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Matthew Wood

Matthew Wood

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Matthew Wood posts

Biggest MS Developments - July

I'm going to periodically summarize the best of the Slack group discussions as part of your subscriber content, first so we've got a curated historical record for future reference, and second to make sure you didn't miss (some of) the major developments. Since this is an experiment, I'd very much appreciate your feedback on the format and how it could change to be better.

Alright, let's dive in:

Manufactured Spend...

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An Interesting Credit Card to Debit Card Service

Kasheesh has been brewing in stealth mode since last year, but as of today the cat is out of the bag after Benjy @ Miles To Memories shared some details. Here's what you should know:

- It's a service built to let you split payments across multiple credit cards
- It works with AmEx, Mastercard, and Visa
- It only allows charges of exactly the fa...

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A Method for Liquidating Metabanks and Other Tough Gift Cards

The doors have been closing on Metabank gift card liquidation for several years. Since 2019, we've lost liquidation at Walmart Money Centers, Kroger Money Centers, Safeway Money Centers, and most recently Publix Money Centers. But, not all doors are closed by any means and there's a great one that's been working for years and is still waiting for us to throw gift cards right through the door frame:

Western Union in-store bill pay...

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$10,000 per Day in Manufactured Spend from Home

Introduction

Fluz is an application for generating gift cards in real-time and getting cash-back for doing it, with an intended use case for buying during checkout online or at an in-person retailer for a little extra back on the purchase. It's basically a cash-back version of 2022-03-14 01:05:11 +0000 UTC View Post

Group Chat Update

EDIT: All invites have gone out. If you can't find yours please let me know (it will come directly from Slack and may end up in spam). 

Hey friends,

I had impassioned arguments for just about every platform for a group chat imaginable, and in roughly equal numbers for each platform to boot -- unfortunately there's not going to be a single platform that satisfies everyone. So, we're going to start with Slack.

I'...

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United Travel Hacks

Note: This is the promised first newsletter focused on travel hacking topics. These will come periodically just like the manufactured spend posts.

Let's talk about how we can make best use of United awards and TravelBanks. With a bit of legwork, we can make both much more flexible than their rules imply.

Award Ticketing Flexibility

2022-03-04 16:54:06 +0000 UTC View Post

Patreon Updates

Hi Friends,

I'm just getting back from a long, disconnected vacation, but I wanted to give you two quick updates before I dive into the regular routine:

  • I've had literally dozens of you ask about a Telegram / WhatsApp / Slack / Discord group for Miles Earn and Burn Patreons, and I think we're about at critical mass to make that work. I'm leaning toward Slack, but if you have strong opinions please let me know.
  • I've a...

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Another $5,000 MS Opportunity from Home or at Walmart

Venture capitalists are currently overfunded, in that their funds are larger then ever and the number of targets they're chasing is shrinking. That means that they're making big bets on FinTech platforms with suspect business models, and those very same FinTechs typically give us another way to manufacture spend.

Recently, a ne...

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$6,200 in (Recurring) Visa/Mastercard Manufactured Spend

There are two opportunities for opening new credit union accounts that offer big spend on Visa and Mastercards without cash advance fees, and they're even better because they illustrate a technique not often discussed in the churning space even though it has relatively wide applicability. The deals:

Taking 4% off of your Credit Card Balances from Home

Right now, there's a nice opportunity for paying bills from home at a 4% discount, and it's less convoluted than many of the games we play. The ELI5:

Fee-Free Mastercard Gift Cards from Home

For several years I've been chipping away at a not-well publicized source of Mastercard gift cards that you can buy online. These cards are interesting because they're a rare BIN, so they're less likely to be blocked than most other gift cards. That's interesting in-and-of-itself, but now the company is running a fee-free promotion as icing on the cake.

Normally I'd post something like this on the blog and it's not exactly private per se...

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Nearly Fee-Free Online Gift Card Liquidation

EDIT: This deal is unfortunately on life-support. Many cards aren't working any more, but a few still are. I think it's unfortunately not long for the world though. Additionally, Stockpile has implemented a $100 card load limit per 24 hours, which makes this a waste of time in my opinion.

I was first introduced to Stockpile on black Friday 2020 when they ran a promot...

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A $15,000 per Month MS Play at 0.5% from Home

Thanks again for being a Miles Earn and Burn subscriber. I wanted to share another technique which isn't really public, but is a bastion of at home manufactured spend and has been for several years.

Have you heard of Western Union? I'm assuming the answer is a resounding "yes".  They've been around for literally 170 years, and their presence is glob...

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Subscriber Newsletter: Fee free MS opportunity

Hey guys,

I really appreciate the support you show, and I wanted to share something that I'm not going to put on the blog because it would die quickly if it got out there. Please keep this one to yourselves and your immediate family:

One of the many stock trading apps that have come out of the woodwork is Public.app. I started prodding at this one back in June since it's no...

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Thanks for subscribing

I will put tips and tricks here in the future, but for now, let me just express my thanks in the sincerest possible way. No jokes or comedy here, just a thank you.

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