Comment by matthewdgreen | Hacker News Reader

Comment by matthewdgreen | Hacker News Reader

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Credit card rewards typically represent around 1% of transactions. For a cross-country trip with a $500 flight, 3 night at a $200 hotel, 4 $25 taxi trips and 9 (average) $20 meals that works out to 1% of $1380 or $13.80. In exchange for this modest benefit you will need to keep receipts and do data entry for about 15 items. If you forget a single meal receipt or accounting disputes a single charge, you’re already in the red. It’s not even clear if this reward covers the theoretical cost of extending a loan to your employer (at consumer interest rates), which is what you’re doing.

This only adds up to a substantial benefit if you’re doing major international travel (carefully) or handling big-ticket hardware purchases on your card. Meals and travel is almost certainly a net loss.

People who travel a lot for work are often extremely attuned to the credit card rewards game, so getting only 1% back is unrealistic. You can eek out at least 5% back (and often much higher, depending on redemptions) on all travel expenses. So in this(extremely inexpensive, bare-bones) travel scenario it’s more like $65. With international or frequent travel, it’s not hard to arrive at a couple extra thousand dollars a year.

You can just use your personal card on the big ticket items (flight and hotel) and use the corporate card for the small ones, if you’re worried about forgetting something. And you can get 5% points for those expenses (with either airline/hotel brand loyalty cards, or something like Amex Platinum that works on any brand). If you’re traveling a lot and flying business class for work it can add up to thousands of dollars and pay for your vacations.

My credit card gives 5 miles per USD for flight bookings, between 3 and 5 miles per USD ofr hotel bookings (depending of direct or via an OTA) and 5 miles per USD for restaurant/food purchases. Now one can call a mile worth one cent or one and a half cent, whatever you want. Either way it's going to be closer to a 3-8% personal benefit rather than 1%. If you travel rather often it adds up.

> Credit card rewards typically represent around 1% of transactions.

This is a significant underestimate. Consider that the Citi Double Cash card gives unlimited 2% cash back on everything, and that a lot of other cards offer even higher rates (I've seen 5%) for individual categories.

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