Originally Posted by
envoy245
How are fellow Staplers using their Ink Plus credit card at Staples, while trying to "cash" out Staples rewards and ink rewards?
January was an unusual month in which I bought $600 worth of Free After Rebate crap from Staples. I also bought $300 in gadgets / toys at Staples.
For Feb., I will have close to $120 in Staples rewards (which includes $60 in ink recycling rewards). Since I'm just Plus, these expire 2 months out.
I just bought 300 empty ink cartridges ... so I'll have $40 in ink recycling rewards / month.
The other challenge is the rebate prepaid cards that will be coming out (from January FAR). These are fee-free for 6 months. Fortunately I think of the $800 FAR rebates, I will only have $200 - 300 in Visa prepaid.
Rewards always come before the INK card. Rewards are 100% cash back, Ink is ~5%. Just accept that you won't always be using your ink card. You can always add on a $200 gift card if you want to increase spend.
Staples has some down weeks, but cashing out $120 in rewards in 3 months shouldn't be that big a deal. The key is to try to keep the value of the rewards down...under 50 is usually easy enough to dispose of in 2 tries. When staples used to do free after reward, this was a bigger issue.
As far as the visa prepaid, there are many options. One new option is to use evolve for paying bills. You can use for regular spend of course. Amazon payments and loading target card are options too.
I have 6 months to spend rewards, but I've almost never needed more than 2 weeks. Getting multiple rebate addresses helps too...you can double your spend.