Now what, with manufactured spending?

American Express is tightening down on gift card purchases. We’ve thankfully finished our 4X at grocery stores with Amex Gold,
Dosh has disappeared at Kroger and I’ve found my bottom limit on available manufactured spending. 

I could still do Dosh for $15 each at Sam’s Club on gift cards, but the time involved to drive out to my closest Sam’s Club meant over an hour to round-trip it. When I add on the liquidation time for buying and depositing money orders, it was less than $25 per hour. I’m retired, but financially comfortable and not really a fan of driving almost an hour in touristy traffic. So now what?

Staples $0 fee promotions

I’ll continue the high paying Staples $0 fee cards when they show up. And, I’ll continue the short trip (about 10 minutes) to the local Kroger to use our Navy Federal card at 3% on groceries.

The math on the 3% card is 3X on about $1500 or $45 each, times two credit cards or $90 gross.

Then we subtract the $5.95 per card x 6 = $35.70 and minus $6 worth of money orders for a net of $48 in under 1 hour. The $1500 per card, per trip is a little scary after doing only $500 per card per trip when Dosh was in play.

CVS + Pei

My other option is to go to Walgreen or CVS and use the PEI app for $5 cash back on a single $500 gift card at 2.625% or $505.95 x 2.625% = $13.28 +  $5.06 the PEI refund less the $1 money order. I don’t need to go any further as there is no size to this prize.

These summaries are great for me:

1. It’s the only time I actually do the math
2. You get to correct my errors or suggest better alternatives, and
3. I drove the hour to realize that I don’t want to spend an hour in the car for $25 net. But, it did put me over the minimum transfer on both our Dosh accounts, which will now sit unused.

Final thoughts

I know Ariana is backing off a bit on manufactured spending and it seems to be an opportune time. As is always the case, something else will show up soon and we’ll all be off to the races again.

Have I missed a great manufactured spending opportunity that you are willing to share with your fellow MS addicts? Or maybe, a new credit card sign-up bonus will show up. I’ll start looking.

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