[gonehome]

The Apple Card is a great credit card for people that aren't optimizing points for travel (most regular people).

The software is solid and Apple prevents them from reselling your data to third parties. The cash back is super easy to use and visible (and the extra percentage on Apple purchases is a nice bonus).

I have some cards I use for perks (Amex Plat/Gold, United Club, used to have Chase Sapphire Reserve) but I used the Apple Card as my sole card for a while and I kind of miss the simplicity of it. With Amex I feel like I'm fighting against an Army of Amex employees trying to make it as hard as possible for me to use the card's perks where as with Apple I feel like they're genuinely trying to make the software usable for me, the incentives are more aligned.

Every time I have to use Amex's site to 'enable' a perk and then read the fine print to make sure I actually get the benefit it makes me angry at some invisible product manager that hates customers.

[wombat-man]

Yeah, I just can't spend my time on that stuff. I got a card that just gives me 2% on everything and I'm calling it a day. no fee.

Airport lounges sound cool, my friends sometimes get a deal on travel/hotel. But they also can't use points in some situations for weird reasons. Another uses a spreadsheet to optimize his poins. I just can't devote that kind of time to that stuff.

[giarc]

The points can really be worth it though. In 2 years, over 3 cards (between my wife and I), I've racked up nearly 400,000 Aeroplan miles, which is valued somewhere around $8,400 (2.1c per mile). And this is regular spending, and pretty basic cards (AMEX Cobalt and TD Infinite). These aren't the $700+/year cards, all are $1xx/year.

[matwood]

I mostly fall into the 'set it and forget it' group. But, if you travel it can pay to add another card. Also, there's a middle ground between do nothing and track on a spreadsheet. It's pretty easy to have an Apple Card for 3% Apple things, Amazon card for 5% at Amazon, and then something like Venture X (or other travel friendly card) for everything else. One of nice things about the Venture cards is you simply book travel however you want then apply points to the purchase after the fact - no blackouts.

And since you mention lounges - if you travel 3+/year, lounges and TSA Pre/Global Entry really lower the frustration of travel.

[rabbits_2002]

2% on apple pay, 1% otherwise. So many other cards offer more cash back.

[jwells89]

It really is quite nice. If it weren’t for my SoFi credit card giving a flat 2% back on everything (which can be routed into a 4.5% savings account), my Apple Card would be my primary card. As it is it primarily gets used for Apple Pay since the cash back is the same in that circumstance as well as for Apple stuff for the 3% back.

Wouldn’t be surprised if between the two Apple will be the one to keep the perks going longest though… my hunch is that SoFi will dial theirs down once they’re done trying to aggressively grow.

Apple still beats SoFi in the UI department though. More bank/card apps should be modeled after the Apple Card page in Wallet.

[TylerE]

Amazon card is a good option. 5% cashback on Amazon purchases (and often with "no interest if paid within 12 months" type terms on stuff like TVs. 2% on gas and 1% on everything else. Cashback accrues in practically real time and is useable on 99% of products on Amazon, so it's very normal-person friendly as it doesn't require optimization of habits if you already buy a lot of stuff on the 'zon. Super simple since it just rewards flat dollars, no points or annual thresholds or loyalty programs or...

Also doesn't require the insanely good credit of the Apple card.

[meristohm]

Yikes. I know it's just an example, but how often do "normal" people buy TVs?

I gave up videogames because I didn't want to spend so much time in my head like that (I'll still gladly play tabletop games with other people, and even couch-coop videogames if I'm invited too, but I gave away my gaming PC), and I sure don't want to spend time fiddling with credit-card points games. It helps that we're mostly unhooked from "retail therapy" or whatever the term is these days.

What are the costs of cc points games? Who pays in the long run?

[criddell]

Does Amazon see your activity outside of what you spend at their store?

[FredPret]

I hate points. There's always a catch, a term and condition that excludes your desired flight, or a time limit, or a horrible website, or something stupid.

The best points are called dollars and are accepted everywhere, all the time, for any purchase.

[JohnFen]

I agree.

While I don't use cash for everything, I do actively avoid credit cards that offer any of those "perks".

[xyst]

> The software is solid and Apple prevents them from reselling your data to third parties.

We will see. The Apple Card is using the Mastercard network. Recent article came out which shows MC does their own internal processing of transaction data for their personal gain.

I have requested my data through the GDPR portal — “My Data”. In theory, there should only be data for my other MC card.

https://www.mastercard.us/public/my-data/dgr-public/personal...

I do agree. It’s a nice card for those that don’t care about the “point warfare” (most programs offer 1-3 cents per dollar spent). Side note, GS is very generous with their credit limits. My limit is reaching almost $60K at this point and I maybe use 10% of it.

The one thing I do dislike about the AC is the support. It’s so bad

[rootusrootus]

> most regular people

I'd bet that this is pretty close to 'everyone' at this point. Haven't we been reading stories on HN recently about how airline points are basically worthless these days? I wouldn't be at all surprised if that were essentially true for all travel-related points.

[mfer]

> Apple prevents them from reselling your data to third parties

Do you have a source on this? The Apple Card uses Mastercard which is known to sell data.

[resfirestar]

The privacy policy claims that MasterCard and Goldman do not sell or share transaction data from Apple Card. I’d like clarity on how this differs from any other MasterCard but that is what it says.

Source: https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/data/en/apple-card/

[giarc]

I believe the Apple card uses a different card number for each purchase, so they can't aggregate your purchasing history.

[bombcar]

It is really nice once you give up trying to min/max rewards.

And some of the issues are kind of self inflicted - the "always monthly on the nose" isn't a feature I really need, and I would actually prefer to offset that by a few days, so if they offered that as a feature I'd take advantage of it.

[sdfghswe]

So why did you stop using it?

[gonehome]

I still use it, I just started traveling way more so lounge access was nice.

Then once I had the travel cards I started using them to see if I could optimize their perks.

[paulmd]

I am very content with my alliant signature visa, as it gives 2.5% on everything, still has an extended-warranty benefit, and has no international transaction fees.

There are a few downsides, specifically (a) no contactless chip in the credit card yet, (b) need to keep $1k on deposit and have at least one monthly deposit of any kind/amount (scheduled ACH for $10) to get the 2.5% rate, otherwise it's 1.5%, (c) minimum redemption $50, and (d) ACH processing is a little slow/awkward, so you probably want to pay a bit ahead of time. And generally the UX is a little rough etc, they are a small credit union and it's not super polished, but it's functional.

But yeah I'm tired of category gimmicks/etc, they are not usually worth it anymore. BOA Signature Visa has 3% on category of choice (online purchases or home improvement being the good ones) but it's only up to $2500 in spend per quarter, and they count the non-choice categories against your total bonus, so using it for gas/groceries costs you from the theoretical maximum of $75 total bonus per quarter. And they charge international transaction fees which completely negate the online purchase bonus for anything denominated in non-USD (at least it's not charging for international transactions in USD anymore). And they really screwed up on a fraud case that took CFPB intervention to fix - it turns out, the price of my dignity is apparently $75 a quarter.

The costco card has 4% on gas, which is good (especially when I had a nearby speedway I could buy beer at), but it doesn't cash out until the next calendar year (so you can wait up to 14 months for points) so I generally don't use that except for the end of the year (I'll wait 3-4 months, I won't wait 14). But I think this is emblematic of the problem - the costco card (and many other store cards) only gives 2% even in the store, so it's worse than the alliant, on top of the onerous cashout process! Even if you have a more typical 2%-on-everything card, the costco card is pretty much strictly worse because of the cashout. I mostly got it for the 2-year extended warranty, that was the value to me, but they dropped that benefit at the start of 2022, so, it's almost useless to me now.

Notionally I could use amex or something and try to make it my primary card I guess, but I'm not a business traveler, and the alliant is just mentally easier. 2.5% on everything if you keep the $1k in the account and set up a recurring monthly $10 ach transfer, done. No international transaction fees, what you see is what you pay (plus or minus actual currency conversion, which is unavoidable). Use it as your primary card and spend $2000 and you'll cross the $50 redemption threshold every month. Is fine.

The Amazon Prime card is also very good, 5% on all amazon purchases is good enough I'll make a special point of it. If you do most of your bigbox purchases there, it adds up quick. They also have very good cash-advance offers, right now it's 4% transfer fee and 2% APY for a year - but the cash advance pays off first, and new purchases continue to accrue interest at the full rate (25% or whatever), so, you want to lock the card while you're doing a cash advance, so you are also foregoing that 5% (really, 2.5% above the alliant) from amazon purchases, but, if you're mature with it, it's great for consolidating other debt or financing things that need to be done in cash.

[tech_ken]

I'm also an overall satisfied Alliant customer. Definitely the lack of contactless chip is annoying, and I will echo that their UX could use refinement, but otherwise it's a pretty reliable card and the points are simple and easy. Fraud detection is a little hair-trigger I've found, but I have a few backup travel cards so when something unusual gets declined I can use an alternative.