Tag Archive for Capital One

I got $2000 back from my credit card company?!

A few months ago I blogged about how I love the Capital One Venture Card.  The other day I was curious how much we’ve cashed in this year on the card and was pleasantly surprised.  We have erased $1,548 in travel purchases for our bill and I have over $300 available to be cashed in at anytime!  That’s almost $2000 we got back and because we pay the balance off every month we haven’t paid a dime in interest.

We put everything we can on the card, like the expenses from the tree falling on my house earlier this year and our daycare costs.  Combining the points towards a family vacation, combined with our frequent flyer miles, I think will take a big chunk out of our expenses.

Now…where should we go?

Are the rewards worth it?

I admit it… Alec Baldwin sold me on the Capital One Venture card. I’ve had reward cards before, but I found, as many of us have, that it was difficult to cash in on the travel rewards. I moved away from the rewards for a while because I just didn’t feel like the rewards were very high.

I have been pleasantly surprised to find that utilizing the rewards on my Venture card really is as easy as Alec Baldwin promises. I’ve found it easiest to just use the purchase eraser instead of using the booking system.

I’m now putting everything on my Venture card so my points can wrack up. It averages a 2% return so for every $5000 I put on the card I get about $100 back.

But there is a trick to maximizing rewards……YOU MUST PAY THE BALANCE EVERY MONTH. As long as you are charging items that you know you can pay off at the end of the month it’s great. If you do not pay the balance then the interest will take away from your benefits.