Episode 05: How to Maximize Your Personal Spending to Achieve Travel Credit Card Spend Minimum

In this quick episode I just wanted to follow up and elaborate more on what I just briefly touched on at the end of the last episode on how to efficiently and quickly get to your minimum spend requirement.

How is this important? 

When I first started doing this, I didn't really actually have a big budget to just be spending all the time, so I had to get creative in ways on how I was going to get the spending minimums. Some of these spending minimums are pretty easy, for example $1,000 in three months which for some people they'll just do that in one week.

However for $3,000 in three months, or even up to $5,000 in three months, those minimum spend requirements can be quite a lot for some people that aren't making a lot.  

One of the strategies that I mentioned before was trying to plan your card applications right around when you have big bills coming up. Examples of bills that you might consider wanting to put on your credit cards to reach your minimum spend requirement include: car insurance, health insurance, apartment rent, utility bills, and much much more. We all have lots of bills to pay, so that is one unavoidable aspect of life.  

Why not pay your bills with these travel credit cards and get something back in terms of airline points towards free flights. 

Just keep in mind though when you do have these big spends and “bills” coming up that when you apply for the credit cards to wait at least one to two weeks before your card comes so that way you don't have to miss paying your payment, and miss the opportunity to actually use those “bill” payments to achieve your minimum spend requirement.  

Now there is one advance way to reach your minimum spend. 

Before I tell you, prior to bank catching on, people used to buy Mint and then use those same money to pay back the bank. That strategy got busted. The next method was pure manufacture spending, whereby people would charge cards to get Vanilla cards or other sorts of gift cards whereby fulfilling the spend requirement quite quickly. Most banks have caught on with that.  

The strategy I present still works, although you will have to take in the usual 3% credit card fees. 

And I'm not going to say sneaky because it is slightly sneaky but it's still legal and within the bounds. I’ll actually save the technique I’m mentioning here for a later episode – just so I don’t overcomplicate things for you guys!  

I hope this episode helps you figure out how to achieve your minimum spend without feeling like you need to use your credit card out of the blue. 

You can transform your mindset and now put your usual bills and everyday spend towards these travel credit cards. Again, you would already need to pay for these bills, so instead of doing with check and cash, you use your credit card instead so that way you can get closer to getting those bonus points faster! 

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Do you easily achieve your credit card minimum spend?

Do you put your everyday bills such as rent, groceries, utilities, etc. on your card?

Just comment and let me know if you guys have any questions that you want me to address. 

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If you missed, Episode 04: How to Choose Which Travel Credit Card to Apply

Next,  Episode 06: The Travel Credit Cards I Applied for My 2016 Round the World Trip  

Follow me @hustletoparadise to stay up to date on future episodes of Travel Hacking with Hustle to Paradise.

(Introduction photo courtesy of Didier Weemaels found on Unsplash)