Golden 1 Credit Union 3% Cash Back Card On Grocery, Gas & Restaurants Now Pays Monthly

Golden 1 Credit Union offers a platinum rewards credit card. We’ve written a full review on this card before, but here are the highlights for those who have not read that review:

• Annual Fee:  None
• 3% Cash Back Categories: Grocery, Gas and Restaurants.
• 1% Categories: Everything else.
• Credit Line: Up to $50,000.

Now there are cards that will earn at a higher rate on gas purchases with no spending cap. But 3% cash back on Restaurants is the best out there now (depending on how much you value flexible points at). There are cards that earn 5% (or even 6%) cash back on grocery store purchases, but all of these have spending caps. Grocery stores are typically one of the easiest categories to generate spend in, because so many of them sell $500 gift cards.

This makes this card a very attractive option, in the past the problem with this card was that the cash back you earned was only paid out once per year (similar to the new Discover it Miles card). I can now report that this has changed and the cash back you earn will be paid out monthly.

The cash back that you earn is automatically transferred to your savings account with Golden 1 and it doesn’t look like there is a minimum you need to earn to be eligible to get your cash back.

Issues

There are still a number of issues relating to this card though.

• They are ChexSystems inquiry sensitive. This means if you’ve been signing up for lots of bank account bonuses, you’ll struggle to be approved for membership.
• Not all states are eligible. You need to live in California to join without any fee, if you live outside of California then you need to join Financial Fitness Association (and pay $5) to be able to join. Even then, not all states are eligible. Your best bet is to call them first.
• They do a hard pull with Equifax just to join. This is not all that unusual and it looks like they will combine this joining hard pull with the hard pull they do when you apply for a credit card.
• They are strict on credit card requirements. A lot of people have been told they want six months of activity on the checking account before being approved for the credit card. This is similar to what Wells Fargo has been doing with their credit card products.

Personally I am not bothering with this card at the moment because of the above mentioned issues. I still have enough cards to cycle through that spending caps aren’t really a big issue at the moment. I’ll probably sign up for the credit union soon so I can start building some history, but I’m not really in any rush to get the credit card.

Another option is the consumers credit union card which also offers 3% cash back on grocery stores, although you can only earn a maximum of $6,000 cash back ($200,000 in spend). The advantage is that this card has a $100 sign up bonus and also offers a rewards checking account that offers a 5%+ APY.

Hat tip to weehoo from myFICO forums