Earn 64% Off Travel Paying Your Bills With The Barclaycard Arrival
I’ve been very happy with my Barclaycard Arrival World MasterCard because the miles are almost completely unrestricted. I just pay with my Barclaycard for whatever travel expense I want and then redeem the miles for a statement credit. This can be an airline ticket, a hotel, a car rental, a cruise, even a NYC taxi ride is classified as travel. No award hunting, no availability restrictions. The Barclaycard Arrival MasterCard currently comes with a 40,000 mile sign-up bonus after spending $1,000 and continues to earn 2 miles for every dollar spent. Each mile is worth 1 cent towards travel. You get a 10% rebate on your redeemed miles so the card is equivalent to 2.2% cash back on all spending. The card has an $89 annual fee, but I am planning to downgrade it to the no annual fee version after a year and keep the card. I wrote a full review of the Barclaycard Arrival World MasterCard when I applied for the card last April.
When I visited Acadia National Park over July 4th weekend, the hotels were all pretty expensive (many sold out because I looked less than two weeks before!) and I could not find any hotels I could redeem with points at a reasonable rate. The big chains Hilton, Starwood, Hyatt and Marriott simply do not have any hotels in Bar Harbor. I ended up redeeming my Barclaycard Arrival miles to stay at Bar Harbor Regency right on the ocean. In fact, I used the Barclaycard Arrival miles for the full $560 hotel bill at the end including drinks, breakfast, lunch, etc.
How do we earn Barclaycard Arrival miles?
Well, there is the sign-up bonus that comes with the card, of course, of 40,000 miles after spending $1,000. That’s pretty good and the spending requirement is pretty low. Then you can continue to earn miles by just using the card on regular everyday purchases, which I do. This is equivalent to 2.2% cash back on all my purchases, which I can later use for my travel.
But if you have bills to pay and you are not using your credit card, Vanilla Reloads can be a great idea provided you can find them at your CVS or 7 Eleven can and fit them conveniently into your lifestyle. In fact, buying Vanilla Reloads with your Barclaycard Arrival and paying your bills will get you 64% off all your travel!
What are Vanilla Reloads?
Vanilla Reloads are cards sold at some CVS and 7 Eleven and they can be loaded up to $500 for a fee of $3.95. These can then be loaded online (or even through the internet with your smartphone) onto the American Express Bluebird card with a limit of $1000 a day or $5000 a month.
The Bluebird is not a credit card. It’s a card that’s meant to replace a checking account and does not have any fees. In fact, you just sign up for one by ordering it online. There isn’t even any pull on your credit. Once the funds are loaded onto the Bluebird, you can use the card to pay bills such as rent, mortgage, tuition, utilities or any place you can send a check or debit card. The Bluebird is issued by American Express, a very reliable financial institution I trust with my money.
I wrote a full post on using Vanilla Reloads and the Bluebird Card for more information.
64% Off All Travel
If you buy $1,000 in Vanilla Reloads, you pay $7.90 in fees (2* $3.95) and make $22.00 in cash back towards travel (2.2% * $1000). It’s actually $22.17, but let’s not be picky on cents and decimals! If you use this method, then for every $22.00 you spend on travel, you save $14. That’s 64% off all your travel. Every $100 in travel expenses will cost you $36.
I know that’s a lot of numbers and a lot of information so let’s go over the steps to getting 64% off all travel with the Barclaycard Arrival:
- Before you book your trip or travel expense, buy Vanilla Reloads with the Barclaycard Arrival to pay your bills until you have enough miles. For every $100 in travel, you need to spend $5,000 on Vanilla Reloads. This will cost you $39.50 in fees and you will get 2 miles per dollar for 10,000 miles. You will get the 10% rebate automatically later, but you need all 10,000 miles up front when you redeem.
- Once you have enough miles, use your card to pay for your travel. This can be any air ticket, hotel, vacation package, cruise, car rental.
- After the purchase posts, log into your Barclaycard Arrival account and select that you want to redeem miles for your travel expense. It will charge you one mile per cent, but then you’ll get 10% of the miles back.
How much vacation credit can we earn in a year?
Let’s put the numbers in perspective for two people, perhaps a couple, using a Barclaycard to buy Vanilla Reloads to pay some large bills where each person has a Bluebird. If each person buys $5,000 a month on Vanilla Reloads, that’s 10,000 Barclaycard miles a month or $110 towards travel expenses. After a year, the couple will have 240,000 points good towards $2640 in travel expenses. That’s one CVS stop a week. They will have paid $948 in Bluebird fees. So that’s $2,640 towards any vacation travel expenses for $948. And if you count the sign-up bonus of $440 per person, that’s over $3500!
For a couple, $2640 can go a long way towards a nice vacation or some family travel. It can buy two tickets to Europe (costing under $500 each, as a result), pay for a lot of family visits or pay for a full vacation to Hawaii, even covering meals at the resort and other incidentals. However they use the $2640 credit, it only cost $948 out of pocket. And the best part is, they just book their vacation with the card however they want.
Some people may want to sign up for additional credit cards and use Vanilla Reloads towards minimum spending requirements. That’s a great strategy also and sign-up bonuses from additional credit cards are certainly a great way to get even more miles. Maybe you earn United miles for your plane tickets and then use Barclaycard miles to pay for the hotel. Even if you put $15,000 of spending on Vanilla Reloads toward other credit card sign-up bonuses, you still have $45,000 in Bluebird capacity left over and can still earn over $2,000 in travel credit with the Barclaycard. There’s plenty of Bluebird capacity for both strategies!
In addition, there are certainly other cards that you can use for Bluebirds and Vanilla Reloads. While my Citi ThankYou card offer gave me a 5 point bonus for spending at drugstores, the sign-up bonus is much lower at 15,000 points and Citi has been known to shut down accounts for those that purchase Vanilla Reloads so I would be extremely cautious with that card. Finally, paying bills with the Barclaycard won’t make you rich in terms of travel. Those who truly value flying business class can possibly earn a higher return per mile than 2.2 cents. I personally split my Vanilla Reload spending between the Citi ThankYou card (because I don’t want to get to aggressive with it) and the Barclaycard. The true appeal of the Barclaycard is the $440 sign-up bonus for only $1000 spending and the flexibility of the points. I wouldn’t sign up for the Barclaycard just to earn 2.2% cash back or buy Vanilla Reloads. However, since I already have it, this is a great card to use given I value most other individual miles or points below 2.2 cents.
Card Application Link: Barclaycard Arrival World MasterCard
Summary
- The Barclaycard Arrival World MasterCard (my full review here) offers $440 in travel credit after spending $1000 within 3 months and an additional 2.2% cash back towards travel on all further spending.
- Buying Vanilla Reloads with the Barclaycard Arrival yields 64% off toward just about any travel expenses such as plane tickets, hotels, cruises, car rentals, hotel incidentals, etc.
- A couple buying Vanilla Reloads on a regular basis to pay large bills can earn over $2,000 in travel credit at 64% off and still have enough Bluebird capacity to meet spending requirements on credit cards with other sign-up bonuses.
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(In the interest of full disclosure, I do get a referral if you apply for a Barclaycard Arrival using my link. I always include the best offer I can find regardless of referral. As always, thanks for your support!)
Assuming 1 person is maxing out only 1 Bluebird, then the Barclay arrival card is earning $840/year.
This puts things into perspective IMO. That’s not very much. Although it’s also possible to beat that with a points earning card that’s bonused, most valuations of points are similarly rate at < 2 cpm according to FrequentMiler and MileValue. By that standard, none of this game is very rewarding. Still, the premise of non-fixed rate value points is that there are hidden values in redemption sweet spots, routing flexibility (stopovers/23-hour layovers), and in aspirational awards. It becomes difficult to place a value on those things, since there isn't actually an alternative product available that let's you do those things. In general, I figure that $840/year is not worth my time, but that the hidden value from awards allows a different kind of travel with lots of 23-hour stopovers, lounges, and riding in business class for approximately the cost of flying coach. I say, take the $444 bonus, and dream a little bigger for your rewards. Sorry that was long.
Some good points and discussion there :) You’re absolutely correct that if you want high-end aspirational awards and luxury business class travel, a more aggressive mile collecting strategy is probably more appropriate and this may involve signing up for more credit cards and getting more bonuses. But I do have lots of domestic travelers among the readers :) For those that don’t want to sign up for many credit cards and just want the simplest, easiest card to use for simple travel, this can be quite nice. Although $840 profit may not be much to someone who is used to jetsetting around the world in luxury, it can be valuable for those who need to save up for vacation, particularly because they can use it on anything. A good example is Svetlana’s parents; they don’t travel much at all, but would like to take a Caribbean cruise in the winter. Given their CVS is close to their grocery store, they’re just stopping by every once in a while and will be able to pay for their vacation this way; their cruise incidentals will be 64% off too! Most other miles are reasonably valued at less than 2 cents each so, if you have a convenient opportunity to buy Vanilla Reloads, this is a good card to do it with to save up for that extra vacation that may otherwise strain your budget.
Wow, awesome post! I am definitely in that boat where an extra $1000 or so can go a long way to a nice family location and it’s great that I don’t need to look around for awards. That’s always so complicated! Your post about the Barclaycard is actually the best one I’ve ever read because it really explains all the different ways to use it. Vanilla Reloads and free vacations, here I come!
I like the math oriented approach, however you are missing one vital link. That is the opportunity cost of using some other card to buy the Vanilla Reloads. You could for example use the Fidelity 2% cashback card, in which case you would earn $20.16 for your $1,000 purchase. The only benefit the Barclays card is the end of year rebate, which is pretty darn small (0.2% of the spend, not enough in my book to cover the liquidity premium of being restricted to just travel expenses). In other words you could do a year of spending and get $2,640 in travel credits, or about $2419 in cash. So the user gets “paid” $221 for agreeing to only use for travel purposes. Indeed it is a complete fallacy to think that the only cost of obtaining any kind of point through any gift card/reload scheme is just the cost of load fees. The real cost is 2% of your spend plus the load fees – you are basically buying those points at $0.02 per point earned. So when I use my Citi TYP card at 5% I am basically earning an additional 3% of spend minus load fees which is a good deal, possibly higher if I use for flights. But if I use say my SPG card I am buying points at $0.02 per point plus fees (which may or may not be a good deal)
Anyway enough geeking out, more importantly, WTF do you buy these things in Manhattan? I can find them by the bucket load down in NC but can never find any up in NYC
It’s true that cost is relative to opportunities… e.g. if your’e a contract worker making $500 a day, a weeklong vacation actually costs $2500-$3000 more (though maybe it’s offset by relaxation effect, which is hard to put a price on), but that’s not how most of us think of it when making vacation decisions in this context. When an individual makes an investment, he thinks of his personal return as the nominal portfolio return, not the return over, say, treasuries (yes, industry measures are different). It only makes sense to compare in terms of cost to what someone is already doing and already spending. If someone is already buying Vanilla Reloads with a Fidelity cash back card, then yes, he only stands to gain $221 by agreeing to only spend this on travel. I would still take this trade as I would 100% have travel expenses that I would otherwise be paying cash for, but I don’t already have the Fidelity card. If one doesn’t already have the Fidelity card, using the Barclaycard returns an extra $221 *and* the opportunity to not have to sign up for an additional credit card that someone is not interested in otherwise. Like I said, there’s no reason to sign up for the Barclaycard just to run VR, but if one already has it for the sign-up bonus, it’s among the solid choices given its flexibility on travel.
VR in NYC is a real problem… I tend to stock up when visiting parents in NJ or on vacation in other states… like Maine! Seems you take a similar strategy. :)
I like this post and your response to the opportunity cost argument. It makes no sense to “subtract” the 2% that you could’ve gotten elsewhere when you’re talking about how much you can make buying VR with your Barclay card. Like you say, it’s something to consider when you are deciding which card to put your spending on, but it doesn’t mean the return is anything less than 2.2%, it just means that another card may be better if you’d prefer getting real cash.
I like your blog and the math. :-)
Will you be at the Chicago Seminars? I think I heard recently you’ll be at FTU, but I won’t be going to that one.
Thank you for the compliment on the blog. I will be at the Tampa FTU, but won’t make it to Chicago. I have a trip to LA scheduled that weekend. But I hope you have at the Chicago Seminars, if you go!
When redeeming points for travel, do you need to have enough points to cover an entire cost; or can you do a partial redemption?
You can redeem as many miles as you like for a statement credit, but cannot redeem fewer than 2,500 and it can only be for Travel categorized purchases within the last 90 days.
Hi Professor :)
I have a challenge for you:
I am looking for cards to apply for my AOR, I need 2 or 3 more options, and I came across this one:
Travelocity AMEX from Barcaly.
I researched it but want your opinion on comparing it head to head with the Arrival card.. which is better?
The Travelocity comes with 10,000 bonus after meeting the spending req, 3 points @ Travelocity.com and 1 point elsewhere, redeeming 1 cent per point (so 10,000=100$), BUT, at 20,000 a point =2 cents (20,000=400$).. and NO annual fee..
The weird thing is, this card did not get much attention as I found only sketchy reviews about the “current” card (I say current because it was a MasterCard before).
What do u think? Up for the challenge and possibly a great review :) ?
I’ll be happy to take a look at that card and provide a side by side comparison!
Putting $5000 on month on Vanilla Reloads on a Barclay card is going to set off red flags at Barclay into have your account looked at and closed. These things should be done in moderation.
I have not heard any stories of Barclaycard accounts being shut down and pay my bills regularly with Vanilla Reloads via credit cards. But if you have an sources that state otherwise, do send me a link! :)
I did 20k last month with a CL of 5k, and have not been shut down.. i am going to cool it though as it’s an awesome card!
What is the difference between Barclaycard Arrival and CapitalOne Venture? The Venture is also 2 mile per $1 spend and no restriction on redemption
They are similar. CapitalOne Venture is 2 miles per dollar, equivalent to 2% cash back. Barclaycard Arrival is about 2.2% cash back, but only to spend on travel. Because the Barclaycard Arrival miles are so flexible, I find it nearly the same as cash back as I always have some flight, train ticket, taxi ride, hotel meal, etc to spend the miles on. Another downside to CapitalOne is they will pull all 3 credit reports for the application causing hits on all 3 bureaus whereas Barclaycard will pull just one.
i don’t understand why you buy vanilla reload cards. would it not be the same or even cheaper to just use the barclay’s card for the same dollar amounts and pay the balance in full each month, thereby saving the $3.95 charge for each reload? can you clarify this for me please?
The purpose of Vanilla Reloads is to expand your credit card use to transactions that don’t take credit cards. As an example, many of us can’t use a credit card to pay rent or mortgage, but the Bluebird allows you to pay these bills or write a check. It’s more like a checking account than a credit card.
Of course, as you said, there is no purpose in paying the $3.95 fee to load funds to the Bluebird and then using it to buy groceries, which already takes credit cards. You may as well use your Barclaycard to begin with :)
Barclaycard Arrival terms:
“Cash Equivalent” means the use of your Card or account number to obtain money orders, traveler’s checks, foreign currency, lottery tickets, gambling chips, wire transfers, person to person money transfers (including but not limited to transfers facilitated over the internet), or the use of your Account to open a deposit account or to TRANSFER VALUE TO A STORED VALUE CARD at a location or through a merchant other than a financial institution and any other transaction that MasterCard, Visa and/or American Express (as applicable to your Account) may designate as a Cash Equivalent. Cash Equivalents and the Transaction Fees associated with any Cash Equivalent are considered Cash Advances for interest calculation purposes.
may included VRs (the rep at Barclay was very clear that a VR was a cash equivalent) and possibly even single use/gift cards. Just because you haven’t been caught doesn’t mean others shouldn’t consider the risk. Also, the local Walgreens will not accept credit cards to pay for VRs (no CVS in state).
Doesn’t loading a bluebird require a trip to Walmart with a 1k daily limit?
Thanks,
Paul
Just curious why you’re planning on downgrading – the break-even on the annual fee is about $8100 in non-travel, non-dining spending. Sounds like you’re planning on at least $60K in non-travel spending – that’s worth nearly $600 more, even after the annual fee . . .
You’re correct. It does not make sense to downgrade if I were to continue to spend $60,000 on the same card as then I’d only be earning 1.1% and it makes sense to pay the annual fee in that case. I also don’t quite do all $60,000 as I split between different cards. However, if I spend say $20,000 on this card, then the annual fee would cut the cash back to 1.75% (as opposed to 2.2%). I’d rather go with a 2% cash back card or miles at that point and not be hit with that annual fee :)
Thank you for all the tips on your blog. I am a newbie and catching up on the basics. I started with this card and would like to expand my expenditure on it however I read somewhere that the Vanilla Reloads are no longer available – do you have any suggestions for alternatives – thanks :)