Uncommon Cents

As I’ve stated before, I am not one of the personal finance bloggers who will say to cut up your credit cards, put them in a blender, or make them into blocks of ice. Instead, I am of the opinion that credit cards are like a sharp knife–they can help you do great things, or they can cause you great harm. The difference is in you.

I already discussed one of my favorite money hacks: card timing, where you wait until just about the closing date of your credit card statement to make a purchase, with the purchase missing the statement that gets mailed to you that day and put on the following one, giving you perhaps two months to come up with the cash to pay it. This is a technique I use often, including with my recent purchase of a MacBook.

Another simple (perhaps too simple to call an actual) money hack is to charge things with the credit card that gives the best reward for that purchase. For instance, I will charge gas to my Pentagon Federal Credit Union Visa or my Discover Open Road because they give me a 5% reward on gas (with some limitations in the case of the Discover); if I’m buying groceries I’d also be likely to use the Pentagon FCU because it gives me a 2% reward there. It’s nice if these rewards can be combined, like I did with the MacBook: I ordered it the day my statement was closing and used their ShopDiscover program to get a 5% reward. Sometimes, however, it’s not possible to do both, so I’m beginning to wonder: if I have to make a choice between the best reward I can get (usually between 1.25% and 5%–1% is a “standard” reward) and maximizing the time before I have to actually come up with the cash to pay, which is better? Currently I’m still leaning toward maximizing the reward, but I need to think about this more. Opinions?

Tags: Credit cards, Frugality

Trackback URI | Comments RSS