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Home > Archive: March, 2011

Archive for March, 2011

Hefty Costco AmEx Rebate

March 1st, 2011 at 06:17 pm

Last Thursday we received a Costco American Express rebate check for $1,019.59. These rebate funds will go straight into our travel savings.

According to the year-end summary we spent 53% of our total expenditures on travel, a category that pays back 2%. It's a good rebate program but it pays to monitor transactions to ensure expenditures are assigned to the correct category. A few months back, I found an expense that should have been tagged as travel but wasn't. The correction resulted in an extra $67 on the rebate.

We charge everything possible on our Am Ex account and pay the balance in full each month. There are just a handful of items I can't charge (e.g., property taxes), but if they take Am Ex, it goes on the card. I especially like paying for gas because this category pays back 3% and it means ~16 cents per gallon savings at the current price of gas. Another good feature: the card has no annual fee.

One drawback is that some places still do not take Am Ex, but in that case, I use my Chase Freedom card that also has a decent rebate program.