Best Rewards Credit Card

Amex business gold recently gave me 75000 points for signing up.
Capital one venture signature visa gives you 10000 points to sign up and then 2 points per dollar spent, so I like this one better and I'm accumulating points for my next ED in 2013.

Originally Posted by jagu

Amex business gold recently gave me 75000 points for signing up.
Capital one venture signature visa gives you 10000 points to sign up and then 2 points per dollar spent, so I like this one better and I'm accumulating points for my next ED in 2013.

Points and miles are not the same. I refused AMX because their points cannot redeem AA miles.

Originally Posted by Dave 330i

Points and miles are not the same. I refused AMX because their points cannot redeem AA miles.

everyone's situation is obviously different - if AA miles are your thing, obviously this steers your decision making...

Originally Posted by wyb

everyone's situation is obviously different - if AA miles are your thing, obviously this steers your decision making...

not only that one point does not equal 1 mile. There are also fees associated with transferring points to miles, if that's what you're after. That's why they don't call those points miles. How much is 1 point worth? Today's mile has a value of .02 dollar.

http://www.plasticiq.com/blog/what-i...ewards-points/

Originally Posted by Dave 330i

Points and miles are not the same. I refused AMX because their points cannot redeem AA miles.

Yeah but points can be used to buy tickets and hotel rooms. My 75000 Amex points can buy $550 worth of tickets on any airline and I will accumulate over 200k by 2013 because i pay a lot of vendors with it.

Same goes with the venture card and I prefer the flexibility instead of been stuck with one airline.

Originally Posted by jagu

Yeah but points can be used to buy tickets and hotel rooms. My 75000 Amex points can buy $550 worth of tickets on any airline and I will accumulate over 200k by 2013 because i pay a lot of vendors with it.

Same goes with the venture card and I prefer the flexibility instead of been stuck with one airline.

Agree on your flexibility, but to me AA mile is God. 40K miles gets me RT to Germany before the summer crowd fighting for hotel rooms and poorer services. Now, I have miles for 4 RT to Europe, not bad. Brassy hotels do not impress me when I travel to Europe. Next trip? Oh yea, April-May.

Originally Posted by Dave 330i

Agree on your flexibility, but to me AA mile is God. 40K miles gets me RT to Germany before the summer crowd fighting for hotel rooms and poorer services. Now, I have miles for 4 RT to Europe, not bad. Brassy hotels do not impress me when I travel to Europe. Next trip? Oh yea, April-May.

AA used to be awesome but I have cancelled my Citicard. Back in 2006 I used to travel to anywhere in the Caribbean for 25k point round trip.

Originally Posted by Dave 330i

not only that one point does not equal 1 mile. There are also fees associated with transferring points to miles, if that's what you're after. That's why they don't call those points miles. How much is 1 point worth? Today's mile has a value of .02 dollar.

http://www.plasticiq.com/blog/what-i...ewards-points/

Personally, I'm interested in points that can be exchanged for gift cards, or for items. The Amex points we get can actually be spent at amazon.com... that works for me - miles, I don't care about, as almost all my travel is business and the business pays for that, not me personally.

Like I said, each to their own, with you being retired and all travel being personal, I fully expect a completely different set of criteria to decide which card is best for you - and that the resulting "best card" is almost certain to be a completely different "best card" from mine...

So I thought I would provide an example that explains *my* logic...

we acquire our points by using Amex as a flow-through card to pay for a supplier in the business - not by purchasing airline tickets - these are "other purchases" - and we gain 1 point of $1 of spend, so $50,000 of spend will earn 50,000 points.

Those points can be traded in for gift cards (yes, that limits where we redeem the cards but there are ALWAYS things we can get at Home Depot for instance - and when Mrs wyb wanted new dishes / glasses for the house, we shopped the places we knew we would get gift card FIRST - so see if using gift cards would be a good deal... if it worked out, great, if not - oh well... pay for them elsewhere - not a big deal.

We also traded in points for $100 giftcards for various restaurants in Denver - Mortons (anyone want to buy that one??) - Flemings, McCormick + Schmicks, etc, etc. I only bother looking at the places where 1 point = $0.01 on a gift card, there are other places with 2 points to the penny - but I knock those out of my equation most of the time, as we can get a prepaid AMEX card for that conversion if we wanted to - and that would give us a lot more flexibility than giftcards if we want that bad a redemption rate.

Next - we redeem at Amazon.com - as an Amazon Prime member I already get $0 cost 2 day shipping and you can link your Amex rewards directly to Amazon - at checkout, you get the option to pay partially, or fully in points - that's been used a few times - most recently, we bought a new Omega 8004 juicer... $259.99... and here is how I decided that it would make total sense to use Amex points at Amazon, instead of some other method of payment...


Omega 8004 juicer at Amazon.com

$259.99 paid for 100% with 37,136 Amex points at amazon.com

or -

$259.99 at 80% (bed bath and beyond 20% off coupon)

discounted price = $207.99
+$20 shipping + handling (approximately)
+$6.03 tax (state) at 2.90%

= $234.02

cost of a $250.00 Amex prepaid card for $250 = 50,000 points

hmm... even if the "price" were close, redeeming for Amex prepaid, then spending would require a multi-step and multi-day process of redemption of cards for prepaid, waiting for delivery, then placing the order, waiting for delivery - I can't imagine it taking less than a week - but going direct to Amazon and spending points means 2 business days later, I get the goods delivered to my door.... it's a bit of a no-brainer for me.

That said - if I was accumulating points from buying airline tickets, or planning on redeeming points/miles for airline tickets, then I would certainly look at my card rewards plan differently.

Back in the old days when I was traveling, the mile junkies (sales people) and I would share stories over free drinks on the concierge floor at the Hiltons. Now, too much drama for me. Life should be simple and my time, valuable. Use CC to buy things, then pay off CC at the end of month. Accumulate miles, but never try to be a whore or junkie unless the one time reward is substantial. This philosophy works for me. My life is as happy as can be. I tell my kids that whenever I can.

I have chase....the rewards program sucks

Originally Posted by the540wgn

I have chase....the rewards program sucks

I agree - we have mutiple chase cards and Mrs wyb was all impressed at the sales pitch - I keep asking her - so how much do we have in there compared to what we get from Amex... the answer is... lacking...

I wish she would just flow everything through AMEX

whoot whoot. AA CitiCard

$85 Membership renewal due January. I called and gave them another song and dance story about how I want to cancel out CC with membership fees. "Noticed we gave you $85 membership credit last year". The offer this next year is if I make 5 purchases within 3 months, I would receive a $95 credit. Read me the recorded offer, and my answer is "yes".

I was betting they wouldn't accept the termination since all my payment activities is tied to this CC I use 99% of the time, except in EU because CitiCard charges 3% exchange rate fee.

Originally Posted by boile

if you're a chase customer, get the chase amazon card. zero annual fee.
You get 3% on all amazon purchases, 2% on gas, restaurant and some other stuff, and 1% everything else.
You can redeem your credits in cash, amazon gift certificate, airline mileage or hotel credit.

+1

Originally Posted by NASA43

+1

Got an interesting offer from Discover this year. If I charge $2500 per month for the last 4 months of 2012, they pay $500 cash back on top of regular cash back. Just waiting for last statement to cycle before the $500 hits. They gave monthly updates to confirm compliance. :beer:

Just applied for another AA Citi card after being off that for 5 months. Need $3000 in charges to get 40k miles. Needed a few more miles to get flight I wanted to Provendentiales (however that's spelled).

Next up- cancel Starwood Amex and reapply in 6 months.

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Stopped using the Amex Gold card w/ points and instead moved to the Costco Amex. Everything is charged to the card and paid in full each month. I've learned to prefer the cash back rewards.

Originally Posted by jw

Stopped using the Amex Gold card w/ points and instead moved to the Costco Amex. Everything is charged to the card and paid in full each month. I've learned to prefer the cash back rewards.

are you getting .024 to .0275 back in cash? Each AA mile is worth that amount. For example off season RT ticket to Europe costs about $1100, and summer around $1450. Now AA will fly you RT to EU for 40k miles during off season and 60k miles during the summer. If you divide cost/miles you get $.0275/mile during off season, and $.0242/mile during the summer. Regardless whether you use miles of pay for the RT ticket, you have to add tax and fee to the ticket cost, around $125 depending which airport you fly to. For me, I rather get miles rather than 1% cash rebate.

While we're still fairly loyal to one card (Amex SPG), we also play games with the other cards. At this point with our credit scores we take advantage of the great deals (like $500 from a chase southwest card that we cancel right after getting the rewards) and just view it as a given we will end up getting a few k for free every year from various credit card companies. Strange how the system rewards people with good credit free money...

ive heard good things about discover

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