Update on HRB Emerald load limits

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Since reporting last Wednesday that HR Block Emerald prepaid MasterCards are (finally) reloadable using Vanilla Reload Network reload cards, I've been tracking my loading activity with the goal of establishing the card's limits (since it is not even published in the terms and conditions of the card that it can be loaded with those instruments). Here's what I found:

As you can see, there's a rolling, 24-hour load limit of $1,000. There also appears to be a weekly or monthly limit of $5,000 in loads – although it's also been hypothesized that it's a limit of 10 loads of any kind, so if you were loading lower-denomination cards for whatever reason, you might end up being able to load less than $5,000.

As a reminder, you can use your Emerald card's routing number and account number (called "DDA" for some reason) from the account's home page to pay bills or transfer money from the account to any bank, credit card, or other payee that allows it. Unfortunately, American Express for reasons known only to themselves does not allow you to link bank accounts with account numbers over a certain number of digits, so I have not been able to successfully link my Emerald card as a payment source for my American Express cards. Of course, for a mere $0.95 I could pay my American Express bills directly from the HR Block Emerald interface, which I might consider doing under certain conditions.

A gift card deal too good to resist

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[update 2/6/14: please see my post on Upromise Investments]

Gift card churning seems like a lot of fun for those who enjoy it. The really serious guys like Frequent Miler wait for a big opportunity to come along and then go big, turning gift cards into merchandise and then trying to liquidate the goods, generating credit card spend and – hopefully – a small profit.

Personally, I only dabble in gift cards when opportunities come along that already fit into my overall strategy. For example, I was happy to pay $7.50 for 3,500 Flexpoints last May.

Today I made an exception and strolled down to my neighborhood Staples to buy some hanging folders – and a $100 Visa gift card, which came with an activation fee of $5.95. Just to magnify the insanity, I didn't even use a card that bonuses office supply stores: I used my American Express Hilton HHonors card, which earns 3 HHonors points per dollar spent on non-bonused purchases.

American Express Offers for You

By now you've guessed where this is going: my HHonors card was targeted by Amex for the Staples "Offer for You," which reads:

Get a one-time $25 statement credit by using your enrolled Card to spend a total of $100 or more on qualifying purchases at Staples by 3/17/2014.

If you carry any American Express cards, log into your online account and see if any of them have been targeted. From the reports I've read online, most people are only receiving the offer for one of their credit cards. If you get the offer for more than one card, then use the "Multiple Browser Tabs" trick described here to register for the offer on each eligible card.

Plink

In addition to the $25 statement credit I received from American Express, I also made sure to add my Hilton HHonors card to Plink in order to earn 300 Plink points (worth $3 in Amazon credit) for spending more than $60 on my linked credit card at Staples.

Breaking: Liquidate with Evolve Money

Finally, I was excited to take advantage of this offer in order to run an experiment liquidating Visa gift cards using Evolve Money.

I'm more than happy to report that I was able to successfully add the Visa gift card to Evolve Money (after registering the gift card online), and make a bill payment to one of my utility companies.

This is extremely exciting since it effectively reduces the cost of gift card liquidation to $0. If this technique continues to work with other prepaid cards, like the One Vanilla cards sold at CVS, it will mean $28,000-$31,000 in monthly manufactured spend with no liquidation costs.

The possibilities here are truly staggering, but I'm going to refrain from any additional speculation until later this week when it becomes clearer what kinds of possibilities exist to liberate cash using Evolve Money.

3 Insane Ways to Use Evolve Money to Manufacture Spend

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[update 2/6/14: please see my post on Upromise Investments]

Yesterday I broke some pretty exciting news: there's an online payment service that allows you to make bill payments – for free – using any Visa, MasterCard, or Discover debit card. I mentioned some eligible payees, one possibly lucrative use for the service, and told you folks to start experimenting.

One of the first comments on that post was from reader Alcwj, who wrote:

So... can't payoff CC = no MS

Instead of responding in the comments, I decided it would be fun to write up the 3 craziest ways I could think of to push as much spend as possible through the service (Evolve Money bill payments are limited to $1,000 per calendar day).

Cancel Student Loans

While the specific terms and conditions will vary depending on the private loan issuer, as a rule it's possible to cancel federal student loans by paying off the balance within certain time periods. If I remember correctly, the period is something like 90 days after disbursement.

So, if you or someone you know is eligible for student loans, you could have them take out the maximum possible loan, then pay off the loan using Evolve Money. Then you can use the cash from the student loan to pay off the credit card you manufactured the spend with.

Home Equity Lines of Credit

I fully confess that I'm well out of my depth here, but my understanding is that when you have a home equity line of credit, you only pay interest on the amount of money you borrow. The trick here would be to make a payment towards your HELOC, then withdraw the same amount of money the day that the payment is due to post. You won't pay any interest, and you can use the money from the HELOC to pay off the credit card you manufactured the spend with.

529 College Savings Plans

As I mentioned yesterday, Evolve Money has among its payees tons of 529 College Savings Plans. The interesting thing about these savings vehicles is that the money you contribute is taxed in the year it's earned. The account's appreciation is treated, pro rata, as earned income in any year an appreciated balance is withdrawn, unless the withdrawal is used for qualified educational expenses, in which case any appreciation is tax-free. Finally, the increased, pro rata, value of any withdrawal is subject to a 10% penalty if the withdrawal is used for non-qualified educational expenses.

However, because contributions have already been taxed, it's free to withdraw contributions as long as they have not appreciated at all. If they have, the appreciation is treated as a penalized, non-qualified withdrawal. That means you can contribute $30,000 to a 529 College Savings Plan, and as long as the account has not appreciated (you might achieve this, for example, by investing it in an FDIC-insured savings account earning little or no interest), the withdrawals will be penalty-free.

Keep in mind that I'm not a tax attorney — and I'm especially not your tax attorney. But this is my understanding of how these accounts work.

Bonus Insanity: Same-Day Payments Free Until February 16

Right on cue, Evolve Money also started a promotion today offering free same-day payments. As far as I'm concerned it's the duty of each and every reader to start experimenting with this service. Report back successes — and failures! — in the comments. I'll have a report on yesterday's test payments Tuesday or Wednesday, whenever they end up posting (or not!).

What's a PayPal subscription, anyway?

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A few readers have written in to ask about the mysterious box that appeared in the top righthand corner of my blog a few weeks ago. If you get new posts delivered to your e-mail or through an RSS reader, you probably didn't even notice it, but it looks like this:

If you click on the dropdown box you'll see a few different amounts and frequencies:

So why did this box appear on the site and what does it mean to you?

The Multinational Free-quent Flyer Empire

First, let's be honest: this site is not a cash cow for me. I'm not throwing a pity party here: I love blogging, I love helping readers, and I love hearing new ideas and datapoints from my readers, all of which is only possible because I have this forum.

On the other hand, it does cost real money to host the site. Some of those costs are offset by book sales, and I want to extend another thank you to all the readers who bought my eBook and those who were kind enough to leave a review on Amazon (even the negative ones)!

At the same time, ever since my short-lived and ill-fated experiment with affiliate links, there haven't been any good ways for readers to directly support the site. Sure, you can sign up for Uber using my link (and thanks to those who did!), and there are a number of other referral links scattered around the site (I get a dollar if you sign up for Venmo!). But that's not the kind of money that pays for monthly hosting fees.

Consider Subscribing

Which brings me to PayPal subscriptions. I got the idea from a podcast I periodically listen to (heck, I even stole the amounts). By choosing one of the amounts and frequencies from the dropdown menu, you can make a small, regular contribution to the site, which I'll use to offset the costs of running it. Naturally, you can make the contribution using a rewards-earning credit card.

So if you've learned anything useful, and especially if you've learned anything lucrative, from this site please consider making a small, regular contribution. It'll go directly towards producing the great content that you know and love, and towards keeping this site uncluttered by intrusive ads, affiliate links, and the other junk that you don't want to see and I don't want to deal with.

Won't you consider making a contribution today?

Getting Away With It: Seasoning Credit Cards

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I know there are a lot of very exciting developments that I've been reporting on for the last few days, and there will be lots of updates on those fronts over the coming days and weeks.

However, I always have a lot of topics on the back burner, and tonight I want to briefly address one question that a lot of readers asked in response to my end of year reflections: how do I keep from getting in trouble with my credit card issuers, given the amount of manufactured spend I put on my credit cards?

While it's not an exact science, I've used one and only one technique since I got into the travel hacking game: seasoning credit cards. Using this ridiculously simple technique I have never had a single card shut down or a single "hostile" conversation with a credit card company representative — although I periodically do trigger fraud alerts, which can normally be resolved through a text message or automated phone call.

Why Season?

I have a friend in town whom I've been gradually introducing to the travel hacking game, and since he flies to Poland once or twice a year, I suggested he sign up for the Chase United MileagePlus Explorer Card when it had a 55,000 mile signup bonus (after adding an authorized user), so he could redeem award tickets on LOT, a Star Alliance member (this was pre-United devaluation, of course).

Once he received his card, on a walk over to our friendly neighborhood CVS I explained that credit card companies don't like to see sudden, large transactions on newly issued credit cards, since that's the kind of behavior that desperate people and crooks exhibit – people trying to get as much cash off a line of credit as quickly as possible.

When we got to the store, he promptly picked up 2 Vanilla Reload Network reload cards and attempted to load them both with $500.

What happened?

What do you think? The transaction was frozen and he had to spend 15 minutes of his (and my) afternoon on the phone with Chase Card Services explaining why his first transaction on his brand new card was for over $1,000.

How to Season

So while it's no great secret — and I'll be the first to admit that it's superstition, not science — here's what I do to season a new credit card, reducing (in my mind) the likelihood of fraud alerts and frozen transactions down the road:

  • When I first get a new credit card, I buy a single $500 Vanilla Reload Network card (or whatever I need to buy at the moment);
  • Then, I wait. And wait. And wait;
  • I wait until that first transactions has cleared from pending to posted;
  • Then I buy another $500 card;
  • And wait. And wait. And wait;
  • I wait until that second transaction has cleared from pending to posted;
  • Only then will I buy 2 cards at once;
  • And wait. And wait. And wait...

You get the idea. The concern of the credit card companies is not "perk abuse" or anything like that. The concern the credit card companies have is the risk of chargebacks: if an identity thief gets a credit card in your name, you will naturally refuse to pay for any purchases made with that card. Your pattern of activity should have as its goal proving to your credit card company that it's you making those purchases, and that you intend to pay for them.

If I've signed up for a credit card exclusively for the signup bonus then I can typically meet any minimum spending requirement within a week or two using this technique.

If it's a card that I plan to put spending on long-term, then sure, this technique means I only manufacture $7,000 or so the first month that I have the card. But that's a small price to pay, in my opinion, for a smooth and uninterrupted relationship with my credit card providers.

Developing: Evolve Money

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[update 2/6/14: please see my post on Upromise Investments]

Hot on the heels of yesterday's exciting post on the HR Block Emerald Prepaid MasterCard, today's news is about a potentially even more lucrative product: Evolve Money. I first read about this service last night on FlyerTalk and went to bed thinking about the possibilities.

Today I looked into the service in depth and have some pretty exciting preliminary conclusions.

How Evolve Money Works

Evolve Money is a service that allows you to pay your bills online – for free – using a Visa, MasterCard, or Discover debit card, REloadit packs (available at some grocery stores), or a product called "Evolve Pay Bucks."

You can create an account to store your payees, or use the service as a guest and input your bill information each time you pay a bill.

After searching their database of payees, you select the biller you want to pay, enter your account information, then choose your payment method.

That's it. It took me a few seconds to set up an account, add my MasterCard debit card, and make a number of experimental bill payments. I'll keep my readers updated with those results.

What Payees Are Available?

There's good news and bad news on this front.

First, the bad news: as far as I can tell no bank's credit card division is listed as an eligible payee.

The good news is there are a lot of payees that are potentially lucrative. The list is incredibly long (it's free to search, so go check it out for yourself), but here are some highlights I found:

  • Mortgages: Bank of America Mortgage, JP Morgan Chase Mortgage, Wells Fargo Home Mortgage, PNC Mortgage, Countrywide Home Loans, etc.;
  • Student Loans: Federal Student Loans - All Servicers, Discover Private Student Loans, Citibank Loan/Private Student Loan/Line of Credit, Acs Educational Services, Great Lakes Educational Loan Services, etc.;
  • Savings Accounts: Utah Educational Savings Plan, TD Ameritrade 529 College Savings Plan, Schwab 529 College Savings Plan, etc.;
  • Insurance Premiums: Blue Cross Blue Shield (every state);
  • Tax Payments: hundreds and hundreds of city and county revenue departments are listed.

Which Debit Cards Work?

I can confirm that the PayPal Business Debit MasterCard does work for bill payments, and these transactions are processed as signature purchases which should earn 1% cash back. My regular readers know what that means: you can load your PayPal account using PayPal My Cash cards purchased with a rewards-earning credit card, then earn 1% cash back liquidating those funds paying bills you wouldn't ordinarily be able to pay with a credit card. You'll be earning your credit card rewards – and a small profit – for transactions that wouldn't otherwise earn rewards.

If you are currently paying a mortgage or student loan using withdrawals from your bank account, take a look at the list of available payees and decide whether you can take advantage of this service instead and earn rewards on those payments.

BREAKING: HR Block Emerald card Vanilla Reloadable

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I reported back in October that the redesigned Vanilla Reload Network reload cards had "MasterCard rePower" listed on the front. I linked to a list of MasterCard prepaid cards and speculated that it might be possible to load some of them using Vanilla Reload Network reload cards.

I went out and hunted down a few of the most promising cards on the list, including the Mango checking account alternative and the HR Block Emerald card, both of which had no monthly fees or fees that were easily waived (in Mango's case, through a single $500 deposit each month).

Unfortunately, as I reported at the end of October, neither the Emerald nor the Mango card ended up being loadable using Vanilla Reload Network reload cards.

I stuck both cards in my drawer and forgot about them until I saw this post from a few days ago on FlyerTalk. There, user SoCalStew reported success loading his Emerald card, writing:

For a brief shining moment, a couple of weeks ago, I was able to stuff a few VRs into my Emerald Card. This is how it looked on the Emerald site.

01/01/14 ADD FUNDS - POS / VANILLA TOPUP REDEEM 10ATLANTA GA USA $500.00

Then they pulled the plug on reloads. Comes up as a "Code 21" on the VR site.

Fortunately I had a few Vanilla Reload Network reload cards lying around, so I dug out my Emerald card and tried it for myself.

SUCCESS!

I can now report that for at least some users, HR Block Emerald cards are Vanilla Reloadable. This is terrific news because back in October when I first got my Emerald card, I confirmed that it's also possible to pay bills using ACH pulls – for free – from the Emerald card account. That makes it possible to liquidate Vanilla Reload Network reload cards at no additional cost once they've been successfully loaded to the Emerald.

Limits?

A few minutes ago I was able to load just two $500 reload cards to my Emerald account before receiving an error that I'd reached the limit on the number of loads allowed. I'll continue attempting to load money to the account over the next few days, weeks, and months and report back any other load limits I'm able to discover.

Reader experiences are of course more than welcome.

Thoughts on making Platinum Medallion and Rollover MQM

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Reports have been trickling in of Rollover MQM posting and sure enough when I logged into my Delta Skymiles account today, I saw that my 2014 Medallion tracker was updated with 1,142 Rollover MQM:

As planned, I made Platinum Medallion on December 29, on a First Class Alaska Airlines flight from Kauai, HI to Portland, OR. Thanks to Delta's generous earning rules and the fact that Alaska Airlines has just one First Class fare bucket, I earned 5,262 MQM on that flight, putting me just over the threshold for Platinum Medallion status.

I've explained before that I consider Platinum Medallion the best Medallion status because it's only at that level that you get free award redeposits and changes, which allows you to lock in an award at the "Standard" or "Peak" levels, then keep an eye on award availability to later change the award to the "Saver" level and receive the difference in miles back – at no additional cost.

So was it worth paying $372 roundtrip to upgrade from Alaska's Economy to First Class? If I'd flown in Economy, and earned just 7,799 2013 Medallion Qualification Miles, I would have ended the year 6,657 MQM short of Platinum Medallion Status (and rolled over 18,343 MQM).

On the other hand, as a Gold Medallion, I would have to pay $150 per change to redeposit or reissue Skymiles award tickets.

Just to stress how valuable I find this benefit, just a few hours ago I already took advantage of it and reissued a domestic ticket from 32,500 Skymiles to 25,000 Skymiles, with the difference of 7,500 Skymiles redeposited in my account.

Now, I would never pay $150 to recover 7,500 Skymiles. The point of being a Platinum Medallion is that I don't have to. One reissued ticket per year isn't going to pay for a $372 flight change. But the recovered miles do have some value, and I have no doubt that I'm going to save enough Skymiles this year using this technique to more than justify the additional cost of my First Class tickets over the holidays.

Errata on Rollover MQM & MQD

The Points Guy made a comment today that I want to "correct" as early in the year as possible since it's worth thinking about as the Medallion qualification year proceeds. He wrote:

Just as background on rollover miles in case you are a Delta flyer yourself – as I mentioned, you can rollover miles above and beyond your current elite status threshold qualification. Whether you roll over 500 miles or 200,000, there’s no limit.

That means if you are a Silver or Gold Medallion the maximum you can rollover is 24,999 miles, since anything more would bump you to the next level; Platinum Medallions may rollover up to 49,999 MQMs; Diamond Medallions have no limit to how many MQMs they can rollover. Something important to point out is if you do not qualify for Silver Medallion status, you wouldn’t be able to rollover any MQMs, so you must achieve elite status at some level in order to rollover miles. [emphasis mine –FQF]

The bolded statement is true of the previous and current Medallion program years. However, now that Medallion Qualification Dollars are in effect, all Medallions can roll over unlimited MQM. The Delta website makes this clear in the FAQ on Medallion Qualification Dollars:

If you achieve one Medallion qualification criteria and not the other, your status will be determined based on the lower of the two qualification thresholds that you achieved. For example, if you earned 76,000 MQMs (enough to qualify for Platinum Medallion status), but had $6,000 MQDs (enough to qualify for Gold Medallion status, but not Platinum Medallion status), then you will earn Gold Medallion status. Rollover MQMs will be calculated as anything in excess of the MQM threshold for the status earned based on the new criteria. In the above example, you would roll over 26,000 MQMs and would then need at least $2,500 MQDs (or the MQD Waiver) to earn Silver Medallion status the following year. [emphasis mine –FQF]

Obviously this is a distinction without a difference if you plan to receive an MQD Waiver through spending $25,000 or more on a co-branded American Express card. However, if you don't have an American Express card, it's easy to imagine rolling over tens of thousands of MQM:

  • Take a flyer who previously qualified for Platinum Medallion status by flying 75,000 MQM strictly on mileage runs at 3.5 cents per mile flown;
  • Assuming all 3.5 cents per mile count towards Medallion Qualification Dollars (they won't, because of taxes and fees), that Platinum Medallion would earn just $2,625 MQD in 2014 and only qualify for Silver Medallion status in 2015;
  • They'd roll over 50,000 MQM but still need to earn $2,500 MQD in 2015 in order to earn Medallion status in 2016 – or risk losing all 50,000 rolled-over MQM.

I love Marriott free night promotions

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If there's one thing I've learned in the travel-hacking community, it's that people who love Marriott Rewards really love Marriott Rewards.

Personally, I don't find Marriott Rewards points very useful. Even though I have the Marriott Rewards Premier Visa, I signed up for that card because of the free night certificate, 50,000 bonus Marriott Rewards points, and $75 statement credit (plus the annual free night certificate). As a rule I only charge one small purchase to the card every 6 months or so, to keep the account from being closed due to inactivity.

There's no point in manufacturing spend on the Marriott Rewards Visa cards because they only earn 1 point per dollar spent on most purchases (the Premier Visa earns 2 points per dollar spent on restaurants, airline tickets, and rental cars, which are irrelevant here).

However, I do find Marriott's regular MegaBonus promotions (here's the latest one) amazingly effective at getting me to direct my paid stays to Marriott properties. If you understand hotel loyalty programs as rebates on hotel stays, then the MegaBonus promotions are a 50% – or more – rebate on up to 4 paid stays during each promotional period.

My Winter MegaBonus

The MegaBonus promotion ending tomorrow offered a free night certificate good at Category 1-5 properties after your second and fourth paid stays during the promotional period. I earned 1 certificate, on the following stays over New Years:

  • 1 night at Courtyard Portland City Center: $115.64
  • 1 night at Fairfield Inn Portland Airport: $81.30

If I'd charged those stays to my Marriott Rewards Premier Visa, I would have earned 984 bonus Marriott Rewards points, on top of the 2,064 points I earned as a Silver elite. Instead, I charged both stays to my Barclaycard Arrival World MasterCard, so I can redeem 19,694 Arrival miles against the two charges, at a total cost of a bit less than $79 (because of the 10% rebate on travel redemptions).

Having completed those 2 paid stays, I earned a Free Night Certificate good at a category 1-5 hotel. As you can see from my point density charts, there is no other hotel program that allows you to earn a free night at even the lowest tier properties after spending just $200 (with the exception of Concierge members with Club Carlson). Marriott allows you to stay at Category 4 or 5 properties for that much (or less) multiple times per year.

Plan Your Stays

To maximize the rebate from the MegaBonus promotions, you do need to plan your paid stays to make sure you have exactly 2 or 4 paid stays during each promotional period. Multiple nights in a row at the same hotel – even on separate reservations – are not supposed to count as separate stays. That's why for my 2-night stay at the Courtyard Portland City Center I booked the first night as a paid stay, then used a free night certificate from a previous MegaBonus promotion for the second night of the stay. By then changing hotels to the Fairfield Inn Portland Airport I was able to get a second stay credit (and be closer to the airport for my morning flight the next day).

If you're traveling with another person, you should be able to alternate nights at the same property and earn a stay credit for each night by crediting them to each person's account in turn. However, I have had problems in the past getting stays to properly credit to my Marriott Rewards account, so you may have to follow up with Marriott Rewards after your stays to make sure they credit properly.

Stackable New Member Promotion

Even better, Marriott is currently running a promotion for new members, whereby you can earn a free night certificate good at Category 1-5 properties after completing 2 paid stays within 120 days of the end of the month in which you join.

The best way to time this promotion with the next MegaBonus promotion is to sign up through this link on February 1: that way you'll have until the end of February, plus 120 days (roughly through the end of June), to complete your 2 paid stays, after which you'll have 1 free night certificate good at Category 1-5 properties (from the new member promotion) and 1 certificate good at Category 1-4 properties (from the Spring MegaBonus promotion).

Weekend thoughts from around the web

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Here are some quick hits from around the blogosphere:

Hope everyone's having a great weekend!