Blue Cash Rewards Increase
August 24, 2010
Our Blue Cash rewards card got a major boost last week thanks to our home remodeling projects. With a tiered rewards system like the Amex Blue Cash uses you earn the most cash back after you’ve reached the highest tier. The faster you reach that level, the more cash back rewards you earn over the course of a year.
Cash Back Rewards
Of course you don’t want to go out and spend more just to reach the highest rewards tier but in years where your expenses are much higher, you definitely get there faster. As we’ve been working on our new house, we put a lot of the remodeling costs on our Blue Cash since it’s one of the best cash back credit cards. Not everyone takes American Express, some of the individual contractors only accepted cash, but enough of them accepted it that we’ve reached the highest tier much faster this year.
Home Improvement Rewards
This remodeling comes at a good time for us in terms of credit card rewards because Blue Cash pays out your rewards on your anniversary date and then starts your tiered earnings over the following month. Since our annual rewards payout was just two months ago we hadn’t spent enough so far and were still in the bottom tier.
Our remodeling schedule was pretty tight since we had to be out of our old house and needed the new one ready before we moved in. That meant we had to make a lot of decisions and spend a lot of money in just a few days time. We used the card for so many big purchases last Wednesday that I’m surprised it didn’t start smoking from being swiped so many times. Now we’re well above the minimum to earn 5% cash back at gas stations, drug stores, and grocery stores.
Blue Cash Rewards
Now that the big spending for remodeling is (hopefully) over our card can cool down a little. The good news is that we’ve stayed in our remodeling budget so far; and since we put a lot of it on our Blue cash card, we’ll be earning more cash back rewards this year than last.
All posts by Ben Edwards
This is great. I have a Citibank Rewards card and use for many purchases for the sake of gaining the reward. Recently, they sent me a card for what they considered to be an upgraded program – World Plus. I discovered this “upgrade” was only if I traveled frequently – which I do not. Kind of ticked me off that they did that; I requested they put me back on the card I had prior to the upgrade and continue giving me the cash back rewards. They did, after making up a few excuses why they switched me in the first place. Anyway, the rewards are a nice little perk and I’m happy you got an increase.
@Tracy, I agree that spending money solely with the intent of earning rewards doesn’t make much sense since you’d spend much more than you’d earn with cash back.
But if you’re using your rewards card on something that you’d buy with cash, even if you didn’t have a card, then I think cash back cards are a good way to put some extra money in your pocket.
Cash back rewards seem like a bad idea in my opinion. You have to spend money to get money and in order to get that money you have to keep spending. Seems like very valid system.
AMEX Blue Cash is my card of choice as well. Gotta love that cashback! We earned something like $400 this past year. Straight to the savings account.
Blue is my cash back card of choice too.