Originally Posted by crimson12

I think you may be confusing two different issues.

1. You have to spend $5000 within 6 months (I think? Don't quote me on that) to get 50,000 bonus points. Is your question how to spend $5000? First, see how much you normally spend per month. If your usual spending will hit $5000, then no worries, you're good.

2. If you're asking how to spend the 50,000 points, you have multiple options. Most people here will tell you that Chase points are valuable because of their transfer partners. For example, if you wanted two roundtrip economy tickets in the U.S., you could transfer your points to United, which charges 25,000 points for an economy r/t. With 50,000 points, you could get 2 tickets. (Make sure to check availability on United BEFORE transferring, because you can't undo the transfer.)

2a. You could also "spend" the points through Chase directly. You will get 1.25 cents per point. So if you wanted to pay for a flight, hotel, car, etc., you could spend up to $625 (50,000 x 0.0125) for "free" using points. Because these are fixed-value awards (1.25 cents per point) most people on this website tend not to use them.

3. This forum ("Manufactured Spending") is more about ways to spend money on credit cards that you can then liquidate into cash. To take a simple (and non-existent) example, if I could go to the store, and charge $100 to my credit card, and they gave me $100 in cash, then I have accumulated $100 in spending on my card (and earned 100 points) but I have $100 in cash so I have earned those points for free.

Most Manufactured Spending has some transaction cost (a few examples, like credit card loads to Serve, don't, but that's going away in two weeks). But for example, you could use your Chase Ink card to:

--go to Staples
--buy a $500 gift card
--pay a $3.95 gift card fee
--spend the $500 on stuff you otherwise would

You have spent $504, earned 2,520 points (because the Ink gets 5x points at office supply stores) and you get back $500 to spend on the gift card. In this simple example you've generated 2,520 points for $4 or 0.15 cents per point. As you see above, you can get a minimum of 1.25 cents per point return from the Chase Ultimate Rewards travel site, so you are 1.10% ahead of the game with this simple example.

Most everything else (reload cards, money orders, etc.) all builds on this same basic concept. (One exception is reselling, which is more complicated. But Staples often has "free after rebate" items. You could buy those items, get 5x points, get the rebate so the item is free, and then ebay the stuff for profit.)

Anyway I think that answers your questions but if you clarify we may be able to help.

Oh, and welcome to FlyerTalk!