Capital One No Hassle Miles can be earned on numerous Capital One rewards cards. The program follows the basics that all other miles based credit card rewards programs use. For each dollar you spend on the credit card, you earn 1 mile. Miles can be redeemed for free airline tickets, free hotel rooms and other free travel services.

2012 Capital One Rewards Catalog

Just like with the Capital Rewards Catalog 2011, Capital One saves money by not mailing a printed rewards catalog to every cardholder. Some customers report that they get catalogs because they have a high point balance, while others say that they only get the miles redemption catalogs when they have high card usage. Either way, there is no way to order a Capital One Rewards catalog in the mail. You either got one or your didn’t.

Fortunately, like all rewards programs, the merchandise you can redeem miles for is not offered at a bargain price. The reward “prices” are good for months at a time, so unless the card company is willing to hold inventory of merchandise (expensive), it is necessary to charge an amount of points that results in paying full retail or more for an item. You are much better off redeeming your rewards points and miles for free travel.

Capital One Rewards Chart

Fortunately, you don’t even need a complicated Capital One rewards chart to figure out how many miles you need to redeem for a free flight, depending upon whether you have Capital One No Hassle Miles, or Capital One Venture Miles.

For the Capital One Venture Card, and its no-fee cousin, the Capital One Venture One Card, you redeem your miles at a rate of 100 miles per dollar for any travel expense. (Only certain categories of travel expenses are allowed under the Venture One rewards program, but they include airfare, hotel and car rental.)

You don’t have to order your reward or redeem miles in advance. Rather, when your travel expenses show up on your credit card statement, you can redeem your miles against the existing charges. For example, if you spent $650 on a free plan ticket as your credit card reward, you would buy the ticket using the Venture card just like you would if you were not redeeming miles for free trips. When you see the $650 show up on your monthly bill, or online, login to to redeem your miles. Use 65,000 miles to cover the $650 charge and your balance is now $650 lower. Just pay the rest of your credit card bill like normal.

If you have a Capital One No Hassle Miles card, the deal does require a free ticket redemption chart. The chart is unchanged from the 2011 credit card rewards program.

A ticket that costs less than $150.00 takes 15,000 miles to redeem.

$150.01 to $350.00 takes 35,000 miles to redeem.

$350.01 to $600. 00 takes 60,000 miles to redeem.

Tickets over $600.01 are the price times 100 miles to redeem.

Redeem Miles for Cash or Gift Cards

You can also redeem No Hassle Miles for cash or gift cards.

Cash rewards are the same cost as statement credits. The only difference is that you don’t get a check in the mail. Each reward is redeemed at a rate of half the redemption points for travel. In other words, while 10,000 miles should get you $100 worth of travel, it only gets you $50 worth of cash.

Gift card rewards are dependent upon both the retailer and amount. Some retailer’s gift cards cost the same amount as cash. In that case, you are better off buying them, collecting the points for spending the money and then redeeming for a statement credit. Other retailers redeem at the same rate as travel.

Watch out for changing redemption rates based upon the size of the card. Some retailers will charge a higher rate on cards with smaller values. Often, the better rate begins at $100 gift cards, so check this price point first.

Related posts:

1. Capital One Rewards Catalog – No Hassle Miles – Travel Rewards
2. Capital One Rewards Catalog 2011 Is Here

Capital One Rewards Catalog 2012 originally published at Personal Finance Blog - FinanceGourmet.com

Update: Information on the new 2012 Capital One Rewards catalog is here.

The 2011 Captial One Rewards catalog is here! I’ve learned that not everyone gets a printed hard copy Capital One Rewards catalog in the mail, but for some reason, I seem to get one each year around Christmas. I guess the folks at Capital One think that people are more likely to redeem miles for Christmas gifts or for free holiday travel, especially since the airlines like to block out all of the good flights and days around Christmas time.

This year, my NoHassle rewards catalog came after the new year and is titled, “Explore.” If you upgraded to the Capital One Venture card, there is apparently a supplement or entirely different Venture card rewards catalog according to the note enclosed.

Without any further ado, let’s jump right into the current Capital One Rewards Catalog.

Capital One NoHassle Rewards 2011 Program Guide

First up is how to earn miles using my Capital One No Hassle Rewards card. The basic earning rate is 1.25 miles for every $1 spent using the card. Money spent in bookstores, video rental stores, gifts shops, card stores, florists, art supply stores, craft stores, and souvenir shops earns double miles or 2 points for every $1 spent.

The guide also notes that Capital One miles do not expire after a certain number of years, and that there is no limit on how many miles you can earn in the NoHassle miles program.

Capital One Rewards Miles Earning Chart

Perk Central for Capital One Rewards

Like pretty much every other rewards credit card and other program that offers points for spending money, you can earn even more points by shopping through a special Capital One website called Perk Central. You can earn up to 15 bonus miles per dollar spent by shopping through Perk Central.

The best way to take advantage of the bonus miles offered for shopping through the special Capital One website offer is to always check Perk Central before making big purchases online. Be sure to delete your browser cookies, or better yet, use your browser’s privacy mode if you have already been to the merchant’s website before. You don’t want your bonus rewards voided because your shopping trip didn’t count as a “referral.”

For example, Best Buy, CompUSA, and Staples are all listed as Perk Central retailers. Just drop by Perk Central first before buying your office supplies or electronics and rack up bonus points on each purchase. Those bonus points can make redeeming Capital One rewards miles for gift cards a great deal. Double dip by earning bonus miles at Best Buy, and then getting a $100 Best Buy gift certificate reward for cheap!

Other Perk Central companies listed in the Capitol One Rewards catalog for 2011 include:

• Bloomingdales
• PetSmart
• Sephora
• Starbucks
• Gap
• Macy’s
• Barnes & Noble
• Sierra Trading Post
• Foot Locker
• Dick’s Sporting Goods
• Sears / Kmart
• Walmart
• Home Depot
• Sears
• West Elm
• Dell

Earn Miles Fast On Capital One Rewards Card Plus Perk Central

Two other companies of note on Perk Central are the Apple Store and Southwest Airlines.

If you are looking to buy an iPod, iPad, or MacBook Air, you know that they are not cheap. Getting a good deal on an Apple computer or iPhone can be tough because the company doesn’t really allow big discounts. However, if you buy them and earn bonus miles on those big ticket items, the value of your miles goes up and you can get a deal on Apple electronics by combining your purchase with a statement credit or cash back reward.

Likewise, get bonus miles when you book your Southwest Airlines tickets through the Capital One rewards bonus website. Make sure you are also a member of Southwest Airlines frequent flier program and you’ll get big bonus points, plus you still get credit for your Southwest Airlines miles because the two programs are not related or exclusive.

Earn Capital One Miles Paying Bills

To really see your miles add up fast, use your card to pay bills. Pay the card off every month and you are basically getting free money.

That $300 doctor bill is a tax deduction, and it can earn you 375 miles while you are at it.

Your $100 electric bill is worth 125 miles, and so on.

A $1,000 worth of bills and groceries charged to the card each month (and paid off each month) is worth 1,250 miles. That is 15,000 miles per year without doing anything other than what you would normally do. And, that, is the key to taking advantage of rewards programs and discounts.

Up Next: Capital One Rewards redemptions catalog.

Related posts:

1. Capital One Rewards Catalog 2011 Is Here
2. Capital One Rewards Catalog 2012

Capital One Rewards Program 2011 Guide originally published at Personal Finance Blog - FinanceGourmet.com

Not long ago, comparing rewards cards was pretty straight forward. Most credit card offers gave cardholders one point, or one mile, for each dollar spent and charged to the card. Credit card rewards programs sometimes offered bonuses for earning miles either for using the cards during specific periods of time or when shopping at certain types of stores. Often, these special offers came in the form of “double miles” or even “triple points”.

These days, such offers are non-expiring specials on some credit cards. Other cards, such as some Capital One rewards cards offer a base miles earning rate other than 1 mile per dollar. My Capital One No Hassle Miles credit card, for example, has a base miles earning rate of 1.25 miles for each dollar spent, with two times miles per dollar spent when the card is used in certain types of retail shopping establishments.

Of course, comparing which card offers the highest miles earned per dollar spent is useless without also comparing what rewards those miles or points can be redeemed for.

In order to determine which rewards cards are good values and which ones are below average (or worse) it pays to keep in mind that the “average” cash back credit card offers 1 percent cash back on all standard purchases. That works out to $1 cash back for every $100 spent. If the rewards program offers a value equal to or greater than 1% of dollars spent, the program can be considered average. Bigger rewards equal bigger value.

Redeem Credit Card Miles for Free Flights

Redeeming credit card points for free flights is a long-standing tradition. With both credit card companies and airlines tightening their belts, however, there have been big changes in how to redeem points for free airline tickets.

Many credit card rewards programs require you to book your tickets through them or a designated company. Doing so allows the company to collect fees from the airlines like a travel agent does, allowing them to offset the cost of rewards tickets.

Most credit card customers were savvy enough to use their miles and points only on more expensive flights, which is why most rewards programs have eliminated tiers of rewards based on miles. Instead, many programs charge a certain number of miles for a certain price range of airline ticket.

Others, like the Citibank rewards program cost a certain amount of points to redeem for the exact cost of the ticket. A recent check showed it cost 15,700 points to to get a free airline ticket that cost $149.40 directly on Expedia for the same flights.

Redeem Credit Card Points for Gift Cards

One great way to redeem points without traveling is to get free gift cards for gifts or to merchants that you use on a regular basis. A few years ago, we furnished our baby bedroom with free Babies R Us gift cards we got be redeeming 10,000 miles for every $100 gift certificate, the equivalent of 1 percent cash back.

There are still good deals to be found redeeming credit card miles for free gift cards, but you have to do the math and keep a close eye on the details within each program.

For example, the Capital One rewards catalog shows that a $100 Babies R Us gift card requires redeeming 15,500 miles. That is a lot more than the 10,000 miles it took a few years ago. However, with a base mileage earning rate of 1.25 miles per dollar, that $100 gift card works out to $12,400 of spending. That’s still worse than 1 percent, but not as bad as it looks at first glance.

Choosing the Right Rewards Card

The best rewards programs are usually those that offer rewards at approximately a 1 percent redemption rate that have significant bonus earnings where you shop regularly. For example, if you shop a lot at XYZ Stores and they have a Miles Supreme Plus Visa card where you earn 1 point per dollar spent but earn 2 points (or more) for every dollar spent at XYZ stores, those bonus miles will add up and make your point redemptions more valuable than ever.

Whatever credit card rewards program you go with, always read everything you receive about the program and monitor both the earnings rate and the cost of redeeming rewards, as these can change frequently. What starts out as a good deal, may end up becoming less valuable with one quick little notice that the company hopes you don’t end up reading or understanding.

With a little persistence and research, you can find the right rewards card for you and your family.

Related posts:

1. Amazon Rewards Visa Credit Cards
2. Capital One No Hassle Rewards – Gift Cards

How To Compare Rewards Credit Cards originally published at Personal Finance Blog - FinanceGourmet.com

New credit card laws passed by Congress in 2009 are going into effect.  What you need to know about credit card laws and how they have changed won’t be a big difference from what things were before.  Credit Card companies testified in front of Congress that they would stop using their very worst tricks.  That, plus a multi-million dollar lobbying campaign made sure that the new credit card laws did not require sweeping changes to the credit companies typically sneaky and underhanded business practices.

How do these new credit card laws affect smart credit card users who take advantage of good credit card rewards programs to earn points or miles?

One of the major rule changes states that when the credit card issuer decides to unilaterally change the terms of your contract, they have to give you 45-days advance notice.  If the new terms are not acceptable to you, you can opt out.

There is a catch.  In order to opt out, you must cancel your card, and close your account.  Then, you have to pay off the whole remaining balance within a certain number of days.  Oh, yeah, and that doesn’t apply to variable rate cards.

If you pay off your credit cards every month, then this is no big deal, because you could always pay off your card account and cancel it before you were charged any interest anyway.

If you carry a big balance on your credit card, then this doesn’t really help you anyway, unless you can figure out how to pay off that credit card account in 90 days.  If you could do that, you probably wouldn’t have the large balance in the first place.

Basically, the only people this really helps are people who have small to medium sized balances on their credit cards, and people who can take advantage of balance transfers to other credit accounts.  Of course, in that case, it was always possible to do that and then cancel the card anyway.

In other words, you have to be just as sharp and aware of credit card companies tricks.

Credit Card Rules Change Used to Hide Bad Company Behavior

As we’ve come to expect from banks and credit card companies, many credit card issuers are taking advantage of all the noise around the new credit card rules to make a few not-so-favorable changes to their credit card terms as well.

American Express recently notified some customers that their rates were going up.  The new rates are a variable rate equal to PRIME plus a certain percentage.  Some card holders report getting new terms of PRIME RATE plus 12% or so.  With the Fed holding rates at all time lows (nearly zero percent) that means that the interest rate on these American Express cards will be around 15%.

That doesn’t sound too bad.  Except for two things, first, now that these customers have variable rate cards instead of fixed rate cards, the helpful rules no longer apply because different rules apply to variable rate accounts than credit card accounts with fixed rates.

Second, watch out as the economy recovers and the Fed starts to raise interest rates back to more normal levels.  PRIME interest rates of 4% are just a 1% raise in the Federal Reserve target interest rate away.  Putting the Fed Funds rate back at a still very low 3% means a PRIME rate around 6% and the American Express card interest rate rises to 18% pretty quickly.

Be careful out there.  Remember always take advantage of reward credit card programs.  Use these various credit card rewards points to offset the expenses and inconveniences of always having to watch your back to make sure the credit card companies are sticking a knife in it.

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Related posts:

1. Credit Card Rewards Programs – Are New Laws Making Them More Stingy?
2. 529 Plans New Rules for 2009 and 2010

New Credit Card Laws Change the Rules in 2009 originally published at Personal Finance Blog - FinanceGourmet.com