Two credit cards which make the Arrival Plus look stingy! Are they worth the hassle?

Over at Miles4More, Kenny has unearthed a nice little offer: it’s the BB&T Spectrum Rewards card, and apparently this thing will let you get 4% cash back on all your purchases, not just the usual gas/grocery/drugstore stuff.

Is there a catch? You bet there is! Actually, there’s more than one catch. First of all, the offer is only good for the first three months, so if you want to capitalize on it you’ll need to be on top of things. The second catch lies in how the offer is structured: you really only get 3% for the first 90 days. How do you get to 4%? From the offer page:

• Earn a 5% anniversary bonus on cash earned every year
• Earn an additional 30% bonus on cash earned when spending $50,000 or more annually

Those two bonuses should take you up to 4.05%, but you’ll have to spend 50 grand to do it, preferably within those first 90 days.

So, dear readers, is this worth signing up for? My answer, as always, is it depends. If you’re able to handle the $50K in three months then this is a great deal. One of the unknowns here is how generous BB&T is with their credit lines. On Twitter Doctor of Credit pointed out that there was only a single solitary data point for BB&T credit cards on the creditboards.com database, a credit line of $20K.

In short, there’s a lot of unknowns about this one. It’s potentially very lucrative, but you may just end up wasting an inquiry and some time. Who’s in? I’m not, but that’s because I don’t currently have my MS act together, otherwise I’d give this one a try.

The other item on my discussion list today is the Bank of America Travel Rewards card. It gives 1.5% back in the form of travel expense reimbursement, but with B of A’s new Preferred Rewards program, which is replacing its Platinum Privileges program (as far as I can tell, the new program will be fully rolled out on September 8), you can get an extra 75% back on credit card rewards, which would bring this card to 2.625% back on all purchases. (Note on that Preferred Rewards link: it may bring up Platinum Privileges depending on which state you’re in, so you may need to open an anonymous browser window and tell them you’re in South Carolina).

2.625% on everything with no annual fee sounds great! Is there a catch? You bet there is! You’ll need to keep $100,000 in B of A or Merrill Lynch accounts in order to qualify for that 75% bonus. Assuming you have the assets to move around you’ll have to decide if this is worth it for you.