Could i get a PM on some ideas too? thanks!

There isn't really a right answer to these arguments. Yes, there are ways to MS without paying any fees at all. You can argue what the "true value" of points are until you are blue in the face. The answer to that is different for every person.

IMO, doing half your MS with points and half with a 2% card to offset the fees is very flawed as well. If you value the points you earn greater than the 2%, you should just churn the points card. If you feel the points are worth less than what you get with a 2% card, you should just churn the 2% card.

This. My fees this month are negative (not the first month this has happened). My overall fees for the year are positive, but very reasonable. The negative fee months help offset months where there are no promos available. ~20k miles this month

Disagree. Points can/should be worth significantly more than the cash value of the points. Of course, if you aren't interested in travel, put the $ in your pocket.

For me, this game has been a revelation. My travel has increased dramatically, while my costs have dropped precipitously - a win-win. But I can't imagine going thru all the rigmarole if I were just getting a few thousand cash a year in CB. My time is better spent elsewhere if all I'm getting is cash value.

But a few card signups plus some MS, and ability to get tickets worth $10-$20K each? That's a no brainer.

Thanks, farwest101. You nailed it.
While microeconomics, indifference curves and notions of value are debated, there's no mention of that 1 thing you can't buy or get with points.... TIME.

Some obviously enjoy the MS game so it's not a time 'loss' since pleasure is derived from it.
I'm no lawyer but I do bill by the hour so I'm hyper-sensitive to time invested.
Overlooked in much MS discussion is time 'cost'.

I love your argument. It's very logical. However, many people have difficulty on valuing their points. So they play safe. At least they know their points are free and it gives them peace of mind.

I just love my points. $200 doesn't make me exciting at all. But 20000 points make me feel good. I know I'm silly. I just love the points game. Counting my points is better than counting my $ because it's much larger and make me feel I'm rich with points. It's so difficult to get one million dollars and it's much easier to get one million points

I should have been more specific. You have to assign a value to your points based on what you redeem them for. You can't just say "I feel richer because 200,000 is bigger number than $200" :p

If you regularly fly airline X and can get a coach ticket for 25K that normally costs you $350, then your points are worth $.014 each. Obviously this will be different for everyone.

Yes. Revenue > Costs for me. Or, I can "pay myself back" with points/cb liquidation and still have leftover points from the spend.

I redeemed 497,000 points this year. Average redemption value was 2.1 cents.

I am at a balance of 1.5m points. So before I MS, I ask myself do I need the points? Say I can manufacture UR at a penny each but I have 400k UR points, it's probably not worth it. But if I can MS for .2 then maybe I should.

Even if points are valued slightly less or equal to CB rate, it's still easier to have points balance aside. (Feels even better if that points are free or offset.)
Cashback just mixes so much with other normal cash flow. It'd take special efford to do accounting and separate that cash earned from CB cards towards future fravel.

When cashback drops into the rest of money earned traditional way, it becames "no better" than the other money I could spend on travel.

Kenny - Over in Judge Roy Bean's home town don't forget we had The Texas 10K, the Bank of the Banker and the Zombie Buffalo. PM me on Hello Sailor as I was always too busy with other opportunities to ever get around to them. Maybe ADK, Jr. can pay them a visit.:p

I agree with this 100%. If you're not interested in travel, pocket the cb. If you're not interested in travel, why you on FT?! :D

When not meeting a minimum spend or taking a break from apps, I MS.

If you do the Wells 5% card, you can easily bank $1-2K in the six month intro. Repeat this every so often with other similar cards, and you have your profit, or at least you cover your VR fees.

[Deleted]

Isn't your point the whole theme of this post?

Yes, but people keep wandering off into the valuations of their points...

I used some points for my trip to Puerto Rico recently.

Would these kind people PM me as well? I am still new to MS and any tips from you smarter people helps. :) Thanks.

x2, after threads and threads of reading. Tons of valuable information.

every PM I got is basically already described in this thread..
Wellsfargo 5x cash back at drug store for 6 months. Buying 2 VR makes up for the cost of 10 on another card. Break even should be easy for 6 months with that.

This is probably one of the best posts I've read on flyertalk and describes me to a T. If I were gaining say 2 to 3K a year cash back while I still would find a daily spender than got me cash back I would NOT sign up for multiple cards and have to convince my wife to do the same. I could get a quick part-time job and get the money if it were truly necessary.

I'm also the first to say I would not spend $20,000 on first class tickets to London and Italy this year (no way/now how) but I did redeem some miles for just that. $1,000 cash (roughly) or $20,000 worth of tickets and seeing my wife sleeping after an icecream sunday in the air on the way to my dream vacation? No way I'd trade that. I used to scoff at the people saying they got 20 cents+ per mile. Now I'm "that guy."

OP - I only sign up for cards that are no annual fee and my manufactured spending is limited to Amazon payments (100% free). That gets me 24,000 miles/points/whatever for zero cost, sometimes more. We also make a comfortable living so our regular spending (and some spending on travel/expenses for the business I work for) add to our pile. I do not do any of the VR cards as it's not worth the hassle, again my decision. I did do about $5,000 worth of Chase gift cards which while 100% free, I tired of that quickly and quit.

Many good ideas in this thread. Look at other sites for cashback, use portals on your own cards for additional cash back, rebates, etc and I think one could EASILY do this with zero cost. But time is money as well...

Good luck!

Because you're all so charming, of course. :D

I'm actually planning on my first airplane trip for many years in several months. Plenty of time to MS points for travel for once instead of CB. And that knowledge came partially from reading these threads until my eyes bled.

As for the OP, I'm of the mind that you have to spend a little money in order to earn more money. The investments of fees + time = lots of free lunches.

I only take 1-2 trips a year. I am building miles in each alliance for booking flexibility for my family of four but I will certainly eat a devaluation or two in the coming years. For me it makes sense to mix in a bit of cash to offset the various fees (AF on cards, MS fees).

Boy did I open a can of worms in this thread :eek:

Abandon thread for me

If you are not even interested in travel , then you sure can take the CB.

However, using your same logic, if someone who do travel and will otherwise spend money on air fares or ticket, the opportunity cost for getting the $100.79 using a 2% cashback card via loading 5K in VR , instead of using a Ink card earning at 1.7X UR ( all VR fees offset-ed, UR valued at 1.8cent ) , is $153.

I use 3% cash back card for 1/3 of my MS and pay off all the gift card fees for all the other airlines/hotel points.
This really makes me feel really good and unnecessary to calculate the cpm or actual value of points/miles because every points I get is GAIN.

some good ideas in this thread for sure.

i for one am a little nervous about shopping thru cb portals with amex gc purchases as I am more familiar with other cb sites. wish fatwallet had 2% for amex gc

Assuming you have a 1x point card, if you redeem points for > 3 cents per point, you would be better of churning the points card (s) alone. If you redeem points for < 3 cpp (most likely) youd be much better off churning for cash and using that to pay for travel.

I'm here because there is much more discussion here about MS than places like FW. I have enough miles/points on Barclay to cover my relatively small travel needs for awhile.

OTOH, I can always use more cash, and enjoy the MS process most of the time. I have two methods that net me 4% or more on spend. I don't MS over my CL on either CC, so I'm limited to about 20K per month without resorting to less lucrative methods.

For the curious, one method is the already mentioned WF 5% card. The other card is no longer available, and the 4% is only achieved by a combo of the card with F5/F6.

And kind of a tangent in this discussion is the effort people will put into churning. There are the portal-resell churners - I'd imagine these people probably have a bit more free time and are willing to be a bit riskier - but ultimately make more from it. You have the people who will buy gift cards at grocery stores and spend time in Wal-Mart liquidating. Then, you have the people who just prefer the relative ease of buying VR's and cashing them out through Bluebirds - and then you have the people who just MS to clear credit card bonuses and have no other desire to do so. Although there's probably not a one size fits all - I'm willing to bet the more money people make, the less likely they are to do some of the more complex stuff as they probably value their time more. If something ever happened and I went down to a 30-50k a year salary, I would probably hit some of the other methods more hard and heavy.

For me, cash is king. I just use Fidelity 2% Amex. figure my costs approximate 1%, leaving the other 1% for profit.

Well, I believe the OP is asking how to get 1k UR/SPG points (ie. 1k VR/1k CGC ...etc) with less fee (< $8) or even better making profit? Of course, the value of points or cash is weighted based on each person's preference.

My preferred method of MS will be ending in the next few months and it allowed me to generate spend while getting approx. 8% in CB on top of the points. More than offset fees

Very true.
But like everyone else is saying, point values are very complicated.
I can easily earn over 5 cpp by redeeming business class international flight,
but I would never buy those tickets with cash.
Also, the availability of the flight tickets varies as well.
Like I can't always book Savers Award Ticket on UA if my trip isn't flexible.
Anyway, by paying off all the fees by cash back cards, I might won't earn maximum gains, but I don't have to compromise my family trip.

There's many ways to MS. Most of the issues are not about right or wrong.
It's almost about how you're comfortable with and make you happy :)

The vanilla cost of $3.95/$500 is around 0.8 cents/mile. (DL Amex card). I just booked a low mileage award trip for 25k miles, vanilla cost of $197.50 for those miles. It's a last minute non-hub to non-hub trip, revenue tickets are costing around $1050 to $1100 for travel on or around those dates. So my redemption rate is better than 4 cents/mile.

(and yes, I really booked a domestic r/t on Delta.com using the award tool and got it for 25k miles- I know that claiming such a thing undermines my credibility, but its true).

I tie my MS spending with money making opportunities at local office supply stores. Ink recycling, rebates + coupons makes each transaction a slight money maker. Then apply that to MS and it's a break even proposition for me.

Me too! :cool:
I dont value Hotel points as much as Airline points. Personally I would never transfer UR points to Hyatt.
Usually I spend the least amount of time at hotels. I am all for the destination and any 4 star hotel will do. Priceline has been fun and effective to me. Never felt any different and always got nice rooms.

And usually a business class fare will do.

Sometimes we dwell on the tangible but the intangible can be more valuable too: a surprise vacation with a loved one, a free ticket for a friend, even a ticket to help a stranger go to a funeral.

But different strokes....

Ink recycling - hasn't that kinda gone the way of metal recycling?:p So hard to live green when your plastic can't profitably buy their plastic at a decent profit margin....

You must be the best and most original poster here! :cool:

All of my MS is to make a profit....

I use USbank cash+, Amex blue cash preferred, Citi thankyou preferred and other cards to buy large amounts of VR and MP at drug stores/gas stations. I probably net ~$800/month at my current rate