My Kind of Rewards

I could start off by telling yow how crappy my ten-mile training run went yesterday but I'll spare you the mundane details surrounding my sand-bagged legs and instead talk about my bonus cash. Let me just preface this with the fact that no one is paying me to plug them, I am doing this out of the goodness of my heart for Discover Card.

Here is an example of why I love them (a snapshot of my "cashback" rewards statement this past month):

Opening Balance $ 64.06
New Cashback Bonus This Period
5% Cashback Bonus + $ 0.00
ShopDiscover & Promotional
  • SHOPDISCOVER 10% - MUSICIAN'S
+ $ 11.49
  • 10% LOWE'S CASHBACK BONUS
+ $ 19.70
  • DOUBLE HOLIDAY
+ $ 7.14
Everywhere Else + $ 0.25
Redeemed This Period
  • Discover CashbackBonus ElectronicDeposit
– $ 50.00
Cashback Bonus Balance = $ 52.64

If you play your cards right with Discover and use it for specific purchases yielding rewards, you can get decent cash back. Not much effort required other than thinking about which card to use when making your purchase (or booking travel - January through March is 5% on travel type stuff so I just booked a hotel room I was already going to get with Discover). Now that I'm over $50, I can get it electronically deposited into my savings account. Cha-ching! This is the second $50 reward chunk I have gotten since Thanksgiving.

Discover and American Express are my go-to cards. I just redeemed 10,000 Amex points for $100 Home Depot card. Love them too. One point for one dollar. They are not paying me to mention them, either. Though if either Discover or Amex wants to pay me, that would be Just Dandy. I am like June, trying to guilt Fedex into an endorsement. Seeing as she has a bazillion more readers than I do I think she has a better shot, albeit still long.

I pay these guys off each month, so I don't carry a balance (which probably aggravates the credit card companies a bit since I'm sure they'd love to make some interest money off me). This is sort of where I deviate from a lot of personal finance celebrities (i.e. what's his nuts... I can't remember his name, the one that has the radio show and the debt ladder of lowest to highest... [brain fart]) - I choose to use credit cards rather than cash or debit cards because I can use them responsibly and don't think they are the root of debt evil.

Anyway, here's to lower credit card bills now that the holidays are over!

Comments

  1. This is exactly why I needed to make this resolution! Who knows how much I've missed out on by not going with one of these rewards programs!! Thanks for writing about yours in detail so that I have an idea of what to expect :).

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  2. They're not evil if you are 1) taught how to use credit properly, 2) given a starting point from which to use them responsibly (read: not starting in debt already), and 3) maintain a lifestyle that doesn't require monetary assistance from a source other than your job.

    Unfortunately, most people aren't provided and don't know how to seek help to reach point 1). If you don't know "how to start" and you don't have any resources for education, you're screwed. And that's where the credit cards capitalize.

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