Maxing your credit cards

OK, so this is a little early to be thinking about this, as it is often best to be done at the end of the year when your credit cards haven't reached their yearly redemption limit, but for those that don't like to cram at the end, this will be good knowledge now.

Assuming you have one (or more) of those 5% credit cards for Grocery stores and drug stores, you should _definitely_ be aware of the following.

Safeway sells Gift Cards to such places as Nordstrom's, Old Navy, Bed Bath and Beyond, Home Depot, Sportmart/Oshman's/Sports Authority, Jamba Juice, Chili's just to name a few. Normally, with your credit card you can only get 1% back at such establishments. However, if you buy a Gift Card at Safeway (or CVS Pharmacy for you east coasters), you will instead be getting 5% back.

Let's say you wanted to buy a $100 chainsaw at Home Depot. If you go there with your credit card, you would only get $1 (1% back) making the purchase $99 (let's assume no tax).
However, if you bought the $100 GC from Safeway, you'd only be spending $95 on that $100 chainsaw. Such an easy way to make an extra couple bucks.

Now, for some of you with only one of these credit cards, if you come close to maxing out the $300 redemption per calendar year, then you might be hesitant to do this, but if you instead don't even come close to the limit or have two such cards, then don't forget this come December!