Modern day rewards are now associated with reward credit cards, points, travel or from a business perspective, employee rewards. The internet is flush with best rewards offers or how to best reward your employees.
I’m a rewards credit carder but have noticed a shift transpiring. My Southwest credit card that I earned many free flights with flying out of Burbank airport substantially increased the annual fee for 2026. I hadn’t used SW points since moving to Chicago. So, I cashed them out for things and gift cards I could use to avoid the fee and cancel the card. American Airlines is also ending points redemption on basic economy seats making me reconsider that reward card also.
But that isn’t what true rewards are about. Even employee rewards while valuable aren’t personalized to you individually. Most employers provide some type of reward whether that is in the form of an annual bonus, equity, commissions or time and flexibility that is above and beyond baseline pay.
It is up to you how to make that reward personal to you. Are you spending the rewards characteristic to what you want? Does the end result of what that reward buys or the extra time spent reveal the character of who you are? Or does it reveal something else?
I rewatch Christmas Vacation every few years for the laughs and the music. Clark Griswold’s plan to use his annual Christmas bonus to put in a pool is characteristic to his character.
Material possessions can make us happy, and we subsequently feel rewarded. Often times there are things that we would otherwise never buy because they seem irrational if we bought them with the earnings we need to live and save for the future. Sometimes strategic purchases become our most prized possessions. This is true for my piano that I purchased with a bonus 25 years ago moving it 3 times cross country.
Or take a vehicle, for example, which some view as a utilitarian possession, solely to get from point A to point B and nothing else. I have a different view as I drive a lot, sometimes in heavy traffic and sometimes by myself for miles on end with no traffic. So, I want a vehicle (new or used) that I thoroughly enjoy driving. It becomes an experience, my own private sanctuary, and not a laborious chore. My husband is the same, but we drive vastly different vehicles and hate driving each other’s.
If you are redeeming your rewards for things that aren’t characteristic to you (or your family), that isn’t a true reward and instead becomes a liability, an obligation.
If you view past reward purchases or outcomes as regrets, then it may be time to begin a process of figuring out what you actually find rewarding, not what you think others would want or be impressed by. Instead, try new things. Develop the ability to change your mind, your lifestyle and how you spend. Morgan Housel emphasizes this in his latest book, The Art of Spending Money.
My husband and I used to spend all of our bonuses. It wasn’t until our forties that we realized we needed to buy more into a future. We were fully contributing to our 401(k)s but weren’t saving much beyond that. I like Morgan’s practice of viewing every bit of savings as having actively purchased something.
Instead of spending our bonuses on tangible things, we began saving more cash, a lesson learned in California home buying, and investing in Index Funds, first at Vanguard, then adding others at Fidelity and Charles Schwab. With the bonus funds deposited in our bank account, we set up automatic withdrawals each month to purchase these funds which we could stop in case we needed the money for something else.
This is much harder to do because buying time in the future is intangible. You have nothing to show for all the hard work that earned that bonus, no personal reward. We as humans are naturally inclined to seek immediate rewards ensuing from earlier times when survival in those environments was essential where resources were scarce and uncertain. You still have to acknowledge the bonus and the hard work that earned it in some manner, a nice dinner out, a day trip, a weekend getaway, creating a personal sanctuary of your own space.
We have abundant resources, options and opportunities now more than ever. Although uncertainty looms around us especially in the headlines and social media provocateurs, it’s always been that way but in other contexts. Embracing the unknown forces us to try new things, utilize different resources and find rewarding opportunities we never would have discovered by doing the same thing over and over again.
For those with bonus time, extended holidays, summers off, no monthly/weekly overnight travel or daily commute time, is this time spent characteristic to what you want and who you are?
Someone recently posted on LinkedIn to STOP the humblebrags of earning enough money to buy an expensive sports car and yet, 2 months prior they had posted a picture of their nicely upgraded kitchen along with the new furniture and rugs humblebragging that it may not look like much yet but thrilled to be moving back into the living areas of their house.
Only you can find what is rewarding. By always looking to others for fulfillment or criticizing their choices, you will overlook what your own contentment and happiness feels like. Along the way, find the rewards that are unexpected because they compound into something even greater.
“The best things in life are unexpected because there were no expectations.” -Eli Khamarov
Points or Cash Back? – The Big Picture