In A World of Credit Card Excess and Premium Card Fever, Maybe the Best Strategy Is the Simplest

There’s a credit card for everything these days — from fancy ‘premium’ metal cards with overwhelming benefits to simple cards with category-specific earnings. The sheer selection might tempt the personal finance-conscious to optimize. But for the average person, there’s really only one way to win the credit card game:

• A simple 2% cash back credit card with no annual fee. There’s nothing wrong with optimizing, but with so many cards, categories, and ‘coupon book’ credits, your wallet can get noisy fast.
• With a simple 2% card, you eliminate the guesswork — no stressing over what card to use, merchant MCC codes, category-specific spending, or how you’ll use your points in a more complex rewards program.

What’s 2% worth these days? It might not seem like a lot, but 2% is often good enough — especially when it saves you from the temptation to over-optimize. Virtually every bank — Fidelity, Wells Fargo, SoFi, and others — now offer an unlimited 2% credit card with no annual fee and minimal added hoops.

For hoop enthusiasts: There are some alternatives that offer more, like the 3% Robinhood Gold Credit Card (requires a $5/month subscription) or the US Bank Smartly card (requires a minimum deposit). But these come with restrictions on certain types of spending, so only you know how much effort you’re willing to put in.