Credit Cards
Frugal Father’s Day Gifts
While I believe that the use of credit cards is difficult for many people to manage, my wife and I have taken advantage of the rewards offered by our Citi Rewards card for years. We are extremely disciplined in what we spend on the card and still follow our monthly budget. Any expense that can be paid by credit is charged to the card to earn as many rewards as possible. We typically earn a couple hundred dollars in gift cards each year which is basically free money! We always pay the bill on time and never pay less than the total amount due.
About a month ago my wife and I were talking about what we wanted to get our dad’s for father’s day. These types of expenses always trouble my wife and I as we don’t really account for them in our monthly budget. Basically, any birthday presents or gifts come directly out of our Grocery & Entertainment budget. We decided to look at what types of gift cards we could get from the rewards we accumulated through our credit card. After reviewing the list, we came across a gift card for Omaha Steaks which seemed perfect for both our father’s, so we went ahead and order a $100 gift card. Over the past weekend we placed our order for both our dad’s and got them both 12 Omaha Steak Burgers, 4 Stuffed Baked Potatoes, and a Cheese Cake for $110.92. Once we applied our $100 gift card, the total out of pocket expense was $10.92 for both of our father’s. We were extremely happy with our purchase! Now - would we ever place that kind of order without the gift card? Never! It was very difficult for me to agree to pay $12.50 for each father for shipping. I would never spend $25 on shipping! But the use of the card helped with my frustrations and gave us the opportunity to splurge a little on our dad’s.
While we were very pleased with our purchase, I will admit that I have become a little frustrated with our Citi Rewards card in the past year with the types of gift cards offered. The selection of cards offered has decreased while the amount of points required for the cards has increased. In addition, I have not paid close attention to other card offers to see if we could earn more points or rewards instead of the card we have. I recently read a sponsored post on Dollar Frugal called Apply for Best Credit that has some good links I will be checking out to look for other deals.
Do you use credit cards that earn rewards? What is the best deal you have found?
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4 comments for “Frugal Father’s Day Gifts”
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[...] The Gods That Failed wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerpt While I believe that the use of credit cards is difficult for many people to manage, my wife and I have taken advantage of the rewards offered by our Citi Rewards card for years. We are extremely disciplined in what we spend on the card and still follow our monthly budget. Any expense that can be paid by credit is charged to the card to earn as many rewards as possible. We typically earn a couple hundred dollars in gift cards each year which is basically free money! We always pay the bill on ti [...]
We just recently switched from using our citi dividend rewards card to getting a Penfed rewards card. The penfed card has been great so far. It gives a 5% rebate on gas, 2% on supermarkets, and 1.25% on everything else.
The best part though is how they credit your rewards with each bill. When we get our bill, the last line item is a credit for the reward you earned for the month.
It’s nice to not pay in a total and then reimbursed after the fact.
Ralph - I will check out Penfed. I am looking for a card that I can use exclusively for gas. The 5% rebate on gas that you mention looks very interesting. Thanks for the tip.
Interesting that you put this up - I just did that myself for a gift. I have to have a company credit card, but it is just a regular card that is in my name that I use for the company and nothing else. I could chose any card I wanted and then I submit everything to the company to be paid. I chose the Barnes and Noble card, which is not the best rate out there or anything like that - but it doesn’t matter since the card is paid in full each month. My sister’s birthday was last week and I used one of my $25 gift cards to buy her a planner that she wanted. I also used a coupon with it so there was a remaining balance on the gift card. It was the first time I have ever done that - before I always used the cards for my own book buying sprees. It is something I will definitely do again though!!