Reward Credit Cards: How Much Cash Can You Get?

Miles take a back seat to cash for credit-card holders; competition heats up and rewards get juicier

Cash-back credit cards are growing in popularity. PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES

Forget about that free plane trip or the private dinner with a famous chef. When it comes to collecting rewards from credit cards, most consumers just want cash.

Cash-back rewards cards are increasingly popular with shoppers, prompting financial institutions to develop programs that, in some cases, return as much as 10% of spending. But the recent explosion in cash-back cards has some industry executives worried the market is getting overheated.

They say the hefty rewards aren’t sustainable for the banks and may not ultimately drive the brand loyalty that is the goal of such programs.

“I’m sure someone has a spreadsheet that tells them how they are going to make money, but you have to put in a lot of assumptions,” says David Nelms, chief executive officer of Discover Financial Services Inc., which issued the first cash-back card in 1986 and now offers several varieties.

Cash-back cards reward consumers by essentially rebating some of the money they spend. Instead of points, customers get cash they can use to reduce their credit-card bill, deposit in a bank or buy a gift card.

A Methodist Network for Immigrants Believes in ‘Welcoming the Stranger’

Rob Rutland-Brown of National Justice for Our Neighbors lives out his faith by helping run legal clinics for low-income immigrants in 10 states

The children of Methodist volunteers play with the children of immigrant clients during a Justice for Our Neighbors clinic at Hillcrest United Methodist Church, Nashville, Tenn., 2012. PHOTO: JAN SNYDER

Coming from a family of United Methodist ministers—including his father, grandparents, aunts and uncles—Rob Rutland-Brown says that his own generation was expected to find a vocation in the church as well. But after stints working as a schoolteacher and with the Special Olympics, Mr. Rutland-Brown found a different way to act on his faith: helping immigrants.

In 1996, while Mr. Rutland-Brown was a teenager in Florida, one of his cousins and an aunt co-founded a nonprofit in northern Virginia to provide legal aid to low-income immigrants who had been seeking advice informally at local churches. Nearly a decade later, his cousin, Allison Rutland Soulen, decided to devote herself full-time to legal work at the nonprofit, and Mr. Rutland-Brown—with a new graduate degree in nonprofit management—took on her job and became executive director of the group, called Just Neighbors.

The Origin of Just About Everything, Visualized

SLIDE:1 / OF14. Caption:Caption:The Origin of (Almost) Everything is a visualized science book that explains the origin of (almost) everything, like dark matter.JENNIFER DANIEL/NICHOLAS BREALEY

THE WORLD IS full of simple questions that have complicated answers. For example: What is the universe made of? Why do we have wax in our ears? And where exactly does belly button lint come from? “There are so many great scientific origin stories out there,” says Graham Lawton, features editor at New Scientist.

In his new book, The Origin of (Almost) Everything, Lawton worked with designer Jennifer Daniel to unravel dozens of life’s biggest mysteries. Lawton crafts the narration while Daniel handles the infographics. Together they’re able to answer nagging questions that have inspired centuries of scientific inquiry.

The Origin of (Almost) Everything doesn’t look like a typical science book. It’s friendly and colorful. Its blocks of text and ample images, makes it read more like a magazine than textbook. “We wanted to almost invent a new genre of science book,” Lawton says. Origins is divided into six sections—the universe, the planet, life, civilization, knowledge, and inventions—with each page dedicated to a different topic.

The Best Albums of 2016

Clockwise from top left: Beyoncé; David Bowie; Anohni; Mary Halvorson; Andrew Cyrille; Chance the Rapper. Credit Clockwise from top left: Andrew Harnik/Associated Press; Andrew H. Walker/Getty Images; Ryan Pfluger for The New York Times; Jacob Blickenstaff for The New York Times; Laurel Golio for The New York Times; Michael Zorn/Invision, via Associated Press

The music critics of The New York Times share their picks for the best pop and jazz albums of the year.

Jon Pareles

1. BEYONCÉ “Lemonade” (Parkwood/Columbia) As a set of songs, “Lemonade” plunges into one troubled marriage: a cycle of distrust, betrayal, fury, loyalty and wary reconciliation. It moves sure-footedly through styles from the rooted to the futuristic; it touches down in gospel, blues, soul and country with all the programming expertise of the 21st century. And it presents Beyoncé the singer in guises from ethereal grace to raw ferocity and pain. Then, as a multimedia work, “Lemonade” goes even further: Its video album, directed by Beyoncé and Kahlil Joseph with crucial interludes of poetry by Warsan Shire, magnifies the personal to the archetypal, situating Beyoncé among generations of African-American women in a long, unselfish, unfinished struggle. (Read the review | Listen to the Popcast)

THE BEST IN CULTURE 2016

Highlights from the year in Movies,Television, Theater, Pop Albums,Pop Songs, Performances,Classical Music, Dance, Art and Podcasts as chosen by the critics of The New York Times.

2. DAVID BOWIE “Blackstar” (ISO/Columbia) Bowie made his final album not a summation but a final metamorphosis. He assembled a studio band of forward-looking jazz musicians to play songs full of tense ambiguities: harmonic, structural, verbal. The album confronts mortality with a last burst of probing, passionate invention. (Read the review | Listen to the Popcast)

Barely Half of 30-Year-Olds Earn More Than Their Parents

As wages stagnate in the middle class, it becomes hard to reverse this trend

A study released Thursday reported that barely half of American 30-year-olds—51%— earned more than their parents did. That’s an enormous decline from the 1970s, when 92% of American 30-year-olds earned more than their parents. PHOTO: H. RICK BAMMAN/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Barely half of 30-year-olds earn more than their parents did at a similar age, a research team found, an enormous decline from the early 1970s when the incomes of nearly all offspring outpaced their parents. Even rapid economic growth won’t do much to reverse the trend.

Economists and sociologists from Stanford, Harvard and the University of California set out to measure the strength of what they define as the American Dream, and found the dream was fading. They identified the income of 30-year-olds starting in 1970, using tax and census data, and compared it with the earnings of their parents when they were about the same age.