Being Nice to Your Friends and Family Pays Bluebird Dividends
I’m sure no one is surprised to hear that many of my friends and family like taking advantage of miles and points. They are friends with me, after all! When a good deal comes up, many of them are likely to jump on it… like the 100,000 American Airlines sign-up bonus available right now. The issue is that these deals frequently come with a high spending requirement; in the case of the American Airlines credit card, it’s $10,000 within 3 months.
Of course, many people don’t spend that much within 3 months on their regular everyday spending. And that’s why most end up signing up for Bluebird and using Vanilla Reloads to pay bills. As an overview, Bluebird is a checking account alternative. To load Bluebird, we can buy Vanilla Reload cards at CVS or Longs Drugs for a fee of $3.95 and load them with up to $500 at a time. The limit is $1000 a day or $5000 a month. These are then loaded to Bluebird and Bluebird can then be used to pay bills. Once they can add in their bills to their credit card spending (rent, student loans, paying by checks to contractors, etc), meeting the $10,000 spending requirement within 3 months is often no problem.
Once my friends and family members have these miles, I am very enthusiastic about making sure they use them wisely… that includes free one-ways, helping with award searching and genuine training when time allows. In the past year alone, my family has booked trips to Hong Kong, Thailand, the French Riviera, Mexico, skiing in Vancouver, Australia, you name it. They could not be happier with all the free travel they’re getting and, quite honestly, they’re completely hooked!
But what happens to their Bluebirds? Once the spending requirements on their new credit cards are met, some end up finding little additional motivation to keep earning incremental points paying bills with the Bluebird. This makes sense as earning 1 point per dollar may cause them to skip visiting CVS that month altogether… except for those that have a credit card that earns bonus points at drugstores, which I still do. I can earn 5 points per dollar for my Vanilla Reload purchases and bill paying so I am always motivated to go! And that’s a big part of how we plan to collect Citi ThankYou points for my trip to Easter Island this year!
With all the help and guidance I provide them with their trips, my friends and family are more than happy to let me in on some unused Bluebird space. After all, you can bill pay to anyone from Bluebird. I am extremely lucky to have a big family and some very close loyal friends.
My parents each have a Bluebird, but they are more than happy to let me use them whenever I want. After all, they know I’ll make sure all their trips are covered anyway so they’re never starving for points. Since my mom has the Citi ThankYou card, they are quite diligent on going to CVS and buying Vanilla Reloads themselves… but then again, I am an authorized user on my mom’s card so I frequently end up helping them out.
My cousins all love me at this point after all the free trips I’ve helped them book. My cousin Roman, for example, just visited Asia in December with a great American Airlines deal. With a busy consulting lifestyle and, of course, no drugstore category bonus card at this point, working CVS visits into his lifestyle is a bit of an obstacle. But being the generous person he is, he is happy for me to have his Bluebird at my disposal… until he needs it for a sign-up bonus, that is!
Svetlana’s parents have the Southwest Companion Pass and are happy as clams flying between Kansas City and San Francisco to visit family and paying half the miles every time. They do tend to make it to CVS time and again to collect miles on their Barclaycard Arrival World MasterCard, which earns 2.2 cents per dollar in travel credit for all spending. Nevertheless, they are always happy to let myself and Svetlana use their Bluebird space.
So there you have it. Be generous, surround yourself with generous people and you’ll always have everything you need… including all the Bluebird space you want! It goes without saying that we should share our knowledge and ideas with those close to us anyway without expecting anything in return. Having more ways to earn points as a result is just icing on the cake!
Wow, this post is very funny. I am jealous of your family members for all the free miles and points advice… can I be adopted into the family? I can bring two Bluebirds into the mix!
We’ll take a vote on it at the next family reunion… we’ve been looking to diversify the cousin portfolio ;)
MP – how do you earn 5x on CVS VR purchase? I look at Citi website, no mention of drug store purchase with 5x rate? There are 5 CVS within 4 miles of where I live and they usually have VRs, would be nice to boost earn rate by 5x!
Unfortunately, the Citi ThankYou card with the 5x bonus at drugstores is no longer available. Even if you send in an old brochure, they respond saying “The offer is no longer available”. The other card I have, though, is the Wells Fargo card which offers 5% cash back at drugstores, grocery stores and gas stations in the first 6 months only, but it has no annual fee. This card often requires a banking relationship with Wells Fargo, though people can sometimes get it by applying in person at the local branch.
I loved that. I’m trying for big trip for next January. I think I’m your long lost cousin. After all, we both in NYC. Lol. Thanks for sharing.
Wow, good luck collecting those points :)
Sadly all of my cousins, uncles, aunts etc are all either British or Canadian and lack the magical 9 digit number that unlocks all these doors…!
Guess you’ll have to wait until the kids are old enough. I know you’re already training them :)
are the various rumors that CITI treats VRs & other prepaid products as cash-advance purchases?
what about the amount of manufactured spend you charge to citi accounts.. are they as liberal as Chase? as strict as AMEX? in between? 20k VRs/month?
Vanilla Reloads are no problem as these are just drugstore purchases. More “cash-like” purchases like Amazon payments will incur a fee, however. I have not bought anywhere near that many Vanilla Reloads so have no experience with that, as I am an authorized user on my mom’s Citi ThankYou card, my own and my Wells Fargo card. With all these options, I do not spend extremely much on any one card! :)
i see. to which fee are you referring please?
(“Amazon payments will incur a fee”)
Citibank will charge a cash advance fee for cash advance transactions like this. However, if you buy a reload card at a drugstore, that does not… although, of course, the cards themselves do have a small fee ($3.95 for $500 loading).
Hi MP. I’m going through your GH kauai notes again. Did u take the Wailua kayak tour from the hotel? If yes, do u recommend it?
Depends on a few things… I am going to have a post coming out in the next 2 days (almost finished!) where I discuss that tour in detail… the positive and negatives :)
I enjoy receiving your emails and reading your posts. they are well thought out and clear.easy to understand. I am having a problem locating Vanilla Reloads. I live in Central New Jersey, and the CVS stores here have stopped carrying them. When I asked the managers for an explanation, they all say that CVS will be going “cash only” for VR (much like Walgreens). I have picked them up in Brooklyn, NY, and actually bought $10,000 when on vacation in Sanibel Island, Florida (gorgeous over there!). But I need to find them near my home. Any ideas?
Hey MP,
I have a friend who is willing to let me use his BB space.
Can you tell me how you use other people’s accounts especially with regards to their passwords, emails, phone numbers, pins, etc?
Thanks,
Bill
Great! So you cannot buy Vanilla Reloads anymore with credit cards, which means you have to go to Walmart to load them with prepaid Visa gift cards… but multiple Bluebirds make it more efficient! For that, you’ll need the actual Bluebird card to load funds onto. Then, in order to pay bills, you’ll need the person’s username, password and security answer word to log in. Then, when paying a bill using the Bluebird BillPay, you’ll also need the PIN. You really won’t need any other personal information or address at any points – he’ll just get an email when you load money or initiate payments.