(Hurdy Gurdy Travel Podcast)
Justin of the Hurdy Gurdy Travel Podcast remasters and re-releases an episode recorded 2–3 years ago with twins Eric and Bill Dickerson as a tribute to Bill, following his death from stroke-related complications.
This conversation captures their early journey into miles and points and creative spending: credit card welcome bonuses, bank account bonuses, gift card reselling (including buyers like CardCenter.cc and QCGC), and using ACH payouts to help meet bank bonus requirements.
They also discuss finding an edge with online gambling in Pennsylvania and New Jersey using blackjack strategy, casino promos, referrals, and gift-card-funded play, plus stacking everyday savings with grocery and gas rewards (Giant, Price Chopper, Weis) and easy wins like CVS CarePass.
Throughout, they emphasize starting small, managing risk with split tender and varied transaction amounts, and building confidence over time.
Since this recording, their strategies helped unlock meaningful travel, including trips to Aruba and Florida. Bill will be missed.
Bill Dickerson Obituary:
https://www.poconorecord.com/obituaries/psom1417872
Timestamps
00:00 Points & Miles Intro
00:36 Tribute and Re-release Context
02:50 Meet the Twins
03:26 Origin Story and Getting Started
05:31 Making Money Gambling
08:09 Casino Promos and Referrals
09:51 CVS CarePass Easy Wins
10:55 Grocery Points and Free Gas
14:41 Manufactured Spend Mindset
16:28 Learning Curve and Cashier Hurdles
20:08 Gift Card Suspicion
21:16 Reselling and Arbitrage
22:07 Bank Bonus Stacking
24:09 Time Value Strategy
25:17 Store Rules Reality
26:26 Split Tender Tactics
29:28 De-risking New Cards
31:33 Hobby Mindset Wins
33:19 Start Small Advice
34:26 Travel Rewards Wrap-Up
35:37 Final Takeaways
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Rough Transcript:
Travel at low cost with points and miles. Credit card rewards bring the smiles. Many adventures tales to be told, make and save money, the world will unfold.
Fight the war on happiness. Pick up the gold. Hurdy Gurdy Travel Podcast breaks the mold.
Hi everyone. This is Justin from the Hurdy Gurdy Travel Podcast. Before we get into today’s episode, I wanna share a few words. What you are about to hear was originally recorded about two or three years ago when twins, Eric and Bill Dickerson were just getting started with miles and points and creative spending.
At the time, they were learning the ropes, asking great questions, and beginning to see how powerful these strategies would be. They came on the show to talk about their start and encourage others to get started [00:01:00] with miles and points and explain some of the basics about creative spending. Sadly, about a week ago Bill died due to complications from a sudden stroke.
I wanted to remaster and rerelease this episode as a tribute to Bill. Bill was a good friend, had a great sense of humor, and was passionate about learning how to make travel more accessible and affordable. He also did a lot with creative spending in the hobby. We talk about bank account bonuses, gift card reselling, and much more.
After this recording a few years ago, bill and Eric went on to have real success in this space. They used benefits for a trip to Aruba, several visits to Florida and other travels they probably wouldn’t have taken otherwise.
It was inspiring to see how quickly they applied the ideas in miles and points and creative spending and what they learned. This episode captures them at the beginning of that journey, curious, motivated, and excited about what was possible. Bill will be missed. I’m grateful for the time we had, [00:02:00] the conversations we shared and for the impact he had on Eric and in Miles and points in general.
He was part of my local group and community chatting online, came to a few events and we chatted on the phone quite often. Unfortunately, that has ended, but I will keep in touch with Eric, who was also on the episode and survives following stroke complications of his own several years ago. This episode will be rereleased in Bill’s memory.
Some of the information is dated, some no longer relevant. I’ve taken out some of the information from the original recording, so it’s a shorter episode. But enjoy the episode today recorded several years ago, but lots that is still relevant in 2026.
it’s the start of 2024. Happy New Year, and three people in one episode for a Hurdy Gurdy. First. Indeed, you’ve got a set of twins to go. I’m onto that. [00:03:00] Yep. Sometimes they can’t tell you apart in person, but the voices are definitely different. For today’s recording, you can definitely tell our voices apart, so that’s a good thing.
We knew each other through a community philosophy group a while back, and I sent you a few things about the credit cards, about some different things that we’ve been doing, and I’ve been talking about in podcast episodes, and eventually you started with Chase, signed up for bank accounts, credit cards. So what is your origin story?
How did you get here today for the recording? I had a stroke seven years ago and I worked through it for a number of years. But unfortunately when I lost my job, I had to start trying to find alternate ways of making money and I first started by doing like a print on demand through Etsy.
I tried to YouTube a couple YouTube channels as well as affiliate marketing, but none of it seemed to be working. And I saw the type of success you were [00:04:00] having with this. So I thought it was a good opportunity to give it a check. To be honest, I was a bit skeptical to begin with, but I figured you were successful, so I’d give it a try.
Yeah, it’s been about a half a year now, so we’ve been doing that and we’ve been successful. We started out with the other things and we’ve got into this because we saw how you were doing and basically we started we started slow with getting the Chase Sapphire card, we had a history before of doing credit cards to get the airline miles.
We were aware of that previously because I had some airline credit cards before starting this. So we did, we were aware that there was ways to make money through credit cards, and we had done some bank bonuses before, but it was normally just like once a year we do a bank bonus and we get a credit card.
Once in a while we saw an offer for the airlines and we didn’t really look into what the best offer was. We just. Saw something that we thought looked okay and we went for it. Yeah. You maybe had [00:05:00] about three or four personal cards, a spirit card with Bank of America, Amex, Delta personal card, and some others, but you didn’t see the larger picture of ways to increase spending in creative methods and getting these bigger bonuses.
We just thought it was a, every once in a while. So the answer to everything is more credit cards.
As past podcast guest, Darren Remsberg has said, yes, more credit cards more checking accounts and more gambling. Oh yes, definitely more gambling. Always the answer. Some people are skeptical about that too, of, oh, you’re gonna lose so much money and this and that, but we found ways to optimize using the Pennsylvania websites in particular and some in New Jersey you’ve been doing.
So can you tell us about that? How are you making money gambling? We’re making money gambling based on the fact that we largely do Blackjack and we use the Blackjack strategy guide. Which is basically a 99.6% return to player. When [00:06:00] you factor in that we use, we say during, we try to play some during promotions, and then even when you’re not using promotions, you’re purchasing gift cards through your credit card to put ’em in there.
You’re getting points and miles while you’re doing it. You’re playing with an edge every time you play. Yes. As long as we’re making up for about that half percent, and typically we’re looking for 2% or more for it to make sense as you’ve been sourcing these prepaid cards and gift cards at grocery stores and many other places where there’s more than just say, paying a 5 95 activation fee on 500 and only getting one X or only 2%, you’re getting bigger edges than that. People will be surprised at how often the casinos give the edge. For instance, wind Creek on slots will give you the edge twice a week, Tuesday and Thursday with their promotions.
Bally Casino usually gives you an edge once a week. You can usually find an edge on Fanduel [00:07:00] and DraftKings here and there as well. There’s a lot of edges to be had, even on just the gambling websites to not only be getting the point with your gift cards, but also end up on top with the gambling as well.
We’re in it for the long game here that some days we’ll have some losing days gambling, but overall, if we have a consistent edge and we put in a large volume, we’re going to reach expectation and that variance is going to even out over time. Yes. On the face of it, we’re giving up about a half percent, but with the bonuses, the credit card rewards, the gas, the groceries, the statement credits and much more.
We’re really crushing it. Yeah. I think that just mentally is a hurdle that I still struggle, but then you just have to get back and do it again.
You might have some days where you’re down a few hundred, but there are other days where you’re definitely up more than that. And I suggest people start at small betting units, practice off the table to learn the strategy. Using trainer apps and using the chart, maybe even a deck of playing cards.
Whatever works for you. Not [00:08:00] everybody’s gonna learn the same way. But definitely with repetition, with practice, you recognize the patterns over time and we’re looking at the strategy chart right as we’re playing. Another way I think we come to get an edge that I don’t know that a lot of people do is we’re getting some of our friends to sign up for these offers.
’cause when you sign up for the new promotion offers some of these online casinos have some pretty big first time signups. Wind Creek has a $400 deposit match. BetRivers has a two 50 deposit match where you get, you put two 50 in, you get two 50. We’re having them sign up for ’em, but we’re basically going purchasing gift cards and then they pay us back once they get their winnings.
That way we’re getting more of an edge. with Wind Creek, we’re taking $50 for every person we sign up for it out of their winnings. And with Bet Rivers, you get a referral bonus. By getting them to sign up for it you can further purchase cards and guarantee an edge on your end as well.
Yeah. So everybody [00:09:00] wins as you’ve met people that didn’t want to put up the money or they’re afraid, or I don’t want to gamble or whatever. I’ll just use my money and just gimme $50 and I’ll do it for you. So I like it. Yeah, just gimme 50 bucks and I’ll do it for you.
It’s been a few months, and it’s just consistent winnings with the online gambling, the ups and the downs. But overall, it’s like the stock market up into the right. Yes, it’s been up and with all the other stuff we’re doing as well like gift cards and we’re getting giant, giving away free gas and everything.
Oh yeah. September was the first vanilla visa three X promotion that happened and I was on an Alaska cruise, so it was the travel hacker’s dilemma, but I definitely made a statement in November and December when they ran the promo again. And then the CVS, I swear, CVS just ought to gimme the store because every week I’m getting like two, four dollar, three dollar, off any order, so I have to go.
Oh yeah. Can you explain that? The CVS Care pass program? Yeah. The CVS Care pass, I think is it 49 95 per the year? Something like that. You [00:10:00] get $10 a month free stuff from CVS. They load on your anniversary date every month $10 into your account so you can get $10 of free purchases.
It comes out to 120 per year. But what I’m finding is that I’m getting an extra $4 off, an extra $3 off, like once or twice a week on top of that. It’s really coming back to being a big savings with CVS. As a beginner, that would be something very easy for anybody to get into. Yeah, that’s gonna be very profitable, like gonna get them some extra money throughout the year.
Yeah, very low commitment threshold, just paying the annual fee, and I think CVS just wants you to forget about it. Like people just sign up and they never use the $10 credit or, oh, it’s only $10, so I’m just gonna let it go. But that’s a very easy win, and I imagine that most people in the audience are going to go to CVS and
buy things occasionally, whether it’s cold medicine, cough medicine, some personal hygiene items. It should be pretty easy. We have the first world problem of too many grocery rewards. I’ve just been sourcing all of my [00:11:00] pharmacy items at Giant and some other places. You have Price Chopper in your area.
You’ve been overrolled on groceries recently. Can you explain that? Price Chopper was doing the points for for buying the gift cards. They were giving away points. I think at one point it was four times points for the golf cards.
The golf MasterCard for the listeners, right? Yeah. Can explain that. The golf MasterCard. Yeah, the golf MasterCard you buy. You’d buy 500 worth of them. And then you get $40 worth of groceries.
Yeah, so you’re paying probably the 5 95 or 6 95 activation fee, but you’re getting back $40. You’re getting in the credit card spend. The edge on that is really spectacular. That’s just like a hammer it just drop everything in World tour, maybe multiple Price Choppers, multiple visits multiple days.
How much do you get up to, you have maybe 800 or $900 in grocery rewards somewhere around there. Between the two of us. Yeah, we had somewhere around there. We haven’t paid for groceries in probably three months or gas between price chopper and [00:12:00] Giant. And we’re good through the end of February with gas being maybe the only thing that might run out mid-February if something doesn’t change.
But then we could always go to Weis points for a dollar off on that. Weis has been really generous too, giving the points on game on DraftKings, maybe some of the MasterCard. Super Bowl promotions coming up if you want some hot sauce and paper towels for the Super Bowl I don’t know how many paper towels you’re gonna get to fill your storage area.
I’ve been good on paper towels for a while. Might you find yourself buying like 10 rolls of paper towels. They’re 99 cents or there’s some free I think it’s Helluva Good dip. The Weiss near us is not as good with the promotions as a Weiss voice near you, but they seem to be getting some of the newer promotions.
It’s been 99 cent, 18 count eggs Free ice tea. Free ice cream. I’ve been calling it Weis Tea and Weis Cream, so hopefully we don’t whale out and get really fat from all the free stuff. That’s definitely a danger of the hobby.
My perspective, since I’ve been doing this is i’ve [00:13:00] got more frugal about my grocery shopping too, I’m looking more for these deals. I’m also looking for ways to get better buying stuff that’s on sale more often to get more value. I’m looking for deals and will stock up when I see a deal to get stuff.
It’s helped me change my mindset to be more frugal about my shopping too. Yeah, just don’t be like the giant PA Savers Club Facebook group where someone bought four jars of mayonnaise. We talked about that in a previous episode.
The mayonnaise expired and there were like 70 people in the comment section. Call corporate, go to customer service.
Yeah, you gotta make sure you’re buying stuff that doesn’t have a short, you don’t want to be stocking up on milk or yeah, milk or eggs for months. ’cause that’s all going to go bad. You want to be stocking up on stuff like body wash. But it is fun to supermarket sweep. Have you had dinner at Price Chopper? Maybe Salad bar, maybe the sushi section? We’ve had dinner. Our price Chopper is not honestly that good for that type of stuff. Oh, you might have the smaller price choppers, [00:14:00] but I know Edwardsville, Pennsylvania has the Market 32 location that has a lot of fresh foods. Yeah. This is, it’s about 10, 15 minutes away. It’s in Marshall Creek, which is a smaller town.
That’s a let down. Yeah. In the past when Speedway gas stations had big promotions, there would be certain speedways that would have a big storefront and others we called a speedway hut that they just had the gas pumps and that was it.
So very discouraging Speedway. Yeah. We unfortunately we do not have speedways by us either. So Wawa has entered the scene though, right? We just found out that our local Wawa is now starting to carry the Draftking gift cards, which is very beneficial, fee free, sneaky spend. Some people get confused about this and they think, oh if you have to spend $4,000 in three months to get a signup bonus, then you’re just gonna be spending money on random stuff and overspending. What’s been your experience? I’ve actually found the opposite is the case. I’ve been actually spending less.
You can get spending, if you just [00:15:00] go out and purchase something that has no value to you to purchase it. Yeah. That’s probably not the best thing.
Most of our spend went through the gift card and then running it through the casinos. That’s where we’re finding most of our credit card bonuses. Like sure, we will do occasional, regular , ‘ few. That’s few and far between. It’s mostly the gift cards
that we’re getting that are bringing us to the spend and we’re bringing that right back through either the casinos or gift card reselling as well. We transcended organic spend. I never have to rely on regular, everyday, or organic spend to meet a signup bonus anymore.
It is nice if it lines up okay, I have an auto insurance payment coming up, so if I have a new card and I’m working on a signup bonus. That’s awesome. But if I don’t, I’ve never struggled to hit signup bonuses. I’ve never been within a week and, oh no, I’m a thousand short, and now I gotta go out and buy some Louis Vuitton clothes or Supreme, these t-shirts that have just the word Supreme.
[00:16:00] And maybe we’re just gonna charge you extra money because it says the word Supreme. But I got my t-shirts for free at Giant. I don’t know about you, but I have a lot of Philadelphia Phillies t-shirts. People think I’m a Phillies fan, but I’m just wearing the shirts from Giant. It’s all right. Go in the frozen section.
They got some T-shirts there. If I’m gonna be spending it anyway, I might as well do it on the card sometimes just to move towards the next card quicker. Yeah. Yeah. It can definitely help quicker, but most of it is all manufactured spend.
Yeah. And how was the learning curve for this? At first, I imagine it was a lot of information for you. We were keeping in touch as I said Hey, if you start this, I’ll definitely give you the support because I appreciate you using referral links and we’ve known each other for some time, so I’ve been mentoring you guys.
We have the online group chat for Greater Philadelphia Travel, which meet up in Willow Grove, Pennsylvania. And you’ve gone to the in-person meetings. It’s been fairly easy in terms of the learning curve. There’s not too much complicated with it.
And we’re [00:17:00] always able to ask you a question if we have a question that comes up about when to use what cards in what situations. Probably the hardest part on the learning curve for me is sometimes pushing myself out of my comfort zone.
’cause you’re a little nervous about certain spends. But once you get past that. It’s all good. I think the biggest thing is getting over the amount of money you’re gonna be churning through. Churning through thousands of dollars, like tens of thousands of dollars, and you’re going through all these like gift card, it starts off as a little bit intimidating, but once you get doing it, everything flows together it’s a pretty quick learning curve. What I would say is you want to make sure when you start you don’t want to start too fast. You want to get into it, get a feel for it. Get a feel for how everything works, and go faster as you get moving for further and get more comfortable. Yeah. The first time I told you about the fee free MasterCard, it’s a Staples. For instance, I remember I said, just go in, buy one [00:18:00] card for $200 instead of just going in and making a bigger purchase.
And just learn how it works because you won’t be as nervous, you won’t be as intimidated. And after you’re comfortable, then you can buy more. The comfort level depends also on the cashier, how comfortable it is, because those are the cashiers, they tend to make up their own rules.
Oh, cashiers making up their own rules. Yeah. You went to Price Chopper.. You were trying to buy a $400 game on gift card for sports betting casino sites. And they were trying to tell you, oh, you can’t buy a gift card that’s $400. Even though the packaging said $400 on it, and even the manager got involved with that one.
They were coming up with that you could only purchase up to $300 because it was after 7:00 PM Oh. But when we got there, we were trying to check out, it just got past seven because I worked till six 30 and we went up right after work.
It got after seven because we were trying to buy DraftKings gift cards and they only sell them via cash. It used to be credit, but then that [00:19:00] died. I don’t want to pay for cash for DraftKings gift cards when I can get points for it by buying it at another spot.
We went back to get the game on. And at that point our cashier was saying it’s after 7:00 PM we can’t sell gift cards. And then the manager, he couldn’t show anywhere where it said it, but he backed her up. At that point, eventually we convinced them to do it.
They did eventually do it though but it was a bit of a hassle and a bit of talking to get them to do it that night. Yeah, it gets complicated ’cause I try to be logical and assume that there’s reasons for stuff, but the cashiers sometimes just shut it down and say things that make no sense.
I would show cashiers, they say oh, we need to see a card and an id. I show ’em the card and ID, and it’s we just can’t do this. Okay, here’s my card and id, oh, you can use cash for the transaction if you want to. I think that’s funny. A wad of hundreds is okay, but a credit card with an ID isn’t? Some people might feel frustrated about this or it’s weird I spent this time to go in the store and you’re just gonna shut me down, even though I met your expectations, and then you’re just putting up more [00:20:00] hoops.
Sometimes I just have to walk away. It doesn’t always work arguing with them and maybe sometimes it’s best to just walk. Yes, but it’s tough to tell. To me the wad of hundreds would be more questionable. That’s less traceable than a credit card. Yeah. Yeah. So you would think that somebody walking in with no idea and just a wad of hundreds going in and buying a gift cards would be more suspected of fraud than somebody with credit cards. Yeah. And I try to explain to the cashiers I’m doing this because there’s a promotion and I’m getting the credit card rewards otherwise I’m just not going into price chopper and buying like $1,900 in gift cards without a promotion.
But I try to explain that at first because yeah, it could seem suspicious to them or other people aren’t doing this, or, oh, it’s all fraud, it’s all money laundering, whatever nonsense they want to say. Like I, I got accused of money laundering by a worker at Cheesecake Factory when I tried to buy a $50 gift card and that was a whole thing and the manager came over.
There’s a little bit of hassle sometimes in the social interactions, but I think nine times outta 10 or even more than that, it goes really [00:21:00] smoothly. I think the cashier who gave us problems at Price Chopper has figured out what we were doing. I think she thinks now we’re smart because how many free groceries we’ve got. ’cause we’ve been back through her line multiple times with free groceries.
You mentioned the gift card reselling, so can you give us a quick explanation about that and how that’s been going so far? Card Center is the one we tend to use primarily, but we do use the other one on occasion as well. For listeners that’s CardCenter.CC and Taylor Thomas of qc gc.io, they’re usually buying the gift cards.
Either break even or better. It’s even better when you get some arbitrage out of it and make some extra money on it. Either way, you’re getting better and you’re getting all the money back, right? So it’s a little bit of America loves maths, or maybe we see something like Lowe’s is 10% off and we’re selling it for 90%.
Even though we’re breaking even, we’re still getting credit cards spend and [00:22:00] rewards, we’re able to stack many things and we’re also getting paid through ACH, which is triggering bank account bonuses as well. You wanna be using that to get bank bonuses on top of that because they will send it as so it does qualify as meeting the requirements for bank bonuses.
I have a Wells Fargo bonus that’s about ready to go in as soon as my payment goes through. we have three credit cards that I’m trying to get my bonus on online. We note some advantages here, like we talked about finding an edge in blackjack because a lot of these companies will put out these promotions
as marketing efforts. They’re hoping to get new customers. We’re able to take advantage of these things and try to scale deals and make money from this. I think most people outside the hobby, maybe they’ve just been using the same bank account for the last 20, 25 years, they haven’t thought about opening new ones.
They’re reluctant to do it, but we’re signing up for multiple accounts to get these bonuses, and it’s been consistent wins. As I always say, the wins continue [00:23:00] for now months for you guys. Just starting out, you’ve easily pulled over a thousand or 2000 a month being pretty consistent with this.
Plus a lot of the rewards that are maybe gravy or extra, it’s hard to quantify exactly what it is. People say oh, how much did you make an hour? It’s really missing the point because we’re doing really well overall and getting a lot of free stuff that’s not as quantifiable.
Yeah, that’s the one thing sometimes figuring out how much you’re up is a challenge because it’s a mixture of groceries, gas points, everything’s all over. You get a whole bunch of stuff. You can get these checking account bonuses relatively quickly the spending on the gift cards and paying through the gift card reselling. Yeah. And big bonuses. And then another thing with checking bank accounts is I didn’t realize that some of these savings accounts have such a high interest returns.
Laurel R oad checking has 5% on it. Yeah. That could be a game changer for somebody over a course of a year getting little extra money. That’s easy if you can [00:24:00] change your bank account over just like one of those that has a. 5% interest rate on it, you’re getting money out of it and it’s pretty low effort.
Yes. And we’re always thinking about is the effort worth it because I’m not about to take a 15 minute detour to save $2, but I’m happy to take a 15 minute detour for a play that’s worth maybe 50 or $60. Yeah. Or even more than that in some circumstances. It’s just valuing your time. Making the right decisions.
And I like to bundle stops. If I’m going to my Weis location, I can make three or four stops on the way, stops in that area. I’m never just going 30 minutes to go to one place and then going home. Usually I’m trying to bunch my travel or to try to do things on a certain day rather than spacing it out.
There are a lot of ways to do this. You’re doing the math at home, you’re doing the research, the scouting. Whatever you need to do and those road trips can be valuable even if you’re only staying within maybe 30 or 40 minutes from home or even closer than that. And a lot of what we’re doing is also online.
Yeah. A lot of it you can do right from home, which it makes it [00:25:00] great for Eric because with his inability to drive from a stroke he can do stuff while he is at home, buy stuff online which is great for his disability. Yeah. We’re definitely trying to be location and job independent in that way.
And you could do this on your own pace. Now sometimes there’s a deal, it’s today only like we saw the Thanksgiving Dollar General deal. Some days it’s wow, every stop might be worth $30 or so, $20.
Dollar General is notorious though for making up their own rules. They love to make up their own rules because you’re going to one Dollar General, they’ll let you pay with the credit card.
But when you’re going for the deals that you can make, like $30, it’s worth it to even you’re getting $30 just for even using your debit card at that point.
It’s just not as good as when you can use the credit card. You might go to the one, the same dollar General the next day and you’ll have a different cashier and that will no longer exists anymore. Yeah, it’s still worth trying to use. I would still suggest, even if a [00:26:00] Dollar General’s telling you that they don’t take credit, try it the next time you get a, you could get a different answer From everybody.
Sometimes I’ll just say, oh, maybe we can try and see if it works. Because sometimes cashiers will say it’s not going to work. And I say can we try? And then surprise, surprise, it actually works. Yeah. I’ve had that happen at many stores that I already knew it worked at.
The cashier will be like, I don’t think this is gonna work. Can we try because I’ve done it before. It’s going to work. Yeah. Surprise. Split tender. Can you describe that for listeners as this has been a way to de-risk and disguise spend in many ways.
You wanna keep your when you put on your credit card, you wanna keep sub 300. Because it will disguise the spend from the credit cards as the over three hundreds and will look like it’s the won trigger fraud alerts because all fraud. Yeah. You want to be doing a split tender of under 300 for each card to make sure, and you really wanna try to make it like an odd amount as well.
Make it [00:27:00] different amounts so it’s just looks like organic spend. That way it doesn’t trigger fraud alerts as often. You still might get one. I had my American Airline Citi card reject me for fraud 1.0.
Citi loves the fraud alerts. Yeah. Yeah. They love their fraud alerts, I had to call and it went well. Yeah. If I were to buy a $505.95 card with a promotion, I’ll say to the cashier, can we split this between two credit cards? Okay, let’s do the first one for
$297 and 33 cents and then put the rest on the other one. Some places we can control that. Like giant, they have a button that comes up that says this amount, correct, yes or no, hit the no button and just change the amount because sometimes cashiers can mess up. I’d prefer to take the matter into my own hands.
I think you recently got approved for a new card. You went, you told the cashier to split tender, the cashier said it was okay, and then they ended up just doing a larger transaction that you really didn’t want. I don’t think he knew what he was doing. I told him I was trying to just split tender and I gave him the amount and he is okay go ahead.
And I thought he did it. [00:28:00] Then it turns out that the whole thing was charged and this was at Weis. The unfortunate thing at that point is once it’s done. Yeah. Because they can’t really at that point, even if they undid it the credit card company’s still gonna see the 5 0 5 charge.
Yeah, and it might even be more suspicious for them to undo it at that point then. Yeah. At that point you’re out of luck . It doesn’t happen all that often, but it will happen on occasion.
It’s more often that when you try to spit tender that they’re gonna try to tell you that you can’t do it. How can we try it and it won’t work. It will work. They can always split tender. It’s just they don’t want to do it. And I think that’s some of the thing that gets a little
the cashier’s on the fraud thing is because split tender. You wanna be trying to tell ’em that you’re splitting, give a reason why you’re splitting the tender if they ask for it. Yeah. Be social with them, explain the process, it’s not too much effort to do that, and they’ll just see you as a better customer or more legitimate, whatever.
Yeah. That’s suspicion, unfortunately is there, they don’t really know how this works. [00:29:00] Sometimes they don’t even know their own promotions, which I find funny. There was no meeting in the morning explaining what was going on. Former podcast guest, Heidi used to work at a Starbucks and she would often say that there was a meeting where they would explain the new things, the new promotions, the new flavors, the new menu items, whatever.
There was decent management to that extent. But at some of these grocery stores, they’re just like, oh, that’s not the case. Or You won’t get this. Or they’re pulling out the flyer and looking at it. There’s a degree of patience that’s required. And with the split tender it’s just a matter of de-risking.
If we have to spend something like 3000 or 4,000 in three months, there’s no need to go in there and hammer like a $1,500 transaction at a grocery store for your first transaction. That just doesn’t look as legitimate, that the credit card company might not honor that spend as part of the signup bonus.
So we’re just de-risking as we know we can get there. It’s just being patient with the spend and spreading out transactions, different merchants, different amounts. Yeah. You gotta be careful. You don’t want to flood your credit card either. It depends on the credit card because some of them would have the [00:30:00] higher threshold that you have to meet.
You don’t have to a card that’s spend 3000 in three months to get there. You’re gonna get there relatively quickly anyway just by doing your splitting tender.
I’ve heard in other spaces it’s a marathon, not a race, we’ll get there. It’ll be okay. Just do things in the right way. Don’t try to get over excited about getting there. It doesn’t really take that long to get there when you’re doing it.
’cause you’re gonna be going through gift cards and casino, online, gambling site you’re gonna have spend through purchasing gift cards, buying online casino gift cards and everything. I think I’ll note about the buying and reselling gift cards is also when you go, you wanna make sure when you’re doing that, that if it’s a a gift card site is probably not best to use for your new cards.
You want to use older cards for that because when they say gift cards it could trigger it not being credited for you too. Yeah, like gift cards.com, my gift cards plus [00:31:00] egifter stuff like that just looks really obvious as spend. And the terms do include that spend doesn’t count, but some spend actually does.
And it’s whether the rules are enforced or not. There’s just some discretion that you need just understanding these programs and again, just trying to de-risk and just be strategic. You had the learning curve initially, like learning the basics of these programs, and now I’ll just call you and just do a checking in, but you’ve been able to mostly do this stuff by yourself at this point.
Once you’re into this and getting more accounts, more into the weeds of things, you can scale and get even more. It’s constantly an interesting game for me. It’s fun, it’s profitable. I think it’s a good hobby. We’re still having fun. Some of the critics will say, oh, that sounds like a lot of effort.
That sounds like a lot of work. It sounds like a lot of work, but once you get into it, it doesn’t feel like a lot of work. I find it it’s more creative so as opposed to my job where it’s tedious. I feel you’re trying to figure out how to get deals, make money.
It’s actually more fun [00:32:00] to do it. People don’t want to do the bank bonuses. they say that’s too much work. But then it takes them 15, 20 hours a week of work to get that same 300 they would’ve got from the bank bonus and like a 30 minute period at most.
Yeah. Work sounds like a lot of work. Too much work when it really would take ’em all like 30 minutes at most to sign up for a bank bonus. And get everything set up to do it. When I first started with this, I thought that people that were working maybe like 10, 15 hour jobs
would be more motivated to do these things. But then I saw that wasn’t the case and my hope for humanity went a little bit down. The song Misanthrope by the Band Death- some good, some bad opinion, dangerous, right? Not all people will have the motivation or other reasons they’re skeptical or who knows?
I’ve tried to get a lot of people in, obviously you guys got in. But not everybody wants to play ball. We hear all these reluctant statements and I say look, if I can do it, I’m showing you these pictures. Don’t have to be all in. Maybe you could just do a few things and start small and see how it goes for you rather than, [00:33:00] oh, travel’s so expensive.
Oh, the price of gas I heard the other day the price of butter is so expensive. People from other states are messaging me. It’s I wish I had giant in my area and that I could just use the grocery rewards. ’cause not a lot of people have that in their grocery programs. I’m spending money on groceries anyway. I’m spending money on gas anyway, so if I can save money on that’s like making money in some way. It’s pick your own adventure. What do you want to do? You don’t have to do everything. I don’t do everything. You can definitely pick some things and start with the bigger things.
If you don’t want to go all in, you can just go small, make a little extra cash for an extra vacation here and there. Work your way up and work as you feel comfortable. It doesn’t take much to make like an extra like $500 a month and it’s very low effort at that point. You guys have been going to Las Vegas a lot, so when you’re ready to deploy the capital dollars here of all the points and free nights and so much more, it’s gonna enhance the quality of your next trip and you’re going to spend significantly less.
Yeah, it’s definitely a improvement. It will make your life a whole lot better. [00:34:00] It’s something you can do on your own time. It sounds like it takes a lot effort, but it really doesn’t to make enough to make a meaningful change in your life.
Yeah. Maybe they’re mindlessly scrolling through X, formerly known as Twitter, or watching random stuff on Netflix and then complaining that it sucks. It’s okay, if you could spend some time looking into this, and I’m happy to help of course, and many other communities, many other places to learn this information and apply it.
I’m still having fun since I’ve been doing this in 2018, I’ve taken numerous trips that I never would’ve paid for multiple cruises, Alaska, Hawaii, Italy, Greece, and many more locations to come. That’s for sure. Yeah. You can get stuff that’s all inclusive
and then you won’t be paying a dime and you can do different things that you never would envision doing. Yeah. I flew in business class to Europe in a lay flat seat. I don’t do as much international travel. It’s mostly domestic for me. But the cruises, I think, would’ve retailed around $1,500 plus all the taxes and fees.
I’ve gone on some that were zero taxes and fees, and [00:35:00] then the taxes and fees in many ways can be offset by rewards. A 10 day Caribbean adventure recently had the Alaska cruise. These were really cool experiences that I otherwise wouldn’t want to do. People think, oh, this is a once in a lifetime opportunity.
I can’t afford this. Or I can only travel once a year, once every two years. This is false. If you have the financial discipline, the organization, and you put the effort into this I think that most people can do this. Yeah. And I think a lot of people would actually find it more more interesting than they think it is. ’cause it’s a challenge trying to find ways to make money get these things done going through it. I find it fun and something that I look forward to trying to make money. Any final words as we get to the end here? Don’t be afraid to try it. Just jump in and start to do something small and see if it works for you. Even if you just start with one credit card and one bank account, see how that goes and then keep going forward from there.
And it’s definitely can be a life changing experience. I definitely agree. Just start small, one card, one bank account [00:36:00] and open a couple of the casinos. And go from there. And then you can start getting more and more going on it. As you go, as you get more used to it. Yeah. We’re really fortunate to be in Pennsylvania and have the online gambling because people from other states, they’re like, oh, I wish I had that.
Especially Californians. I hear a lot from Californians. For some reason California doesn’t like online gambling, but Pennsylvania definitely does, as does New Jersey. I think California’s talking about legalizing it, so they may. Oh, they’ve been in talks with the tribes for a long time. Yeah. We’ll see. We’ll see. The war on happiness continues brought to you by the Indian tribes in California and the land-based casinos. Yeah. All right. Thank you for joining me today. All right. Thanks for having us.
Travel at low cost with points and miles. Credit card rewards bring the smiles. Many adventures tales to be told, make and save money, the world will unfold.[00:37:00]
Fight the war on happiness. Pick up the gold. Hurdy Gurdy Travel Podcast breaks the mold.