How to Get a Free Cash Advance

Are you interested in getting a free cash advance using your credit card? The Direct Ship Program is a highly successful program designed by the US Mint to promote the circulation of Presidential Dollar coins. Rolls of Presidential Dollars are sold in $250.00 face value quantities along with free standard shipping. With no mark-up or shipping costs, you can effectively get a free cash advance by purchasing money at face value through this program using your favorite credit card. When you receive the coins you can simply store them in a high interest savings account until your monthly credit card bill comes in. Then you pay off the bill and reap the card benefits of the free cash advance from the purchase.

Here's how to do it.

Difficulty:

Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need

• A credit card with a minimum limit of $250 that you want to get a cash advance from.

1. 

   To start your free cash advance, go to the US Mint's Direct Ship Program Page. You can find a link to the various coin types in the the Resources section below. Elect to purchase 1 or 2 two boxes of coins from the menu (you can only order up to $500.00 at a time but you can submit multiple orders). Enter your billing/shipping information and make sure you select Standard Shipping (1 - 2 weeks for 4.95) from the shipping menu. On the last screen you will enter your credit card information and you can review the details of the order. You will notice that the shipping charge has been dropped and the amount due is simply the face value of the coins.

2. 

   You should receive an email confirmation of your order from the US Mint and another confirmation when it is shipped. It usually takes about a week before the coins are sent but your card is only charged once they release the coins for shipment.

3. 

   A lot of people use this process to get a free cash advance from their credit cards. In addition, using a cash back credit card to purchase the coins can yield a 1 - 2% cash back (better than most savings accounts these days) and you can store the advanced cash proceeds in high interest savings accounts until the payment is due. This is a great form of credit card arbitrage and essentially allows you to print free money through a reverse interest loan from the Mint and the card company.

4. 

   An even better use of the Direct Ship program is for fulfilling the minimum purchase requirements on travel reward cards. For example, say you sign up for Citibank's AA Advantage credit card. This card usually offers you 25,000 AA Advantage airmiles once you make $1000 in purchases. This is a total of 26,000 airmiles and is enough for a round trip US domestic flight ticket. Since you are fulfilling the purchase requirement with the Direct Ship transaction you are effectively getting a round trip airline ticket for free, saving you hundreds of dollars. And you get a free cash advance from your credit card at the same time!

Resources

• US Mint Direct Ship Program