As I’ve mentioned before, I generally prefer cards that earn transferrable points, rather than straight cashback because points can provide outsized value, compared to cashback. Many people, however, understandably prefer straight cashback because of its simplicity and because it can immediately reduce a credit card bill. I’ve previously talked about the Blue Cash Everyday card, which was my first Amex card 5 years ago. The annual fee version of this card is the Blue Cash Everyday Preferred, which has a $95 annual fee, like the EveryDay Preferred card. The question immediately is if the additional cashback can offset the $95 annual fee. The annual fee is worth it if you can get more than $95 more value out of the card than you can with the Blue Cash Everyday card.
Welcome Offer
At the time of posting, the Amex Blue Cash Everyday card has a welcome offer of $300 cashback after spending $3 000 in 6 months. This offer is $50 more than the no annual fee version in exchange for spending $1 000 more in 6 months. I’m not particularly impressed by that offer, but in the immediate term, that covers $50 of the $95, but only in the first year.
Earnings
Like many Amex cards, the Blue Cash Preferred has a three tiered earning structure: 6% at US grocery stores (up to $6 000/year), 6% on streaming services, 3% at US gas stations and on transit (e.g. Taxi/Uber, tolls, buses, and trains), and 1% on everything else. Compared directly to the Blue Cash Everday, the card offers an additional 3% at US grocery stores (with the same $6 000/year limit), and an additional 1% at US gas stations. The addition of the streaming services and transit categories are relatively new. They make the card more interesting, but streaming services are unlikely to be a large spend category, but transit could be, depending on your spending habits.
If you spend at least $264/month on average at US grocery stores, you will net $190.08 of cashback, which is $95.04 more than you’d get with the Blue Cash Everyday. That’s a very substantial amount of cashback for not an unreasonable threshold to hit.
Benefits
Beyond the cashback that the card earns, the card also offers a $10/month Equinox+ credit. If you already pay for Equinox+, the credit offered by the card more than offsets its annual fee before any money is even spent on it. Like all Amex cards, the card also offers access to Amex offers, which can often represent excellent value if used well.
How to use the cashback
The cashback can be redeemed as a statement credit. That’s it. Since it doesn’t earn points, you can’t actually use Amex Travel unless you have a second Amex card that does earn points.
Examples of using the card
For consistency with the other card pages, the second category instead of points earned is ‘cents earned’.
| Example A | Example B | Example C | Example D | |||||
| Groceries (6%) | $300 | 1 800 | $200 | 1 200 | $600* | 3 100 | $400 | 2 400 |
| Gas (3%) | $0 | 0 | $100 | 300 | $200 | 600 | $100 | 300 |
| Airfare (1%) | $700 | 700 | $200 | 200 | $0 | 0 | $400 | 400 |
| Hotels (1%) | $1 000 | 1 000 | $200 | 200 | $0 | 0 | $300 | 300 |
| Gen Travel (1% or 3%) | $400 | 600 | $0 | 0 | $300 | 900 | $100 | 300 |
| Dining (1%) | $600 | 600 | $300 | 300 | $300 | 300 | $0 | 0 |
| General (1%) | $1 000 | 1 000 | $500 | 500 | $500 | 500 | $400 | 400 |
| Total | $4 000 | 5 700 | $1 500 | 2 700 | $1 700 | 5 400 | $1 700 | 4 100 |
| Average cashback/$ | 1.43 | 1.8 | 3.0 | 2.41 | ||||
| (Blue Cash Everyday) | (1.15) | (1.33) | (1.94) | (1.53) |
*With this high of monthly grocery spending, the groceries category actually gets maxed out; this is reflected in the total ‘cents earned’ as a loss of 500 ¢/month.
The Blue Cash Everyday’s big (but specific) bonus categories means that the average cashback earned is 1.43 – 3.0 ¢/$, which is excellent.
Specific examples
| Card | World Traveller ($750) (% return) | Marriott Hotel night ($230/night) | Points values (WT/Hotel) |
| No rewards card | 2 728 (4.9%) | 2 200 MP (7.3%) | $37.10 / $17.60 |
| Blue Cash Preferred | 2 728 + $7.50 (5.9%) | 2 200 MP + $2.30 (8.3%) | $44.60 / $19.90 |
| Chase Sapphire Preferred | 2 728 Avios + 1 500 UR (7.9%) | 2 200 MP + 460 UR (10.3%) | $59.60 / $24.50 |
| Amex Green Card | 2 728 Avios + 2 250 MR (9.1%) | 2 200 MP + 690 MR (11.5%) | $68.60 / $27.26 |
Is this credit card right for you?
For travel/dining heavy budgets, this card is not the best fit. However, for anyone that spends a lot at grocery stores and drives a lot, this card is excellent. It has the best cashback at grocery stores that I’ve seen on a card, and I think the monthly spend threshold required for this card to give more value than the no annual fee version is very reasonable. For grocery store spending, given the choice between this card at 6% cashback and the Gold Card at 4x points/$, I think the Blue Cash Preferred is superior if you don’t value the benefits of the Amex MembershipRewards eco-system.
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