If the COVID-19 pandemic has taught us anything about rewarded credit cards, it’s that products can be a very lucrative bonus category. As people switched from dining out to cooking at home, food refunds began to pile up quickly.
When it comes to the best credit cards for groceries, few can compete with American Express Blue Cash Preferred® Card. The card offers an excellent cash back rate of 6% at US supermarkets (on spending up to $6,000 per calendar year, then 1%) in addition to several other attractive bonus categories.
Considering Blue Cash Preferred? Let’s take a look at the types of cardholders this popular cashback card might be ideal for.
Blue Cash Preferred: A Brief Overview
The Blue Cash Preferred bonus categories offer cashback on some of the most common spending, giving you the opportunity to earn hundreds of dollars in rewards annually.
“Grocery makes up the bulk of my budget, and I used 6% card refunds on US supermarket purchases to earn a whopping $500 in 2020,” said Emily Sherman, a former credit card expert at CreditCards.com.
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Why should you get this card? Despite the annual fee after the first year, the Blue Cash Preferred card is one of our favorite cards for families. It helps eliminate queues and long commutes by offering a generous reward rate for spending at gas stations in the US and also offers one of the highest cash back bonuses you can get using your card at US supermarkets. Read full review |
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welcome bonus
Annual fee Entry annual fee $0 for the first year, then $95. What else do you need to know
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“While this may be a controversial statement in the travel credit card game, American Express’ Blue Cash Preferred Card is my favorite credit card,” Sherman shared. “It offers cash back, which leaves less room for maximizing value-added rewards. But he offers loads of cash for the right spenders.”
Who should get Blue Cash Preferred?
It’s immediately obvious that Blue Cash Preferred is best suited for people who spend a lot on products and prefer to be rewarded in the form of cash back. Let’s take a deeper dive into which Blue Cash Preferred cardholders are best suited for.
You spend at least $260 a month on groceries
The 6% cashback you can earn with Blue Cash Preferred is capped at $6,000 per year, after which you’ll earn 1% That’s $500 monthly spending to maximize your cashback earnings.
While this may be an easy target for families, if you live alone, $500 may be too high for your monthly grocery budget. This doesn’t mean that you can’t get more out of the card, but there is also a recurring yearly fee to consider after the first year. You don’t want to just break even – you want to make enough money to make the card worthwhile.
If we consider only grocery expenses, the break-even point for this card would be $132 of monthly spending at the supermarket. But if you want to get at least twice as much cash compared to your yearly pay, you should be spending more than $262 on groceries per month.
You regularly spend in other bonus categories
If you max out the grocery category, you can get up to $360 in cash per year with Blue Cash Preferred. After the current annual fee, this amounts to $265 that you receive from the card. But as you’ve seen from Sherman’s 2020 earnings, there’s the potential to make a lot more.
Additional categories of bonuses can help you with this. Let’s say you spend about $300 a month on gas or transportation – that’s $90 in annual cashback with Blue Cash Preferred. Streaming services have also become a popular spending category during the pandemic, with an average monthly household spending of $47 in 2020. If your streaming expenses are about the same, you can get around $34 in cash per year. That’s $389 in annual rewards if you combine these two results with your maximum spend on products after payment.
Do you prefer simple cashback cards?
Getting rewarded with Blue Cash Preferred is very easy as the fixed bonus category structure is simple and you don’t have to worry about earning points or rotating bonus categories.
Refunds are also easy. You must have at least $25 to redeem and can choose between a credit statement, gift card, or merchandise purchase. For cardholders with already busy lives, you’ll appreciate the limited choices on this card.
Who should not receive Blue Cash Preferred?
Do you like to get maximum travel rewards?
On the other hand, if you’re focused on earning travel rewards and earning premium travel perks, Blue Cash Preferred might not be the right choice. Instead, you can explore American Express cards that earn Membership Rewards points.
For example,American Express® Gold Card will also generously reward you for purchasing groceries with a 4x increase in points for purchases in US supermarkets (on purchases up to $25,000 in a calendar year, then 1x), and you can use rewards for airline tickets at great prices.
You consistently spend over $6,000 on groceries per year
In its April 2022 report, the USDA estimated the monthly cost of food for a family of four at about $917 (inflation-adjusted according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Price Index). This means that the annual product spending is around $11,000, well above the $6,000 limit for Blue Cash Preferred.
For families with rapidly growing children, especially if you have more than two children, Blue Cash Preferred won’t reward you enough to make it worth it. In this case, we recommend that you apply for a card with no food spending limit, or at least a much higher limit.
bottom line
When it comes to cashback, American Express Blue Cash Preferred is one of the best cashback credit cards on the market. It has a simple reward structure and can be very lucrative for the right cardholder.
If you have determined that Blue Cash Preferred is the right option for you, now may be the best time to apply. The card currently comes with a $300 welcome credit offer after you spend $3,000 on purchases within the first six months.
Check out CardMatch to see if your card will be approved – this can be checked for free and won’t affect your credit score.
Editorial disclaimer
The editorial content on this page is based solely on the objective judgment of our contributors and is not based on advertising. It was not provided or ordered by credit card issuers. However, we may receive compensation when you click on links to our partners’ products.
