Credit card rewards are turning us into jerks

Pam's circle of parent friends likes to split the financial load when it makes sense, whether it's ordering pickup or delivery, going out for a group meal, or getting tickets to a theme park or a movie. But there's one dad who has recently picked up a habit that irks her: He insists on putting all their group purchases on his credit card.

The gesture comes off as nice, but it ends up making extra work for Pam because she's constantly having to use apps like Splitwise or Venmo to pay him back. Even when it would be easier if she just paid her family's part, he seems to slide his card in first. Once, when the guy was in line in front of her at a fast-casual restaurant, he waited for her to order before butting in to try to put the purchase on his card. It's not the end of the world, but Pam told me it's bothersome — especially because this dad acts like no one is picking up on what's going on. He's not doing all this out of the kindness of his heart; he's doing it because he wants the credit-card rewards.

"I overheard this person say that, 'Oh, with all of this spend on my credit card, I get 5% off this or 20% off this.' And I'm thinking, 'Oh, so this is just benefiting you,'" Pam, who lives in San Francisco and asked to use a pseudonym so the jerk in her group wouldn't know she thinks he's a jerk, told me. "I like people who are just up front versus trying to sneak things in and manipulate."

Consumers love their rewards. In a recent poll from Ipsos, 71% of Americans surveyed said they had some sort of rewards, points, or cash-back card, and 80% of those with such a card said they valued their rewards. They'll cling onto those rewards even if it means a tough outcome for others: A 2019 LendingTree survey found that people were likelier to support a cap on how high credit-card companies could set their interest rates if the limit reduced access for people with imperfect credit than they were if it meant the cap would lower their rewards. Credit-card issuers and banks love rewards, too — they're a good way to attract customers.

But maybe we love our credit-card rewards too much, to the point that it's making us act in less-than-ideal ways toward those we hold near and dear. Money is always complicated, and the standoff over who gets 1.5% cash back or three times the airline miles after paying for brunch is no exception. And it seems like no matter who picks up the check, everyone is a bit dissatisfied: For every Jane angry at Joe for insisting on putting everything on his credit card so he can upgrade his honeymoon to Singapore, there's a Mary fuming at Mike for shortchanging her when he paid back his part of the bar tab, making the points she got for paying the up-front cost a wash.

"It does seem like one of those ultimate pick-your-battles kinds of things," Matt Schulz, the chief credit analyst at LendingTree and the author of "Ask Questions, Save Money, Make More," said in an interview. "It's an awkward thing, and you just don't want to be that person who makes things uncomfortable over something like credit-card rewards."

But credit-card rewards are, indeed, making things uncomfortable.

Plenty of people have had the experience of the check landing after a group meal and multiple people trying to put their credit cards down so they'll earn the rewards. Usually, it winds up fine — you agree to split it, or you all decide to take turns, one person pays this time for the points, another next time. Not everyone at the table cares about maximizing their rewards, but just like some people are super into Taylor Swift or fantasy football, others are obsessed with gaming credit-card points. Whatever the case, a lot of points-related interactions can start to feel pretty icky pretty fast.

Take a spin around Reddit, and you'll find all sorts of rewards-related conflicts. There are people complaining that their spouses don't want to play the rewards game, and other point obsessives weighing whether it's OK to refuse to split their rewards with their point-indifferent partners. One user asked whether they should be expected to share their travel bonus with friends after booking a group trip. Another sought advice after a friend asked whether they might be able to use their rewards to get a discount on a hotel for their group of friends. "I do have points," the person wrote, "but they are perks I get." They asked whether it might be acceptable to use their points but charge people the monetary value of the booking anyway.

Jen, from Chicago, pays for everything she can to rack up rewards, and she's pretty sure it doesn't bother anyone else. "I haven't really run into anyone who's been super pissed off," she said, though she cools it in professional settings. If anything, it's a hassle for her. When traveling in a group, she's typically burdened with all the planning so that she can put all the flights and hotels on her card. Her partner refuses to get his own rewards card, which is frustrating, so she finally made him an authorized user on one of hers so at least she can get points from his purchases. "He doesn't seem to care," Jen, who asked to withhold her last name to protect her privacy, said. "Everything he gets, I get paid back."

She did recently have a small dispute over points at a dinner with two longtime friends. When the roughly $120 check came, Jen took out her card, as she always does, but noticed another friend did, too. She'd gotten a new card through work and wanted to rack up points for flights. They decided to split the bill in half so that both got their points. Their third, nonpoints friend sent them each a Zelle payment, getting no reward for her trouble. When I asked Jen how much she thought the haggling was worth, she said maybe a couple of bucks. But it all adds up, she insisted. "It's enough for me, over time, to where it matters," she said. "I'm not trying to be greedy."

A small disagreement over credit-card points isn't going to end a relationship, but it is a situation where animosity can build up over time, especially if there isn't good up-front communication. The person constantly in debt to the person who puts everything on their card can start to feel like they're being taken advantage of, and the person trying to track everyone down to get paid back can get upset, too.

"It is more work to chase down all of the payments, and so I think you have to decide for yourself what is the value of the rewards that you're going to earn by putting this whole thing on your card? And is that worth the time and energy?" Emily Thompson, a credit-cards editor at The Points Guy, said. If you're trying to hit $8,000 in spend to get a welcome bonus, the answer might be yes. If you're earning a point per dollar, which is worth about $0.01 in many cases, you may want to stand down.

Lending money is often fraught, and people are effectively doing this when they toss everything onto their credit cards. In a CreditCards.com survey, 59% of respondents who had lent money or paid for a group expense with the expectation of being paid back said they'd had something bad happen. Forty-two percent of lenders said they lost money because they weren't repaid, and 26% said their relationship with the borrower was damaged.

"People should tread carefully because it only takes one person stiffing you for it not to be worth it," Ted Rossman, senior industry analyst at Bankrate, said. "Are you OK taking the risk? Are you going to follow up? I find that there are very quick diminishing returns with this. If you don't get paid back quickly, you probably won't get paid back at all."

Someone slightly miscalculating the tip or tax on the reimbursement might negate the rewards earned, not to mention if they miss the payment entirely. Eating a $50 loss in the name of $2.50 in rewards is not a worthwhile trade-off.

Friendships come with so much more gray area compared with, say, business relationships. What may seem completely fine to someone — taking a couple of weeks to pay a friend back or asking a friend to pay the cash equivalent of points they used for a hotel booking — might seem completely out of line to someone else.

"There are more clear terms for business, for romantic partnerships. But in friendship, what's normal? What's not? What do I owe you? We don't know," Danielle Bayard Jackson, a friendship coach and educator, said. "We have a lot of these friendships that end prematurely or that get bogged down by a lot of resentment and confusion."

Most people I talked to about this story had some sort of rewards-related anecdote with at least mild tension. One person said his friend group never has a problem with points hoarding … before name-checking one friend who goes too far. Another said she sees paying on her card at restaurants as a way to save servers the headache of trying to divvy up the bill, though that means she has to warn everyone that she's a big tipper and make sure they're on board. I recently booked a fight with a friend who remarked she'd gotten some $300 in travel credit from her rewards card. I briefly wondered whether she would offer to split the discount with me. (She didn't, and she was right.)

"As much as calculating the value of the rewards that you can earn, you also have to calculate any potential negative impact on your relationship with the person," Thompson said. When she books trips for friends using her rewards, she comes up with a price that's still a "really good deal" for her friends, but it "isn't nothing," she said. That seems fair, though I'd be curious what her friends think.

It's not just friendships that credit-card points can get in the middle of — but also romantic relationships. Matt (a pseudonym), from Alaska, got super into rewards a couple of years ago, watching endless YouTube videos and scouring financial-advice websites for tips. His wife was not so into it — she's the "kind of gal that's like, 'Just give me the stupid card if I use it if you want but don't expect me to have this rotating collection,'" he said. The issue came to a head when they planned a trip to Florida. Matt was procrastinating on booking, so his wife went ahead and did it without using the right card. He had her cancel everything so he could rebook with the card he wanted to use, but that wound up being a mistake — when he went to make the new reservation, prices had increased.

"We lost the rooms and things that she booked, and we ended up paying more. And for what? We got like 2% back on the whole deal," he said. "I should have just let her be right and be done with it."

Matt has pretty much given up on the rewards game now; he uses a 2% cash-back card but doesn't pay much attention beyond that. All the hassle around it "got to be pretty stupid," he said, and the Florida drama was just "petty shit." He and his wife are now divorcing (but not over the points).

Whether all this fuss over rewards is justifiable, relationally and financially, is context-dependent. Points maxing isn't low effort, and unless you're willing to spend a bunch of time figuring the system out, you're just wasting your and everyone else's energy in trying to hoard rewards. More importantly, if you are not paying off your credit-card bill at the end of every month and instead are carrying a balance, the rewards are not worth it.

"If you carry a balance, you shouldn't be chasing rewards. You should be focusing on paying your balance down," Schulz of LendingTree said. "You don't have to be an accountant to understand that paying 27% interest to get 2% cash back doesn't make a whole lot of sense."

Credit-card rewards can be great, and they're definitely popular. Plopping down an American Express Platinum Card feels fancy, as do the perks that go along with it. But as with everything, there are trade-offs.

On a macro level, the rewards aren't free. They're funded by swipe fees paid by merchants that often get passed on to all consumers in the form of higher prices, regardless of how they pay, on top of interest payments and late fees. One recent Federal Reserve study found that this system led to a redistribution of $15 billion in wealth each year from the poor to the rich, the less educated to the more educated, and high-minority areas to low-minority areas.

On a micro, more day-to-day level, rewards are a fun, little benefit that can become unfun fast. A local restaurant implements a 3% surcharge for credit cards to try to make up for swipe fees, and suddenly you find yourself vowing to never return even though the difference for you was $1.50. Or you see a friend on Instagram bragging about upgrading their flight and realize that's why they've been so insistent on putting brunches and happy hours on their card all year. Even though it doesn't really affect you, you feel a little cheated.

Experts say if you're the points maxer trying to charge every group purchase, it's good to be up front about what you're doing. (As in, don't be like Pam's dad friend.) But if people don't want to go along, you might just need to accept that. Or realize that if they are going along, they may still think what you're doing sucks.

Emily Stewart is a senior correspondent at Business Insider, writing about business and the economy.