American Express Green Card ($150): gives 3x points on travel, 3x points on transit, 3x points on restaurants.
Bank of America Prime Rewards Card ($95): gives 2x points on travel, 2x points on dining, 1.5x points on all other purchases.
Capital One Venture Rewards Card ($95): gives 5x miles on Capital One Travel, 2x miles on all other purchases.
Chase Sapphire Preferred Card ($95): gives 5x points on Chase Travel, 3x points on dining, 3x points on online groceries, 3x points on select streaming, 2x points on general travel.
Citi Strata Premier ($95): gives 10x points on Citi Travel, 3x points on air travel, 3x points on hotels, 3x points on restaurants, 3x points on supermarkets, 3x points on gas stations, 3x points on EV charging stations.
Wells Fargo Autograph Journey Card ($95): 5x points on hotels, 4x points on airlines, 3x points on other travel, 3x points on restaurants, 1x points on other purchases.
If your goal is just purchasing flights + perks then the American Express Platinum is the best option. 5X on flights, multiple hotel status boosts, fantastic purchase protections and the best lounge access of any card. The problem is that American Express is not accepted in many countries, so I wouldn’t use this as a one card solution. You could pick up a card like the Wells Fargo Autograph to use for spending overseas and just use the Amex for booking your travel.
If you are going Chase, I would probably recommend spending up to get the Sapphire Reserve over the Preferred. Much better travel benefits and 3X on travel spend.
I would not recommend using your debit card overseas. At the very minimum get a Visa/Mastercard with 2X on every dollar spent and no foreign transaction fees. This will reduce your costs and give you some protections in case anything you purchase has issues. They will also give you the best exchange rate. When you go to pay, always pick to pay in the currency of the country you are in and let the card/bank figure out the exchange for you.
I’m going to recommend getting the Capital One Venture X. It’s one of the best travel cards on the market. The annual fee is $395 but there’s a travel credit where if you use the portal to book a hotel or flight then you get up to $300 back. On top of that you get 10,000 miles every year after your first anniversary. So that essentially brings the annual fee down to $-5.
The biggest weakness of the card is that it doesn’t have any good domestic airline transfer partners. But it has really good transfer partners for airlines going to Europe, so that’s perfect.
The Capital One Savor can be paired with the VX for a killer 2 card setup. It gets 3% on dining, grocery, and entertainment. That cashback can be converted to miles if you have the Venture X. The Savor also has no foreign transaction fees so you can use it while abroad (same with VX).
As a quick tip, I would recommend using the travel credit on a hotel for your trip, and using the points to transfer to an airline partner and booking your flights that way. I think that’s what would get you the most bang for your buck.
The downside of all of this is that the Venture X can be a little tricky to get approved for. I would recommend going to the pre-approval tool and seeing if you are pre-approved. If so I’d recommend to go for it. If not I would say to apply for the Savor and wait a few months then check again for the Venture X. Capital One does tend to prefer people who don’t have a lot of accounts so I feel like you would have a good shot of getting approved.
Hotel Credit Cards give a higher status in the hotels loyalty program and give a one free night certificate each year and earn hotel points on all your credit card purchases that can be used for free hotel stays in the future.
Marriott Boundless Card gives Marriott Silver Status and one free night certificate worth 35k Marriott points, plus you can combine it with your own Marriott points.
Marriott Business Card gives Marriott Gold Status and one free night certificate worth 35k Marriott points, plus you can combine it with your own Marriott points and gives 7% off paid Marriott hotel stays, plus you can earn another free night certificate after spending $60k.
IHG Premier Card gives IHG Platinum Status and one free night certificate worth 40k IHG points, plus you can combine it with your own IHG points, plus a credit for paying for Global Entry/TSA Pre-Check, plus gives $50 for toward the United Travel Bank.
World of Hyatt Card gives Hyatt Discoverist status and one free night certificate at any Category 1-4 Hyatt hotel or resort.
Hilton Surpass Card gives Gold Status but only gives a free night certificate after spending $15k on the card.
Just keep in mind the annual free night certificates are always given on the anniversary of you opening the hotel credit card account; so the first free night certificate won’t appear until after 12-13 months of having the card.
All hotel credit cards come with various travel protections, like Trip Cancellation/Interruption Insurance, Trip Delay, Baggage Lost, Baggage Delay.
Tough to beat the Amex Platinum for a travel card. 5x on flights and prepaid hotels plus all the other travel perks. Just get a Visa with no FTF and you’ll be set.
@Mary
I’ve heard of BILT, need to do some more research. Definitely looking for best sign up bonus in regards to buying flights. Going forward, I would like something that will continue to provide good travel incentives and perks.
If you spend at least $300 on airfare or hotels annually, the Venture X is hard to beat. It’s a great catch-all card, with great travel perks, that is easy to make sense of its annual fee.
Best if you did a combination with a hotel card, say Hilton Surpass (with an effective AF of minus maybe 500), and Citi Strata, which has great earning categories (like 3x dining and 3x restaurants), and at the moment as good transfer partners as Chase and ever getting better.