Credit cards pay for your loyalty, they work to get your payments to go through their system.  They sell your information, and they get a little something from everyone who sells you something using a credit card reader, Apple Pay, whatever. 

In this comparison of the Southwest Chase Visa card and Golden1 Credit Union Visa Cash Back+ card, I gave my imaginary cardholders the exact same amount of money, $25,000, and the money was spent in the exact same way using each card.

I went to some trouble to figure out how much frequent flier points were worth in dollars. If you are not familiar with a frequent flyer credit card, you get points for the dollars you use on the card. 

You have to go through a number of steps to get from points to dollars and at the end of day, after all that work, I found the difference between the cash back and the value of the frequent flier miles is less than 12%.  You want to watch for annual fees and you want to watch for your ability to use the card outside of the US.  The Southwest Chase Rapid Rewards VISA charges $99 a year and the Golden1 VISA Cash Rewards+ charges $0.  Both can be used oversees.

The point of this analysis was to show that you don't need to go to a big bank to get good cash back from your credit card purchases. You can go to a local bank who's not for funding fossil fuel and do just fine. Bill Gates will not look down on you and the young people in your life will appreciate you a lot. And just maybe you won't fly quite as much and that's not bad either.

You can stop here as the rest of this is for those who want to understand where the numbers came from so they can repeat this analysis, doing so will add to the card choices and to the fun.

Frequent Flyer Dollar Value Analysis

Points are accumulated at a little bit over one point per dollar spent on the card. I used 1.1 point per dollar spent. The Chase frequent flyer card delivers 3,000 points annually just for having the card. With a total $25,000 annual expenditure I came up with a total of 30,500 points. (Referring to the table might help.)  I did not consider sign-up bonuses for any card.

To get to a total dollar value for the points you have to have two other values: the average number of points needed to buy 1 air mile, and the cost of 1 air mile.  Based on a survey of the number of points needed to travel distances between cities, such as Baltimore to San Diego and Las Vegas to LA, and the cost of that travel, I was able to come up with the average number of points needed to buy 1 mile of airline travel, and the cost of 1 mile of that travel.  That's right, I went back-and-forth through the Southwest Rapid Rewards system to observe the various points and dollars needed to buy flights 30 days in advance. Not scientific, but in the ballpark.

I came up with 18 points to buy 1 mile and the value of that airline mile being $.39 (which is eerily similar to the federal deduction for unreimbursed miles traveled by auto). The value of a mile depends a lot on your choice of tiered prices for lowest cost "Want to Get Away" seats and Business Class seats.  I picked a combination of high, lowest and medium tiers and averaged them. For those of you thinking globally if you were to divide .39 by 18 you get 2% which is just about what credit cards give you back in cash (or equivalent value) generally.

All cards are not the same. They're not underwritten by the same institutions with the same business ethos. And I'll pick on Bill Gates again. People who try to live within their means are noble and people who ignore and discount every effort to create a livable planet have a lot to answer for. Change your credit card. It's something you can do to move the needle toward a fossil free future. There are credit unions and banks underwriting credit cards to keep you and the planet whole.  Lose your Chase, Wells, Citi and Bank of America Cards.