Hah! Read it and weep, my friends. This month’s AMEX bill came with the annual kickback coupon: FIVE hundred thirty-seven dollahs and sixty-one centavos!

YES!

Not only that, but by dint of endless no-buy days, I managed to come in TWO HUNDRED DOLLARS under this month’s credit-card budget, which rolled on top of the existing accretion of $300 comes to another lurking five hundred bucks.

Hot dang! I’m gunna have it all converted to dollar bills, pile them up in the middle of the living-room floor, and roll around in them! In time, maybe I’ll have enough to fill up the swimming pool with dollar bills and take a daily dip, like Scrooge McDuck in his money bin.

Okay. Well. Seriously. I suppose it’s going to hafta go into the Renovation Loan Fund. And okay, yes, I know My Beloved Employer’s curious accounting this year undoubtedly = higher taxes for moi. Argh. Into the savings fund with it.

Hmmm. But $537 plus $500...it’s almost enough to cover a Thomas Moser table. <<salivate>>

Nope. Nope! Stop that! INTO the MONEY MARKET with it. How smug will I feel when that next Vanguard statement shows up? Give me strength, Lord!

How did I engineer this apparent windfall? By getting a credit card with a cash rewards plan and using it to pay for everything other than regularly recurring, automatically transferred utility and insurance bills. Over the course of the year, that adds up to a fair amount of money, so that even the tiny percentage represented by the kickback brings in a nice sum.

More on how to use credit cards to your advantage in a future post.

credit cards