Best Credit Card with Cash Back Rewards

Don't you need to be a student to get that? Figured when they ran my salary/credit score I wouldn't stand a chance.

Well... AmEx Blue card just crashed and burned with this fine printEveryday Purchases are eligible purchases: made at supermarkets located in the U.S. (superstores and warehouse clubs are not considered supermarkets), of gasoline at gas stations located in the U.S. (superstores, supermarkets and warehouse clubs that sell gasoline are not considered gas stations),

Gator_sl said:

Well... AmEx Blue card just crashed and burned with this fine printEveryday Purchases are eligible purchases: made at supermarkets located in the U.S. (superstores and warehouse clubs are not considered supermarkets), of gasoline at gas stations located in the U.S. (superstores, supermarkets and warehouse clubs that sell gasoline are not considered gas stations),

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Yes, but that's for ALL AmEx cards. Target, Walmart, Sam's, Costco... none of them code as grocery on any AmEx card. SO yeah, if you do all your grocery shopping at stores like that the AmEx cards won't be of any use to you.

The Ancient_sl said:

Well it's bad to compare it to the Citi double cash back card, since that one's strictly better on anything that isn't gas/groceries and you'd ideally have both cards. You also did it in a weird manner.

Continuing forward on the cards that do make sense to compare, I've done a lot of math I won't share but your card probably comes out ahead on the average family of four with established average grocery and fuel costs to the tune of $70 a year. Take out the $150 signing bonus you get for the fee card and you are coming out ahead in year 3.

For individuals or couples I just don't see it as a better option regardless of spending habits. Gas and Groceries are pretty fixed spending categories, even "hefty spenders" aren't going very far out of line.

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Alright let's actually do the math just to get some break points. I agree gas is a pretty fixed expenditure and the preferred card has 3% on department stores while the old blue cash card is 5% on drug stores which would be pretty impossible to model in any generic fashion so let's ignore everything but groceries.

Blue Cash Preferred card. $75 fee annually, 6% on groceries up to $6000, 1% thereafter
Old Blue Cash card. $0 fee annually, 1% on groceries up to $6500, 5% thereafter

Spending $12k on the blue cash preferred nets $345 in cash back
Spending $12k on the old blue cash nets $340 in cash back

That's where the two cards meet, so if you spend more than $12k in a year at a grocery store the old version of the card is better. You'd have to spend $17k on the citi dbl cash card at a grocery store to get the same benefit. Keep in mind I compare the citi dbl cash on grocery spending as well because there is nothing stopping you from having both the citi dbl cash and one of the Amex Blue Cash cards and using the Amex at grocery and the citi elsewhere.

But actually, the best way to do it would be to have both the AmEx cards since the old version has no fee. Use the preferred card for the first $6k, then switch to the old version for the rest of your yearly spend.

Or just do what I do. Buy EVERYTHING at your grocery store. In other words, need to go to home depot? Buy a home depot gift card at the grocery store. The reason I do that is because I also get gas points on store brand gift cards at one of my local grocery chains (visa and amex gift cards don't count). I actually buy gas station gift cards until I hit the monthly cap, then I go to the store gas station for the rewards fill up. Saves me like $60/mo in gas plus all the 5% cash back. As a single dude I put ~$27k on my old Amex Blue Cash card last year. This works for me because the grocery store is walking distance from my house so it's literally on the way to everything. Also not all grocery stores give points on gift cards, in fact most don't, even on store brand gift cards.

Picasso_sl said:

Did the chase sapphire preferred and put a 4k vacation on it first thing. was an easy 600 bucks

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The line of cards from Chase that give Ultimate Reward points are all top notch. Chase UR is one of the best reward programs out there and has a ton of affiliate partners that you can transfer points to at a 1:1 ratio.

I have the Sapphire preferred and the Ink business plus. Sitting on about 150k UR points right now which I am going to use for intercontinental travel.

I got the card fedor listed and I am not a student.

Amex cb rewards were shafting me for however long before i actually checked it one month. Min redemption fee bugs me and they shopping portal sucks dick.
in closing, amex is a bitch company.

Khane_sl said:

But actually, the best way to do it would be to have both the AmEx cards since the old version has no fee. Use the preferred card for the first $6k, then switch to the old version for the rest of your yearly spend.

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No, that's just crazy because then you'd have to spend $12500 on groceries to start earning full amount on the old card. Once again, you'd be better served with the new card up to 6k and any other grocery card or even generic card for amounts past that.

The Ancient_sl said:

No, that's just crazy because then you'd have to spend $12500 on groceries to start earning full amount on the old card. Once again, you'd be better served with the new card up to 6k and any other grocery card or even generic card for amounts past that.

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Generic cards only give 1% at best. The Old card gives 1% during the first $6500 and 5% thereafter so there is no reason not to use it. Most other cards with those categories only pay out up til $1500 in spend max. But like I said, very clearly many times, that card is the best card in that class IF you spend a lot of money at grocery stores. And you can do what I do and spend all your money at grocery stores by buying gift cards to get the perks for spending money at other places that have no good CC deals. And if you are really lucky you can even get gas rewards points for buying said gift cards.

Gator_sl said:

I was also thinking about getting the AmEx blue card for groceries and gas. Its a $75 annual fee but with 6% grocery and 3% gas cash back.https://www304.americanexpress.com/c...referred/25330

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Sweet, thanks -- I just picked up one of those. I spend just a little over $6k/yr on groceries, so this is perfect.

I'm also one of those liberal elitists who shops at Whole Foods. Then I found this:American Express Reload | Whole Foods Market

For every $300 you load on a whole foods gift card with an American Express card, you get a $5 bonus. I presume this is on top of the 6% cash back, as that purchase would still be coded as groceries? If so, that's a 7.5% discount on just about my entire grocery spending. $450/yr - $75 fee = $375. +$150 sign-up bonus. I would have gotten 1% before, or $60... so that's an extra $315 ($465 in the first year) compared to my current Amazon card. Yeah, I'll take that.

Now I wonder whether I shouldalsoapply for the 2% cash back card. My non-grocery and non-rent spending isn't very high, but the card doesn't have an annual limit. Plus, I don't really care about the hard inquiry (not buying a house).

The hard inquiry won't effect your credit score much, if at all and the increase in your available credit if you don't have high utilization of said credit will actually help your credit score. In other words, apply for the 2% card if you are fairly certain you won't get rejected (since you don't plan on taking out a mortgage or car loan in the near future).

I've opened 8 new credits cards since Nov' 14. My credit score has dropped ~7 points across the 3 bureaus (in fact, it went up 1 point with Experian)

Careful with assuming you'll get 6% cash back on the gift card loads though. It's likely you will but there is a chance that Whole Foods gives AmEx level 3 data (meaning they give AmEx the full details of each purchase) and if they do AmEx won't give you bonus category cash back on those purchases because gift cards are explicitly excluded in the terms. However if Whole Foods doesn't give level 3 data AmEx has no way of knowing what it was you actually purchased at Whole Foods and you're good to go.

Looks like the bonus is on auto-reloads, so they'd know that it was a gift card... shame. 6% is still pretty awesome, though. Until February 15, there's an extra 2% bonus on grocery spending at Whole Foods. (Also, the initial sign-up is $10 for $100 in gift cards, so that's actually a risk-free way of testing whether I get 6% back on top of the bonus or not.)

I did end up going for the Citi card and after chatting with customer service, they gave me a small (but sufficient for regular spending) line. The vagaries of credit card applications baffle me... it's less than 20% of the Amex card's limit that I got without having to chat with anyone. So either the new credit line was already taken into account, or there's ridiculous variance in the process.

Looks like I just doubled my number of credit cards.

Amex Blue Cash Back -> Groceries, 6%
Amazon Visa -> Amazon, 3%
Citi Double Rewards -> Everything else, 2%
Capital One -> my oldest credit card (with a $750 limit!), that I may as well keep around. The average account age is around 6 months now, so...

Thank god all of these support automatic payments, so I don't have to keep track of that many cards. Just have to ensure there's at least one monthly charge on each of the accounts so they stay active.

Fedor_sl said:

Sallie Mae Mastercard (5% gas/groceries/amazon) and Fidelity American Express (2% everything) is the best two card combo for the average person.

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The 5% on the Sallie Mae card appears to be only for the first $250 per month -- so on half as much as the AmEx Preferred. Nice that Amazon is included, though, assuming they code all purchases there as "books."

Yeah it's just me and my wife and we easily spend $125+ a week on groceries, depending on what we need to buy.

Fedor_sl said:

Credit Cards - Sallie Mae Mastercard - Sallie Mae

5% cash back on the first $250 per month on gas purchases
5% cash back on the first $250 per month on grocery purchases
5% cash back on the first $750 per month on book purchases
Regular Amazon.com purchases and Amazon gift cards count as book purchases. These are excluded: Amazon Payments, Amazon Prime membership fee, and Amazon digital purchases.

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So digital book purchases don't count to the 5%? Also, Is this like the AmEx Blue card where superstores / warehouse clubs don't count? We buy in bulk at BJ's and sometimes shop at Walmart and would like those to count towards the 5%.