ANNOUNCED: Discover 5% Cash Back Categories for Q1 2025 💳 Discover it Bonus Credit Card Rewards

Hey, I'm Adam Jusko from ProudMoney.com. Discover dropped a little news over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, revealing the 5% cash back categories for the Discover It card for quarter one of 2025, and those categories are restaurants, home improvement stores, and select streaming services. As always, you get that 5% on up to $1,500 worth of purchases in those categories combined in the first calendar quarter of 2025, which runs from January 1st through March 31st. Remember that you have to activate in order to get the 5% on those categories, and you want to do that before the quarter starts because Discover does not do it retroactively. So if you activate after January 1st, any purchases that you have made in those categories previous to that would not get the 5%. So you get the 5% on those categories and then all of your other purchases, of course, get 1%. For the most part, those categories are self-explanatory. A couple things I will mention. Restaurants does show restaurant delivery services as part of that category in case you were wondering. In terms of home improvement stores, you probably know mostly what that means. Your Home Depot and Lowe's obviously are going to fall in there. But then things like garden centers, nurseries, that kind of thing is also part of home improvement. A few things might fall outside. Floor covering in particular is one that they say is not part of that category. In terms of the select streaming services, it mostly is going to include everything that you would probably think of like Netflix and Max and YouTube TV and all of that kind of stuff. One thing that it does not show in the list is Hulu or Disney Plus, anything sort of in that Disney package. So as far as I can tell, those are not getting the 5%. Now they do say that there may be some things that aren't on their list that would get the 5%, but the fact that those big names are not showing there would make me believe it's not happening. So how do we feel about those categories? Well, as far as I'm concerned, good, but not great. 5% at restaurants is always welcome, but I think that first quarter is probably the least welcome time to get it because for a lot of people, that is when you are maybe pulling back from your dining out purchases because you have just spent a lot over the holidays maybe. Maybe you made a resolution to lose weight in that first quarter. Whatever reason, you're probably not hitting the restaurants quite as much, especially in January and February as you would maybe later in the year, unless you're somebody that just does that regularly and eating out is going to be the same no matter what time of year it is. In terms of the home improvement stores, same thing. If you've got some indoor winter projects, probably makes a little more sense. Or if you're going to push things more toward the end of that first quarter and you're getting more toward spring, that could be attractive. The streaming services is a good one as long as you are paying for them directly with the credit card because if you're getting things through other bundles, you wouldn't necessarily get that 5%. I know I'm getting something through Verizon, something through my internet service, and so there's a lot of bundling going on right now to try and get you into these various streaming services, and you're only going to get that 5% if you're paying for it directly with the credit card. So for me, I think, but I would like to know what you think about it. Let me know in that comment section below. Otherwise, I thank you for watching. Now, if you don't have any comments about this, the next thing you're going to want to do is watch that video.