Note: Please note that this offer may no longer be available or is expired. All information about Capital One Savor Cash Rewards Credit Card has been collected independently by MyMoneyBlog.com.
Does dining out and take-out describe your daily ritual? Capital One has refocused their Capital One Savor Cash Rewards Credit Card with a sign-up bonus, waived first year annual fee, and 4% cash back at restaurants. Here are the highlights:
- $300 cash bonus after $3,000 in purchases within the first 3 months.
- 4% cash back on dining and entertainment, 2% at grocery stores and 1% on all other purchases.
- No foreign transaction fees.
- No annual fee for the first year, $95 after that
- Capital One cardholders get access to premium experiences in dining, entertainment and more.
Capital One says that existing Savor cardholders will be upgraded to the 4% back on dining and other features of the Savor, but will have their annual fee waived indefinitely. No sign-up bonus, though!
Purchase rewards details. Notable about this card is the 4% back on dining and entertainment. 4% is higher than most other rewards cards that offer some sort of boost on restaurant purchases, such as the Costco Anywhere Visa (my review) with 3% on restaurants (amongst other rewards categories), however it does charge an annual fee. Often one of the rotating 5% cash back cards has restaurants as a category.
If you already have one of those cards above, you’d have to spend decent chunk on dining out to justify paying that $95 annual fee after the first year. That $500 first-year bonus will buy a lot of grub, though! Of course, if you do dine out often, you might actually take advantage of their free Concierge service to help you get reservations at high-demand spots.
In case you were curious, the application page provides some direct clarifications on the rewards structure.
What counts as dining?
Purchases at restaurants, cafes, bars, lounges, fast-food chains and bakeries.What counts as entertainment?
Buying tickets to a movie, play, concert, sporting event, tourist attraction, theme park, aquarium, zoo, dance club, pool hall or bowling alley. Also, making purchases at record store and video rental locations. This excludes non-industry entertainment merchant codes like cable, digital streaming, and subscription services.What counts as a grocery store?
A supermarket, meat locker, freezer, dairy product store and specialty market. Excludes superstores like Walmart® and Target®.
Statement credits. The rewards on this card are nice and simple. You earn cash, which can be redeemed as a statement credit or a mailed check. There are other options, but none are especially interesting or more valuable than cash.
Credit approval details. This card says it requires “Excellent credit”. Capital One is known to limit you to two consumer Capital One credit cards per person. They are also a bit unusual in that they pull your credit reports from all three major bureaus, instead of just one.
Bottom line. The Capital One Savor Cash Rewards Credit Card has a $300 sign-up bonus, waived first year annual fee, and 4% cash back on dining and entertainment. Note the $3,000 of total spending required within 3 months – maybe it’s your turn to put group dinner on your card and have everyone else pay you back to take advantage of that 4% back.
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Why consider a cash reward credit card if you’re pursuing early retirement? A yearly $95 fee and incentive to spend more to get a 4% discount. Isn’t it contradictory?
The signup bonus and 4% earned the first year when the annual fee is waived.
Good question for the newer visitors. If you can manage your spending (critical in pursuing early retirement), you can leverage credit card bonuses to offset much of your travel expenses each year at no cost to you except keeping track of your credit checks. The competition has gotten so intense that I set a bar of $500 in the first year to get me to try out a new card. There are hundreds of credit cards that don’t meet this hurdle. If a person found six of these a year, that’s $3,000 value per person ($6,000 a year per couple). That’s a very solid annual travel budget (or a much higher savings rate).
You get $3,000 in bonus from 6 cards but you’ll have to spend $18,000 within 3 months to get it?
You get them throughout the year, not all at once.
Plus, you’re not going to find six of them these days.
I must disagree – There have been 5 credit cards worth $500 in the first year in the last 2 months alone:
1) this one
2) Citi ThankYou Premier
3) Chase IHG
4) Barclaycard Arrival
5) Chase World of Hyatt
None of the ones listed above are subject to Chase 5/24 restrictions either.
Jonathan – somehow you missed the Bank Of America Premium Rewards! I don’t pay as much attention to the cards that don’t let you redeem for cash…
Another alternative would be the Uber Visa card which offers 4% cash back on restaurant spending and no annual fee.
That’s true, I was more thinking about cards that people often have already that gave cash back on restaurants. The new Uber card doesn’t have enough of a sign-up bonus to warrant a new application for me. I can’t believe it only offers 2% back on Uber – why not something like 5%? It’s the Uber card!
I just got rejected for this in spite of having a >800 credit score, not many recent card accounts opened, having significant credit card monthly flow, a relatively high income, etc. — I’ve applied for a lot of cards in recent years (though fewer in recent months) and gotten all of them (I know to avoid triggering clauses like Chase’s 5/24, or CapitalOne’s own 1-in-6-months deal).
From what I’ve now seen in other forums, this is unusually common. Plus CapitalOne apparently does three hard credit pulls when you apply (one for each bureau).
I’m not saying it might not be worth applying, for any given person — I just figured it would be good to bring up how it seems to be an inexplicably difficult card to get for people who’d normally be a shoe-in, and the outsized impact it will temporarily have on your credit history when you apply.
I wish I had read James’s comment before applying – I had the same problem despite excellent credit and limiting my applications this year. I hope others see this, or maybe Jonathan can add a note about how difficult this card is to get.
I applied and was immediately declined for the Capital One card. The next day I applied using my wife’s credentials. She was also declined. Both of us have never been declined like this before.
Got immediate approval for 30k limit. Thanks!
I can confirm they pull all 3 major credit bureau’s.
Jonothan, what do you do after the first year with all these cards? I assume you don’t close them. Do you downgrade them somehow?
I had the Citi AAdvantage for a few years (4-5) and every year until this April they would offer me something to waive or credit back the annual fee. Something like “spend $300 this month and we’ll credit your bill$95.” This year after multiple calls to different representatives I couldn’t get anything. I ended up accidentally closing the account through the automated system. I said I’m calling to close the account, thinking it will get me to a higher level customer retention rep. The system asked me if I am indeed calling to close my account and when I said yes it said okay your account has been closed. When I got transferred back to a rep and told them the automated systme made a mistake they said they would have to do a hard creidt pull to reopen it 30 seconds later
I usually keep the card for the full first year and give it a chance. If I don’t like it enough to keep it past the first year, then I am okay closing it. Closing a credit card doesn’t really hurt your credit score very much unless it is something like your first and only credit card. This post is older, but it still applies:
https://www.mymoneyblog.com/how-opening-and-closing-credit-card-accounts-affects-your-credit-score.html
I usually wait until the annual fee is charged, I call them up and ask about alternatives like you mention. Many times they will offer to waive the annual fee for another year, which is extra good if the card includes a perk like free checked bags. Other times they will make some sort of hurdle like spend $1,000 on the card in 60 days and they will credit back the annual fee. Other times you can downgrade to another card with no annual fee. But if they really make me close the account, that’s fine too. Doesn’t bother me.