{"id":1830,"date":"2021-06-18T04:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-06-18T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/?p=1830"},"modified":"2023-04-18T12:30:21","modified_gmt":"2023-04-18T18:30:21","slug":"friday-manufactured-spend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/2021\/06\/18\/friday-manufactured-spend\/","title":{"rendered":"Friday Manufactured Spend"},"content":{"rendered":"

So, I started out with a Weekend Wisdom<\/a> post but then got excited by item #1 when I found it on FlyerTalk, then I got excited that I found a useful piece of info on FlyerTalk for the first time in years, and then finally I felt like I had to throw a few other things along with it to fill out your weekend. Here\u2019s my disconnected result:<\/p>\n

1.<\/strong> Did you pound the Discover Q2 5% bonus<\/a> at Warehouse Clubs? Yeah, neither did I. But, there\u2019s a reason to step foot in a Sam\u2019s Club again: $500 Vanilla Visa <\/a>and Mastercard gift cards are coming back to Sam\u2019s brick and mortar stores. The fee on these is $4.95, so an all around good deal. In case you\u2019re not a Sam\u2019s Club member, you can join for $45 and get a $45 Sam\u2019s Club gift card<\/a> either online or in store. If you do it online, go through a shopping portal \u2014 it may work.<\/p>\n

2.<\/strong> Now let\u2019s talk about easy minimum spend from home for a moment, especially given all this week\u2019s American Express offers. Good options are: Plastiq<\/a>, Bravo<\/a>, and Fluz<\/a>. With Bravo, you can do some archeology on older APK files and find a way to get the fee down to 2%, but it\u2019s not for the feint of heart. With the right options on Fluz, you can approach 0%. On Plastiq, you\u2019ll pay 2.85%, but you can be really creative with your targets to get your money right back in your pockets. There are other payment processors too; if\/when you find one, try small charges on Visa, Mastercard, and American Express because often you\u2019ll get different results with each.<\/p>\n

Of course these aren\u2019t the only at-home options. There are others that you\u2019re no doubt passingly familiar with like gift card reselling, buyer\u2019s clubs, Kiva, and online arbitrage (that last one is a ton of work though, but you can do really well if you\u2019ve got the stomach for it).<\/p>\n

3.<\/strong> Starter Bros locations in California <\/a>are offering $10 off when you buy a $50 gift card and $10 in groceries. This might seem like a sleeper but you can scale it. Side note: Until very recently I just assumed Starter Bros was like AutoZone, O\u2019Reilly Auto, or Pep Boys. Spoiler alert: it\u2019s not.<\/p>\n

\n
\"\"
This post posing as an electrical circuit.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So, I started out with a Weekend Wisdom post but then got excited by item #1 when I found it on FlyerTalk, then I got<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_editorskit_title_hidden":false,"_editorskit_reading_time":2,"_editorskit_is_block_options_detached":false,"_editorskit_block_options_position":"{}","footnotes":""},"categories":[54,53,12,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1830","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-credit-cards","category-gift-cards","category-ms-hints","category-quick-hits"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1830","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1830"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1830\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7268,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1830\/revisions\/7268"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1830"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1830"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1830"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}