I think getting the Woolworths QFF card is a brilliant idea if you usually shop at Safeway/Woolies. Here in our country town the Coles (which used to be the only local shop to me in suburban Melbourne) is rather sub-par, so Safeway has become the main shop. Considering we spend ~$1800/month on groceries (I have no idea how, for two adults with two children on the weekends, but we do), the credit card is a brilliant option.
Not only do we get 16,000 points for signing up, we get no points capping (which we would get with the NAB QFF card, with whom we normally bank), 3 points per $1 on Woolies Select and mobile products, and 2 points per $1 spent at Woolies, Big W, Caltex Woolworths, Dan Murphy's, BWS, and some Dick Smiths. The normal points-per-dollar spent on anything else is 1-to-1, which is better than most VISA/Mastercard offers with any bank (usually it's 1-to-2).
I will be starting rental rewards soon, which I also think is a brilliant idea as it's a major expense for us. In summary, though, this is my strategy (note that I've just started as a member):
- sign up for use the Woolies credit card for all possible purchases, and pay off immediately so no interest is incurred
= 16,000 (initial) plus 3,600/m (normal spend on groceries) plus 1600/m (petrol) = 78,000 points in a year
- rental rewards
= 1,300/m = 15,000 points a year
- current medication expenses
= 1,000/m = 12,000 points a year
- random spending on clothes, other goods
= 500/m = 6,000 points a year
- eating out once per month at a QFF member restaurant (3 points per $1), with a conservative $80 for two people
= 240/m = 2,880 points a year
- telstra mobile (my husband works in IT and the connection with Optus just isn't as good as Telstra); it costs 1%, but a $4 charge per month (2 bills) to get 2,400 points is pretty decent, and it just means I have to go to their website instead of BPAYing it.
= 200/m = 2,400 points per year
= 122,280 points per year
That's almost a return flight to London (where my husband's family live) for one person.
This isn't including any bonus points we might pick up on along the way from buying certain things, it's just making sure we pay for as much as we can on the card, and using the best card for our spending habits. We don't really fly at all (his business does, but insists on using Virgin and not letting him buy his own flights anyway; he can't choose accommodation either and often it's a business apartment), so we're not getting tonnes of points that way - it's just changing the way we pay to ensure that we get as many points as possible
Something else we're doing is transferring his AMEX from a platinum card to a QFF card. We were just going to pay it off and get rid of it since it's not accepted at a lot of places, but I called up and found you can just transfer the card across; at the moment, if you spend $300 on it within 3 months of the the new card opening you get a bonus 5,000 points. You also get another 2,500 if you book a flight with Qantas or Jetstar, but we don't fly very often so the chances of that are fairly low. We'll transfer the balance, make a few purchases we pay off straight away, and then just pay off the card (which will take a while).
That's the plan based on our current expenditure, and as we pay off other debts we'll have a higher disposable income which might go on flights/accommodation for getaways where we can earn points.
! I just did a quick google maps look - the return trip to get his girls is 120km, so that's 240km per weekend just for that, and then the round trip to work is about the same again each workday. the weeks I checked over, he also had to do a return trip to his ex-wife's house in Werribee twice (once to pick some clothes up, another to pick just one of the girls up), and that's 180km return! So for the period, I think the petrol was pretty normal - he's working from home more often, though, so it means he's only filling up once or twice a week at most.
