How to Meet Minimum Spending on Credit Cards - Debit Gift Cards to Money Orders

Buy Debit Gift Cards and Liquidate with Money Orders at Walmart

This method is the bread and butter for many manufactured spending enthusiasts. There are many places to buy gift cards, but you can not just buy any gift card. You are looking for Visa or MasterCard gift cards that say "Debit" that allow loading up to $500. American Express Gift Cards will not work for this method. AMEX gift cards are never set up for debit transactions. Visa and MasterCard debit gift cards are the only ones that will work for this process. If they do not say "debit" than they will not work. 

All of the gift cards have a fee which varies from $2.95 to $6.95. Find the gift cards with the lowest fee possible. Grocery stores and department stores often sell gift cards with a $5.95 fee.

Once you buy the gift card(s) you will have to set up a pin. The process for doing this depends of the debit enabled gift card. Many of them you just call the 1-800 number on the back to set one up.

After you set a pin, you go to the money center at Walmart and ask to buy a money order. Money orders cost $0.70 each. Money orders at Walmart have a maximum of $1,000 and you are limited to two money orders per day. To minimized the fees as a percentage of the total being manufactured it is best to do a $1,000 money order with two $500 gift cards. If you paid a $5.95 fee each for two $500 gift cards plus the $0.70 money order fee your total cost for manufacturing $1,000 is $12.60 or 1.26%. This is fine as most points are valued at more than $0.01 per point. And you are doing this to get a large sign up bonus. You probably would not want to buy $500 gift cards with a $5.95 fee just to earn the points unless you have a category bonus with your credit card for example that gives 2x points at grocery stores.

Note: Walmart is not the only location that sells money orders with the ability to use debit cards, but Walmart is one of the cheapest locations to buy money orders.

Additionally, do not buy One Vanilla Visa Gift cards. I use to buy these frequently from Walgreens. These gift cards no longer work as debit cards at Walmart.

Hint: I usually ask for a money order at Walmart for $999.30 which is two $500 gift cards minus the $0.70 fee.

Once I have the money order in my hands, I fill it out with my own name on it and deposit it to my bank account just like you would a check.

If you have any questions or comments, leave a comment and I will be happy to respond!