I’m getting ready to take a new job where I’ll be charging a LOT of stuff. Travel and business expenses- including such evils as renting space at trade shows ($$$$). Where I’ve worked in the past I’ve been issued a corporate card for these things, but because this will be a small company it’s going to be reimbursement based.
I don’t know how much money we’re talking, but might be approaching six figures per year. Obviously I’m going to have to be diligent about my expenses.
I’m planning to get a dedicated credit card, and I’m struggling to get past all the marketing wank and determine which card would be the best for me. So I am soliciting opinions.
FWIW, I already do a lot of work travel and have a mountain of miles on American, good status there, and a card that delivers to the AAdvantage program. I mostly care (there) about upgrades and lounge access, but because I (normal times) travel 3-4 times a month I rarely use my miles for personal travel awards. That said, unless they extend my status through 2022 I’ll probably lose it this year. I’ve only just started to get back out there and not at the rate I was (no complaints, though).
SO, what do people like for credit card rewards programs?
Is this a new company? If they can afford to pay out a reimbursement, why can’t they pay the bill in the first place? Why can’t they get a corporate card?
If it were me, I would be going for a cash-back card. Even at 1.5% a six-figure spend would result in a 4-figure reward.
I’m lying. If it were me, I wouldn’t do it. There’s more than the question of potential money lost, there’s your credit score and probably other stuff I’m not thinking of. I don’t have the stomach for that kind of risk.
It’s an established company with a small “storefront” in the US. I’ve been dealing with them for many years and I know them well. I’ll be the sole US representative and thus there really isn’t an infrastructure in place. It’s complicated, but it’s completely on the up and up. The current person is an old friend of mine and he’s retiring, he’s asked me to take over.
I like my Amazon card.
It’s always nice to go to buy something and find that I have enough points to pay for it. If you buy a lot of stuff, that might work out for you.
I know a lot of people who say the exact same thing, but I’ve never understood it. The way my brain is wired, I can’t tell much difference between buying it with points or buying it with cash. Points is not free; if I use my points today, then I’ll have fewer points tomorrow.
When I ask myself, “Can I afford this? How much money do I have?”, so of course I add up what’s in my pocket AND my checking account AND my savings account AND all my other investments, and that includes my points as well. I concede that these different monies have different degrees of liquidity, but my point (no pun intended) is that credit card points are a finite resource, not a magical genie.
Airline rewards cards are great for their sign-on bonuses, but for ongoing purchases you’re probably better off with a card that gives cash back. Airline miles are similar to a 1% cash back program. That is, you need to charge around $20,000 to get enough miles for a flight that might cost around $200. Compare the same AA flights for the cost in points and dollars to see what the cash back equivalence is.
If you can get a card that gives you 1.5% or 2% back, that will probably be a better deal overall. You’ll get cash which can be worth the same or more as airline points, but you can spend it on anything you want. Find a card which has the cash back on all purchases rather than only in certain categories.
I can’t speak for the OPs company, but nothing seems unusual about this. It’s just about scalable logistics. I work for a giant corporation and book my travel through their Concur deployment. The company pays directly for flights, but I get reimbursed for everything else. I do have a corporate Amex card and Concur does allow for the reimbursements to go directly as payments against it but it’s actually a bit of a pain to get the timing right and annoyingly the card is in my name anyway. So I just use my personal card and get reimbursed into my bank account and sort it out myself. No cost to me since we pay off the card every month and I get the points, etc. that comes with the personal card.
So if a company is small enough not to issue corporate cards or maybe has less feature rich reimbursement software I can see the requirement to cover things yourself in the reimbursement model. Even in my case where technically they have all the stuff I still prefer the personal card. I wouldn’t want the company paying the hotel or restaurant bills directly. The latter would be unworkable, the former seems non-standard and inconvenient.
Yeah, you get it. I’ve usually had corporate cards, and two different companies I’ve worked for used concur. All but one allowed me to use a personal card if I chose. I didn’t, but some of my colleagues who were points chasers did.
In this case, you’ve a large company with most of its physicality overseas, and a US operation that only consists of a few people. And I’ll be the only one getting reimbursement.
I’m just looking for how, if I’m going to be passing through large sums of money, I can make some advantage from it. I could use my AA card, but I’ve already more miles than I’ll ever use.
I guess I appreciate people looking out or me, but there’s nothing strange about running expenses through one’s personal card.
I’ve been happy with my Chase Amazon card too. 5% from Amazon purchases, 2% on a few categories (gas and restaurants? I forget) and 1% on everything else. This year there was 6% cash back on Prime Day purchases. I put about $1000/mo on my card and get like $300 back.
Of course it’s only really that great if you make a lot of Amazon purchases. There are probably other cards with more categories in the 2% range.
@beowulff resist the urge to use those cash back points at Amazon. I know they make it super easy. But you’re leaving 5% on the table when you use them at Amazon. Don’t use the points to shop and instead pay in full, then put the points back into your credit card bill. It’s the best way to use the card.
It sounds like most of you travel will be domestic, but if you have to do anything that involves international payments, you should definitely check that there are no foreign transaction fees. There are some cards I have seen that give great rewards, but also charge transactions fess which in effect negate the advantage of the reward if you make a foreign purchase.
Also, there are some cards that will allow you to do a direct transfer from the credit card to the bank of your choice so you can take that cash back and deposit it directly to a savings account. This works out rather well because some cards will send you the rewards by check, which you then have to deposit yourself.
I tend to prefer “cash back” over points, but most of the time they are equivalent because most of them can be converted to cash, although in many cases it is not exactly the same value. This is definitely a time to read the fine print.
Foreign Transaction Fees are pretty much inescapable in my recent experiences. Even if you use cash you’ll pay some sort of fee somewhere in the chain. The only way I’ve found is to have an account somewhere that refunds the fees on ATM withdrawals, then you can just deal in cash in the local currency where possible and get the fees to get the cash back when you return. My brokerage has a service like this if I maintain a bank account there.
ETA I see some travel cards waive (absorb) the fee.
As far as credit cards are concerned that is not the case. All of the Discover Cards and Capital One Cards have no foreign transaction fees, and Bank of America has at least one that I know of as well. Most other Credit Card companies have no foreign transaction fee cards, but often only for cards that charge an annual fee. ATM fees are a different thing altogether and, if you have a card that charges you a foreign transaction fee, you will get two fees charged for a withdrawal at a foreign ATM.
OK. I should have added provisos: at the time I checked this out, about 3 years ago, I found no no-fee mainstream (sorry, Discover) cards that waived FTFs. I checked in response to an unexpected CC gouging after a foreign trip. So I switched on the next trip to mostly cash, and found I got gouged again with double ATM fees, one at the machine (which was expected), plus one at my bank, and I found all big banks levy that double, second fee.
I guess that goes to show how little it is advertised as feature because Capital One has, as far as I know, never had foreign transaction fees. They might have had at one time, but not for the many years that I have used them. The Bank of America one is more recent, but has been around for more than 3 years. For me, this is an important consideration when selecting a Credit Card so it is something I actively look for and sometimes the basis for my decision to apply or not for a rewards credit card.
Yeah. It’s hard to make apples to apples comparisons, so you kinda have to prioritize what you’re looking for.
AA gives you lounge access and that was the main deciding point for me. I’ve used the miles for personal trips, but that was still secondary. I’m sure Delta has something similar.
Hotel loyalty cards are good for scoring suite upgrades.
Discover has 5% cash back on different stores on a rotating basis. I use it for restaurants Jul-Sep and other stores as their quarters come up. I’ve got nearly a grand banked there over the past 5 years.
Amazon and it’s 2-5% were mentioned earlier, but that’s of limited usefulness while traveling.
Depending on how long reimbursement takes and whether you pay from your own cash reserves and then replenish that from the reimbursement, you may want to see where you can get the best interest rate. PenFed Credit Union will issue cards below 10% if your scores are in the 800 range.