@Anonymous wrote:
What’s your strategy? Do you use a mixture of both or do you prioritize one over the other? However, I would expect one to prioritize cashback on purchases that net you 4-5% back though unless you own chase cards. How about for those purchases that earn less than 4-5%?
Another school of thought is to prioritize SUBs at first
For a 'new' guy/gal, there are enough 'above average' SUBs on the market to last many people a few years and the banks are coming up with new ones every now and then. SUBs in general are like 20%-ish cash back, give or take.
Beyond a few years, it starts to depend on time/personal interest, some would then get interested in this and starts to churn, in good years they might even be able to sustain 20% for quite a while, while some would get tired of spending time on this and resort to "no AF 2% all the way" method. Many others would fall into the wide spectrum in between these two extremes.
It also seems to be related to CC spending rate but this is far from 'linear'. For example, for some people that spend at very high rates, there're simply not enough SUBs to keep up with them, nor can they burn points fast enough, so they are 'forced' to take the CB route; while others who spend slower might find SUB chasing/point cards not only feasible but actually a better value; and as one continue to push the spending rate down there is a point where the floor of redemption (such as min amount of pts needed for a flight/room) starts to get in the way (letting points sit there idle while waiting to hit the floor is not efficient and the general trend of points devaluation doesn't help either), so CB might again become the better way, although SUB can still make sense here as long as min spend is attainable.
