No-Fee 2% Cash Rewards Alliant Credit Card

Finance
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I’ve had the Alliant Platinum Rewards card for many years now, and got it to expand my credit profile at the time. I really liked Alliant, knew I’d be with them for a while, and thought it would be a nice fee-free card to reduce my overall utilization. But otherwise, I never used it.

I assumed the rewards were crap, because they had a third party website I had to create a separate account to log into to see the rewards, and it wasn’t clear what the rewards were useful for.

There’s been a lot of hype around Alliant’s $59/year 2.5% card that earns 3% for the first year, and in those threads, I’ve heard mention of a no-fee 2% Alliant card, and it appears that I already have it all this time and didn’t realize it!

If I understand correctly, you earn 2 points per dollar spent on this no-fee Platinum Rewards card, and each point is worth 1 cent. Once you get $20 you can redeem for statement credit.

I’m constantly trying to simplify my financial life and wonder if I should dump my 2% Fidelity card in favor of this Alliant card that I already have. The main downside being that you need to spend in $1,000 intervals to get rewards, otherwise it’s nothing. But otherwise if it’s my non-category spend card of choice, then I’ll hit the $1,000 mark eventually.

My biggest concern is they might devalue the points overnight with no warning. With Fidelity, it seems clear that it’s intended to be a 2% cash back card. With the Alliant Card, if I hadn’t read discussion about it online, I’d still have no idea it was 2% cash back. I’ve lived through the PenFed points devaluation where those lost 15% of their value overnight, and also PenFed pulled Visa Gift card redemption options for a period of time.

My concern would be I let the points add up in Alliant and they decide no more savings account transfer option. And since they never advertised it as a 2% cash back credit card, they could shrug and say “it’s a rewards card and we’re changing the rewards”

There’s a secondary concern in that I keep some savings in Alliant and it’s not a good idea to keep savings and credit in the same place, but I don’t intend to default on my credit cards in the near future, so I feel fairly safe from that standpoint.

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I would be very surprised if Alliant devalued their points. I am aware of what happened at PenFed. But PenFed has an aura of sleaze about it you do not find with Alliant today, and never have.

I use an Alliant CC now. I would never, ever carry a PenFed card regardless any promise(s) they might make. History shows PenFed cannot be trusted. Alliant, OTOH, has always kept faith with its members.

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Fidelity cards do have periodic spending bonuses… No fee so why not keep It?

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Can you explain? I’ve never seen/noticed one.

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My 5% PenFed Gas card is still kicking strong that I’m grandfathered into!

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They email offers from time to time. “Spend $X,000 and get X,000 bonus points.” You have to enroll in the offer. Most recent one was spend $2,000 earn 2,000 bonus points (I think). That’s 3% CB on $2,000 spend.

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I’ve never gotten one. I wonder if I need to subscribe to marketing emails. Or I wonder if they never send them to me, because up until recently when I got Sapphire Reserve, I was spending $2k+ per month on the card already and they didn’t want to target me with spending offers.

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Both of these are actually the key. Make sure you’re in on emails, but go hot and cold with them, when you’re cold they’ll start luring you back with offers.

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Looks like the reason I missed this card before is because it was a 1% card up until May of last year. So it’s only been 2% for less than one year according to this blog, which explains why I had it sockdrawered for years and didn’t realize it is actually worth using.

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This was mentioned many times on the Alliant board here and at FatWallet.

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Yep, I just got one yesterday.

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Wow thanks for that. I missed the email and found it after reading your reply. Mine is a pretty crap offer… $20 if I spend $4800. What’s yours?

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It looks like my Fidelity 2% card is set up to only redeem at 5,000 points which I think is $2500 spend, compared to 2,000 points or $1,000 spend on the Alliant card.

I’m leaning towards hitting that 5k point threshold on my Fido card (need another $600 of spend) and then sock drawering it for a while, unless they give me some bonuses to spend.

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Additional 2,000 points after spending $50. P.S. I always find their offers confusing.

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There’s a few recurring bills I have that are under $100 per month in total. I like the idea of using the Fido 2% card for those, and then using the Alliant 2% card for every day non category spend. This way if the stuff I am buying on the Alliant card winds up compromising the account number, and I need to get a new card number issued, I don’t have to go through the hassle of updating my recurring payments.