Bank of America has added in the online login a meter to keep track of how much was spent of your $2,500 quarterly limit on the Customized Cash Rewards card. The meter is being rolled out on the website and app, but is not yet available for everyone.
It’s a nice addition to easily track how much you have left on the $2,500 limit. As a reminder, the Bank of America Customized Cash Rewards card earns 3% and 2% on select categories, up to $2,500 per quarter. This is juiced up to 5.25% for Bank of America relationship clients who maintain $100,000 or more in assets in their bank or brokerage account.
Hat tip to boilerwire and teamcashback
Someday my grandchildren will get an upgraded BOA credit card bill pay service while I’m collecting social security.
lol I stopped using this card exactly because it didn’t have a spend tracker. Seems like they were counting on customers going past the limit and then getting next to nothing.
Sure of course it has a known cap of the $2.5k/qtr. If you were diligent you could export your transactions and sum them.
BoAs change category flow has a wonky buggy total by current month, prior month and last 3 most, but it’s buggy enough to not trust it. So this update is welcome if it seems to track correctly. For posted transactions it seems correct so far.
Where does it show the meter? Can a screenshot be added? Clearly I don’t seem to have it yet.
There is an image linked in the reddit discussion:
https://www.reddit.com/r/CreditCards/comments/1hvpszs/bofa_adds_category_spend_tracker_for_ccr/?sort=old
Thanks for this post, DOC! Great news!
Terrific, I’ve got it! On the app, when viewing the page for the particular card, scroll down below the transactions section to the Cash Rewards and Benefits section. The blue words See Your Spending Progress links to a page showing a simple bar graph, 0 to $2500, and where you are now..
US Bank Smartly Visa 4% CASH BACK ON ALL PURCHASES – BETTER!
Not necessarily. As Chuck mention, 5.25% is what some would be getting from this BOA card. Also one may be using this BOA card for initial deposits toward a bank SUB in which the BOA is safe to not code as a cash advance, whereas USB may be unknown or code as cash advance.
If you want simplicity then definitely, but I think other than cash back you’re not getting much else right? Didn’t see the card giving any other benefits. Along with elevated cash back, I think with preferred rewards there are other benefits to be had especially if you have a branch nearby.
BofA’s program has been running like clockwork for many years. US Bank has just dipped its foot in the water. Still not clear whether every purchase with Smartly will get 4% consistently without drama (large purchases, tax payments, gold purchases, opening bank account, etc.) or nerfing. For me, need to see a positive track record of at least one year.
For anyone that cares, $3888 is the crossover point where charging something on Smartly wins over CCR (assuming you still have the full 2.5k available).
If you have the funds, you can use both the Smartly (4%) and the BoA (5.25%).
Yeah, my comment would be a moot point for anyone that only had one or the other…
Yes, you are right. You’ll make $31.25 more if you utilize the full $2,500 quarterly spend with the 5.25% BofA, versus the 4% US Bank cash back, and then once you hit the spend limit, you’d have the 4% cash back for everything over.
Finally! Now they hopefully can look at fixing their unnecessarily confusing ebill/autopay system.
That autopay is a disaster. Thankfully I only need to navigate it once for the lifetime of each card.
You don’t take advantage of the 12 months of 0%?
Amazing how long it took to get a fairly basic and quite useful and important feature out.
I asked BofA for this feature so long ago. I told them how helpful it would be for me since I have two separate BofA Customized Cash credit cards, but even very helpful if I only had one.
I, also, do not yet see this new feature in my online accounts or inside the mobile app.
Now, if they would do my other suggestion to reverse the following policy: If we make a charge that posts, the amount of the charge is naturally deducted from the $2,500 quarterly spend limit. But, should after the charge posts you ultimately get a credit for that charge for whatever reason such as because you returned the item you purchased for a refund, BofA does not put back that amount towards the quarterly limit. They take back any cash back you earned for that charge, of course, but they will not put the spend amount back onto the $2,500 spend limit.
In my experience, Bank of America and other banks only take back 1X points/cashback when returning things, even though the original purchase earned 3X or 5X, etc. In that case, nothing is lost in terms of being able to fully utilize the category.
This is true, IME BoA seldom takes back the PR bonus and almost never the category bonus despite the policy terms. That was for everyday purchases though, I think midas or someone else had a large travel purchase refunded and BoA enforced the terms.
I Agree. I was waiting on BoA to take back cashback earned on returned products this Christmas and it never materialized. I guess this makes up for online purchases that we don’t receive extra cashback for when inputted manually.
Awesome! I love this program!
I get over $2k cash back each year from BoA cards alone.
Nice, how many cards do you have?