Good morning everyone. August 15 marks the midway point of Q3 (July 1 to September 30), so I wanted to do a quick check to see how I was doing in regards to my Q3 restaurant spending on my Discover It Credit Card. This quarter, the Discover It Credit Card is paying 5% cash back on all restaurant purchases, up to $1,500 in spend. If you max out Q3, you will earn $75 cash back ($1,500 x 5% = $75).
After you complete the $1,500 restaurant spend this quarter, all future restaurant spend only earns 1% cash back this quarter. I don’t want to do that, since I would rather put the extra restaurant spend on my Chase Sapphire Reserve Credit Card and earn 3x Chase Ultimate Rewards Points per dollar at restaurants. Some people value Chase Ultimate Rewards Points at more than 1.5 cents per point, but I tend to redeem them for airfare at 1.5 cents per point, so 3x Chase Ultimate Rewards = 4.5% cash back vs. Discover It’s 5% cash back (plus, I tend to redeem my Discover cash back for discounted gift cards through the Discover Deals portal). Anyway, let’s get back on track and talk about calculating Q3 restaurant spend on the Discover It Credit Card.
After logging into your Discover online account, click the Activity & Payments drop down menu and click the Search Transactions link.
For the date range, use July 1 and then today’s date. Then select Selected Categories from the Categories drop down menu and check the Restaurants box. Then click the orange Search button.
On this screen, you will see all qualifying restaurant purchases from Q3. At the bottom of the page, you will see a total. My total is $507.20, which is about 1/3 of the way to the $1,500 quarterly cap. Based on my spending for the last 1.5 months, I do not have to worry about going over the $1,500 quarterly cap.
If you do not want to see specific transactions and would rather just see your quarterly spend progress, click the Rewards drop down menu and click the 5% Cash Back Bonus link.
Scroll down to the July-September restaurant cash back summary. I have earned $25.36 in cash back this quarter from restaurants. You can also divide your cash back amount by 0.05 and that will show you how much you have spend out of your $1,500 quarterly spend. $25.36 / 0.05 = $507.20, which is the same number that I got from above.
If you have any questions about calculating your Discover It Credit Card Q3 cash back, please leave a comment below. Have a great day everyone!
Wow, dude! I hope those are business expenses or covered by someone. Otherwise you’re just spending $1500 so you can say you got $75 back
I’m not going out of my way to spend $1,500 at restaurants, that is just normal lunches and dinners. Have a great day.
Thanks for the helpful info.
You’re welcome, Susan. Glad to help :)
Very helpful since I asked Discover reps twice if there was a way to check progress in quarterly categories online and they both said no you have to call in and ask a rep to add it up. I don’t like calling several times to check as I get closer to the $1500 cap even though usually Discover customer service and phone tree are better than most
Haha, I’m surprised the Discover reps didn’t know that there were 2 ways for cardholders to calculate the spend on their own. I’m glad this post helped you out :)