Earning over 12% cashback on amazon this quarter.

Yes, that is right - i am earning over 12% back via a combination of points that can be eventually used as cash.

Let me explain. I have both, the Chase Freedom Card as well as the Chase Sapphire Preferred Card (this one has a $95 annual fee, but it is totally worth it as can be seen here). The Freedom card gives out 5% cashback - as chase ultimate reward (UR) points on rotating categories every quarter up to $1500 spent, this quarter the categories are grocery and drugstores. These UR points can then be converted to cash, used for booking travel directly on the chase website, or if you have the sapphire preferred card - transferred to an airline partner by converting to miles.

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.

Using a virtual card number this cyber monday.

Cyber monday is upon us, and like every year almost everyone is getting ready to buy a lot of stuff at great discounts online. While that seems more convenient than standing in long lines in the cold on black friday, it does come with a downside - security of your credit card used online.
There have been tons of cases where credit card numbers have been used by hackers or billed for recurring subscriptions. One good way of getting the best of both worlds is by getting a free virtual account number for your current credit card and using that number instead of the actual number.
I already did that with my Citi credit card, it is very simple and takes less than 5 minutes

• Log on to your citi credit card account
• Go to Tools and Services -> Get a Virtual Account Number
• Choose one of 2 options - the downloadable version for PC, or the online version for Macs or if you will use Virtual Account Numbers at work or from multiple computers.

Follow through the next couple of steps and within no time you have a virtual number for your credit card to use without any worry at any of the online stores (even the ones which seem to give awesome deals but seem shady enough to not give your actual account numbers :))

Citi cards, Bank of America and discover currently offer this free benefit. Happy and Safe online shopping to all this cyber monday.