My family uses credit cards for all purchases and we pay them off in full each month. Although sometimes we’ll use a 0% APR promotion for bigger purchases.

Which cards do you use for maximizing your rewards?

  • momtheregoesthatman@lemmy.worldEnglish
    4·
    1 year ago

    It’s a cat and mouse game to achieve “the best” rewards. It’s made this way on purpose and they change monthly/on a cadence (as you most likely all know). I always look around to research and modify our usage per expenses.

    That said:

    • Amex Platinum for travel (hotels, flights)
    • Chase Freedom for gas (rewards are sometimes targeted)
    • Chase Sapphire for streaming, bills and randoms because I like their points incentive(s)
    • Citi Simplicity for balance transfers, since they tend to target my family for generous offers (like when we had to buy a new living room :/)

    Other than the Citi card, we pay our balances. Our rewards points are pretty built up at this point and we’ll use them for things like vacations, or vacation add-ons, rentals or gift cards for the kiddos.

    • WetBeardHairs@lemmy.mlOPEnglish
      4·
      1 year ago

      I am planning to drop my Chase Sapphire Reserve because the service has suffered while the price increased (started at $250 and now it’s $500/yr).

      About how much do you spend on hotels and flights to make the Amex worth it? They charge $750 a year!

      Edit: I’m also bitter that Amex bought all of the airport lounges that I used to get into for free with my Chase card.

      • momtheregoesthatman@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        Yep, I agree about Chase. And the same could be said about Amex with the changes in perks + the Centurion lounges always being full. I have been an Amex customer for a long long time and regularly call to get my fee partially waived (it’s hit or miss). I stay for their customer service. It’s second to none. To answer your question, I travel a lot. I do gov consulting work so it’s all reimbursed :)

      • Very_Bad_Janet@kbin.social
        1·
        1 year ago

        I’m glad I’m reading your comment. I had just called Chase this morning and the Chase Sapphire Reserve is now $550/annual fee and the bonus is now 60k points (i think.ot used to be 100k, which is what I got when I signed up.for the Chade Sapphire Preferred card). I was interested in order.to get the bonus points but also for the Chase airport lounges - if I can’t access those.lounges there.might not be any point (no pun intended). ETA: Can you use all of the Priority One lounges?

        What other benefits do you get for that $550? Is the fee waived the first year?

        • WetBeardHairs@lemmy.mlOPEnglish
          2·
          1 year ago

          They shuffled the rewards around a few years ago due to covid.

          • Free instacart. We used the crap out of it for the first year during covid. Then the terms eroded and it got really expensive.
          • Free Uber priority or Lyft Pink or whatever. That saved us… maybe $10.
          • Free TSA PreCheck. It’s worth $75 every 3 years or so. Maybe prices have gone up.
          • Priority Pass - yeah that thing that gives you access to like 0 lounges now. It was great when I got my card nearly 10 years ago.
          • Rewards points. They dropped Travelocity (thank god) as an intermediary. But now their booking costs are about 10-20% higher than booking directly with the airline/hotel/etc. So we try to bank up our points and use them to purchase whole tickets and we never spend cash through their portal anymore.
          • $300 of travel cash. We’re careful to not book travel with that reimbursement through their portal. The 10-20% markup translates to $30-60 in rewards which, at a 5% cash back rate costs $1200 in travel to recoup.

          Oh and when I signed up they gave me almost $750 in travel credit as a premium. I think I’m going to start churning again because that was the best freakin’ reward.