I am new and have been obsessing about miles, cash back, ect. I recently went to a gas station and bought a gas/merchandise card with my discover card. As it is there 5% cash back period for gas, I recieved 5% cash back for my $500 dollar gift card as it listed in the gas catagory.

I didn't see much info on Netspend but it seems to me like someone could purchase a net spend card at a gas station ( code for gas = earn 5%) and then simply use it to get cash from an atm (one of their options), put cash in your Bank account and pay off your cc. It's money laundering, but so is the mint trick. Again I have been obsessing about this. Seems like you can reload these thing at most places, walgreens, kmart, grocery stores, gas stations. You can take advantage of these category based rewards too.

I am a student and love deals but cant imagine a way to reach the bonuses on a cc when you have to spen 5000 in 6 months to get 10,000 miles.

If I have done the math right:

$3.95 to load the card at a gas station, up to $500 per transaction (https://www.netspend.com/account/dis...leValueWithPin)
$2.50 per ATM withdrawl (plus ATM owner fee, if any) (https://www.netspend.com/help/freque...uestions.shtml)
restriction of $325 per withdrawl and $940/day

If we give this a go with $1300, that means $21.85 in fees for 6500 miles or $0.0034 per mile. Sounds like you were using Discover, though - I believe that bonus category ended yesterday, and was capped at $1500 spend. Is there something I'm missing?

Points wise, these cards only make sense if any fees on the card are less than the value of the points earned and no other problems are created.

As far as spend goes, if you have a job where you put travel on your credit card and get reimbursed later, your CC spend will probably be higher than if you have to spend your own money.

Others have found ways to push more day to day spend through credit cards. Look at each transaction in your checkbook and determine if there's a way to use a credit card instead of a check in a way that makes sense; using your CC shouldn't cost more[1]. Then as time goes on, you look at each credit card transaction and decide which credit card to put it on for best results. For the points game, don't carry a balance. Paying interest wipes out the value of the points.

There are a number of threads already here on getting spend up. Proceed rationally, and ensure that any method fits your needs. Not all will.

[1] If you are trying to make a spend goal, then it can make sense to lose a few dollars on the individual transaction in order to make a spend goal and get 25K-50K points for doing so. But outside of this, paying to push the rent or mortgage payment through an intermediate to get 1000 points is almost always not a good deal.

Plus the cost of gas for a round-trip drive to the gas station then to the [preferrably fee-free] ATM (if it's not on the same gas station). At this magnitude of transactions these expenses are significant enough to through into equation.

Very well done. I am still working out the details.

#1 While it is true that some establishments charge a fee, not all do. The gas station by my house is running a promotion on these cards for the next few months for fee waiver and loyalty points. I understand this may not be the case everywhere.

#2 The fee can be easly avoided by getting cash back at the grocery store, walgreens, ect. Granted a little persistance is neccesary but when has that ever stopped someone in the miles game.

As for the fees, I am new to this. I don't see a problem paying 21.85 for 6500 miles. It's that a bad thing? I am not trying to be sarcastic BTW. My only real experience with rates are ) buying a ticket 4/$ ( round trip home ) maybe more if I had a miles card. Buying miles ( i think ) is something like16/$ Also I use RN and get 5/$.

I may be naive but almost 300/$ sounds awesome to me.

Unless I don't quite understand the cashback thing (I have never used one), you should still purchase something at the store, i.e. have a legitimate purchase at a store in addition to which you get a cashback. And If I remember correctly the cashback menu at Walmart, amount of cashback is capped at maybe $200 or something.

This fact surely doesn't stop you from still running your scheme and earning miles, but makes the ultimate task - building a low-cost, low-effort, large-scale, continuous use and replicable scheme of earning miles (which is what Mint was) a somewhat very challenging task.

Sounds like an effective way to make a spend, esp if you can do cashback while making a purchase and reduce your cost to just the activation fee. I've got another $8,500 to burn off an Amex withing the next 2 months so I may explore it.

Looking at this further, unless I'm missing something, it appears to be only loadable via cash or check.

Are you sure that it isn't considered as a cash advance?

eek, you are right

So to be clear, if you buy the Netspend card, or a refill card at a store, you can only purchase using cash or check - you cannot use a CC? There's the catch!

These can be reloaded with reload cards which can be bought at some places with a CC.
To avoid spelling it out for you, do a little bit of reading here:

http://boardingarea.com/blogs/freque...es-the-throne/

It has a distinct advantage over the Amex Prepaid card - bill pay, for companies that don't normally take CC, as in mortgages.. only 79 mortgage companies listed so far in their Biller Directory, but you can e-mail to request they add your Biller.

There is a $20 bonus for referrals when you load $40. A conga was just started in the Spam forum:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/s-p-m...-netspend.html

That's the catch with like 99% of these cards.

You generally have to depend on internal controls failing and a clerk accepting a CC against policy which makes this an unpredictable revenue stream in your business model.

Got ya. Now you finally give it up after ignoring pm's.