How to earn 320€ or more a year from your credit cards

I’m part of a FIRE whatsapp group which recently talked about rewards cards options in Ireland. I’ve done a bit of research on this and have figured that, with a few changes, our household should be able to EARN over 300€ from 2 credit cards net of stamp duty and bank fees in one year OR almost 400€ by using 3 cards and a Revolut account.

UPDATE: Just after I signed up to the An Post credit card, I got notification that the money back program was ending in April 2021. This reduces our potential earnings but will be looking to use the KBC credit card (not mentioned in this post which earns 1% cash back on certain categories and the Avant credit card earning 1.25% cash back on certain categories). The KBC card is capped at 10€/month and Avant is capped at 12€/month. To max these both out each month you’d need to spend 1,000€/month on the KBC card and 960€/month on the Avant card on specific categories. If maxed out each month it would be a return of 204€ after 60€ stamp duty for the 2 cards.

For those reading from other countries with much better rewards programs, Ireland has very few reward programs. That said, after reading this article, I don’t feel so bad about that. Given the limited options here, this post details the best solution I could find for our spending habits.

Firstly, I should start by saying that this option should only be followed by people who pay off their credit card in full every month. The estimates below are based on our own personal spending habits and may differ based on your own circumstances. Also, we will keep bank fees low by mainly using our credits cards for all card expenditure.

You can watch the youtube version of this post here.

Feature Comparison

In this post, I will be comparing the below products. As I am not planning on incurring any interest by keeping the credit cards paid off in full every month, I am not taking credit rates or introductory balance transfer offers into account:

• AIB Platinum Card
• An Post Credit Card
• Avant Credit Card
• PTSB Explore Account
• AIB Current Account

If you’d like to compare other features of these accounts and cards do check out these helpful sites for comparison:

• Compare Current Accounts: Bonkers and CPCC
• Compare Credit Cards: Bonkers and CPCC

Credit card comparison

Features	AIB Platinum	An Post	Avant
Cash back	0.5%	5%	1.25%
Cap	225€/year	None	12€/month 144€/year
Category limitations	None	25€ or more at Lidl	Retail & Entertainment
Other rewards	AIB everyday rewards (adhoc offers) Visa luxury hotel rewards	Cash back at other shops	Avantages program (tesco clubpoints, CircleK etc)
Spend to reach cap	45,000€/year	No cap	960€/month 11,520€/year

Bank Account Comparison

Features	AIB Current	PTSB Explore	KBC
Fees	18€/year plus per use costs for DD, ATM withdrawals, transactions	72€/year flat fee	0€
Rewards	N/A	0.10€/transaction, max of 5€/month CircleK, Sky & SSE discounts Go Rewards (adhoc offers)	N/A
Cons	Higher costs if you make a lot of transactions	High costs if you don’t maximise rewards	No Cash Lodgement or Withdrawal in Branch, No excel extract of transactions
Spend to reach cap	N/A	50 transactions	N/A

Our plan:

• Switch our bank account to an AIB current account
• Apply for the Avantcard
• Apply for the An Post Credit Card

Estimated costs:

AIB current account:

• Quarterly fee 4.50€ (18€/year)
• Direct Debits costs 5-6 /month @ 0.20€ per transaction= 13.20€/year
• ATM withdrawals 1-2/month @ 0.35€ per transaction = 5€/year
• Total annual cost: 33.25€

Credit card costs:

Stamp duty: 60€ (30€ for 2 credit cards)

I plan on paying the cards off in full every month and should not have any interest charges.

To note here, I used to transfer money to the good on a credit card in order to essentially use it as a debit card in order to keep transaction costs down which I would have incurred by using a bank card. It was also a useful approach when travelling as you could withdraw cash more cheaply from a credit card than a debit card while abroad (depending on the fees of each card). I recently discovered that this is against the terms of use of a credit card and if any money was stolen or any purchases made fraudulently while there was money to the good, you would not be protected. Good to know!

Total fees:

93.25€

Estimated rewards:

The An Post Credit Card has a money-back program where they give you 5% back on all purchases of 25€ or above at Lidl (among a few other shops) with NO cap. If you spend an average of 450€/month that would give you 270€ in cashback.

The Avantcard gives 1.25% cashback on shopping and entertainment to a max of 12€/month or 144€/year. To get this you need to spend 960€/month in these categories on the card.

Total rewards:

414€

Net result:

321€

Considerations:

Maxing out these rewards will take some effort to ensure we use the right cards at the right shops. One at Lidl and the other for everything else. We’ll need to limit our bank card use to DD payments and limited ATM withdrawals only. All other costs will be incurred on the credit cards. We will transfer our monthly costs to the card at the beginning of the month so that we never actually go into credit.

While there are some other bank accounts like KBC that offer no-fee banking, we ultimately didn’t go for them as they do not have the option to withdraw or lodge cash at a branch which we require from time to time. Also, they do not have the ability to export transactions to excel which is a pain when collating expenses for import into my expense tracking tool.

Also worth noting is that my husband and I have recently merged accounts so we only have 1 current account and 1 credit card between us. I will apply for the new credit cards on my own and then add my husband as a card holder so he can have his own card. This simplifies our strategy as all of our household spend will be on these 2 cards and through 1 current account which also helps us keep banking costs down and simplifies my expense tracking.

Other options:

PTSB Explore Account + An Post Credit Card

I also looked at using the PTSB Explore Account in combination with the An Post card. The PTSB account offers 0.10€ per transaction up to 5€/month as well as 0.02€ off per litre at Circle K (when you use your Topaz card and pay by direct debit). Last year we spent 860€ on petrol, assuming we’d only use Circle K for 50% that would come out to about 6.60€ back in the year. Over the last 12 months, we made 580 transactions excluding the Lidl ones. This would result in 58€ cashback for the year plus the 6.60€ = 64.60€. Annual fees on the account are 72€. Bringing our banking fees down to 7.40€ for the year. The PTSB options also offer cashback on Sky and SSE if you have those.

Adding in the 220€ we’d make from the An Post card for Lidl purchases would still net us 212€ for the year.

AvantCard Avantages

Other members of the group, James and Rodger, said they used Avant card and availed of their “avantages” program. Apparently, you can get 4% cashback on tesco by buying prepaid gift cards with your points, 7% off hotel bookings in expedia, 3c off per litre at Circle K etc.

I think you accumulate 1 tesco clubpoint for every 4€ spent which can then be traded in for tesco vouchers. These vouchers have higher value at other shops like: Milano’s pizza where you get 10€ for every 2.50€ in tesco vouchers. 40€ for every 10€ tesco vouchers at centreparks and 80€ for every 20€ in tesco vouchers at Irish ferries and so on.

From what I can make out 1 tesco clubpoint is worth 1 cent. If we spent 22k on this card and converted to tesco points it would amount to about 55€ in value. This would convert into about 220€ in value in the centreparks, milano’s or Irish ferries options above, then minus the 30€ stamp duty, netting 190€ for the year.

I personally don’t shop at Tesco and not planning on the other travel/restaurant-related costs until the vaccine is rolled out so I’ve put this option on the back burner for ourselves for this year. Now that we have our son, we will likely look to use the likes of centreparks and irish ferry’s at some stage but will keep this in mind for future.

I also prefer the idea of just getting cashback which I can spend anywhere so I’m not tempted to spend even more money elsewhere just because I have a discount there.

AvantCard + AIB Platinum + Revolut + An Post

Yet another member, Stephen of savvyspender.ie, found a way to double up on cashback offers between 2 cards using Revolut.

As AIB Platinum offers 0.5% on all expenses regardless of category, he loaded his AIb card into Google Pay and adds money in Revolut through the Google Pay & AIB option, effectively getting 0.5% on this “online purchase”. He then spends the money on his AvantCard and transfers the money from Revolut to pay off the AvantCard which gets him the additional 1.25% cashback on retail and entertainment categories (to a max of 12€/month).

According to the AvantCard FAQ this includes shopping and entertainment spend, including online, your shopping for groceries, in department stores, clothes & shoe shops, chemists, hardware, electrical, petrol stations, restaurants, concert tickets and public houses.

Any spend on travel, gambling or services aren’t covered by Cashback; holidays, car hire, public transport, flights, hotels, online betting, book makers, healthcare, electricity, water and gas charges.

All merchants choose how their business is classified for spend on credit cards; if they classify their business as travel or services we do not include them for Cashback rewards, for example a restaurant in a hotel, which is classified as accommodation, will not be eligible for rewards.

So for us, if we estimated our shopping and entertainment spend was just over 18k excluding about 3,500 for travel and services – that would give us the cap of 144€ from the AvantCard (to get this cap you only need to spend 960€/month on these categories or 11.5k/year) and an additional 112€ from the AIB Platinum. Then the An Post card would give us 270€ for the Lidl purchases. For a total of 526€. Minus 90€ in stamp duty for 3 credit cards and 33€ in bank fees. Earning a net of 403€!

Although this is surely a great hack, I’m not sure if I’m up for the hassle of maintaining 3 credit cards for the sake of 82€, but I wanted to include it in case someone does including my future self.

What about you? Do you have any reward card hacks? If so, please share below!