With the airlines now allowing you to redeem miles for in exchange for paying for just a portion of a tickets (pay the rest in cash), 10,000 miles can reduce your annual family vacation travel cost 5 – 10%. When you earn miles for your everyday expenditures, you can still justify playing golf, relaxing at the spa, taking your clothes to the dry cleaner, etc. By redeeming the miles you earn on these “everyday” activities, you can lower your family vacation travel costs because you made smart choices with your discretionary expenditures. Choose the right rewarding merchants for the things that you spend $$$ on repeatedly and your rewards can really add up…automatically…and get you much closer to that next trip or vacation

The value of earning up to 5,000 miles annually going to the dry cleaner can more than offset what you would save by ironing your clothes yourself… How much time would it take to clean and press your dress shirts…or how frustrated would your significant become if you were to transfer this new responsibility to them? Rewards can also help to justify the enjoyment of life’s pleasures. Do you really want to give up playing your normal round of golf at 7am on Saturday @ an average cost of $50 per month or $600 per year? What if you can earn another 5,000 miles per year for playng golf or going to the spa…? Add that to your 5,000 miles earned for dry cleaning to the a total of 10,000 incremental miles earned.

What we have found is that if consumers are repetitive spenders on life’s small luxuries, then rewards combined with the convenience and joy factor may be make these luxuries economically reasonable! Let’s do the analysis together – if your average dry cleaning bill is $40 and you traditionally went to the dry cleaner 1.5 times per month - then you are spending $720 per year on dry cleaning alone. In many reward programs like Thanks Again (www.thanksagain.com ), you can double your rewards with a total reward value of up to $100 on your $720 of expenditures. And that value can be available in cash back or converted into 5,000 airline miles (given the seasonal promotion and if you earned these miles on an airline rewards card or not).

Given these shaky economic times, consumers are tightening up their fists and holding each and every dollar for as long as possible. Consumers have eliminated many historical discretionary items from their monthly budgets like dry cleaning, car wash, spa appointments and golfing despite the fact that these expenditures provide great convenience and pleasure. Question – can rewards help in these troubling times?