My Credit Card Rewards Lineup for 2026
Credit Cards for Everything!
This post is an update to my 2022 post My Credit Card Rewards Rotation for 2022. My setup has changed quite a bit since the original post, so I wanted to lay out my current credit card setup. But first, let me reminder you of Jeff’s Rules for Credit Card Use:
- Never carry a balance on any of your daily use credit cards. Use them to get a free 30 day loan from the bank so you can keep your cash on hand. Just pay off the amount you used before the closing date and float the credit for free.
- Don’t let credit influence your purchases. Only buy what you normally buy if you had to pay with cash. It’s much easier to justify purchases when credit cards are used, so be careful!
- Use credit cards for everything! Earn rewards and enjoy the other benefits of credit card use such as purchase protection and the ability to do a chargeback if needed.
Goodbye Old Friend
My rotation has changed quite a bit since the last article. The biggest change was that I had been using the US Bank Altitude Reserve for the past couple of years. The main benefit was the 3% earning power of mobile wallet purchases. 3% is very good on its own, but the key is that the earned points could easily be redeemed at 1.5x which made the card a 4.5% earner. As always, all good things must end and US Bank took away the ability to redeem points at 1.5x as well as downgraded other benefits. I ended up cancelling the card last month since the high annual fee didn’t make sense for me any longer.
Hello New Friend
The newest card I welcomed to my portfolio this year was the Robinhood Gold card. While technically a “free” credit card, to make it work right, you need to have a $50/year Robinhood Gold membership. I think the membership is easily justifiable, especially if you are ok with moving existing IRA accounts into Robinhood. With a Gold account, they do a 1% match on assets moved over to them which could add up quickly if you have enough assets. They also do a 3% match on IRA & Roth IRA contributions and I don’t know about you, but I do like free money.
A Slight Twist on Cash Back
The main reason I went with the RH Gold card is the 3% cash back that the card gives on every purchase. It’s great for a catch-all card which normally top out at 2%. However, instead of straight cash back deposits, I am opting to move the points over to Robinhood and use their fee free trading to buy stocks, mutual funds or ETF’s. You can buy partial amounts of assets which is nice. I’ll usually move the points over once a week or so and then do a purchase using all of the earned money. Sometimes I’ll wait until the market makes a downturn and then make my purchases.
My reasoning that the $50-$100 cash back I’m earning every month doesn’t really move the needle if I just deposit back into my checking account. I’m planning on keeping the cash back earnings invested so they appreciate over time as well as earn dividends. I just got the card in October and my balance is already around $400.
A Little Simpler is Sometimes Better
In the past, my rotation was setup so that it was possible I could be using up to four cards on a daily basis. With the introduction of the Robinhood Gold card, I chose to make it much simpler and just use three daily cards:
Groceries (5% cash back)
It’s very difficult to beat 5% on this spending category. I’ve been using this card for groceries for the past few years and it’s been working great. There is a $500 monthly cap on the 5% match, but we rarely go over that so it works out perfect.
Food & Restaurants (5% cash back)
Yes, it’s possible to get multiple Custom Cash cards. You have to product change an existing account into a Custom Cash. The timing on this was great; I had a Citi Strata Premier card that I got last year for the bonus. This annual fee card is not worth keeping, so I converted it to the no fee Custom Cash card.
It can be confusing to have two different cards of the same type/brand, so what I do is I have my grocery card setup with tap to pay on my phone and I then I use the other accounts’ physical card for food and dining purchases. You need an actual card at restaurants anyway, so it works out and every grocery store I use has tap to pay. If you use Samsung Pay, you can add memos to the cards to keep your spending categories straight.
Most Everything Else / Catch All (3% cash back)
I’m a big fan of this card. The app is very modern and easy to use. It gives you the ability to easily create virtual cards and manage family spending. It’s a great choice for large monthly expenditures like insurance.
The 3% is probably not sustainable, but I’ll enjoy it while it lasts. I don’t anticipate it lasting much longer than a year, but who knows? We could be earning more on certain spending categories like 4-5% on gas using the Citi Costco card, but having a simple system is sometimes better.
Automation
I’m a big fan of automating my investments as well as recurring monthly payments.
Auto Payments
- Cell Phone (2x points) Capital One VentureX. I just use this payment method for the cell phone insurance. It’s pretty much the only thing I use this card for. I keep it for international travel and airport lounge access.
- Cable/Internet (5x points) Chase Ink Business Cash. This is a no-fee business card and 5x is pretty good on a monthly bill that just keeps going up.
