Bank of America Customized Cash Rewards

The appeal here is the choice: you pick your 3% category from gas, online shopping, dining, travel, drugstores, or home improvement, and get 2% at grocery stores and wholesale clubs on top, all with no annual fee. A $200 bonus after $1,000 of spending in the first three months and 15 months of 0% intro APR on both purchases and balance transfers make for a solid opening stretch. The ceiling is the catch: those 3% and 2% rates share a combined $2,500 per quarter cap, and past it everything falls to the flat 1% base rate, so roughly $10,000 a year of bonus spending is all you get. There is also a foreign transaction fee, which rules the card out for trips abroad. It works well as a targeted category card if your spending fits inside the cap, and poorly as an everything card.