Originally Posted by
Dr Jabadski
That exact “more effort”, along with occasional lost/counterfeit/used GCs, is a dealbreaker for some or many people. Not as bad as MS which requires a visit to Walmart Customer Service, for which I personally would rather gouge out my own eyeballs with a hot fire poker, but for some/many people that juice isn’t worth the squeeze.
Right. I have zero interest in doing MS (other than occasionally peaking into the MS forum here to see what's going on). I practice category shifting, so I don't buy more giftcards than I can reasonably use for natural spend in the next couple of months. $76,200 later I have not had a single case of fraud, lost cards etc. But it definitely is a risk I
am aware of.
Originally Posted by
Smiley90
For one of my coworkers, even opening a credit card dedicated for rent is "too much" work and they just use a cashback card for everything. We have to keep in mind at all times that we're the 1% in terms of effort put into this.
And the effort for category switching is definitely something worth considering. It costs time and money to drive to office supply stores. I used to that part of town other reasons, so I tried to not make a special trip. That has changed and I go less often. I shifted a lot of my category switching activity to eGift cards from giftcards.com. Instead of 5X UR with no fee I was paying the card fee and earning 3X or 4X AA miles and LP via the shopping portal. But I could do it from my desk
And yes, there are times when I think I should just get a 2% cashback card and simplify my life. But that thought quickly vanishes when I sit in that comfy J seat on the way to Europe
But the 2% card
is the right choice for many people who aren't interested in investing a lot of time in this hobby.