A few years ago, cash back credit cards were everywhere. Today, the offers are harder to find as company hunker down and deal with the financial crisis we’re facing. Despite the economic climate, cash back credits are still out there and you can still get a little cash back on your purchases.

How do cash back credit cards work? Each credit card company does it differently but the basic idea is the same. Every time you make a purchase with the credit card, your cash back or rewards account goes up in value. When you reach a certain threshold, you can cash out your cash back. Some companies will write you a check (Citi), while others will directly credit your account balance (Discover).

Is cash back worth the hassle? The answer is it depends. Some cards offer high cash back percentages on certain purchases and you can optimize your cash back by using several cards. I don’t recommend using more than two or three cards because the return on your time will decrease as you get more cards (you may find it helps to write down the cash back categories on the card itself).

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Citi recently debuted a new credit card designed to reward customers for being responsible with credit. I think Citi saw the writing on the wall, given the recent consumer backlash towards punitive credit card company behavior and Congress’ actions to restrict a company’s ability to play games, and decided to strike while the iron was hot and introduce a credit card and appeared to be on the side of the American consumer.

At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter why a company does what it does. It only matters how consumers can take advantage so they can buy the things they need and keep more money in their pocket. I may be a bit cynical in saying this but credit card companies aren’t altruistic when they offer rich cash back reward credit cards, it’s just business.

So how does the Citi Forward card reward responsible behavior?

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During a recession, the flow of credit tends to tighten up as banks and lenders take fewer “risks.” The result of this is that people who are credit-worthy but have no credit history, such as students, are caught in the middle. Without a credit history, they can’t get credit cards and loans. With credit cards and loans, they can’t establish a credit history.

An old standby practice, piggybacking, was recently eliminated as the new FICO score rules changed how it treated authorized users. In the past, someone with poor or no credit could “piggyback” as an authorized user on an account of someone with good credit. Many parents put their children on their credit card accounts to help them establish credit, the parents were “co-signing” their child’s debts, so it was perfectly acceptable. Unfortunately, people started abusing this and selling “authorized user positions” on their accounts, some for as much as $500 or $1,000 a piece, so FICO had to respond.

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