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The 4 Stupidest Ways Credit Cards 'Reward' You for Spending
Each year of my childhood, a group of middle-aged men would come to my school and give every kid the chance to sell magazine subscriptions in exchange for prizes from a catalog. What at first seemed like an opportunity at entrepreneurship turned out to be pretty blatant child labor. In order to get a boom box or a bicycle or anything good, we would have to sell roughly 1,100 subscriptions. The prizes for selling a more reasonable but still ambitious number of subscriptions, like 15, were so sad, even arcades were too embarrassed to carry them. Getty "Guess who rolled a perfect game of skeeball, bitches!" The point is, those middle-aged men took advantage of my fundamental misunderstanding of value, and while I swore that I'd never get suckered by that kind of duplicity again, I realized recently that I was falling for nearly an identical scam as an adult, this time orchestrated by the middle-aged men in the credit card rewards racket. At some point, banks figured out that as much as people like low interest rates, no annual fees and an online payment system, what we really go berserk for are prizes. We love the idea of getting new stuff, especially when we don't have to do anything to earn that stuff except buy other stuff. We will dive head first into bankruptcy if it means getting a "free" leaf blower, regardless of whether we have any leaves to blow, simply because it feels like a bonus. And even though some banks offer useful prizes like airline miles or cash back to try to coax us into spending more than we can afford, they've also figured out that it doesn't really matter what they offer as long as they call it a "Reward." That's why your bank will present to you, without any hint of sarcasm, the offer to cash in your points on polished hunks of garbage like ... #4. This Fucking Candle Holder Points: 42,000 Card: PNC Bank PNC Either this candle burns exclusively on pretension or PNC Bank was so self-conscious about earnestly charging 42,000 points for a hunk of glassthat they deliberately wrote a misleading product description. Nowhere does it mention, for instance, that this fancy, "hand painted," "contemporary and classic" slice of the American dream is just a cup with some lines on it. The product name is equally as vague: "Orrefors Mine & Yours Hurricane." Considering that you'd need to spend around $15,000 on your credit card just to accrue enough points for it, I would be sorely disappointed if I ordered this and didn't get an actual hurricane in the mail. Judging by the picture, it looks like maybe it's a beige sleeping bag with a tea light candle painted at the bottom, or else it's a translucent mattress hovering over a giant candle, both of which are far cooler than the actual product. And if you think I'm being too harsh by suggesting that PNC would intentionally try to confuse people into believing that this is anything other than trash, take a look at the same product as it's advertised on other sites. Ebay.com Seeing the base makes it much clearer that you're just looking at a lump of stupid, and so does the word "Lite" right in the product name, which PNC conveniently dropped. Still, the candle holder is almost $100, according to Amazon -- surely this thing is worth those 42,000 points, right? Well, no. Considering that most banks will offer $100 cash in exchange for every 12,000 to 17,000 points, this piece of schlock actually costs more than double what you would pay for it anywhere else. So enjoy your reward, PNC customers, you more than earned it. #3. This Fucking Decorative Bead Points: 62,800 Card: American Express American Express As a man who doesn't wear any jewelry save that hemp necklace I regrettably auditioned in the early 2000s, I've never understood trinket culture. It's possible that this wingless bee with a massive hole in its abdomen is highly desirable among charm collectors, but on the other hand, anyone who accumulates bullshit like this shouldn't be allowed to have a credit card in the first place. For starters, it's anatomically incorrect, with only four legs and no thorax, so already American Express is trying to sell you lies. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, it's objectively stupid. This is not just a lazy representation of a bee, it's a lazy representation of anything. Without the lines around its lower half, it could just as easily be a tiny golden alien, but, you know, a regal one. Finally, it's not a full bracelet or a ring, it's one bead that would require over $60,000in purchases just to get. It's easier to imagine someone buying this with the intention of melting it down and creating something worth owning than someone who exchanges reward points because they genuinely like this bee. Getty "It only took me six of those little Martians to make this." The product description says, "designed to reflect each wearer's personal style," which actually makes perfect sense, considering that it's a pointless waste of space disguised as something fancy.

Video How to Add Beads to a Bracelet eHow
Video TranscriptHi. I'm Melina and I'm with Expert Village and I'm going to show you how to make a beautiful transfer polymer bracelet. In this next step we're going to bead our bracelet. We're going to take one of each color and again, this can be any color scheme that you want. And you don't necessarily have to do one of each color. You can do anything you want but I'm going to do one of each color. And after I have one of each color I'm going to put in one of my beads. And what I'm doing is because these holes are bigger than seed beads I'm not going to put a tiny yellow right next to the big hole because it's going to go right inside. I'm going to put a big green on the outside of each hole. If not, your beads are going to get lost inside. And now we're just going to bead the whole thing. We're going to make sure that our bracelet is the desire length for our wrist. So we're going to go ahead and see if you need to make it any longer or any shorter. We're going to close off the other side of the bracelet.