Let your Rewards truly reward you!
This article is about how to let your Rewards truly reward you. Now you may be wondering why I capitalized the word Rewards. Well that is simply because I am talking about Cash Back Rewards that are offered by credit card companies. I know the content and ideas in this post are nothing new. This is just my thoughts and experience with it.
For some time now I have exercised great responsibility with my credit cards, although that was not always the case when I was younger. Now days I am always paying the balances off at the end of the month so that I never carry a balance. This has proven to be very advantageous when it comes to my credit score.
Back last year I decided to open a new credit card account for me to use. The card that I was getting was a Capital One Quicksilver that offered me 1.5% Cash Back Rewards on any purchase. The card had a 15 month 0% APR and an annual fee of $39 but I wasn’t worried since I could just cover the annual fee with my Cash Back Rewards.
After using this card very minimally for a couple of months, I began to realize that I wasn’t receiving very much in Cash Back Rewards. This should be expected since I was only using the card very minimally of course. So I decided that if I was going to take advantage of the Cash Back Rewards that I was going to have to start using the card all the time and boy did I ever. The Cash Back Rewards really started building up then.
Everything was rolling and working splendidly. I didn’t think that it could be going much better then this happened. One day I was contacted by one of my banks, Suntrust. They were offering me their Suntrust Cash Back Rewards card. With this particular card it had a introductory period of 12 months with 0% APR and no annual fee. It offered 5% Cash Back on gas & groceries purchases up to $6,000 in the first 12 months. After that I would get 2% on gas and groceries and 1% on all other purchases. Plus to top it all off I will recieve a 10% bonus for redeeming the money directly into my Suntrust account.
At this point I was hooked. I decided to go ahead and get the card and in doing so that would require me to adjust my strategy. So what I decided was that I would use my new Suntrust Cash Back Rewards for all of my gas and grocery purchases and then I would use my Capital One Quicksilver card for all other purchases. By using this strategy it will allow me to maximize my Cash Back Rewards.
Now at this point you may be wondering why I chose to post this here on my blog. Well it’s simple since I pay off my balance every month I have no need to use my Cash Back Rewards for that. So I will elect instead to use these Rewards to reward myself by using the money as fresh capital to invest into More Dividends. The great thing about this strategy is that as long as I continue to be disciplined with my credit cards I will basically be creating free money without doing anything extra. This is my strategy to let my Rewards reward me!
Do you incorporate Cash Back Rewards into your financial strategy? If so I would love to hear about it please leave any comments or questions below!
Credit card rewards can provide a HUGE benefit if your spending habits aren’t changed. Heck, who wouldn’t want to receive 5% cash back for things you are purchasing every month anyway? There are so many options out there for you, the hard part is finding the one that works best for you and your situation. For work I travel a lot, so I use a Hilton ZMEX for everything because the constant travel helps multiply my travel rewards. Glad you found one that works best for you and your situation!
Bert
Yeah, currently this strategy is working pretty well for me. If there are any changes to this strategy I will update it in the future. Have you cashed in on your travel rewards in the past?
Sounds like a good strategy for you, especially because you are in control and paying off the balance each month. I have one card that gets me solid rewards, IHG credit card. I get points towards my hotel rewards account with IHG (Holiday Inn brand hotels). I forget what the points rewards are, but it’s something like 1% on all purchases, 2% on gas, and 5% on all hotel charges. I use the card for business travel and really rack up the points. I am able to take the family on free hotel stays several times a year. Works great for us.
That sounds like a fantastic deal for you. Not so much for me though since I don’t do business travel. The end result though is that it is helping us out financially. We are using doing nothing special… other than using a credit card….. to pay for stuff that we would have bought anyways…. and then being rewarded for it.
That is awesome that you are able to use the rewards as free hotel stays with the family! Thanks for stopping by!