It depends on your spending habits. If you charge a lot of items on your credit card, I would recommend the AMEX Blue Cash card. For around $30k in charges that I average yearly I get back around $500-600 with no annual fee. It's also one of the only cards that doesn't have a limit as to how much cash back you can earn. You earn 0.5% cash back on your first $6,000, then 1.5% on everything after that for the year. You also earn 5% bonus cash back at supermarkets, drug stores, gas, etc.
Other than that, my Citibank Driver's Edge Charter World Mastercard pays back 2% cash back, but it has to be used towards the purchase (new or used) or lease of a car. The cash back expires after 5 years if you haven't used it though, which isn't good if you don't usually buy or lease a car every 5 years.
One word of caution...the best of the cash back cards never have the best interest rates. They're for people like myself who always PAY IN FULL every single month. It's great because I know they PAY ME to use the cards, not the other way around. If you're like the typical American who carries a balance month to month, you're better off getting a no-frills cards with a low interest rate...what you save in interest charges will be much more than what you'd get back if you carried a balance on one of these cards. I actually don't even know what the interest rate is on these cards since I don't care because I always pay in full, but I know enough not to recommend them to my friends who carry a balance.
Message Edited by Mark_in_Pasadena on 12-11-2008 01:43 PM
