5 Creative Ideas for Reaching Your Credit Card Sign-Up Bonus Spend Requirement

You've just been approved for a new credit card with a great sign-up bonus. Now all you need to do is complete the spending requirement in a predetermined amount of time as dictated by the card, and poof, that bonus will appear in your account! Sounds pretty simple, right? Well, not always. The spending requirement to achieve the sign-up bonus for some cards is much higher than others.

I recently was approved for a card that promised a sign-up bonus of $900 if I could spend $6,000 in the first three months of card ownership. With my mortgage payment not an option towards attaining that total, I had to come up with some other, more creative options. Here are five things that worked for me.

1. Pay ahead on car insurance

I currently pay my auto insurance policy for a six-month term. Most of the best auto insurance companies will let you pay for at least a year of your policy at one time. I contacted my insurer and requested to pay for another six months of my insurance policy, and they kindly obliged. The cost of my policy is about $600 every six months, so that payment automatically brought me to 10% completion of my required sign-up bonus spending.

2. Pay ahead for lawn care or other services

Consider using your card to pay for childcare, cleaning services, pet sitting, or anything else you might pay an individual or company to do for you on a weekly or monthly basis. High inflation levels have left a lot of Americans struggling to pay the bills, therefore there are likely folks out there who wouldn't mind an advance on their normal paycheck. I pay my lawn service $40 per week from April through November to mow, edge, and trim my lawn. Generally, I receive an invoice at the beginning of each month for that month's lawn services. I reached out to my lawn servicer and asked if he might allow me to pay for the whole season upfront this time around. Again, he happily obliged. He estimated 30 services for the season, bringing my total invoice to $1,200 and shaving off another 20% of my sign-up bonus spending!

3. Employ the help of a partner, close friend, or family member

Have anyone in your life with an upcoming large purchase to make? Assuming it's someone you really trust, ask them to allow you to charge the item on your new card and let them pay you back at an agreed-upon time.

As luck would have it, my parents were out of town recently and the oven at one of their rental units ceased working and needed to be replaced ASAP. Enter myself and my shiny new credit card. I was able to run into the local appliance store and purchase the oven of my mom's choosing and set up delivery to their rental unit, all while my parents were enjoying their vacation states away. All in, the total for the oven came to $720. If you're keeping track, that's another 12% closer to my goal, leaving me now with 42% of my sign-up bonus spend requirement completed.

4. Book an upcoming vacation well in advance

Every year, my best friend and I take a girls trip together to celebrate our winter birthdays that fall just two days apart. Our trip doesn't take place until late January/early February, but because next year is a bit of a milestone birthday (the big 3-5), we already had our destination well researched and chosen in advance. My new card and the promise of a $900 sign-up bonus gave us the perfect excuse to go ahead and book our trip online.

You could book a hotel, flights, rental car, excursions, and more with your new card, and you'd likely wipe out most of your required spending without having to do much else. But because our vacation is far away and I was making decent progress on my sign-up bonus spending already, we opted to just book our lodgings using my new card. Grand total: $3,000. And just like that, another 50% of my sign-up bonus spending is in the books. Only 8% -- or $480 -- to go!

5. Purchase gift cards to oft-shopped places

As of now, I'm not going to have trouble meeting my sign-up bonus spending requirement (and then some) in the allotted three months, so I opted to just make this my primary card for gas and groceries for the next couple months to close the gap. With the price of both of these staples currently up, it won't take me long at all to finish off that last $480.

But if you're still further off from your goal and time is running out, this would be a perfect time to scoop up some gift cards to places that you regularly shop. A few hundred dollars for your favorite grocery store and gas station will go far in your sign-up bonus spending, and you'll be sure to use these types of gift cards up in no time!

Sign-up bonuses: approach with caution

Sign-up bonuses are an excellent way to earn some extra cash or rewards points, but be careful, as they're only a good deal if you come out ahead. If you know there's absolutely no way you could meet the spending requirement in the given timeline just with spending that you would have done anyway, then it might be best to pass on the offer from the start. After all, needlessly charging up several thousand dollars, not being able to pay it off, and accruing hundreds in interest fees as a result, isn't a fun bonus for anyone.