@Anonymous wrote:Charles Schwab Amex Platinum gives 1.25 multiplier on all MR pts. Combines nicely with BBP (2.5% everything) and the Gold (5% for restaurants and grocery). Of course heavy AF, so have to consider if you get enough value out of the cards.
This is a neat combo for sure, but costs you $800 to do. You can get $300 back really easy with the airline credits and some more back with some of the other credits, but that is still a really high buy-in where any extra % you are getting back will not offset those AF's unless you are spending a really high amount. $10k in annual groceries and $10k in restaurant and $20k in annual non-cat will get you an extra $300 worth of MR from the CS x1.25, $300 from the airline credits gets you to $600, so you still are down about $200 which you can make up with monthly credits or more roughly more spend. Not a bad deal at all considering you pretty much get a free Amex Plat and only really use 3 cards.
Chase Tri-Fecta 'mulitplier' is similar. Even with credits you still have to pay $150 a year to do it and the extra .25 you get over a 2% card on Freedom Unlimited and the extra 2.5% you get on the quarterly categories from Freedom will likely not even offset that $150. You might end up a little in the red, but you do get some killer benefits from the CSR for almost no AF at all.
The BofA and Merrill Edge deal with Premium Rewards isn't a bad deal, really. It is truly best of when it comes to straight cash back, but it requires $100k of assets in Merrill Edge which is a financial barrier most people can't cross and those that can probably don't want to move that much just for an extra .65% on CC purchases.
I think Wells Fargo has a kind of complicated 'multiplier' across 3 cards, but still in the end doesn't come out better than 'best of' cards for each specific category from many different banks.
