Skip to footer

Up to 6 percent cash back on almost anything? A three-step credit card strategy.

This strategy from CreditCardForum.com lets you earn up to 6 percent cash back on almost any credit card purchase.

3. Redeem your rewards strategically

Mark Lennihan/AP/File
Signs for American Express, Master Card and Visa credit cards are shown on a New York store's door in 2007. By using the right cards, you can get up to 6 percent back on many of the regular purchases you make.

  • By Michael Dolen Contributor

Depending on the card, you will probably have several different options for redeeming your rewards. Cash back is most popular, but be careful because not every program will automatically give you the typical penny per point. For example with the Bank of America WorldPoints program, redeeming 2,500 points will only net you a $12.50 statement credit (that’s a half penny per point). In order to realize a full one cent value, you would need to first save up a windfall of 25,000 points, which is good for a $250 statement credit.

Then there are some reward options which may net you more than a penny per point. Take the Discover It card (and its predecessor, the More) which let you convert cash back to higher valued gift cards. For example, $20 will get you a $25 gift card from Nike, Gap, and Black Angus Steakhouse among others. That’s a 25 percent boost in value, which makes the 5 percent cash back you earned the equivalent of 6.25 percent. The Chase Freedom offers gift cards too, albeit a smaller selection.

 – Michael Dolen writes credit card reviews for CreditCardForum, a website he created to help consumers with their credit decisions.

3 of 3
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.