tempted to apply for Discover More...should I

[athensguy]

Careful with the blue cash. You basically have to spend $20K+ at gas/grocery/drug stores to make it worthwhile, and it's still not going to be the best cash back card unless all that spending is at grocery and drug. The reason is that the first $6500 in spending per year is rewarded at a greatly reduced rate. They're also reducing the regular cash back rate to 1.25% from 1.5%.

My personal combo is Schwab Invest First Visa (FIA) which gives 2% on everything, and Citi Driver's Edge which gives 3% on gas/grocery/drug and lets you accrue 1 cent per driven mile in rewards, so that lets you get up to 6% on those three categories. I was going to throw Penfed in the mix, but I didn't manage to get one.

If you can get a Penfed, it will, in most cases, beat Blue Cash all by itself, as will Schwab.

Also, there is a 2% card from Fidelity that is on the Amex network.

http://personal.fidelity.com/misc/buffers/retirement-rewards-card.shtml.cvsr

It's the "Retirement Rewards" card, but you can drop the cash back into several different accounts that don't necessarily have to be retirement accounts.

[haulingthescoreup]

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CHARGE_IT wrote:

Newbe,

I have the Clear and Blue among five accounts with AMEX. I recommend the Blue over the two you mention and you should pay a small extra fee to get the Membership Rewards instead of the Express Rewards ...

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I remember seeing that option on the AmEx site last year, but by the time I had gotten a Blue, it was no longer there. Once I closed my Gold, my only option was Express Rewards. This was confirmed by the CSR.

Worth checking into, at any rate.