I use my Amazon Prime card for mass transit in NYC. Rideshare (Uber etc) too I think. 5pts/$1.00 spent.
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If they didn’t take AMEX, we didn’t buy it/eat there/stay there, etc. We never ran into a problem.
The second card has been more for DH’s purchases since retirement, to keep his (consulting) hookers-and-beer-money acquisitions separate from our house account which I manage. What he does with that Visa card is his own business. I don’t track it or pay for it but, evidently, it offsets the impressive damage he does with Amazon. Oh, and now he can use a credit card at Costco instead of paying with cash.
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Thanks for all the replies. I’m a little reluctant to play the game where you rotate cards by category (restaurants with this card, travel with another) because there’s not enough room in my wallet or my brain. But DW carries a purse; maybe we should consider having a dedicated dining card, etc.
In the meantime my BIL told me about another option, with Bank of America. They have a no fee 1.5% cash back card, which doesn’t sound great, but if you enroll in their Preferred Rewards program and keep $100,000 or more in an account with them the rebate is bumped up to 2.62%.
The $100,000 can be with either BofA or Merrill Lynch, and the phone rep tells me that retirement accounts qualify. Seeing that we already have a 401k with Merrill this seems like a no brainer.
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I, like @tsbna44 , had a Fidelity card and applied my 2% rewards to my kids 529 plans. After college was done, I applied it to my and my spouse’s Roth IRA accounts with Fidelity. After retirement, I have been applying it to my Fidelity investment account. I recently got the Wells Fargo 2% rewards card and periodically apply the rewards amount to reduce my current bill. I, too, did not want to mess with shifting categories.
The BofA account sounds great, as long as you are earning a reasonable amount of interest.
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Exactly. I see a couple options, but I’m not convinced either will work.
Merrill Lynch accounts qualify and my wife has a 401k at Merrill Lynch with enough to get us to that tier. The phone rep told us that retirement accounts qualify but I can’t find any written confirmation. We’ll see.
The other option is a high yielding liquid fund, similar to Fidelity’s SPAXX, which currently yields 4.96%. But ML makes it hard to see your options until after you open an account. Again, we’ll see.
If you are willing to pay the $95 annual fee, Capital One has an attractive promotion running at the moment on their Venture card.
You will earn 75,000 points + a $250 credit for use in their travel portal after spending $4000 in three months. The card awards 2X on all purchases, so no need to track rotating categories.
The 75,000 points can be used to erase $750 of travel expenses if you don’t feel like using the points to book travel via an airline or hotel. Obviously better leverage when transferring points to airlines/hotels, but the erase feature can be convenient. It can be used to erase travel purchase from prior 90 days.
One slightly annoying feature is that the card is metal, so I’ve been using it for purchases from my computer!
I will send you info.
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And frequently gives 6% back if you’re in no hurry to get your purchase, maybe a couple of days later. I got my Amazon VISA a couple of years ago when they were offering a $200 gift card for signing up.
We also have an HHonors Am Ex that has paid for many many hotel stays, a Chase VISA regular cash back with bonus categories every quarter like gas stations, and I have a USAA Am Ex cash back for my personal purchases (vs shared).
This was one route I was going to suggest if you want simplicity. I’ve had the BoA Premium Rewards card for a number of years. Back when I got it I was told I had to have a BoA checking account in order to qualify for the Preferred Honors program, as well as a Merrill Lynch account. I opened a joint brokerage account with Merrill Edge and transferred money over and also earned a $900 bonus for doing so at the time.
I think if you use your wife’s 401k account, then she will need to be the primary on the checking account, and get the card in her name because I believe the SSN has to be the same for all the accounts. If you have a joint brokerage account with Merrill then the joint account balance can be used as the qualifying amount for both of you.
To earn the 75% bonus for the Platinum Preferred Honors program, it is an average balance of $100K over the past three months. So if the Merrill account is only funded up to the $100K amount, it will take three months to reach the 75% bonus level, if that makes sense. But after that, I’ve found that BoA will send a letter if you’ve dipped under $100K for a period of time and give you a deadline to boost it back up.
All that said, I barely ever use this card since I get better rewards by opening new cards (and pay in full each month).
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I used to only take Visa and MC at my office because the transaction fees were half those from Discover and Amex. Then a Discover card slipped through and I noticed the fees were the same as Visa/MC. When I checked into this, I found Amex had also dropped their fees. So we take all 4 now. I think this is common with many businesses now.
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We use Amex, no fee, and cash back for grocery and gas purchases. We use our AARP card, no fees, for medical co-pays, and get 2% back. For everything else, we use Capital One, no fees, and no foreign currency fees, which is nice when we travel abroad.
Amex Plat for travel and other benefits and foreign transactions. Wells Fargo Active Cash (no fee, 2% cash back on everything, no limit) for day to day purchases.
I have a couple cards. But my free (no annual fee) one is a BofA “Travel Card” but it really works out to 2.65% cash back with no limit on spending or cash credits. All you do is go onto the website and pick travel or dining related expenses to receive a cash credit for, as often as you want. It is very broad in the definition so there’s always vastly more expenses eligible than needed to apply the credit toward, so it works out the same as a cash card. And every spending category gets at least the 2.65% back. A few get more. Again, no cap. That said, I think it starts out as 1.5% if you have no funds in any BofA accounts and the % goes up with higher balances. BofA is not our primary bank (because they generally suck), but we just keep a CD or money market to hit the balance limit for the higher rebate rate.
Yes, this is exactly what I do. And I just keep most of the $100K in a higher interest vehicle like a CD. If you already have a 401K, even better. There truly is no exception or spending limit that is eligible for the 2.6%. I get a decent amount of credit every year.
I do no recommend BofA for anything other than this card, though. I deal with 3 banks and 6 financial institutions and they are by a large margin the very worst of all of them. I’ve been a customer for decades for various reasons, but do almost none of my banking there any more. They really don’t provide a service. You are the product and they have long since taken the position that they will shamelessly exploit you for all you are worth and provide nothing in return. This card is the exception.
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Is Citi among the three?
Don’t you mean 2.625% rather than 2.65%?
1.5 + 75% = 2.625%
I would be peeved if I could’ve been getting 2.65% this whole time. 
When comparing 2% vs 2.65% and such, it may be helpful to review how much income that 0.65% difference will generate and whether there you can get a better return elsewhere.
For example, I have spent ~$4k so far this year on non-property tax credit card expenses So I am on pace to spend ~$7k this year. Of this $7k/year credit card spending, $4 to $5k would be on a my 2% cashback card. The remainder is Costco purchases on Costco card, Amazon purchase on Amazon card, etc. So If I improved my 2% cashback card to 2.65%, I’d get an extra $4,500 * (2.65% - 2%) = $29 per year. After taxes, that might work out to ~$20. I don’t consider it worth the effort for an extra $20 per year, particularly if I’ll likely lose more than that $20 by having a less optimal return on $100k in investments that need to be linked on BoA/ML.
Instead what is far more worth in to me is credit card sign-up bonuses. I mentioned the $1650 bonus earlier. This is Amex platinum. They had a promotion for 150k points earlier, which can be redeemed at value of 1 point = 1.1 cents via Schwab. In addition to the $1650 bonus, I have had numerous other benefits including $400 saved in travel bank for future flights, $20/month in streaming credits, $15/month in Uber / Uber Eats credits, Walmart+ membership with hundreds of savings on Walmart purchases + free grocery delivery, 6 months free trial of Paramount+/Showtime, 6 months free trial of Apple music, 6 months free trial of Sirius XM radio, 6 months free trial of Monarch money, ~$100 in credits via items on offers page, and many others. I expect to have net return of $2000, beyond expenses for annual fee… much higher than the extra $20 I’d get for the 2.65% cashback card. The card also has improved my life by getting me to try services I was not familiar with and would not have considered, if there was not a free trial. I put one of my semi-annual property tax bills on this card, to meet the spending min requirement.
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Yes, typo. I wrote it as 2.62 on another reply. Thanks.
The CDs I have been putting the $100K in have been market competitive and I want a certain percentage of my portfolio in cash equivalent anyway. Also, I am putting WAY more on that card that you do apparently. An order of magnitude more. I don’t think I pay taxes on the rebate. It comes in the form of a credit against expenses on the card, not as true cash and they don’t submit any record of it as income in their tax statements. I wouldn’t sweat a 2% card either, but is there a free one other than Amex? I have had many bad experiences with places not taking Amex in the past and in general didn’t like them as a company so they wouldn’t be my first choice. But if there was a Chase Visa or Mastercard or something that had unlimited 2% cash equivilent rewards with no restrictions or limitations, great.
No. I’ve done various business with Citi before – loan, credit card, etc. But at the moment I have none with them.
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Me too…we put 70K a year on our card. So, the extra cash from the +0.625% over what we are getting now is tempting enough that I may consider the hassle of moving money to BoA to be worth it.
Of course, cash back rewards are not income and thus not taxable.
Robinhood was offering a 3% cashback card for awhile. Don’t know if they still are. I could not figure out how to get one though…you have to sign up to be invited to apply for the card. Maybe they didn’t want to send me an invitation because I don’t have any money invested with them?
I do want to put more effort into playing the game with the introductory bonus enticements though. I just need to find the motivation!