A huge value of cash rewards vs travel rewards is not having to save up 100k points for a redemption (and hoping you earn enough in time for your trip, and that they don’t get devalued). You can redeem to cash early and often and reinvest those rewards.
I think a lot of creators hype up videos with "4 cents per mile trip to paradise" titles without explaining that you can only get those kinds of value booking business and above, being flexible on dates and a bit of research. If you just need to get 8 hours away for a wedding and are flying coach you are not going to find that kind of value for your points.
I'm not sure why so many people are team travel over team cashback. People say that you should only use a credit card if it already fits into your spending that you'd normally do anyways. But I highly doubt most people on team travel regularly travel regardless of whether or not they have a credit card. I mean if there's no annual fee, then it's not costing them anything. But with those higher annual fee cards, I'm almost certain the people trying to get their value out of it will start actively going out of there way to travel more to get their value out of that annual fee even though they'd normally wouldn't be traveling that much to begin with. As someone who uses cashback cards, if I had to pay an annual fee (which I do on one card at the moment) it would not be hard for me to offset, and profit from, the annual fee with cashback from spending I do anyways.
I keep going back and forth on whether to just stay with cashback setup or move to travel. Travel points seem to be more max value, but maybe I’d be better if just targeting cards that have points instead of straight dollar cash back? I don’t travel now but may later on
I encourage you to determine what the *actual* value of travel points are *to you*. Most content creators inflate the real-world value for most people. Next time you’re booking a regular vacation, do a quick check for how many points you would need in total and the cpp for those points. Assuming there’s even award availability for when you want to travel when you’re actually booking, you’d probably be disappointed to find out how little “outsized value” you actually get
@@MarkReese usually places such as Wawa, quickchek, Sunoco. AAA has a 5% cash back for fuel while the Amex is 3%. However the Amex also includes for transit, tolls, etc. Having a fuel specific card is nice for write-offs but finding cards to commit to long term can be tedious. I personally don't like too many cards.
In your experience what cards allow you to transfer to bank accounts? For me, I am looking to maximize my cash back cards by reinvesting the rewards into savings. I do have travel cards but have always been more cash back leaning!
