It is rare these days to have a bank that gives you anything other than an interest paid statement in the mail.
Yesterday I received a letter from the NAB to say that they needed to raise the interest on our investment property loan by 0.29% because the ‘market conditions have changed’. Yet the Reserve Bank have kept interest rates on hold. As such I can only look on such a move with skepticism.
ING Direct, on the other hand, have done nothing but surprise me with their level of service and financial credits. First, my dad referred me to them and we both received a $50 credit when I joined. Nice! Next I had 6 months as an introductory gift where I received 5% back for any PayWave purchases under $100. Now that the 6 months have come and gone we still receive a little kick back in the form of a 2% rebate on PayWave purchases under $100.
2% doesn’t sound like much but it is nice to see all these cumulative credits appearing in your account rather than constant debits. It also amounted to $283.67 in the last financial year alone.
While that might not seem like anything to write home about, let alone blog about, it does bring to question how much the average person actually gets back from their credit card rewards.
I looked into a few credit cards last week, crunched some numbers and found that most did not offer a cash reward but rather a store credit system and charged for the privilege of having their rewards card.
I also rang a few lenders to query the cash rewards that they offered and found that most could only really offer 0.6% back on each dollar spent using their card. This would mean I would need to have spent $47,278.33 to recoup the same gains made though ING.
There are a few catches with the ING Direct card however:
• You need to have $1000 deposited monthly into the account.
• The account carries no interest that I know of.
• The card is only a debit card and offers no credit function (Read: This will keep you out of trouble!)
The ‘no interest’ component means that you need to actively make your money work for you. What I mean by this is that you need to scoot your deposits elsewhere to lower the interest payments on some of your debts or to be deposited into savings to earn interest. It would be a bad move to leave $10,000 sitting there earning no interest and would probably erode any potential gains.
Let me know if you know of any other banks offering such services in the comments box below.
Note- I am not affiliated in any way with ING Direct but I do like the cut of their jib! At the time of writing I also discovered that while they no longer offer the 5% rebate on PayWave, the 2% rebate still applies however, and they are offering $75 to new sign ups. Hope that helps.