Frequent Miler's latest team challenge, Million Mile Madness, is happening now! Follow us as Greg, Nick, and Stephen compete to earn 1 Million SAS miles by flying 15 airlines before November 23rd. Who will complete the challenge with the most Speed, Affordability, and Style?
We endeavor to have the best Best Offers page on the Internet. That’s not a small task; at the moment, there are 155 credit cards on our Best Offers page. A week rarely passes when there aren’t necessary updates to offers, benefits, links, descriptions, names, or other details and we do our best to keep up with those changes. As I was doing some site maintenance yesterday, I stumbled on a few credit cards that were absent from our list but warranted places on our Best Offers page. Knowing that many readers look to our Best Offers page as a resource, I thought it was worth a post today to alert readers as to a few new additions that caught my eye.
What makes a “Best Offer”?
Before getting to the cards we added, I wanted to quickly answer the above question for newcomers to this site:
First, Frequent Miler believes in sharing the best publicly-available offers, whether or not we earn a commission. Sometimes (many times, in fact) this means that we have affiliate links that we do not list since there are other non-affiliate public links to better offers. The cards in each sub-section on the Best Offers page are listed in order of first-year value based on the value of the welcome offer and other easily-quantifiable first-year benefits after accounting for the opportunity cost of spending to meet the welcome offer versus your next-best option (earning 3% cash back since there are a number of ways to do that in the first year as an alternative). See this post for more on how those calculations are determined. The short story is that we try to be as objective as possible in determining the value of offers and then only list the best ones that are publicly-available.
Secondly, we generally do not list cards on out Best Offers page unless they offer some sort of intro / welcome bonus worth at least $100. There are some exceptions; for example, while the Citi Double Cash sometimes comes with a welcome offer, at other times it does not. Since the card offers a benchmark rewards rate of an effective 2% back (1% when you make purchases and 1% when you pay the bill) and especially since those points are now transferable to other Citi ThankYou cards (and onward to airline partners), it logically makes sense to list that card. Likewise, the Costco Anywhere Visa is listed despite no bonus because it offers 4% back on gas (on up to $7K / year) and 3% on travel & dining with no annual fee. However, most cards listed have a welcome offer worth at least $100 (notably, the first-year value may still be less than that based on the calculations mentioned in the previous paragraph).
Based on those benchmarks of either a welcome offer worth at least $100 or benefits that make the card particularly noteworthy, I made a few additions to our Best Offers page yesterday.
New Additions
We have added the following cards to our Best Offers page. Click each card name to go to our card-specific page and learn more, but I’ll summarize each below the key info here to explain why we included them.
First up is the Wells Fargo Cash Wise Visa, which is a basic cash-back card that should have been listed on our Best Offers page for quite a while. This omission was purely oversight. Current bonus information dictates that this one easily warranted a place on our Best Offers page:
| Card Offer and Details |
|---|
None This card is no longer available.No Annual Fee FM Mini Review: Not bad for a cash bonus with a low spend threshold and/or cell phone insurance, but this card is not very rewarding for ongoing spend. Earning rate: 1.5% cash back everywhere in the form of Go Far Rewards ✦ 1.8% back on Google Pay or Apple Pay purchases for the first 12 months Base: 1.5X (2.25%) Card Info: Visa issued by Wells. This card imposes foreign transaction fees. |
As it says in the summary above, there is alternatively a current targeted offer good for 3% cash back for the first year. Indeed, receiving that offer in the mail is what led me to notice its absence from our Best Offers page. That 3% bonus is less exciting than it seems: since the card ordinarily earns 1.5% cash back everywhere, the bonus works out to be 1.5% on up to $30K in purchases. In other words, you’ll spend thirty thousand dollars to earn a bonus of $450. By contrast, while the offer above is worth much less, it requires exponentially less spend. Most readers with expenses high enough to consider the 3% back offer would be better off opening a couple of cards with decent welcome offers rather than concentrating $30K in purchases on this card.
On the other hand, for those interested in the current welcome offer on the card, it could be a good opportunity for a proportionally decent bonus for low-spenders.
The next card we added is the Schwab Investor card from American Express. While this card is not notably rewarding for ongoing spend, it currently offers a welcome bonus that meets our threshold to make the Best Offers page. For those with a Schwab account who are looking to add a cash back bonus to their money belt, this might make sense. Despite not carrying an annual fee, it doesn’t seem like a keeper to me since it doesn’t offer much for the long-run.
| Card Offer and Details |
|---|
$200 Cash Back as a statement credit ⓘ Non-Affiliate $200 statement credit after $1K in purchases in first 3 monthsNo Annual Fee Information about this card has been collected independently by Frequent Miler. The issuer did not provide the details, nor is it responsible for their accuracy. FM Mini Review: The Schwab Investor card offers a decent return via the intro offer, but it isn't very rewarding for ongoing spend. Earning rate: 1.5% on all eligible purchases Base: 1.5% Card Info: Amex Credit Card issued by Amex. This card imposes foreign transaction fees. Noteworthy perks: Cash back is automatically deposited into your eligible Schwab account. |
The BBVA Clear Points card came onto my radar thanks to a tip from a reader alerting us to the choose-your-own-adventure nature of the quarterly bonus categories. Note that while the fine print on the website indicates that the welcome offer was valid for applications through 12/31/19, we included it here because the website continues to list the offer. You’ll likely need to apply via phone or in-branch anyway, which should give you an opportunity to confirm the bonus.
| Card Offer and Details |
|---|
none This card is no longer availableNo Annual Fee Information about this card has been collected independently by Frequent Miler. The issuer did not provide the details, nor is it responsible for their accuracy. FM Mini Review: While the initial bonus is not very generous, the uncapped 3x earnings in a category of your choice (from ten options) each quarter could make this card interesting. Earning rate: Choose one of ten categories for 3x and one for 2x each quarter, then 1x everywhere else. Must choose 3x and 2x categories before each quarter starts or all purchases will default to 1x. You may select your categories as early as the first day of the preceeding quarter. Bonus categories are not capped. Base: 1X (1%) Card Info: Visa issued by BBVA. This card imposes foreign transaction fees. |
The interesting aspect of this card is the ability to pick a quarterly 3x category (and a 2x category, though 2x is not very notable) from a list of ten options (I believe the options are listed here). You must choose your quarterly bonus categories before the quarter begins or rewards will revert to 1x everywhere. What makes this card potentially interesting is that there is no cap on the quarterly earnings in your chosen 3x category. It’s not without some headaches: the terms of the rewards program note that points expire 36 months after earning them, which I think means that you’ll potentially have points expiring on a rolling basis, and all points are forfeited if they close your account (and without knowing how tolerant they are in terms of their 3x categories, that is a consideration). This one seems like a fringe option for the adventurous who want to try something new.
The fourth card hit my radar yesterday thanks to an update from Doctor of Credit. While I wasn’t previously familiar with the Affinity Cash Rewards card, the combination of a decent $200 bonus with 5% back on bookstores (including Amazon) and rotating quarterly categories (all with no annual fee) made this card sound like a pretty solid option for those looking for cash back and quarterly categories.
| Card Offer and Details |
|---|
$150 cash back ⓘ Non-Affiliate $150 cash back after $3K spend in first 90 daysNo Annual Fee Information about this card has been collected independently by Frequent Miler. The issuer did not provide the details, nor is it responsible for their accuracy. FM Mini Review: The Affinity Cash Rewards Visa Signature card could be really interesting for its rotating categories since the fine print indicates that it stacks on top of ordinary earnings. Earning rate: 5% back at all bookstores, including Amazon (note: this is capped at $1000 in purchases per month) ✦ 2% back at restaurants, gas stations, supermarkets, Netflix, Spotify, Uber and Lyft. Base: 1% Dine: 2% Gas: 2% Grocery: 2% Other: 5% Card Info: Visa Signature issued by AFCU. This card has no foreign currency conversion fees. Noteworthy perks: No foreign transaction fees; cell phone protection |
Like with the BBVA card above, the bonus categories do not appear to be capped. What’s more, the fine print on the landing page for the 5% categories indicates that the 5% on those categories is a bonus on top of normal earnings, which would make this card a hands-down leader in quarterly categories that also earn an ordinary category bonus on the card. Having no experience with Affinity, it is hard to gauge its reliability, but this one could certainly be worth it for those who will spend a lot in this year’s quarterly categories.
Bottom line
Now and then, a reader will reach out to say, “I’ve signed up for all of the credit cards. Now what?”. The first reaction in our minds is always, “All of them?”. That reaction is because there are so many offers available that could be of interest for one reason or another and despite having 150+ cards on our best offers page, we occasionally stumble on even more offers like the ones above that we just added to the site within the past day. Of course, some offers will not be appealing whether due to their size or the issuer or their inability to fit your goals. However, when you get to that point where you’re asking, “Now what”?, the next step is often to look for the cards that best reward the type of spend you do, and sometimes these sorts of oddball cards can be just the thing to fit your needs. It’s always worth keeping an eye out for the opportunities you didn’t notice you were missing.
Want to learn more about miles and points? Subscribe to email updates or check out our podcast on your favorite podcast platform.
Nick, just to let you know, it appears the link to join Affinity is no longer working (it’s redirecting to a totally unrelated page). Also, the Affinity link on the best offer page (when I click from the Affinity link in the post above) is going to the Alliant credit card page.
Greg & Nick, here is a not-fully-formed idea I have had, feel free to take it and use it if you want. Perhaps this is just something to mull over and keep your eyes peeled in case a different platform (or platform add-on) comes along that is worth considering.
For “regular” posts, I think the approved-comment sections works fine. However, for the resource pages like Best Offers, individual CC pages, etc., a way to make “suggested edits” would be useful. I am thinking of this like a Wiki page, except instead of being public-editable, it would be a way readers could make suggested edits but be approved by one of you. So it is still expert-approved info on the site, but with the ability for the readers to find and highlight needed updates that might slip thru. Right now I think best-practice is to comment on the particular page, but then that just pollutes the comments with “update this info” entries which are no longer relevant once the info has been updated. And sometimes those pages are so old that I wonder if anyone checks the comment section on them.
An example: a couple weeks ago I found some info about Southwest Companion Pass in one of the personal card descriptions. It had info about the new 2020 rules as if they were in the future (and still referenced the pre-2020 rules as current), but the calendar had already flipped by a few days. So I made a comment, the info was updated, but my comment lives as a no-longer-useful contribution to future readers of that page. In fact, if anything, it now causes more confusion than it helps since my original assertion is no longer factually accurate.
https://frequentmiler.com/complete-guide-southwest-companion-pass/#comment-2192936
I could see how a system like this might need a way to establish “trusted contributors” to avoid a flood of spam, or maybe the same type of automatic system could handle that similarly to what you must use for the comments.
As I said, not-fully-formed, but an idea to make the site an even better resource.
Thanks for the feedback! You make a solid point in terms of outdated comments.
In terms of old pages and whether or not anyone checks the comments, we get an email when someone comments. We get a lot of email every day and there are only so many hours in the day, so there are certainly times when a comment might slip through the cracks, but practically speaking whether you comment on a new post or a post from 5 years ago we are equally likely to see that comment and respond to it.
In terms of suggested edits, that’s a good idea that would be hard to do exactly as you are suggesting (the information you see on the page is fed by a table which is in turn fed by a spreadsheet, so it’s not quite as simple as hitting the edit button and deleting a few words on that specific page the way you would imagine with a wiki). That said, a way to submit a suggested edit rather than a comment on the page does seem like a potentially good idea. I’m not sure how to make that user-friendly enough that everyone would “get” it in the same way that commenting at the bottom seems like a universal way to communicate.
I like the feedback. We’ll talk about it and see what we come up with. Thanks!
Hey Nick,
Speaking of old comments, I don’t know if this is this place to mention it, but I’ve noticed that in posts regarding a recurring event (e.g.. Fee-free VGC at Staples), the comments will be old, and possibly out of date.
See : https://frequentmiler.com/staples-fee-free-visa-gift-cards/
Maybe you guys are using the same post heading every time? For for readers wondering if there are any new and important user data points or feedback, they might be surprised and puzzled to only find comments from months ago.At the very least, is there a way to change the comments time stamp from “8 months ago” to “4/1/19” or something like that?
Keep up the great work!
Re-posting those old posts instead of creating a new post each time is intentional for several reasons:
1) It preserves comment history. Often, questions get repeated or valuable information gets shared that you may have missed the previous time it was posted if you looked once and didn’t see the comment that came in a few days later that added a great data point. This keeps all discussion together in one place instead of being spread over a dozen or dozens of similar posts.
2) It preserves old deal history in one place so if there are significant changes to a repeated deal over time we can easily see the trends in how that has changed or developed.
3) It makes linking to that post from other related posts easier since the URL stays the same, so it is easy to find. This can be important for someone who lands on an unrelated page from a Google search. Let’s say that someone Googled Manufactured Spending and landed on an old post we wrote where we referenced fee-free Staples gift cards and linked to our post about them. Moving forward, that person who lands on a 2016 post won’t be re-directed to a Staples Gift Card deal from 2016 that is long-gone but will (hopefully) see the most current version of that deal. This is just an example, but I think you can imagine what I mean.
4) It is potentially better from an analytics perspective since established pages with external links to them tend to be ranked as being more reliable by search engines. This isn’t the most important thing to us, but it is a contributing reason.
5) It keeps a single URL that one could bookmark and check for updates, which is also good from the perspective of Google traffic since it isn’t a date-specific URL but rather a topic-specific URL.
6) It saves us time over re-inventing the wheel entirely for posts where most details remain the same.
While I can see your perspective on out-of-date comments, I think keeping the comment history can be helpful. For instance, I recently signed up for some new bank accounts for bonuses. I couldn’t remember the time frame for the bonuses posting, but I was able to go to Doctor of Credit and scroll through comments from the past couple of years on that particular bank’s deals (since they are all covered in the same recycled post) and see multiple data points in the comments on one page. That type of situation doesn’t necessarily apply to a Staples gift card deal, but it’s an example as to where I find that useful.
However, your question about whether comments could have a date instead of “8 months ago”: I’m not sure I see a huge difference since both communicate that the comment is from the past, but on the other hand I imagine we probably could change the format to show a date and time stamp instead of a length of time. We’re working on implementing a new theme and I’ll toss that on the to-discuss list. Thanks for the idea!
I like posts like this even if I’m not planning to get any of the newly mentioned cards. It was Frequent Miler that first put the Ebates (now Rakuten) Visa on my radar. Great card. Certainly a favorite. Thanks for keeping an eye on stuff like this!
I use my BBVA Clearpoints card at Simon Mall which gets 3x on Retail, as a way of offsettings VGC fees. Sometimes I will buy 4- 6k worth at a time to get some cash back. One thing they do not like is when you make multiple payments from various sources. They blocked my card one time and put a hold on my payments for about 10 days until i could use it again. I thought I was being Shutdown, but it is working again.
Do you what the categories are that are available for 2x/3x? Also, do we know what MCCs code to those categories?
Thanks
There’s a link in the post to what the categories are. I don’t know what the MCCs are.
Nick,
I saw the link. I guess to clarify, you choose one of each for the 3x and 2x from the same list?
I didn’t see this one on your list. http://www.commercebank.com/personal/cards/drury-rewards-visa