Wells Fargo Active Cash® Card: Spend $500 in First 3 Months

...You can cash out any amount for a statement credit to the card (min $0.01) -- if you want a mailed check then its in $25 increments...

It is more than 2%, it is 2.65% as preferred member that I am

I have Penfed 2% cash back card on everything plus 0 foreign transaction fees which this card does not have.

So there's a couple perspectives for this-- if you're talking cards that provide some benefit to the travel itself, that's mainly the Amex Platinum card to get access to Centurion lounges... (also gets you free Priority Pass, Clear and precheck/global entry, but many other cards do too). This isn't quite as much a slam dunk as it used to be because as of early last year they no longer let you bring in free guests, but if you're travelling alone they're still (broadly speaking) the best airport lounges.

The Plat has a high annual fee, so it's not (usually) worth keeping beyond the first year- but in that first year you can get (depending how much you use/value the various credits) most or all of the annual fee back in value, plus the signup bonus which I think is like 175k points for 8k spend these days... (so $1750 to potentially several times that when used for travel).



The other perspective is best cards for earning the MR points... SUBs are, by a large margin, the best way- so you'd want to look to churn through as many as you can support with your spending (without carrying a balance or overspending)--- typically Amex SUBs are once per lifetime (though there's exceptions) so you want to tend to go for "best" offers as they come along.... For example the Amex Everyday card is only offering 10k points for a SUB right now, but it does 25k from time to time so you'd wait for that.

Once you get through all the various SUBs (which ought to be able to rack you up at least 500k points- maybe twice that if you can also do the various business SUBs- Plus a decent number of points and free night certs for Hilton with Amex, IHG with Chase, and Marriott with both Amex/Chase depending how you do it) then it'll come down to what you tend to spend the most on....

Personally I find the Chase ecosystem better here (again after you've churned through all the chase SUBs- and you actually want to do those BEFORE Amex due to 5/24) because of the 5x earning opportunities even on free cards (vs Amex where 2x on non-category is the best you can generally do without annual fees- and the "best" annual fee earner with Amex just got refreshed in a bad way)... But "normal" point earnings as I mention is very secondary to churning through SUBs so if you're starting out it'll be at least a couple years before it's a major concern...

You have to plant 100k in an account that pays almost no interest or work with Merrill Edge which is one of the worst discount brokers. Hard to justify IMHO.

For several years, I have been using Citi Double Cash back Mastercard card with 2% flat rewards. Hard to beat that card, except the point that this card doesn't offer 0% foreign transaction fees. However, recently I have moved to a Visa Signature Credit card from Alliant Credit Union, which offers 2.5% Flat cash back and also offers 0% foreign transaction fees. I have been using this card for 6+ months. I also used it recently on an international trip. It worked fine everywhere. It does need a credit Union membership, which is free. It needs an average daily balance of $1000, sign-up for e-statement and an electronic deposit (salary credit or mobile check deposit) per month. Should be fairly easy to meet that requirement. Currently this is my default card unless I get higher than 2.5% cashback on another credit card. Note: The direct deposit needs to be going to the checking account, not a savings account. The Alliant card also offers 2.5% flat cashback for the first 100 days to new credit Union members irrespective of meeting other requirements. At the end of 100 days, and thereafter every month once, it would check if eligibility requirements are met. If requirements are no longer met, cashback would drop to 1.5%.

Robinhood gold card offers unlimited 3% cashback