Analysis: 1.5% CB on non-CC items with Ink Plus
 

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. All personal checks
4. 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?

Uh, yeah, that's what this whole forum is about. Isn't this covered in the Staples $200 VGC thread?

Thoughts: your math is off, you are paying too much, and why are you using %s when you could be using these for miles and points for more value instead. Hmm, if only there were entire threads devoted to these topics!

Oh my goodness, you've discovered a new way to do MS!!

Wait a minute....

Yea you have a lot to learn. That's horrible value anyway. Sign up for Visa savings edge and you can get 2.5% CB! (Through 2014). I'm guessing you probably took the 70K point bonus and cashed out the $700 too, you bandit!

Don't take the cash back on Chase points they are worth double that (at least to me) when transferred out to travel partners.

I'm confused, how can I make the points worth double their value? I just logged into my Chase Portal and have 99,157 points. These are equivalent to the following:

99,157 Points = $991.57 Cash Back Point Value: 1cent
99,157 Points = $1,239.46 Travel Credit Value: 1.2cents

How are you concluding they're worth double their value? Also, redeeming for travel is only nice if you have a imminent travel need. If you have no upcoming travel, redeeming for cash is your best option. Please advise.

Have you looked into the available transfer partners (i.e. United, Southwest, etc). That is how people get more value per point. Not shopping for travel on the UR website.
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Mods, I'd suggest moving this thread to the New to Manufactured Spending thread.

Thanks for the tip. I'll look into those transfer partners. Much appreciated! I guess I have more thread reading to do! Thanks much!

Let's say you transfer 8000 points to Hyatt and book a room that normally costs $200. You just redeemed your points for a value of 200/8000= .025 which is just ever so slightly more than .01 per point.

However, if you have no travel plans and want the cash, there isn't anybody here that can stop you.

check rewards2cashdotcom to find more options to increase your cash value.

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

If you have no travel coming up just let the points sit. If you want cashback stop using a 5x card to buy giftcards with 3.5% fee. You will get sick of that real fast and if you don't then you got way too much time on your hands.

ibleedOrange, I am only seeking cash-back for items that traditionally could not be purchased with a credit card. See my original post. I'm not seeking to "manufacture" additional cash-back that's beyond my normal spending. Does that help clarify? I looked into the SW airline points transfer idea, they are very attractive.... I think that'll be my best bang/buck.

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.

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.

And to second what ibleedOrange wrote above me, you're using a lot of semantics when there's no difference. Using BB to pay mortgage means you pay CC (that you bought the VGC with) from your bank account. Or you can use what you loaded to pay CC, and pay mortgage from bank account. I don't like the logic you're using; it's similar to when people say "I lost $100 in the past few hands at the blackjack table, but I was up $100 already, so I didn't really lose anything." Yes, you did. You lost $100 that you could've kept if you had quit when you were up $100.