The Best Strategy for Making Money With Cash Back Cards in 2024

Cash back cards offer a straightforward deal. Pay with your card, and earn a percentage back on your purchase. It's a valuable benefit, easy to understand, and consumers love it. A recent credit card study by The Motley Fool Ascent found that over half (56%) of Americans have cash back cards.

If you want to keep it simple, you could use one cash back card for all your regular spending. There's nothing wrong with this method, but there's also a way you could earn much more: carrying multiple cash back credit cards. Because when you don't mind adding another card or two to the mix, you could potentially double your cash back.

More cards, more cash back

There are two big advantages to using multiple cash back cards. First, many cash back cards have welcome offers worth $200 or more for new cardholders. If you want to make as much money as possible with cash back cards, welcome offers are the fastest way to do it.

Here's an example of what I consider one of the best two-card combinations:

• The Citi Double Cash® Card has a welcome offer of 20,000 ThankYou® Points (redeemable for $200 in cash back) when you spend $1,500 in the first 6 months.
• The Blue Cash Preferred® Card from American Express has a welcome offer of $250 in statement credits when you spend $3,000 on purchases in the first 6 months. This card has a $0 intro annual fee for the first year, then $95. (See rates and fees). Terms apply.

So you could open one of these cards, spend enough to earn the welcome offer, and then open the next one. If you earn both welcome offers over the rest of 2024, that's already $450 in bonus cash back.

You'll also be earning cash back on all the purchases you make with each card. That brings us to the other advantage of this strategy: You can earn higher cash back rates.

The Citi Double Cash® Card earns up to 2% back on purchases (1% when you make a purchase and 1% when you pay it off). That's great for an unlimited rate that you earn on all purchases. But this card doesn't have any bonus categories, like other cash back cards -- including the Blue Cash Preferred® Card from American Express. That card earns:

• 6% at U.S. supermarkets, on up to $6,000 in spending per calendar year
• 6% on select U.S. streaming subscriptions
• 3% at U.S. gas stations
• 3% on transit, which includes taxis/rideshare, parking, tolls, trains, buses, and more
• 1% on other purchases
• Terms apply

If you have both, you can use your American Express card for purchases in its bonus categories, where you'll earn 3% to 6% back. For everything else, you can use your Citi card and earn 2%, twice as much as you'd earn with the Blue Cash Preferred® Card from American Express.

The best strategy for earning cash back

Having multiple credit cards gives you a little more to manage, but it can earn you a lot more cash back. You'll have the opportunity to earn more welcome offers and a high cash back rate across more spending categories.

The Citi Double Cash® Card and the Blue Cash Preferred® Card from American Express are an excellent combination. But there are also plenty of other options with different welcome offers and cash back rates.

If you're open to using multiple cards, I'd recommend starting with a card that earns 2% on purchases in all spending categories. Then, add one or more cards that earn bonus cash back in the places where you spend the most. It's not hard to do, and it's how most cash back enthusiasts boost their rewards.