Recently, I joined Miles Per Day's $20,000 spending challenge. The idea is to spend $20,000 on the American Express Platinum card within 90 days for the greatest amount of profit and the least amount of effort/time. The full sign up bonus of 150,000 Membership Rewards Points is earned when you spend $20,000 in 90 days.
A couple of notes to start with:
- I have bought a lot of merchandise. I have had problems with receiving some of the merchandise which has resulted in a delay in reselling attempts. I have about $6,000 worth of inventory that arrived today (some will arrive tomorrow) at Amazon so the next update will have a lot more good information on profit margin. I have about another $6,000-$7,000 of merchandise from various merchants on its way to be delivered to me.
- I still have a lot of merchandise gift cards which I trying to unload slowly. It means my float is greater than I'd like, but I want to cautious.
Here is some info from some of the other contestants:
Noah from Money Metagame gave his 4 week breakdown and he is still killing it. 11% profit so far. Great job Noah!
Chasing the Points updated as well. He finished 75% of his spending with by far the least amount of work.
Vinh at Miles Per Day gave his first update. He finished a lot of the spending with good margins, but got banned from Bloomindale's along the way. That's annoying.
Big Habitat joined as well. His 13.6% profit on over $9,000 of spending is looking awfully pretty to me.
The Numbers Breakdown
- Spending Complete: $20,376.53 - this number may decrease. More on that in upcoming days or weeks
- I've finished the challenge, but I still have plenty of merchandise to buy
- Inventory Total: $13,333.81 - I have sold very little. As I mentioned before, I had some delays in receiving many shipments so everything is taking a bit longer than expected.
- Pending Earnings Total - $4,101.56
- Cash from Sales - $3,978.04
- Shopping Portal Cash Back (Top Cashback, etc.) - $93.52
- This does not include cash back from unsold items
- Store Bucks (eBay Bucks, etc.) - $30
- This does not include cash back from unsold items
- Cost Basis for Sales: $3,806.51
- Cash from Sales: $3,978.04
- Profit from sales - $171.53
- Profit margin - 4.5%
- Additional profit from shopping portals and store bucks - $123.52
- Profit margin after shopping portals and store bucks - 7.75%
- Total Times Spent: ~10 hours.
- I think it is taking me the longest. I need to work on that.
Thoughts and Looking Forward
I made a couple of poor choices in terms of profit margin. In one sale, I made a profit of $13 after spending over $1,600. That's less than 1% and I didn't get any shopping portal money or loyalty points. I actually even lost almost 2% on one sale that was slightly less than $500. They weren't great sales but I was able to at least buy and sell the items quickly.
If you take those two sales out, my profit margin would be significantly higher. I haven't made that same mistake again, but I have taken some risks on same sales. We'll see how it works out for me.
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