Frequent Miler on the Air - The most rewarding card for groceries & dining | Coffee Break Ep20 | 7-30-24

Episode Date: July 30, 2024

Everybody eats! So everyone can make use of earning opportunities at restaurants or grocery stores. In this episode, we'll talk about our 4 favorite credit cards for exactly this.   (01:31) - Amex Gold Card earns 4 points per dollar for US grocery stores (up to $25K in spend) and 4x for restaurant dining Read more about the Amex Gold Card here. (03:22) - Citi Strata Premier earns 3 points per dollar for grocery and 3 points per dollar for dining Read more about the Citi Strata Premier Card here. (05:11) - Capital One SavorOne gives 3% cash back for dining, grocery stores Read more about the Capital One SavorOne card here. (07:14) - Altitude Reserve card earns 3 points per dollar on travel and mobile wallet payments, which could apply to grocery and dining Read more about the Altitude Reserve card here. (12:26) - Which card is the best for earning points on grocery and dining spend? Visit 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

Here we go. This is not your typical frequent miler on the air episode. This is a standalone segment we're calling Coffee Break. Each Coffee Break segment will cover a single topic related to miles and points. And each Coffee Break is limited to 20 minutes or your money back. Enjoy. Today's coffee break, the most rewarding card for groceries and dining. Nearly everybody I know eats at some point in their lives. Everybody eats.

Everybody eats. And in this modern world, eating means you're probably buying food either at restaurants or at grocery stores. And so we're going to get into what is the best card so that you can get rewarded when you're paying for all that food. Right, right. That everybody eats was a reference to like an old Mimi sort of a video. So I didn't expect Greg would get it, but maybe somebody out there got the eat your grapes, Rebecca. It's the guy that was feeding the animals. Everybody eats anyway. So we all got to spend money on it. And, uh, and so we'll talk today about your best options. Cause there's a bunch of different cards

that bonus this type of, of activity. So don't forget wherever you're watching or listening, please give us a thumbs up, leave us a good review, leave a comment. We appreciate all those things and go to frequent miler.com slash subscribe to join our email list and all of that fun stuff. All right, let's hop into it. So what's the first card up that we have to talk about? All right. Altogether, we're going to talk about four cards that we picked out. So there are others that are rewarding, but we picked out our four favorites for nailing these two categories of spend. And number one on the list, that doesn't

necessarily mean it's number one overall, is the Amex Gold Card, which earns four points per dollar in both grocery stores and for restaurants. Now, grocery stores are limited to $25,000 spend per year, and it's only for U.S. grocery stores, whereas dining is worldwide. And so, you know, it has some pros and cons. So some pros are, first of all, four points per dollar is a great return. I mean, that's a great category bonus. And we love that it earns transferable points. Membership rewards can be very valuable if you use them the right way, transfer to great partners, and book great awards.

So those are good. And you don't need another card to do it. Some cards, in order to make your points transferable, you need another card. But this one, it's all in one. Some cons. Amex. Amex. That's a con right there.

It's just not accepted everywhere in the world. So that can be a problem. Amex. That's a con right there. It's just not accepted everywhere in the world. And not only that, the bonus category on grocery is on US supermarkets. So not only is it not accepted, you're not going to earn a bonus category if you're shopping in a supermarket abroad. True. And it has a relatively high annual fee. Now, granted, it has a bunch of rebates that can mostly make up for that, but that's a pain in the butt in itself is making sure to use those rebates, which dribble out over the course of the year rather than all at once. So, yeah, so that's the first one, the Amex Gold Card. Why don't you go through the next one in our list, Nick? All right, next up, the City Strata Premier. This is an interesting one for folks because this earns 3x grocery and 3x dining, and it has some other useful 3x categories too that might be of interest for you. So pros, of course, it earns

transferable points, city thank you points. And like I said, it has some other 3x categories. There's 3x gas and EV charging, 3x flights, hotels and travel agencies. So if you're booking even through an online travel agency, you should get 3x and 10x hotels, car rentals and attractions that you book through city travel. And so that's all pretty good. And you can, of course, add a bunch of fee free cards through city in order to boost your earnings, kind of, you know, fill out your wallet with a 2x Everywhere card and a card that can earn five points per dollar here or there or what have you. So you get some other options to build together with it. So that's kind of nice. And Citi's got a decent slate of transfer partners,

but the cons, of course, this has a $95 annual fee. So it's not free. That's a potential con anyway. And while Citi's transfer partners are pretty good, they're not the best on the market necessarily. They aren't my favorite of the transferable currency kind of realms. Although, that said, they certainly aren't bad. Citi's not way behind everybody else, just they're missing a few that some others have. So that's a potential downside. But overall, this is a pretty interesting card that I think a lot of people find use for. I should mention to it, it does also come with

an annual travel credit. I think it's a $50 hotel credit or something like that, I think. $100 back when you spend $500 is what it is. So there is a little something there. Potentially, it could be useful, although truthfully, cities travel portals usually a little bit overpriced. But from a grocery and dining perspective, this could be a decent option. Yeah. Yeah. Next up, we've got the Capital One Saver One card, which gives you 3% cash back for dining and grocery stores.

Now, it has a bunch of pros, no annual fee. And also like the Strata Premier, dining and grocery is not the only categories where you can earn 3x, but you also get it for entertainment and select streaming services. Now, even though this is a cashback card, a cool thing is that your rewards can be moved to a card that earns miles, capital one miles, which then would make the points transferable to partners. So, for example, if you had a Venture or a VentureX card, you can move your cash back to that card and then transfer to the transfer partners. Cons, this is sort of similar to Citi in a way. The transfer partner list is good, but it doesn't have everything you might want necessarily. And the other thing is, if you are into transferable points, you do need a second card to make the points transferable.

So that's a minor con. But yeah, but overall, a solid choice. Yeah, I think Capital One one has most if not all of city's partners and adds one or two so might be a step up from there and in between one of the others depending on on how you value different partners of course doesn't have city's choice you know hot choice transfer uh well bonus or not bonus ratio it doesn't have choice one to two transfer it doesn't have leading hotels of the world which city has uh it does have eva but it doesn't have one to one to eva the way city does

so so yeah depending on what you want to do it's it's on the other hand it has aeroplan and it has windom which may or may not be useful to you depending on uh you know situation and your ability to buy points and all the rest of that. So yeah. All right. Good points there. So we got the three we've talked about so far, Amex gold card again, city strata premier and the capital one saver one, but that's not all another option for your grocery spend could be the altitude reserve card. The U S bank altitude reserve card earns three X travel and mobile wallet payments. So mobile wallet payments is a pretty broad category because it means if you're using Apple pay or Google Pay on your phone or your smartwatch or whatever, then you're earning three points per dollar on all of the purchases that you pay for in that way, which basically I think

any grocery store these days takes mobile payment of some sort as well as some other stores you may not have thought of. So you got to know that this card has a $400 annual fee, which sounds like a whopping annual fee on the surface, but maybe isn't as bad as it sounds because it comes with an annual $325 travel and dining credit. That's every membership year, you get $325 back on up to, or up to $325 back on travel and dining. And that's automatic. You don't need to call or, uh, you know, work to apply that and just use the card for travel and dining. And that's automatic. You don't need to call or work to apply that. Just use the card for travel or dining purchases and you'll get $325 back a year. So it kind of feels sort of like a net $75. So not as expensive as it sounds on the surface if you regularly spend money on travel and dining anyway. Pros. Of course, you can use mobile wallet almost everywhere

these days that you're paying for something in person, not only on grocery purchases at a grocery store, but also at warehouse clubs like Costco or Sam's Club or any of those different warehouse clubs that you may have thought you couldn't get a bonus category on. And you can, as long as you use your phone or smartwatch to pay, you could be paying with your altitude Reserve and earning three points per dollar. And the other big pro is real-time mobile rewards. So real-time mobile rewards is an interesting U.S. bank feature where with certain types of purchases, you can pay for the purchase with your card, your Altitude Reserve card, and then receive a text message that offers you the chance to redeem points against that charge. And the nice thing is that travel purchases can be done in this way to use the points at a value of one and a half cents per point towards travel purchases. Now, there's some ins and outs and what have you, as we have a guide as to what works and what doesn't work. But essentially, at a surface level, you could buy a flight that, say, costs $450, and you'll get a text message that says, hey, you just bought this $450 flight.

Would you like to redeem 30,000 points to cover the cost of that flight at a base level? Now, again, there are some ins and outs that have to be U.S. merchants, although there are some foreign ones that work, blah, blah, blah. But basically, it means that it's possible to get one and a half cents per point out of the points towards travel. So when you're talking about three points per dollar spent on mobile wallet, you're looking at a return of basically four and a half percent at, again, Costco or at the grocery store or dining or whatever else it is that you spend money in or at in person. Hans, of course, is that the points are not transferable. So if you like transferable currencies, you want airline miles, this might not be the ideal card for you. Of course, you could use this cash back to buy airline miles, I guess, but you wouldn't be able to redeem points at one and a half cents per point that way,

at least in most cases. And many restaurants, of course, just might not take mobile wallet payment. If you go to a nice sit down restaurant, probably they aren't going to bring over a card reader in the United States anyway to pay for your meal. And it might be a little awkward to be like, hey, can you go tap my phone on the payment terminal? It might be a little weird. So you're not going to be able to necessarily get that quote unquote four and a half percent back at all restaurants. Right. Right. Yeah. And it's kind of such a bummer because I'm so used to when I go to Europe, like most places, just bring the little terminal to the table and you tap to pay and you get your 3X that way. One of the things I love, I mean, you mentioned about real-time mobile rewards, Nick, but a couple of things I love about that is like one is you can also go through U.S. Bank's travel portal and buy travel and get one and a half cents per point value. But, you know, I kind of hate going through portals to buy like flights, for example, because if something goes wrong, then you have to deal often with the portal support instead of the airline support.

And that can be really awkward and could really cause problems at times. With this, you can go directly to at least a US airline where it works and buy your tickets. I really like that. And it also includes things that aren't normally on portals at all, like paying for an Uber or Lyft ride. And you could get your 1.5 cents per point value by paying with points for that ride. So I really like those things. Yeah. And while it's supposed to be US merchants, we do have some data points on our page about what works of different foreign carriers or entities sometimes working. And there are some minimums and different categories and things, but like I just used this recently to rent a car abroad from a rental company that I don't think exists in the United States.

I'd never heard of it before anyway, but I was booking through auto slash and I was paying through auto slash, which I assume that's why it triggered real-time mobile rewards because that is a U S company. So even though the rental wasn't a U S rental, I was still able to use my points at one and a half cents per point. So, so that was pretty nice. Yeah, it is. All right. So Nick, what's

your pick? If you had to pick just one of these for your grocery and dining spend, what do you think is best? Boy, this is tough. I, you know, the, I think the couponification of the gold card has made it kind of tough for a lot of people. It's awfully expensive and having to work to get credits is not fun. So I think I eliminate that one pretty quickly and then it becomes kind of tough between the other three. I think if you're looking for the easiest solution, I think the Altitude Reserve is awfully easy. I'm gonna be taking a trip to Europe

and a couple of other places soon and that's gonna be my workhorse. I'm gonna use that everywhere because I don't have to worry about is this going to trigger a bonus category or not? I know it's going to work everywhere and they're going to take it everywhere. So that's, to me, I think a really good option.

And I say that as somebody who likes miles. So that's, you know, I think significant. I think if it weren't for that, though, I would be more into the Capital One Saver One than the City Strata Premier. And I know that there are people that will disagree with me on that. I like having the option of Aeroplan. I like that Capital One still has Turkish and they have Avianca Life Miles, all programs that I use

frequently. And City, of course, also has Turkish and Avianca Life Miles. But I like that Capital One adds Aeroplan because that's another program I use quite frequently. And I like that Capital One adds Aeroplane because that's another program I use quite frequently, and I like my Capital One miles. So I would lean towards the Capital One Saver One for no annual fee if I really wanted to earn something that earned transferable points. And you got to caveat that because it doesn't really earn transferable points. You do need another Capital One card, although you could do it with no annual fee at all. Have a Venture One card and use that to transfer so you move your cash back to miles at one cent per mile and then transfer your miles onto partners with the Venture One. And I think that's pretty unique and special in terms of Capital One's capabilities. So I think

my pick for most people is probably the Saver One. But I think for me, the Altitude Reserve is going to be my top pick. I'm going to bring the Capital One Saver one with me on my upcoming trip though, because that entertainment category, I have a feeling might be kind of broad. And so I may end up using that quite a bit for entertainment. If I can go to a museum or I'm going to some other attraction like that, I'm going to be trying that card to see if it triggers the bonus category. Yeah. Interesting. Of course you could just tap your altitude reserve and know you're getting three X for those. That's that's true that's the gamble yeah that's that is the advantage of the ultra reserve not having to worry yeah yeah um yeah it's really tough to pick a winner here i agree with everything nick said about the amex gold card so i'm not picking that one uh plus the the fact that you know a lot of

places well that it doesn't work at grocery stores outside the U.S. and that a lot of places don't necessarily accept it at, you know, smaller restaurants internationally. The, wow. So I think that the decision between the Strata Premier and the Saver One almost depends on what direction are you likely to go with other cards so so for example if you because they're both earning 3x for these two categories uh both of them if you prefer cash back you could just take that 3x as cash back and you're done um if you uh if you like the ability, if you like wanting to transfer points and don't want another card, then the Strata Premier is your obvious pick.

But if you don't mind having another card, I mean, a lot of people, if you're just gonna be looking for one more card, I think that either the Venture or more likely even the Venture X is gonna be really good choice for you. And then suddenly the saver one becomes a great combination

with the Venture X because you can move your cash back to the Venture X and make the points transferable. So I'm going to answer it that way and say if you're just going to pick one and you like the idea of transferable points, even if you're not sure you're going to use them,

let's go with the Strata Premier. If you have sort of a longer vision of wanting a great travel card in the Venture X, then go with a Saver 1 because then you can expand your portfolio to those two cards to make a really great combo. If you're sure you're happy with cash back and you want a good travel card as well,

the Altitude Reserve is a great choice, especially because that 3X is so much broader than dining and grocery. As long as you carry around your phone and you can tap to pay most places, more and more places, except that, then you can do really well with that. It's funny how even to pick the best dining and grocery card, it's hard for us to separate that from an overall strategy, right? Like thinking about what other cards you might want to have, because I think that, you know, that just goes to the point that we would always make that there's not one single card that's the best card in general.

Usually your best option is to have at least two cards. And so, you know, then things change a little bit, right? Because then you say, yeah, VentureX would give you a bunch of different travel related benefits that might be of interest to you. And so if you want those things at a pretty good cost, when you consider the rebates on the card, then, you know, that obviously does seem like a good potential combination. Altru Reserve is perhaps a one card solution for people because it does still come with priority pass, although only eight visits a year, but it can be used at restaurants. So, you know, there's a bunch of different considerations here.

So it's hard to still pick one winner, but there we have it. At least you have our thoughts as to which one might be the winner for you. And you can kind of tweak that from there, I think, right? Yes, definitely. And I'm going to add one more thing to Nick's last explanation is that the nice thing that the Capital One portfolio has no foreign transaction fees.

And the Citi Strata Premier doesn't either. But if you're going to expand that into things like the double cash, so you could get 2X everywhere else, that does have a foreign transaction fee. So if you spend a lot of time overseas, I think now your choices are between the Capital One collection of cards and the Altitude Reserve as your two good options there. Yeah, great point. Great point. Well, that I think ties us up for coffee break this week. If you would like to get more of this stuff in your inbox each day or each week, again, go to frequent miler.com slash subscribe to join our email list, wherever you're watching or listening, give us a thumbs up and don't forget to check out

our full length frequent miler on the air episodes dropping every Friday. Bye everybody.