Sales is a great career if you’d like to work long hours, solve complex problems, and make a lot of money. This career also affords you the ability to build interpersonal communication skills and the ability to work with a diverse range of people. In doing so you’ll most likely have to meet with prospects face to face for coffee, lunch, dinner, drinks. You may have to travel long distances to see them to help close the deal and ensure the relationships are strong.
All those expenses should be put on a credit card, but not just any credit card, your credit card. As work pays you back you’ll be racking up credit card points and miles to make your next vacation free. That’s the easy way to do it, but you’re not here for easy you’re here to be a professional and maximize your expenses. First step is to research the best credit cards for you.
If you’re like me you periodically check sites like Dans Deals and Nerd Wallet to see what are the best credit card offers available on the market.
Maximizing credit card offers in order to get the most points possible and or leveraging the correct credit card at the correct time is extremely important. For instance if you are taking your customers out for dinner, you should be using a credit card that provides you the most points possible for dining, while using the correct card for travel points. My wallet has both an American Express Gold Card (4x points on dining and groceries) as well as an American Express Platinum Card (Travel card) which I’ll use at specific times.
If you want to take your credit card points game to the next level, open a new card that provides the best opening offer such as 100,000 points or a credit statement. Sales reps that can predict their future expense report such as requiring travel and dinners for a week long work trip should open a new credit card and reap the rewards of that opening offer by booking their next vacation, on the boss!
Further credit card points and travel miles are not currently taxable, “the IRS treats cash-back rewards as a rebate on spending and not as income, so you aren’t required to pay income tax on these rewards” as stated in a recent Forbes article. Reviewing a statement by the IRS essentially stating that doing the math isn’t worth their time – https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-drop/a-02-18.pdf
Be aware that some of these credit cards do come with annual fees that may make you think twice, but if you can get that expensed as well, then the sky is the limit.
