Making the Most of Your Credit Card and Frequent Flyer Rewards Points
Last updated January 26, 2009
Does your credit card reward you in some way each time the cash register rings?
Credit card companies frequently offer reward point or cash back programs to give consumers a little extra incentive to use plastic in place of good old-fashioned cash.
Once you've racked up the required booty of reward points, you can redeem them toward travel, merchandise, gift certificates, accommodations at selected hotels and more.
Over half of all credit cards available today have some sort of rewards component associated with them, generally worth about $0.01 to $0.03 per dollar spent.
But the challenge sometimes is simply keeping track of all these reward points, not to mention deciding how best to use them.
Managing multiple frequent-flyer and credit card programs can be a real headache: program rules and restrictions are constantly changing, your mileage credits may be missing
or incorrectly listed, there are multiple expiration dates to keep track of.
There are a number of websites and other products available to help consumers track and get the most out of their
hard-earned credit card points, rewards, and airline frequent flyer miles. Although some services charge an annual fee, they may offer worthwhile perks such as email alerts regarding when miles will expire and award listings.
Here is a list of some of these Web Sites or available products/services you may consider:
- MaxMiles.com. The MaxMiles.com "MileageMiner" automatically gathers all of your frequent flyer balances and account information from airlines, hotels, and credit cards,
analyzes the most current mileage offers, reconciles account activity, and sends you a personalized report of all your miles via email. After a 90 day free trial, the subscription currently costs $29.95 annually.
- MileTracker. Miletracker is a free downloadable application sponsored by USA Today.
MileTracker currently supports more than 105 frequent flier and loyalty programs. Once you create a profile and insert
your multiple account information, you will not need to input it again.
When you open MileTracker and tell it to display or update your accounts, it automatically and simultaneously goes to all the accounts your have listed in your profile, inserts your personal information required for each account, and retrieves the account data to be viewed on your computer desktop.
- Points.com. This Web site allows you to track reward miles and points for free. It also allows you to trade with other users on the site’s Global Points Exchange, GPX, but there is a fee involved. There is a processing fee of $6.95 per trade, plus whatever additional trading fees that may be required by the airline or rewards program.
- Plastic Jungle.com. This is a Web site for gift card exchange and services, for consumers who want to either buy gift cards at substantial savings, sell them for cash, or trade pre-owned gift cards for others.
Given that many credit card reward programs offer gift cards as one of their available redemption choices, this site may be handy if you end up with a gift card you'll never use.
Plastic Jungle guarantees all transactions and offers industry-leading features like gift card replacement protection in case they are lost or damaged, and instant alerts via text or email.
Users may list gift cards for free on Plastic Jungle, with successful transactions charged a 10 percent fee when their gift card is sold or traded.
- Giftcardtracker.com. This site is more a less an online "reminder" service, in which you enter all of the gift certificates, online gift cards and rewards that you’ve accumulated and this site will store your gift certificate information and send email reminders regarding which cards you have and when an expiration date is approaching.
We recommend you search the "Consumer Reviews" section of cardratings.com if you'd like to conveniently search and compare credit cards by reward type.
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