The Rewards They Are A'Changin'
So, apparently AMEX and the likes are paying people to drop their credit card accounts.
Chase, on the opposite side of the financial health landscape, has dropped the Freedom plan’s permanent 3 points/dollar for gas, groceries, and fast food. People with the old cards still get this, but for new offers this is just an introductory bonus.
Citi has a similar card, which doesn’t offer check- or direct deposit-based cash rewards, that also only offers bonus rewards on an introductory basis. Their rewards redemption process (the ThankYou program) is patently ridiculous, with irregular point requirements making redemption values situation-dependent.
Like, you get something like $0.70 on the “dollar” when redeeming for $10 gift cards to stores, while you get a whole dollar on the dollar when redeeming for $100 store gift cards. If you want a vanilla universal gift card you better get ready to give up 20% or so.
This is abusive. The convention is 1 point = $1 spent = $0.01 in rewards. When you start playing these games it becomes crazy to decipher. I was having to use a calculator to figure out effective rebate percentages.
The old Chase Freedom is completely awesome for the patient and careful. Triple rewards on gas and groceries. Plus, if you get to $200 of rewards, they send you a $250 check instead. This makes your groceries and gas work out to 3.75% cash. I believe this is known as a “loss leader.”
Fidelity’s excellent “Investment Rewards” Visa gives you an effective universal 1.5% if you cash into a Fidelity brokerage account.
I did all this research because we just found out Chase will not accommodate any weirdness around renewing credit cards upon their expiration. Our cards will expire deep into the expat time, so it would be great to take care of this while we’re back for a visit.
No better options, though, so here’s to another complicated cross-ocean management.