How to best spend? Especially at the supermarket

hill_ekaterina

Hello! I am wondering what is the best way to spend day-to-day? At the moment we have a joint NatWest Rewards account, a NatWest rewards cc, an Amex and then a couple of cards for travel.

We tend to chuck everything on the Amex and Natwest cc but do you know what is the optimal way of doing this? Are Tesco ccs worth it?

I have a bit of FOMO when it comes to maximising rewards! Any opinions are welcome! 🙂

DullGreyGuy

It depends, unfortunately. 

We can buy rechargeable gift cards for supermarkets where you pay £95 to get a £100 credit (or something like that). We top up with a reward credit card so get points for the £95 spend.

If your reward card gave some sort of bonus for supermarkets or if your gift card merchant was considered a "cash like transaction" by your credit card then this may not be the best option. 

Katiehound

Currently Tesco CC gives you:

1 point for every £8 you spend elsewhere

 5 points for every £4 spent in Tesco- ie one extra point
 

Point for every £4 spent on Tesco fuel (excluding Esso) plus 1 point for every 1 litre bought

(1 point for every 2 litres bought with a Clubcard alone)

not amazing especially since the rewards have been downgraded.

TheBanker

My Natwest Rewards CC gives 1% cashback at Supermarkets so I use that. Occasionally there are extra offers at certain supermarkets (my most recent was 6% cashback at Morrisons on spends over £30, but I've had offers at Waitrose in the past - I think these are personalised and they only run for a few weeks so you need to keep an eye on the app). When the Morrisons offer was running I bought some gift vouchers. Interestingly there's sometimes a bug where you get the special offer cashback in addition to the normal 1%. 

Sometimes I use my Chase debit card which gives 1% cashback.

My work has a scheme where I can buy supermarket gift vouchers at a discount of around 4% (varies by supermarket) so I sometimes use that but often I forget or can't be bothered with the faff.