Best Credit Card for High Income Earners

[I Find This Humerus]

Any good cards out there specifically for high income earners that gives you nice perks?

 

I personally don't travel much so don't care for flyer miles.

[Ryan]

I like my 2% cash back card from Fidelity. It requires a free checking account with Fidelity (no fees, free checks, free ATM rebates, no ability to make cash deposits), and automatically deposits cashback into that account. It auto debits that checking account on the statement due date.

[jhwkr542]

I just use citi's 2% cash back card.  It's a good all use card.  You just get the money as a deposit or statement credit.  I don't want to have a billion cards to manage.

[Hank]

Typically you don’t have cards for high earners, you have cards for high spenders.

Buying something you otherwise wouldn’t in order to get 2% or 2.5% back doesn’t seem like a winning strategy.

Fat Wallet used to be the go-to place for credit card deals until the website shut down. Some of the former Fat Wallet forum users are at https://www.fragiledeal.com now.

[Lithium]

doctorofcredit.com is the new site for credit card deals.

I do BoA's cash rewards card for groceries, Chase Sapphire Reserved for travel and restaurants (will need to cancel when the $450 annual fee is due), Chase Freedom for the 5% categories, and Citi DoubleCash for everything else.

[Physiciancouple.com]

We use Alliant CU’s credit card. 3% back on everything the first year, then 2.5% back going forward. I think the annual fee is $50 or so. We run everything we can through it from kids’ preschool tuition to utilities. We will get back $3,000 or so this year. Well worth the bit of hassle to set up an account with them.

If only we could pay our stud loans with it!

[NaOH]

.

[Kamban]

I am not a guy who opens and closes credit cards just to earn airline miles or other points.

I have Capital one Spark Business that has no fees and has no transaction fees for international purchases. Works very well. I have Costco Citi card.

I also have Chase Sapphire Reserve card which I opened when it gave 100k points. It has $450 annual fee but gives back $300 in travel use ( which I always qualify), 3x points on travel related purchases and usual perks like coverage when renting a car etc. Is it worth the additional $150? I am not sure but since it is in the name of my business, it stings less. When I retire I might not keep it any more. It also gives $100 for Global entry fees and has no foreign transaction fees.

I know you don't care about travel but this info might be useful for others.

[Lithium]

After I cancel CSR, I will just use my BoA Travel Rewards card for restaurants and travel.  It pays 2.625% back in cash on everything, but the catch is you have to be in the Platinum Tier of Merrill Edge's Preferred Rewards to qualify for that reward rate.  Actually, I probably should be using it in place of my Citi Double Cash card currently now that I think about it.

[TheGipper]

Lithium wrote:

After I cancel CSR, I will just use my BoA Travel Rewards card for restaurants and travel.  It pays 2.625% back in cash on everything, but the catch is you have to be in the Platinum Tier of Merrill Edge’s Preferred Rewards to qualify for that reward rate.  Actually, I probably should be using it in place of my Citi Double Cash card currently now that I think about it.

Click to expand...

You first have to decide if you're a travel points or cash back kind of person.  I prefer no hastle cash back, preferably automatically applied as a statement credit (and also tax free!).

I think right now the BoA Travel Rewards card (2.625% unlimited cash back card for preferred clients), BoA Cash rewards (3.5% groceries, 5.25% gas if preferred status) and the BoA Premiere rewards card ($99 annual fee version with other perks and categories, ie restaurants) are the best on the market.  I am not eligible for the discontinued 2.5% USAA card.

Only catch is to be BoA platinum preferred you need to hold a running average of 100k in BoA checking, savings, or Merrill Edge.  Merrill Edge works well with no commissions and can hold Vanguard ETFs or pretty much anything else you want.  Could also satisfy the requirement by transfering a Roth to them.

Our current card lineup is:

1) BoA Travel Rewards (2.625% cash back workhorse card)

2) BoA Cash Rewards (5.25% gas, 3.5% groceries with $2500 quarterly cap)

3) Amex Simply Cash Business Card (3% restaurants, 5% cell phone, 5% office supply stores (which can get you 5% off on many gift cards to apply to other things)

4) Amazon Prime Card:  5% off all Amazon spending. Just load it on Amazon account and forget about it.

5) Jet Blue Plus Card (we do 90% of our travel with jet blue who allows family pooling of points and recently (?still running) had a 60,000 sign up bonus ($840).  I am not a card churner and don't usually bother with other sign up offers.

At some point I will probably consolidate the Travel Rewards and Amex Simply Cash to the BoA Premiere Rewards Card.  Some big grocery spenders may find the Amex Blue Cash annual fee card to be worth a look.

Later when I retire and travel more I'll look to consolidate to one of the high annual fee premiere travel cards (Chase Sapphire Reserve, Citi Prestige, Amex Platinum etc..).

[I Find This Humerus]

Hank wrote:

Typically you don’t have cards for high earners, you have cards for high spenders.

Buying something you otherwise wouldn’t in order to get 2% or 2.5% back doesn’t seem like a winning strategy.

Fat Wallet used to be the go-to place for credit card deals until the website shut down. Some of the former Fat Wallet forum users are at https://www.fragiledeal.com now.

Click to expand...

Why did it shut down?

[cgossage]

Chase Saphire Reserve or Starwood Preferred Guest Amex are my go-to's.

[Hank]

They got bought out and shut down. Their corporate parent also owned ebates.com and wanted to shift traffic there.

The Fat Wallet forums were collateral damage.

[janettebournes]

We used to play the churn game until fraudulent charges started popping up more frequently

We opt for simplicity now and funnel the vast majority of our spend onto an Amex Platinum card

- we like Amex's customer support which always sides with the customer first

- MR redemptions can be incredibly valuable if you utilize them on first class international travel (we also don't travel often but like to do so in style on the rare occasions we do travel internationally)

- my husband still foolishly hopes we will one day qualify for Centurion status but there's no way I would allow our annual spend to get anywhere close to qualification levels

[MPMD]

Kamban wrote:

I am not a guy who opens and closes credit cards just to earn airline miles or other points.

I have Capital one Spark Business that has no fees and has no transaction fees for international purchases. Works very well. I have Costco Citi card.

I also have Chase Sapphire Reserve card which I opened when it gave 100k points. It has $450 annual fee but gives back $300 in travel use ( which I always qualify), 3x points on travel related purchases and usual perks like coverage when renting a car etc. Is it worth the additional $150? I am not sure but since it is in the name of my business, it stings less. When I retire I might not keep it any more. It also gives $100 for Global entry fees and has no foreign transaction fees.

I know you don’t care about travel but this info might be useful for others.

Click to expand...

that's correct and offsets the fee if you do much travel at all.

will also get you into international lounges which we've used in Chicago (only terminal 5), London, and I think Copenhagen. really diminishes the pain of international travel imho.

we pretty much run our budget through the Reserve. generally amounts to international flights for the both of us with a bit left over. last year we did like 6 days in Ireland basically just on points.

one of my experiments for 2018 whenever my wife lets me do it is to put us on all cash for a few months and see how much less we spend. i'm guessing it would be fairly drastic.