The Discover Open Road credit card, as the name suggests, is for those credit cardholders who want to get cash back on gas. Who isn’t looking for a good gas rewards card with the high gas prices we’re seeing these days?

Unfortunately, as gas prices have risen, the cash back rates on gas cards have fallen across the industry and the Discover Open Road card was hit as well.  Even though it’s not as easy as it used to be to earn as much cash back on gas purchases - if used correctly the Open Road card rebates can still pay off.

Spending Rebates
The Open Road card gives you 2% back on gas and restaurant purchases, as well as 1% cash back on other purchases once you’ve met the annual spending tier.  However, there is a monthly cap on earnings, we’ll talk about the spending tier and monthly cap in a minute.

The upside to the Discover Open Road card is that you can begin earning double cash back immediately on gas and eating out so it works even if you’re a low spender.  There’s no yearly limit on rebates and your rebates do not expire. You can also trade in your rebates for double Cashback Bonus with Discover partner merchants, like you can with the Discover More and Discover Miles cards.

To qualify for the gas rebate your purchases must be made at merchants classified as gas stations.  You won’t get the gas rebate if you buy fuel at warehouse club.  In terms of eating out, it’s considered a restaurant purchase if it falls under the classification of fast food, cafeterias, cafes, and formal restaurants.

Downside to the Open Road
The drawbacks to the Open Road card are the two I mentioned above, the monthly cap and the annual spending tier.

Open Road pays you 2% cashback on the first $250 you spend on fuel and eating out each month.  Once you hit that monthly cap, your gas purchases earn anywhere from .25% to 1% cash rebate.  If you’re wondering where the .25% comes from, it’s based on the annual spending tier.  Purchases on your card that aren’t for gas or restaurants earn .25% cash back until you’ve spent $3,000 for the year. Once you crosss that tier, all non-gas/restaurant spending earns you 1% cashback.

Since there are other rewards cards where you can earn higher cash rebates than .25% on your spending, this doesn’t make the Open Road card ideal for purchases other than gas.  However, if you use this card just for gasoline then you can earn some decent cash rewards.

Open Road Fees and APR
For a rebate card, the Discover Open Road card has a realitively competitive APR, with a 0% introductory offer for both purchases and balance transfers. Pay attention to the table at the bottom of this article for exact information on current offers.  Another nice thing about the card is that it doesn’t charge you an annual fee – so you can earn rewards without paying.

Credit Card Balances
The Open Road card is most recommended to applicants with good credit or better who are most likely to secure the card’s lower rate. The card does use the two-cycle balance to calculate finance charges, which is more expensive than calculating based on average daily balance. Because of that it’s best for people who choose not to carry a balance on their cards.

How to Use the Open Road Card
The wisest way to use this card is purely for gas and restaurant expenses, because if you use the card for general purchases, your cash back rebates won’t be as high.  It’s probably easiest to use it just for gas, once you’ve spent your $250 for the month you can switch over to one of the other top gas rewards cards or cash back cards.

The Chase Freedom(SM) Credit Card is one of the better rewards credit cards available. While most rewards cards offer one or two percent in cash back rewards, the Freedom card offers 5% cash back or 5 points per dollar on gas, entertainment, groceries, airlines, department stores, and other things that make up your seasonal purchases. This is what makes the Chase Freedom card especially good for cardholders: you earn back more on those purchases you make.

5% Cash Back Schedule

The way that this rewards program works is that you receive the 5% cash back rewards in rotating categories that change every three months. Here’s the cash back schedule for the Chase Freedom rewards card for the rest of 2012:

• January – March: Gas stations & Amazon.com
• April – June: Grocery stores & Movie theaters
• July – September: Gas stations & Restaurants
• October-December: Hotels, Airlines, Best Buy, & Kohl’s

One thing to note about this schedule is that Chase Freedom tries to offer you the most cash back on the items that you are especially likely to buy in a particular season. For example, there are gas rewards in the summer when people tend to drive most and shopping rewards as well as travel rewards during the winter holidays.

Some people actually use this card in conjunction with other rewards cards, and only put purchases on the Freedom card that are earning the bonus.  Of course, the downside of this approach is that you have to keep track of the categories and juggle mutiple cards. 

This approach can help to maximize the amount you get back but to me it’s more work than it’s worth.  It really depends on how much you spend on your card and how easy it is for you to keep track of the bonus categories.  You also have to keep in mind that if you open too many cards it can negatively impact your credit score.

Chase Cash Back

You will earn 1% cash back rewards on all purchases you make that don’t fall into one of the seasonal categories, which means you get a 1% rebate for each $1 of purchases.

Also, as part of the Ultimate Rewards program, Chase has a trip planner where you can search for flights, hotels, and rental cars. The functionality is okay, they let you filter by price, schedule, city, etc – like most major travel sites. If you book and pay for travel using the site you earn an extra point for every dollar you spend.

You won’t earn cash back for transactions on your card that aren’t purchases. For example if you do a balance transfer or something like a cash advance don’t expect to be earn any rewards since Chase doesn’t credit them on that type of activity.

Bonus Cash Back for Online Shopping

Chase has an online shopping tool that allows you to search for even better cash back deals when making online purchases with select retailers. It is possible to earn up to an additional 10% cash back on the purchases that are made through this online shopping tool.

Cash Back Bonus Offers

Chase Freedom somtimes offers the opportunity to earn an additional cash back when you first start using the card. You just need to spend a certain amount within the first three months of opening the card and then that money is available for you to redeem. For example, for their $100 bonus offer, if you put $500 on the card during the first 3 billing cycles then they put a credit on your card for $100.

Redeeming Cash Back Rewards

It is possible to start redeeming your rewards for cash as soon as you’ve earned the low amount of just $20 (and you can then continue redeeming in $20 increments). However, there are also other ways that you can redeem these rewards:

• Pay yourself back using the cash back that you’ve earned to pay for a recent purchase on the card
• Get gift cards with your cash back rewards
• Redeem for travel rewards with no blackout dates or restrictions
• Exchange the cash for points and redeem the points for merchandise

Flexible Repayment with Chase Blueprint

Chase Freedom is one of the cards that is part of the Chase Blueprint program, a program designed to allow you many different repayment options for your spending. Those repayment options include:

• Full payment each month in specific spending categories that you select so that you never pay interest on items purchased in those categories
• Set a goal date for when you want to pay off a large purchase and split the payments evenly until that date
• Set a monthly amount that you wish to pay on a large purchase until the item is paid off
• Set a target date and create a plan for paying off an entire balance

The Chase Blueprint program is free and is linked to your online Chase account. You can make changes to your payment plan at any time.

Chase Freedom Fees

There is no annual fee for the card and a relatively low APR compared to other cash back cards. Chase Freedom does occasionally offer introductory 0% APR on balance transfers as well as purchases; see the chart below for more details.  

Gas Rewards & Gas Prices

Sadly, gas credit cards and the rewards you can earn from them may be the only good thing about the rising price of gas.  Although earning cash back on your card doesn’t bring back cheap gas it at least takes a bite out of more expensive fill ups.  Choosing the right gas card for your spending patterns can help stretch that cash back a little farther.

Cash Rewards and Interest Rates

One important point is that using a credit card for gas purchases and carrying a balace on it will wipe out any rewards you earn on your purchases. If you really want your gas credit card to make a dent in your gas costs make sure you don’t end up paying interest on your purchases.

If you find yourself putting all your purchases on one credit card, along with your gas, and can’t afford to pay it off each month – you could consider getting a rewards card that’s just for gas and paying for everything else with cash or some other card that features a low interest rate.

How Much Cash Back?

So how much cash back can you expect to earn when you use a rewards card?  The percentage back will depend on which card you qualify for and how you use it. 

Membership Cards

For example, the Costo True Earnings card pays 3% cashback on purchases, one of the best out there.  Of course you can only qualify for the card if you’re a member of Costco wholesale and the 3% cash back rate has an annual cap of $3,000 in gas purchases. So if you’re not member you can’t take advantage of it – and if you do belong to Costco, after you spend over $3K in a year the cash back rate goes down to 1%.

Another example is the Pen Fed Platinum Cashback card that pays a whopping 5% at the gas pump.  This is another card with a caveat.  You have to join the Pentagon Federal Credit Union to qualify for the card and take advantage of the high cash back payout.  The good news is that if you want use the card there’s a way you can become a member but it’s one more hurdle to earning top cash back rates.

Annual Fee

I really like the Blue Cash card from American Express because it has a cashback structure that fits how we spend our money.  They recently updated the card so that now you actually have two options, the Blue Cash Everyday and the Blue Cash Preferred card.

The differences between the two are the card fee and the cashback rates. Although you pay an annual fee with the Preferred card, you earn the highest cash rebate on groceries and gas.  So you have to look at your history and see how much you spend on those two categories to determine if you make enough purchases to make the Blue Cash Preferred worth it.  It makes sense for our family but it might not for you.

Cash Back Categories

Both the Discover More and Chase Freedom offer 5% cash back on gas purchases but they operate a little differently than the other cards mentioned above.  These cards have cetain categories of spending that they pay 5% cash back on during the year.  The categories change every quarter and typically use a seasonal approach.  For example, they might offer 5% back on gas during the summer months when people tend to do the most driving.

Cashback Always & for Everyone

So far we’ve talked about cards that mostly earn 5% cash back but each of them has certain things that might not make them the best card for everyone – membership cards, spending tiers, cash back categories.  Not to say that these aren’t good cards, it’s hard to pass up 5% cash back on gas, but they may or may not be the best fit for you.

There are cards that pay more than 1% cash back on gas every month of the year, don’t have an earnings cap, and are available to a wider audience.  Although the cash back rate on those cards typically isn’t as good, they can still be a good gas card.

One example is the Discover Open Road card.  This card pays 2% back on gas and at restaurants, so if none of the other cards is a fit for you, this could be an option.  They are a litle more strict on who they accept for this card based on your credit history.  If you have a poor credit score you might not be approved or may have to pay a higher interest rate

Comparing Cards

Hopefully this has been a helpful look at the different types of gas credit cards available, how much you can earn, and things to think about for each one. You can review the benefits and features of these top gas rewards credit cards listed below and hopefully find the right gas card that will save you the most money.

The SimplyCash may be one of the best business credit cards out there because of the fact that it combines a lot of rewards opportunities with reasonable rates and no annual fee. The card offers the highest cash back percentage on wireless phone services and office supplies, 5% back, and earns you 3% cash back on gas purchases.

Other business credit cards offer a flat 1% cash back on all purchases but the SimplyCash card combines a cash rebate card with a gas rebate card for business owners.  It kind of borrows from the model of the TruEarnings card, where you earn a fixed percent back on all your purchases, in the case of SimplyCash that’s 1%, and are paid a considerably higher rate for things like gas and office products. Having both of these available on one card is what makes it stand out the most for me.

Although there’s no annual limit on the total cash back you can earn with the card you only earn 5% back on the first $12,000 worth of purchases of wireless and office supplies you make in a year.  The same applies for gas purchases, after your first $12K annual gas spending, the remaining sales earn you 1% cash back.

Simply Cash Discounts
In addition to the cash rebates, the SimplyCash® Business Card from American Express OPEN offers discounts at all OPEN Savings merchant partners. This means that not only will you receive cash back on purchases, but you can also save additional money on a variety of office-related products and services.

The OPEN Savings program has a good selection of companies that businesses tend to work with for things like travel, technology, shipping, etc.  Here you can see some examples of the merchants in the program such as HP, Hyatt Hotels, FedEx, AirTran, Hertz, and Symantec.

The Open Savings program is pretty simple, if you use your Simply Cash card at one of the merchants, the discount is automatically applied when you pay.  For example, Symantec makes the popular Norton Anti-virus software, if you buy Norton for your business with your SimplyCash card you get a 10% discount.  You do have to read the terms of each merchant and product to make sure you get the discount.  In the case of Norton, the Symantec products are only eligible for the discount if you buy through their online store.  So be sure you know the terms of the merchant before you buy.

Rewards are Automatic
Another nice thing about this business rewards credit card is that redeeming your rewards requires absolutely zero effort on your part. Each month when you receive your credit card statement you will see that your cash back rewards have been automatically added to that statement. Many business owners have good rewards credit cards but are so busy that they forget to redeem those rewards. That will never be a problem with a card that offers automatic rewards!

Simply Cash APR and Fees
As is the case with many business credit cards, the Simply Cash from American Express card has a relatively low APR with an introductory 0% APR. The card also has a longer-than-average 25-day grace period, as well as no annual fee and no fee for additional cards, all of which enhance the appeal of this card. To get up-to-date information about the APR for this card scroll down to the chart at the bottom of this page.

American Express Benefits
American Express does make a serious effort to make their business credit cards more than just a credit card. Their OPEN network not only has the Savings program I discussed earlier, it also features the OPEN Forum and Connectodex.  These online business communities feature business resources to help fill the gaps in a business owner’s expertise, as well as networking tools for trading advice and collaboration.

The online account management and reporting you get with an American Express card like SimplyCash are pretty flexible when it comes to tracking and reporting on how you’re spending your money.

Conclusion
Of all the benefits of the Simply Cash from American Express, the 5% rebate on office purchases is the greatest selling point. For any business owner who logs a lot of miles in a car or other vehicle for deliveries or other purpose, the cash back on gas expenditures is also highly attractive especially as gas prices continue to climb. All in all, this card has no annual fee, low APR, and high rebates: all things you should look for in a business credit card.

The True Earnings American Express card can be a good credit card if you’re a Costco member.   How much can the True Earnings Costco card save you on every shopping trip? 

Chances are if you’re a Costco shopper then you’re likely a natural born bargain shopper. On top of the bulk discounts you get at Costco, the TrueEarnings card earns you cash back on purchases at the store.  Since the credit card also serves as your Costco membership card you’re sure to have it with you every time to earn rewards.

TrueEarnings Rewards: The best rewards points for this card are for everyday purchases such as gas which nets 3% back on the first $3000 annually and 1% after that. You’ll get 2% back for travel purchases & and restaurants and 1% back for everything else, including shopping trips to Costco.

When you buy gas, you’ll get the full 3% back, which is why it’s one of the best gas credit cards. Unlike other gas rewards cards which require minimum spending levels or seasonal purchases for the highest cash back, the True Earnings card earns you 3% cash back on the very first dollar you spend on gas, regardless of the season.

TrueEarnings Promotions:   In the past, Costco ran True Earnings promotions for new customers to help offset the cost of membership. They’re not offering anything right now for new customers but if you’re an existing customer and you apply for the TrueEarnings card or sign up to have your Costco membership automatically renewed and charged to your TrueEarnings you’ll get two free months of Costco membership.

TrueEarnings Fees: There is no annual fee for the True Earnings card but you do have to be a Costco member to shop there and that requires a membership fee.  The upside is that if you don’t make back the membership fee in savings over the course of a year, Costco will refund your fee.

You can also become an Executive member for a higher fee but then you actually earn an additional 2% cash back on purchases, making it easy to cover the fee with your savings.

The APR: The APR is an important factor if you carry a balance because it could negate whatever bonus you might be earning on purchases. The good news is that the American Express TrueEarnings credit card offers an introductory 0% APR upfront, and then a decent variable APR depending on your credit.

Conclusion: You know you can earn 3% cashback at restaurants but one thing we haven’t mentioned is that True Earnings rewards card can also be used at other stores outside of Costco.  You won’t get the same benefits, you only earn 1% cash back on purchases at stores other than Costco.

The best benefits of the TrueEarnings card are when it’s earning maximum cash back, which is on restaurants and gas. So if you are a Costco member or thinking about becoming one then this card is for you. 

You can see more information about the True Earnings card in the table below, and can open the card with the following link – Open Card

The Discover Motiva credit card is a unique rewards-based credit card that combines a low introductory APR, rebate points, and a unique pay-on-time bonus if you pay your bills on time for six months straight. That can motivate you to avoid late payment fees while earning rewards. The card has other benefits as well, not the least of which is the fact that there is no annual fee for this card.

Rebate Percentages
The Motiva also has a unique formula for rebate percentages. Instead of a point-per-dollar for every dollar spent, as is common with nearly all rewards cards, the Motiva’s rebates are based on annual purchases. For the first $1500 in spending, you will earn .25% back. After $1500, you’ll receive .50% back and 1% back on all purchases over $3000. What this means is that you don’t have to be a huge spender to receive ample rewards. However it also means that you’ll see a boost in rewards as you begin to spend more on the card throughout the year. It’s a win-win bonus rewards situation.

Double Rebates
Along with general rebates, cardholders can double the amount of rebates by exchanging them for merchant-partner gift certificates. The Discover Motiva Card is teamed up with such partners as Bennigan’s, Chili’s, Red Lobster, Blockbuster, Bed Bath and Beyond, Staples, Pep Boys, and a long list of other outlets with names that you’ll recognize. Unlike some other rewards cards that have minimal partnerships, the Motiva card has partnerships at locations you’re more than likely to find in your town. In addition, Discover gives a 5%-25% cashback bonus at Discover’s own online shopping site. You save more when shopping with these places which is great if you already shop with such big brands.

The On Time Rewards
When you pay your Motiva credit card bill on time for six months in a row, you’ll receive an additional bonus of the card’s current finance charges. This benefit never goes away. Put simply, cardholders can expect to get back interest payments twice a year when bills are paid on time. Hopefully you are paying your bills on time anyway so you won’t have to do anything different to get these extra rewards. As many people carry a balance on their credit cards, this extra bonus twice a year makes the Motiva card very attractive to cardholders who don’t spend a huge amount on credit but carry a balance.

Other Discover Card Features
For a card with a unique rebate plan, you might think that the card makes up the difference with fees. You’d be wrong. The Discover Motiva card has no annual fee. You don’t have to pay anything to get something back with this card. Like other Discover cards, the Motiva has other benefits, such as travel insurance, car rental insurance, and the ability to change the bill due date to the same date as other bills or credit cards. It offers protection and convenience all in one rewards credit card. It is also important to note that this card often has a low introductory APR on both purchases and balance transfers; see the table below for additional information on current rates.

Conclusion

If you play your cards right, there are a lot of advantages with this card when compared to other cash back cards. You’ll be able to get discounts at the Discover store, along with rebates, which you can then trade in for merchant gift certificates. To top it off, you’ll receive interest payments back twice a year on the above payments – this can also help ensure timely payments, aiding a personal credit rating and guaranteeing that you won’t have to pay late fees. Since there is no annual fee on this credit card you’re getting a lot of bonuses without paying a price.