Quote:
Originally Posted by Greggers
Good tip for those who have a cash back with 5% at grocery stores (e.g. AMEX Blue Cash) and shop a lot at say Amazon.
Go to Vons/Safeway/Wherever, buy a lot of Amazon gift cards with your AMEX Blue Cash/Whatever, spend the money you were going to spend at Amazon anyway with gift cards -- profit with 5% savings on Amazon purchases.
Blue Cash Preferred is 6% at grocery stores and Blue Cash Everyday is 3%. Amex recently capped the bonus earnings at $6,000 per year, so this is not as lucrative as it once was.
Other things to keep in mind is often stores will run GC promos. A store by me is offering 4x gas points for money spent on GCs. That means, for every $100 in GCs you buy with the amex BCP, you get $6 in cash back and $.40 off per gallon (around $6 on a normal tank). So you get a 12% rebate on GCs that you will use anyway.
There are a lot of cards with highly bonused spend that can leverage opportunities like this. The Hilton cards get 6x at gas stations, grocery stores, and drug stores. The Ink cards get 5x at office supply stores.
Finally, there is the trick of GC "upgrading". Buying Sears physical GCs at 5x or 10x from the Chase shopping portal, and then going to Sears or Kmart and buying gift cards you want and paying with the Sears GC.