Best credit card miles or cash

[Alan]

I have used Amex Blue Cash back for the last year. Rates are tiered so you have to be a high spender, but once over the minmum of $6,500 you start getting 5% on everyday items. For the 12 months just ended in January I spent just over $20k and with my spend pattern got a cash rebate equal to 1.95%. So, not bad for me, and I expect to spend more on it this year than 20k so expect to get over 2%/yr

 

[DangerMouse]

I tend to focus on getting cash rebates from our credit cards rather than miles or "thingies" that I never really wanted.

We have Wells Fargo credit cards, no annual fee, every $50,000 spent results in a $600 cash rebate.

We also have a Chase credit card which gives us miles on British Airways, 1 mile for every $ spent. We have never had an issue with not being able to get a flight to Europe using miles when required. We try and fit in one trip to Europe every year and usually fly British Airways. Our aim is to accumulate enough miles for Club Class or above.

We also have a Hawaiin Airlines credit card through BofA. 10,000 miles on joining, 1 mile for every $1. This is a good card for us as being on the West Coast with direct flights on Hawaiian it's a cheap long weekend destination for us.

We also have American Express, however compared to the above cards the rewards aren't as good. We have the green one. What I do like about American Express is their customer service. Way above the levels experienced at any bank.

 

[Dog]

I've decided to start using a credit card rather than the check book this year. So, I've been watching for a good cc offer. Just rcvd the Costco/AMEX application. It looks like a good deal, no fee and provides a tiered cashback option for all purchases (1% - 3%). Using one card that provides cash back on all purchases appeals to me rather than using multiple cards (also replaces the Costco card). Allows me to minimize the number of cards in my wallet. I use to be more concerned with having a card that offers a low interest rate, but since we pay off our cc balances each month, that tactic doesn't make sense.

 

[JohnEyles]

I'm surprised that (unless I'm mistaken) no one has mentioned the Pentagon
Federal Credit Union card, which gives 5% cashback on gas and 1.25% on
everything else. Of course you have to join, and (if you don't otherwise qualify)
join National Military Families Assoc before you can join PFCU, but I imagine a lot
of folks here are already doing that for the 6.25% CDs.

 

[Nords]

I'm surprised that (unless I'm mistaken) no one has mentioned the Pentagon Federal Credit Union card, which gives 5% cashback on gas and 1.25% on
everything else. Of course you have to join, and (if you don't otherwise qualify)
join National Military Families Assoc before you can join PFCU, but I imagine a lot
of folks here are already doing that for the 6.25% CDs.

It depends on your expenses and the hassle factor of carrying & tracking extra CCs. We spent a grand total of $1400 on Hawaii gas last year, so our 5% rebate would amount to $70... and our USAA credit card runs 3% specials so the 2% difference would amount to $28.

 

[clifp]

Hmmm, I am actually wondering what to do with the huge wad of miles I now have on my Schwab Visa. Good for cash, airline tickets, and a bunch of overpriced crap consumer goods. I didn't quite have enough miles to get tickets for the 4 of us next month for a vacation, so I paid cash. Wondering whether the miles are worth keeping or if I should just cash them in.

I always cash my Schwab Visa miles in. In general if you read the fine print in the Worldpoint program offered by many cards, you'll find that it is hard to qualify for a a ticket that is worth much more than $.01/mile.

In contrast, I think Visa mileage cards offered by major carriers, 20-25,000 miles can be often redeem for $400-$500 flights or 35,000 miles for $500-$700 flights to Hawaii with advanced booking.

One other comment, I find the teaser promotions for many airline cards to be pretty good. Typically, I get 6-12 months free membership, plus 10-15,000 miles and a few fairly useless coupons, if you use the card pretty extensively plus take a couple of flights you can pick up a free airline ticket in a year. I then cancel the card and join another airline program.

 

[Goonie]

I'm a big fan of Amazon's rewards card (by Chase). It gives the 1% (1 point per dollar) spent on any purchase, and then 5 points per dollar for Amazon purchases (I buy just about everything from Amazon, electronics, books, games, etc). You get gift certificates in the mail once you hit 2000 points ($20). Just type in the code, and you have "free" money to spend at Amazon

Much better than points you can only spend on certain things like Sony's crap card, or AA's points, etc.

Thanks, Ceb! I've been looking for a rewards card that would fit my style, and I completely forgot to look at Amazon. I also do ALOT of my shopping there! (and I did see the posts about it being 3%, not 5%, but that's still OK with me)

Again, Thanks!

 

[Alan]

One other comment, I find the teaser promotions for many airline cards to be pretty good. Typically, I get 6-12 months free membership, plus 10-15,000 miles and a few fairly useless coupons, if you use the card pretty extensively plus take a couple of flights you can pick up a free airline ticket in a year. I then cancel the card and join another airline program.

In November DW got a letter from Delta saying that her 36,000 miles were due to expire end of year. Amex were offering a Delta miles card free for the first year and 15,000 miles on first purchase. DW applied and spent $47 on the card. She got 15,000 miles, taking her over 50k miles and we booked 2 tickets to Quebec city in May. She cancelled the card yesterday (no penalty). - pretty good deal - thanks to Delta for pre-warning her as the miles were left over from her company travel. (she RE'ed 2.5 years ago)

 

[Helena]

I have a question.

How much extra incidental money do you wind up spending
when using those free air miles ?

 

[Helena]

I'm a big fan of Amazon's rewards card (by Chase). It gives the 1% (1 point per dollar) spent on any purchase, and then 5 points per dollar for Amazon purchases (I buy just about everything from Amazon, electronics, books, games, etc). You get gift certificates in the mail once you hit 2000 points ($20). Just type in the code, and you have "free" money to spend at Amazon

Much better than points you can only spend on certain things like Sony's crap card, or AA's points, etc.

I love my Amazon Visa.

The free $25 gift certificates are perfect
for using Amazon's free shipping option...
so you spend nothing on the DVD, CD,
Book, etc... and nothing on the shipping.

You can't beat that price

 

[saluki9]

I have a question.

How much extra incidental money do you wind up spending
when using those free air miles ?

If your goal is to take a trip who cares? If you were never going to travel in the first place then I suppose you spend more money, but you are getting something out of it.

 

[maddythebeagle]

Apparently, the chase cash plus card is still available for signup at chase bank locations (if you have nearby)....5% on gas, groceries, and drugstores....We have a couple of these that we use as our main cards...

 

[youbet]

I have a question.

How much extra incidental money do you wind up spending
when using those free air miles ?

None. If our vacation was going to cost $2K, including $800 airfare, getting free tickets saves $800 and reduces the total cost of the trip to $1.2K. We've yet to find any catch or hook where we spend "extra" money.

 

[LOL!]

How much extra incidental money do you wind up spending
when using those free air miles ?

Sometimes there is a $5 to $25 to pay the airport service fee or tax. You would pay this fee even if you paid cash. If you change your mind, you can cancel your flight and get your miles back for a service fee.

 

[Alan]

Sometimes there is a $5 to $25 to pay the airport service fee or tax. You would pay this fee even if you paid cash. If you change your mind, you can cancel your flight and get your miles back for a service fee.

The costs have gone up recently. We just got 2 "free" tickets from Houston to Quebec and they cost $46.50 each. $36.50 in taxes and $10.00 handling because we booked by phone instead of internet. Problem is it is really hard to get free tickets on the internet because you can't access the partner airlines. The last 3 tickets I got were all on partner airlines. These "Delta" free tickets are actually on Continental.

 

[clifp]

I love my Amazon Visa.

The free $25 gift certificates are perfect
for using Amazon's free shipping option...
so you spend nothing on the DVD, CD,
Book, etc... and nothing on the shipping.

You can't beat that price

Are there any catches to the Amazon card?

 

[Helena]

A vacation cost a lot more than just the airfare.

Of course, if one is going to spend that money
anyway... the extra cost of hotels, rental cars,
restaurants, etc.. doesn't matter.

But if one has alot of air miles crying out to be
used... this sort of reward is expensive.

 

[DangerMouse]

Actually I find we don't spend anything extra in our efforts to reach the rewards being offered. We never decide to got anywhere just because of the points. We try and use the points to fit in with our plans. For example, if we are going somewhere we will look to see if there are cheap fares on offer, if so we don't use our points. We try to accumulate our points to get to a level where we can have something we would never buy, ie. a first or club class ticket on a long haul flight. This is usually the best value for the $s involved.

 

[Helena]

Are there any catches to the Amazon card?

I'm been using mine for years... no catch.

Assuming the rules are the same for
new cardholders, you get points every
time you use the card. Every 2500 points
a gift certificate to use on Amazon.com is
automatically mailed to you. When you spend
at least $25 on Amazon.com you normally
can qualify for free shipping... which means,
unlike those airline miles, it costs nothing
extra to redeem the reward.


For more info go to Amazon.com
type in keyword: rewards
the link to the Amazon Visa
info is at the top of the page.

 

[Alan]

It has probably been over 10 years ago that I started using cc's that gave cash back rather than air-miles. With flying so much for work it was getting to very hard to use up the air miles. When I retire I will stick to cash back cc's rather than miles back. Another disadvantage of free tickets is that the flights are very restricted, and the departure times are pretty brutal as well.

 

[Goonie]

Just signed up for the Amazon Rewards VISA a few hours ago. 3% @ Amazon, 1% elsewhere, and $30 credited to my Amazon CC the first time I use it!! 0% for the first six months....but that doesn't matter to me, because it'll be paid in full each month.

That $30 credit is nice, because there is something that I've been wanting but didn't want to part with the money....it's something that I would consider a bit frivolous, but with the free shipping I can get it for less than two bucks!!! Man, am I splurging or what!?

So I guess I have to change my order of usage (that I posted earlier somewhere on this board... "debit, credit, or cash....in that order") to Amazon CC, debit, cash....in that order. 8)

(this is the first CC I've applied for in about 9 or 10 years....AND probably the last for several MORE years!!!)

 

[Surfdaddy]

How to maximize airline miles

Some of you may not know about this trick, as many airlines allow it (I know I've done it at least twice on American Airlines).

You can add a second city within the same award. They don't need to be "on the way" to the other city.

As an example, a number of years ago I took the family within the US on a 25,000 mile award per person. We decided to go to Buffalo, NY to see Niagra Falls. Well we had a whole week (8-9 days with weekend). We didn't want to spend that long in Buffalo. Where else do we want to go? We decided on San Antonio, TX. We live in California. So we flew LA-Dallas-Buffalo, spent a few days, then flew Buffalo-Dallas-San Antonio. Finally we flew San Antonio-Dallas-LA. All on a 25,000 mile award.

Last summer my wife and I decided to go on a FF mile vacation while the kids were in camp. We managed to snag availability on a LA-Kauai flight for 35,000 miles. Well 35K miles for LA-Kauai is not a great value in mile usage. We had almost two weeks. Could we add another city? Called AA, answer was yes! So we decided - where haven't we been? We ended up deciding on New York City! So we flew LA-NY, then NY-Kauai via LA, then back to LA, all on a 35K mile award. So we felt we really got value out of our miles.

Downsides: A lot of flying, of course. You need enough time for two destinations. And at the current time the website can't handle multi-city awards (at least on AA), so you need to call and then you get an extra charge for the use of the human. But it's still a great value.

 

[JohnEyles]

Another take on this issue ...

I hate it when card companies want you to do tricks for them in order to
get your "rewards". Just found out that CapitalOne now requires you call
in to their "rewards program" to get your cashback, instead of just
crediting it to your account as they used to.

Penfed, they just credit it once a month, no fuss no muss. Plus I like the
idea of a card from a credit union instead of one of these bloodsucking banks.
Maybe it ain't quite as good a deal ...