FIRE’d, frugal greetings to all my millionaire readers.  (Hi Mom, Josh, and Miguel!)  Okay, as most of you already know, I’m bat-guano crazy.  Once my mind gets going on something, there’s no stopping it.  In January my mind began to percolate on how to fund $2,000 to our son’s Coverdell educational savings account.  Since we’re “retired” for now and living on a fixed income of $43,500, we don’t have lots of extra money just waiting to be invested.  How could we get our hands on $2,000 without working, stealing, or dancing for tips?

Suddenly in a moment of clarity, it came to me.  Instead of earning money in a traditional manner, I decided to reach out and grab some of the low-hanging, monetary fruit that’s all around us.  No, I’m not talking about a magic money tree.  I’m talking about the various bonuses offered by banks, credit unions, and credit card companies.  Instead of walking past their free money offers, I decided to grab every piece of face-level, monetary fruit that I could get my hands on.

Before we hit our FIRE number, we were Travel Rewards Millionaires. Here are the referral links for the credit cards we currently use:
"Flexible" Rewards	Chase Ultimate Rewards * Capital One Reward Miles
Airline Miles	British Airways * Southwest Airlines
Credit Tradelines & Referrals	Capital One * Savor One * Discover ($100 bonus)
Business Cards	Hilton Honors * Capital One Spark * Southwest Airlines
Coming Soon: Free Mini-Courses

It started last spring when I received an offer in the mail from a credit union (see doctored photo above).  It offered a $25 credit if I spent $500 on my seldom-used credit card.  Usually, I’d throw such junk mail in the trash and forget about the offer.  However, this time my reptilian, travel-hacking mind sensed an opportunity:

1.   I could buy a $500 gift card for $4.95 to complete the spending requirement.
2.   Then, I could convert the $500 gift card to a $500 money order for 69¢.
3.   From there, I’d deposit the money order to my checking account, and use its bill-pay service to pay the credit card bill.
4.   The bottom line:  $25 cash-back bonus – $5.64 of fees ($4.95 + 69¢) = $19.36 for low-hanging fruit (aka, free money).

Naturally, this was an offer that I couldn’t refuse; it might have been the easiest $19 I ever made.  Even better, there was more low-hanging fruit to be had.  When I was in the process of canceling a credit card, the service rep offered me a $100 credit if I spent $1,000 on the card.  A thousand bucks?  No problem!  I took the offer, bought two $500 gift cards, flipped them to money orders, deposited them to my checking account, and promptly paid my fictitious $1,000 credit card bill.  The math:  $100 credit – $11.28 (fee above * 2) = $88.72 of free money.  (Do you see what I’m doing here?)

Our goal for 2017 was to generate at least $2,000 of monetary rewards so that we could fund our son’s Coverdell educational savings account at Vanguard.  We accomplished our goals through the use of:  six cash-back credit cards with sign-up bonuses, three credit union sign-up bonuses, and one credit card spending bonus.  Here’s how we did it:

Six Cash-back Credit Cards = $1,776

In January we each applied for three credit cards offering various bonuses.  Unsurprisingly, we were approved for all six cards.  (I’d prefer not to name the cards, but I usually sign up for my cards here.)  Here are the details on the three cards we opened:

1.   Card #1 offered a $500 bonus (with 2% cash back) after spending $4,500.  After fees, we each generated $545 of free money from this card.  Total = $1,090.
2.   Card #2  offered a $250 bonus (with 1% cash back) after spending $5,000.  There is another $250 bonus after spending $10,000 within 12 months of opening the card.  (We’ll start chipping away at that bonus in a few months.)  This resulted in $243 of free money after fees.  Total = $486
3.   Card #3 yielded a $100 bonus (with 1% cash back) after spending a whopping $500.  Total = $200

All three of these cards had cash-back bonuses (of at least 1%) that covered the cost of purchasing gift cards.  ($500 gift cards bought at $4.95 result in a fee of .99% ($4.95 / $500).  That means that the 1% cash back covers the cost of buying the gift card.  Did you get that?)  The only other fee involved was the 69¢ cost of buying money orders.

 Three Sign-up Bonuses at Credit Union = $135

Last spring we went to a Jacksonville Suns (now the Jumbo Shrimp) baseball game with our Cub Scout pack.  We had a great time , and, better yet, we got to camp out on the field after the game.  During a trip to the concession stand, there was a promotional table for a well-known military credit union.  I spoke with a friendly representative and learned that I could join the credit union even though I had never served in the military.  She took my contact information and called me a few weeks later.  She intentionally delayed signing us up so that we could qualify for four $50 sign-up bonuses.  One bonus went to a custodial account for Eduardito, and Edwina and I scooped up the other three bonuses.  Since $5 had to remain in each account, we were able to get $45 from our three accounts (2 individual and 1 joint).  The math:  $45 * 3 = $135

One Spending Bonus on Credit Card = $94

Last December I received the following offer from my credit union:  “Spend $500 on your credit card before December 31st and receive a $100 statement credit.”  If you’ve read the post this far, you already know exactly what I did, right?  Yes, that’s correct:  credit card → gift card → money order → checking account → bill pay back to credit card.  Once again my total fees on this maneuver were $5.64 ($4.95 + 69¢).  The bottom line math:  $100 – $6 = $94.

Here’s a table with the grand total for my visual learners:

Yours in FIRE’d Frugality,

Ed

Useful Resources: Companies and Services that We Actually Use (Lots of affiliate links here!)
Investing:  Vanguard, Fidelity, Schwab	Banking:  USAA, Schwab, Chime. Alliant, Navy Federal
Travel Rewards:  Credit Cards, Airbnb, Uber	Credit Tradelines:  Tradeline Supply Company
Net Worth Tracking:   Personal Capital ($100K+), $20 bonus	Health Savings Account:  Fidelity
Mexican Cell Phone & Credit Card:  ATT Mexico, DolarApp	Alt-Ed:  Study.Com, Sophia Learning, InstantCert
Credit Sesame, Credit Karma, Annual Credit Report	Blogs, Books, and Podcasts
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