Every two weeks or so, Staples offers a promotion for Visa/Mastercard Gift Cards waiving the usual 6.95 activation fee. There is typically a daily limit of eight card purchases per customer per day.
How to Earn Chase Ultimate Reward Points
This can be an easy points-generator for Ink Cash, Ink Preferred, or the older (no longer available) Ink Plus cardholders. Many of the Ink cards offer 5x times points for office supply store purchases. Going into the store, a fee-free $200 Gift Card would net you 1000 Ultimate Reward Points per purchased Gift Card.
Many times Chase will have offers such as $25 back off a $200 purchase at Staples. Adding the Chase offer to your Chase credit card allows you to get Ultimate Rewards Points in addition to the Chase offer.
How to Use Up Your Visa/Mastercard Gift Cards
Offloading gift cards can be challenging if you are buying the maximum per promotion but, if you are only buying a few at a time, less so. I rarely hang onto the gift cards and instead cash them out rather quickly as there is less worry about losing them or fraud issues.
You can use the gift cards to pay for the following :
- Car insurance payments, for instance Geico lets you make payments on the amount due for your insurance bills.
- Cooling/Heating bills. Check with your providers if they have an online bill payment option
- Medical bills. Hospitals and medical centers are always happy to take a payment
- Mortgage: some mortgage companies will allow you to pay part of your mortgage with a card without a fee.
- Trip deposits, many require a deposit for part of the full amount
- Planned trips, if you know a trip is coming up shortly, having a few Gift Cards you can use for trip expenses/souvenirs is nice.
How to increase the value of your Chase Ultimate Reward Points
Coming soon, how to increase the value of your Chase Ultimate Rewards points.
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