Buying gifts, decorations, holiday meals, and flights back home can really put a dent in your wallet. But using your cashback credit card could help you earn rewards that’ll soften the blow. And with Kudos, a free app that helps match your rewards, you can earn more than double in cash back at popular stores and treat yourself to a little extra joy this holiday season.
We spend a lot during the holidays
While gifts and decorations aren’t the real reasons for the season, it’s no secret that we spend a lot of cash this time of year. You may already use your credit cards as a way to save a little extra cash for those large purchases, but it doesn’t always make up for it.
On Black Friday alone, Americans spend an average of $473, with men reporting a staggering $565 and women reporting a slightly lower $382.
About 42% of Americans spend between $20 to $49 per gift, and 15% report spending more than $100, according to Finder’s Consumer Confidence Index. If you were to spend at least $35 per person and have at least 10 people to buy for, that adds up to a whooping $350 in presents alone. And for those who spend $100 per person, 10 gifts would amount to a bill that’s well over $1,000.
And if you use a 5% cashback card on $350 for presents, you’ll earn a meager $17.50 in rewards. While it’s a little extra money you wouldn’t have otherwise earned, you can maximize your rewards by taking advantage of apps and browser extensions like Kudos that’ll boost your rewards on purchases you’re going to make anyway.
Kudos might beat out Santa this year
Kudos is a free app and smart wallet that analyzes your credit cards and picks the best one that’ll maximize your cashback earnings before you make a purchase. It also recommends new credit cards based on your purchase history for more cash in your pocket.
And thanks to their current special holiday promotion running until December 25, you can earn up to five times what your credit card will earn you at select big-name retailers and websites you’ll likely shop for presents. Merchants featured in this promotion include:
Walmart
Kohl’s
Lowe’s
Priceline
Kayak
IHG
Choice Hotels
Stubhub
Sephora
Ulta Beauty
Neiman Marcus
Macy’s
Lego
Adorama
Fandango
Turn presents into cash
If you were to spend around $350 on presents for your family with a 5% cashback card and use Kudos’ boost, you would turn $17.50 in cashback into $87.50. If you’re in a giving mood this year, that could mean a few extra gifts — or perhaps one for yourself!
Flights are massive cashback earners
Say you’re about to spend $1,700 on a domestic, round-trip domestic flight for your family of four to visit the in-laws. If you use your Chase Sapphire Preferred Card with 3x points, that would mean earning a modest $51 in rewards.
But if you use Kudos and book through Priceline, you can turn that $51 of cashback into a whooping $255, thanks to Kudos’ current promotion with Priceline where you’ll earn five times in boosted rewards. And if you’re staying at a hotel while traveling, Kudos is also partnered with Choice Hotels for the same promotional boosted rewards.
But don’t forget about Thanksgiving
Before we get swept up in the Christmas spirit, there’s Thanksgiving. Sure, we don’t buy presents, but you might host and have to spend hundreds of dollars on food, or you’re a guest tasked with bringing a dish. Turkeys alone cost $27.90 the week before Thanksgiving, and Americans spend an estimated $1.28 billion on these birds.
While you’re food shopping, you can use Kudos at places like Walmart for online orders to also earn credit card rewards. And of course, right after Thanksgiving is Black Friday and Cyber Monday — prime times to score mega deals and earn even more rewards with Kudos.
During the holiday season, we might spend a lot of cash, but it’s also a great time to take advantage of your rewards credit cards and maximize them with Kudos before their promotion ends on December 25.
Bethany Hickey is a personal finance writer at Finder, specializing in banking, lending, insurance, and crypto.
Bethany’s expertise in personal finance has garnered recognition from esteemed media outlets, such as Nasdaq, MSN, Yahoo Finance, GOBankingRates, SuperMoney, AOL and Newsweek. Her articles offer practical financial strategies to Americans, empowering them to make decisions that meet their financial goals. Her past work includes articles on generational spending and saving habits, lending, budgeting and managing debt.
Before joining Finder, she was a content manager where she wrote hundreds of articles and news pieces on auto financing and credit repair for CarsDirect, Auto Credit Express and The Car Connection, among others.
Bethany holds a BA in English from the University of Michigan-Flint, and was poetry editor for the university’s Qua Literary and Fine Arts Magazine.
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