Credit Card Rewards and Recommendations

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Business, Finance, and Careers > Credit Card Rewards and Recommendations

Subvisual Haze: Nov 22, 2003; The building was on fire and it wasn't my fault.

smackfu posted:

Amazon sent me a fancy mailer extolling the benefits of their new improved Chase card (that I already had.) Seems a bit silly waste of money.

About half the time I log into the Citi website for my doublecash card I get a screen wide ad for...the doublecash card. It even has "not interested" and "tell me more" options. Reminder that this occurs after I've already logged into my account for that stupid card.

# ¿ Feb 28, 2017 16:06

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# ¿ Apr 30, 2024 08:03

Subvisual Haze: Nov 22, 2003; The building was on fire and it wasn't my fault.

The Amazon 5% Card and Citi Double Cash card are my current regular cards for Amazon and most everything else respectively. Discover IT and Chase Freedom are both good options if you can keep track of what their quarterly 5% category is.

# ¿ Mar 1, 2017 02:28

Subvisual Haze: Nov 22, 2003; The building was on fire and it wasn't my fault.

ETB posted:

I forgot I had that too! It's easier than juggling the Freedom reward, which I'm not sure occurs anymore for Amazon purchases.

Chase Ultimate Rewards got devalued on Amazon. I'm not sure what the exact percentage is, but 1300 points will only get you like $11 back on Amazon.

# ¿ Mar 1, 2017 07:41

Subvisual Haze: Nov 22, 2003; The building was on fire and it wasn't my fault.

Space Fish posted:

New Amazon Rewards Visa opt-in bonus arrived:

"Activate this special offer by March 31, 2023 and you’ll earn a total of:

5% back at gas stations
5% back on internet, cable and phone services
3% back at grocery stores

This offer is valid for every $1 you spend on up to $1,500 in combined purchases made with your Amazon Rewards Visa Card."

This card has really woken the gently caress up lately after years of slumber.

Edit: Huh, "this promotion is not available for the account you entered," okay. Prime only? Not for my zip code, perhaps?

Thanks, I didn't see this promoted anywhere, but it did activate for my Amazon card. Should be nice for gas. Discover IT already grocery stores as their 5% category for this quarter though.

# ¿ Jan 14, 2023 22:41

Subvisual Haze: Nov 22, 2003; The building was on fire and it wasn't my fault.

Girbot posted:

5% this quarter with Discover.

and Chase Freedom. I hate how often those two 5% category cards sync up. They were both groceries in Q1 this year also.

# ¿ Jul 4, 2023 21:29

Subvisual Haze: Nov 22, 2003; The building was on fire and it wasn't my fault.

Strong Sauce posted:

Is there a limit/cap?

It's actually monthly and the cap is $500, after that the bonus drops to 1%. It's a really good card, glad I got it.

# ¿ Jul 12, 2023 18:43

Subvisual Haze: Nov 22, 2003; The building was on fire and it wasn't my fault.

New quarter and Discover IT's 5% rotating categories are: Target and Amazon (already have Amazon 5% card)
Chase Freedom's 5% are: Paypal, Wholesalers, Select Charities

I've never really thought about using a rewards card to give to charity. Now I'm kind of curious at the prospect.

# ¿ Oct 3, 2023 00:05

Subvisual Haze: Nov 22, 2003; The building was on fire and it wasn't my fault.

TITTIEKISSER69 posted:

I currently have a plain Chase Freedom, which I've had for several years. If I go for the Freedom Unlimited (2x cashback and no annual fee), does that replace my current Freedom or do I end up with two cards and two balances?

I have both the Freedom and Unlimited currently, so you can definitely have both. It might be better to sign up for a new card instead of converting, as there's a pretty good signup offer for new Chase cards right now that generally doesn't apply to a card conversion. There would be the temporary credit pull though. The Chase no fee rewards cards are a bit of an odd bunch.

1) Unlimited is 1.5% baseline (not 2% like you mention) to the best of my knowledge. With 3% restaurants and drugstores, and 5% travel
2) plain Freedom (which I don't think they offer new anymore) is 5% rotating categories with 1% everything else
3) Freedom Flex is kind of a hybrid of the above two. 5% rotating categories (same categories as plain Freedom), 3% restaurants and drugstores, 5% travel, 1% everything else.

The current sign up bonus from Chase on either Freedom Flex or Unlimited looks quite good: $200 cashback if you spend $500 in the first 90 days, 5% cashback on gas and groceries for the first year, 15 months zero apr. I'm tempted myself to get a Freedom Flex for the bonus and stop using the other two.

# ¿ Dec 2, 2023 21:50

Subvisual Haze: Nov 22, 2003; The building was on fire and it wasn't my fault.

Oh gotcha, that is a nice offer. I'm guessing it's either that or the $200 bonus+5% gas/grocery for a year offer, not both?

# ¿ Dec 2, 2023 22:18

Subvisual Haze: Nov 22, 2003; The building was on fire and it wasn't my fault.

Next Quarter's 5% rotating categories are:

Discover it: Restaurants and Drug Stores. Good categories.
Chase Freedom +/- Flex: Grocery Stores and Fitness/Gyms.

Interestingly I think the Chase Freedom Flex's new sign on bonus of 5% in grocery for the first year combines with the quarterly 5% bonus to give 9% cashback total on groceries in the next quarter. (9% because both bonuses are +4% modifiers to the baseline 1%.)

# ¿ Dec 16, 2023 00:20

Subvisual Haze: Nov 22, 2003; The building was on fire and it wasn't my fault.

Mine's purple. It's a nice color

# ¿ Dec 28, 2023 04:34

Subvisual Haze: Nov 22, 2003; The building was on fire and it wasn't my fault.

quote:

Adding a new card means getting an additional card with the same account information. Once you activate the new card, you can still continue to use any other cards you may have. Remember, adding a new card is free and each user can have up to 4 card designs.

Up to 4 designs! Yeah, it sounds like once you get your original you can request 3 additional cards with different designs. The space one looks cool. Also upgrading my purple card to a purple card with a monogram also sounds tempting.

# ¿ Dec 29, 2023 04:28

Subvisual Haze: Nov 22, 2003; The building was on fire and it wasn't my fault.

Also this is really min/maxing, but the time from the purchase until payment of your monthly credit card bill is basically a zero interest loan. Better to send that bonus cash off to a savings account to accumulate a small amount of interest for you than to pay off part of the zero interest loan early.

You should of course pay off your full previous statement's balance every month to avoid high interest accumulation against you (unless possibly you're in a zero APR signup period), but there's no value in paying it off early (which is essentially what taking a statement credit is).

# ¿ Jan 20, 2024 01:32

Subvisual Haze: Nov 22, 2003; The building was on fire and it wasn't my fault.

Splinter posted:

Why not just get the Fidelity 2% with 0 foreign transaction fee instead of dealing with that Double Cash redemption gotcha? Is there some other benefit?

I don't actually have the Fido card, but I believe from what I've read you need to reimburse the bonus into an existing Fidelity account (which not everyone might have), and I think they also have a minimum redemption limit ($25?). In contrast my Citi Doublecash is fine sending out my $3.20 to my designated outside bank if that's all I accumulated this month.

# ¿ Jan 20, 2024 02:55

Subvisual Haze: Nov 22, 2003; The building was on fire and it wasn't my fault.

Boris Galerkin posted:

Churning is fine for the subset of people with high credit scores, already have $0 in unintentional credit card debt, and are otherwise paying off their balances in full every month.

If these apply to you go hog wild. Do note that you will have to pay taxes on all of your bonuses. A popular credit card forum was recently talking about how people are now getting 1099s for claiming free night stays and such with certain issuers.

Not generally true regarding taxes, credit card bonuses are largely classified as rebates/discounts instead of income and thus aren't usually subject to income taxes. I received two new card bonuses last year and neither resulted in a 1099. Neither did any of my cashback rewards which I redeem as cash.

I think getting a couple new cards a year, enjoying their signup bonuses and zero APR period and paying off the full balance before the zero APR intro period ends is a smart move. Free money for a little account opening legwork. You might even consider augmenting this with a rare new bank account bonuses or brokerage transfer bonuses.

The actual large volume churning stuff that reddit or doctorofcredit or wherever does seems more risky. Risky either in that the credit card companies/banks wise up to your gimmicks and start limiting your credit lines or denying new accounts, or that you just fumble something up like forgetting about one of the zero APR deadlines on one of your countless new cards and take a big interest hit. Another easy to discount risk is that you start to spend beyond your ability to pay resulting in a debt snowball. Or you might become weirdly obsessed with money as your brain tries to keep track of all those bonuses and timeframes.

# ¿ Feb 5, 2024 00:08

Subvisual Haze: Nov 22, 2003; The building was on fire and it wasn't my fault.

CubicalSucrose posted:

Would be interesting to see which approvals you would even be able to get with 0 income. I assume the answer is "a lot more than one might expect." Agree with everyone else basically.

Zero income!? The churnable sign on bonuses are income!

# ¿ Feb 5, 2024 03:41

Subvisual Haze: Nov 22, 2003; The building was on fire and it wasn't my fault.

Do you have $100k of assets (brokerage/IRA whatever) that you can transfer? If so, consider looking into BofA's Preferred Rewards program. Basically $100k of assets between BofA and Merrill Edge accounts gives you Platinum Honors Preferred Rewards tier, which adds a +75% rewards multiplier to BofA's otherwise underwhelming no fee rewards credit cards. For example their 1.5% unlimited cash rewards card becomes 2.62% cashback on everything.

Even better is their Customized Cash Rewards card, where your 3% chosen category gets boosted to 5.25% cashback. The best thing about the CCR is that one of the categories available to choose is "online shopping", which is broadly defined to include almost everything you buy through an online portal. This results in the interesting situation where your boosted CCR gives better cashback than many store/site specific cards do when buying online (better than the Amazon Prime's 5% card, Target Redcard 5%, Costco's 2% to name a few).

# ¿ Feb 5, 2024 18:26

Subvisual Haze: Nov 22, 2003; The building was on fire and it wasn't my fault.

gregday posted:

Holy poo poo, when did Chase add a Request Increase button to their site? I just hit it and got an increase on my card that hasn�t had a change in limit in 10 years. I had tried asking customer service for an increase before without it triggering a hard pull but was always told they couldn�t do so.

I'm pretty sure I've done that before. I think they've even used the offer of it in an ad email to encourage me to update my yearly income.

# ¿ Feb 6, 2024 00:47

Subvisual Haze: Nov 22, 2003; The building was on fire and it wasn't my fault.

THF13 posted:

The OP is up to date with recommendations for popular common use credit cards, I don't keep it up to date with current best sign up bonuses. Those change too fast and there are better places (doctorofcredit) for that.

Good summary. The link to the original Chase Freedom card is dead, I'm recommend swapping it to the Chase Freedom Flex, which is a straight upgrade of the basic Freedom card. It keeps the same 5% rotating quarterly categories but also adds on 5% bonus through their travel portal, and 3% on restaurants and drug stores. Looking at the Chase credit card page I don't even see the original Freedom card listed currently, so maybe the original Freedom has been flat out replaced by the Freedom Flex.

# ¿ Mar 8, 2024 23:44

Subvisual Haze: Nov 22, 2003; The building was on fire and it wasn't my fault.

Q2 (April-June) rotating 5% categories announced:

Chase Freedom (Flex): Amazon, Hotels, Restaurants.
Discover IT: Gas Stations, EV charging, Home Improvement Stores, Public Transit

Interesting question whether Chase Freedom Flex will offer even higher combo bonuses. Since it has a baseline 3% for restaurants, it will hopefully offer 7% cashback total at restaurants next quarter (1% baseline plus the two modifiers). Similarly I wonder if hotels booked through the Chase travel portal (5% typically) will become 9% cashback.

# ¿ Mar 14, 2024 20:11

Subvisual Haze: Nov 22, 2003; The building was on fire and it wasn't my fault.

Figures that after I jumped through the hoops to get a BofA UCR card with platinum preferred rewards status to get 2.6% cashback on everything, Robinhood decides to roll out a 3% on everything card.

https://newsroom.aboutrobinhood.com/the-new-gold-standard-introducing-the-robinhood-gold-card/

quote:

The Robinhood Gold Card is the only credit card you�ll need, and it�s exclusively for Robinhood Gold members1. The Robinhood Gold Card has no annual fee1, no foreign transaction fees, and offers you an unrivaled 3% cash back on all categories2. You will also earn even more on travel, getting 5% cash back when you book through the all-new Robinhood travel portal. Your reward points are then redeemable for travel, giftcards, and shopping at major retailers such as Apple, Nike, Bloomingdales, and more. Points can also be redeemed as cash, which can then be instantly transferred to your Robinhood brokerage account to invest, earn interest4, or withdraw.

They're obviously playing a little loose with "no annual fee", as the card requires Robinhood Gold, which is $5/month. Still though Robinhood Gold does have other interesting perks.

I do have RH Gold for the 3% IRA match. I probably won't sign up for this card quite yet, maybe if they add some sort of signup offer.

# ¿ Mar 27, 2024 02:16

Subvisual Haze: Nov 22, 2003; The building was on fire and it wasn't my fault.

If you get fancy you can almost make RH Gold pay for itself. If you have at least $2k in your brokerage account you can enable margin, and with Gold RH will give you the first $1k of margin at zero interest. That $1k invested in something like SGOV with 5.2% yield will almost but not quite pay the RH fee.

# ¿ Mar 27, 2024 03:11

Subvisual Haze: Nov 22, 2003; The building was on fire and it wasn't my fault.

There's something about Robinhood in particular that really triggers the fear and disgust center of the brain far out of proportion to comparable companies. Kind of fascinating how you'll find this response pretty much everywhere online and cutting across groups who otherwise agree on little.

# ¿ Mar 29, 2024 17:51

Subvisual Haze: Nov 22, 2003; The building was on fire and it wasn't my fault.

BadSamaritan posted:

Hey thread! I was hoping for a recommendation for a credit card. We have a large emergency house expense (>$10k) that, while we can cover with cash, we�d rather use a card and pay over time. We have excellent credit, and have a BofA Travel, BofA category cash back, and Amazon card that we use regularly.

I�m looking into a 0% APR card (12-18mo term) and want to see what my better options are. I�m fine with a modest annual fee but it looks like most of those don�t have intro APR deals. Any suggestions?

Do you have Preferred Rewards with BofA? If so opening an Unlimited Cash Rewards card with them would probably do well.

# ¿ Apr 6, 2024 01:29

Subvisual Haze: Nov 22, 2003; The building was on fire and it wasn't my fault.

Three new cards in one year shouldn't cause any issues, and the 3 you're considering are all useful cards. Maybe a 20-30 point temporary drop in your credit score due to the hard inquiries and lowering the average age of your accounts. After a year or two your score will probably drift back to where it is now.

# ¿ Apr 7, 2024 20:50

Subvisual Haze: Nov 22, 2003; The building was on fire and it wasn't my fault.

I believe the idea is that you can transfer points between the citi cards. So use the doublecash and custom cash to gain points, then transfer them to and use the rewards+ to redeem the points at a slightly higher rate. You're right that the rewards+ by itself is pretty unimpressive.

# ¿ Apr 8, 2024 16:33

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# ¿ Apr 30, 2024 08:03

Subvisual Haze: Nov 22, 2003; The building was on fire and it wasn't my fault.

There are rare cases mentioned online where credit card bonuses have been counted as income (and thus taxable), however the common factor in those cases seems to be a bonus reward that wasn't linked with prerequisite spending. Most cc rewards are tied into spending requirements, thus are classified as rebates and are not taxable.

# ¿ Apr 19, 2024 03:02

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Business, Finance, and Careers > Credit Card Rewards and Recommendations