CashFreely Best Offers
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We rank the cards below based on the overall cash value for a beginner. Some of these cards earn travel rewards, but we are ranking them based on their cash value. Check out our sister site Travel Freely if you are looking for travel rewards.
If you don't know anything about traveling for free, you need to know this: Sign-up bonuses are the #1 way to rack up points without traveling or spending a lot of money. Some people get more rewards in one bonus than they would in an entire year’s worth of spending on the same old card they’ve had for 5 years.
Please note: You can support Cash Freely by using our partner links when you sign up for a card, which may earn us a commission. See full advertising disclosure below. If there’s a better link we can offer that will not earn commission, we will always post the better offer. I hope that earns your respect and trust over time.
There are several factors that go into our rankings. It's important to know that we rank our cards with our average user in mind. So if you are an expert with cash back, you probably have your own system and don't need our recommendations anyway.
Here is the criteria we use:
- Value of Sign-up Bonuses - CashFreely seeks to maximize sign-up bonuses, so if great sign-up bonus offers come out, those cards will move up in the rankings.
- Bonus spending requirement- We rank cards lower that require major spending as part of sign-up bonus. We consider major spending to be $7,500 or more in a 3 month period. We would recommend hitting the first bonus, and then moving on to another card that will get you more cash back with less spending.
- Annual Fee - No one likes to pay annual fees, but many are worth paying for the overall value. That said, we normally lower the rankings of cards with annual fees over $100 because the average CashFreely member does not want to pay a higher fee.
- Intangibles - Factors such as customer service and ease-of-use can be hard to value but very important. If there’s a card that earns a bit more cash back but the bank is a huge pain to deal with, then we will weigh that as a factor. Also, some cards are harder to get approved than others. This may play a role in the rankings as we hear back from members’ experiences.