Good goodness am I a fan of credit card rewards. Jake calls me a nerd for it but I sure do get my kicks from free travel.
Some proof: I was one of the lucky few who took advantage of both the Chase Sapphire Preferred and the Reserve credit card travel deals before Chase changed the rules and only allowed card members to take advantage of one bonus. I somehow managed to get over $1,700 in travel rewards! This was helpful for a fun trip to Portugal we did a few years back (see pics below).
If you want to check out the travel video from our Portugal trip, you can find it here. Don’t mind my poor video editing skills, I promise they will improve for the Norway video.
Anyways, I have really only been in the travel rewards game for a couple years now, so I am still catching up to the real OG’s out there, but I am pretty excited to share my most recent hack with you. It’s called Plastiq and it’s a website that allows you to use your credit card for transactions that would normally prohibit credit cards.
To be fair, Plastiq was on my radar for a few years but I didn’t have the perfect card and transaction combo to give it a go. Good news though – the full review is here and it’s a game changer.
What Is Plastiq?
Plastiq is a website that allows you to use your credit card to make transactions that would normally prohibit credit cards as a form of payment. Some examples include:
- Mortgage Payment
- Rent Payment
- Utilities Bill
- Student Loan Payment
Why is this a big deal? Some of the payments listed above can take up the majority of your monthly budget, so being able to use your credit card is incredibly helpful. Especially if you have a minimum spend amount on a newly activated card that you don’t think you would normally reach with your day-to-day groceries and small errand spend. You can instead use it to pay your rent/mortgage for a couple months and BOOM! You hit your minimum spend! đŸ™‚
For those of you who are not familiar with reward credit cards. A minimum spend is the amount you have to spend when you first get your card in order to receive the “big” bonus. For example, if you just received your new travel card the rewards offer may say “spend $5,000 in the first 3-months and receive $1,000 in travel points.” In this case your minimum spend would be $5,000. Anyways, moving on đŸ™‚
How does Plastiq make money?
They charge you a 2.5% fee per transaction… but wait, here’s the best part. With Plastiq, you can earn fee free dollars or (FFDs). These are basically “Plastiq dollars” that you can use to not have to fork up any fees.
You earn FFDs by signing up, activating your account and by referring other members. You even get $500 worth of FFDs by using this referral code: 1296563.
I earned $5,050 just for signing up and activating my account (adding a credit card). This means I was able to make $5,050 worth of transactions through Plastiq completely for free, no fee charged. Any transaction I completed over the $5,050 threshold though, would have been charged a 2.5% fee.
The 2.5% fee wouldn’t make sense to pay normally. If you had no FFDs and no credit card that had to meet a minimum spend, I don’t think paying 2.5% for this service would be worth it.
One of the few cases where I would still use Plastiq and pay the fee would be if had a credit card that earned me 3% cash back (or more) on all purchases. Simply because using Plastiq and this card for all your purchases would earn you 0.5% cash back every time (3% cash back minus 2.5% fee equals 0.5% cashback leftover).
Have You Used It?
Oui. I have now used this tool and I can say that it was fully worth it. We recently got the Chase Business Ink Preferred card which had a minimum spend of $5,000 in the first three months. Once the minimum spend was hit, we earned $1,000 in travel rewards.
We used Plastiq to pay a myriad of business expenses that normally wouldn’t except a credit card. They totaled to the minimum spend amount of $5,000 which means we have a new free (or $1,000 discounted) vacay coming up soon. đŸ™‚
I have heard of other sites out there, like RadPad, RentMoola and Venmo (who you’re paying needs to have an account for this last one) but have never used them with a credit card to pay expenses. Venmo I have used but more for paying your buddies back for a drink or Uber.
My Tip To Maximize Your Rewards
Below is the absolute best way for you to get the most FFDs and the most out of your FFDs which means you can make higher transaction amounts through Plastiq (and hit your minimum spend!). Follow the steps below to maximize your Plastiq dollars.
- Check out NerdWallet and ThePointsGuy to see the best credit card bonus offers out there for you. *Skip steps 1 & 2 if you already have a credit card you want to use*
- Apply for the card (& hopefully get accepted).
- Use Plastiq to meet the minimum spend to be able to achieve the credit card bonus (i.e. spend X amount of money in X number of months).
- Go to Plastiq and use this referral code: 1296563 – this will unlock $500 FFDs for you.
- Activate your account (this step earned me $5,000 FFDs by itself).
- Refer a friend. This will get you $1,000 FFDs. This will be available to you once you have made an account.
- Keep referring friends as you need to make more payments/need more FFDs.
So just by using the referral code, activating your account and referring one friend you will have earned about $6,000 FFDs. That’s pretty awesome. That means you could even potentially use that $6,000 towards a couple credit cards minimum spends if you wanted to. The hacking possibilities are endless!
*Note: Do not apply for a credit card if you do not intend to pay the full balance owed every month. I pay my balances as I swipe my cards. Credit card debt is a serious issue and should not be taken lightly.
Final Thoughts
If you are huge on credit card rewards, I would highly recommend giving Plastiq a shot. It is super easy to use and with the steps listed above, you can easily hit a minimum spend requirement of a credit card. Catch those travel rewards and save them up for a trip to Japan! Or Argentina! Or maybe even Hawaii!
Anyways, if you’re a rewards hacking nerd like me – give me a shout in the comments and tell me your favorite tricks.
Don’t forget, this referral code 1296563 gives you $500 fee free Plastiq dollars.
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