Top Cards for Winter Vacation: December 2019

Getting More Rewards vs Saving on Interest & Fees

When it comes to your actual earnings, every detail is important. In most credit cards' offers fees and rewards counterbalance each other, and for each prospective card you need to consider what dominates. Some premium credit cards have hefty annual fees and are worth it for only those who spend the equal or more for plane tickets.

On the other hand, sometimes a card boasts low fees, but has no rewards either. Thus, it's a matter of calculation. In order to determine the card's worth to you we need to count its rewards value. We don't take into account any interest payments, because we take as a basis that you don't carry a balance and you are never late with your payments - this is the only way you can get any profit from a rewards credit card.

What is rewards value and why it is important?

The rewards value is how much you are going to get back with the card, how much money you are going to pocket. To calculate it, we need to put together all your expenses per year. Since individual spending can vary, we will take average annual spending per person. We don't take expenses that don't earn rewards like mortgage, cash advances or balance transfers.

Generally during a year, you have a lot different expenses, which you can't put all in one category, so cards with a good rewards rate on all purchases and a good sign-up bonus will earn you more simply because all in all you spend much more in different categories altogether than in one selected category, even with increased bonuses. That's why in the game of rewards all expenses are important. Let's see how much an average person spends per year:

How do we calculate the rewards value for the first year?

The calculation is pretty simple: we take annual expenses of an average American (the ones that earn rewards) and multiply them by the rewards rate. If the card has a bonus offer, we add it to the earned rewards. We assume that bonus offer is earned by default, as well as all expenses are put on a credit card. All calculations are hypothetical and vary depending on the credit card spendings.

With these operations you get a number in miles or points, but we need to know how much real profit you are going to get, so we divide this number by the redemption rate. Redemption rate varies, but generally it is 1 mile/point - one penny, so we take it as a rule. Therefore, dividing the sum in miles by 100 you get your rewards value in dollars.