Are you a USAA Total Rewards Member?

I decided to throw a quick "deal" post in tonight before I get back to work. My husband and I opened our USAA account when we first got married, going on 4 years ago. For anyone who has the military affiliation to join USAA, I highly recommend it for many reasons. One that I would like to highlight now is the Rewards Program. If you already have USAA and your debit card says "TOTAL REWARDS" across the top (it's a bright blue card), then you are enrolled in the rewards program. If you haven't done so yet, log into your online account and find the Total Rewards link (should be on the links on the right side of the page...if you can't find it do a search of their site). Basically the way the program works is, you get points for payments processed as credit (when you make a purchase at a store, hit credit instead of debit...the only time you can't do it is if you want cash back because you can't get cash back on credit). There is no additional cost on your transaction and there should be no difference on your account except for the way it may appear on your statement. It won't cost you anything and it still processes immediately. The points can be converted to gift cards, which you can request from your online account. Normally, we take something generic like Target gift cards as we know there is always something that we can use at Target. We redeem a few times a year and this most recent time, we redeemed for a $25 Target card and a $25 TGIFriday's card. This weekend my husband and I went to TGIFriday's and we each ordered their $13.99 pick 3 (appetizer, entree and dessert), I had a glass of Sangria and he had a Coke. We used our gift card and had about a $10 plus tip balance to pay. Not bad for 3 courses and an alcoholic beverage! The Total Rewards program has all kinds of store and restaurant gift cards. There is also the opportunity to translate it into airline miles, etc. There is also a similar program with the credit cards through USAA. I am pretty sure that it works the same way but haven't redeemed any yet as we just opened the credit account recently.