple repeat purchases without a hiccup. I’ve done 8 figures at Amex with perhaps 2 fraud alerts in the last decade. I can’t go a day without a fraud alert or some bs from other issuers when I need to hit deals hard and fast.
My advice is to pick Amex cards that are worthy keepers – Hilton, Blue Biz Plus, Everyday Preferred, Gold. Then just slowly work your way thru all their other cards to earn signup bonuses. Keep them a full year before cancelling or downgrading and you’ll be fine.
I have the amex plat..gold.. aspire..delta plat..blue cash preferred. Im military so i dont pay any annual fees
I didn’t know that was a thing! Any other banks waiving annual fees for military?
I’ve always tried to work in normal spending and don’t spend more than your stated income. YMMV.
Wow that is dedication! I generally only buy/liquidate if the stores are on my way with the exception of a magical gas station. I don’t mind sitting on GC for days or weeks. Fortunately this works for me since my volume is so low (<2k per month). I try not to MS any more than I have to since liquidating is such a freaking pain. In fact, I just "lost" $500 at DG bc I was greedy. Did 2×500 and went for a third. DG fraud kicked back the trx but of course we couldn't put the money back on the card. In retrospect I should have had a real debit on hand.
Hi Rick, long time no see. Nice reading you again. You are leaving out an important cost To MS: gas price and usage to drive to all this places.
With all the quite numerous money orders being deposited into one’s personal bank account… doesn’t the bank question these transactions?
That is bank dependent. I’m ok with BofA and Wells Fargo and a few at sun trust. It is also location sensitive
Trial and error