Get £180 by using this card

This brilliant reward credit card offers a real return on your spending.

Truth be told, money is a little tight at the moment. My son seems to have inherited my appetite and is working his way through milk like there’s no tomorrow. Having a child is proving even more expensive than I had anticipated.

So I’m even keener than usual to spot chances to get something for nothing. That may mean taking advantage of the excellent Double Clubcard deal at Tesco at the moment (I was tragically excited when I noticed Pampers were included in the double offer).

But as exciting as getting life’s necessities on the cheap is, it’s even better if you can treat yourself for free. And my favourite rewards credit card allows you to do just that.

The Express Rewards card

The Express Rewards card comes from, surprisingly enough, American Express, and allows you to get all sorts of free goodies from places like Marks & Spencer, iTunes, Boots and Amazon. You’ll need to have a household income of £30,000 to qualify for the card.

You earn points based on your spending, but the points you earn depend on where you are doing that spending.

So, for every £1 you spend in supermarkets, you enjoy three points, up to a maximum of £500 per month (and even my son’s drinking habits have not pushed us to a Tesco bill quite that large just yet).

For every £1 you then spend in leading department stores, you enjoy a return of two points. You can then earn one point for virtually every £1 you spend elsewhere.

Converting your points

That’s all great, but how many points do you need to get before you start seeing a return? After all, as much as I love Amazon, there’s no point putting all of my spending for the year on a credit card only to see a £10 voucher as the return.

Thankfully, the return on the Express Rewards card is far better than that!

Once you reach 5,000 points, you can convert them into a £25 voucher, a decent return compared to any other rewards card in the market. But what makes the card extra attractive is that if you spend £500 each month in the first three months of having the card, you’ll collect 18,000 bonus points.

That’s the equivalent of £90 of gift vouchers, a fabulous deal in anyone’s book.

Based on my household’s normal credit card spending, I reckon we would accrue about 1,500 points a month, minimum. Over the course of a year, that comes to 18,000 points – another £90 of vouchers! So for doing my usual spending over the course of the year, I’d be looking at £180 of vouchers to spend in some of my favourite places.

Where to spend those vouchers

American Express has 15 retail partners, where you can spend the vouchers. Now, I like most of these stores and spend money there fairly regularly, but nonetheless it’s a fairly limited list, which may undermine the attractiveness of this card to some of you.

Here are the stores where you can spend those vouchers:

• Marks & Spencer
• Amazon
• Harvey Nichols
• House of Fraser
• Harrods
• iTunes
• Boots
• Net-A-Porter
• Gap
• HMV
• Tiffany & Co
• Molten Brown
• Homebase
• Comet
• Waterstone’s

Your usual spending

There is an important thing to stress when considering rewards cards – they are not an excuse to spend more than you usually would.

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The whole point of the card is to ensure you get a reward on the money you already spend, not encourage you to spend even more in order to get more points. After all, if you can’t pay off your balance each month, the interest you’ll be paying on the debt will outweigh whatever benefits you get from the points.

However, it is a good idea to put as much of your spending as possible on the card, in order to get the best possible return.

Cold, hard cash

Of course, vouchers are only useful if they are valid in stores you are likely to spend money in. And with the relatively limited selection available from the Express Rewards card, it may not meet your needs.

A good alternative is to get rewarded for the money you spend with good old-fashioned cash!

Again, the best card around comes from American Express, with its Platinum Cashback credit card, which pays an incredible 5% in cashback on all of your spending over the first three months, up to a maximum of £100.

After that, the rate of cashback you’ll enjoy is variable, depending on how much you spend over the year. So spend £3,500 and you’ll get 0.5%, spend between £3,501 and £7,500 and you’ll get 1%, and over £7,501 and you’ll earn 1.5%. So with my family’s usual credit card spending, we’d be looking at cashback of around £214 from the Platinum cashback card.

As many readers will no doubt be keen to point out, the issue with American Express is that its cards are not accepted everywhere. There are cashback alternatives though, with two new entrants to the cashback credit card market. For a full run down of the options, be sure to have a read of Five top cashback credit cards.

Get a free holiday

The other brilliant form of reward card that I really like are the cards that help you towards holidays. Most of the main airlines offer their own credit cards, which offer you points towards cheaper flights and accommodation, so if you’re a loyal user of Virgin or British Airways then you may want to go for their card.

However, I much prefer the general Airmiles scheme, as you can choose from a range of different airlines. The official cards of the scheme, the Lloyds Duo Airmiles cards, are pretty nifty in their own right. For a great guide to the best holiday credit cards, have a read of Get a free holiday in Italy!

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