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In the post What’s in Greg’s Wallet? 2024 Edition, I explained that I have three Custom Cash cards which I use exclusively for grocery purchases. Since these cards earn 5x on the category you spend the most, but only up to $500 per billing cycle, I can maximize earnings by using them only at grocery stores and only up to $500 each per month. Instead of keeping track of this myself, I used the Curve card to manage my Custom Cash spend. Whenever I spent more than $500 on a single Custom Cash card, I used Curve’s “Go Back in Time” feature to move the charge to another Custom Cash card. That was easy. But now, in the US, Curve is dead.
I could keep using Custom Cash cards for grocery spend, but I’d have to be more careful than before not to go over $500 in a billing cycle with a single card. One way to do that is to buy $500 grocery store gift cards at my local supermarket once per month with each Custom Cash card (or with only one or two if I find that I’m not spending $1,500 per month at grocery stores).
Maybe that would be worth doing if 5x was way better than I could do with other cards. But it’s not. My wife has an Amex Gold card which earns 4x at US grocery stores on up to $25,000 spend per year. An easy 4x sounds better to me than a “work for it” 5x. So, when my Curve card died, I added my wife’s Gold card to my Apple Pay wallet and started using that for all grocery spend. Problem solved!
But now it looks like the Gold card is going to be revamped into a more expensive and more complicated coupon book than before. And while I would probably do well with the added $50 every six months Resy credits, I’m not a fan of complicating my life with more coupon-ish credits to deal with.
So now what? Short term, I’ll wait and see what really happens with the Gold card. There’s a chance that our next renewal will be at the current $250 annual fee. If that happens, we’ll keep the card for another year and I’ll keep using the Gold card for grocery spend until late 2025.
If and when we eventually cancel or downgrade the Gold card, I’ll consider other options. I could go back to my Custom Cash cards and do the work. Another option is to use my Altitude Reserve card since it earns 3x on all mobile wallet payments. Alternatively, I could get the Citi Strata Premier card which earns 3x at grocery stores and several other categories. The problem is that I also have the Citi Prestige card and wouldn’t want another annual fee in my Citi ecosystem. Another option is for my wife to apply for the Capital One SavorOne card. It has no annual fee and earns 3% on dining, entertainment, select streaming services, and grocery stores. Even better, since my wife has a Capital One card that earns Miles (the Venture X card in her case), she could transfer the SavorOne rewards to her VentureX and then the rewards would be transferable to airline and hotel partners. At the moment, I think the SavorOne option is best. But the credit card space changes rapidly. The best option now may not be the best option if/when we ditch the Gold card. When the time comes, we’ll see.
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I want to do this. I currently have a Strata Premier with the AF coming up soon. I’m going to apply for a Custom Cash this week and then, hopefully downgrade my Strata to a ? Another Custom Cash, Rewards + or Double Cash? I’ll have to go a period of time with no way to transfer the points to partners, until I can re-apply for the Strata in 2025 (when I’ll be eligible for another SUB). I’m not sure what the best option is. Most of my shopping is at Safeway. AARP sells Safeway at 8% discount ($50 gc for $46). So I can buy those if I go over $500.
Visa gift cards do the trick at grocery and Costco.
For those not familiar if Custom Cash cards, I feel like I should defend them a bit here. I also have a number of these cards, and while I do not think I have ever spent more than $500 in groceries in a month, I do sometimes rotate what card I use for a given category. It is not difficult to see whether or not you have reached the $500 limit. Pop open the app, tap on the card, and there is a big box that says “Front Runner” and lists your top category, and how much you have spent that billing cycle. When I am waiting in the grocery store line, I sometimes take 15 seconds to verify that I am using the correct Custom Cash card. You do not add up the charges on your own, etc.
Earning 5x certainly isn’t a bad thing. If it’s working for you, keep after it!
In my case, we probably spend $500 in two trips to the grocery store. I have a hard enough time getting P2 to not use a card that earns 1x — getting her to check and see whether we’re on the second or third or fifth trip to the grocery store that month is a bridge that I know is too far. And at the times when she’s shopping with two young kids, I could easily imagine that being amore of a pain than it’s worth.
Like I said, that’s not to say it’s a bad strategy, just that I know it’s not one we’re going to pursue.
Crabcakes (way at the bottom) brings up a good point. Regarding groceries and gas, why not use the CIC to buy VGCs? 5x up to $25k. (By the way, the Amex Gold absolutely involves work to avoid breakage. Let’s not kids ourselves.)
I’ve never put any “work” into using my Gold at the grocery store. What are you talking about?
Similar to the Custom Cash, that’s a nice strategy if it works for you! I’m not going to carry a wallet full of $200 VGCs and rotate them out or keep track of which one or ones in my wallet is a partial, etc. And with gas, it’s not going to work to just fill up the tank if the balance on the card isn’t at least $X, etc. I can totally understand why you’d do it, but the convenience factor makes it unappealing to me. The irony is that I type that as we ride 3.5hrs in the car to fly out of an airport with a better award deal and with my kids in the backseat complaining about the long ride — so there are some inconveniences I’m willing to accept, but the pocketful of VGCs for everyday spend isn’t one of them.
Great post, as I just cancelled my Amex Gold when the annual fee came due. I couldn’t justify another annual fee and 10k retention bonus for $3k in 3 months didn’t seem worth it to me. I’m putting a lot of spend this year on a Hyatt card for elite nights. Then thinking about applying for Surpass in the next week, planning to put the $3k SUB spend late December/early January to get the SUB then (might use annual free night Jan 2026) and have spend count toward $15k in 2025 for another free night certificate. If I’m approved for Surpass, that will be my grocery card at least early 2025. I’d consider a Custom Cash, as a lot of our “grocery spend” is at Costco, so I usually spend ~$500/mo at actual grocery chains. But I’m just not a big fan of TYP – no hotel partner that I like (Hilton isn’t a great value but I like it as a backup for Amex) and no Aeroplan. I already use VGC from ODOM at Costco for 5x UR – I load a Shop Costco card with multiple $200 VGC and prefer that to carrying a bunch of gift cards. I wonder if I could do the same at a grocery store (IE Trader Joe’s) – buy a $500 store GC with 3x $200 VGC. Anyone have any idea? I like using a Shop Costco card because it’s tied to my membership, so should be easy to recover if I lost the card. And I don’t worry about thieves stealing the balance on it like some have reported on VGCs.
How do you load a Costco shopcard with multiple $200 VGC?
It couldn’t be easier – just tell the checkout person that you want to add $600 (that’s what I usually do with 3x cards at once, but I’ve heard you can use 6x or more at once) to your existing card, or get a new card for $600. They scan your membership card. Then swipe the first VGC, then they say total (owed) is now $400, swipe the second card, they say the total is now $200, then swipe the third card and you’re done. I’m not sure if this strategy is common or not, but multiple cashiers have helped me with the same process without issue.
Thank you, How do you tie the shop card to your membership?
I don’t think you can do that.
Greg, I’m curious how you’re planning to use your Custom Cash’s now if not for grocery/”grocery” spend?
I simplified my grocery spend to four options, as I got tired of juggling:
I used to have the Amex Gold, but ditched that after a year, as it was redundant and annoying work to justify the annual fee. I analyzed my annual spend via Empower and saw that I spend twice as much at Costco and BJ’s than at grocery stores, and have low spend on dining. I have plenty of existing cards earning 3x/3% (CSP, CFU, Bilt, USB AR, Hilton Surpass) on dining, and those suffice.
Publix was the dominant supermarket, so I set the CSP as the sole payment method in the app and forgot about it. I regularly buy cobranded gift cards at Publix, thereby earning 3.1x year-round on Amazon, Marshalls, Lowe’s, and more. In all other cases, I turn to the Altitude Reserve via Apple Pay. 🙂
The nice thing about the Amex Gold is that, despite the complexities of the coupons, on the spending side it’s simple: is it food? In the US? Reach for the Gold.
Unfortunately it’s not that simple.
The 4x ‘restaurant” spend doesn’t code that smoothly, and it’s been about 50/50 for me when using it for “dining” spend
Per their terms, it won’t count 4x for
Unlike Chase, which has a wider “dining” category and codes the above.
I started online ordering most of my groceries for 3 points with the Chase Sapphire. I also go trough Rakuten to earn 1.5 Amex points. So 4 1/2 points on the bulk of my groceries. It’s pretty pain free
Nice stack. Can I ask what online service you use? A platform like Instacart or something local to the store? Thanks!
I have a local Safeway and it pays 1.5% when you go through Rakuten and pick up your groceries. I know there are others. Albertsons is another one if you have one of those. A quick search of your local grocery stores on Rakuten may turn one up you can use.
lol … I’ve been going the easy 4x route with AmEx Gold rather than the “work for it” 5x Citi Custom too. Overall Citi TY points is high maintenance requiring one to track which card generated the points before canceling one of their cards. You could transfer those points, but then those expire in 90 days! K.I.S.S. Citi.
I’m currently using Citi Strata Premier for around $1500 in monthly groceries and $150 in gas… I’m living in Europe, Custom Cash doesn’t work for me, neither Amex Gold.
I’m debating if $95 for Strata makes sense, or try to get a SavorOne since I already have a Venture X. Is it an easy card to get?
Alternatively, I can also use my USBAR like Greg thought about.
Very likely I’ll cancel my Strata Premier at its AF time in October.
I am consistently getting retention offers from Citi on my Premier (now Strata Premier) card. Last one I got was earlier this month. 10k TY points for spending $3k in 3 month. Easily offsets the AF.
Do you call or email them with a cancelation request? How do you get the retention offers? I’ve been holding on to this card since 2016, but ready to downgrade to a no-fee card in October before renewal..
Interesting, I got nothing after the first year so downgraded it after using the points on a VA redemption.
Resy credits? I thought Resy just made restaurant reservations. Does it also allow payment of the check once you’ve finished the meal?
You just pay with your card at any restaurant listed on Resy. You don’t have to use Resy at all.
Are there any tools like Mint, YNAB, AwardWallet, etc. that can be set to track monthly Custom Cash spend? Given that spend is based on billing cycle it seems like it would have to be a highly customizable setting.
On YNAB you can set a $500 budget for a category, so you’d have to make multiple grocery categories and manually assign grocery store purchases to each one based on which card you used. You can also set which day of the month you need the bucket refilled, but unfortunately the purchases are tracked monthly by the calendar and not statement cycles.
My Custom Cash statement period is roughly a calendar month, I pay it off immediately, and I set an alert for when the balance exceeds $500. I don’t sweat going $200 over it still beats 3x up to $833.33/month.
That should be $1000/month, not $833.33.
Cool but between Costco, Sam’s and Walmart they have about 40% of the grocery market and that doesn’t code to “Groceries”. Here in fly over country Walmart is more like 80% of the grocery market I’d guess. On the other hand my local little grocery store also doesn’t take Amex so I’m bitter on this topic 🙂
For this, the BoA customized cash card set to online transactions works pretty well as long as you buy gift cards. For Walmart in particular, you can buy them with the United MileagePlusX app to make it easier and get some United points on top. Alternatively, if you have the Citi AT&T More card, you can also use that for 3X.