Originally Posted by dukerau (Post 23872891)

We get what you're doing. The question is: is it worth it for the time effort for the benefit you're getting? How much of this spend could you do with a Discover card through Evolve? 1% cash back, no fees, don't have to leave your house. Or get a 5% cash back card, buy $500 VGC at grocery/drug, load that to BB/Serve/Redbird and bill pay out. Now that's worth the effort.

Originally Posted by ibleed0range (Post 23872872)

Have to explain the same thing to every new guy.

#1 You are not getting cash back for items that traditionally can't be purchased with cc. You are buying giftcards man. You load them to Bluebird and do what with the money? Pay your mortgage? No you pay your credit card. Your just robbing peter to pay paul and you are manufacturing additional cashback. Whatever you want to call it is up to you but you don't know what your talking about. If you want to limit yourself to getting cashback For just a mortgage and car loan equivalent to say $1400 a month that is on you. But you can buy $5K of those a month and dump to bluebird and the outcome is exactly the same. Pay your mortgage out of your bank account and use bluebird to pay your credit card.

Originally Posted by ericdabbs (Post 23873543)

+10000000...when I first started MS, my cousin gave me the same pitch about how how MS allows you to essentially pay your mortgage and car payments by CC and earn 5%. I quickly found out that this wasn't necessarily true because if you use all your funds to pay your mortgage or car payments, then how are you going to pay for the huge CC bill. You would essentially use funds from your bank account to pay that off.

That is why the whole idea of BB checks are just crap. With the way BB checks are structured where the payee needs to call a number to get an authorization number and write it on the check to verify the payment is just odd and weird and there are too many stories of people using BB checks to pay rent resulting in missed payments and late fees. I much rather use the funds to pay back CCs and use bank checks to pay off mortgage and car payments than BB checks.

Originally Posted by vah4883 (Post 23873821)

That is not correct if you can pay rent or mortgage with money order. For rent, I pay with money order bought with gift cards instead of direct bank check.

Originally Posted by ericdabbs (Post 23873911)

Yes but how did you buy your gift card? You still have those funds you need to pay back on your CC. With VGCs you either load to BB/Serve or use them to buy MOs or BP. In this case the funds you used on your VGC for the MO should have been used to pay off your CC. All you are doing actually is tacking more fees onto yourself with the extra MO fee because you still have that gap of funds that need to be paid back to the CC.

Simple example, you buy $500 VGC from a store using CC. You use that $500 VGC to buy $499.xx MO after fees. You pay rent with $499.xx MO. You still have a $500 balance on your CC that you need to pay back. How is this any different?

Originally Posted by tilleyd (Post 23872745)

Is Rewards2Cashdotcom a legitimate business? Seems on the surface like a scam operator. Who else here has used that website?

Originally Posted by ericdabbs (Post 23873911)

Yes but how did you buy your gift card? You still have those funds you need to pay back on your CC. With VGCs you either load to BB/Serve or use them to buy MOs or BP. In this case the funds you used on your VGC for the MO should have been used to pay off your CC. All you are doing actually is tacking more fees onto yourself with the extra MO fee because you still have that gap of funds that need to be paid back to the CC.

Simple example, you buy $500 VGC from a store using CC. You use that $500 VGC to buy $499.xx MO after fees. You pay rent with $499.xx MO. You still have a $500 balance on your CC that you need to pay back. How is this any different?

Originally Posted by vah4883 (Post 23873981)

The differences is very clear. you will earn points or CB. Your idea was correct if BB didn't have monthly limit. Let say you have one BB and intend to just MS with that and also you have $500 monthly rent. After buying 10 gift cards and load to BB and pay back your CC, your are done for that month. Now for rent you have two option, first paying $500 directly from bank or pay $5 more for cost of money order + giftcard but instead earn for instance 1500 MR or 1500 DC points

Originally Posted by tilleyd (Post 23872567)

Folks,

This is how I utilize Ink Plus now that I've received my 70K bonus, I plan to continue to MS with this card for all things that can't be charged to a card. Here are the items I am now earning 1.5% back for:

1. Mortgage payments
2. Property Tax
3. Credit-Card balance payments
4. All personal checks
5. Insurance payments

Before I discovered MS with Ink Plus all the mentioned items were deducted directly from my bank account with NO extra cash-back incentive/return. But after discovering MS, I'm now earning 1.5% on all these items.

This is how I do it:
1. Acquire $200 VGC cards from OS stores till I've reached my monthly spend need
2. Liquidate these into BlueBird at Wal-Mart
3. Pay off items using BlueBird BillPay

Accounting for $6.95 VGC fees, my effective return rate is 1.5% for all these items which used to directly be deducted from my bank account with no bonus/incentives! Thoughts?

Originally Posted by ericdabbs (Post 23873543)

+10000000...when I first started MS, my cousin gave me the same pitch about how how MS allows you to essentially pay your mortgage and car payments by CC and earn 5%. I quickly found out that this wasn't necessarily true because if you use all your funds to pay your mortgage or car payments, then how are you going to pay for the huge CC bill. You would essentially use funds from your bank account to pay that off.

That is why the whole idea of BB checks are just crap. With the way BB checks are structured where the payee needs to call a number to get an authorization number and write it on the check to verify the payment is just odd and weird and there are too many stories of people using BB checks to pay rent resulting in missed payments and late fees. I much rather use the funds to pay back CCs and use bank checks to pay off mortgage and car payments than BB checks.