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SpelledBackwards posted:How do merchants report cash-like portions of a purchase? Is it split out? I'm no expert, but I'd guess you'd get $4. From what I've seen, it seems to be handled on the merchant level. That's why bookstore cards give you cash back from amazon, regardless of what you bought there.
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Jan 1, 2015 22:49
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Bisty Q. posted:The ones that I saw are all over the map in classifications, but nowhere food-related. We've got 5499 (convenience stores), 5999 (general merchandise), and 7999 (recreation/amusement facilities Is there a good way to tell what category businesses are if that information isn't included on a statement (I don't have a Discover or an Amex Blue)? I usually just have to go back and do the math to see if I'm getting bonus points somewhere or not.
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Feb 3, 2015 14:08
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). Each store is franchised so can pick its category code. It doesn't seem like any of them are going to be anywhere near grocery. I don't know why you're getting it at Discover, except if the one you go to is 5499, Discover might lump those together (since it uses a different categorization system). Amex does not include convenience stores in grocery stores. In fact, it often misses bodegas, IME.
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I'm looking for a new grocery store card. I don't really want to pay an annual fee since I do most of my grocery shopping at Costco and a local chain that does not accept credit cards, so my total credit card grocery store spending is only about $1500 a year. I was going to apply for the Sallie Mae MasterCard, but it looks like they changed their categories. Is there a good successor to that card, or should I just move my spending to my double cash card? If the best I can hope for is 2-3%, with my low spending, I'll just stick to the 2%, but if there is still a 5% no annual fee (even if it is capped) card, that's worth the trouble for me.
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Oct 16, 2015 15:41
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I have the Costco amex now, I'm looking for something to cover the non Costco stuff.
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Oct 16, 2015 16:17
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I'm thinking about applying for a Target Red card. No fee for 5% on all Target purchases seems worthwhile (I'd otherwise put it on the 2% Fidelity card). Any reasons not to do this? I'm thinking about the time I applied for the 3% Amazon card when there was a 5% Citicard equivalent.
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Oct 30, 2017 17:44
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astral & halokiller posted:good stuff Thanks! I'm probably going to get the credit card, but honestly, I hadn't put a ton of thought into it. I'll consider that Discover, but I've been avoiding rotating category cards to keep the mental overhead of "which card to use" low. As for the fees, as long as it's just the interest/late/overdraft fees, it shouldn't affect us. I didn't see any others. Lastly, to piggyback on a prior question, I just bought a house. I'm definitely considering going for the min-spend signup bonuses, but as far as a straight cash back option, is the Lowe's 5% my best plan?
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Oct 30, 2017 19:02
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Hi thread! I used to follow along with credit card offers a while back, but once the 2% cash back Fidelity card came out, I just got lazy and started using that for everything, so I'm pretty out of the loop now. In a few months my wife and I will be going to Croatia. We're normally pretty frugal travelers, but her company has a perk where they are reimbursing for this trip. As such, we'll be spending more on flights and other travel costs this year than we normally would. I figure it's worth investigating if getting one of the big sign up bonuses is worthwhile. What I'm looking for is the best one time offer combined with travel bonus points so we can hopefully take advantage of this trip to help fund our next trip. I probably wouldn't keep the card open once it comes time to pay an annual fee, unless it's really worth our while. I'm not averse to paying a large annual fee if it is worth it, but with our spending habits, I doubt it will be. We don't have any of the big name cards, nor have we hit any of the company's limits of open cards, so I think just about anything is open to us. We don't normally stay at any of the big hotel chains (AirBnB is more our jam), but if it makes sense to pick one, we have stayed at various Marriott properties before. We don't have a preference for any specific airline, but as mentioned, we're cheap, we will be flying economy, and with the exception of this trip, we buy tickets with price as a major factor. We both have great credit and are reasonably well paid, and we'll be able to hit a reasonable minimum spend (I've seen 3k over 3 months or 6k over 6 months, either would be fine). Maybe the Chase Sapphire Reserve? It's only 2x points on travel, but the signup bonus alone seems like it's worth it. Ideally, we'd also like a card with no foreign transaction fees with bonuses for Travel/Restaurants/Entertainment for spending when we get there, but that could be a second card or we could just use the Amazon card we already have that doesn't have a fee. Maybe that Uber card for this? I spent some time reading The Points Guy, and Nerdwallet but my head is spinning a bit with the complexities of some points transferring, and every point worth a different amount... makes me want to go back to the straight 2% cash back. We have some time here before we have to do this, so if there isn't a slam dunk bonus at the moment, we can wait. What should we do? Thanks! Grumpwagon fucked around with this message at 00:32 on Jan 31, 2019 |
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Jan 30, 2019 23:54
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astral posted:Another option is the Chase Sapphire Reserve; that one is front-loaded with a $450 AF, same 50k point signup bonus as the Preferred, this one will give you a $300 cardmember year travel credit, will give you (once you activate the benefit) a priority pass card giving you and guests (check terms re: any guest limitations) access to participating airport lounges, earns 3x on dining/travel, and reimburses you for one global entry or TSA precheck fee every 4 or 5 years. Points redeemed for travel via Chase's travel portal with this card get a 1.5x multiplier instead of the Preferred's 1.25x. Same airline and hotel partners. I think I'm going to try for the Reserve. Is there a referral for that? I saw the goon spreadsheet, but it only had the preferred (if I get denied for the reserve, I'll definitely use a preferred link).
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Feb 3, 2019 21:56
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Grumpwagon posted:I think I'm going to try for the Reserve. Is there a referral for that? I saw the goon spreadsheet, but it only had the preferred (if I get denied for the reserve, I'll definitely use a preferred link). Sorry for the double post here, but this is too long to ninja edit into my initial post.  Warning, many  ahead for a pretty obvious conclusion After actually doing the math on this, I'm changing my mind back to the Premier. I'm sure a lot of you have already thought this through, but for those of you who haven't, the conclusion I've come to is that for someone who doesn't travel for business, or eat out a ton, the main value of a travel points credit card when you already have a 2% cash back card is in the sign up bonus (plus the various side insurance benefits and such, but for the purposes of this analysis, I'm leaving those aside. This is dollars spent on travel/dining to travel value received only). Here's why I think that. Please feel free to point out any errors I have made. It has been a loooong time since I've been in school, so my math is rusty, and my knowledge of credit card perks is spotty. Errors likely. Comparing the Reserve card to my 2% card. The Reserve has to bring me $150 dollars in value a year to recoup the annual fee. However, that just brings me back to 0. If I were to have spent that same money on the 2% card, it would have also given me value. In order to recoup the annual fee AND catch back up to the 2% card, I'd need to spend $6000 on travel/dining each year to break even. The formula for that is: (X * 3 * 1.5)/100 - 150 = X * .02 The left side of the formula is the Reserve card where X is dollars spent on travel/dining, 3 is 3 points per dollar spent on travel/dining, 1.5 is cents per point if used on the portal (then divided by 100 to be dollars), and 150 is the annual fee differential ($450 fee minus $300 travel credit). Solving for X gives 6000. So at first glance it appears that if I spend over $6000 on travel/dining, the Reserve is better than the 2% card. Any less than that and the 2% card is better. HOWEVER, if I've read the terms right, the $450 fee applies immediately, whereas the $300 credit is awarded every anniversary (i.e. it applies on day 366 and every year after, not day 0), so you're starting out -$450 in the hole that you have to make up over the lifetime of the card. By our formula above (subbing in 450 for 150), you have to spend $18000 to make that up. So, you have to spend $6000 on travel/dining every year to make up the $150 fee, AND an additional $18000 lifetime before you get out ahead of the 2% card's lifetime value. The same formula for the Preferred vs 2% after the first year would be (In the first year, when the fee is waived, the Preferred is strictly better, as long as you're spending your cash back on travel): (X * 2 * 1.25)/100 -95 = X * .02 Which solves to $19000, so you'd have to spend $19000 a year on travel/dining to equal the 2% cash back card. This also doesn't account for the fact that when you book travel with points, you don't get points, whereas when you book travel with cash, you do get cash back (at least.. I don't think it does. My brain hurts). So, to conclude I don't travel for business, and I definitely don't spend $19000 on personal travel per year. I might spend $6000 on travel/dining a year, considering Chase's broad definition of travel, but it's not a lot more than that (I have a YNAB "blow" category that includes dining out, but also many other things, so getting an exact dollar value is hard), so my break even time from the initial $450 fee is too long to make the Reserve worthwhile. Obviously, the value of the initial 50,000 points outweighs the annual fee, but both cards have the same bonus, so claiming the bonus on the Preferred makes more sense to me. My current plan is to get the Preferred, spend the money needed to claim the bonus (because the 2% cashback equivalent of $4000 is $80, much less than the value of the bonus alone, not counting any points), then cancel or line change the card when the first annual fee comes due. TL;DR: That's a whole lot of to come to what is probably a pretty obvious conclusion that most/all of you probably already know already: It's all about the sign up bonuses.
Grumpwagon fucked around with this message at 23:46 on Feb 3, 2019 |
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Feb 3, 2019 23:38
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astral posted:You get the $300 travel credit in the first year too. Assuming you can use up that $300 travel credit, it's really a question of whether the lounge access from the Priority Pass, the one-time funding of Global Entry ($100 value) OR TSA precheck ($85 value), the increased travel portal point redemption value, and the extra point per dollar earned on dining and travel is worth $150 to you. Oh, yeah. That makes a huge difference. Basically, it's back to if you spend $6000 on Dining/Travel a year, it's worthwhile (as that calculation already includes the increased redemption value). Cool, thanks for that.
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Feb 4, 2019 00:15
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Diva Cupcake posted:Anyone know if the annual fee on the CSR counts for my $4k minimum spend for the signup bonus. I don't know, but they almost never do.
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Mar 2, 2019 21:46
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I'm going to get a discover it, as the main grocery store I shop at only accepts discover credit cards. Is there any reason I should wait? Sign up bonuses or anything? I will of course use a goon sign up link.
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Jan 4, 2020 18:45
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Looking for an opinion on a new card. I'm trying to keep things simple by only keeping a few cards in active use. I currently have a Chase Sapphire Reserve. I got and used the signup bonus, but will be cancelling before the next annual fee. I just don't spend enough to make back the $550 annual fee, even after the $300 travel credit. That leaves me with a Fidelity 2% cash back card that I use for most things and a Discover for grocery shopping (my preferred grocery store only accepts Discover). I got an offer for the Wells Fargo Autograph card, which is no annual fee and 3x points on restaurants, travel, gas, transit, streaming services and phone plans. I've gone over Doctor of Credit's gas, travel and restaurants cards, and it seems like while I can get cards that hit 4% for some of those categories, 3% is actually pretty good now, and that replaces the CSR's categories well (and even adds a couple of extra). It is no annual fee as well, which I appreciate. So 2 questions: 1) Any red flags with the Autograph card, or is there a better card with similar categories? 2) What no annual fee card should I product change the CSR to? I probably won't be using it a ton, but I'd rather not cancel it for age of account reasons. Grumpwagon fucked around with this message at 23:09 on Sep 26, 2023 |
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Sep 26, 2023 23:06
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| # ¿ Apr 28, 2024 21:57 |
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demostars posted:Wow, maybe the most bizarre credit card processor ever, I've never heard of a place only taking Discover. I know WinCo only accepts debit cards because of transaction fees, but I wonder what their logic is. CEO was a big fan of Sears back in the day? Yeah, it's weird, but it makes more sense once you realize it's a discount grocery store with 0 frills, and my impression of the owner is he's one of those super frugal people. For a long time they only took Cash+Debit. I got this Discover when they announced the partnership, pretty much specifically for it. Anyone with access to my post history can figure out where I live very easily, so no worries there. When I posted that, I figured someone would call out the chain in particular. As for the cell phone autopay discount, at least with T-Mobile, if you have a debit card set up for autopay, but make a credit card payment before the autopay goes off, you still get the discount. They've only just recently changed the policy to debit/bank only, so maybe this'll stop working, but for now it has. Not thrilled that it's Wells, but yeah, seems like a good card, so I'm going to go for it. Thanks thread!
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Sep 27, 2023 18:41
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