I’ve been tracking all my credit card reward points, gift cards for answering surveys, and other random “freebies”. We save them all up each year and they cover our Christmas expenses. This year we’ve done such a good job that we will have money left over.
Keep doing this for a while and you might come to a point where it is impractical to spend anywhere near all of it on Christmas presents.
These were our numbers for the last few years (this is credit cards and bank bonuses, plus other random stuff like Swagbucks):
2016: $6600
2017: $10,880
2018: $20,630
2019 so far: $6,000
Ours gets lumped in with the rest of our money, but it would be cool to see it all in one place like OP did.
How are you earning so much? I have plateaued hard after a first year where maybe I earned $5,000. I became well over 5/24 and ineligible for a ton of cards. With checking bonuses, the time lag is so high that accounts opened in Oct/Nov won't pay out until 2020. Would love to hear how you reached even 10k
For checking bonuses, I open every account available to us as soon as possible, and close it as soon as terms allow. This lets you get many of the bank bonuses every year or so. Credit cards have slowed down a bit this year as we both went way over 5/24, but I have been opening business cards and also having family members open cards and put me as an authorized user. I hit the spend and split the bonus with them.
This was our list of banks and cards last year:
Bank bonusesBank of America business checking ($200)
BBVA compass ($200)
WI bank and trust x 2 ($400)
Old National Bank x 2 ($400)
Chase Checking ($300)
HSBC ($350)
PNC ($200)
Memory Bank x 2 ($200)
Incredible Bank + 3 referrals ($600)
Bank of the West ($100)
CIBC ($150, didn't qualify but they sent me a check for the inconvenience, count it!)
Wells Fargo ($200)
Waterstone Bank ($250, will be paid out over the next 12+ months, but I don't want to update every month)
North Shore Bank ($300, also paid out over next 12 months)
Fidelity x 2 ($400)
US Bank ($225)
Chase Business ($300)
Chase Personal ($300)
Citi ($200)
First Federal Bank of Wisconsin ($300)
BMO Harris ($200)
PNC ($300)
Citi ($200)
HSBC ($200)
Wells Fargo ($200)
Huntington ($500)
$7175 paidCredit cardsCiti AA business card - 75,000 points after $3k spend
Sold Chase points from a CSP for $600 to a miles broker
Bank of America Premium Rewards $547 statement credit + $85 for selling the $100 AA gift card
Bank of America Business card - $200 statement credit
Bank of America Premium Rewards #2 $550 + $85 for selling AA card
Hilton Business Card - 100,000 points
Barclays AAviator Business card x 2 - 50,000 AA miles each
Citi Premier x 2 - $1451.70 cashed out, SM'd them to be matched to 60,000 point offer for both
Chase United Mileageplus Explorer - $100 statement credit and 45,000 miles
Chase Ink Cash - $530
Citi AA - 75k AA miles
Citi AA - 65k AA miles
IHG Premier - 105,000 IHG points
Wells Fargo Propel - $375
Wells Fargo Business Platinum - $575
Total: $5098Tradelines$2000 paid