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You're already spending the money.
Groceries, gas, the coffee on the way in. That spending can pay you back — a little or a lot, depending entirely on which card you happen to be holding. Here's how that works, from scratch.
What a “reward” actually is
Every time a card gets tapped, the shop pays a small fee to the card company. It's built into the price whether you use a rewards card or not.
Some cards hand a slice of that fee back to you. That slice is the reward. That's the entire mechanism — there's nothing cleverer going on underneath.
Cashback or points — what's the difference?
Cashback is money. A 2% card gives you two cents for every dollar. Nothing to learn.
Points are money with extra steps. Cash them in for a statement credit and they're worth about a cent each. Put them toward a flight instead and the same points can be worth two or three times that — but you have to learn how, and you don't need to on day one.
Why which card matters
Cards don't pay the same on everything. One pays extra at supermarkets, another at restaurants, another at the pump.
Put $200 of groceries on a plain card and you get about $2 back. Put the same shop on the best card for groceries and it's closer to $6. Same food, same money, different card.
That gap is the whole game — and it's why the answer changes depending on where you happen to be standing.
So what's your spending worth?
Drag these to roughly match your month. We've started you at typical amounts.
Roughly what do you spend a month?
On a plain 1% card, that earns you
$143 a year
On the best cards that cost nothing to hold
$421 a year
$278 more than you're getting now
Up to $1,214 more with cards that charge a yearly fee, and points cashed in for flights rather than credit. Both are worth learning — neither is something you need on day one.
All figures estimated, and deliberately on the low side. Nothing you enter here is saved or sent anywhere — it never leaves your browser.
One rule that makes all of this work
Rewards only count if you clear the balance every month. Interest runs far higher than any reward rate — carry a balance and the card takes back several times what it ever paid you.
That's not a warning about you. It's just how the products are designed: the rewards are funded by the people who pay interest. Pay in full and you're on the winning side of that arrangement. Don't, and no card is worth optimising.
Where we come in
Knowing the best card for groceries is easy once. Remembering it at the till, for every shop, for every card in your wallet, is the part nobody actually does.
PointsMaxxing keeps track of it. You tell it which cards you carry, it tells you which one to pull out — in about a second, wherever you are. No bank login, no account linking.
Start with the cards you already have.
Join the waitlist and we'll tell you the moment it's ready.
Already know the basics? See what the app does →