Credit Card Recomendations

TravelJunkie1234 · April 2015

Hi All,

Does anyone have a miles card (Like Discover It Miles, Capital One Venture card, etc)? Do you think they're better or worse than just a regular rewards card that you can use to redeem points for other things as well as travel?

Currently we use our debit card for almost everything but I'm hoping to start putting most of our purchases (groceries, gas, etc) on whatever card we get so we can get points/miles, and then I can just turn around and pay off the card each month.

I'm just now starting to research some of the cards out there, but would appreciate any tips to look out for, or if there are any cards that you might recommend (or ones to stay away from!)

Thanks!

hoffse · April 2015

We've been working the Chase cards recently - Sapphire, Freedom, and Ink. We opened the cards as we were about to pay for our back room remodel, so we hit the spending minimums on all of them really easily to get the sign up bonuses. We plan to visit Belgium at the end of the year to see H's grandma (last visit), and we now have enough points to make that trip almost free.

We budget enough out of pocket to take one trip a year, but if we want to do more than that, we have to work points to keep our costs from getting out of control.

One nice thing about the Chase cards are the transfer partners. I didn't think it would be hugely useful for us, but I was wrong. For instance, my law firm just announced a trip to California for next April, and spouses are invited but we have to pay for their travel costs. Well we can transfer points to SW to get flights for H, and it "costs" way fewer points than booking through Chase directly. Same with United, Hyatt, etc. It's nice to have a single set of cards where you can consolidate points and then transfer them as needed.

If you want to work travel points, I think it's important to first figure out your travel plans/goals for the next 12-18 months to the best of your ability. Then find a card or cards that fit those plans. For us, being able to go to Belgium mostly for free is a huge deal, because it frees up our budget for a big trip next summer. That was our goal with these cards, and we'll have ample points leftover once the trip is done. We're not settled on a destination for next summer, but several of the options we are looking at have Hyatt's... On the other hand, one of the places we are looking at has mostly Starwood hotels. We might open a Starwood card if we settle on that destination.

Try not to let the credit cards drive your trip - let the trip determine which credit cards you need.

hoffse · April 2015

Side note: one of the things that drives me crazy about travel points bloggers is that they tend to burn points on totally random destinations just because they can. Sometimes I think that they decide to go to places like Iceland or wherever because that was the best deal they could get with their points, not because it's a place that genuinely interests them (which is a shame - Iceland looks interesting!).

For most of us, our time to travel is limited. Obviously some will disagree with this, but H and I have taken the approach of "if this is the last time we leave the country, we want to see X" when figuring out where to go. It's not the most MM way to travel, but it's been very fulfilling for us. Besides, we give up a lot to take a week off of work. H's bonuses are directly tied to how many hours he bills a year, and when he loses a week of billable time his bonus goes down. So even a "free" trip ends up costing us something. We want the destination and experience to really be worth it.

Maybe someday we'll travel based on the best deal, but for now... we're working our way down the bucket list, and we simply consider credit cards as a way to defray those costs

short+sassy · April 2015

@hoffse, so true! Just the time is a huge factor for me also. I get a decent amount of vacation time at work and it doesn't affect that income to take it...but it's still only so much time. And then I have a part-time job that I have to pay someone else to do when I am out of town so, for a week, that is $350 I am not earning on top of paying for a vacation.

My mom is friends with a married couple...both retired...who play the "airline" game. They will book flights to places they want to go on but, as long as the costs are similar, will purposely choose flights or days/times that tend to oversell. Then they are the first to raise their hands when the airline offers free tickets/airline dollars to anyone willing to give up their seats. They're almost always able to get on another flight later that day or the next day and are given at least a couple hundred airline dollars each on top of that. They have gotten a lot of free airfare this way, though they complain the airlines used to be a lot more generous with the offers, lol.

RosieC18 · April 2015

We have a chase sapphire preferred and love it. You get double points when you spend at restaurants and triple when you buy travel which works very well for us as a long distance couple. I haven't played around with the transfer thing mentioned above but I definitely will be now! The only real downside for us is the annual fee, which is usually a deal breaker. However, H's firm covers it since he needs a high-limit card for work travel so we decided to go with it.

I would think about how you spend money, in addition to what you want to buy with points. Chase doesn't have many perks for money spent on gas, but that's fine with us as we only have one car and don't put a lot of miles on it. We try to be reasonable about eating out, but that is where 90% of our fun money goes, so we wanted a card that rewarded that. Also they counted our caterer as a restaurant, and the caterer didn't charge us a credit card fee, so that was almost a flight right there. It was awesome.

Do you know any management consultants? They are basically professional points/miles gatherers. If you do, I'd ask for some advice, but be prepared for a long lecture involving binders and charts.

ETF: typo

hoffse · April 2015

Yeah what Rosie mentioned is a good point - you might also want to see where you spend. We tend to spend a lot on restaurants because we have a lot of "professional development" lunches that we can expense to our firms. This quarter restaurants are 5x points on Chase Freedom, and we can transfer those points to our Sapphire card to be used for travel. The transfers are instantaneous. We've earned about 1200 points just on restaurants since April 1.... and we have until the end of June before that category rotates out. The really restaurant-heavy time of year for us is May. That's when the summer associates arrive, and the number of reimbursable lunches we have typically doubles that time of year.

We also spend a lot on home improvement, and I now just buy HD and Lowes gift cards on Staples.com to get 5x points on those expenses with the ink card (Ink gives you 5x at office supply stores, and gift cards count). We price out most projects before we start, so I usually have a good sense of how many gift cards to buy. We do use the ink card for all of H's separate business expenses, but we mix personal on it as well. Chase doesn't seem to care.

If you really don't have one category where you spend a lot, a good cash back card is always great. We have a Fidelity AmEx for "everything else." It earns 2% back on everything, and the rewards are deposited as cash. That typically beats the 1% you get back on "everything else" with Chase for non-bonus-category spending. Yesterday I charged my next semester's tuition to my Fidelity card and earned over $100 in cash rewards. Those rewards will be deposited into my brokerage account at the beginning of May, and I will probably add them to our vacation fund for incidental expenses.

dodkalm83 · April 2015

I like my Capital One card (Venture card) because they charge 0% conversion fee if you travel outside the US. You also get 1.25% points on any purchase.

I would also recommend Chase freedom because they have special deals every quarter where they bump up your points for regular purchases like gas/groceries/amazon.com.

als1982 · April 2015

Copied and pasted from a similar post a few months back:

Our primary is Barclay Arrival Plus, which nets 2 point per dollar spent, and redemption of 1.1 dollars for every 100 points. The catch for that good rate is that it's only on travel redemption, and not straight cash back. But I've noticed that travel is defined very loosely and things like train tickets and cabs count in addition to cruise, hotel and flight purchases. Annual fee is waived the first year and signup bonus currently equates to $400.

We also have a Chase Southwest, which H uses for his business travel. H travels for work on average once every two months, so not a ton but enough to hit A-List status annually and Companion Pass when we use this as our primary. This card has an annual fee, but nets double points on hotel stays in addition to Southwest flights.

I use a Chase United for work and personal spending. It has an annual fee, but comes with two business class lounge passes a year and free checked bags. We usually take one big international vacation a year and fly a United partner so this makes it worth it.

We also maintain a fee free Capital One for longevity, which has a decent earn rate for a fee free card. We put all our wedding expenses here and ended up making well over $1,000 before we even got into the strategy of points and miles.

I've tried hotel cards, but those don't seem to net the free rooms close to the rate that airline or cash cards earn.

And don't forget to always sign-up for your primary card's dining club (we end up with a few thousand miles a year just by registering our cards and eating at places we go to anyways - especially H's work dinners while on business trips), and definitely shop through their portals whenever you're buying online. Evreward.com is a great place to check to see if an online retailer offers miles or points through a portal, and which portals they are a part of. (Although don't count on the accuracy of their earn rate.)

We LOVE to travel hack.

JoanE2012 · April 2015

@hoffse - I've been to Iceland and it was really neat! Worst jet lag I've ever had though....I think it was partly due to the lack of daylight.....when we went the sun didn't rise until around 10:30 and it set by 4pm.

@traveljunkie1234 - We use the United Mileage Plus card. We live near a United hub, so it works for us. We charge pretty much anything and everything (and pay it right off!) We take about 2-3 major vacations a year. Most we pay out of pocket. We try to use the miles on more expensive trips and/or more expensive airfares like Hawaii or Europe.

As @als1982 mentioned, we online shop through United's portal to get bonus miles and we are signed up for Mileage Plus dining. All of it helps get more miles!

Xstatic3333 · April 2015

dodkalm83 said:
I like my Capital One card (Venture card) because they charge 0% conversion fee if you travel outside the US. You also get 1.25% points on any purchase.
I would also recommend Chase freedom because they have special deals every quarter where they bump up your points for regular purchases like gas/groceries/amazon.com.

We use the Venture card too and are happy with it. Now, I sort of tripped into it after getting promoted from a crappy Capital One card I signed up for in college, so I didn't really research other options. But, I really like the flexibility. You can use the points for ANY travel related expense; rental cars, flights, hotels, and even stuff like campsites will show up as an option when you go to the "purchase eraser." This summer we'll use some for wedding hotel stays. Another cool thing is that the points become available immediately after you make a purchase, whereas with many other mileage cards you need to wait a full billing cycle. For example, the last time I used my points, I thought I only had enough for one of our plane tickets and was just short for the second. I bought my ticket in a separate transaction, and was able to use the points from that purchase to then immediately buy H's. We were still able to select seats next to each other

Another thing I'll say for Capital One is that whenever I've called, they've had excellent customer service. I care a lot about customer service so that's a big plus for me.

We fly to FL from RI at least once or twice a year to visit H's dad, and our goal with CC points is to never pay to fly to FL. When I flew last week to take my dive instructor exam, I actually opened the JetBlue card to use the sign up bonus to make that flight free. That card only offers one mile per dollar spent on most purchases, but 6 miles/dollar on JetBlue purchases. A side benefit to this that we just realized is that H's mom also flies to FL quite a bit to visit her brother, but doesn't use computers so has us buy her ticket and then writes us a check. She likes to fly JetBlue, so we can use that card to purchase her tickets and get enough miles back each time to pay for one "leg" of a FL trip for us (i.e. RI to FL for one person).

What I think I may be able to do, though I haven't tested it yet, is use the Capital One card to "buy" JetBlue miles and then use purchase eraser on that purchase. That would effectively allow me to combine points between the two cards, but I'll have the cash in reserve the first time I try it just in case.

I have found that, although we don't pay interest, I overspend a bit when using CC for fun. However, going forward we'll plan to use them for routine purchases conducted by H as well as large, planned, budgeted purchases we have to make anyway (contractors, vet, etc.) and my work reimbursables.

TravelJunkie1234 · April 2015

Wow, you all brought up some great points and tips, thanks! Looks like I have some thinking to do about what would be best for us. Aside from bills, we don't really spend much money but our normal things that we would probably use the card for would be eating out, groceries, and Amazon purchases (Home Depot is probably another one now that summer is nearly here!)...

We have no family or friends nearby so it would be nice to earn some points and not have to pay quite as much when we fly out to Colorado or California to visit DH's family and our friends, or on trips to visit my family in Brazil. Ideally we like to visit each of our families at least once a year, but those trips add up (especially to Brazil--those plane tickets get more expensive each year!) and make it harder for us to go on trips to other places that we want to see.

MommyLiberty5013 · April 2015

Not sure if anybody stated this above, but I wouldn't use a Discover or an Amex (as my sole cards). These cards typically are not accepted in foreign nations. Also, many U.S. establishments do not accept them either. Therefore, I'm a fan of a VISA or MasterCard that does a percentage on everything AND a higher percentage for restaurants/travel/gas.

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