Sarah Rathner

I spent about $15,000 on furniture when I moved into a new place, and I'm still paying that off.

I think of credit card rewards as a way to earn a little bit back for every dollar you spend.

Sarah Rathner is a credit card expert at NerdWallet.

2018 was the year where I went to Australia, New Zealand, and Japan all in one year.

Oh, that's cool.

And that was all on points and miles.

So my honeymoon to Hawaii was done mostly on points.

At my peak, my husband and I were taking international trips around every nine months or so.

So typically you can earn cash back, which is basically what it sounds like.

It's cash back loan.

in your bank account or cash off of your next credit card bill.

So that is pretty straightforward.

If you have a credit card that offers 5% cash back, for example, that just means for every $100 you spend using that credit card, you'll get $5 worth of points.

And with those points, you can literally get $5 taken off of your statement.

So you pay less on your credit card.

Travel rewards are a little bit more nuanced.

Typically, you earn these rewards and then you can redeem them toward travel expenses in different ways.

So if you had like an airline or hotel credit card that has like the brand or the airline on the card,

For those cards, you would redeem for plane tickets, things like that, or you would redeem for hotel stays or room upgrades.

So there are lots of different ways you could redeem these types of points.