Combining the Power of Top Cashback Cards

[dp321]

Currently in my credit card portfolio I have:

Discover More 

Citi Dividend

American Blue Cash Everyday

Chase Freedom 

I think I have cover all the bases. However, is there a real advantage of keeping all these cards in my wallet? I know the quarterly rotating category may be a little bit different, but I wonder if it is worth the effort to keep tracked with all these cards. Any opinion, especially from people with one or more of these cards?

[Anonymous]

I'm glad to have my Amex green. Buy, build points, they never expire.

I did recently accept a Discover card though since it would be another prime card to build history with.

But I know my nature. I won't submit my attention to "signing up" every quarter though. If it suits me to use it then I will.

I want simple and Amex does that for me.

So my Amex remains my prime mover.

[Anonymous]

You might need to add fidelity amex to cover majority of expenses not including in those cards. It worth my effort to keep the best card in specific categories in a wallet like citi forward for restaurant or penfed reward for gas but I'm tired of keeping track of rotating categories cards like chase freedom especially when there is maximum cap for reward.

[clocktick]

What are the maximum caps and how likely are people to actually reach them?  Is the Fidelity Amex the one that puts your earnings directly in a brokerage account?

[Anonymous]

Another thing; someone once posted about how much they made in cashback.

The result there though was that, despite making some money back, the hassle of constantly keeping track was just not worth it in the end.

Something along the lines that hassle-free use was making them 80% of what they could potentially make.  That additional 20% just wasn't worth effort.

[Jazzzy]

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@clocktick wrote:

What are the maximum caps and how likely are people to actually reach them?  Is the Fidelity Amex the one that puts your earnings directly in a brokerage account?

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The maximums on the Discover categories are pretty low. Some of their 5% cashback categories have a $200 purchase amount maximum. That's only $10 cashback. And you do have to sign up for them each quarter.

My best cashback is the PenFed. The 5% on gas and 1% on everything else is given to you as a credit on each statement. No signing up. No remembering. It's just there as a credit. It's my favorite for cashback.

[Anonymous]

You could redeem cash back without brokerage account but having account will help lower threshold of 2% cash back to only $2500 for 50$ while non fidelity customer will need to meet $12500 level to get $250 back.

[dp321]

When I only had my Discover More, due to the pitifulness of that tier program, the majority of my cashback was earned through 5% categories and shop discover. The highest cap on the Discover card is somwhere along the line of $800 during the quarter when they have 5% on Airline purchase. Now that I have Chase ($1500 spending cap each quarter) and Citi ($300 total cashback in a calendar year), I think the Discover is looking less and less attractive to me.