What would you do?

Every once in a while I muster up the strength to visit Million Mile Secrets, who is rightly famous for his circles and arrows , which cause great angst and hilarity in the travel hacking community.

He also has a completely undeserved reputation for ripping off my blog posts, and I won't hear anyone say differently.

I was skimming his 11-part travel reports and exhortations to book Southwest tickets (thanks but no thanks) when I came across this post advertising a $49 guide to travel hacking (only $37, for a limited time only!).

Now, I don't want anyone to accuse me of restraint of trade, so instead of telling you to instead buy my ebook, available through Amazon.com for just $2.99, I thought I'd share my thoughts on what I'd do with the $34.01 I'd thereby save, using techniques that are included in my book and described right here on the blog.

• Load your Nationwide or US Bank Visa Buxx cards with $500 17 or 13 times, respectively. Ultimate Rewards points generated at 1 point per dollar: 8,534 or 6,532;
• Buy 8 Vanilla Reload Network reload cards. 2% cash back: $80.63;
• Buy 11 Vanilla Reload Network reload cards with your PayPal Business Debit MasterCard at 1% cash back, after loading your PayPal account with 11 PayPal My Cash cards bought at a "gas station." Ultimate Rewards points or Flexpoints generated at 2 points per dollar: 11,086.
• Buy 5 PIN-enabled Visa gift cards at a local supermarket. Membership Rewards points generated at 2 points per dollar: 5,060.

How many points would you manufacture on a $34.01 budget? Leave your suggestions in the comments, but Square Cash, Venmo, and Amazon Payments don't count – otherwise Nomadic Matt might get the impression that we were making fun of him.