Should you choose travel rewards or cash back credit cards? It depends on the one that brings the largest bang on one’s credit card.
Additionally, a person should know that the prizes are only valuable if the balance is paid off in full every month. Without that, the interest accrued on the balance will often be more than the acquired prize.
How Travel Rewards Differ from Cash Back Prizes
Getting and redeeming Travel prizes might be quite hard. So, a card owner must be ready to put in the energy and time to interpret the hotel programs or airlines.
Free Travel rewards seem amazing but most card owners find it challenging when attempting to claim the points or miles that they have accumulated.
Travel Rewards Gaining
Most Travel prizes cards provide inducement points or miles for use in traveling. Traveling categories include: car hires, airfare, entertainment, restaurant stays and meals.
Travel Prizes Worth
These prizes provide a chance of gaining a great value of every point or mile gotten. The prize is more valuable when it is claimed for global travels in distinguished restaurants, costly late flights, and the business class ones.
The miles and points have little value if applied in internal flights in economy class, mostly if a traveler is able to book a flight which enough advanced notice.
However, when miles and points get redeemed for flights with great value and expensive hotels, it is easy to get 3 to 5 cents in worth on every point. This is way nicer than the Cash Back option.
Claiming Travel Prizes
The chance to claim travel prizes differs as per the loyalty scheme and the card in use.
There are credit cards which warrant no constraints or blackout dates when choosing a flight or a stay. There are others which provide a small duration of staying or few seats for anyone redeeming the prizes.
Still, there are some which just let people redeem a statement credit for the journey purchase made. The way a person chooses to travel is what determines which program he or she will join.
Restaurant cards and co-branded airline let people use their miles directly to redeem stays or flights via a loyalty scheme linked to their credit card.
Often, a person can arrange to fly with their associate airlines and chains also. General traveling cards may require a person to book the flight via their portal. Alternatively, they may let people move points to the programs which are present.
It might be difficult to claim airline miles for a flight on peak traveling season, so the programs are never really convenient for the people traveling on holiday.
Besides that, most enthusiastic travelers that have certain traveling needs are not properly served by traditional airline flyer companies.
For instance, taking a shorter flight on a route that has high competition brings little value from 25,000 miles on a flight which costs between 100-200 dollars.
Additionally, big families will often get disappointed in their attempt to get more than 2 or 3 award seats present for the least mileage level.
People who do not like staying in big, chain restaurants will have little to use for restaurant points.
Lastly, if your schedule prohibits looking for an award seat early enough, your miles will have little value.
Travel perks
One biggest advantage of Travel Prizes is the travel perks.
When one is a frequent traveler or he does not like the pain of traveling, these perks will be valuable:
- Status upgrades
- Priority boarding
- Free inspected bags
- Lounge access
Cash Back Rewards
Many credit card owners including those who enjoy traveling prefer cash back prizes.
To begin with, the cash can often be used in paying bills such as rent and mortgage. This is not possible to do with hotel points or airline miles.
In addition, a person can save and invest the cash and it will increase with time.
On the other hand, for travel rewards, restaurant points, and flyer miles lose value after some time because businesses modify their rewarding schemes.
And even though there are different travel rewards which provide points that are redeemable for flight purchases, if a person fails to make a travel purchase, he or she will be unable to use the acquired points.
Getting Cash Back Rewards
Many Cash Back prizes provide inducement points in shopping areas such as big shops and groceries. They might additionally contain a shopping point which provides more places for shopping with other associate merchants.
Points worth
The best travelers can receive from 3 to 5 cents per point in Travel Rewards but Cash Back points normally have 1 cent per a point.
The point worth is low on Cash Back.
However, the Cash Back programs are straightforward and a card owner is guaranteed a good return without decrypting loyalty programs or looking for award presence.
Those that find it hard to claim the Travel prizes are likely to gain zero value from their points.
Cash Rewards claiming
It is very easy to claim a Cash Reward. Before redemption, some need a certain amount. There is also a chance to claim reward cards and products.
Shopping perks
Most cards provide useful perks for customers. There are perks like:
- Credit monitoring service
- Extended warranty
- Buying and cost security
Conclusion
Prize credit cards provide points, cash back and miles for a person’s spending but determining the best prize card is never simple.
If you are the kind of credit card holder that prefers sitting back and waiting for prizes to pile up and claim them effortlessly, then consider the Cash Back option.
On the other hand, if you are the kind of individual that dreams about work and 1st class traveling, or you like booking flights with short notice, consider Travel Rewards.
About The Author
Nika Goddard is a psychologist, writer-freelancer, traveler and just creative person, lover of world cultures, languages, food, wild spaces and urban places by nature. You can find her on LinkedIn.
