I dont disagree with this instinct. But it has nothing to do with forecasting interest rates - a mere 6 of your churn cycles and you’re almost to the point of having earned more than that 5-year CD will earn over it’s entire lifetime. PLUS you’ll still have another 54 months to continue earning whatever the current CD rates are; even if it’s less than the currently available 3%, it’s just gravy on top of what you would’ve earned anyways.
What can I tell you, glitch99. To me the CDs are the serious stuff. The side hustle is just a hobby . . on the side . . and not about really big money. Fun? Sure it’s fun to make 10-12% APY. It’s not fun when they close down your cards, as happened to me twice within the last year (see up thread).
I cannot bank on a side hustle. I can bank on “money in the bank”. Then later, and only a few months from now, I will go back to having fun.
And by the way, it does frighten me a little that you agree with me on prospects for interest rates. What’s the world coming to anyway.
First and foremost, you can safely ignore this post . . and this entire thread for that matter . . unless you have time on your hands and nothing better to do with your time. There’s nothing here that will be helpful to anyone. As it has been from the beginning, this thread is more about my personal saga.
Glitch99 advised me to go one way if I wanted to make the most money. Glitch99 was RIGHT!! But I went the other way anyway. Why?
Gut feel. It came down months ago to my having too little money to do a proper keep-alive of my PSECU add-on CDs. Those CDs are voracious eaters. They gobble funds.
So I completely, temporarily, shut down my side hustle, which has been the subject here from the start, in order to conserve every last nickel I could. Months have passed, as you can see from the date stamp on that last post.
And things have worked out! 
I still have both PSECU CD’s going, paying 3.25% APY, and at the middle of next month my “ship finally comes in” when a big CD I own matures at last and I can finally stop scrounging for funds and restart my side hustle. In fact:
Because of the way various dates (i.e., the calendar) have fallen, I was able last week to do two side hustle CD’s “Just for Fun” (Thank you Linus Torvalds! 
). This worked out because I will not need cash for them, to pay off the credit card charges, until after my CD matures.
I did a 3% reward at B of A and a 2.5% reward at Alliant. Not big money at all when you consider last year I was charging at a rate exceeding $100k/month. But still fun. It was the fastest $200 I’ve made, tax free, in a long while. And I’ll have my dough back at the end of April for a yield multiplier of over ten. That’s an annualized return of between 25% and 30%, tax free. Is it any wonder I liked this game so much! 
Now much less exuberance:
The taxable yield on my two short CDs is as low as any time I’ve been running this hustle: 0.1% APY. This really does not matter because one does this to collect the rewards. But still, it’s an indication of everything that’s happening. From the same counterparty, last year, my short CDs were yielding 0.7%. Again, not a complaint . . . but certainly a sign of the times.
Finally the really, really bad news, a true kick in the head but something over which I have no control:
First of all, bank mergers are horrible; devastating. I’ve never revealed my counterparties on this thread because that would be giving the hustle away entirely. But my most important counterparty, the bank which has sold me many tens of thousands of dollars of short CDs and allowed me to pay with a CC, is merging with another bank. Soon.
I have a great relationship with that bank, and with one representative there in particular. Thanks to the merger, he has been fired. And the acquiring bank is shutting down the mechanism I need to do more CD purchases. So it’s curtains for me, as well . . . at least there.
I have only one other iron in the fire, my last hope. It’s a four multiplier so twice as good as everyone’s old standby, GTE Financial. If this pandemic causes that opportunity to go away, I’m finished. You cannot do this side hustle without counterparties.
At least I’ll still have those PSECU CDs. 
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FAB RIP
Now it can be told. As pointed to in my earlier post, my principal and most important counterparty no longer can accommodate my side hustle needs. It’s truly a sad day (for me).
Anyway, in the interest of providing full disclosure I want now to disclose the name of the counterparty that made me so much money:
First Advantage Bank
Yeah, it was a bank, not a CU. FAB is in northern Tennessee. I stumbled on their amazing offering purely by chance. It was like falling into a buttertub.
But FAB is now gone. It was just absorbed into something called Reliant Bank
Reliant Bank takes over FAB . . . . sadly
I had never heard of Reliant Bank before they swallowed my cash cow. It was a lot better before they showed up and shut me down. One of the very first things Reliant did was to eliminate FAB’s “buy CDs with a CC” facility. Reliant Bank sucks. But I guess all good things eventually come to an end.
To bad!
Seems like I remember First Advantage Bank. How long ago?
I think I started with them back in 2018 (or was it 2017?).
Anyway, yes, FAB was featured on Ken’s blog a while back for some sort of checking deal I think. I’m really not sure because I did not participate in that deal. But it was popular at the time. And anyone could become a customer back then.
More recently they closed things off and would only do business with people living in Tennessee or Kentucky.
Despite the setback at FAB I am moving forward now that I once again, finally, have money.
My last ditch counterparty is coming through. It’s not as good as FAB, where I was running multipliers typically of six or even higher. Now am operating with best multiplier being four. This means, with a typical 2% reward card, maximum theoretical annualized return on my CDs there is 8% APY tax free. It’s a little higher using Alliant’s Signature Visa with a 2.5% reward: 10% tax free.
You never quite achieve the theoretical maximum, but it is close depending on how rapidly you turn the money over once a CD has matured.
Anyway it is great to have my little side hustle back up and running now that funding is available.
Care to share the bank or credit union? Or, can you share how one goes about finding these for the side hustle?
Sorry. Throughout the thread I’ve not done that for what I believe are obvious reasons.
To some extent, yes:
There are two critical aspects. First, you need a financial institution which offers SHORT CDs, ones to which most folks pay scant attention because the interest rate is miniscule. Course within the hustle that rate is unimportant. Heck, that tiny amount of interest is even taxable!
Ken’s internet website can provide you CD offerings, including terms, for hundreds of financial institutions. You want terms of, at maximum, three months. If you can locate shorter, so much the better.
When I launched my hustle I went with everyone’s old standby, GTE Financial. Did many tens of CDs with them before I wised up. Shortest CD GTE offers is six months. That provides you a multiplier of only two. So, for example best case with an Alliant card, you are realizing a poor 5% APY tax tree. With your 2% reward cards that falls to just 4% APY. And GTE limits you to $5000 maximum CD per account.
Later, with more experience, I found a source of 30 day CDs. Those beauties were netting me as much as 36% APY, tax free. That was when my Discover card still carried a 3% reward, during the first year. And even with 2% cards I was looking at 24% APY tax free. You would be surprised how quickly money grows when you’re compounding at over 20%. Anyway, that was at a CU. One of the higher ups there got wind of what I was doing and shut me down abruptly and unceremoniously. She did not kick me out of the CU, though, and I had already bought well in excess of a quarter million in CDs before she put an end to my gravy train.
All right, back to the second critical aspect. First, with Ken’s help, you have located institutions offering short CDs. Now it’s all “shoe leather”, making inquiries on the telephone. You have to determine whether or not your candidate institutions will allow CD purchase with a CC. And, sadly, most will NOT! But if you keep calling and trying, you might eventually just hit paydirt.
And if not, you can always play the game at GTE. They will be happy to take your money.
I have one or two good relationships with GTE reps . . . called 'em so often in the past they got to know me. I begged for them to add a three month CD to their lineup. No dice. The higher ups there refused. If they ever have a change of heart they will be SWAMPED with new CD money. Because, except for absence of a short term offering, doing the hustle at GTE is quite easy.
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I guess I’m to dumb, don’t understand. The multiplier & 2% cards… etc… Short term CD’s… Wish I understood your game. I know it takes lots of time & book work to keep everything balanced. Just miss a few times & game is kaput!
I have several CC’s but I really only one. CITI double cash card 2%. Just received another check in the mail- $549.56. Cash in the hand! Just do a lot of charging, big bills. Simple game for me… 
He buys a $1000 3-mo CD with a 2% CC. 3 months later the CD matures, he cashes it in and buys another 3-mo CD with the CC. Rinse, repeat. In one year he will have purchased the $1000 CD with a 2% card four times, which effectively gives him 8% cash back on $1000 just from the CC rewards (2% done four times). Plus some interest from CDs themselves. The trick is finding banks that let you buy CDs with a CC without fees (or fees below cash back).
With a 6-mo CD the annual return is only 4%, because you only buy the 6-mo CD two times a year.
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…and a 30 day CD yields an annual return of 24%, because you can use that $1,000 to buy 12 CDs a year.
& I’d say the biggest holdup would be finding someplace that would allow buying CD’s with a credit card!!
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It also has to be on a MasterCard, if you’re keen to some of his posts.
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Yup. MC tends to be more generous when it comes to coding transactions like this as a purchase as opposed to a cash advance.
My CITI Double Cash is a Master Card… 
Not any longer. That was long ago. That CU I mentioned where they had the one month CD offerings, well, that same CU would only accept MasterCard and Discover. That is why, back at the very beginning of this thread, I was needing MC help.
But also as I wrote recently, that CU shut me down and I no longer can access those one month certificates. Much more recently I have been able to buy my CDs with any card (Visa, MC, Discover) except for American Express. FAB, for example, before they were swallowed, took any one of those three cards. I have never, throughout this adventure, found a financial institution willing to sell me a CD while allowing payment with any AMEX platform card. If you can locate such a financial institution, you have struck GOLD!
It’s fair to say this hustle has evolved. Things are different for me now than they were back in 2018. And by the way, I’m making a whole lot less money now than once I was making. But it remains a fun game, and the profits certainly more than pay for the food I have to have delivered, at high cost, during this pandemic. Also it’s something to do which can be done at home. So certainly no complaints!
I agree, many of the options we work on here are not Big money making projects. Now that we are home bound for most of the day, keeps us busy & occupied.
Nice to make a little extra $$'s here & there…
Update
So far so good at my backup counterparty. Am going in only gently. APYs are also modest, some at 10%, rest at 8%; all tax free of course, as always. But the numbers are very small when compared with the halcyon days of yore; doing only perhaps fifteen to twenty grand per month . . . at most. This could ramp up going forward. I need to find a second counterparty. It’s not easy.
Also doing decent with my add-on CDs. Will put in over thirty-five grand first week in June at 3.25% APY taxable, so a lot more money than is happening here with the credit cards. But the two schemes taken together are working for me without drama.
Earlier this year I had to shut down my CC hustle to preserve funds for the add-on CD thing. It all has worked out. Now I have both still up and running. Sweet. Patience won the prize. 
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Sometimes in life mysterious stuff happens . . . stuff you cannot for the life of you understand. Here is one such instance:
This is for anyone who is a Keesler FCU member. It’s not as easy to join Keesler now as once was the case; I realize that. But a lot of folks joined in the past, when it was easier to get in, because Keesler back then offered some pretty attractive CD deals. So there must be a few Keesler members reading this.
I already alluded to this mystery far up thread. I don’t expect anyone to remember. This is an old, long, thread. But this is in the realm of the somewhat wacky Keesler Visa Signature card. I never could understand it; still can’t.
As mentioned more recently, I have restarted my side hustle which is the subject here. As part of that I charged a “purchase” to my Keesler Visa Signature card. Course it was really a CD I was “buying”. Everyone who has followed this thread already knows that.
So today it came time to cash in on my 2% reward. I visited the Keesler website and went through the process to get my cash. They do it by crediting your Keesler savings account. Fine.
Ended up with three times as much reward as I was expecting. Instead of 2% they gave me a 6% reward. Sweet! 
Over on the Keesler website for their Visa Signature card it says:
Benefits: Earns 2% cash back or 3 points for every $ spent; plus a $100 credit with $1,500 in purchases within the first 90 days of having the card.
Well, I obtained my card a whole lot longer ago than 90 days. That is for certain! And they paid me the hundred bucks way back. So it’s a mystery, at least to me, where all this extra moolah is coming from. This is not the first time. The Keesler rewards money just keeps flowing in. I hope they do not claw all the extra dough back some day!
Anyway, bottom line there appears to be lots of room in this Keesler buttertub for other members. If you have a Keesler membership but do not yet have one of their Visa Signature credit cards, the suggestion from here is for you to apply ASAP. After all, it is guaranteed to pay you at least a 2% reward. And based on my good fortune you might end up with a whole lot more than that!
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