Robinhood Gold Card 2024: Is It Worth It?

If you haven't heard yet, Robinhood just dropped one of the biggest announcements for their Robinhood Gold members– a whopping 3% cash back on everything for their Robinhood Gold Credit Card.

The Robinhood Gold Credit Card is going to be the first credit card to ever offer 3% cash back on everything. The most you will see for cash back cards on all categories is 2% with some exceptions:

• PayPal Cashback Mastercard - 3% cashback on anything if you checkout with PayPal using the PayPal Cashback Mastercard
• Bank of America Unlimited Cash Rewards Card - 2.62% cashback on all categories if you are a Platinum Honors Tier member

How to Get Robinhood Gold Card?

There are two ways to get the Robinhood Gold Card right now:

1. Join the Waitlist - The Robinhood Gold Card is currently not available for general public. You need to reserve a spot on the waitlist on Robinhood's website (all Robinhood asks is for your email address to join the waitlist aka no login necessary).
2. Refer 10 friends to Robinhood Gold - To bypass the waitlist, you can also refer 10 people to Robinhood Gold.

Robinhood Gold Card Benefits

Here is a summary of the Robinhood Gold Card's Benefits:

• No annual fee (You do need to be a Gold member though which is $5 a month, so it's basically the indirect fee)
• No foreign transactions fees
• 3% cash back on all categories
• 5% cash back when you book travel through Robinhood travel portal
• Trip Interruption Protection
• Extended Warranty Protection
• Visa Signature Concierge Service
• Purchase Security
• Return Protection
• Travel and Emergency Assitance
• Auto Rental Collision Damage Waiver
• Zero Liability Protection
• Roadside Dispatch

Should You Get The Robinhood Gold Card?

For those who are not currently a Robinhood Gold member (such as myself), I would caution to carefully consider risks with companies like Robinhood who have not had the best interests of their customers in some past situations. While they are continuing to change the game for finance and pushing the creativity of membership benefits, trust is just one of those things that takes time to re-build.

The most significant risk associated with using Robinhood involves the potential for the company to face financial insolvency. Should Robinhood encounter such difficulties, your assets and cash may become temporarily inaccessible until the bankruptcy proceedings are resolved. That being said, I will say that utilizing something like the Robinhood Gold Card is not really susceptible to insolvency risks since you are taking on a debt instead of putting your hard earned cash and assets in Robinhood. So if you wanted to become a Robinhood Gold member for the sole purpose of getting the Robinhood Gold Card, then you moreover just need calculate your estimated spend to see if it's worth it.

The most natural way to calculate a credit card's worth is to see how much you need to spend to offset your "annual fee". While the Robinhood Gold card doesn't have an annual fee, the Gold membership basically forces one. This ends up being $60 a year for the Robinhood Gold card. So if you spend at least $2000 in a year, then you will break even on your Robinhood Gold membership (at $5/mo, but also keep in mind there's a $50/year option).

Now, the next thing I would do is to measure the opportunity cost vs a 2% cash back card. If you already have a 2% cash back card, it's important to understand at what point would a 3% cash back card be worth it considering the annual fee (NOTE: most 2% cash back cards have no annual fee). Doing this math, if you spend at least $6000 in a year, then you will benefit more on your 3% cash back card than your 2% cash back card. After $6000, you have offsetted the annual fee costs and also caught up in cash back from what a 2% cash back card would have given you, so from that point forward, it'll outpace the 2% cash back card.

Now, if you are already a Robinhood Gold member, you should definitely get the Robinhood Gold credit card. I presume those who are current members are happy with Robinhood Gold so adding on the credit card does not really do much except make that experience better. A cash back on all categories card is a must for everyone's pocket as a backup!