Give away travel

There have been two big, fun developments in the world of travel hacking in the past two weeks: Staples began selling $300 Visa gift cards online, and Office Max began selling variable-load Visa gift cards in-store. Those developments have been more than adequately covered elsewhere (see, e.g., $300 Visa gift cards, Office Max variable-load cards).

The fun part, of course, comes not from earning your miles and points, but from redeeming them. On the one hand, both of these new developments are profitable on a cash-back basis. A brand new Chase Ink+ card would allow you to annually manufacture $2,500 in cash back at a cost of $589.05 (98 variable-load cards, assuming Office Max quickly fixes the current pricing error and raises the cost of each card from $3.95 to the correct $5.95). If you master high-value Ultimate Rewards redemptions, you can get astronomical value at minimal cost: a $12,001 Lufthansa first class flight for $259.18 in fees, or something like a 97.8% discount.

So it's now easier and faster than ever to accumulate huge numbers of valuable Ultimate Rewards points. But Matt at Saverocity's post yesterday got me thinking about the fact that earning points more easily makes them no easier to redeem. Naturally you can redeem your cheap Ultimate Rewards points for cash, but many travel hackers find that unsatisfying when they know how to both earn and redeem points for much more valuable redemptions.

While Matt introduces the idea of "outsourcing" to describe finding additional time to travel by automating and having others perform routine tasks, there's another way outsourcing can benefit you: outsource your travel, by giving it away.

Why give away travel?

We give away travel all the time without thinking anything of it. If you have a partner, spouse, or children, you might be booking travel for 2 or 5 or 10 people, all of which is paid for with your own travel hacking expertise. We may not think of that as giving away travel because it's basically selfish: we want our loved ones with us while we travel!

At the other extreme of altruism are the variety of programs that airlines participate in, which allow you to donate, typically without receiving any tax advantage, miles and points you already have in your frequent flyer accounts (United, American, Delta). Those programs may be noble, and I don't doubt that the charities involved receive some cash or travel benefit when they receive a mileage donation, they also don't allow you to exercise your specialized knowledge as a travel hacker: knowing which redemptions provide the best value for your redeemed mile.

Somewhere in the middle is giving away travel to people you know, but just for the sake of letting them travel. If your niece is graduating from high school, you can outdo all the other uncles by sending her on an international romp for trivial out-of-pocket cost.

Trips to give away

When you've got a huge store of cheap Ultimate Rewards points, there are a few combinations that produce terrific vacations for trivial amounts of money. You may not want to take them yourself, but your relatives, young, old, or in between, might be thrilled to.

British Airways/Iberia Avios

The big three transatlantic options with minimal fees and fuel surcharges are Boston-Dublin on Aer Lingus (25,000 Avios round trip), Berlin-New York JFK on Air Berlin (40,000 Avios roundtrip), and Madrid-JFK/Chicago O'Hare/BOS/ (34,000 Avios roundtrip).

In case it needs to be said, Madrid, Dublin, and Berlin are all pretty amazing places to visit for the first time!

Since American Airlines is an Avios partner airline and has a terrific route network in Latin America, you'll also find great deals there when dispatching your relatives from Miami. Nassau in the Bahamas, Cancun in Mexico, Montego Bay and Kingston in Jamaica, and Providenciales in Turk and Caicos are all 9,000 Avios roundtrips from Miami.

From the West Coast, you'll probably want to send your loved ones to Hawaii for 25,000 Avios roundtrip from Seattle, Portland, the Bay Area, or Los Angeles and San Diego.

Hyatt

So now we've isolated some of the destinations our loved ones might like to visit. How can we put them up? Of the Ultimate Rewards hotel transfer partners, Hyatt Gold Passport is going to be our best bet, with IHG Rewards Club as a backup option (more on that in a moment). Let's narrow down our destinations by access to low-level Hyatt properties.

• Dublin. No Hyatt properties.
• Berlin. Grand Hyatt Berlin, 15,000 HGP points per night.
• Madrid. No Hyatt properties.
• Nassau. Grand Hyatt at Baha Mar (opening indefinitely delayed).
• Jamaica. Hyatt Ziva Rose Hall and Hyatt Zilara Rose Hall, 25,000 HGP points per night.
• Cancun. Hyatt Zilara Cancun, 25,000 HGP points per night. Hyatt Playa del Carmen, 20,000 HGP points per night.
• Providenciales. No Hyatt properties.
• Hawaii. Andaz Maui at Wailea Resort, 25,000 HGP points per night. Hyatt Regency Waikiki Beach Resort and Spa, 20,000 HGP points per night. Hyatt Regency Maui Resort and Spa, 20,000 HGP points per night. Hyatt Place Waikiki Beach, 12,000 HGP points per night.

IHG Rewards

IHG Rewards requires a special mention because of their random PointsBreaks list of properties that cost just 5,000 points per night. While IHG is a transfer partner of Chase Ultimate Rewards, it's essential to remember that you never have to transfer all the points required to book a PointsBreaks property! That's because you only have to have 5,000 IHG Rewards points in your account to be able to purchase an unlimited number of additional points at 0.7 cents each to top up an award redemption.

If, like me, you're always eyeing the PointsBreaks list for countries you might like to visit and stay on the cheap for days or weeks, remember: you don't have to go yourself! There might be somebody in your life who'd like to visit the Holiday Inn Mundanjiang even more than you!

Conclusion

Like a lot of people who started traveling early and often, I cut my teeth on discounted airlines and youth hostels. One of the most remarkable things about travel hacking is that it gives us and our loved ones the opportunity to see the world in more comfort and at far lower cost than was possible just 5 or 10 years ago.

So if you're having trouble redeeming points fast enough to drain down your rewards balances, don't forget that you can give travel away!

Having a routine is fantastic. Also dangerous

Back in September, Matt at Saverocity wrote this post about the potential problems of a travel hacker getting so "locked in" to one or two loyalty programs that they're unable to take advantage of other, potentially more lucrative programs sitting right under their nose.

Conveniently, I was name-checked in the post, so I guess I'm entitled to respond.

Matt thinks our limiting factor is time and attention; I think it's value

Here's the marker Matt laid down, challenging us slackers to rise above the hobgoblins of our little minds:

"I don’t think anyone would have the gumption to do this. But what if you had to drop all your existing programs for 6 months. The world wouldn’t end, and if you were dedicated, you’d be forced to learn a lot about other things outside of your knowledge base. Humans are notoriously good at adapting and evolving when forced to do so, but if you give us the choice...we’d rather not."

Today, I can manufacture up to $120,000 per cardmember year on a US Bank Flexperks Travel Rewards card and earn 2 Flexpoints per dollar (at gas stations or grocery stores) or 3 Flexpoints per dollar (in charitable spending), worth up to $4,800 or $7,200 in paid airfare.

I have unlimited time and attention (this is my job), but what I don't have is the willingness to give up concrete, quantifiable value in favor of spending months diving deep into alternative rewards programs on a speculative basis.

Having a routine is fantastic

Much of my monthly manufactured spend proceeds according to a familiar routine. I know which merchants will sell me which products in which quantities, and I buy them with the cards that give me the most value, starting with bonused spending categories and working my way down.

Far from limiting my frame of reference, I find a consistent routine, developed based on the actual credit cards and loyalty programs that I use to pay for my actual travel, gives me more mental bandwidth to dedicate to studying new techniques and calculating how I can integrate them into my travel hacking practice.

Having a routine is (can be) dangerous

What Matt gets exactly right is that if you focus on a single method of manufactured spend, or on credit cards issued by a single bank, or on a single method of liquidation, then you're making yourself vulnerable to local, regional, or national policy changes.

If you travel hack recreationally, that may not be the end of the world; a lot of people who were manufacturing huge volumes before Vanilla Reload Network cards became harder to buy stopped completely once they became increasingly restricted, and never thought about the game again.

No deal lasts forever

At the time of writing, I understand that Target stores are not allowing Prepaid REDcards to be loaded with debit cards. Is this the end?

Honestly, probably not.

But if it is, did you convert all your Serve and Bluebird cards to Prepaid REDcards in anticipation of the deal lasting forever? Why? Serve cards can still be loaded at Family Dollar stores using any PIN-enabled debit card. Bluebird cards can still be loaded at Walmart with US Bank-issued MasterCard and Metabank-issued Visa cards sold at Staples.

The most lucrative deal, the biggest secret you're keeping, even from your fellow travel hackers, won't last forever. When it ends, you can either have a range of unrelated deals to fall back on, or you can find yourself scrambling to learn about other techniques to meet your ongoing travel needs.

Conclusion

There are only 6 programs I earn miles and points in with any intensity:

• US Bank Flexperks
• Hilton HHonors
• Chase Ultimate Rewards
• Delta Skymiles
• Barclaycard Arrival+ miles
• Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan (for crediting paid flights operated by American and Delta)

On the one hand, Matt is right to point out that any constellation of miles and points programs that are earned to the exclusion of other programs raises risks: the risk of devaluation, the risk of increased attention to accounts, the risk of available techniques changing or drying up.

On the other hand, a simplified routine based on the actual value of the points you're earning and, even more importantly, the points you're redeeming, may give you the cognitive freedom you need to stay on top of new and developing techniques.

Are office supply store Visa gift cards cheap or expensive?

This post was inspired by a comment left by reader net netty to my post on dealing with the new Visa gift cards being sold at Staples. S/he wrote:

"And I agree that everyone might have their own priorities but you are doing it wrong and giving bad advice if you are paying 6.95 per 1,000 UR pts."

This reminded me that it might be useful to write about how I decide between various methods of manufacturing spend: which techniques to use; which cards to use them with; and which to set aside for later.

Liquidation bandwidth is usually more limiting than purchase bandwidth

The simplest way to think about developing a manufactured spend strategy is by allocating your liquidation bandwidth across your current (and potential future) credit cards.

That usually means assigning bandwidth to your bonus-earning cards first; if the same $500 in spend will earn 500 Marriott Rewards with one card or 1,000 Ultimate Rewards points with another, the bonus-earning card is strictly superior, not least because Marriott Rewards is an Ultimate Rewards transfer partner.

A slightly different situation arises when trying to compare two different techniques with different price points and earning rates.

For example, Chase Ink cards earn 2 Ultimate Rewards points per dollar spent at gas stations, and 5 Ultimate Rewards points per dollar spent at office supply stores. The higher earn rate, however, comes at a higher cost: $6.95 per office supply store 1,000 Ultimate Rewards points, versus $4.95 or less per 1,000 gas station Ultimate Rewards points.

That means on a cost-per-point basis, gas station manufactured spend is the cheaper, and therefore "better," technique.

And indeed, in a world with unconstrained liquidation bandwidth, that would be the end of the analysis.

But in the real world of liquidation constraints, the analysis is turned upside down! The same 1,000 Ultimate Rewards points earned at office supply stores use up just $200 in liquidation bandwidth, compared to the $500 used up by gas station gift cards.

A travel hacker with access to only these two techniques and $5,000 in monthly liquidation bandwidth could earn 15,000 more Ultimate Rewards points monthly by choosing office supply stores over gas stations. Even if you value Ultimate Rewards points at just 1 cent each, office supply stores produce a small profit of $25.75 over gas stations.

That's because $1,000 in liquidation bandwidth costs $34.75 in office supply store activation fees and earns 5,000 Ultimate Rewards points ($15.25 in profit). Gas station fees for $1,000 in liquidation bandwidth are just $9.90, but that spend earns just 2,000 Ultimate Rewards points — and just $11.10 in profit.

Of course there are other liquidation constraints: office supply stores may sell cards that are easier to liquidate at Walmart, while gas stations may sell harder-to-liquidate Vanilla-branded gift cards.

On the flip side, for many people time is the most important liquidation constraint, and 25 $200 cards are without question more time-consuming to liquidate than 10, $500 cards.

Conclusion

Hopefully this post illustrates the importance of taking a liquidation-first approach as you develop your own manufactured spend strategy: allocate your liquidation bandwidth across all your credit cards and manufactured spend techniques, starting with the cards which maximize the value of each liquidated dollar. Usually, that means using your highest bonus spend categories first, and only then working your way down to unbonused (but hopefully still-valuable!) credit card spend.

Quick hit: new Bluebird/Serve/Redbird scheduled adds

[Editor's note: I'm currently traveling so responses to comments and e-mails may be slightly slower than usual. —FQF]

When writing about simplifying and automating debit card transactions back in July, I wrote:

"Unfortunately, as with Evolve Money, I am no longer able to create new so-called 'scheduled add' transactions. What I am able to do is edit existing scheduled add transactions and change the funding source to a new credit or debit card."

Turns out there's an easy workaround that allows users to create new scheduled adds.

Once you're logged into your Serve, Bluebird, or Prepaid REDcard account, simply navigate to:

• https://secure.bluebird.com/Manage/ScheduleAutoAdd/ for Bluebird scheduled adds;
• https://secure.serve.com/Manage/ScheduleAutoAdd/ for Serve scheduled adds;
• https://secure.prepaidredcard.com/Manage/ScheduleAutoAdd/ for Prepaid REDcard scheduled adds.

Using this technique, you can create as many scheduled adds as you like, either in order to meet monthly debit transaction requirements or, in the case of Serve, simply to schedule the manufacture of $1,000 per month in third-party (not American Express-issued) American Express credit card spend.

Taking a manufactured spend inventory

Last week I wrote that — unless you're a reimbursed business traveler — your best bet for earning as much travel as possible, as cheaply as possible, is to manufacture spend furiously. Actual purchases made for consumption by a credit cardholder won't generally earn sufficient miles and points to pay for a single trip, let alone an entire travel hacking lifestyle.

That's the origin of my maxim that miles and points earned from everyday spend should be a rounding error in your travel hacking strategy. You may as well be paying with cash.

With that in mind, I thought it might be worth laying out a few suggestions for what it means to manufacture spend furiously.

Reflect often, but not too often

I'm a blogger, so I don't mind spending hours poring through forums and blog comment sections finding opportunities that aren't widely known, so I can share them with my readers and in my subscribers-only newsletters.

It's literally my job.

But it's not your job. You're a lawyer, consultant, software developer, marketing professional, or exotic dancer. You have a family. You shouldn't be spending every spare minute researching new manufactured spend techniques.

But you should spend the occasional minute examining the techniques you have available, and making sure you're maximizing them.

Are you earning the miles you use, and using the miles you earn?

If you spent any time following affiliate bloggers before discovering my blog, you may have signed up for a variety of random credit cards you don't actually use to manufacture spend. In that case, you might be sitting on 100,000 Membership Rewards points, 80,000 Marriott Rewards points, or 50,000 Delta SkyMiles.

Do you have plans to use them? Can you work them into your actual travel plans?

Don't waste your time applying for cards that earn miles and points you can't use, and make sure to use the miles and points you do earn.

The corollary is that lower signup bonuses and earning rates can be worth pursuing if they're the miles and points you're actually going to use. If you aggressively redeem American Airlines AAdvantage miles during the "low" season to Europe, 40,000 AAdvantage miles are worth a lot more than 60,000 or more Delta SkyMiles.

9 questions about your manufactured spend practice

I don't repeat myself here on the blog much because I find it excruciatingly boring to write the same things over and over again. With that in mind, here are 9 questions to ask while taking your personal manufactured spend inventory:

• Have you tried buying prepaid debit cards at every local gas station?
• Do your local grocery stores allow you to buy Reloadits or PIN-enabled prepaid debit cards with credit cards?
• Have you searched for all your local Simon and Macerich malls?
• Have you visited every local store that sells Western Union and MoneyGram money orders?
• Do you live near any Family Dollar stores?
• Do you have relationships with some or all of your local credit unions?
• Do your Walmart store locations still allow bill payments to Visa and MasterCard credit cards?
• Have you asked your friends and family to let you administer Serve, Bluebird, and Prepaid REDcards for them?
• Have you opened Nationwide Visa Buxx cards for all the teens in your life? In your partner's life?

Conclusion

I hope I've made clear that I don't believe everyone should be pursuing every possible technique as aggressively as possible. There will always be techniques that are too time-consuming, or that simply require more attention than you're willing to pay, to be worth your time and attention.

But once in a while, even the most time- and attention-constrained travel hacker should take a quick inventory to make sure that the time and attention they do have is being deployed in the way they earns them the trips they want to take — hopefully as cheaply as possible!

Manufacture spend furiously

Yesterday Miles Per Day reported that US Bank Visa Buxx cards, which have been closed to new applicants for many months but have continued to work in the interim for existing cardholders, will no longer be loadable with new funds after October 24, 2015.

These cards are terrific, especially if you have access to US Bank ATM's, which allow free withdrawals of the $2,000 that can be loaded monthly to each card at a total cost of $10. If you used a card like the Barclaycard Arrival+ MasterCard, you could earn $40 in statement credits, per card, against travel purchases each month.

In other words, each US Bank Visa Buxx card you carried allowed you to purchase $480 in annual travel at a 75% discount.

I like small, isolated techniques

On the one hand, $480 in annual travel reimbursements is small fry compared to many other available techniques. But what I like about US Bank Visa Buxx cards is that the tool is isolated from all my other manufactured spend techniques: if you have access to US Bank ATM's, you don't need to cannibalize the liquidation bandwidth you're using with any other technique. It's $2,000 in "extra" manufactured spend per month — and cheap, too!

I do everything I can

Obviously, I don't use manufactured spend techniques I don't have access to (I sometimes hear from readers who can still buy Vanilla Reload Network cards!), and I don't use manufactured spend techniques I don't know about.

But to the extent possible, I pursue every avenue of manufactured spend available, because it's impossible to know when any particular technique will cease to be available. Since I do my best to redeem rewards currencies roughly as quickly as I earn them, I never want to find myself with empty account balances and no way forward to earn more.

Two ways to travel exclusively on miles and points

There are two ways to generate enough miles and points to fund the number of trips I want to take at deep enough discounts to make them affordable: be reimbursed by an employer for frequent business travel, or manufacture spend furiously.

While my takeaway from my point density charts is that paid hotel stays are an incredibly inefficient means of generating sufficient points for award stays, that only holds if you're paying for your own stays. A Starwood Preferred Guest elite paying for stays with the American Express co-branded credit card earns 5 Starpoints per dollar spent at Starwood properties, and would have to spend $2,000 on paid stays before they earned enough points for a single award night at a mid-tier property.

I don't think I've spent $2,000 on hotel stays in my entire life to date.

On the other hand, a Starwood Preferred Guest elite paying for stays with their co-branded credit card and being reimbursed by their employer for those stays wouldn't have to pay a penny for an award night at a mid-tier property; they'd just have to wait until their employer had spent $2,000 on their behalf.

Meanwhile, the same 10,000 Starpoints would cost someone manufacturing spend with their co-branded credit card perhaps $86 in fees, depending on the techniques used.

Manufacture spend furiously

If your reimbursed business trips generate enough miles and points to finance all the travel you're interested in, you're in luck.

Otherwise, you can research every technique you come across to find out whether it can be integrated into your miles and points strategy.

The stories affiliate bloggers tell about paying for travel with signup bonuses are "just so" stories, which is why I don't tell them. Of course if you work backwards from the signup bonus you're trying to sell, you can find trips that will be exactly covered by the points earned. But if you want to be in charge of your own miles and points strategy, rather than running off to the Maldives every time an affiliate blogger tells you to, you should be pursuing a robust, diverse miles-and-points-earning strategy.

And unless you're one of the lucky few, frequent business travelers, that strategy should include as many different manufactured spending techniques as possible.

How do you react to a shock to your travel budget? How should you?

Yesterday my scheduled flight out from my ancestral homeland was overbooked — very overbooked. They asked for 6 volunteers, and ended up taking 5 of them, each of whom received $1,300 in Delta voluntary denied boarding compensation. I was one of the lucky inconvenienced (my partner was volunteer #6, and had to actually fly home, the poor thing), and the proud owner of $1,300 in Delta travel.

Then I realized that I had a problem. I already manufacture enough miles and points to pay for my planned hotels and air travel. In fact, once my next statement closes and my HHonors points post, I'll have all 5 of my remaining planned vacations this calendar year fully booked.

Moreover, Delta transportation vouchers are non-transferrable: the recipient has to be one of the passengers on the reservation — although excess funds can be used to pay for additional passengers on the same reservation.

Air transportation vouchers are worth (much) less than cash

This is a corollary of my argument that statement credits are worth (much) less than cash: for me, $1,300 in airfare is worth a maximum of $700, since that's the cash value of the 70,000 US Bank Flexpoints I would otherwise redeem for a reservation costing between $1,200 and $1,400, and as little as $350 or so, which is roughly what I paid out of pocket for those Flexpoints.

But does that mean I should take my $1,300 in bump compensation by redeeming 70,000 Flexpoints for $700 in cash?

Thinking about travel budget shocks

With a nod to economics, we can describe what happened yesterday as a positive "shock" to my travel budget. If my miles and points balances, travel needs, and manufactured spend strategy were previously in equilibrium, they are now by definition out of equilibrium: I've now accidentally purchased more (deeply-discounted) travel than I have a current plan for using. Since I try to never earn miles and points speculatively, this disequilibrium requires action.

But what action? Here are four ways I could respond to this travel budget shock.

Monetization

No, I don't mean selling the transportation voucher — it can only be used for reservations where I'm one of the passengers. I have in mind the following logic:

• I just received $1,300 in airfare.
• I planned to redeem 70,000 Flexpoints for my next $1,300 in airfare.
• Instead I'll use the transportation voucher and redeem my Flexpoints for $700 in cash.

It's true that my Flexpoints are worth more than $700 when redeemed for airfare, but that's begging the question: the whole point is that $1,300 in airfare is worth less than $1,300.

Why do you think the airlines are so eager to give it away?

Travel more

I have a strategy for earning all the miles and points I need for the travel I already have planned, but now that I have $1,300 in Delta funny money, I can travel more than I expected. There's always somewhere to go, after all!

The simplest way to do this is to not alter my planned earning and redemption at all: if all my trips are already optimized between revenue fares (paid for with cheap Ultimate Rewards points and Flexpoints) and award trips, then I can convert my Delta transportation voucher directly into airfare for new trips.

A more nuanced (read: time-consuming) approach would be to re-optimize all my refundable and not-yet-booked air reservations. For example, a $450 ticket that I might have planned to reluctantly redeem 30,000 Flexpoints against can now be paid for with my transportation voucher, while I can redeem those Flexpoints for a new trip costing up to $600.

Likewise, a $250 flight against which I might have redeemed 20,000 Ultimate Rewards points can now be paid for with Delta funny money, and I can start looking around for a high-value Hyatt redemption where I can stretch those same Ultimate Rewards points.

Convert to leisure

My current manufactured spend strategy met my current needs before the travel budget shock, but now it exceeds those needs by $1,300. Sounds like it's time for a vacation! For the next 70,000 Flexpoints I had planned to earn, now I get to hit the alarm clock and go back to sleep.

Just kidding. I don't have an alarm clock.

But for those of you who do, if your goal is to earn the miles and points you need to meet your travel needs, a large positive travel budget shock like this is a godsend. Spend the time you would have spent at the grocery store, gas station, or hunting down promising Kiva loans with your kids. They probably won't appreciate it, but you will.

Switch to cash

Everyone has their "best" cash back option. Maybe it's 5% cash back with a US Bank Cash+ Visa card or a "new" "old" Blue Cash card. Maybe it's 2.625% cash back with a Bank of America Travel Rewards card. Maybe it's 2.105% cash back with a Barclaycard Arrival+ MasterCard. Maybe it's 2%+ with a Fidelity Investment Rewards American Express (or Visa, or MasterCard). Maybe it's a Citi Double Cash (although that's a stretch).

If you don't want to slow down your manufactured spend, and you don't want to monetize the points you've already earned, this is your hybrid option: start earning the most cash back possible with the cards you already have, instead of earning the points you had intended to redeem for your travel.

After all, everyone wants money. That's why they call it money.

What about negative travel budget shocks?

The impetus for this post was a huge positive travel budget shock. But there are other kinds of shocks: you could lose access to a merchant that previously allowed you to manufacture spend; you could suddenly learn of an unanticipated trip you have to take; Delta could stop publishing award charts and your miles could suddenly be worthless for the trips you planned to take.

You don't need to plan for every eventuality, but you should plan for some eventualities.

Conclusion

Don't for a second think that this post is meant to say that you need to treat every "win" as an excuse to lose sleep worrying over how to deal with it. The first thing you need to do is celebrate (I know I did).

But when you're done celebrating, you may want to spend a minute or two figuring out how you're going to work your win, big or small, into your overall miles and points strategy.

New Staples Visa gift cards got you down? Try these two weird old tricks

I like buying Visa gift cards from Staples. I buy a lot of Visa gift cards from Staples. But the new Staples Visa gift card design has been causing me enough frustration that it's started to disrupt my mellow manufactured spend lifestyle.

I was tossing and turning the other night, dreading liquidating the $600 in Visa gift cards I had in my sock drawer, when I had a vision, a vision of restoring my manufactured spend equilibrium.

Background: the new Visa gift card design

Via Miles to Memories, here's a handy picture of the "old" Visa gift card design (on the left) and the "new" Visa gift cards (on the right) that have been costing me so much tranquility:

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Problem 1: glue used on new peels is sticky and gross

The previous generation of Visa gift cards could be liquidated right out of the package, once you'd removed any obstructing glue dots. The new card design still has the last four digits of the card number set as the default PIN, but the card number is itself covered by a peel that uses the stickiest, most inconvenient glue I've ever seen on a prepaid debit card. While removing the peel, and while being transported in your pocket or wallet, this glue gets everywhere, and can seriously affect the ability of the card to be swiped smoothly through magnetic readers.

Solution 1: don't remove the peel

Remember, you only need the last four digits of the card number in order to use the card as a PIN-enabled prepaid debit card. So instead of removing the peel completely, just peel back the right corner and jot down the last four digits somewhere — for example, on the card itself:

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Once you've noted the last four digits, return the peel to its original position: no muss, no fuss.

Problem 2: stray scraps of terms and conditions coming off on cards

This has happened on one third of the cards I've purchased in the last few weeks: a random glue splotch causes a strip of the paper that the card's terms and conditions are printed on to come off on the card, directly opposite the magnetic strip. This catastrophe causes the card to catch every time it's swiped, making it frustrating or even impossible to liquidate using a magnetic card reader. Here's an offending example:

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Solution 2: wrap it in receipt paper

This is a trick I learned years ago, but haven't had occasion to use in a long time. But while tossing and turning last night, I remembered: by wrapping a card in receipt paper, you can prevent irregularities in the card's surface from preventing the card's magnetic strip from being recognized. Just hold the receipt paper folded tight around the magnetic strip, position it at the top of the magnetic reader, and give it a smooth stroke:

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Result: success on my first swipe, and no awkward insistence that my Walmart cashiers let me swipe my cards over, and over, and over again.

Reminder: you can still sign up for Nationwide Visa Buxx cards

I earn only a small fraction of my miles and points chasing signup bonuses. There are people who get all the miles they need through signing up for new credit cards, but I have found that strategy leaves me me with large-but-not-large-enough balances scattered across multiple accounts in a way that mitigates most of the value of the points.

For example, after signing up for a Citi Platinum Select / AAdvantage World MasterCard and Barclaycard US Airways MasterCard in January, 2014, and receiving 85,000 miles between the two cards, I still have about 38,000 AAdvantage miles remaining (including my 10,000 US Airways anniversary miles).

This isn't because I don't fly American — I fly American fairly regularly, redeeming Chase Ultimate Rewards points for cheaper flights and US Bank Flexpoints for more expensive flights, and crediting those paid flights to Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan. What I don't do is find many occasions to redeem AAdvantage miles — especially such a small number of them.

Instead, I earn miles and points directly in the programs where I get the most value, and where I'm sure to redeem them, by manufacturing spend on the appropriate credit cards.

Nationwide Visa Buxx cards have been around for years

I first wrote about Nationwide Visa Buxx cards in February, 2013 (yes, I've really been blogging that long).

The opportunity offered by these cards is simple: after signing up for a "parent" account, you can add "teen" card accounts, each of which can be loaded with $1,000 per rolling 30-day period from any Visa or MasterCard (although beware of loading using Citi-issued credit cards), at a cost of $2 per $500 load. The "teen" cards, which you'll receive in the mail, are PIN-enabled and have a maximum purchase limit of $800 per rolling 7-day period.

Nationwide Visa Buxx cards are still available for new signups

Two other, more lucrative Visa Buxx products have been limited in various ways over the years: TD Go cards can now only be funded with TD Bank-issued credit cards, and US Bank Visa Buxx cards are no longer available for new signups.

But Nationwide Visa Buxx cards are! So if you don't yet have a card, consider opening an account today. No deal lasts forever, but those of us who opened US Bank Visa Buxx cards in time are still going strong, despite new applications for the card not being available since February, 2014, and I have no reason to believe the Nationwide gravy train will end any time soon.

Simplifying and automating debit card transactions

Last month I wrote about using Amazon Allowance to generate credit and debit transactions, like those required by Wells Fargo to waive monthly maintenance fees, by Bank of America's Better Balance Rewards card to ensure you receive your quarterly bonuses, and by Consumers Credit Union to trigger the high interest rates on their Rewards Checking accounts.

I like Amazon Allowances and I use Amazon Allowances, but there are reasons you might prefer not to use Amazon Allowances: you might not do enough shopping on Amazon to justify buying Amazon gift credit, or on the contrary, you might value your relationship with Amazon too much to entangle it in your extracurricular activities.

With that in mind, here are two other options for, if not automating, at least simplifying your monthly transaction requirements.

Evolve Money

Interest in Evolve Money has dwindled since they added fees for transactions funded by prepaid debit cards, but the site still exists, and they still have a large database of billers that's well worth exploring. For example, I'm able to make contributions to my Utah Educational Savings Plan account, which is in my opinion one of the better 529 Educational Savings Plans available — and, even better, it's not administered by Upromise Investments!

Importantly for our purposes, Evolve Money charges a flat 3% fee on credit card and "small bank" debit card transactions, rather than the more typical 2.9% + $0.30 fee charged by many payments processors. That means a $1 charge incurs a fee of exactly 3 cents. Since you are allowed to make 4 debit card-funded payments per month, per biller, if you can find 3 eligible billers in their database you can generate 12 transactions per month at a total cost of $0.36.

Unfortunately I cannot seem to set up recurring payments using Evolve Money, but since payments can be scheduled in advance you can just set aside 5 minutes per month to schedule your 10-12 monthly debit transactions. Likewise, a monthly $5 Better Balance Rewards payment would cost all of $0.15 in processing fees.

Bluebird, Serve, and Target Prepaid REDCard loads

American Express's full-service prepaid cards actually feature a powerful recurring payment service: you're able to schedule recurring transactions to move funds from a debit card to your prepaid account, as well as from any credit card on the American Express network (some American Express-issued credit cards do not earn rewards on such transactions, however).

Unfortunately, as with Evolve Money, I am no longer able to create new so-called "scheduled add" transactions. What I am able to do is edit existing scheduled add transactions and change the funding source to a new credit or debit card.

So on the Bluebird account I manage, I had three recurring "scheduled add" plans already created, and was able to change them to set up daily $0.50 funding transactions for the first 12 days of the next 3 months. That's not exactly automatic (I'll have to move the dates forward every 3 months), but it also doesn't take up too much mental bandwidth.

Conclusion

Frequent Miler and Matt at Saverocity have both raised the question lately, in their own ways, of how much cognitive space they're willing to devote to "smaller" deals when they could instead be pursuing big fish, and I think it's an absolutely essential conversation to have.

In my own travel hacking practice, I tend to err on the side of doing more, rather than less. I continue to pursue a number of "small fry," like Visa Buxx cards, which offer a small amount of unbonused spend each month. But I'm also eager to automate or simplify as many elements of my manufactured spend as possible, so I can devote more cognitive bandwidth to exploring new deals — and sharing them with my readers!

Recurring, small debit card transactions are precisely the kind of nuisance that can take up a disproportionate amount of attention, and are the kind of thing that are essential to simplify or automate if at all possible.