As I start doing the year-end financial stuff, one thing I always do is tally up the credit card charges.
Marriott Visa: $36,068.81
AOL Visa: $3,206.25
Discover: $1,176.39
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Total: $40,451.45
As far as rewards earned, we got 41,384 Marriott points. That's enough for up to 7 free nights with some points left over. At $80/night, that's about $560. We got $40 cashback from Discover. We haven't redeemed our AOL reward points yet but they're worth a few more dollars, so total rewards are a little over $600 for the year. We also got one free hotel night from Marriott that we get every year on our account anniversary. That saved us over $200. We used that when we went to New York for our anniversary in July. So really, our rewards were over $800.
I was a little surprised to see the total is nearly $9,000 more than last year. Looking back, I can explain most of that. My wife had surgery in 2006 that I didn't pay for until 1/07. That was a couple thousand. She then had surgery again in 07 that cost another $800 and some. We also started planning my daughter's Bat Mitzvah which is in September and gave deposits to the caterer, the DJ and the photographer totalling a few thousand dollars. Add in a couple of costly car repairs on our two 100,000-plus mile cars and that accounts for almost the whole $9,000.
All in all, not so bad. No late payments. Every bill paid in full each month. Zero interest charges. And only the Marriott card has an annual fee ($65) but as you can see, it is well worth paying for what we get in return (over $760 in free stays earned this year).
2007 Credit Card Usage Totals
December 26th, 2007 at 11:44 pm
December 26th, 2007 at 11:51 pm 1198713078
December 27th, 2007 at 12:04 am 1198713868
December 27th, 2007 at 01:25 am 1198718714
I'm afraid that I won't pay it off at the end of every month even if I have the cash for it, but I guess it works if you want your rebate cash.
Congrats!
December 27th, 2007 at 01:47 am 1198720038
December 27th, 2007 at 04:23 am 1198729439
I also did a lot of traveling and am a platinum priority club member. Free air and hotel, not a bad way to vacation. Now to just find the time.
December 27th, 2007 at 02:53 pm 1198767203