$350 just to park a little money? Sign me up.

Manufactured Spend

Manufactured Spend is a rather esoteric branch of the Travel Hacking field. It focuses on ways to build up your travel currency through activities that require you to spend little, if any, money, and we all know we can’t go anywhere if we don’t have money, miles, points or a “rich uncle”. We’ll be talking about the first three here at TravelZork over the coming months. You’ll be on your own searching for that rich uncle. Right now we’re going to focus on how to get some money for almost nothing.

Chase has a large number of credit cards that are excellent for Travel Hacking. One of the best is the Chase Sapphire Preferred Card. You can usually get sign up offers that will yield you up to 50,000 bonus miles after an initial spend of $3K or less. Their Hyatt and Marriott branded cards are also both good. Their annual fees are less than $100 per year (sometimes waived in the first year) and you get one or two free hotel nights every year. Used wisely that one benefit more than offsets the annual fee. I’ve used my Marriott free night at the Ritz Carlton – Atlanta / Buckhead each of the last two years, and used the Hyatt free night to get a free room that was upgraded to a Suite as a benefit from my status as a Hyatt Diamond.

Chase has been aggressively opening brick and mortar banks in 25 states all across the US. They are also courting new customers with some really good offers. Free money kind of good offers. I call this a Manufactured Spend strategy because you don’t have to spend any money to get this money. You only have to agree to park some money with Chase for a while and you can earn $350 that can be put to work paying for your next vacation. There are two components to this deal: A $200 bonus for opening a Chase Total Checking Account and a $150 bonus for opening a Chase Savings Account.

To Receive The $200  Checking Bonus:

1) Open a new Chase Total Checking account, which is subject to approval;

2) Deposit $25 or more at account opening; AND

3) Have your direct deposit made to this account within 60 days of account opening. Your direct deposit needs to be an electronic deposit of your paycheck, pension or government benefits (such as Social Security) from your employer or the government.

After you have completed all the above checking requirements, Chase will deposit the bonus in your new account within 10 business days.

To Receive The $150 Savings Bonus:

1) Open a new Chase Savings^SM account, which is subject to approval;

2) Deposit a total of $10,000 or more in new money into the new savings account within 10 business days of account opening; AND

3) Maintain at least a $10,000 balance for 90 days from the date of deposit. after you have completed all the above savings requirements, Chase will deposit the bonus in your new account within 10 business days.

You can apply for this offer here: Chase $350 Offer

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