Difficulty in choosing 5% useful category for US Cash + from April 2013

[Anonymous]

With 3 popular categories- Bill pay, Airlines and Home improvement stroes going away from April, I am having hard time in selecting 5% category which will give me

more than $3 per month.

My monthly expenses on Books, cell phone, sports goods, hotels, furnitue or car rental are less than $60 per month.

I have separate cards dedicated for movies, fast food and restaurants

I may have to select Department stores as only possibility or stop use of the card from Apri 2013

[Bandit_1025]

What about Electronics? Best Buy sells Amazon gift cards and at some locations have vanilla Visa and MC’s.

[FutureBillionaire]

This card isnt' that great now.  I'm going to use it sparingly.

[Sevenfeet]

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@FutureBillionaire wrote:

This card isnt' that great now.  I'm going to use it sparingly.

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Alas, the card is indeed not as good without these perks.  In my house, not only is the bill pay category worth about $9k a year but State Farm added another $4k on top of that.  After that, it's dining that I use the most that would fit with the Cash + card...$7300 combined full service and fast food dining.  Nice, but not the super card I had hopped to apply for.  And the 2% group is useless to me against other products.

[Duncanrr]

This was a card on my radar. Not anymore.

[Anonymous]

Glad I never bothered to apply for this card. They nerfed it pretty quick.

OP, if you use Mint, see which categories you spend the most on and go from there.

[Imhotrodcrazy]

I guess I am one of the very few who is not upset and  will benefit from the new changes.  I will be finishing up on the updating of my home and the use of the "home improvement" category by the end of March.  Then I will be moving on to the "department store and furniture store" categories"  for furniture replacement.  Yes, I am also sorry that they got rid of the home improvement category and hope they will put it back in rotation soon.  In addition, I have made a lot of money off of this card, so I have no complaints with it.

[ztnjpv]

yeah....struggling myself with this decision. It's not just the loss of the magnificently stupenddous Bill Pay Category ( over $24,000 spent in this category alone since Aug '12) but also the caps on 5% spending at $2,000 per quarter. I could have somehow managed some significant indirect spending on these bills via prepaid debits and gift cards....but alas. 

I am leaning toward Bookstores for Amazon spending. But there are two problems with this for me. 

1. As was pointed out above, I can get Amazon Gift Cards elsewhere via another 5% category store. 

2. Electronic Stores, as an option for one of these such stores, doesn't do me a lot of good outside of gift cards because it's not the kind of store I shop at all the time and because you can get nice cash back on these purchases online via shopping portals when the need arises. But hey, it could work anyway. 

3. I am not in the habit of using Amazon very often...but maybe I should be....

I dunno....kinda bummed by all this. At least retaurants is still there. I really do eat out a lot and the effective 5.25% with Gold checking is still excellent and easily the best restaurant card around for top cash back. Sure, fast food doesn't count but that's small potatoes for me. A nice evening out to dinner with the Mrs. (which we do a few times per month) costs more than I'll spend on fast food in 6-7 months. And most of that is Starbucks anyway and I buy gift cards at Staples for that with my Ink at 5% cash back. Fast food just isn;t worth it for me. 

[FutureBillionaire]

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@ztnjpv wrote:

yeah....struggling myself with this decision. It's not just the loss of the magnificently stupenddous Bill Pay Category ( over $24,000 spent in this category alone since Aug '12) but also the caps on 5% spending at $2,000 per quarter. I could have somehow managed some significant indirect spending on these bills via prepaid debits and gift cards....but alas. 

I am leaning toward Bookstores for Amazon spending. But there are two problems with this for me. 

1. As was pointed out above, I can get Amazon Gift Cards elsewhere via another 5% category store. 

2. Electronic Stores, as an option for one of these such stores, doesn't do me a lot of good outside of gift cards because it's not the kind of store I shop at all the time and because you can get nice cash back on these purchases online via shopping portals when the need arises. But hey, it could work anyway. 

3. I am not in the habit of using Amazon very often...but maybe I should be....

I dunno....kinda bummed by all this. At least retaurants is still there. I really do eat out a lot and the effective 5.25% with Gold checking is still excellent and easily the best restaurant card around for top cash back. Sure, fast food doesn't count but that's small potatoes for me. A nice evening out to dinner with the Mrs. (which we do a few times per month) costs more than I'll spend on fast food in 6-7 months. And most of that is Starbucks anyway and I buy gift cards at Staples for that with my Ink at 5% cash back. Fast food just isn;t worth it for me. 

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I struggled as well. I ended up choosing department stores.  I really think that they are going to lose money for swipe fees.  I will use this card once a month now for my phone bill. 

Has anyone confirmed that there is a $2k cap now for this card?

[ztnjpv]

The CSR told me there was a $2000 cap on 5% categories. I have also seen this stated at various blogs. But 2% spending is still unlimited.