Well, I'd need more specifics about which card you're talking about and what type of purchases.
I presume if you're talking about Flexperks, then you're referring to USBank credit cards.
I have the USBank FlexPerks Travel Rewards card. It's a points-based card, which earns:
- 3 points per $ of charitable giving
- 2 points per $ of grocery or airline purchases (whichever you've done the most of this cycle)
- 1 point per $ of all other spending
What this resolves to in actual % cashback depends on how you redeem the points.
You can redeem the points for cash at a rate of 1¢ per point, which would effectively yield 3% on charity, 2% on grocery/airline, 1% everything else.
Or you can redeem for an airline flight through their portal (which is essentially Travelocity). Basically, for 40,000 points you can redeem for a flight that would otherwise cost up to $800. So if the flight you redeem for would otherwise be $799.99, then you'll effectively have been earning approximately 6% on charity, 4% on grocery/airline, 2% on everything else. But if the flight you redeem for would otherwise cost $400.01, then you effectively earned 3% on charity, 2% on grocery/airline, 1% everything else. We did the former last year. Booked two roundtrip tickets from ORD->FLL which otherwise would have cost us $399.98 each, using 40,000 points total. Was very happy about that. Honestly, faced with the latter scenario, I'd probably just pay for the tickets with a different card (that gave, say, 5% back on airline spending) and save the points for later. Then again, you have to take into account the annual fee ($50 or 3,500 points), and determine if you think you'll make better use of the points before the annual fee makes it unenconomical to keep the card going.
The card has offered occasional opportunities to earn extra points, like signing up for paperless statements, participating in surveys or marketing promos, special bonus points for spending $x amount during a particular period, or points for entering/winning a vacation photo contest (we came in second one month, earning 10,000 points!). We typically use the card only for charitable contributions, the aforementioned promos, and the initial spend.
USBank does offer good signup bonuses from time to time. The best seem to be during the Olympics, where they offer a good base of points, with additional points for each medal the U.S. team wins. Hint: wait until just after the games are over before applying and you'll know exactly what you'll be getting. We got ours during the 2014 summer games and got 32,650 bonus points to start with, which isn't too shabby.
Chris.
