When do you prefer to redeem your cashback points?

[hrdsurfer]

Just curious what y'all's preferences are. Do you do it at certain time intervals, dollar amounts, or save with a certain purchase in mind? I kind of like to redeem every year, unless I have something in mind I'm saving for 

[Anonymous]

I do mines monthly. I use to do mines every December but I seen too many people post about account closure and losing rewards. And someone said on here that rang so true: "it's not yours until you redeem them."

[Anonymous]

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@hrdsurfer wrote:

Just curious what y'all's preferences are. Do you do it at certain time intervals, dollar amounts, or save with a certain purchase in mind? I kind of like to redeem every year, unless I have something in mind I'm saving for 

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With very few exceptions (where larger amounts might have some advantage, like buying gift cads with Discover) the "rational" thing to do is to redeem every time a reward posts, depositing into an interest bearing account.

This:

a) earns a bit of interest, slowly becoming more significant with savings accounts above 4%

b) prevents the chance of loss, if, rightly or wrongly, the issuer closes your card because they think you have done something bad

c) and for those that want to use the rewards for some special purpose (or at least to know it is a significant amount), using a separate deposit account allows you to do this

Doing ANYTHING else is just ungodly, but such people exist!

[hrdsurfer]

Those are actually good points. Seems so obvious, but I never really thought about it. 

[RSX]

right away - it is THEIR money until i redeem it 

i don't care if it gives me a credit of $0.38 - i will use the card and therefore it will reduce the amount by that credit

i read a story on here of someone using it as a "Savings account" - and I don't remember the number exactly, but it was in the Hundreds of Dollars - and their card was closed in Dec and they lost all the money they hadn't claimed throughout the year - PAINFUL!!!!

https://ficoforums.myfico.com/t5/Credit-Cards/Synchrony-closed-my-account-and-won-t-let-me-redeem-my...

[hrdsurfer]

These post inspired me to claim my rewards. Had about $250 accumulated over the last few months. Of course comenity's online service wasn't working for whatever reason, but they were able to get it done over the phone.

[Horseshoez]

Interesting discussion; I just checked my account pages of the three financial institutions I have active cards with (my CSP was just approved last week and hasn't arrived yet), I guess I should do something about them.  

[B_A_R]

ASAP. Then I transfer over to an HYSA. I've read about to many horror stories about accounts being closed with hundreads or thousands of dollars of cash back in them.

[Horseshoez]

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@B_A_R wrote:

ASAP. Then I transfer over to an HYSA. I've read about to many horror stories about accounts being closed with hundreads or thousands of dollars of cash back in them.

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I'm going to cash in the rewards just because it is "time" to do so, however, I'm not at all worried about my accounts getting closed; TD is my main bank and I run plenty of money through my accounts monthly, so I figure I'm good there, and I have yet to hear of accounts being closed by either CapOne or PenFed because of a lot of accrued awards.

Side comment on TDBank; when I logged in today I noticed they gave me some auto CLI love in the last couple of weeks, from $8,500 to $11,500. 

[Anonymous]

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@Horseshoez wrote:

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I have yet to hear of accounts being closed by either CapOne or PenFed because of a lot of accrued awards.

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It's not "because", just accounts get closed for lots of reasons, and we hear about the ones where a lot of awards were lost.  Cap One closed one of my cards without notice (for non-use).  I don't think I had any rewards unredeemed but if I had...

Also, apart from my original caveat (saving up for some more valuable redemption, such as discounted gift cards) there is really no good reason, apart from the effort, to keep them with the issuer