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Discover IT and Chase Freedom both offer 5% cash-back categories, on up to $1,500 of spend. These categories switch quarterly.
They recently released the details of the coming 2015 year categories.
Discover
Here’s the Discover categories:
Let’s compare that to the 2014 categories:
Q1 2015 is “Gas and Ground Transportation”. I’m excited about the gas, since you can often find gift cards at gas stations and at 7-Eleven, see Does Discover Count 7-Eleven as a Gas Station. They also added ground transportation to the category, which should mean things like Amtrak and Greyhound tickets, and possibly taxis/Uber.
Q2 2015 is “Food and Fun”, which will probably include restaurants and some entertainment venues. Q2 2014 was home improvement and furniture.
Q3 2015 is “Summer Spruce” which will mean things like home-improvement and the like. Q3 2014 was gas stations.
Q4 2015 is “Holiday Shopping”, which sounds the same as its been in the past. This will probably include online shopping and department stores, as in 2014.
Chase Freedom
We only have info on Q1 Freedom. I haven’t found a direct link, but from what I’ve read (link, link)Â Q1 will include:
- Grocery stores (excluding Walmart and Target)
- Starbucks
- Movie theaters
This is great news, since in 2014 Chase did not have grocery stores as a category. Grocery stores are places we go anyway, and a great place to stock up on $500 Visa gift cards.
Here’s a look at what we had with Freedom in 2014:
Basically, Chase kept the movie theaters and Starbucks the same in Q1 2015 as in 2014, and they just changed the gas for groceries. Both of these are great categories, but grocery stores are a little easier to cash out on.
Citi Dividend
Citi Dividend also has rotating categories, but they haven’t released their 2015 categories. Hopefully, they’ll have drugstores for Q1 2015 like they had for Q1 2014. Drugstores, of course, are stocked with gift cards, which makes it an easy category to cash out on.
Benificial note: Citi Dividend caps us at $300 reward dollars per year, but they don’t give the quarterly cap of $1,500 spend/$75 rewards per quarter. So if you find a particularly useful quarter, such as drugstores, you can spend a full $6,000 in that category during that quarter, and you’ll get a full $300 from that quarter alone.
