Originally Posted by
mjb59463
Thanks for the response!
I'll have to dig into what MR card would be best for me.
Restaurants/Gas/random non-cat things make up the majority of my spend, so I'm not sure what the best play is. Not sure what card or combo would hit this and obtain the rewards I want.
If you already have the CSR for restaurants, the Everyday cards could work well for gas spend and non-bonus, as long as you make enough purchases on it per month to get the bonus. Though personally I find it hard to make the monthly purchase counts without dining spend (thanks to lots of little purchases like grabbing coffees and such), and there’s no special bonus for dining on the Everyday. So it can be a tricky one.
If SkyMiles are really the priority, dropping the CSR and going all in on the Preferred Rewards Gold card could also be an option. The return on dining is only 2 points and there’s no bonus on non-airfare travel, but it does have a decent mix of bonus categories.
And obviously it’s never a good idea to carry a balance on a card, but FYI Amex has a feature called Pay Over Time that they offer on charge cards (in my experience, they usually pitch it to you after your account has been open for 6 months or a year) where they let you carry the balance for purchases over a certain amount (I forget how much but maybe $100?), such that those purchases behave essentially the same as a credit card.