Credit Cards: Tempting Offers Update

Well, you know what they say, if it seems too good to be true it probably is!!

A couple of weeks ago I posted about Credit Cards: Tempting Offers that I had read about in a post from Five Cent Nickel. He outlined several credit cards that combined were offering a total of $700 in sign up bonuses.

Well, I had considered signing up to take advantage of some of these offers, even though I know from Dave Ramsey that if you play with snakes you will probably get bitten. So I held off, until today. Now that I am back from vacation I realized that I have earned less than half of my $1,000 earnings goal and there's only one week left in the month. So, I reconsidered the credit card offers.

The one I was considering was the American Express Business Reward Card because it claimed to give 25,000 bonus points that you could use towards $250 in gift cards. So, I checked out the website and saw a great list of stores from which the gift cards were available. I decided that I could use the $250 to purchase Christmas gifts for my family and relatives, and take $250 out of my gift budget to use for the Debt Snowball.

Seemed like a quick and easy way to add $250 to this months "earnings".

Well, after reviewing several pages of fine print in the credit card offer, I finally decided to call and speak with someone who could answer my questions in person. So, I asked about the 25,000 points and the gift cards and was told you can only use the 25,000 points for an airline ticket. If you want to convert the points to buy gift cards, you only get 5,000 - which will only get you $50 in gift cards. :(

So, no deal for me. Not worth the risks for only $50 in gift cards.

Back to the drawing board to come up with another $500 this month! (I'm thinking Associated Content, ebay, yard sale.)