Credit Card Cash Rebates - What Am I Looking For?
By Andre Hansen
Credit card cash rebates offer the maximum flexibility and if flexibility of your card is high on your list of priorities then you should focus your attention on cards that offer the highest cash rebate percentage.
It is easy to fall into a pattern of thinking that makes us assume that doing all of our spending on a credit card with cash back features is highly beneficial to us. This is true up to a point, up until the time before the economy started its downswing, credit cards offered as much as 5% cash rebates on amounts spent. Many companies have reduced their percentage to 3% and some to even lower than that.
Irrespective of the state of the economy, for the consumer rebates continue to remain the highlight of using it. However, card companies are hiking interest rates to increases falling revenues and the consumers have to bear a heavier load.
When you carry a balance on your card, no amount of credit card cash rebates is going to help you. The interest rates continue to spiral upward on unpaid balances, so any rebates you may earn will be swallowed up.
How do cash rebates from credit cards work? Depending on the polices the card operates on, you will get as much as 6 percent rebate on "everyday purchases" which include supermarket shopping, gas stations and drugstores. There will be cash rebates applicable on other purchases like clothing stores, furniture and other stores; these rebates are usually a much lower percentage, maybe 1.5-2% at best.
Every card will have its own terms for availing the rebate. This is usually determined as a ceiling or limit that you have to reach on your spending in order to avail of the rebate. For example, when the card specifies the spending limit as $7500 annually, it means you have to spend that amount (or more) each year to avail of the cash back rebate.