Last month, my husband got in on the credit card rewards game. He has a new card, and has to spend $3000 in 3 months–or $1000 a month. If he does that, he will get a very nice sign up bonus: enough miles for a round trip ticket to Europe.
I figured this would be easy-peasy, considering our monthly expenditures. But it is turning out to be a little more challenging than I thought.
The trick, of course, is not to spend more money than usual in order to get your bonus. Otherwise, you are just spending more money.
Looking at our monthly bills, no one would think we would have a problem finding a way to charge enough money to the new credit card. However, it seems that someone who spends hours a day a lot of time reading financial blogs finds it much easier to do the necessary credit card dance than someone who is just going along for the ride.
In the first month, that credit card was used on less than $200 of purchases. Now we have to figure out how to get $2800 of planned spending on the card before we miss the chance for the bonus points.
planned purchase
One of the tricks to qualifying for a bonus is to get the new card right before you have to purchase something expensive: a trip, appliances, season tickets, a wedding.
We have a big expenditure planned soon–a hotel stay–which should take care of some of this. And we might have an unplanned but necessary expenditure–a hot water heater, since ours is misbehaving–which would unfortunately take care of a bigger chunk.
DAily Expenses
Another way to get your spending to goal is to use just one card for all your daily expenses (that you were going to buy anyway). I’ll try to remind my husband to use only the new credit card while running errands, as he is still using other cards to buy food and sundries.
But this is gets complicated quickly. His biggest expenditures are at Costco, but he can’t use his card there (they only accept Visa, and the new card is a Mastercard).
manufactured spending
Apparently, one can buy Costco gift cards on-line, and it doesn’t have to be with a Visa; this might be the best way to meet the spending deadline. We could buy several hundred dollars worth of cards before the end of the bonus period, and then use those cards all summer long.
We can also support our house of worship by buying gift cards to the local supermarket chain; that might be another way to meet the spending deadline.
This is what’s called manufactured spending, using your new credit card to buy enough gift cards to qualify for the bonus, and then using those gift cards throughout the following months on things you would use anyway, like groceries.
I have read some blog posts by people who talk about paying their utilities ahead of time to meet the required spend. I looked into this, but it isn’t an good option for us. Which is unfortunate, since I think we spend too much on utilities. It would be nice if we could at least make a bonus when we pay.
Will this house of cards come tumbling down?
The credit card game works best with two separate users, racking up bonuses every few months, to get points or cash back bonuses.
I can see from my husband’s first foray that this is a bit more complicated than I realized. At least it is if you don’t eat, sleep, and breathe the game.
We’ll see how this turns out. Maybe we won’t manage it, and we’ll have a new credit card and no bonus. Hopefully, we make the required spend, without wasting money on things we don’t need. In that case, we will be smiling all the way across the Atlantic on a free flight next year!
Do you sign up for credit card bonuses? If so, how do you like to keep all the details straight? If married, is your spouse on board?