What is the Best Groceries Cash Back Card?

[staticvoidmain]

Personally, this is why I am waiting on what Capital One would do to the Walmart credit card. If they give it a better cashback model than Synchrony, this problem will be solved for me.

[calyx]

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@Anonymous wrote:

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@Anonymous wrote:

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Do you have Aldi or Lidl?  These are most likely to beat Walmart.

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Aldi yes, but it's not really a valid comparison IMO.  They're maybe 1/5 the size of the Walmart grocery section and carry mostly off-brand products.  I've got an Aldi in the same plaza as my job, so we run over there often for something if we run out of it since it's close, but there's very little in an Aldi that I'd buy.  I would consider Aldi 100% impossible to buy everything I need in; I'd have to go to other sources for the products I use most.  Maybe my local Aldi isn't on par with the rest of the country, but to me it's pretty ghetto overall.

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It's not a valid comparison for you, maybe, but other than specialized items (that I hit Publix or Whole Foods for, since Walmart/Target probably won't have them either), I can easily do 99% of my pretty varied shopping at Lidl.    I don't shop at Aldi just because it's not on the way home from work, but they recently renovated (spurred by competition from Lidl, I think) and are pretty nice (except that they didn't order nearly enough wine advent calendars last year - hah!).    One of my employees will actually drive ~30 miles from home just to go to Lidl because they're so much cheaper than Walmart.

Lowe's (yes, there is a Lowe's Grocery, yes, same founding family as the big blue store) is generally cheaper than Walmart as well .   I've also got discount chains like Compare, but since Lidl/Publix has everything I need, I haven't tried them out.    I know that my sister prefers HMart and Giant because their prices are better than walmart in her area (and yet I can't convince her to BCP, grrr).

Which isn't to argue who the best grocery stores are, really, it's going to be personal, but I think the assumption that Walmart is always/generally the cheapest (for groceries) is just odd to me, because I've just never found it to be true, but I've found that people tend to prefer them because they can get "everything" they need including non-grocery items in one trip rather than hitting more than one store and the groceries aren't terribly expensive.   And because of the superstore nature of walmart/target, I can see why AMEX might not want to code them as a supermarket.    Just like I can appreciate that while (for whatever reason) CostPlus World Market also codes as "groceries" for me in AMEX, they don't code as a supermarket for the 6% CB  (bummer, since I recently bought a dining set there, though I'm pretty sure I'll hit my cap anwyay).

[calyx]

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@Anonymous wrote:

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@KJinNC wrote:

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For the record, the break-even point for BCP itself, not in comparison to BCE or any other card but simply in terms of covering the annual fee, would be about $133/month in grocery and qualified streaming service spend.

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Yes, but that is a fairly useless metric for any card, that can overstate the value of an AF card! Always compare with a possible alternative, even a standard flat 2% card.    (But obviously for cards in a category, such as groceries, it makes sense to compare to other grocery-centric cards)

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I would add in that you should also add in the value of the SUB.
A $300 SUB (what I got, I think it's down to $250) would be three years of AF right there (assuming no increase, of course).

[Anonymous]

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@calyx wrote:

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I would add in that you should also add in the value of the SUB.
A $300 SUB (what I got, I think it's down to $250) would be three years of AF right there (assuming no increase, of course).

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Yes, but I also argue against that bolded way of thinking (I make a lot of rules!)   Certainly take the SUB into account but only as part of the first year package comparison (or two years if there is a second year component).   What I've seen people do is "the SUB paid the AF for four years, so I will keep the card".   Once the SUB is yours, it's yours, and evaluate your choices going forward, that AF is a cost, is that cost justified, are there better alternatives etc.

[wasCB14]

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@Anonymous wrote:

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@calyx wrote:

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I would add in that you should also add in the value of the SUB.
A $300 SUB (what I got, I think it's down to $250) would be three years of AF right there (assuming no increase, of course).

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Yes, but I also argue against that bolded way of thinking (I make a lot of rules!)   Certainly take the SUB into account but only as part of the first year package comparison (or two years if there is a second year component).   What I've seen people do is "the SUB paid the AF for four years, so I will keep the card".   Once the SUB is yours, it's yours, and evaluate your choices going forward, that AF is a cost, is that cost justified, are there better alternatives etc.

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Also perhaps two years if someone wants to make his or her bonus-seeking behavior slightly less blatant to issuers.

[digitek]

Grocery is the largest single category expense for our family.  I had BCP but we would go over the $6k cap (~$900/month).

There are only a few real grocery cards in the mix.  Amex BCP is a clear winner if you use it for enough grocery spend; at $500 a month grocery and ~$30/month streaming and taking into account the the $95 AF it comes out to about ~5% cashback.  If you can use the credits on the Amex Gold you end up paying $30 a year for x4 MR on grocery (and restaurant).

For Target you can get a 5% debit card which is really easy.

I was pretty sure I was going to close my Amex Gold after the first year and use the Altitude Reserve with Samsung Pay at the Grocery for 4.5%, but lately I've been doing the online ordering/in-store pickup and it won't work for that.

I'll probably end up keeping the Amex Gold as our grocery card workhorse, but I don't really know what to do about the $100 Airline Incidental credit since you can't easily use it for gift cards anymore.  Some decent Amex Offers I can take advantage of might help, but those are not guaranteed and are usually of no interest.

[Aim_High]

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@SouthJamaica wrote:

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@Anonymous wrote:

UMB Simply Rewards. It’s 3% back at grocery stores as well as discount stores, dining, and on gas. 

Its one of the few cards that specifically includes Walmart and Target (they’re discount stores). 

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It's not 3% cash back, it's just 3 points, which are worth 1.5 cents in cash.

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No, I *HAVE* this card. 

It pays 1 cent per point.   I can use points for cash or gift cards for .01/pt.

It pays a full 3% back on those categories as Saeren said with no limits on purchases per quarter or year!

In that respect, it beats the AMEX Blue Cash Everyday as Saeren said since it pays the same 3% but also has no spending limits.

If you spend $1000 per month on groceries (and yes, there are families that easily do that), you're even losing money to carry the AMEX Blue Cash Preferred when it comes to grocery purchases alone versus the UMB Simply Rewards.  (Counting the AF, BCP never pays more than 4.4% on groceries.  But if you look at a flat $12K annual spend with a flat 3% CB card vs BCP's AF/6%/1%, you're actually only getting 2.7% with BCP vs UMB SR.)  I am not factoring in the streaming service cash back, but some people can't benefit as much from that as from grocery cash back. Yes, BCP can be a good grocery strategy for some people, but for many it won't be enough to cover grocery purchases alone without a backup cash-back plan.

[Anonymous]

I didn’t mention this because the OP asked about Walmart and Target but the Bank Of The West Cash Back card has the same 3/3/3 setup but it lacks the discount stores. So groceries, dining, and gas. 

https://www.bankofthewest.com/personal-banking/credit-cards/cash-back-credit-card.html

What is nice about this card is that your cash back is automatically redeemed every quarter as long as you earned a penny in that period. No points to deal with, no minimum or increment redemption. It’s a MasterCard so in theory it should code the same places as the UMB card and they’re said to be less conservative.  

[wasCB14]

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@Aim_High wrote:If you spend $1000 per month on groceries (and yes, there are families that easily do that), you're even losing money to carry the AMEX Blue Cash Preferred when it comes to buying groceries purchases alone versus the UMB Simply Rewards.  (Counting the AF, BCP never pays more than 4.4% on groceries.  But if you look at a flat $12K annual spend with a flat 3% CB card vs BCP's AF/6%/1%, you're actually only getting 2.7% with BCP vs UMB SR.)  I am not factoring in the streaming service cash back, but some people can't benefit as much from that as from grocery cash back.

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I agree BCP is of limited appeal, but at $1k per month of supermarket spend Amex Gold would look pretty good with even mediocre MR value.

I'm not a fan of switching cards mid-year due to caps, but after the first $6k of supermarket spend on BCP, someone could always switch to a general-purpose secondary option like a 2% card...something not too specialized that they might have, anyway. I don't think that 1% is a realistic earn rate for the MF crowd's excess supermarket spend.

[Aim_High]

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@digitek wrote:if you can use the credits on the Amex Gold you end up paying $30 a year for x4 MR on grocery (and restaurant).

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The topic was  "What is the Best Groceries Cash Back Card?"

MR points are not cash back.

MR points can be redeemed for cash but only at 0.6 cents each, not their best use.

4X MR points if you use them for cash is only 2.4% return, (not even counting that extra $30 AF), so not a competitive return for groceries compared to several other options such as BCE or BCP or UMB Simply Rewards.