It’s easy to earn bonus rewards on most purchases. After all, most of my purchases fall into the categories of travel, gas, dining, and grocery bonuses offered by many companies. best rewards credit cards.
However, there are times when you may need to make a non-bonus purchase on any of your cards. However, you don’t have to settle for earning 1 point per dollar on this purchase. Instead, you can use one of these Best credit cards for everyday spending.
One of our favorite everyday spending cards at The Points Guy is Capital One Venture Rewards Credit Card. I decided to see how many types of purchases I could make without earning bonus rewards on most best rewards credit cards.
But, of course, all of these purchases will earn 2 miles per dollar with Capital One Venture Rewards. Here’s what I found.
How to earn more value with Capital One Venture Rewards
Whether or not a purchase earns bonus rewards for a bonus category depends on the code assigned to the merchant. In particular, sellers are given codes depending on the type of products and services they sell.
So even if you understand how Credit card issuers categorize travel and dining purchases, you still cannot earn bonus rewards if the merchant is coded differently than expected. For example, a shop that sells bagels and coffee might be classified as a bakery instead of a coffee shop.
If you think you can earn it Bonus rewards on large purchases, you may want to make a smaller purchase with your card to see how it works. However, if you use one of these Best everyday spending cardYou don’t have to worry about how your purchase will be encoded.
There’s a reason we’re focused Capital One Venture Rewards in this guide instead of all the everyday spend cards: it’s the best independent consumer everyday spend cards. Special, Earn Capital One Mile is simple. And, Redeem the Capital One Mile Extremely simple whichever you choose exchange at a fixed rate or Transfer your miles to airport or hotel partners.
Related: 7 reasons to get the Capital One Venture Rewards card
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Make purchases with Capital One Venture Rewards
Now let’s look at some purchases that will typically earn you 1 point, mile or reward per dollar with most best travel rewards cards And Refund card. Of course, all of these purchases will still earn 2 miles per dollar with Capital One Venture Rewards.
Car expenses
You can earn rewards by using one of these Best card to buy gas when you refuel.
And you’ll usually get a reward for using one of these Best card to buy travel to pay tolls, parking and car rentals. However, you typically won’t earn rewards on other auto expenses, including:
- Car repair
- Supplies, tires and auto parts
- Auto service shops, including body shops, tire shops, and paint shops
- Car wash
- Towing service
- Buy carincluding cars, trucks, boats, campers, rickshawmotorbikes, motorbikes and snowmobiles
Child care and education
Child care and education are significant expenses for many consumers. Sure, you can Maximize your points and miles on back-to-school shopping and use best credit cards for school supplies. However, in many cases, you may not be able to pay many of your most significant education and child care expenses with a credit card.
And even if you can use a credit card, you typically won’t earn bonus rewards on the following types of purchases:
- Primary and secondary school tuition
- University tuition
- Professional and trade school tuition
- Inspection fee
- Child care services, incl Child care costs and preschool
Home and interior care
Because I am one digital nomadI don’t have any home improvement or Interior expense. But I know many people who have moved in the past few months and they have certainly incurred a lot of expenses on home and interior repairs.
Unfortunately, however, the following types of purchases typically do not earn bonus rewards:
- Landscape and garden services
- Buy from nurseries and garden or lawn stores
- Home repair, including general contractor services
- Glass and crystal shop
- Furniture and carpet store
- Curtain and fabric store
- Furniture reupholstery shop
- Carpet and upholstery cleaning service
- Swimming pool buying and selling service
Granted, a card like Bank of America® Custom Cash Rewards Credit Card can earn 3% cash back on select Online Shopping merchant or home improvement and interiors if you choose either of these as your 3% category (for combined purchases up to $2,500 per quarter; then 1%).
However, 3% isn’t much higher than the 2.8% return you can get from Capital One Venture Rewards on all purchases. So I’d stick with Venture Reward unless you Prefer cashback rewards.
Related: Credit cards and the best strategies to maximize home improvement spending
Specialty store
Determining how specialty stores will code can be challenging.
So I usually assume I won’t earn the bonus reward and use it instead Daily spending card when shopping at the following types of stores:
- Pet store
- The shops mainly sell gems, metals or jewelry
- Cosmetics store
- Cigar shop
- Newspaper counter
- Sports goods store
- Hobby, toy and game store
- The store offers cameras and cameras
- Art and Craft store
- Art dealers and galleries
- Stamp and coin shop
- Bicycle shops
- Bookstore
- Stationery shop
- Music stores, including stores that primarily sell pianos or records
- Commercial equipment store
- Duty-free shop
- Specialty food stores, including butchers, nut and confectionery stores, candy stores, bakeries, and dairies
- Shop tents and awnings
- Wig and wig shop
- Specialty clothing stores, including stores specializing in shoes and furs
- Second-hand stores, including antique stores, pawn shops, and antique reproduction services
- Salvage yard
Of course, this is another broad category you might want to use Bank of America Custom Cash Rewards Credit Card if you have selected online shopping merchants as your 3% category. However, only some online sellers qualify. So there’s no guarantee that online purchases made with your Cash Rewards card will earn 3%. However, if you use Capital One Venture, you know you’ll earn 2 miles for every dollar spent.
Related: A guide to maximizing your shopping portal for your online purchases
Health care
Luckily, my out-of-pocket health care costs are generally relatively low. However, for some people, health care is one of their largest expenses.
Luckily, most Healthcare providers accept credit cards. However, you typically won’t earn any bonus rewards for the following fee types:
- Ambulance service
- Nursing and personal care services
- Medical services from physicians, dentists, chiropractors, optometrists and other health care professionals
- Consulting services
- Hospital care
- Medical and dental laboratory services
- Hearing aid buying and selling service
So if you regularly incur a lot of health care costs, you should use one Daily spending card such as Capital One Venture Rewards. That way, you can earn more rewards for these unavoidable expenses.
Other services
Many support services are not typically classified as bonus category purchases on most support services. rewards card.
In particular, I generally don’t expect the following services to earn bonus rewards:
- Food Service
- Laundry, laundry, garment and dry cleaning services
- Legal services and lawyers
- Flower service
- Veterinary services
- Marina services
- Tailor, seamstress and alteration services
- Photography service
- Public warehouse
- Clothing, costume and uniform rental service
- Hair salon and barber
- Shoe repair, shoe shine, hat washing services
- Funeral service and crematorium
- Massage room
- Health and beauty spa
- Dating and escort service
- Tax declaration service
- Shopping service
- Extermination and disinfection services
- Cleaning service
- Technology services, including computer maintenance and information retrieval
- Small appliance repair service
- Detective and security services
- Management, consulting and public relations services
- Publishing and printing services
- Specialized cleaning and polishing service
- Courier services
Of course, these services can earn bonus rewards in some cases. For example, a photography service offered at a hotel might Earn rewards while traveling. And food and beverage services performed by restaurants can Earn rewards while eating.
Related: The card is currently offering sign-up bonuses of 100,000 points or more
Buy other products
Finally, there are some other fees you may want to charge to your credit card that typically won’t earn rewards.
However, you’ll be able to earn 2 miles per dollar with Capital One Venture Rewards on the following purchases:
- Charitable contributions
- Membership fees of political, religious, automotive, civic, social, fraternal and other organizations
- Court costs
- Pay punish money
- Payment of bail and bond
- Payment of insurance premiums
- Payment of utility services
- taxpayer
- Payments for government services
- Sign up for sports and recreation camps (although this may be considered recreation or travel in some cases)
Related: 9 things you didn’t know you could pay for with a credit card
Bottom line
Like my instructions above Expenses you should not put on your credit card, there are no hard rules here. Specifically, depending on what other cards you already have in your wallet and monetization incentivesother Daily spending card might be better for you. And especially if you have repeat purchases with the same merchant, determining how your purchases are encoded can help you choose the best card to use.
However, if you’re looking for a simple card that earns valuable rewards on all your purchases, Capital One Venture Rewards is a good choice. You don’t have to worry about how your purchase will be encoded. And, you can redeem Capital One Venture miles at one fixed price or by transfer to airline and hotel partners.
To learn more, read ours Full review of the Capital One Venture Rewards card.
Register here: Capital One Venture Rewards Credit Card with a bonus of 75,000 bonus miles when you spend $4,000 on purchases in the first three months of account opening.
