I am using a Savor One as my daily driver. It’s an excellent card and the 3% in groceries and dining covers two of my largest spend categories so it’s a great fit.
However, I still feel as though I’m leaving a lot on the table for everything else that only gets 1%. I am currently using a secondary Venmo Visa – mainly because I needed VISA exposure for costco. It’s an aesthetically pretty card but the lack of authorized users and only being able to manage the account inside the app are pretty big hindrances for me. I don’t think I’m going to stick with it.
Any recommendations for a complementary daily driver? I know I should just consider the WF Autograph but I REALLY hesitate to work with them just on principle.
Everyone would say that the Venture X would compliment the Savor One quite nicely. The annual fee of $395 is the only deterrent and the ecosystem for the points are best utilized for travel at that point.
The annual fee is negated by the $300 travel credit when booking on the portal and the 10k annual points given on your anniversary date.
Alliant Credit Union has a flat 2.5% visa. To qualify you have to keep a monthly average of $1k in an ACU checking account, have at least 1 transfer on that account per month, and use e statements. Makes for a good daily driver.
That sounds almost too good to be true. Does the CU have restrictive sign up criteria? All you have to do is park a small amount in the account, make one deposit a month (does it need to be direct deposit) and you get 2.5% everywhere???
It’s good, but after crunching some numbers I find it to be less of the unicorn some folks make it out to be.
The Alliant checking account earns 0.25% interest, and right now SPAXX is paying out 4.75%, so there’s a delta of 4.5%.
So now there’s $45 in interest a year you give up, closer to $32 after taxes.
$32/0.005 = $6,400 <- This is the breakeven point versus a 2% card with no deposit requirement (WF ActiveCash, Fidelity Visa, Citi DC, PayPal MC, etc.).
That amount might be chump change to you if you have a lot of uncategorized spend, but it’s worth taking into account when choosing the best card. This was kind of my wake-up call where I realized that churning will do much more for you than optimizing spend every will. Even if you spend the $6,400 to break even, and then spend another $20,000/year, you’re netting an extra $100/year. It’d take you seven years to catch up to the sign up bonus for the Chase Sapphire Preferred.
I’ve been working on unlocking the 60k bonus travel points (80k when I signed up) on the Chase Sapphire Preferred card. It’s my first time getting a card specifically for the rewards and so far it’s going well. Depending on how I use the points, they should be valued at at least $800, which easily offsets the $95 annual fee.
ETA: As for being my daily driver, its 3x points on dining and groceries is nice, along with 5x on travel. The points are stacking up noticeably faster than my Discover cards did.
One way to think about the sign up bonus is 20% cash back, if it is $800 after spending $4000, as well as the points you earn for that spending.
There are cards where you can earn 40%, ie $200 back after spending $500, but you can only apply for so many cards per year, so it would be difficult to maximize your total cash back with these smaller cards.
