Manufactured spending (MS) is the process of purchasing cash equivalents with a rewards earning credit card, where the rewards earned are greater than the fees incurred. It can be used for meeting minimum spend requirements or just racking up frequent flyer miles with your favorite airline or hotel partner.
Below we’ve listed some of the more common manufactured spending techniques, we’ve also ranked them as easy, medium or hard. Before dipping your toes into MS we suggest starting off small, reading a lot about each individual method, testing things for yourself and also only doing what you feel comfortable with.
Funding Bank Accounts
Read our full post on this method
Difficultly level: Easy to Moderate
A lot of bank accounts allow you to fund the initial deposit with a credit card, this can be a maximum of anywhere from $100 to $1,000 depending on the bank. There are a few downsides to using this method:
- You can only do this for the initial opening deposit
- Most of these bank accounts have monthly fees, which can be waived but either require a direct deposit from your payroll to hit the account or a minimum balance
There is also one massive upside, some bank accounts also come with bonuses. Which means you can also earn up to $600 (a recent Chase checking bonus) by completing some simple requirements.
Other Methods
If you’re going to do manufactured spending, it’s important to always look for opportunities to double or even triple dip. This is where you earn rewards points with more than one loyalty program at once. Here are some of the most popular programs that allow you to earn points in addition to what you already earn with your rewards credit card.
We regularly post about new methods & tricks for existing methods. Make sure you keep an eye out on our manufactured spending category for new posts about this topic. We also suggest subscribing to this blogs RSS feed or joining the newsletter to be notified instantly.
If you know of any methods we should cover, why not contact us to let us know!