8 Ideas to Meet Minimum Spending Requirements for Sign-up Bonuses (2018)

1. Plastiq- allows you to pay any bill that you wouldn’t normally be able to pay (rent, mortgage, car payment, student loans, etc) with a credit card.  There is a 2.5% fee but they occasionally run deals where certain types of cards are less.   This is not something I recommend doing on a regular basis, this is only if you’re trying to meet minimum spend.
   • At 2.5%, that’s $25 per $1,000
   • If you’re just needing meeting minimum spend for a sign-up bonus, it is most likely worth it.  For example, you open the Citi Hilton Card that I mentioned in the Amsterdam post.  You need to spend $2500 to get your sign up bonus. This offer has expired, click here for the most current list of our favorite offers.
   • Now I’m assuming you have at least some spending that can be paid with a credit card but let’s say worst case scenario you have to make 2500$ spend by using Plastiq.
   • You would pay $62.50 in fees for $2500.  If you’re getting the kind of value out of the sign-up bonus we got in the Amsterdam example, 62.50$ is worth it.
   • Use my referral code & pay $500 worth of bills to get 500 fee-free dollars.  Note that you must first pay $500 with the fee (2.5% so $12.50 in fees) to get the 500 fee-free dollars, but again this could be worth it to meet a minimum spend.  If it asks for a referral code use 573475.
2. Prepay utilities-some utility companies will allow you to overpay.  The overpayment will be applied to the next month’s payment
3. Prepay insurance-many insurance companies offer discounts if you pay 6 months or a year at a time rather than monthly payments.  So assuming you can afford to pay the entire year, you might actually be saving money by doing this.
4. Pay everything on your credit card-duh.
5. If you have a Flexible Spending Account debit card, don’t use it. Always use your credit card and then file the claim to get reimbursed.  Most FSAs make it very easy to upload receipts for reimbursement directly to your bank account
6. Buy gift cards for places you will shop anyway. If you shop at Amazon all the time, why not buy a $500 gift card? Bonus: you can go through united’s shopping portal app. It has to be the app, this will not work on their regular portal, and get a bonus 0.5 miles per dollar or if you have a card that has a grocery store bonus category such as the Amex everyday card, you can buy gift cards at grocery stores and get 2 Amex Membership Reward points per dollar.
7. Buy Visa or MasterCard gift cards. These have a fee of $4-7, but it gives you plenty of spending options.  Amex also has gift cards and if you have an Amex credit card or charge card they often run specials for fee-free gift cards.
8. Use Venmo or PayPal to pay friends, but note there is a 3% fee to use a credit card.  Again, these are suggestions for meeting minimum spend, not for regular use

I will add to this list if I learn of any new and worthwhile ideas!

Disclaimer: I may earn a commission from link(s) found in this article.