Quote from samtihen : Citi MasterCard 5% Back on Gas, Groceries, and Drugs Citi® Dividend Platinum Select® Card [citibank.com] Citi® Dividend Platinum Select® Card for College Students [citibank.com] These are the best cards I can find. There is no annual fee on either card. You get 5% back (confirmed, for as long as you have the account) from purchases from all grocery stores (I haven't tried Wal-Mart yet), all gas stations, and all drug stores. All other stores get 1% back. The APR is reasonable (0% for 6 months, then 13.99%), but I pay it off every month so I don't really care about that. Online access is quick, free, and easy, however I prefer Chase's interface better. You can pay online (same day for free). In addition, it works perfectly with Bank of America's bill pay system, and I assume most others. I am a student, and I have basically no income, and my credit limit is 4,000. Fraud liability is $0, and you can have a photo put on your card. The card looks nice (grey with silver). Overall, this card has no noticeable flaws in my opinion. Check them out! Edited to add: Chase Profit 3% Back on Restaurants Chase Profit [chasecreditcard.com] This is a new card I learned about on this thread. I plan to use it to supplement my Citi Dividend Card. No annual fee, etc. It’s all good.

This is a follow up to previous post, but felt it deserved its own thread.

After reading a couple of the posts and comparing "Airline" cards vs "Rewards" cards, I have come to the conclusion that airline cards are a rip. Let me explain, I just bought 2 tickets from Raleigh - Colorado for $650 (which i thought was a pretty good deal). If I had a FF card and used the miles, it would have cost 50k FF miles (25K for domestic flights is pretty customary). With the exception of sign on bonus miles, you get 1 mile for every $1 spent. So, $50K spent would have gotten me a free flight worth $650, which equates to 1.3% return.

After looking at my expenses from last month, 23% of my purchases were Groceryies/Gas/Drugs, which I would get at the 5% perk. This equates to (I think) an average return of 1.92%, or .62% higher than the FF card (which also charges an annual fee which I didn't factor in).

Some more calculations:

RDU-Paris cost (Orbitz) = $1,000
FF Points = 80k (off-peak) or 120k
% = 1.25 or .83

RDU-Tokyo (orbitz) = $1700
FF Point = 100k (off-peak) or 130k
% = 1.7 or 1.3

Has anyone found an Airline card that can compete with this 5%/1% card.