Make Money Doing Nothing

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I’ve written previously of the benefits of using a cash back credit card for all of your spending. Unfortunately, Chase changed our card for the fourth time in four years and this time gave us a Chase PerfectCard. It’s not a bad overall card, 3% back at gas stations and 1% back everywhere else. But, since we were getting 5/1 on the old version of the card we began looking for an alternative.

We actually found it with Chase. The BP Chase card gives you 5% on BP purchases, 2% on travel and dining, and 1% everywhere else other than competing gas stations. Even better, the card doubles all of your rebates for the first sixty days. We already get 2% on travel and dining through our Costco AmEx card, but the extra 2% on BP gas was more than enough to get us to switch (plus BP is *everywhere*).

We applied in haste because we were taking a vacation in June and I would be travelling for business. The card arrived the day before we left for vacation. Which was a good thing. Because of the extraordinary expenses, we made $180 in rebates on the card in the first month. Not bad for doing nothing.

UPDATE: I included the $75 that you get for signing up for the card in the $180 amount. You get $40 for the first time you use the card and $35 when you spend $3,000 w/n 3 months. We hit both in the first month. So, we didn’t spend like $10,000 last month, it only felt that way.