August 2025 Newsletter

REMINDER! Rakuten Big Deal Days: Every Wednesday Rakuten highlights a specific store with an extremely high points multiplier.

SAVE WISE is an awesome tool to aid in choosing the right portals, finding stacking opportunities, and strategizing purchase timing. We had an amazing live stream with the founder of Save Wise on July 28th.

Use this link to sign up for Save Wise Pro to unlock all the benefits! JGOOT.com/getsavewise

Rakuten’s New American Express Card

(And why I think it’s probably another shiny object)

I’m always looking to maximize my points earning so today I’m writing one week after Rakuten announced its new points (or cash back) earning credit card. I took one for the team and applied the day it was released to run it through the paces. Here’s what we know…so far.

While American Express is the credit card processor and First Electronic Bank is the issuer; it uses tech startup Imprint for management. This allows it to integrate with your Rakuten account seamlessly. You will not access your account through American Express. The only association with your Amex account will be when the points are deposited into your Membership Rewards (“MR”) account quarterly (as determined when you set up your Rakuten account). All account management is handled by Rakuten and Imprint.

The important stuff:

• Zero annual fee

• 4 pts per dollar ON TOP of normal Rakuten earn. Online and instore (28,000 max)

• 10 pts per dollar on Rakuten Dining (no max)

• 2 pt per dollar on Groceries and non-Rakuten Dining

• 1 pt per dollar on everything else

• $25 (2,500 MR pts) bonus after $500 spend

• Points deposit quarterly along with your normal Rakuten earnings

• Missing Point Claims from card go through Rakuten interface

• Add Amex offers to the card to stack with Rakuten purchases

For JGOOTers this isn’t game changing, but it does offer modest improvements in earning: extra 28,000 MR per year, extra 5x on Rakuten Dining, and for no fee.

At first blush this all sounds great, let me explain why I don’t think this is the card for most JGOOTers:

1. Modest Earn. If you are already using a Chase Freedom Unlimited or Capital One Venture X to make your retail purchases, you will only add 17,500/14,000 respectively points to your overall annual earn. This same analysis holds true for dining. If you are already using an Amex Gold along with Rakuten Dining you are currently earning 9x. This card only adds one more point per dollar for dining.

2. Terms, Conditions, and Exclusions. The general bonus categories sound great, but when you read the full terms there are a lot of exclusions on 4x stores. These exclusions include all travel bookings! This is a big negative for those of us focused on travel. And earning a lot of Rakuten points through merchants like Viator.

3. Amex Offers. It is exciting that that are incorporated and stackable, but each offers needs to be manually entered every single time. It is tedious and right now there is no shortcut to auto activate. (We are working with Save Wise to see if there is a work around).

4. Slow Processing. I made a purchase a week ago with the card and it is still processing in my account. This makes reliability tracking difficult.

5. Dining Limitations. Rakuten Dining uses Rewards Network whose network is not very robust outside of larger cities. If few or no restaurants are in your area you cannot capitalize on the 10x.

This is all new, but my initial impression is it is a hard credit pull and another card to juggle in your wallet all for a pretty paltry earn.

That said, I am not kicking it to the curb yet. Rakuten has always been transparent that tracking and studying your spending habits is how it makes money and with new vertical integration with Imprint it can pass more cashback (points for us) back to the user. Time will tell how this goes but I’m making sure I have a front row ticket.

For now, my recommendation is if you are following the process in the JGOOT book you should hang tight on getting this card. The cards you already have in your wallet are doing much of the heavy lifting this card purportedly offers already.

🗓️ UPDATES 🗓️

Mark your calendars for our next Live Q&A session on Monday August 18th at 4:00pm PT/7:00pm ET. Get all your questions answered. Here's the link to join. Don't miss out on attending live!

Kira and Shannon

JGOOT Earning Multipliers Experts