* The gracious host, Ms. Thrifty, of this week’s Carnival of Personal Finance has been kind of nice to feature my article in this edition’s fine selection of PF articles. Please head on over to check it out.
Last week, I wrote a post about Visa’s #smallenfreuden campaign and some of the problems I saw with using your credit card for every day purchases. Some of my readers commenting on my article pointed out the benefits of being able to earn rewards points on credit card purchases. As long as you paid off the balance on your credit card every month, you can put all those extra points towards cool stuff like free vacations. Who could argue with that?
For me, I don’t feel comfortable enough using my credit card in this way. I don’t have a great track record with credit and I want to focus on only spending money that I have available in my account. I need to practice staying within my limits before I feel I can trust myself with using my credit card and paying off the balance every month. Generally, here’s what my relationship looks like:
It starts out simple enough, it’s like the first few months of a romance. I meet credit and I discover we have a spark. There’s that rush of emotion as we experience all our firsts. First latte purchase, first dinner out, first concert together…so many great moments, truly the beginnings of a be-yoo-tiful relationship.
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I then start to wonder about my feelings about credit. We are starting to get serious and I’m getting more excited about the possibility of a future together. Vacations! Imagine the fun we could have together on the Mayan Riviera! I could go parasailing, it’s a once in a lifetime experience after all. What’s $500?
Electronics, furniture, and appliances – oh my! 55 inch television? It’s the store display unit so it’s a deal – at $2300 instead of $3500. Think of all the movies we can watch together! All the bonding moments playing Portal or Mass Effect on Playstation 3! (Ironically, the effing TV is smarter than I am, but that’s not what this post is about)
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Then I cross a line somewhere and credit suddenly becomes a bit of an obsession. I live and breath credit. I want to think about credit all the time. I want to be with credit all the time.
All of a sudden, anything seems possible. I start living in a strange world where everything is fine as long as I can eke out another $50 from my over-the-limit balance. No big deal, I’ll make more money in the future and what’s another $20 a month in payments, anyway? This happens until credit doesn’t want to have anything to do with me. I am now the stalker girlfriend that credit can’t get away from. Yes, that’s me.
But what to do when you want to earn rewards points without using a credit card? I’ve come up with a solid list of rewards programs that allows you to rack up points pretty quickly if you’re diligent with researching the special offers and strategic with using your card.
Rewards Points: Airmiles
There are tonnes of ways to earn points with your Airmiles cards – if you watch the flyers, you can get some pretty sweet deals that can get help you pile those on miles. Safeway has those collect a hundred Airmiles if you spend $100 on groceries coupon or sometimes buy XYZ brand and earn XX Airmiles.
When you’re looking to spend your Airmiles, you can either redeem them for cash (Airmiles Cash Rewards) or buy stuff directly with your miles (Airmiles Dream Rewards).
With Airmiles Cash Rewards, you can go into a business that sponsors this program and make a purchase like you would with cash – provided that you have the right amount of miles. There are a bunch of guidelines around how to use this program – you can read more here.
With Airmiles Dream Rewards, you can use your miles to buy things through the Airmiles shop. It’s the more traditional Airmiles set up – you can get tonnes of things this way as well.
Airmiles also has an app available for smart phones that lets you do cool things like check your account balance and browse the rewards catalogue. The really exciting feature is that you can use the app to check into a store and peruse the bonus offers available based on a GPS radius. In other words, you can find out if your favourite store will have specials or offers that you can take advantage of locally.
Rewards Points: Scene
You can then use the points to get free movies, music, concert tickets and other exclusive rewards. They’ve expanded the program quite a bit since it first started – restaurants are now joining in the fun and you can spend your points for a nice meal out. I have a Scotiabank account and use my Scene points on a regular basis – I’m a movie buff but these points can pay off even if you only go to the movies once in a while. Read more about the Scene program here.
Rewards Points: Shoppers Optimum
Rewards Points: PC Points
You can also earn through banking with PC Financial, get 10,000 points when you set up a direct deposit to your account and five points for every time you spend a dollar using your debit card – 20,000 points will get you $20 in free groceries, for example. The points never expire and there aren’t a whole bunch of complicated rules you have to follow to access your rewards – very straightforward. Read more here.
How about you readers? Do you use rewards points? What works best for you?
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Commercial Images used under the Fair Use section (Section 107) of the U.S. Copyright Act.
Thanks for the link love!
Anytime, buddy. It was a good post.
Hey Lindsey,
We use SDM, Air Miles and PC Points all the time or at least as often as we can. We have got loads of free items using our points over the years. Thanks for sharing and outlining each card.
Yeah, I’ve done pretty well with Airmiles and Optimum points cards personally. I’d like to do more with them soon – hmmm, maybe it will be my July challenge. Thanks for stopping by, Mr. CBB!
I get most of my rewards through my credit card, but I think you are right that there are a ton of other rewards programs besides credit cards. I use rewards programs for coffee shops, pizza shops, and a number of other stores.
Hey hey! I think earning rewards points with credit cards is probably a really good way of doing business – easy to rack them up and efficient to track spending. But yeah, there are definitely some other options!
Thanks for the shout out! And I love the drawings. Keep em coming. I use a credit card for everything, mostly because of the rewards. But I’m not into the churning that other people do primarily because I’d like to buy a house in the near future and don’t want to mess with my credit score. I think rewards can be great, but it’s much more important not to go into credit card debt. So having an awareness like you have is really important, and staying away is much better than misusing.
Hey Matt! No problem on the shout out, that’s happy news! It sounds like you’ve got a good system going on there so that’s the important thing. I know that eventually I’ll be able to use my credit card like this if I choose too, I just have to work at it a bit!
Hey Lindsey I would say I am much like you when it comes to using the credit card for everyday purchases just for points. Don’t want to go down that road. I never plan on using more than one card and don’t want credit cards for the sake of just trying to collect points. You do give some good options for those in our situation but I don’t even know if doing it this way would work for us.
Hmmm…interesting, what do you think would work best for you? What would be the barriers to you being able to use your rewards cards this way? I’d love to help! Maybe we can brainstorm?
I love the artwork! 🙂 I think it’s smart to recognize not being able to handle credit cards and using them for rewards. It can be a slippery slope if you aren’t careful.
Hah! I enjoy drawing stick figure art, I feel like Michelangelo. 😉 I want to be able to use my credit card for rewards one day – it so simple and straightforward – but for now, I’ll just have to get creative!
I love me some rewards. I used to be scared of pulling out the credit card again, but after I learned my lesson, I have been good with it and earning a lot of rewards. I now put everything on my card because it is easier to deal with at the end of the month.
Rewards are pretty freakin’ awesome – no two ways about that! I think I still worry about average person using their credit cards like this without some firm limits. But all we can do is put out the information and hope people read it!
Shoppers Drugs Mart! So good but oh so bad I love it 😉 I’ve redeemed my optimum points for many awesome things over the years…and I always try to shop when they have their bonus optimum points weekend. Why is it that I can never walk into an SDM and walk out with just one item??? It’s a big mystery I tell ya!
Shopper’s is a true Mecca for all things fabulous – especially on a points weekend! How could you walk away with just one thing?
Most people have points, but few people know how to use them. Studies found that nearly 73 percent of Americans enrolled in either credit card rewards programs or frequent traveler programs don’t know how many points they have. That’s one of the most expensive travel mistakes you can make.
“The way people need to think about miles and points, especially the credit cards points, is you’re getting a percentage back of what you spend,” study says. “So when you’re not maximizing that spend, you’re losing money.”