Frequent Miler on the Air - Best credit card for gas spend | Coffee Break Ep70 | 9-16-25

Episode Date: September 16, 2025

When you're at the gas station filling up, which credit card should you be using for that purchase? We used to value Wyndham points around 1 cent each, which made the Wyndham Rewards Earner Business Card, which earned 8 points per dollar at gas stations, a clear winner. But recent data has bumped that value down to about .7 cents, making it less of an obvious choice. So, which card should you consider for buying gas instead?(01:19) - Citi Custom Cash® Card 5x (7.5%), up to $500 per billing cycle(02:34) - American Express® Business Gold Card 4x (6.2%)(03:53) - Wyndham Rewards Earner Business Card 8x (5.6%)(04:41) - Business Advantage Customized Cash Rewards credit card with platinum honors preferred rewards (5.25%): up to $2500 per qtr(05:24) - Sams Club Mastercard 5% (up to $6K per year)(05:51) - Costco Anywhere Visa 5% at Costco, else 4% (up to $7K)(06:19) - Citi Strata Premier℠ Card 3x (4.5%)Visit https://frequentmiler.com/subscribe to get updated on in-depth points and miles content like this, and don’t forget to like and follow us on social media.Music Credit – Beach Walk by Unicorn Heads

This is a Voyescape podcast. You can find all of our travel podcasts from around the world at voyescape.com. Welcome to Freakimilers Coffee Break, where we focus on a single topic related to miles and points. And each coffee break is limited to 20 minutes or less or your money back. On today's coffee break, we're going to be figuring out what is the best credit card to use for gas spend. So you're at the gas station. Which card should you whip out to get the most rewards? So one of the things that's changed recently is the Wyndham points.

We used to have our reasonable redemption value for Wyndham points being around one cent each. And that made the Wyndham earner business card, which gets eight points per dollar at guest stations. That made that the clear winner of, you know, cross cards of which you should use for guest spend. But with new data, we reevaluate the reasonable redemption value, and it's come down to 0.7 cents per point. And that's really changed what the sort of average value of earning 8 points per dollar becomes. And so it's not the clear winner anymore. So what is? Let's talk through our options.

Well, we've got a whole bunch of different options. And some of these you may have even been considering before because they were relatively close with our valuation. for Wyndham points. But let's talk about them. So first up, we have the city custom cash, which is very popular amongst the folks who have it because it offers five points per dollar on a single category, every billing cycle, the category in which you spend the most, up to $500 in purchases per billing cycle. So you could use your custom cash just at the gas station and earn 5x on up to $500 per billing cycle per month, sort of. So that's, well, But if we value our city points at around one and a half cents per point, that's like 7.5% back on up to $500 a month over the course of the year.

That's $6,000 per year, assuming you use this for exactly $500 in spend each billing cycle. Yeah, yeah. And to clarify something about this card, in order to get the full value for your points, to make them transferable at the best rates, you do need to also have either the city strata premier card or the new strata. elite card in order to or there's a couple other cards they'll unlock the full potential of those points earned but once you have one of those you can get those points pooled together and use them at that full value which which is a really nice option all right what else next up we get the amex business gold card that card offers 4x on your top two spending categories each month out of a list of eligible categories on up to i think 150 000 in purchases per year if i remember

correctly. And so gas is one of the options for that. So if gas was one of your top two categories every month, then you'd be earning 4x at gas stations. And based on our reasonable redemption value for MX membership rewards points, that's sort of like a return of about 6.2%, which is not quite as high, perhaps, as the custom cash. But the nice thing here is that the cap is much larger, $150,000 per year. You don't have to track every single month and see have I hit $500, am I under, am I going to go over and only earn one X? You can earn your 4X and up to $150,000 a year and combine purchases in those 4X categories. But that's a high enough cap to probably fill your tank for most folks.

Yeah, yeah. That sounds really good. And we value membership rewards points, which this card earns more than twice as much as we value the Windham points. And so that's why 4X, of membership rewards points looks, at least when we're looking at average values, it looks better than 8x Windham. Which is worth the next mention here because the Windham earner business card earns 8X at gas stations.

And based on our reasonable redemption value, our newly updated reasonable redemption value of 0.7 cents per Windham point, that's like a return of about 5.6%, assuming that you're using your Wyndham points for average values. So that's, again, not quite as strong as 4x on the Amex business gold if you're looking at what we consider to be reasonable redemptions for both. Now, to be clear, you may use your MX points at far more than our reasonable redemption value for partner awards in the right situations. And by the same token, you might use your Wyndham points for far more than what our

reasonable redemption value is. But based on our RVs, the Wyndham earner business card comes in next at about 5.6. after that we got the Bank of America customized cash rewards if you have platinum honors prefer reward status so that means if you have $100,000 in either cash or investments with Bank of America or Merrill Edge or Merrill Lynch then you can get platinum honors status and then you'll get a 75% bump on card earnings so that card would effectively earn 5.25% back on up to $2,500 per quarter if you have platinum rewards preferred status, which again, that's the Bank of America, customized cash rewards with platinum honors.

5.25% that's pretty good and up to $2,500 per quarter. So you can be spending up to $10,000 a year on gas and potentially earning that return. Just below that, you've got the Sam's Club card, which earns 5% at gas stations on up to $6,000 per year. And as far as we know, that's gas stations, period, not only Sam's Club locations and earns 5% back on up to 6K per year, which works out to an average of $500 a month. So kind of similar to some of the, like the custom cash card, although potentially I guess you could spend all your full $6,000 at once and earn your 5% back theoretically anyway. The Costco credit card offers 5% back at Costco gas stations and 4% back at all other gas stations. Now that 4% at other gas stations

is limited to up to $7,000 in purchases per year. So a little bit more bandwidth. at 4% on non-C Costco gas stations, but 5% back at Costco gas could be appealing for a lot of people. A lot of folks like to shop at Costco and get the Costco gas for the discount. So there you have that. And then finally, last but not least, the city strata premier card earns 3x at gas stations. And our valuation of city points put pegs at it around 4.5% back on gas stations. And that card is, of course, a reasonably priced card and offers the opportunity. to transfer to all of city's partners at the best transfer ratios that they offer.

Yeah. All right. So now, thinking about this list that we just presented, it occurs to me that it's very U.S. gas station-centric, right? So a few of these cards have foreign transaction fees, so you wouldn't want to use them necessarily to pay for gas outside the U.S. I think, I can't remember for sure, but I think the Amex Business Gold only gives you 4X for U.S. gas stations.

I don't know if you... Probably correct. Double check my work on that one if you're playing along. Anyway, so I just wanted to give that clarification first. So given these are all really good options. If you don't spend a ton on gas, you probably doesn't pay you to go out and get... And if you already have like one of these cards, it probably doesn't pay you to run out and get another card just to...

earn a few extra points here and there, right? But to the extent that you either spend a lot on gas or you have multiples of these cards, this might be a guide to help you pick which one to use or which one to get. Or if you spend a lot at gas stations anyway, because of course, gas stations also sell other things that may earn rewards. So all right. Yeah, I mean, and you are right. The amex business gold is us gas stations so that one wouldn't be useful for you if you're spending most of your money abroad so out of these options i mean if you just look at the numbers the city custom cash comes out on top and the mx business gold and the wind and earner business but what say you Greg the frequent myler what card are you using when you fill up your tank or would you be using

anyway if you need to get gas yeah well you know i have been earning the wind um earner business 8x. That's what I have been using for quite a while now. The fact that our reasonable redemption value changed doesn't really change the math for me that much on its own because we also saw that the value you get from wind of points ranges a lot. And so it's not unusual to get over one cent per point value. It's not, you know, it's even we've seen over three cents per point value in the data. So there's a lot of potential value to be had. That said, I don't find myself using my window points very often at all, whereas I'm going

through my city points like nobody's business. So I do have a city custom cash card that's not currently being used for anything. I think given that we've now done this analysis and it just hadn't been on my mind, I think I'm going to swap in the custom cash card for all my gas spend within the US, earn the 5X. I don't spend a lot of gas stations, so I'm not worried about going over the $500 per billing cycle, which is actually a nice thing because that's one of the things I don't like about the custom cash card is worrying about, oh, what about when I go over the 500 with gas? I don't think I'm likely to do that. Yeah, I'm not likely to do that with gas. It's more so

if I'm buying other things at the gas station, that that card becomes not very appealing to me. I don't have a custom cash, and we don't have a card that is going to be down greater to a custom cash anytime soon in our household. So that card's out for me for that reason. I hate the idea of tracking, although, as you say, I probably don't spend more than $500 on gas itself most of the time in a month, although it does vary. And I think there are times when I do exceed $500,000. I'd hate to be earning the 1X when I do. The Wyndham earner business card is the card that I still usually typically use. Like you, Greg, I have not used a ton of Wyndham points in recent years, but they come in really

handy when I use them. I've used them for Vakasa vacation rentals a couple of times, and they've provided excellent value there still do provide excellent value. Most Vakasa properties. I also recently use them in New York City, and I know that I go to New York City usually a couple of times per year. So there's usually going to be an easy opportunity for me to get better than one cent per point in value at least once a year out of my Wyndham points. I have a reservation booked at an all-inclusive early next year where I would get good value out of my Wyndham points,

whether or not I make the trip I don't yet know. But anyway, so there's enough situations where I feel like I can get one cent per better out of Wyndham points. I'm not particularly concerned about the properties below the median with Wyndham because most of those are probably not places that I'd be looking to stay and use my Wyndham points anyway. So I think I feel fairly confident. However, that said, I don't always carry the card because I don't always have to fill up my tank very frequently. And so the business gold card ends up staying in my wallet most of the time because it earns 4x on two categories each month. So rather than have to worry about carrying my consumer gold card around. I just carry the business gold card. I use that for restaurants and sometimes for

gas stations if the Wyndham card isn't handy for one reason or another. So I do use a mix because I also use my MX points that better than our reasonable redemption value for the most part. So that's also a decent option. So I mix both of those at this point and I wouldn't probably be chasing a 5% card because I like the opportunity to use my points for even better than the return I would get on a cashback card at gas stations. Yeah. Yeah. Last word here, I'm pretty sure in our list, the Wyndham business earner card and the city

strata premier at 3x are the only cards in our list that are uncapped completely. Right. So if you have a tremendous amount of spend at gas stations, you're probably going to want that Windhamer in our business card to get that ADEX and see how best you can use those points because you can do really well there. Don't forget if you've enjoyed this and you'd like to get on our email list, you want to go to Frequentmiler.com slash subscribe to join our email list, follow us on all the various social media and check out our frequent mile around the air episodes dropping every Friday. Hi, I'm David Brody, co-host of the Travelin10 podcast. Together, myself and my co-host,

Tim Johnson, have traveled to over 150 countries around the world and all seven continents. Now we're sharing our favorite places, some of our best tips and experiences from all around the world in just 10 minutes on Travelin 10. Join us at Voyescape.com. I'm Pauline Fromer. I've spent most of my life writing, talking, and thinking about travel, not just where to go, but how to go in a way that's meaningful. On the Frommers Travel Show, we explore the trends, people, and ideas shaping how we see the world. If you care about the why, as much as the where, I hope you'll join me. You can find new episodes weekly at voyescape.com.