What’s In My Wallet Now?
Part 2
Hint: Two Surprises
By Robert McGarvey
The rethink I never saw coming continues to unfold in my wallet. And new cards have joined the party.
Of course, for years, I have thought Amex – Platinum in particular – had the starring role in my pocket. Regular readers will recall that as I bemoaned the lack of travel related perks in the Covid era – and they have been the main attraction for Platinum – I found myself making dramatically more use of the Amazon Prime card, which delivers 5% rewards on purchases at Amazon and Whole Foods, and also Discover, which offers a rotating cast of 5% cashback rewards. Presently it is on groceries and chain drug stores.
Amex meantime has rolled out new Plat rewards, notably a $30/monthly refund of PayPal purchases funded with the card, and there is a continuing $15/monthly credit on Uber and Uber Eats. Of course I shifted Netflix and the NY Times to PayPal and that’s a quick $30 in my pocket.
But as I feasted on different rewards I got hungry for more and new in my wallet is the Venmo Credit Card. What’s Venmo? A cool person to person payment service owned by PayPal, Venmo moved $100 billion in 2019 and it is fantastically popular with Gen Z (people ages 6 to 24). I signed up a few years ago because it works to send gifts to young relatives (some of whom don’t know what a paper check is).
It’s a good thing I did because I have a multi-year track record with Venmo. And when I heard about the new Venmo credit card, I wanted one.
Right now it is open only to a limited audience, and only via the Venmo mobile app, and when I checked, I discovered I was eligible to apply. So I did.
Why? It’s fee free and it pays cashback – 3% on your largest purchase category, 2% on the next largest, 1% on everything else. I see no caps on spending amounts. (Discover, by contrast, caps a 5% category spend at $1500, meaning $75 back.)
The percentages are dynamic. They will shift as your spending shifts.
We’ll see how much I use the Venmo card but, in principle, I like it because as I spend I earn a few dollars in rewards. Sure, I know there may be cashback cards with richer rewards, but remember Venmo is on point for me, in part because I have written about it before and probably will again. It’s a company I follow.
You want one? Download the Venmo app, from the Apple or Google app store, sign up for a new account and keep checking the app. You may see an invitation to apply.
But now I am on a roll of new cards and also in my wallet is Lili, a new mobile bank card that bills itself as the ideal card for gig economy workers (meaning me). And one afternoon, in under three minutes, I opened the account and funded it.
Partly I did that because in my other life I talk and write a lot about credit unions in particular and financial services in general (remember my tracking Venmo) – and a continuing obstacle in the digital transformation of credit unions has been a slowness to embrace online and mobile account opening. Often a new account means a visit to a branch and that is just so 1950.
When I saw Lili’s promise that a new account could be mine in under three minutes I had to take the plunge – and, voila, it worked. Interested in signing up? Go here.
Lili is free and it provides a free checking account, a Visa business debit card, and expense reports that make tax filing easier.
And the Visa business debit card also is a boom to tax filing. Just use it only for tax deductible expenses and that saves time right there.
OK, by now you are probably guessing that because I no longer have any interest in counting my air miles (what miles?) I have time on my hands and I am putting it to use playing with new credit and debit cards.
I cannot dispute that. Nor can I dispute that I now occasionally read geeky credit card advice articles on the Points Guy that I never would have spent a second on a year ago.
But, you know, saving money by using the right credit card is proving to be fun – and it is a lot easier than I had thought. And yet I still goof with inattention. I picked up a $6 prescription at Walgreens this a.m and paid with the Amazon Prime card (1% rewards). But I should have paid with Discover and gotten this month’s 5% reward. That’s 30 cents versus 6 cents.
It adds up, my mother used to tell me, and, yes, I ignored her. But now she’d be proud of me.