My week in manufactured spending: 4,200 points and $314.69 cash back

Since the GiftCardMall hack a few weeks ago, I’ve steered clear of ordering gift cards from the site. A few readers have reported that they’ve ordered gift cards from GiftCardMall over the last week or two and have not had any fraudulent activity on their credit cards.

I’m still going to hold off on using any of my recently replaced credit cards at GiftCardMall until I know it’s safe. If any of your American Express cards got hacked, be sure to ask them to block all future charges to the old card. Apparently that’s not a given.

The Fidelity Rewards Card was one of a few cards that weren’t hacked. I decided to use it for two GiftCardMall purchases last week. I figured it’s probably compromised anyway, so why not just use it until it has to be replaced. Other than that, I’ve been busy with the Simon Mall $1 off promo that’s going on through June 30. 

At $2.95 per $500 gift card, Simon Mall isn’t the cheapest place to buy gift cards. After all, GiftCardMall lets you cut the cost down to $0.95 per $500. But since GCM out of the picture at the moment (at least for me), I’m focusing on Simon Mall. I’m using Discover It Miles cards to take advantage of the Simon Mall $1 off promotion. Mainly because GiftCardMall doesn’t accept Discover credit cards.

Anyway, I had a pretty productive manufactured spending week. Below is a breakdown of all the rewards I earned.

Chase Ultimate Rewards

I used my Chase Sapphire Preferred as a backup when my Discover It Miles card was declined. I totally forgot I’d made a mortgage payment with the card via Plastiq and had less credit than I initially thought. No big deal. I’m always happy to earn more Ultimate Rewards points (though I prefer it to be cheaper than $2.95 per $500).

I charged $4,288.50 of the purchase to the Sapphire Preferred and earned 4,200 Ultimate Rewards points.

Points earned: 4288 Ultimate Rewards points

Gift card fees: $25.30 

Cash back from the Discover it Miles Card

So far, I’ve only managed $21,400 worth of purchases on the Discover It Miles Card. I’m hoping to at least double this by the end of the month.

Cash back earned: $321

Fees: $126.26

Total profit: $194.74

Cash back from the Fidelity Rewards Card

I charged just $6,400 from a large Simon Mall gift card purchase to the Fidelity Rewards Visa. At 2% cash back, it got me $128 in rewards. Fees on $6,400 worth of gift cards amount to $37.76, netting me a $90.24 profit

Then I caved and placed two $1517.85 Visa gift card orders through GiftCardMall on Sunday. I earned about $60.71 cash back through the Fidelity card and $30 via BeFrugal.

In total, I earned $145.25 cash back through the Fidelity Rewards Visa, after fees and portal cash back.

Fidelity Rewards Cash back: $188.71

Fees: $73.46

BeFrugal cash back: $30

Total profit: $145.25

Final manufactured spending tally: 4,200 points and $314.69 cash pack

In total, my $32,000 Visa gift card haul earned me 4,200 Ultimate Rewards and $314.69 cash back after fees.  Liquidating these cards will cost $0 – $28.16, depending on how I do it.

GoBank Card loads are free while Walmart money orders cost $0.88 per $1,000. The money order route is much faster, so most of the Visa gift cards will be liquidated this way. 

Most of the time when I buy the daily maximum of $8,000 worth of money orders, I also do around $1,000 – $2,000 in GoBank card loads. Sometimes I get someone else to come along so I can liquidate $16,000 at a time. Either way, the liquidation cost isn’t significant.

How much time did it take?

After my last few manufactured spending posts, readers have been asking me how much time it takes me to liquidate all these gift cards. That depends on how many GoBank cards I’m able to load and the day of the week.

Liquidating gift cards during the first week of the month takes significantly longer time because of the long lines at Walmart. I mostly avoid this time, but sometimes I can’t help it.

There’s a Walmart on the way home from work that I’ve been stopping at when I need to and the only time I’m really spending on liquidating is about one hour. Factor in the time I spent buying these cards at Simon Mall and eventually paying off the credit cards and we’ll estimate at about five hours to liquidate $32,000 worth of Visa gift cards. That works out to about $51.94 per hour, which I think is a good return on the time spent.