I often said that when it comes to rewards or cashback point that you should never spend just for the sake of collecting them. Unless you are coming out ahead or you actually wanted the purchase going out of your way to buy something for a small amount of these points can actually cost you money. This came up recently where a person was saying how they were going shopping and they didn’t really know what they wanted.
At first I thought it was a situation such as you are hungry but don’t know what you really want yet. So you walk around seeing if there is something that you would want. In this case though it was simply the person got money and they wanted to build up their store reward points. It’s almost like it was a video game to them. It does make me wonder how many people do that.
The return on this is probably usually as bad as say spending $50 on some kind of carnival game winning these small tickets which you then claim for an item that you could buy for fifteen dollars if you really wanted to. Are rewards points in a sense addictive to many people where it becomes like a form of entertainment expense as well?