Need a new credit card with travel benefits

[Pia]

Love, love, love our Venture One card

Pia

[mbw1024]

We used USAir miles or our upcoming trip and it was a lot more miles then ever before in off season. I have enough miles left to upgrade one ticket to first class (one way) but so far nothing available. Husband and I both had the card. Mine is canceled. Waiting to see how the companion fare certificates play out before we cancel the other.

[Bonny in CA]

we are using the Venture one card. We haven't had a chance to redeem any "miles" yet. I checked the erase feature and we have enough miles to erase our recent two night stay in Reno! I'm saving my miles for STJ, of course! Our plan is to use the Venture card to pay for absolutely everything we can, groceries, gas, electricity, etc. and hopefully rack up a free trip to st. john someday!

[IA Joe]

We just got the Barclay card due to a promotion they are having; put $1000 on the card in the first three months and get 40,000 bonus points, which can be redeemed for $400 in travel expenses.

[Anthony]

We use the Cap One card for everything - and while I don't have the patience to build up the points for plane fare, I have used to "erase" car rentals, train trips, etc. etc. - all kinds of travel expenses. And as mentioned it is the only card that does not kill you when you use it for foreign travel (I had to give up on Amex because of that being in Italy for so long). It does seem to be the best deal out there at the moment.

[lorijo068]

I LOVE my Delta AMEX ! No fees for checked bags. We get on first (zone 1) I just found $273. tickets in January to USVI through Delta! Easy to use!

[dreamshark]

I LOVE my Delta AMEX ! No fees for checked bags. We get on first (zone 1) I just found $273. tickets in January to USVI through Delta! Easy to use!

If you live in a Delta hub, this card is definitely worth the $90/year - pays for itself in checked bag fees in one trip. I use this card for all my major expenses (insurance, fuel oil, hotels) and the miles mount up fast. In a little over two years I've gotten 2 free round trip tickets and 2 $99 companion fares. Unfortunately they apparently decided that was just too good a deal for card holders and are discontinuing the yearly companion fare after this year. But I've already made enough off this card to cover the annual fee for the next 12 years. The only drawback is that there are a lot of places that don't accept Amex, so you really have to have at least one other card.

[Maryanne]

Thanks very much for all the feedback, everyone. Very helpful!

[Sumerwaters]

I like the Starwood Preferred Guest Amex. You earn miles. You can either book a flight directly thru their web site or you can move your miles into just about any airline frequent flier account. So it is free to have an American, delta, us air flyer account, then just transfer the miles to the account of the airline you would like to fly on.

[mbw1024]

Just thought I'd provide an update here since I just used points for airfare with my Cap One card.
I bought 2 tickets for flight from EWR to LAX. The price was $377.80 each on United.

When I review my Cap One card I got about 756 additional points for that purchase (2 pts for each dollar spent).
I go in the the rewards section of the Cap One website. I have option to use "Purchase Eraser" for travel or have points used to credit my account among other things.
If I go to purchase eraser I see the 2 airfares listed and I select them to erase. I need 75,560 point to erase these dollars from my balance due.

As comparison if I opted to get cash back in either credit to account or check form 75,000 points would get me $375 cash.

I have the miles to cover this so I plan to use them. However, I could also elect to erase only one fare and pay for the other.

I did get 10,000 points to open this account and I have had the account open since February. Since that time, excluding the initial bonus points, I earn between 7500-8500 points per billing cycle.

[dreamshark]

I've been researching this whole "travel rewards" card thing. Wow. Things have changed since I got that one MasterCard back in 1985 for car rental and hotel reservations. Apparently the savvy way to go these days is to burn your checkbook, put all your everyday expenses on a high-end rewards card, and earn an airline ticket or two every year. As you gradually descend into addictive point-grubbing behaviors, the next step is to start churning through new credit cards to get the increasingly jaw-dropping introductory offers. You don't even want to know what people resort to in the stage after that as they start finding arcane yet legal ways to earn points for paying their mortgages and car payments (google Bluebird and Vanilla Reload if you're curious).

What the heck, why stay mired in the last century with my checkbook and outmoded credit cards? I might as well get some use out of the great credit rating I've built up by being such a stick-in-the-mud. I'd already dipped my toe in the water with that Delta Amex card (which has already paid for itself 8 times over in 2.5 years). So I cancelled my ancient MasterCard (annual fee, no rewards!) and got me a Barclay Arrival card. The benefits are very similar to the CapOne Venture Rewards card that a few people have mentioned on this thread, but with a 40,000 point intro offer. It's here! Now I have to figure out how to use it for "everything" to build up points.

And I also have to decide whether to stop using the Delta card (which earns Skymiles) and switch over completely to the Barclay travel points (which they call "miles" but they absolutely are not - they are points). And sometime in the next 12 months I have to decide whether I want to pay the annual fee for Barclay's, which is waived for the first year. And if I do, should I drop the Delta card, which also has an annual fee?

Any tips from people who are deeper into the points and miles game than I am? Besides the obvious: "Pay off your balance every month." This is NOT a game that people who live paycheck to paycheck should be playing.

[mbw1024]

Hmmmm. 40k intro points???? (Off to look into new card).

[AquaGirl]

Quote from Dreamshark: "Apparently the savvy way to go these days is to burn your checkbook, put all your everyday expenses on a high-end rewards card, and earn an airline ticket or two every year. As you gradually descend into addictive point-grubbing behaviors, the next step is to start churning through new credit cards to get the increasingly jaw-dropping introductory offers. You don't even want to know what people resort to in the stage after that as they start finding arcane yet legal ways to earn points for paying their mortgages and car payments"

LOL! OK, I confess, we have descended somewhat into said behavior....

Like others, we ran into issues trying to use AA miles for flights to the Caribbean. We had 300,000 AA miles, so last month, we redeemed some of them for hotel rooms. We had a 10 day vacation in the BVIs at nice resorts where the room and taxes were free - completely covered by AA miles. The list of hotels in the US, Canada and Caribbean is fairly extensive, so if you have AA miles you aren't going to use for flights, you may want to check out redeeming them for hotel rooms. We plan to redeem miles for a few nights at Caneel next year, if its still on the AA program.

We are looking at the United Airline credit card. We took the United non-stop Dulles to/from STT on our last few trips and love that flight. Non-stops seem so, well, luxurious. Leave Dulles at 8:30am, get to STT at 12:30pm. They also have a non-stop to SJU, where we fly to get a small plane to the BVIs. They have a good intro offer, *and* don't charge the currency conversion fee. Free checked bags and early boarding. I need to look at the Cap One cards too. Definitely need to change cards, once we are done accumulating AA miles for our Caneel stay.

[mbw1024]

As with Cap One, Barclay's offers 2 cards with the same "Arrival" name. Only the card with the $89 dollar annual fee gets you 2x points for every dollar spent.
For a 40k intro this may be worth it for us. We are about to expire our one year on Cap One and will need to pay the annual fee if we continue. Really had no intention of switching but.....hmmmmmmmmmmmm.

[dreamshark]

As with Cap One, Barclay's offers 2 cards with the same "Arrival" name. Only the card with the $89 dollar annual fee gets you 2x points for every dollar spent.
For a 40k intro this may be worth it for us. We are about to expire our one year on Cap One and will need to pay the annual fee if we continue. Really had no intention of switching but.....hmmmmmmmmmmmm.

The annual fee is waived for the first year, so you might as well get the good one. The problem with points-based programs is... if you cancel at the end of the first year, you lose any unused points. The way this card works, the only way to get full value for your points is to use them to "erase" a travel purchase from your statement. You have to save up enough points to erase an entire purchase at once - hard to do without points left over.

However, you can apparently cash in leftover points at half-value as a general statement credit. So if I decide to abandon the Barclay ship at the end of the first year, I would try to use up the majority of my points on a single travel purchase and then cash out the leftover points. But somebody elsewhere on this thread mentioned another possibility - converting the high-end Arrival card to the one with no annual fee. I'm not sure exactly how one does that, but it's not a bad option. I assume you would keep your points if you did that.