Credit card sign-up bonuses are by far the easiest way to earn points and miles, but some cards having minimum spending requirements of $3,000 and up. If you’re working on more than one sign-up bonus, the spending requirements can really add up! Here are 7 ways to meet credit card minimum spending requirements without spending too much of your own money.
1. Ask your friends and family if you can charge their purchases on your card
When I got started with credit card sign-up bonuses, I met my first few spending requirements by buying things that my parents were going to buy for themselves anyway. My dad likes to work on cars so he buys some expensive car parts. My mom likes to buy gadgets so I gladly put my card down when she wanted to buy a Roomba.
If you’re out with friends, always volunteer to pay and have them Venmo you. This is particularly lucrative if you volunteer to plan a trip for a group of friends. If you can book the hotel, activities, and even airfare, you’ll be well on your way to hitting your spending requirement.
2. Resell, resell, resell
You can resell lots of things like concert tickets, retail merchandise, and gift cards. My main method of reselling is concert tickets on StubHub, but I’ve also dabbled in selling on Amazon FBA.
You can also resell gift cards on websites like Raise. You can also use Amex Offers to buy and sell gift cards. The Amex Offer makes it possible to break even or possibly profit a little. Last month I spent $350 on Saks Fifth Avenue gift cards that I unloaded on Raise. After getting $75 back as a statement credit from Amex, I was able to make $15.
3. Manufactured spending by buying gift cards
The gist of manufactured spending is buying cash equivalents like Visa or Amex gift cards and finding ways to liquidate them to get your money back and pay off the charge for the gift card on your credit card. The most common method of this is buying Visa gift cards and using them to buy a money order and then depositing the money order in your own bank account. There are small fees associated with manufactured spending. You’ll pay a fee to buy the gift card and to buy the money order. You can read more about the various methods of manufactured spending here.
4. Buy store gift cards to use at a later date
If you don’t want to deal with the fees of cash equivalent gift cards, you can buy credit cards to stores for no fee. Say you have a spending requirement to meet in September but you know you’ll be doing a lot of Christmas shopping in November. Buy gift cards to stores where you anticipate doing your Christmas shopping. You’re still spending your own money, but it allows you to knock out your spending requirement without buying something you wouldn’t have bought otherwise.
5. Pay bills ahead of time
Along the same lines, you know you’ll have a cable bill due every month so why not prepay it now when you’re looking for things to charge? Your future self will thank you when you get to enjoy several bill-free months. Again, you aren’t saving any money, but rather paying ahead of time to serve a purpose.
6. Fund a bank account with a credit card
I love bank account bonuses. I love them even more when you can fund the bank account with a credit card! You’re really killing two birds with one stone since you’ll get a bonus from the bank account AND from the credit card. Just make sure to set your cash advance limit to as low as possible so the charge will be rejected should it code as a cash advance.
7. Pay your rent and other bills with Plastiq
Plastiq allows you to pay all sorts of bills with a credit card for a 2.85% fee. If your rent is high, you can knock out a spending requirement in one fell swoop. Sometimes it’s easier to pay the fee to prevent yourself from buying things just to hit the minimum spending requirement.
Final Thoughts
You can get pretty creative when trying to hit the minimum spending requirement for a credit card sign-up bonus. These are the main methods I use when hitting spending requirements. Manufactured spending and reselling can get complicated to track so I prefer to buy stuff for my parents and have them pay me back.
What methods do you use to meet your minimum spending requirements?
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Thanks for the ideas!
The Amex card offer I saw recently excluded cash equivalents and gift cards. I don’t know if that’s what actually happens in practice.
If you know you are going to be buying gifts in a few months, you could just buy the actual gifts earlier, depending on the likelihood of something needing to be returned. You could buy lifetime subscriptions to things you are paying for now (on the prepay concept). You could also set up a card to pay for Paypal and maybe Privacy.com. These bill after the fact, so if you had some big expenses the previous month, they could be looped in. You can also run up spending by buying things on rebate with the Ibotta app – purchases you would make anyway or groceries that have a full refund, and on Snagshout.com, which is an Amazon review site that has some items with full rebates that go to your Paypal account even if you paid on a credit card. Thrift stores where I live take credit cards, so you might be able to buy things at one of the cheaper ones, or antique-type things that are underpriced and resell for the same or at a profit. If you have room, you could also buy things that would produce, like fruit trees and garden seeds, which should have a net savings overall.