The key to accumulating incredibly more travel rewards is to simply always focus on huge credit card welcome bonuses. So it’s absolutely vital to know how to meet more minimum spending requirements and higher minimum spending requirements.
The minimum spending requirement is an amount of purchases to make on a credit card to get the welcome bonus. We have a detailed guide on minimum spending requirements with important warnings; here, we focus on the tips to meet them.
You can almost certainly meet higher amounts than you think. Flytrippers helps you travel for less with its free newsletter specifically about travel rewards, its ranking of the best current offers, and its infographic summarizing all the basics.
Here are 6 tips to meet the minimum spending requirements to unlock credit card welcome bonuses.
What are the 6 tips to meet minimum spending requirements?
There are 6 main tips to meet minimum spending requirements:
- Time your card applications with your planned expenses
- Pay for absolutely all your expenses
- Pay with bill payment services (rent, taxes, etc.)
- Pay for your friends and family’s expenses
- Pre-pay your future purchases (including the refundable hotel tip)
- Pay for things you can get reimbursed or resell
I’ll obviously explain them below.
But it’s important to understand that using these tips will allow you to accumulate so many more rewards. Literally hundreds of dollars per year, even thousands if you want to maximize.
When the minimum spending requirement is low, like only $1,500 in 3 months, it’s obvious that almost no one needs these tips or to make any effort.
But not using the tips and settling for little… makes you miss out on so much free travel. Sadly, when the biggest bonuses have higher spending requirements, many mistakenly think it’s too much.
Don’t forget to read our tips and strategies regarding minimum spending requirements.
Let’s look at each tip to meet more requirements or higher requirements.
Tip #1: Time your card applications with your planned expenses
That means applying for those with minimum spending requirements that match your planned expenses in the following months, to maximize well.
You sometimes have big expenses to make during the year: new furniture, renovations, car repairs, and especially trips.
It’s vital to take advantage of these big expenses to meet more requirements or to meet higher requirements.
To be very clear, you should never wait (the most common basic mistake)… you should always apply for one or more cards when you’ve finished unlocking your bonuses.
The tip is NOT to apply only when you have big expenses. Not at all. It’s just to time the right applications at the right time. Not the same thing.
Tip #2: Pay for absolutely all your expenses
Forget your old cards, your debit cards, and your cash. Forever. Stop throwing money in the trash.
Use your expenses to unlock bonuses. Simple.
It’s the most obvious way to meet more requirements or to meet higher requirements.
If you want to maximize, it means a bit more extra logistics to even change the cards on monthly subscriptions and pre-authorized payments.
At the end of the year, that can represent an extra welcome bonus (so at least $500 more very easily).
Tip #3: Pay with bill payment services (rent, taxes, etc.)
An incredible innovation that you need to stop missing out on!
Bill payment services, like our favorite Chexy, allow you to pay your rent, your property taxes, your income taxes, your car payments, your tuition fees, your insurance, and plenty of other huge expenses.
There’s a payment fee, so it’s ONLY savvy if you use this to unlock welcome bonuses you couldn’t have unlocked for free or to unlock more welcome bonuses.
(Or with the Scotia Momentum Visa Infinite Card, which gives you a 2.25% net profit on all your payments on Chexy, in the worst case!)
It’s absurd to blindly want to avoid fees (like with credit card annual fees). Saving the payment fees but missing out on huge welcome bonuses worth $1,000 is far from savvy.
Using Chexy makes it so much easier to earn a lot of rewards.
Tip #4: Pay for your friends and family’s expenses
This is separate from your Player #2, as spouses/partners are called in the world of travel rewards. Your P2 is considered to be you. Your rewards strategy needs to be common and coordinated.
This tip is about your friends and family, and is especially useful for those who spend less but still want to meet more requirements or higher requirements.
It’s a tip for both your loved ones who like travel rewards and those who don’t.
If your friends and family are also interested in welcome bonuses, you can help each other by alternating so that each of you has an easier time unlocking welcome bonuses during the year. You alone might not have enough spending to reach requirements, but together you do.
If your friends and family pay by debit or in cash, it’s even better for you (even if it’s obviously terrible for them, and you should educate them on this subject). You can pay their expenses and give them a small gift card in exchange; it’s better than the $0 they would have accumulated.
I remind you that 1 of the 6 most important things about travel rewards is to learn more, and one of the best ways is to bring one or more friends with you into this wonderful world. It makes everything easier, whether it’s improving and becoming better, staying up to date on all the promotions and offers, etc.
I’ll be speaking at the Points Travel Festival in Toronto in April, and that’s a great opportunity for you to make many new friends who love travel rewards.
Tip #5: Pre-pay your future purchases (including the refundable hotel tip)
It allows you to shift your expenses into the time period when you have a welcome bonus to unlock.
So you can respect the deadline, or in other words, so you can indirectly get a longer period of time to meet the minimum spending requirement.
This tip is not to meet more requirements, but it allows you to meet higher requirements.
Ideally, you don’t want to prepay for too long because you lose the opportunity to earn interest on your money.
(At the very least, the 2.75% with the free EQ Bank account; a must-have for all travelers to also get free withdrawals at foreign ATMs and no foreign transaction fees, with no credit check!)
But obviously, that’s way less than the value of getting more bonuses, or getting bonuses with higher requirements.
There are a few ways to pre-pay your expenses:
- Gift cards
- Prepaid credit cards
- Refundable hotel trick
- Monthly bills
- Charity
- Points sales
Gift cards are fee-free and are the simplest way to prepay expenses. Stop thinking of gift cards as only for gifts; they’re a vital tool in the world of travel rewards.
You should buy your gift cards on Rakuten to get free cashback (in addition to the free $30 from their own welcome bonus via our Flytrippers link), which compensates a bit for the cost of fronting the cash (lost interest).
Except in 3 situations where it’s better to buy them at the gift card racks in grocery stores, convenience stores, and other stores:
- When your merchant isn’t available on Rakuten
- In-store racks have more choices
- Familiarize yourself with their selections
- When you use a credit card that gives 5X points
- The minimum you should always earn on everything
- If you sadly aren’t unlocking a welcome bonus
- When the store has a gift card purchase promotion
- It happens more and more
- It’s often worth it
The only warning that always applies to gift cards is that you obviously lose the free insurance offered when you pay for everything with your credit card (extended warranty, flight delays, etc.). So that doesn’t matter for groceries and plenty of other expenses, but it’s not recommended for electronics or flights.
Prepaid credit cards are a very similar alternative, but it’s really less recommended than the next one, which is free and simpler.
The refundable hotel tip is an excellent trick that lets you prepay a large amount, with no fee. It lets you indirectly extend your time period to meet the requirement, by several months.
You book a prepaid hote; that’s fully refundable (they often are, but it’s too little known and it costs a lot not to know it, for real reservations).
Then, you can refund it before the hotel’s cancellation deadline, provided that you have done the required spending equivalent to the value of the hotel. To be very clear, you cannot refund the hotel until you have done the equivalent spending; the bank will clawback the bonus points. That’s not savvy.
The tip is not to avoid doing the required spending, it’s to give you more time to do the required spending.
We’re going to redo a very detailed updated article on the refundable hotel tip very soon.
Monthly bills are another trick. If your mobile plan is $50 per month, you can prepay a few months. It’s just less recommended, because it’s more effort for small amounts.
Charity donations are another trick. If you were going to do it anyway, you could move it up and do it when you need to meet a requirement.
Points sales are the trick to use as a last resort. If you absolutely have no way to meet the requirement and you have no spending to plan in the short term, you can take advantage of points sales. It lets you prepay for future trips without having to decide anything.
As we’ve been telling you for years about Aeoplan point purchase promotions, we don’t often recommend this avenue (even with the frequent 100% bonuses; imagine without a bonus). But it’s better than missing a welcome bonus, obviously.
Tip #6: Pay for things you can get reimbursed
Creating spending for yourself allows you to meet the requirements and then get reimbursed in some way.
Many travel rewards enthusiasts put a lot of effort into finding ways to create spending that doesn’t really exist, but banks very strongly disapprove of these ways (because that spending doesn’t really exist).
That said, there are a few legitimate ways to create actual existing spending for yourself. Think about everything you can pay yourself and get reimbursed in some way.
The 5 main ones are:
- Your credit card insurance
- Your employer’s insurance
- Your employer’s expenses
- Your reseller talents
- Your entrepreneurial ambitions
Credit card insurance is great. It’s the easiest and most accessible to everyone, but it’s not scalable at all (it can’t be done on a large scale).
When your flight is delayed or cancelled, you’re entitled to a simple reimbursement of $500 or $1000 (depending on the card) for hotels and meals. That gives you more spending to meet more requirements or higher requirements.
You have to take advantage of it!!! This is on top of giving you more points for future trips and much better hotels/meals than what the airline offers (if it offers any).
Medical insurance is another trick too. If you have any, your employer may be more permissive about the reimbursement process.
Your employer’s expenses are quite a bit less frequent. But if you have a company credit card for work-related expenses, it’s certainly worth taking a few minutes to ask your employer if you can pay for them with your card and get reimbursed instead.
When I was a management consultant and a client wanted me to be in Edmonton the next day and the plane ticket cost $2000 roundtrip, I was very happy to be able to put that on my own card and get reimbursed!!!
Reselling skills require a lot more effort. But I have to mention it because many people create a lot of spending this way.
It involves buying something you know you can resell without a loss, or even with a small loss that is less than what you earn through the spending. It creates spending for you.
The most popular ones are buying electronics and concert tickets, which are highly in demand, and reselling them without a loss. Others take advantage of their knowledge of coins and all collectible items. In the United States, the big trend was even buying gold bars at Costco and reselling them!
Entrepreneurial ambitions are quite simple: having any kind of business involves costs. If you manage to create value and sell your products or services for more than it costs you, in addition to making a profit, you’ll be able to use those costs to meet requirements.
I’m very involved in the entrepreneurial world, and I encourage you to get started for many other reasons that have nothing to do with points, obviously. But it’s a nice bonus!
For example, for ourselves, all of Flytrippers’ costs allow us to meet more requirements and higher requirements.
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Summary
It may seem intimidating to have to meet more minimum spending requirements or to have to meet higher minimum spending requirements. But it’s quite easy to do by knowing the simple tips and it gives you a lot more welcome bonuses.
What would you like to know about these tips to meet minimum spending requirements? Tell us in the comments below.
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Featured image: Mono Lake, California, USA (photo credit: Mick Haupt)
