I was approved for Altitude Reserve back in 2018 after getting rejected 5 times in a rows (this is still hilarious to me). I continue to hold the card for the same exact reason I praised it back in 2017. I’m not sure if I can say this about many cards. To my own surprise, Altitude Reserve hasn’t changed much, especially considering U.S. Bank’s previous hit cart, Cash Plus, was nerfed a few times over. Similar story was repeated with Club Carson (Radisson Rewards) card but I suppose you could give them a pass because Carson (Radisson) might have asked them to make the change.
For quite a while Altitude Reserve was one of my two daily driver cards. Now that the 10x benefit of the other card has ended, Altitude Reserve is quite literally my only daily driver credit card. 4.5% cashback almost everywhere I can swipe a card, its too good. For quite a while, I have not cared to rotate 5x cards in and out of my wallet. I don’t even know if I have a 5x card anymore. I don’t care. The notion of getting 4.5% pretty much everywhere I can swipe my card is good enough.
Obviously, I am still swiping whatever card I am meeting minimum spend on. And, crypto cards have taken a little bit of space in my wallet. Hands down, Coinbase 4% card is the best general rewards card in the market right now. But nobody will tell you that because Coinbase referral only pays $10. I might do a post on how I am using Coinbase card soon. I was mostly waiting to get accepted into their 4% APY program before I show off some cool things but we will see.
Anyway, back to Altitude Reserve – I had a 10,000 points retention offer last year. Well, I got one this year too. Yeap, I continue to get paid $75 to hold this card.
I think U.S. bank has (or should I say Keith and Catharine have) done a good job of chasing away manufacture spenders that the non-abusers or minor reward abusers can hold this card, make a little bit of money….all while the benefits aren’t devaluated at all. I would assume U.S. bank’s more or less once in a lifetime approach towards signup bonus of this card has also helped.
The worrying part about this card is just the soon to be discontinued LG Pay (at least in US) and removal of loop pay technology from Samsung S21 (and possibly newer Samsung phones).
