Best credit card combo for cash back?

Old May 21, 2018, 8:32 am
  #1  
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Best credit card combo for cash back?

Hi everyone,

Not sure if this is in the right place so apologize in advance.

I am looking to transition my current cards over to earning cash back since I don't plan to travel as much as I used to. I have been earning chase UR using the quadfecta (reserve, freedom, unlimited, ink)

What is the best cash back combo that you could recommend to maximize my spend for cashback? I know for sure I will be adding the Citi double cash. I have the Citi Costco card for gas at 4% and can use the freedom for the 5%.

Appreciate your input.

​​​​
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Old May 21, 2018, 10:51 am
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Originally Posted by itsmejson
Hi everyone,

Not sure if this is in the right place so apologize in advance.

I am looking to transition my current cards over to earning cash back since I don't plan to travel as much as I used to. I have been earning chase UR using the quadfecta (reserve, freedom, unlimited, ink)

What is the best cash back combo that you could recommend to maximize my spend for cashback? I know for sure I will be adding the Citi double cash. I have the Citi Costco card for gas at 4% and can use the freedom for the 5%.

Appreciate your input.

​​​​
US Bank Altitude Reserve is 4.5% for everything with mobile wallet, which in case of Samsung Pay means everything in person, and some in-app with Google Pay. Some merchants accept Apple Pay online. Annual fee is effectively $75, and there some perks like limited PP access, primary car rental insurance, GE reimbursement, etc. Also 4.5% on travel, not as wide as CSR or Citi Premier though.
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Old May 21, 2018, 1:30 pm
  #3  
mia
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Originally Posted by yugi
US Bank Altitude Reserve is 4.5% for everything with mobile wallet, which in case of Samsung Pay ....
What is the base rewards rate without requiring a specific method of payment? In what form is the cash paid?
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Old May 21, 2018, 2:27 pm
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Originally Posted by mia
What is the base rewards rate without requiring a specific method of payment? In what form is the cash paid?
Base rate is 1 point, and you can cash it at 1.5cpp via realtime rewards. With Samsung Pay you can get 3x for almost anything in person.
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Old May 21, 2018, 4:09 pm
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We are in a similar situation and have been scaling back on travel cards and concentrating more on CB cards.

While we have a large amount of cards, CSP and Freedom(for 5% exclusively),along with Citi Double Cash and Amex Blue Cash are our active general purpose cards. Costco is our gas card,unless Discover or Freedom offers the 5%.

SPG Amex is used exclusively at Marriott and Starwood for now.

As our travel cards' annual fees come up, we have been requesting waivers or downgrades to the free versions, if the annual fees don't provide at least their value in benefits- this way we can put an occasional charge on them to keep travel accounts active.
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Old May 23, 2018, 6:43 am
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Alliant CU has a card offering 3% on everything for the first year 2.5% thereafter. $59 AF IIRC. This is better than double cash if you spend more than $12,000/yr using the card.
Uber card offers 4% for dining with no AF.

I'll have to look into the US Bank card mentioned by the other poster.
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Old May 23, 2018, 7:36 am
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Freedom for 5% rotating categories (+Discover IT if you do enough spending), AmEx BCP for 6% on groceries (and backup for gas), Uber for 4% dining, USAA Limitless (2.5% on everything, no AF but no longer available) for everyday spend.
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Old Jun 1, 2018, 9:16 am
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Thanks everyone for the input. Based on my spend and a few cards here is what my plan is, thoughts?
Grocery: AMEX BCP and Freedom when it is 5%
Dining: Costco & Freedom
Gas: Costo & Freedom
Travel: Costco
Everything Else: Double Cash
Special (Phone, Internet, Cable): Ink Cash

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Old Jun 1, 2018, 12:11 pm
  #9  
mia
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Originally Posted by itsmejson
....
Special (Phone, Internet, Cable): Ink Cash
....
Bear in mind that INK Cash also earns 5 points per dollar at office supply stores (Office Depot/Max, Staples). Those stores sell gift cards for restaurants, gasoline, hotel chains, etc, You should be able to shift some portion of your expenses from 3% cards to 5% if you buy giftcards when it is convenient.
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Old Jun 1, 2018, 12:44 pm
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The problem with some of these cards you need enough spend for a specific category to justify and offset the annual fee on the card to come out ahead.
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Old Jun 1, 2018, 1:29 pm
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Only one of these cards (Blue Cash Preferred) carries an annual fee.
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Old Jun 1, 2018, 2:44 pm
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Originally Posted by itsmejson
Thanks everyone for the input. Based on my spend and a few cards here is what my plan is, thoughts?
Grocery: AMEX BCP and Freedom when it is 5%
Dining: Costco & Freedom
Gas: Costo & Freedom
Travel: Costco
Everything Else: Double Cash
Special (Phone, Internet, Cable): Ink Cash
Grocery: Freedom (5%) or Discover It (5%) or OBC (5%) or Altitude Reserve (4.5%)
Dining: Uber (4-5%) or Altitude Reserve (4.5%) or Freedom (5%) or Discover It (5%)
Gas: Fort Knox Platinum Visa (5%) or Ducks Unlimited (5%) or BofA Cash Rewards (with Platinum Honors, 5.25%) or OBC (5%) or Altitude Reserve (4.5%)
Travel: Altitude Reserve (4.5%) or BofA Premium Rewards (with Platinum Honors, 3.5%) or Uber (3-4%)
Everything else: Altitude Reserve (in person, 4.5%) and (Citi AT&T Access More (online, 3-4%)) or BofA Travel Rewards (with Platinum Honors, 2.625%) or Uber (online, 2-3%))
Special (Phone, Internet, Cable, gift cards): Ink Cash (5%) or Amex SimplyCash Plus (5%).

Last edited by yugi; Jun 1, 2018 at 8:59 pm
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Old Jun 5, 2018, 10:58 pm
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I would recommend the US Bank Cash+ credit card. You have to choose categories every quarter for 5% cash back, and then you get to choose one category for 2% back. The 2% category options are not great and you probably do better with other cards, but some of the 5% categories can be useful. They now have a 5% category for utilities (electric, gas, trash pick-up), which I find really useful as those bills are normally not covered by other cards. They also have department stores (Saks, etc.), Electronic Stores (Best Buy), Fast Food (including places like Panera, Five Guys), and other random categories like furniture stores, clothing and fitness. If you can plan ahead and you have big purchases coming up (buying new furniture or getting an expensive anniversary present at a Department Store), you can select that category ahead of time before the beginning of the quarter. There is a $2K cap (combined) on the 5% categories, but since I use it for utilities and random categories I never find myself hitting the cap. I've gotten the cash back deposited to my account and I believe they do statement credits, but I'm not sure. Right not they even have a sign-up bonus ($150 cash after $500 spend).
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Old Jun 6, 2018, 7:23 am
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There's no right or wrong answer to any of these, it depends on your spend patterns, and what you spend on. The giftcard loophole on the Amex BCP for instance has been popular because you can get up to 6% effective on a lot of spend, although there is a cap on the 6% cashback in eligible spend per year.

The general easiest everyday best spend card is the Citi Doublecash because no AF and 2% simple cashback, not points that can be re-valued (devalued), acceptance of a mastercard, open to basically anyone in US to apply. To my knowledge, that's the best no annual fee card available that is still taking applications (US Bank Limitless Cashback is no longer taking applications. If you can park $100K or more at Merrill or BoA, then you can get a 2.625% effective no AF card at BoFA. If you're willing to take on a huge annual fee, as mentioned earlier upthread the US Bank Altitude Reserve offers 3x points on mobile wallet at a redemption of 1.5cpp = 4.5% cashback effective. The only problem for this is, at least near me NFC (Apple Pay/Google Pay) acceptance is not that great, and some magswipe readers are still fussy with Samsung Pay. If you take the travel credits on the card as a given, then the breakeven on cashback minus remaning annual fee is $3000 (earns $60 cashback on doublecash, earns $135 on the US Bank Altitude Reserve minus $75 remaining of annual fee = $60).

The other risk, of course, is that US Bank may find that unlimited 4.5% rewards on mobile wallet is too good to last, and then cap this category cashback to a lower amount (like $1500 in eligible spend per quarter) like the US Bank Cash + (which originally earned unlimited 5% cashback in two categories you picked, hotels and rental cars included - some small business owners picked 5% on online bill pay instead). So I'm tempted to think about the Altitude Reserve, but I feel like it's something that's too good to last.

In terms of general spend, excluding specific airline/hotel credit cards:
5% rotating: Chase Freedom and Discover It (5% on rotating categories, up to $1,500 per quarter)
5% on gas: PenFed Cash Rewards Visa, no annual fee ($1,500 deposit account balance at PenFed required to waive annual fee). It earns a miserly 0.25% on all spend other than gas paid at the pump itself. With the costco card at 4%, might not be worth getting if you already have that (I got the PenFed Visa when Costco was still taking Amex)
5% on rental cars and restaurants (up to $1,500 eligible spend per quarter): US Bank Cash+, no annual fee (also there are other categories you can pick from)
4% restaurants: Uber visa (no annual fee).
3% grocery: Amex BCE (my grocery spend is not high enough to merit the BCP, because certain stores like Costco don't code as grocery and Costco doesn't take amex anyways)
2% overall: Citi Doublecash

The other balancing act is how good the benefits set is. One payout on purchase protection, extended warranty, or price protection can eclipse cashback on many purchases. Citi has some great policies on this for the Double Cash, whereas US Bank uses eclaimsline (the one claim I did with them for rental car damage coverage was a nightmare, saved only for the fact that Hertz wanted to get paid and had backdoor phone numbers/emails to sort the entire claims process with their analysts). It's another reason why I'd hesitate to get the US Bank AR card and spend it on a lot of bigger ticket purchases.
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Old Jun 8, 2018, 4:17 pm
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Originally Posted by phltraveler
There's no right or wrong answer to any of these, it depends on your spend patterns, and what you spend on. The giftcard loophole on the Amex BCP for instance has been popular because you can get up to 6% effective on a lot of spend, although there is a cap on the 6% cashback in eligible spend per year.

The general easiest everyday best spend card is the Citi Doublecash because no AF and 2% simple cashback, not points that can be re-valued (devalued), acceptance of a mastercard, open to basically anyone in US to apply. To my knowledge, that's the best no annual fee card available that is still taking applications (US Bank Limitless Cashback is no longer taking applications. If you can park $100K or more at Merrill or BoA, then you can get a 2.625% effective no AF card at BoFA. If you're willing to take on a huge annual fee, as mentioned earlier upthread the US Bank Altitude Reserve offers 3x points on mobile wallet at a redemption of 1.5cpp = 4.5% cashback effective. The only problem for this is, at least near me NFC (Apple Pay/Google Pay) acceptance is not that great, and some magswipe readers are still fussy with Samsung Pay. If you take the travel credits on the card as a given, then the breakeven on cashback minus remaning annual fee is $3000 (earns $60 cashback on doublecash, earns $135 on the US Bank Altitude Reserve minus $75 remaining of annual fee = $60).
In one year of using Samsung Pay I can count on the fingers of one hand number of times it didn't work for me.

The other risk, of course, is that US Bank may find that unlimited 4.5% rewards on mobile wallet is too good to last, and then cap this category cashback to a lower amount (like $1500 in eligible spend per quarter) like the US Bank Cash + (which originally earned unlimited 5% cashback in two categories you picked, hotels and rental cars included - some small business owners picked 5% on online bill pay instead). So I'm tempted to think about the Altitude Reserve, but I feel like it's something that's too good to last.
Yes, such possibility exists given the history of US Bank. But so far I netted around $1700 from this card during the first 13 months I have it.
Cash+ is a useful card, when you need to pay online, and you better have 2 of them to cover 4 useful 5% categories.


5% on rental cars and restaurants (up to $1,500 eligible spend per quarter): US Bank Cash+, no annual fee (also there are other categories you can pick from)
5% is only for fast food restaurants, which is lame. I consider only 5 categories to be good: utilities, department, sporting goods, furniture and electronics stores


The other balancing act is how good the benefits set is. One payout on purchase protection, extended warranty, or price protection can eclipse cashback on many purchases. Citi has some great policies on this for the Double Cash, whereas US Bank uses eclaimsline (the one claim I did with them for rental car damage coverage was a nightmare, saved only for the fact that Hertz wanted to get paid and had backdoor phone numbers/emails to sort the entire claims process with their analysts). It's another reason why I'd hesitate to get the US Bank AR card and spend it on a lot of bigger ticket purchases.
Chase also uses eclaimsline. I used it once, and IMO it was pretty good.
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