I have a Discover It* card, which I applied for last summer since it had a 0% APR for a year offer, and I needed to float some debt. I then paid it off before the interest went up to 27% or some sort of highway robbery amount. I hadn't paid attention to the features other than the balance transfer offer, but then they started sending me e-mails that for the next three months, I would earn cash back on purchases at various types of stores. So, I used the card to purchase my gas and paid it off, then used it at Amazon and paid it off, and so forth. I had the card listed as one of my Amazon payment options, and just about every time I went on Amazon, it would show up that I had $5 or $10 cashback bonus available to use at Amazon. I thought this was pretty cool. Oh, and if you'll recall from my past posts, I pretty much never spend actual money at Amazon, because I have all these gift cards from running things on my computer. So I was earning free money from using free money. Even better.
Today I got an e-mail saying they'd matched my cashback bonus for the past year. The money was available to download (yes, I just used "download" for money) into my bank account, which I did. It was a few hundred dollars, on top of the other few hundred dollars, just for making purchases I would need to make anyway. Being a credit card company, they're of course banking (literally) on people running up their cards, making purchases they think will count but don't, and paying a lot more in interest than they get in cash back. But if you're a smart broke person, you can do what I did and read the fine print about what counts, only buy things you were going to buy anyway, and then pay it off. Free money is the best money.
*Doesn't that sound dirty? Like, discover THIS.
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