Methods To Ease Debit Card Purchase Requirements For Reward Checking

This method should be titled, "How to kill the goose that laid the golden egg."  Especially in the current financial environment, we don't need to give banks reasons to discontinue Rewards Checking plans for all of us by scamming the system with multiple payments in pennies.

Ken, I think this post (and link) are unnecessary - why encourage such behavior?

 

I have multiple RCA's and what I do is the following: I divide grocery or drug store visits into two separate (smaller) orders at the cash register and pay with two different debit cards (about $5-15 each). Towards the end of the cycles when I have almost all the required debit card purchases made, I sometimes split orders into a small debit card purchase and the (bigger) rest of the order goes on a cashback credit card.

I find the link posted above and the overall attitude of the Fat Wallet people in general to be repugnant.  I agree with Alan.  This approach is going to kill RCAs for those of us who are looking for an honest way to earn around 4% on our savings, not rip off banks by  dividing utility bills into $1 increments or buying single ice cream cones at McDonalds. 

And as much as we all appreciate the great work Ken does to help us find ways of maximize the interest on our savings, disclaimer or not, I think it's inappropriate to link to that thread which glorifies ways to legally cheat banks out of a reasonable profit.  In the end activities like those discussed in the link are only going to cause banks to continue limiting RCAs to local customers and reducing interest rates. How to break up a $500 payment into smaller payments is an appropriate topic for discussion in this forum.  But I just don't think the FW thread is.  The members of this forum are better than that.