Yes, I have the citi double cash as well. 1% when you buy and 1% when you pay it off. It use to be my catch all for things like auto repair where there are no specific cash back cards in those categories. Ever since I got the Robinhood Gold, my Citi double cash just sits with no transactions. I've never actually closed out a credit card. WF at 2% cash back on everything is almost as good as it gets.

Hmm - what's the Robinhood Gold? Thats a new one for me. I should look it up.

You have to have Robinhood account with the gold membership which is 50$ a year. I'm not sure how many cards they have given out but I know there is a very big waiting list. For me, I already used Robinhood as my brokerage account and I was a gold member so as a credit card guy, I applied and got selected for it a month after it was announced. It probably had to do with all my investments being in Robinhood and that I applied early. Unfortunately, you can just apply and get the card like every other one. However, you get 3% cash back on everything that can go straight into your brokerage account.

However, I kow people are against Robinhood just like I'm against Wells Fargo because Robinhood did some wild o stuff were they locked all our accounts from buying/selling when the AMC and Gamestop stock was going nuts. Unfortunately for me, I never purchased any AMC or Gamestop. Being a very conservative person, I've stuck to the major stocks that follow the SMP 500.

Also, people have been on the Robinhood Gold waiting list since it came out so I believe they are not wanting everyone to have it but you have to have some investment in Robinhood. I also own 500 shares of Robinhood stock so maybe that's why I was selected so early

That makes sense. I don't currently invest (meaning I don't invest outside of standard things like 401k, of course) as my primary focus is keeping non-401k related cash savings secure in low-risk interest bearing accounts so that it can be a far more sizeable downpayment on a home than 20% due to current interest rates / job insecurity in current times.

Ill keep that in mind for the future though -- never against investing when I have money I can risk -- and if it comes with a 3% no-questions-asked card too, that's more of a bonus.

Thanks for the great convo and info!

This post was edited by CyrusTheGreat on Nov 18 2025 04:43pm

If you really want to play it safe you can keep your $ in Robinhood and with gold they give you 3.5% on uninvested cash and there’s no CD so you can withdraw at anytime and it’ll be available if you wanted if/when the market crashes.

That's kind of how I currently do it - just the bank I currently use offers 4.2% interest on the full savings balance as long as you deposit a minimum of $250 a month.

It's not terrible actually - nets about $230-$240 a month in interest and there's no fees (plus I can get money at any ATM no matter the ATM customer usage charge- no limit, they'll cover it and I only pay what I withdrew).

It has it's perks even though the true "payout" is limited and I haven't found a better option as safe as this / FDIC insured out there in quite a bit

This post was edited by CyrusTheGreat on Nov 18 2025 04:57pm

Exactly that's a great advantage of the Robinhood Gold card. You use that uninvested cash to pay off the card as well as the cash back goes right into the uninvested cash account. Also they love to do promotions. For example, they are giving me 4% for 60 days instead of 3.5% of my uninvested cash because I put 5k in my account at one time.

Sorry I failed to mention in the beginning of the post because I was just seeing what credit cards were out there and if I'm getting too many, 16 of them, but never take on debt you can't afford and pay your credit cards in full every month. I actually log in to all my accounts every Monday and fill out my budgeting spread sheet to see what my family has spent our money on.

4.2% is great. I know he mentioned CD which is kind of older accounts but you should always establish a beat egg. 10k, 50k, 100k...what it would take for you to get back on your feet if a major life changing event happened and invest that into an account like your talking about. 4.2% interest is top tier.

Agreed - before I ever move to buy a house I will retain a minimum of $10k in savings for emergencies and then rebuild from there.

Absolutely never buy a house without a cushion - especially since there will always be minor-moderate things that need to be addressed after move-in (and that's completely separate from any major things your inspector "missed")

In the meantime - the credit card rewards game definitely pays it's dividends if done right and if anyone learns something good from our discussions, even better

Edit:

The bank I speak of is LendingClub regarding up to 4.2% interest if anyone is wondering.

*DISCLAIMER: I have absolutely no affiliation with this bank other than as a regular customer just like everyone else - this is just the best interest rate without limits (i.e. those 5%+ accounts that only will give it on up to $1000 etc.) that I've found in a long time so I am just knowledge sharing.

This post was edited by CyrusTheGreat on Nov 18 2025 06:07pm