Thursday, March 16, 2017

Credit card rewards are for real

I have been through different phases as a online blog consumer. Personal finance to credit card hacking to investing to dividend related investing. I can say that now i am in a place where i have a good balance of all of these.

In my credit card hack phase (i still do a fair amount, though not as active as before) i used to hit up over 10 credit card blogs regularly, including The Points Guy, Mommy Points among others and ended up selectively applying for credit cards and getting valuable points.




People who are into this full time earn and redeem a serious amount of points/miles/hotel points, even though i am no where close to that level, i can say that i have saved a few thousand dollars just doing this selectively part time for a short amount of time. Keep in mind, applying for and cancelling credit cards regularly can adversely affect your credit score, so this is not for everyone.

Here is a quick snapshot of points/miles i have redeemed so far –



Add another $1,050 redeemed as Home Depot gift cards for a washer/dryer redeemed by converting American Express membership rewards points, the total comes to about $9,330

Now i have paid some fees, specially a $95 annual fee for the chase sapphire card that i use as my primary card to get chase ultimate rewards (which is what i have used for most of my redemption). These rewards can be transferred to airlines like united, southwest among others. Total fees paid so far – $720

I have netted about $8,600 so far by not really doing much more than putting our regular spending on credit cards. Not shabby at all.

I guess you will sense a theme here, like my interests – my blog is a mix of all of these things too. I don’t think or concentrate on one aspect and go all in. I like and pursue a little bit of all things in moderation.

2 comments:

  1. In my time during that phase,I did pretty well including 20 day Europe trip, 1 business class to India,3 regular round trip tickets and more .
    Still with decent amount of miles.

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    1. @Desidividend - that is not bad at all. The business class ticket to india itself is a great deal. I have used the miles mostly on domestic round trips, except for one economy class trip to india.

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