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So, I currently have a Discover One card. I've been using that for basically everything for a couple of decades now. I'm thinking about how I can better optimize my cashback and this is what I'm thinking. I wanted to bounce these off someone to make sure I wasn't crazy or missing obvious stuff. My FICO score is 800+ so I should qualify for basically anything. Currently have: - Discover One: for the rotating 5% Cashback - Costco Citi Visa: I don't really visit Costco anymore, so I might drop my costco membership and this woudl go with it if I did. - Amazon Prime Store Card: 5% Amazon purchases year round. I keep an ongoing prime account anyway, so there's no need to optimize about ways to get the 5% without holding prime. It also has rental car damage insurance, and I'm thinking about selling my car this year and going carless, so this is an appealing feature for the (hopefully) rare instances I'd need to rent a car. - Citi Custom Cash: For 5% groceries cashback - Citi Double Cash: For 2% cashback on everything else. I imagine I'd need to spread any new ones out to avoid frequent hard pulls on my credit, so only 2 (or 1, if I want to keep a spare hard pull in the hopper if I need it for 2 years). Double Cash would probably the best pick I'd think? Since that doubles my current cashback from Discover for "everything else". And Discover still usually does the whole "online sales fronts" 5% rate for the 4th quarter, which is when probably 50% of my Amazon purchases are anyway. Anything here that jumps out as really awful planning?
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Apr 7, 2024 00:16
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| # ¿ Apr 30, 2024 01:46 |
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Girbot posted:Why not multiple? I looked into Citi Rewards+ and it looks like objectively worse than a 1% cashback card unless you happened to have very specific dollar amounts to take advantage of the rounding, or it's one of the double point categories? Like say, you spend $22. That gets you 30 points (due to rounding). 30 points can be redeemed for half a cent per point as cashback. That gets you $.15 cashback on those $22. Or .7% cashback? And you have to go through all the obnoxious point claiming too. I guess If you take advantage of something with a better return rate than cash redemption it might be somewhat better. You can use the points for Amazon purchases at a rate of .8 of a cent per point. That comes out to $.24 in value for Amazon purchases that $22 purchase. Better than a 1% cashback, but only barely. But that's still worse than Citi Double Cash at 2% cashback for everything, and still requires you to (potentially) purchase things you otherwise wouldn't, making it potentially worse than nothing. Grocery/Gas get 2x point rates, so they beat a 1% card always, but they still don't beat a 2% cashback rate like Double Cash ever. Even that only gets a 1.8% effective rebate value for Amazon purchases. You could maybe squeeze out a slightly better than 2% value if you spend your points on something with a 1 point = 1 cent value like most of their gift cards, but if you weren't going to buy anything from those shops normally it's not a good deal, and requires, again, a lot of hoops compared to just cashback. This is also with a purchase that takes advantage of (almost) as much of that rounding as possible. The bigger the purchase and the closer to an even $10 amount the purchase price, the worse that is. Plus It's a pretty complicated analysis you need to do to determine if that card is better or worse than another card. Am I missing something about that card that makes it appealing? The 10% point rebate might get you pretty much spot on for a 2% effective cashback value when used on Amazon/Paypal purchases, which is as close as I can think to get being able to use it as "free money" without giftcard purchasing locking you into very specific storefronts.
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Apr 8, 2024 16:19
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It is apparently possible to redeem your Citi "thank you" points toward your mortgage or student loans at the 1 point = 1 cent rate. Which, when combined with the interest savings by putting this toward your principal amount, probably nets you an effective 2-3x value for those points depending on your interest rate.
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Apr 8, 2024 17:42
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MockingQuantum posted:This is interesting but it sounds like it's enough of a hassle (you have to call in to redeem points for this, and I couldn't find any evidence of it when I was searching around the site) that at that point I feel like it'd make more sense to redeem them as cash back and either pay it towards my mortgage directly, or more likely just stick the money in an investment account that's highly likely to gain a better return than my mortgage rate. Yeah, Its the sort of thing that would be too much of a chore to do more than once a year I'd think. But the ROI on early principal payoff for a mortgage is certainly higher than a saving or checking account. And I'm doubtful that taking the 50% hit to the value of the points for a direct cash back would ever be made up with the higher returns for invested money compared to keeping it all plus mortgage rate returns. The absolute best return would probably be being able to forgo some expense you would otherwise had to endure at a 1:1 points to cent ratio and then investing that forgone expense. Buying extra stuff you don't need with the points, or even worse, buying part of something you don't need with the points and making up the remainer with real money is worse than getting nothing back at all.
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Apr 8, 2024 19:17
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MockingQuantum posted:Where are you seeing that it's half a cent per point for cash back? It's always been one point = 1 cent for me on the Citi Double Cash I thought they all used the same rewards site for your points? https://www.forbes.com/advisor/credit-cards/reviews/citi-rewards-card/ says that the Rewards+ card has a 50% penalty on cash back values. quote:Cash back: Get a check mailed to you and your points are worth half a cent. There is a $5 minimum when redeeming for a check, and checks are valid for one hundred eighty days. I'm happy to be wrong. That would certainly improve the value of the "Thank You" points.
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Apr 8, 2024 19:54
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| # ¿ Apr 30, 2024 01:46 |
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Whatever hit it might be, you're going to spend more over the life of that condo loan due to higher rate you'll be paying than the $200 you'd get from that deal. Wait to apply for that credit card until after. If the deal runs out then oh well.
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Apr 23, 2024 19:49
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