I recently moved to a new apartment and when I first got set up I paid my rent with a check because I was told that credit card payments were not available. I poked around and before the second month’s payment was due I found out that you actually COULD pay your rent with a credit card but the management chose not to tell people that because it was not a popular choice due to the cost.

There is an additional $14.95 charge to pay via credit card if you chose to not use a check to get your monthly rent in on time. I decided to explore the option to see if I would earn cash back on the charge as well as on the actual rent payment.

My plan was simple, pay my rent using my card and look at the points I received to see if I got points for only the rent amount or see if I got points for the full total. This was an easy decision for me because the actual amount I paid in rent was $45 less than what I had budgeted for.

The card that I am referring to pays back 1 point per dollar spent on ALL purchases and you could see the purchase amount and the points awarded on the day that the transaction cleared. I went ahead and paid my rent and a few days later I saw that I had received the points on the total transaction, not just the rent portion.

I decided then and there to go ahead and continue to pay my rent using that one card instead of writing a check so that I could earn points. Of course this means I had to adjust the actual rent amount to $14.95 more (I actually just set it as $15) which meant I was now only $30 under my target rent amount for the month.

I am pleased with my decision because under the old scenario I was not earning ANY points at all because I was using a check. Now my rent payment is a bit more but I am still below budget AND I am earning cash back for doing something I have to do on a monthly basis anyway.