Think Before you Buy to Get more Rewards

I love, love, love, LOVE my rewards credit cards. I have 3, but only use one most of the time. I earn 5% on select merchant types(changes quarterly). It used to be, just last month, I would earn 3% on any fast food, groceries, and drugstore purchases (unlimited rewards). This quarter 5% reward is for:

• Home Improvement stores
• Home Furnishing stores
• Lawn & Garden stores
• Drugstores

Which is cool because I have more to purchase from Home Depot, Lowe's and possibly some furniture to buy(at Ikea, maybe) for our near empty living room:)

Any way here is how I "earned" even more rewards on a large transaction on amazon this week. I am assuming I would get 1% there(I have an amazon rewards credit card that earns 3% on those purchases too, but I came out ahead NOT using it in this case).

I purchased $1350 in amazon gift certificates at Kroger using my credit card. This earned me :

1% from the credit card company = 13.50
200 fuel pts for every $100, so .20 on 14 gal(what I usually put in our van)2,700 of those which is about 2.8 % back per $100 spent=37.80 in gas rewards
I also got 540 minutes added to my iwireless phone- linked to my kroger card, each minute is worth .10= 54.00 in airtime

So instead of earning 3% or $40.5 by using my Amazon card, I earned $105.80 total back from my credit card's cash back program, fuel rewards and free minutes buying the gift cards at Kroger. It took me about 15 minutes to purchase the cards and another 15 or so to add them all to my Amazon account when I got home. So for a half hour of work I earned 64.80 more(it's like being paid 129.60 an hour to think!)

Oh, and I went through a fellow bloggers amazon link to complete my purchase, so they should be getting a nice bonus too:)