How to Make the Most of Your Credit Card Rewards
What you should know about credit card travel and shopping rewards.
July 12, 2010 — -- As long as you don't have credit card debt, it's possible for your credit cards to work for you instead of you working for them. In other words, get a card that rewards you for using it. And then use it for everything you possibly can!
This is good advice as long as you're confident you are never again going to carry a balance. Rewards cards typically come with higher interest rates and membership fees, so carrying a balance would be unwise.
But it would also be unwise to pass over the free benefits these programs offer. Since all you have to do is sign up and then spend money as you normally would, it's a no brainer. Use and abuse credit card rewards programs and you will SAVE BIG.
When credit card companies award you points you can use toward travel, shopping and so on, I call those "Pleasure Points" to distinguish them from Cash Back Cards, which I'll discuss next week. The key to making money while spending money is to get a credit card with Pleasure Points you will actually use. My husband used to have a card that earned him points toward a certain brand of car. Problem was, he didn't really want that type of car.
When we got married, I persuaded him to switch to two credit cards that offer fabulous frequent flyer benefits. We were young, hip travelers at the time. Ah, memories… We flew to Europe, Thailand, Chile and Australia using our credit card Pleasure Points.
It was a tremendous deal even though our main rewards card charged a $50 annual fee at the time. Take that Australia trip. We flew business class – woo hoo!— and the two tickets would have cost a fortune if we'd paid cash. Instead, we spent about five years saving up rewards points. Let's crunch the numbers real quick to see how we did:
Trip to Australia
Cash price for 2 tickets: $16,000
5 years of annual fees: $250
BIG SAVINGS= $15,750
Gosh, that looks like such a coup now that I see it written down! Just $250 for two business class tickets to Australia! We had a wonderful time. It was a dream trip we couldn't have justified at the time without credit card Pleasure Points.
