I wanted to hit the min spend of 24k on my Virgin Atlantic cards. I had two choices: MS or pay bills. Initially, I used the Virgin cards for all of my purchases, both work and personal. From car insurance to golf clubs to business expenses, the charges added up. I hit 12k on one card rather quickly, a scary accomplishment. The other card was a few thousand short. Impatient and eager to be done with the spend, I decided to prepay rent, my car lease, and student loans. To do so, I used Plastiq which I had already setup from the time they ran the recurring payment promo. I didn’t bother researching other bill payment methods.
The problem with this strategy versus MS is that it is more expensive. $500 for a gift $504.95 + $1 for a money order is a nominal markup compared to straight cash homey. Plastiq charges a convenience fee of 2.5% for credit cards. Convenience fee is a euphemism for ripoff. Or at least it used to be. Instead of feeling guilty for being lazy, I rationalized that the time saved by avoiding the hassles of MS and the money I could be earning by doing something more productive made it ‘convenient’. Still, the old me who used to drive 100 miles to load up Redbird at the nearest Target in Montana for ‘free’ can’t get over paying explicitly for fees.
What do you think? TPOL slippin’ or maturin’? Before you answer that, realize that I have enough points to fly ANA first. That’s a convenient way to go to Japan.
