> ...extreme-couponing aspect for people who budget down to the penny...

It's the opposite. 1.5% of zero is zero, but 1.5% of a large sum is something material. The cashback credit cards are worth for those who spend a lot of money for it to be worthwhile.

Back of the envelope: $6K per month is $1,000 per month of cashback (or airline miles, points, etc).

>Back of the envelope: $6K per month is $1,000 per month of cashback

Do you have a typo somewhere? $1k of cashback for $6k spend works out to 16.6%, which is very high. $1000 per year is far more reasonable.

Sorry, I meant "... $1,000 per year". $6K × 12 months × (1.5÷100) = $1,080

I always thought that I want to switch to a credit card for miles.

I researched it and I believe this is just a very weird mix of USA and people spending just a lot of money.

Like I can imagine that if you still don't know what a automatic bank wire.is, you might just put everything on a credit card like utility etc.

Or there are people who are living their lives in hotels like consultant who use their cc to pay for company expenses and get rebursed later.

I get 2% off of everything that goes through my credit card and it takes me very little effort, I just have to push the deposits to my main account from time to time. 2% of my spend isn't very significant, but I wouldn't say it's negligible. Less work than haggling for a cash discount and carrying cash.