Maximizing the benefits of your rewards credit cards clearly depends on the types of rewards which are offered. Rewards offered on credit cards vary hugely, including everything from air miles, to money off fuel, to discount vouchers for supermarkets. It is therefore important to read the small print, establish precisely how the rewards are accrued and how and when they may be redeemed.
The vast majority of rewards offered on credit cards are determined by the frequency with which the card is used and the amount of money which is spent on it. This clearly means, therefore, that the more one spends on one’s credit card, the greater the rewards which they receive are likely to be. What one has to be careful of in this respect, however, is not to accrue a mountain of debt on the credit card, merely in order to earn rewards which be likely to be dwarfed by the interest which is charged on said debt.
The best policy here therefore is to use the credit card wherever and whenever possible but only when the cash would otherwise have been available. The cash should then be left in the bank and used at the time of the next monthly statement in order to pay off the debt accrued. In this way, the rewards will be earned on the credit card to the maximum extent but the dangers of accumulating unmanageable debt and having to pay interest on same will be at best minimized, if not in fact eliminated.
Maximizing the benefits of your rewards credit cards also involves paying very close attention to how and when the rewards may be redeemed. One should ensure that there are no exclusions as to which types of purchases qualify for the rewards. These exclusions are almost certain to include such as using the credit card to withdraw cash from an ATM but there may very well be other types of spending which are exempt from the reward conditions.
When the rewards on the credit card have been accumulated, it may be the case that there is a time limit within which they are required to be redeemed. This may well simply be in order to prevent people building them up to an overly high level which will be inconvenient and less than cost effective for the credit card provider. For this reason, it is important to take note of any such stipulation and ensure the rewards which may have taken quite some time to accumulate are not forfeited.
Maximizing the benefits of your rewards credit cards is not therefore difficult. It merely requires that a control be kept on spending and that all due attention be paid to the conditions attached to the use of the relevant rewards credit card.