Bank of America Cash Rewards Credit Card Review: A Supporting Player in Your Credit Card Strategy

Summary

The Bank of America Cash Rewards is a choose-your-own-adventure rewards credit card that allows you to pick a bonus category each month from a set list. It also offers 15 billing cycles of 0% interest on purchases and balance transfers.

Quick Facts

  • No annual fee
  • $200 cash back bonus after you make at least $1,000 in purchases in the first 90 days of account opening
  • Earn 3% cash back in the category of your choice, 2% at grocery stores and wholesale clubs (up to $2,500 in combined choice category/grocery store/wholesale club quarterly purchases) and unlimited 1% on all other purchases
  • If you’re a Preferred Rewards member, you can earn 25% - 75% more cash back on every purchase depending on your standing
  • 0% Introductory APR for 15 billing cycles for purchases, and for any balance transfers made in the first 60 days. After the intro APR offer ends, 15.49% - 25.49% Variable APR will apply. 3% fee (min $10) applies to all balance transfers)

Pros

  • No annual fee
  • Bonus cash back offer
  • High cash back percentage for chosen category

Cons

  • 3% foreign transaction fee

Main benefits:

This card is a cash back card, so you won’t see any particular amazing benefits. The main benefit of this card is a comparitively high cash back rate of 3%~5.25% on a category of your choice. Otherwise, this card is similar to many other cards cash-back cards, offering standard visa purchase protections and a monthly FICO score estimate.

Earning cash back rewards

Considering that this card has no annual fee, the rewards are pretty good. You can choose one of six categories for your 3% bonus category.

  1. Online shopping
  2. Gas
  3. Dining
  4. Travel
  5. Drug stores
  6. Home improvement/furnishings

We think that online shopping is the best category. While using the card, we also found that online gift card purchases also count as online shopping. There were a few other surprising things that qualified for this category. Spending through the Kroger pay app available for use at Kroger stores, also counts towards the 3% bonus.

Maximizing your cash back

If you have are enrolled in Bank of America’s preferred rewards program, you your cash back rate can increase by up to 75%. This means at the highest rate, you can receive up to 5.25% for your selected bonus category, 3.5% for groceries and gas, and 1.75% for all other spending.

Other small benefits

Bank of America offers all it’s cardholder members free admission to over 225 cultural institutions across the US during the first weekend of each month. Free admission includes authorized users as well, which can give your family free admission to a museum every month. Additionally, Bank of America offers BankAmericadeals, a program that offers you small extra savings in the form of statement credits for a variety of purchases.

Is the BOA Cash Rewards card for you?

If you are rather frugal with your spending, and have a large amount of assets (20k+) with either Bank of America or Merrill Edge, this card will help you save more money. Also, this card works extremely well when combined with other category-based cash back cards like the Discover it card and the Chase Freedom card, since it well compliments the categories of the two cards.