It's only 14 cents

It's only 14 cents.

The other night my wife and I didn't feel like cooking which lately with our diets is somewhat unusual. When you're dieting there's always plenty of food and plenty of leftovers so going out to eat would be a waste of food and a waste of money not to mention a waste of paying more in sales tax to the government. Anyway we decided on buying McDonald's. With their app I consider their deals quite reasonable. After ordering my family's and my usual (2 cheeseburgers hold the mustered add mayo lettuce and tomato((I call it the mc'imposter)) I proceeded to check out. As I was staring at my checkout screen I was stumped on a simple question. Should I use the credit card on file or should I go find my wallet and use a different credit card that would get me an additional 14 cents cash back.

I mean it's only 14 cents right?

Since 2014-2015 I have been interested in credit card cash back, loans, intro APR's, and credit card purchasing power. Before that I was a Dave Ramsey fan still am by the way. I just use credit cards ALL THE TIME. In fact I rarely use a debit card. My credit cards don't charge me an overdraft fee. They don't charge me interest. (Yes I'm that good) They pay me monthly to use their cards and as a secret I'm only going to say once. I get cashback on my cashback. I don't even need an ATM. My credit cards give me cash out option.

That being said. Throughout the years I have fine tuned my credit card strategy. Originally I had a citi dividend card and a chase Freedom card that provided one percent cash back from every purchase. The citi dividend card had a flaw where it would only give a maximum of 300 dollars per year. I'm not completely sure what my percentage is now but I currently getting between 1 and 20 percent off or cash back on my purchases if I were to estimate I would probably say around 8 percent. That means every 20 dollars I spend I get around 1.33 back in savings or actual cash back.

So back to my story. The two cards I was contemplating using were a 3% restaurant card and a 2% Citi double cash. If I were to use the restaurant card. It would take me an additional 5 minutes to order our food. The difference in cash back was seriously a mere 14 cents but to me that 14 cents represents a lot more than it's worthless value.

I mean seriously, hypothetical question. If you were at a hotel and while checking out the attendant says. Would you like to pay full price or I can take one percent off. You would want the one percent off right? What if your mortgage company or rental office said hey would you like to pay full price or we'll take 14 cents off?. I don't want to pay more than I have to toward a house. I'd take a penny off.

To me this savings of 14 cents is more than 14 cents back for purchasing my sandwich. It's 14 cents off my mortgage, off my credit cards, or 14 cents towards my next vacation. It's 14 cents added to my financial arsenal. This 14 cents is then worth 15.12 cents if you're calculating my 8% average cashback/savings calculation. 

Last thought. Oil companies know how well a fraction of a penny can turn into a goldmine of funds. If you didn't know you pay 9/10ths of a penny on your fuel. That equates to a half a billion dollars extra a year.

So is it worth it to save a few cents?

Absolutely.