BUSINESS

At Clark.com, we spend a lot of time analyzing the extremes of the rewards credit card market.

On one side, you have the value of a no-annual-fee cash back credit card bringing you steady returns of cash on all of your spending.

On the other side, there is the luxury of travel perks, lounge access and statement credits galore that come with a high-annual-fee travel credit card.

But what about the space between? Is there value in the “middle class” of the credit card market?

In this article, I’m going to focus on the middle tier of credit cards that carry a manageable $95 annual fee.

You may be surprised to learn that some of them are actually pretty useful, even if they’re not often a popular topic of discussion.

5 Credit Cards with Great Value at a $95 Annual Fee

Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card

card_name

Annual Fee:

$95 (See Rates & Fees)

Foreign Transaction Fee:

$0

Rewards Program Details:

Enjoy benefits such as 5x on travel purchased through Chase Travel℠, 3x on dining, 3x on vacation homes, 3x on gas & EV charging, 3x on top streaming services and 3x online groceries (excluding Walmart, Target, and wholesale clubs), 2x on all other travel purchases, 1x on all other purchases

Bonus Offer:

Earn 100,000 bonus points

Bonus Offer Disclaimer:

after you spend $5,000 on purchases in the first 3 months from account opening.

Why It Holds Value in the Middle Tier

Chase recently refreshed the offering on this popular “entry level” travel credit card, and one of the new credits makes it a slam dunk in this category.

“Earn up to $100 in statement credits each account anniversary year for hotel stays through Chase Travel.”

This means you can likely clear the cost of your annual fee each year via a single night of a hotel booking via the travel portal.

That frees you up to enjoy the category multipliers and travel protections offered by this card without fear that you won’t clear the cost of the annual fee.

Blue Cash Preferred® Card from American Express

card_name

Annual Fee:

$0 intro annual fee for the first year, then $95. (See Rates & Fees)

Foreign Transaction Fee:

2.7% of each transaction after conversion to US dollars.

Rewards Program Details:

Earn 6% cash back at U.S. supermarkets on up to $6,000 per year in eligible purchases (then 1%), 6% cash back on select U.S. streaming subscriptions, 3% cash back at eligible U.S. gas stations and on transit (including taxis/rideshare, parking, tolls, trains, buses and more) purchases and 1% cash back on other purchases. Cash Back is received in the form of Reward Dollars that can be redeemed as a statement credit and at Amazon.com checkout.

Bonus Offer:

As High As $300 Cash Back. Find Out Your Offer. You may be eligible for as high as $300 cash back

Bonus Offer Disclaimer:

after spending $3,000 in purchases on your new Card in the first 6 months. Welcome offers vary and you may not be eligible for an offer. Cash back is received as Reward Dollars, redeemable for statement credit or at Amazon.com checkout. Terms Apply.

Terms apply.

Why It Holds Value in the Middle Tier

Being eligible for up to 6% cash back in a category as significant as U.S. supermarkets makes this a significant value when you’re swiping your card for groceries. Maxing out your supermarket spend at $500 per month could be worth $360 in annual cash back.

And don’t overlook the streaming benefits as a way to claw back value. You enjoy 6% cash back on those as well, but you can more than cover your annual fee with the card’s $120 Disney Streaming Credit if you’re subscribed to one of the eligible services.

Marriott Bonvoy Boundless® Credit Card

card_name

Annual Fee:

$95

Foreign Transaction Fee:

None

Rewards Program Details:

Up to 17X total points at Marriott: Earn 6X points for every $1 spent at over 7,000 hotels. Plus, earn up to 10X points from Marriott for being a Marriott Bonvoy® member. Plus, earn up to 1X point from Marriott with Silver Elite Status, a benefit of being a Marriott Bonvoy Boundless cardmember.

3X points per $1: Earn 3X points for every $1 on the first $6,000 spent in combined purchases each year on grocery stores, gas stations, and dining.
2X points per $1: Earn 2X points for every $1 you spend on all other purchases and your points don’t expire as long as you make purchases on your credit card every 24 months.
Free Night Award every anniversary: As a Marriott Bonvoy Boundless® Cardmember, you’ll enjoy a Free Night Award every year after your account anniversary, valid for a one-night hotel stay at a property with a redemption level up to 35,000 points. (Some hotels have resort fees.)

Bonus Offer:

Earn 125,000 Bonus Points + 1 Free Night Award after spending $3,000 on eligible purchases within 3 months of account opening with the Marriott Bonvoy Boundless® Credit Card.

Bonus Offer Disclaimer:

Redeem your Free Night Award for a one-night stay at properties with a redemption level up to 50,000 points per night. Certain hotels have resort fees.

Why It Holds Value in the Middle Tier

Money expert Clark Howard is not a fan of hotel credit cards, but this one has a good chance of holding value for people who stay at Marriott properties at least once per year.

The value of the Free Night Award that is handed out on your account anniversary each year should more than cover the cost of your annual fee.

An alternative way to look at it: You’re paying $95 per year to secure a 35,000-point night at a Marriott property. All other card benefits and rewards are simply a bonus.

Capital One Venture Rewards Credit Card

card_name

Annual Fee:

$95

Foreign Transaction Fee:

None

Rewards Program Details:

2 Miles per dollar on every purchase, every day. 5 Miles per dollar on hotels, vacation rentals and rental cars booked through Capital One Travel.

Bonus Offer:

Earn a one-time bonus of 75,000 miles

Bonus Offer Disclaimer:

once you spend $4,000 on purchases within 3 months from account opening, equal to $750 in travel

Why It Holds Value in the Middle Tier

Clark recommends this card’s more expensive sibling (Capital One Venture X Rewards Credit Card) thanks to two credits that easily mitigate the $395 annual fee. If you’re in the market for a travel card and aren’t afraid of that annual fee, I’d point you in that direction.

But this card also has merit at the $95 per year level. You’ll get unlimited 2x miles on every purchase regardless of spending category, which is not the norm for a travel card. And you can do well on bookings through the Capital One Travel portal.

There is a $120 TSA PreCheck credit available when you purchase with this card.

Wells Fargo Autograph® Journey Card

Learn More →

Annual Fee:

$95

Foreign Transaction Fee:

None

Rewards Program Details:

5x points on hotels
4x points on airlines
3x points on restaurants and other travel
1x points on other purchases
Plus, earn a $50 annual statement credit with $50 minimum airline purchase.

Bonus Offer:

Earn 60,000 bonus points when you spend $4,000 in purchases in the first 3 months.

Why It Holds Value in the Middle Tier

There’s a $50 annual statement credit on airline purchases that essentially slashes the annual fee in half if you fly just once. That leaves you to enjoy the enhanced spending multipliers on this travel card at a much reduced annual fee.

This one is also loaded with protection opportunities, including:

Worldwide Automatic Common Carrier Travel Accident Insurance

Auto Rental Collision Damage Waiver

Trip Cancellation and Interruption Protection

Lost Baggage Reimbursement

Cellular Telephone Protection

Do you have one of these credit cards? We’d love to hear about your experiences with them in the Clark.com community.

Not all available financial products and offers from all financial institutions have been reviewed by this website.

To see the rates and fees for the American Express cards featured, please visit the following links: Blue Cash Preferred® Card from American Express: See Rates and Fees.

The information related to Wells Fargo Autograph® Journey Card has been collected by Clark Howard, Inc. and has not been reviewed or provided by the issuer or provider of this product or service.

The post ‘Middle Class’ Credit Cards: Hidden Gems or Waste of Money? appeared first on Clark Howard.

The firm, freshly valued at $1 billion, aims to replace legacy correspondent banking with always-on infrastructure that connects traditional payment systems and stablecoins.

Most shoppers do not expect something as simple as a bakery roll to carry a safety risk.But food recalls can sometimes involve products consumers never see in their original packaging.This is especially true of products, which are shipped in bulk to grocery-store bakeries, restaurants, or other food-service businesses before being prepared and sold.That is the case with a new recall involving General Mills and one of the country’s biggest retailers.General Mills has recalled more than 735,000 Pillsbury bread rolls because they may contain foreign material, including glass, according to two U.S. Food and Drug Administration enforcement reports.The affected frozen dough was supplied to Walmart in-store bakeries, where it was baked before being sold to shoppers.Pillsbury recall covers more than 735,000 rollsThe recall covers two Pillsbury frozen bread dough products manufactured by General Mills.The first involves Pillsbury Bread Rolls Hard Roll Dough.General Mills recalled 3,080 cases, each containing 180 rolls, for a total of approximately 554,400 rolls.More Recalls:FDA recall hits 2.5 million bottles of widely used eye dropsMassive cottage cheese recall expands after 1 death, 12 illnessesPopular dog food brand recalled over dangerous materialThe affected Hard Roll Dough includes:Lot 11JUN6JL with a “Better if Used By” date of Oct. 12, 2026Lot 12JUN6JL with a “Better if Used By” date of Oct. 13, 2026Recall number H-1154-2026A second recall covers Pillsbury Bread Rolls, Kaiser Roll Dough.General Mills recalled 1,260 cases containing 144 rolls each, or approximately 181,440 rolls.Combined, the two recalls cover approximately 735,840 bread rolls.The FDA lists the reason for both recalls as the potential presence of foreign material, specifically glass.General Mills initiated the voluntary recalls on June 19, and the FDA recently classified them as Class II recalls on July 13.A Class II recall means use of or exposure to the affected product could cause temporary or medically reversible health consequences, while the probability of serious health consequences is considered remote.

General Mills issues recall of 2 Pillsbury bread dough products.FotografiaBasica / Getty Images

Recalled Pillsbury rolls were sold through Walmart bakeriesThe recalled products differ from many grocery recalls because shoppers would not necessarily have purchased a package labeled with the affected lot numbers.General Mills said the frozen dough products were baked onsite and sold exclusively through Walmart in-store bakeries in the United States, Allrecipes reported.The company described the recall as limited and highly contained and said all potentially affected products had been removed.The recalled dough was distributed across 19 states:Arkansas, California, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Louisiana, Maine, Missouri, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, Washington, and Wyoming.Because the identifying information appears on the bulk cases used by bakery operations, customers who purchased fresh rolls from a Walmart bakery may not have access to the original lot or product codes.Consumers concerned about the bakery rolls they purchased can contact the store where they were purchased or General Mills for additional information.Foreign objects such as glass can pose an injury risk if swallowed, including cuts or damage to the mouth, throat, or digestive tract.General Mills recall comes amid challenging yearThe recall arrives as General Mills is trying to strengthen sales across its large portfolio of food brands.The company owns or operates brands including Pillsbury, Cheerios, Lucky Charms, Betty Crocker, Nature Valley, and Blue Buffalo.General Mills reported fiscal fourth-quarter net sales of $4.6 billion, up 1% from a year earlier, while organic net sales were flat.For the full fiscal year, however, net sales fell 5% to $18.4 billion and organic net sales declined 2%.The pressure was especially visible in the company’s North America Retail business, which includes many of the packaged-food brands familiar to U.S. shoppers.Fourth-quarter North America Retail sales fell 4% to approximately $2.5 billion.General Mills said lower volumes and higher input costs weighed on full-year North America Retail operating profit, which fell 20%.The company is now trying to restore growth by investing more heavily in product innovation, brand marketing, consumer value, and efficiency.The company is targeting $3 billion in cumulative cost savings by fiscal 2030, including at least $750 million in fiscal 2027.At a time of challenging retail behavior, the recall increases the risk of a decline in customer trust, as seen in the recent iceberg lettuce recall and its link (later termed a false negative by the FDA) to Taco Bell.Which consequently is said to have impacted in-store traffic, TheStreet reported.Meanwhile, as the recalled dough was baked and sold through Walmart stores rather than packaged for consumers under the recalled case labels, shoppers in the affected states may want to pay closer attention to where and when they purchased bakery rolls.Related: Taco Bell and Chipotle face a problem bigger than lettuce

Kaylee Hottle, who starred in “Godzilla vs. Kong” and “Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire,” has died.

Is the right choice one that you can picture in your mind?

Wall Street thinks GLP-1s could cost the industry up to $55 billion a year. Burger King isn’t waiting to find out.

A major controversy is brewing over a proposal to expand the 2030 tournament from 48 to 64 teams, a one-time increase for its centennial edition.

A minor geomagnetic storm is upping the visibility of the aurora borealis.

Oracle (ORCL) has spent two years telling Wall Street it can build AI infrastructure faster than anyone else. A land commissioner in New Mexico just made that harder.On Monday, Oracle stock fell about 3.5% to a fresh 52-week low, trading near $122 after touching $120.03 earlier in the day.The trigger for the drop wasn’t financial. It was regulatory. New Mexico’s top land official rejected, for the second time, a natural gas pipeline meant to power Oracle’s “Project Jupiter” data center.Normally, investors would shrug off a headline like that. However, this time they didn’t, and the reason says a lot about where Oracle stands right now.What New Mexico’s decision actually blocks for Project JupiterProject Jupiter is a 2.5-gigawatt data center campus in Doña Ana County, part of the wider $500 billion Stargate initiative Oracle and OpenAI are building for AI infrastructure.Running this data center takes a huge amount of power. The facility relies on on-site fuel cells fed by natural gas.That gas needs a pipeline to be moved. The proposed route was a 17-mile pipeline from El Paso, built by Energy Transfer (ET), that would cross a short stretch of state trust land.New Mexico Land Commissioner Stephanie Garcia Richard initially said no to the pipeline application. In a July 14 letter, she again denied the rights-of-way, having first rejected the application in March, KOB reported.Her reasoning was blunt. The project, she wrote, offered little benefit to the state’s land trust or local community, while carrying clear environmental risk.Why the commissioner pushed back:Emissions: Project Jupiter is forecast to emit more than 10 million tons of greenhouse gases a year, more than double the city of Albuquerque’s total, according to Santa Fe New Mexican.Water: The campus draws heavily on water in an arid region already under strain.Return: State officials concluded the project would enrich private backers far more than New Mexico’s public institutions.

A halted pipeline threatens the power supply for one of the largest AI campuses under construction in the U.S.Bloomberg / Getty Images

Why one pipeline denial rattled Oracle stockA local permit fight would not normally move a mega-cap stock. This one did because of what it threatens next.Oracle needs Project Jupiter online to compete with cloud hyperscalers on the AI compute market. A blocked pipeline application puts that timeline at risk.Oracle has already said missing its power schedule would push costs up. Rerouting around state land could add billions to the bill.Research firm SemiAnalysis now expects power at the site in 2029, not 2027, Pete Dinelli reported. The project still lacks an air quality permit and a gas line.For a stock already trading on fear, a two-year delay lands hard.More AI Infrastructure Stocks:UBS says to ‘buy the dip’ in Bloom Energy stockNvidia CEO doubles down on AI and stock market verdictCathie Wood buys $2.1M of tumbling AI stockProject Jupiter was set to run entirely on Bloom Energy (BE) fuel cells, a deal Oracle unveiled that could scale to 2.45 gigawatts. If Jupiter slips, every supplier tied to it feels it too.How the pipeline fight feeds a bigger money problemThe permit denial did not create Oracle’s biggest worry. It amplified one already in the room.That worry is cash. Oracle is spending enormous sums on AI capacity, and the market is nervous about how it pays for that.Related: Oracle’s stock buybacks: History & investor impact explainedOn Monday, CLSA initiated coverage on Oracle with a Hold rating and a $145 price target, Investing.com reported.That call carried the real weight. CLSA estimated Oracle may need up to $500 billion in capital through 2030 to fund its AI roadmap, and internal cash flow could only cover about a fifth of it. The rest would come from debt or equity raises.The financial pressure points investors are tracking:A capital need that could reach $500 billion by 2030A debt load that has pushed Oracle’s credit rating to BBB-, one notch above junkNegative free cash flow tied to a heavy capex rampAgainst that backdrop, any friction at a flagship project reads as one more reason to doubt the plan.The operating business is still growingIt would be easy to write Oracle off after over a 60% decline from its high. But the underlying numbers argue against that.Oracle’s fiscal fourth-quarter results showed total revenue went up 21% to about $19 billion, with cloud revenue climbing 47%.The company delivered more than 1.2 gigawatts of data center capacity in 2026 and reported record remaining performance obligations of $638 billion.The tension is clear. Oracle has the demand and the backlog. What it lacks, at least for now, is a clean path to fund and power the buildout.What Oracle stock investors should watch nextFor readers deciding what to do here, the near-term catalysts are concrete and worth tracking before making a move:The air quality permit. New Mexico’s Environment Department has scheduled a hearing, and no approval means no fuel cells.An alternative power route. A reroute or redesign for Jupiter would confirm added cost and delay.Fresh capital. Any large debt or equity raise would show how Oracle plans to close its funding gap, and could pressure the stock further.The next earnings update. Oracle reports first-quarter fiscal 2027 results on September 10.Oracle remains profitable, its cloud backlog is real, and the average analyst target still sits well above the stock’s current price.However, there is also a real risk. A company funding a historic buildout largely on borrowed money has little room for setbacks, and Monday delivered one.The pipeline denial did not break Oracle’s AI story. It exposed how much of that story still depends on things going right.Nothing here is a recommendation to buy or sell. It is context, so you can weigh the growth against the balance sheet and decide what fits your own risk tolerance.Related: Oracle’s stock splits: History & prospects explained

In an interview with CoinDesk, MoneyGram CEO Anthony Soohoo said that their blockchain strategy has evolved from early experimentation into a broader effort to modernize the company’s global payments infrastructure.