Please recommend me a rewards credit card for air miles

In My Humble Opinion
1

Wanting to do more traveling both domestically (USA) and internationally, and finally figuring out there are these things called rewards credit cards that will accumulate miles for me whenever I use them to make a purchase. So I’m thinking of getting a good one and then just doing everything with it, using it for groceries and bills and entertainment and suchlike, so as to accumulate as many miles I can.

But which card is good? And what should I look for when choosing a card? I’m only interested in miles, not other rewards, and I’d like those miles to be as flexible as possible (for example, I don’t want to be limited to a single airline).

Thanks in advance,
E.

2

The Capital One Venture card is good. The one I have gives 2 points per dollar. The points can be spent to purchase any sort of air travel. The redemption rate is 100 points per dollar. So you would need 10000 points to buy a $100 ticket. Another benefit is that you can use the points to buy gift cards at the same rate. For example, you can get a $100 gift card to many places for 10000 points.

I will never again get a CC which gives rewards to a specific airline’s frequent flier program. It is almost impossible to redeem FF miles for a flight. We used to have AmEx which gave Delta FF miles and it was such a pain to try to redeem them. There were never any suitable seats available.

3

I don’t know if this applies to your area, but I heard a news story recently that air miles here are going to be phasing out the air miles programme soon (within five years, I think it was). I don’t know if you want to be making longterm plans if your air miles are going to go poof soon.

4

I didn’t realize that “Air Miles” was a brand name in Canada and elsewhere; I was speaking generically. According to wikipedia, Air Miles ceased operations in the US in 1993.

5

I think you’re much better off finding a no fee card and banking the extra money towards your vacation fund.

6

Wow, are the fees really that high?

7

That totally depends on how much you use a credit card and how much it costs.
I get about 2/3 of a free lower-48 plane ticket a year, and the card costs me $50/year. Well worth it for me.

8

While I am very pissed off with what Air Miles (brand name) is doing up here, they are not phasing it out entirely at least in the short term. The big thing that everybody is complaining about is that they are making unused points expire after 5 years (points obtained prior to December 31 2011 expire December 31 2016). People that take decades to accumulate enough points for anything decent are, needless to say, POed.

9

Ah, that’s how it’s going - people who take decades to accumulate enough points (i.e. most of us) will lose them then. I use my points to buy movie passes and passes to Radium Hot Springs - I keep up with them that way.

10

Based on your criteria, I think you’ll be best served by the Starwood Preferred Guest American Express. It’s what I use, and there are a couple more moving parts than with most rewards cards, so bear with me.

The SPG Amex gives you 1 “Starpoint” (i.e., a point in SPG’s reward program) for every dollar you spend. (And 2 points per dollar when you charge a stay at a Starwood hotel.)

You can exchange Starpoints for miles in most airlines’ frequent flyer programs. (Here’s a chart showing conversion rates; for almost everyone but Continental/United, the exchange rate is 1:1.)

BUT for every multiple of 20,000 miles you exchange at once, you get an extra 5,000 miles (i.e., a 20,000 transfer yields 25,000 miles, 40,000 yields 50,000 miles).

So, in short, each dollar you charge is worth 1.25 miles on most airlines’ rewards programs.

Now, what are those miles worth? Obviously, this depends on A) the cost of the flight you want, and B) how many miles it will cost you (which varies from airline to airline). I used an Excel sheet to simplify all this, and it’s yours for the asking. And if you do ask, skip the next couple paragraphs, as it’s so much clearer just to see the numbers.

Personally, I used two not-so-hypotheticals: a $500 RT flight to Hawaii (35,000 miles on American), and a $900 RT flight to Tokyo (50,000 miles). This yielded a cash value of $0.0179 per Starpoint and $0.0225 per Starpoint respectively. (Note: I also calculated the cost of a business-class fare to Tokyo, $5,500/100,000 miles, also on American, and got a whopping value of $0.078/Starpoint. My wife and I probably won’t ever use this – we’re fine with coach – but it’s worth keeping in mind.)

The card has a $65 annual fee, and to break even (versus a card that gives you $0.01 cash back per dollar charged) you’d need to charge about $5,200 (this is using my “coach flight to Japan” values). So if you’re going to be using your card for at least that amount, this is probably the one you want versus going with Telemark’s suggestion.

A few caveats: the math I did was using AA’s off-peak redemption rates (these use the fewest miles and therefore sell out the fastest). My wife and I will be flying back from our honeymoon in Japan using these tickets (booked about 3-4 months out, IIRC), but YMMV. Also, the miles don’t pay for taxes and fees; for our Tokyo to LAX flight, this was about $50 per ticket, IIRC.

FWIW, you can also redeem Starwood points for stays in Starwood hotels, but I haven’t yet found a situation where it would have made more sense to do this. (Basically you’d need an event such as, say, Comic-Con, to inflate room prices well past their normal range.)

If you’re interested in this card, feel free to PM me and I can send you a referral offer that’s good for up to 25,000 bonus Starwood points.

11

I recently switched most of my spending from the SPG Amex to CapOne because airline redemption rates for award seats have skyrocketed. For instance, the last time I flew to Hawaii, I couldn’t find any low tier award seats unless I wanted to book a United flight with TWO connections. I ended up booking a 1 connection seat on Delta for 105,000 miles each, which is $84,000 worth of spending on the SPG card (with a 1.25 transfer rate). By comparison, the same flight (retail value $1100), would have cost me 110,000 CapOne miles, which is $55,000 worth of spending on the card.

Another reason that I love the CapOne Venture card is because it’s so simple to use. You early 2 points for every dollar charged, and you need 100 miles for every travel $ redeemed. End of story. So a $700 airline ticket costs 70,000 CapOne miles. Not having to search for award tickets is so liberating. I can now shop for the best itinerary on any day of the week, instead of planning my vacation around what days I can find award seats. And, because the airlines view this as a paid seat (because it is), I can also accumulate airline miles on those flights, which can add up.

Another strong contender is Chase Sapphire. I believe that they are still offering a 50,000 bonus mile sign-up, but check FlyerTalk for more details on that.

There is also rumor on FlyerTalk that CapOne is going to bring back their most awesome promotion where they’d match your airline miles up to 100,000, plus a 10,000 bonus if you spend $2500 in 3 months. That promo netted me 110,000 CapOne miles, worth $1100…for annual fee of $95/year (first year waived). Now we’re talking.

12

I’d recommend trying out http://www.nerdwallet.com. You can input what type of rewards you’re looking for and your typical monthly credit spending and the site will recommend a variety of cards that will meet your needs.

13

Thanks for all the helpful and detailed replies! I’m hoping to choose a card this weekend. Gozu Tashoya, if I choose the SPG Amex you’ll definitely get a PM from me. :slight_smile:

One small question for everyone: I’ve never had an American Express card before, partly because I’d heard there are a lot of places that don’t take it. Is this true? Since I plan to use my new card for everything, I’d like it to be accepted everywhere (or at least everywhere in the US…or at least everywhere in Seattle).

14

Because of higher fees, some merchants do not accept AMEX.

15

I got a CitiBank AAdvantage card a few months ago with an offer for 40,000 free miles after some purchase amount ($1000?) in the first few months. That sounded good so I got it and spend many times more than that and paid it off. Then, they sent me an offer for a AAdvanatge American Express card with no fee with 20,000 additional miles for some rather small amount of purchases. I signed up for that one as well and got the points. I have about 80,000 miles total now in just a few months which is enough for two round-trip Mile Saver tickets to Hawaii that I about to book. I will probably cancel the cards after that and it won’t cost me anything whatsoever for using the cards to get the points. It is just two free tickets.

16

Are the flight miles really workable for you? Start looking into flights now. See how few seats there are for those mileage levels. The problem I had was finding workable dates to get there and back.

17

I frequent the Slickdeals.net and Fatwallet forums ,and at the moment I think it is always better to get a card that gives cash back and buy the tickets (excluding extra initial signup miles).
Probably the best way to get miles is to sign up for a miles credit card, do what you need to do to get to the bonus miles and then close the account. Find another miles card, rinse and repeat.
Barring that, most people can average 2%+ cash back directly.
You have to open an IRA or Brokerage account with fidelity, but you get 2% back on all purchases with the Fidelity Amex:
Fidelity Rewards Visa Signature Card | Credit Card | Fidelity
The Sallie Mae Visa is 2 pts per $, and I believe you can get some gifts cards at 1pt for $1
404
After one of those as your regular card, you need to pull out a specific card depending on where you shop.
Amazon.com visa gets 3% back at Amazon.com
Target Redcard gets 5% back at Target
Chase Freedom gets 5% back on rotating categories (register every quarter, and then only use the card on the 5% categories) https://www2.chase.com/credit-cards

18

There aren’t a lot of them but the seats do exist. I almost completed the booking yesterday for a trip in March but I realized I needed to coordinate some things with other people. I can use them with a couple of months notice.

19

Check out http://thepointsguy.com/credit-cards/ for a good overview of a range of cards. There is a rather active Internet community dedicated to collecting FF miles. The biggest bang for the buck is not from the points that you get from spending but from the sign up bonuses.

And never pay a fee, there are plenty of cards with the fee waived for the first year and when the fee hits in the 2nd year, cancel and move on.

In terms of which card to apply for, it helps if you have a particular goal in mind and then go after particular cards.

Seats can be hard to find but it depends on the trip, routing, airlines, etc. I just booked four tickets to Europe in business class using miles with a routing that would not be my first choice but works for free

20

I haven’t shopped around so I won’t give you a recommendation, but I will tell you my experience with the Amazon card. it gets 3% on Amazon purchases, 2% on Gas, dining and a couple of other things and 1% on everything else. I recently cashed in miles for a ticket and it was real easy. My wife way paying for her ticket cash, so she chose airline/flight based on most convenient date and time, as well as price. I then called the Rewards people and asked for the same flights and got them all, no problems. So if there are any restrictions, I didn’t bump into them. I traded in 45k points for $600 towards round trip tickets to Alaska, so 75 points per dollar.