Time-Shifting Your Credit Card Purchases to Maximize Rewards
A few months ago, I provided some tips for maximizing your credit card rewards. I then promptly forgot to take my own advice about labeling our cards for the current quarter. As such, my wife (who does the bulk of our grocery shopping) has continued to put these purchases on our Platinum Delta SkyMiles Credit Card from American Express instead of our Chase Freedom Visa card.
Yes, we’ve still been earning rewards but, if we had used the Chase card for our grocery purchases, when groceries were in the bonus categories we could’ve received 5% cash back. Bummer…
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Modified on April 11th, 2013 - 5 Comments
Filed under: Credit Cards
About the author: Nickel is the founder and editor-in-chief of this site. He's a thirty-something family man who has been writing about personal finance since 2005, and guess what? He's on Twitter!
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June 16th, 2012 at 10:28 am
This is a great point if you have the money to do it. Will Chase count gift card purchases at grocery stores as grocery purchases? I’ve heard rumor that it doesn’t always work.
June 16th, 2012 at 8:59 pm
Great tip, and I’d love to see the answer to the previous question.
Also, do you know if Trader Joe’s counts as a grocery store, or should I contact Chase? It should, but it is an oddity amongst grocery stores.
June 16th, 2012 at 9:43 pm
This is such a great idea! I think it should work because you get cash back for spending money at a grocery store no matter if they are groceries or not.
June 17th, 2012 at 2:18 pm
It is best to check with the card issuer and store if possible. You can also research some of this online. I think the coding is called “MCC code”.
June 17th, 2012 at 4:22 pm
Lance et al. — Whether or not a store counts depends on how they are coded in the card issuer’s system. I have no idea if Trader Joe’s will report properly, and it might very from location to location. For example, I’ve seen some Super Walmart locations get the grocery store bonus treatment while others don’t. Aside from that, *all* purchases at a store should be treated the same regardless of what you buy. The card issuer has no idea what was in your cart — just that you made a charge at the store in question. So yes, gift cards should be fair game as long as the store you are buying from qualifies for the bonus.