topic Re: Cash Back Cards in Credit Cards

Cash Back Cards

RonDawg — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 21:16:33 GMT

What is the best cash back credit card and why?

Re: Cash Back Cards

gijoe4500 — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 21:19:12 GMT

There is no set answer for this. It depends on your spending habits.

Re: Cash Back Cards

WhiteCollar — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 21:19:42 GMT

Thanks for posting this, I was going to ask this qeustion as I'm in need of a cash back card in my life.

Re: Cash Back Cards

HiLine — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 21:28:17 GMT

@WhiteCollar wrote:
Thanks for posting this, I was going to ask this qeustion as I'm in need of a cash back card in my life.

US Bank Cash+

Why not?

Re: Cash Back Cards

distantarray — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 21:48:39 GMT

1. US Bank Cash + imo since it's 5% cash back on 2 categories and has a strange one never seen before called billpay.

2. Amex BCP 6% back on groceries, 3% on gas and department stores

3. Chase Trifecta when combined Chase checking + Chase Freedom + Chase Sapphire

Trifecta works by Freedom cards with a checking account gives you 10 points per swipe, so if you do even a 1 penny transaction you'll get 11 points. So Freedom should be used whenever the account is under $10. Restaurant and travel costs over $10 you should go with Sapphire. Also points are worth 20% more if booked through Chase.com and the prices are very comparable to other travel sites.

you can get $250-300 for sign up for Chase with Checking, $100 bonus for spend $500 with Chase Freedom, and $400 worth of points if you spend $3,000.

So that's $750-850 worth of sign up bonuses for $3,500 spending in with Chase in the first 3 months. Not to mention if you paid use all the points for travel from Sapphire bonus it's worth an extra $100. putting you close to around $1,000. Not only that every year you get a 7% annual bonus from Chase Sapphire even on the points you spent. So if you spend $100,000 worth of points you'll get $70 worth for free. Not to mention Chase offers rewards if you purchase stuff at their Chase Ultimate rewards mall which can get you upto 20 points on the dollar.

Then best part is since Freedom points on rotating categories at 5% can be transfered to sapphire and also get 7% bonus at the year's end. and being worth 20% more for travel that's 6.24 points per dollar spent and not to mention the extra 10 points for having a checking + freedom so if it did 730 transactions in a year (2 a day) that would be an extra 7,300 points for the year so that should push things closer to 6.5 points per dollar or more on rotating categories.

It's kinda hard to explain but the benefits are quite nice.

Re: Cash Back Cards

flowfaster — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 21:59:48 GMT

US Bank Cash+ is No.1

Amex BCP/E

Discover/Freedom/Dividend

Forward (not really cashback)

Priceline 2%

BoA 123

Re: Cash Back Cards

Anonymous — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 22:02:24 GMT

AMEX BCE + Chase Freedom... both have no AF. I have neither but antecdotally have been pretty good to some people.

Re: Cash Back Cards

Anonymous — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 22:25:58 GMT

Us Bank cash plus without question. No AF, and some pretty good 5% options including Billpay, Restaurants, travel and hotel. You get to choose either gas/grocery/drug stores in the 2% catagory. If you want to play the game, go to your local grocery store and buy gas cards. Double edged sword there. There are a few pieces nobody ever thinks about or mentions here. The catagories are unlimited. BOA, Chase, Discover they all have 1500 quarterly caps. Not the cash plus. Also, if you redeem in quantities of 100 dollars, you also get another 25 dollar visa gift card in the mail. The big one for me, is if you are already a us bank platinum checking customer you get an additional 50 percent bonus on your purchase based off of 1%. So you would get 5.5% on your bonus catagories, 2.5% on your gas/groceries or drug store, and 1.5% on everything else. You cannot beat this card

Re: Cash Back Cards

HiLine — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 22:28:28 GMT

@flowfaster wrote:
US Bank Cash+ is No.1
Amex BCP/E
Discover/Freedom/Dividend
Forward (not really cashback)
Priceline 2%
BoA 123

I would rank Discover, Freedom and Dividend in tier 2, instead of Amex BCP/E. The BCP has a hefty annual fee, while the BCE is almost equivalent to the BofA 123.

Re: Cash Back Cards

flowfaster — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 22:32:55 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
Us Bank cash plus without question. No AF, and some pretty good 5% options including Billpay, Restaurants, travel and hotel. You get to choose either gas/grocery/drug stores in the 2% catagory. If you want to play the game, go to your local grocery store and buy gas cards. Double edged sword there. There are a few pieces nobody ever thinks about or mentions here. The catagories are unlimited. BOA, Chase, Discover they all have 1500 quarterly caps. Not the cash plus. Also, if you redeem in quantities of 100 dollars, you also get another 25 dollar visa gift card in the mail. The big one for me, is if you are already a us bank platinum checking customer you get an additional 50 percent bonus on your purchase based off of 1%. So you would get 5.5% on your bonus catagories, 2.5% on your gas/groceries or drug store, and 1.5% on everything else. You cannot beat this card

+1. You just can't beat this card without an AF(maybe even with). IMO they are just testing the waters here and will eventually add caps to the categories or take away the $25 gift card.

So....I think we have a winner here, the US Bank cash+. End of thread

Re: Cash Back Cards

Anonymous — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 22:39:41 GMT

There are cards combined that eat the us bank. However the us bank card is nice if you only want a one man army card. No caps is nice but if freedom is offering 5% on gas for the quarter its simply a better route to take if you don't plan on spending more than 1500 in gas.

There is also the penfed card that offers 5% on gas with no caps

Amex BCP offers 6% on groceries.

Re: Cash Back Cards

Anonymous — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 22:39:52 GMT

My personal favorites:

Amex BCP - 6% groceries more than covers the AF

Freedom - great for rotating categories, esp restaurants

Amex Costco True Earnings - 3% at Costco gas and 2% restaurants

Pen Fed Cash - for 5% gas when not near Costco

(I may consider a Chase Sapphire Pref after all the great things I have learned about the card here)

You really need to look at where you spend your hard earned $$$, and then you will figure out which are right for you. And be careful when adding them to your wallet - most have sign on bonuses that are awesome but require varying degrees of spend ( and you don't want to over spend just to get a bonus)

Re: Cash Back Cards

Anonymous — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 22:43:06 GMT

Can someone explain the freedom/dividend/discover (which discover?) To me? Is it better than freedom/CSP/checking combo?

Re: Cash Back Cards

flowfaster — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 22:47:12 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
There are cards combined that eat the us bank. However the us bank card is nice if you only want a one man army card. No caps is nice but if freedom is offering 5% on gas for the quarter its simply a better route to take if you don't plan on spending more than 1500 in gas.

There is also the penfed card that offers 5% on gas with no caps

Amex BCP offers 6% on groceries.

Exactly but if you could have only one? With the $25 gift card and a checking account, the 5% categories are really closer to 7%. I agree though that the Freedom and BCP are necessary to maximize your cashback.

Re: Cash Back Cards

Anonymous — Tue, 23 Oct 2012 03:37:27 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
Can someone explain the freedom/dividend/discover (which discover?) To me? Is it better than freedom/CSP/checking combo?

Freedom/Dividend/Discover More/IT all have rotating 5% categories. So when you have all three, you have more ways to get 5% rewards.

Freedom/CSP is the combo used by frequent flyers so they can transfer Freedom 5% UR points to the CSP, and then do what they please from there.