Credit card sluts unite: what's the best "reward" card?

In My Humble Opinion
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I’m a credit card slut. If Best Buy will give me 10% off my purchase for signing up for a BestBuy credit card, I’ll sign up, get my 10% discount, then promptly cancel the card. I also shop around for the cards with the best “rewards.” Discover gives me up to 2% back, which is nice, but I prefer non-cash awards. I thought I’d share with you some of the cards that I’ve found give the best rewards:

Citibank HiltonHHonors card! I love this card! It gave me 10,000 points for signing up and will give me 2 points for every 1 dollar I charge and 3 points for every dollar I charge at a Hilton Hotel. You can get free nights for as little as 12,000 points. Warning: Their redemption program is very convoluted. But if you’re willing to do some homework you can get a great deal. Just by doing my regular shopping, I’ve already earned enough points for 2 FREE nights at an Embassy Suites, which I will use on my upcoming vacation. Woohooo!

Amex Delta has a nice card for racking up miles, but they charge an annual $75 fee. They have a great reward for signing up though (something like 10,000 miles) and I’ve already earned enough for one free domestic flight. (IIRC, a free domestic flight is something like 30,000 miles.) There are a lot of bonus months where you can earn double miles, etc., too. By next year, I anticipate I’ll have enough miles for my husband, too. I’m patient and can wait years to cash in on my reward.

This is a great country where you can get free stuff by simply buying what you’d normally buy anyway. I charge everything from my groceries (yes, I’m one of those people you hate who will charge $5 in groceries) to my property taxes, and I get free stuff for doing so!

The downside is, of course, that the interest rates are not that attractive. But if you don’t carry a balance, however, the interest rate is a non-issue.

Does anyone else have a great card they’d recommend for the great rewards program? I’d love to hear about it.

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What I like about the current Discover cashback set-up is that you can use your cashback bonus to buy half-price gift certificates for certain stores and restaurants. I can get a gift certificate worth $40.00 at Borders or Waldenbooks for only $20.00 in cashback credit.

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I have an American Express Blue card, and their Membership Rewards system has all kinds of stuff. You can easily redeem your points online. This year for Christmas I cashed in some of my points to get a $50 GAP gift certificate for a friend and a 300-minute long distance phone card for my husband. Previous to that I got a $50 certificate for a wine store as a birthday gift for my dad. You can also redeem points for stuff like hotel rooms, car rentals, even cruises. They have that HiltonHHonors thing too, but since I don’t travel much I haven’t looked into it.

As far as interest rates on Blue go, I’ve got something like a 9.9% regular rate, and they are currently offering balance transfers at 2.9% for the life of the balance with no transaction fee.

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My wife and I charge everything–and I mean everything–on our United Airlines Mileage Plus card. 1 mile per $1, with special offers that double or triple mileage throughout the year. Always pay off our balance so the interest rate’s a non-issue. We’re usuallly able to cash in on a few destinations a year with the miles we earn.

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I recently applied for an Amazon Visa card, which will give free points for every buck, and extra points for bucks spent at Amazon. If I pay my rent with it, I can almost get a free book per month.

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Any Amex Card with BVG.

Lets me buy stuff, and withen a 90 day window if the price drops and or you find somewhere else selling it for cheap you can pricematch it. You can buy from a reputable online store and pricematch to a shady place you don’t really trust.

Thats the best reward for a card I can think of.