Have you heard that I love credit card rewards programs? Well this time of year, I love them more than ever.

So far, I’ve turned my credit card rewards into the following items to give away as gifts:

$20 cashback from Discover into $25 in AMC movie bucks

$20 cashback from Discover for $25 in Blockbuster movie rentals

$20 cashback from Discover for $25 Borders gift card

A LEGO® Road Construction Set for 3100 Citibank Thank You points

$25 Amazon.com Gift Certificate for 3500 Thank You points

Rhino Rampage Game for 2,800 Pts

Normally, I try to redeem rewards so that for every point you get 0.01 worth of monetary value. For example, 2500 points gets you a $25 gift card. And I am guessing that if I’d waited, I could have found Rhino Rampage on sale after Thanksgiving. But I decided to be more flexible this time of year. It’s just a relief to cross some gifts off the list without reducing my bank balance.

I’m not worried that any of the retailers I mentioned above will go out of business in the next few months. Plus, the people on my list asked for them.

Call me strange, but I’m pretty much done with my holiday shopping. I didn’t even wait for Black Friday this year. With coupons and sales from practically every retailer trying to entice customers into the stores, will the deals be that much better? Even if they were, I doubt you’d find me standing in line at 4am, unless I lived in a warmer climate.

If I find that I missed out on major discounts because I was too early on the draw, I can always return and rebuy.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 24th, 2008 at 6:28 pm and is filed under shopping. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.