Current choices for Cash Back Credit Cards

[mysticsurf]

Fidelity Visa 2% for everyday...

Amazon Prime Visa for purchases at Amazon & Whole Foods

Costco Visa for Costco, Restaurants and Gas

Citi Doublecash 2% as a backup

 

[pb4uski]

Which of the 2%/no fee cards gives you notifications when used? I use Penfed's Power Cash Rewards for 2% (with PF checking acct), but it doesn't give me notifications. I don't like when my card leaves my hands (many restaurants), card reader could be compromised (gas station risk) or can be hacked (online), so I'd rather have a card that notifies me of every transaction so I can quickly see it's been compromised. I have a couple of 1.5% cards I use in those situations. I'd rather find another 2% card.

My Citi Double Cash gives me 2% and text alerts.

 

[Alex The Great]

Chase Freedom 5% on groceries, gas, Amazon or dept stores (rotating)
Discover Cash Back 5% on groceries, gas, Amazon or dept stores (rotating)
Consumer CU Signature Visa 3% on groceries (always)
Penfed Cash Rewards Visa 5% on gas (always)
Penfed Power Cash Rewards 2% on everything else, including outside of US because of no FTF

 

[TrvlBug]

AmexBlue Preferred is 6% on supermarkets (not just groceries) to $6K/yr but $95 fee. So first $1600 at grocery chains coveries the fee. Works out to 4.4% on $6K groceries. Also 3% on gas not affliated with grocrey stores, & 6% on streaming services. Of course this leaves out Costco & Sam's.

I'm thinking of getting this card for the 6% grocery store cash back. My go to card is the Fidelity with 2% cash back. Does this AmEx card have the great 'car insurance' option that the old Costco AmEx had? IIRC for ~$25 per car rental, it becomes the primary insurance coverage.

 

[Sue J]

If you have the Chase Freedom card with the 5% cash back on quarterly categories, the qualifying merchants for Oct 1 through Dec 31 are Walmart and PayPal.

https://creditcards.chase.com/freedom-credit-cards/calendar

This one works very well for us. We do Walmart grocery pickup and use PayPal for all Ebay transactions and plenty of other things. We should be able to reach the $1500 ($75 cash back) maximum easily.

 

[kgtest]

If you'd like to change the Chase Freedom to the Freedom Unlimited, I think you could just call them and they would offer to make the switch. When I was cancelling the Chase Sapphire they offered to make it a Freedom Unlimited but I already had one of those.

Good, call! If it's an either or I might do that!

 

[kgtest]

I'm thinking of getting this card for the 6% grocery store cash back. My go to card is the Fidelity with 2% cash back. Does this AmEx card have the great 'car insurance' option that the old Costco AmEx had? IIRC for ~$25 per car rental, it becomes the primary insurance coverage.

This might be the next 2021 card for us as well. Going to make sure the 2 or 3 grocers I shop at take Amex first tho

 

[audreyh1]

The Costco Visa (Citi) also has no foreign transaction fee.

Rita

That was a wonderful change. We promptly started using it for all overseas hotel and dining expenses for the 3% rewards. Really added up!

 

[aja8888]

Once upon a time we had 6+% CD's and no cash rebated on CC use.

Now we have <1% CD's and 1.5 - up to 6% paid back on spending from CC purchases. Crazy stuff!

 

[Dtail]

Once upon a time we had 6+% CD's and no cash rebated on CC use.

Now we have <1% CD's and 1.5 - up to 6% paid back on spending from CC purchases. Crazy stuff!

I'll take the first choice, even though inflation was higher and we maximize our use of CC's.

 

[Golden sunsets]

All my Bank of America CC's give me notice, I set them to notify me of anything over $1.00

The Cash reward one, is super great if you are willing to join their Preferred Rewards program (which is free and great). It does mean having a Merrill Lynch brokerage account.

With the Preferred Rewards designation my Cash CC returns 5.25% (instead of 3%) on my choice of category, and 3.5% (instead of 2%) on grocery and wholesale clubs.

Yes. But there is a $2500/quarter spending limitation on the bonus. The $2500 includes your 3% category and the 2% grocery store category. I find that we exhaust the $2500 well before the end of each quarter.

 

[Sunset]

Yes. But there is a $2500/quarter spending limitation on the bonus. The $2500 includes your 3% category and the 2% grocery store category. I find that we exhaust the $2500 well before the end of each quarter.

Good point, I haven't run into this yet, so far I have spent a max of $1,522 on groceries in a quarter, leaving me about $1,000 to spend on my category which is online shopping.

I guess I don't spend enough

 

[Dtail]

Yes. But there is a $2500/quarter spending limitation on the bonus. The $2500 includes your 3% category and the 2% grocery store category. I find that we exhaust the $2500 well before the end of each quarter.

I use 3 cash rewards cards and usually hit the limits right near the end of the 3 month period. I sometimes change the categories in the 3rd month to maximize the reward.

 

[ocean view]

Which of the 2%/no fee cards gives you notifications when used? I use Penfed's Power Cash Rewards for 2% (with PF checking acct), but it doesn't give me notifications.

It looks like PenFed offers Visa purchase alerts. Have you tried this?

https://www.penfed.org/credit-cards/visa-purchase-alerts

 

[aja8888]

It looks like PenFed offers Visa purchase alerts. Have you tried this?

https://www.penfed.org/credit-cards/visa-purchase-alerts

Thanks! I just registered my PenFed CC.

 

[RunningBum]

It looks like PenFed offers Visa purchase alerts. Have you tried this?

https://www.penfed.org/credit-cards/visa-purchase-alerts

Thanks! I was not aware of this. Either it's pretty new, or just really hard to find. Even knowing it was there I had a hard time navigating to it from my PF account or home page. I finally found it by doing a search for "Alerts".

 

[ocean view]

Thanks! I was not aware of this. Either it's pretty new, or just really hard to find. Even knowing it was there I had a hard time navigating to it from my PF account or home page. I finally found it by doing a search for "Alerts".

I don’t have a PenFed card, but a Visa through my local CU. I was really frustrated by the CU alerts that would arrive days after the transaction. In my frustration, I finally found the instructions to set up these alerts directly from Visa. I took a shot that PenFed CU had the same thing. Hope it works out for you.

 

[misanman]

For those of you with the Fidelity card - apparently the rewards scheme has changed and I'm wondering if anyone has see the change yet? There are now three levels, Gold (2.25%), Platinum (2.5%), and Platinum Plus (3.0%). Your level also determines the yield on cash balances in your account as well as some other bene's. Upgrades are supposed to be automatic.

Edited to add - looks like this is only for professional wealth managed clients - would likely not apply to most members on this board. Sorry for the unjustified excitement :-(

 

[Chuckanut]

Edited to add - looks like this is only for professional wealth managed clients - would likely not apply to most members on this board. Sorry for the unjustified excitement :-(

Ahh... Wealth Management! Those magic words that tickle the ears of the uniformed. I'll keep my 2% card.

 

[Dtail]

For those of you with the Fidelity card - apparently the rewards scheme has changed and I'm wondering if anyone has see the change yet? There are now three levels, Gold (2.25%), Platinum (2.5%), and Platinum Plus (3.0%). Your level also determines the yield on cash balances in your account as well as some other bene's. Upgrades are supposed to be automatic.

Edited to add - looks like this is only for professional wealth managed clients - would likely not apply to most members on this board. Sorry for the unjustified excitement :-(

One can be in Fidelity's Wealth Management program without paying any management fees, unless I am misquoting here, or the "professional" aspect is another form of the program.
Thus if correct, the automatic upgrade would not cost anything.

 

[Done]

One can be in Fidelity's Wealth Management program without paying any management fees, unless I am misquoting here, or the "professional" aspect is another form of the program.

Thus if correct, the automatic upgrade would not cost anything.

Fidelity’s Wealth Management requires managed assets and fees.

Minimum investment:
$250,000 managed through Fidelity Wealth Services

Gross advisory fee: 0.50%–1.50%

 

[Dtail]

Fidelity’s Wealth Management requires managed assets and fees.

Minimum investment:
$250,000 managed through Fidelity Wealth Services

Gross advisory fee: 0.50%–1.50%

Okay stand corrected. Thanks.

 

[Katsmeow]

So after reading this thread I have done a little tweaking of cards:

1. Still use Amex Blue Cash Preferred for grocery stores (6%) and 3% for gas stations, streaming services, transportation (rarely use).

I was using this for almost everything else except Apple store purchases and when Amex could not be used.

2. Apple store purchases - 3%. You can get 2% if you use Apple pay but we haven't been going anywhere to use. I was using this card though to get 1% at places where I couldn't use Amex. I am no longer doing that though.

3. Chase Amazon Prime Card - 5% on Amazon purchases. I sometimes used it to get 1% on other things, but no more.

4. Fidelity Preferred Visa - I just got this card because of this thread. It is just a straight 2% deposited to my Fidelity account. I will now be using this for everything except where I get more than 2%. The net effect is that I will be using Amex a lot less. I will be using the Apple card and the Prime card a little less but not a huge change.

 

[tb001]

Any thoughts on the best cash back/rewards card to use for health insurance? Because of covid, for the first time we can put our insurance through cobra on a credit card. I was initially looking at the fidelity 2% card but now I’m wondering if the BofA card might be a better option. Maybe there’s a useful sub category there? It’s almost 40k for our family of four and our biggest annual expense, so getting a decent cash back rate would be nice.

 

[Dtail]

Any thoughts on the best cash back/rewards card to use for health insurance? Because of covid, for the first time we can put our insurance through cobra on a credit card. I was initially looking at the fidelity 2% card but now I’m wondering if the BofA card might be a better option. Maybe there’s a useful sub category there? It’s almost 40k for our family of four and our biggest annual expense, so getting a decent cash back rate would be nice.

I don't believe there is a subcategory for medical on the BOA cash rewards card. Additionally with one card, you would be limited to 2.5k per quarter or 10k per year out of the 40k expense.

BOA also has a Premium Rewards card that one can effectively receive 2.625% back with the caveat of having 100k at ML/BOA. This card does have a $95 fee, but if you travel then $100 of baggage costs are reimbursed each year, plus your breakeven point would be below the 40k expenses vs. the Fidelity 2% card.