Suggestions to rack up points with Premier Visa

[megandgarr]

Hi all,

I hope all the creative budgeters can help with this. I am trying to figure out all the possible and less obvious ways to add up more reward points with my Disney Premier Visa. It was not an upgrade, so I do not get the 5% for 3 months (darn), but I do get the 2% on gas, dining, groceries & Disney purchases. Aside from the most common ways to build up points (use it to buy groceries, pay bills, etc), what are some other less obvious ways that I could use the card to build points. I do not plan to carry a balance on the card, so I am only going to use it to pay bills, or buy what I would ordinarily be able to pay for at the time and then pay it off each month. Our trip is in October and so far we have only paid the room deposit (pre-disney visa) and bought airline tickets (with the visa). I thought maybe I could use the visa to buy Disney gift cards at the Disney store and use those gift cards to pay the balance of my room. Will that work? Any other ideas out there to get the most points that I am not thinking of?

Thanks much!!!!

 

[nordkin]

Why not pay the balance of the room with the card, get the 2% for using it to pay for the room, and get 6 months interest free to pay it off?

 

[scottmel]

Last year my idea was GENIUS. I ordered money from www.usmint.gov. 5k worth to be exact and thereby I earned 500 southwest gift card and 2 free round trips. Sadley they don't allow this anymore......Can you buy a bunch of gift cards to be used to pay off your trip? And if you do so thru Giant Eagle or Kroger you earn free gas. For example Costco doesn't accept Visa but I order their gc using visa over the web.

 

[MisWal]

What about buying visa gift cards at the grocery store to use for other purchases that you would not get the 2% back on? Department stores, etc.

 

[Marionnette]

What about buying visa gift cards at the grocery store to use for other purchases that you would not get the 2% back on? Department stores, etc.

Visa gift cards require an activation fee. The fee is usually high enough that a mere 2% back on your credit card is not enough to make it up.

 

[scottmel]

Visa cards are 3.95 or so to activate. Huge rip off I think......Buying the money was awesome for me b/c there was no cash flow issue. the money paid the bill. to rack up serious points NOW you have to put out the cash and sit on 5k in gift cards which you could do but that is a cash flow issue for some

 

[megandgarr]

These are all great ideas, please keep them coming!!! I was also thinking that I could go to Fry's (aka Kroger) and buy gift cards for stores that I would be to going anyways, i.e. old navy, starbucks, etc (as long as there is not an activation fee). This way I would earn the 2% for the grocery store purchase, then use the gift card to make the purchase at Old Navy, starbucks, etc or wherever I am going instead of only earing 1% if I had just used the visa at Old Navy or something like that. Now I just need to check and see which store gift cards that Fry's sells. It might be an inconvience to do it this way, but every Disney Dollar will help.

Nordkin, Thanks for the suggestion - I guess it would be easier to use the visa to pay my room balance (as opposed to my brilliant idea to buy Disney gift cards - duh), but I I dont think I want to do the 6 mos no interest because I dont want to carry a balance at all. My rule that I have imposed on myself, is that if I dont have the cash in the bank account, then I wont use the card. I am going to treat it like a debit card. If I only pay a portion of my room balance at a time, will that automatically earn the 2%, or does that only apply when the whole vacation balance is paid at once?

 

[megandgarr]

On 2nd thought, now that Frys (Kroger) is offering the 4x fuel points, I think I will use the visa to buy Disney gift cards. By doing this I will earn disney rewards at 2% plus save on gas at the same time.