Ah spring is in the air (well sorta) and all the category points cards have updated their offers for the spring season. Discover IT ® card is straight up 5% cash back (why Lisa got the card btw) for improvement stores including ones like Lowes. Hard to argue with cash back and keep in mind Lowes, and others, do sell many types of gift cards like for gas stations or if you fly SouthWest etc. that you can effectively lock in a discount and spend the gift cards over time.
Same goes for the Barclays Arrival portal. Now you cannot buy gift cards online, but if you are say planning to get a larger ticket item, like a lawn mower, why not buy it online for in store pickup and get 3x points from the portal, 2x points from the card itself, and then also when you do redeem points you are getting 10% back on points so you are net yielding 5.2% for this purchase when used for travel.
The last of the big 3 is the good old Freedom Flex card. They are also, once you activate, doing 5x points for Lowes. Now the 5x is more like 6.25% when you spend them on airfare or other things. So clearly of the 3 the highest yield is from Freedom and you can just walk in the store and buy gift cards here as well.
All three are good value and if you have home improvement things to buy, why not get max points or cash back for buying whatever. Lastly, from the Arrival portal, I did find the 2x for shopping at Walmart.com interesting as well as the JC Penny 6x one. Getting a net 8.2% from JC Penny could yield some nice rewards! – René
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I have a BoA plat card that has a 10% cashback on staples right now and 5% on Home improvement/outdorr stuff. What do you think is the best way to take advatgae of it? Staples is only selling $100 visa GCs at $6.95 which doesn’t leave a lot to pick off.
@sriki – nice – enjoy!
Are there any ways to manufacture spend for this category? I’ve always struggled to hit the $1500 cap for home improvement categories.
Look for accepted merchant codes and use the visa merchant locator website to find the stores in your locality. You might hit pay dirt or might not.