Do you road trip or fly? Do you have a hotel brand? If you road trip, do you use an EV or ICE? Do you have a preferred airline?
Macon said:
Do you road trip or fly? Do you have a hotel brand? If you road trip, do you use an EV or ICE? Do you have a preferred airline?
Generally tend to fly, usually Southwest but will consider most non-budget airlines if prices and schedules are similar. My local airport is not a major hub, but ORD would be the big international airport nearby. No hotel loyalty.
@Firth
Do you rent?
Macon said:
@Firth
Do you rent?
I do but anticipate buying a house in the next few years.
Macon said:
@Firth
Do you rent?
I do but anticipate buying a house in the next few years.
Ok, if you rent, I recommend the BILT card. While it is not quite as good as the Chase Sapphire Preferred card, it does not have an annual fee. In the past 1.5 years, we have racked up nearly 75,000 points with them on rent and a few other monthly bills we don’t have another card to cover. It’s a solid addition.
My main recommendation is the Chase Sapphire Preferred. It has solid travel protections, transfers to Southwest and generally has great transfer partners. The annual fee is effectively $45 (you get an annual $50 hotel credit).
My secondary recommendation is the Capital One Venture X. You will get good international flight transfer partners, lounge access, and Global Entry (which includes PreCheck) credit. The annual fee is effectively -$5. You get a $300 travel credit plus an annual point bonus worth $100 in cash.
Here’s how you work it:
- Restaurants: CSP
- Travel outside of portals: CSP
- Rent: BILT
- Any recurring transactions (utilities, insurance, etc): BILT
- All other transactions: VX
If you think you might want VX at some point in your lifetime I would start with it first. C1 does not like multiple accounts and high credit score. I’ve had it since it came out and C1 won’t approve me for a new secured card. Every other bank loves me.
If you absolutely need a metal card, go for the Sapphire or Venture, but note there’s a lot of bloggers, YouTubers, and other various influencers that push credit cards. It’s big business. Brian Kelly, the guy who started ‘The Points Guy’ sold his blog for $20 million.
I’d suggest leaving your credit alone and keeping the Citi Double Cash.
For a metal card, the upside of the Sapphire is you can top off your Southwest Rapid Rewards. The regular $95 Venture is solid IMO since the sign-up bonus is good and you don’t have to use Capital One’s useless travel portal website.
I like the actual Southwest cards a bit better because the annual fees work out to be lower because of the Rapid Reward points you get each year. The value isn’t as good as cash back, but it’s an easy way to take the sting out of booking flights.
I’ve read all your comments.
Since you are not loyal to a hotel brand that opens some opportunities with the Chase, Citi, or Capital One travel portal. CSP and COV (as well as Chase Freedom Flex/Unlimited) give 5x hotels at their respective travel portals. Citi Strata, COVX and CSR are 10x on hotels at their respective portals. Strata gives a $100 credit on $500 hotel spend at the portal. CO portal offers price matching in the form of travel credit - so, while the CO portal may have a higher price than official channels or other travel portals (e.g. Expedia) you can just book with confidence, knowing that you can submit a price match request immediately after booking. Unfortunately, the others do not offer such a price match, however there are frequent deals for the Chase Travel portal - this year alone there were 3 deals, one showed up in the merchant offers $100 off $500, the others needed to be activated by a link with a multi-tiered deal of needing to book multiple travel elements to receive UR points back. CO travel portal regularly offers internal coupons to various destinations - e.g. 10% max $50 to Punta Cana. I can’t speak to the Citi portal since I’ve never used it.
Regarding flights and domestic carriers, you have the choices below:
- Earn Delta miles from a Delta branded card from AMEX
- Get a premium card from AMEX allowing transfers (with $0.0006/mile excise fee) to Delta
- Directly earn miles with a JetBlue/Southwest/United branded card from Chase
- Get the CSP/CSR card from Chase and transfer UR points to JetBlue/Southwest/United
- Put everything on the Citi DC card and accept a lower transfer rate to JetBlue at 1:0.8.
- Get a Citi Strata card and transfer to JetBlue at 1:1
- Get a Citi or Barclays AA card with direct earning to AA.
- Wait until 2026 for a new Citi card that will have transfers to AA.
- Get a Capital One premium card and book domestic by backdoor using international portals - AirCanada/LifeMiles for United, BA for AA, Virgin for Delta. While this is possible, it’s not suggested since while AC/LM/BA/Virgin offers the ability to redeem rewards for domestic flights, the schedules are much less robust, generally cost more miles than the direct airline site, generally have an additional booking fee, and do not allow for free cancellations (free cancellations of reward tickets are permitted by Delta, AA, United, etc. if booked directly with their miles rewards programs).
Frankly, considering that JB/SW/United/Delta rarely get above 1.3 cents/mile on main cabin rewards bookings, you are best locking a 1.25 cents/mile with the 25% bonus offered by the CSP on your earned UR points either by the CSP or CFF/CFU. The only thing stopping me from telling you to sign up for the CSP right now is that the SUB is subpar at 60k. You really should wait until it is 80k with an option to sign up in-branch at 90k.
Honestly if you’re a physician and don’t want to deal with BS like multiple cards and stuff, the easiest setup might be the BOA PRE card. With Platinum honors, which you should easily get with Merrill Edge, you can get 3.5% dining/travel and 2.6% everything else. You get a 20% discount on travel using BOA portal as well so if you buy flights through there with points, that is 4.4% dining/travel and 3.25% everything else. Get Global Entry/TSA free, priority pass lounges free, $300 airline incidentals so bag check and upgrades and stuff covered, and $150 lifestyle credit. $550 annual fee but the $300 and $150 make up for it.