Best Credit Card for Rewards?

[ckissick]

I'm about to build a house and will be purchasing a few hundred thousand dollars worth of stuff over the next 8 months. We'd like to reward ourselves with a trip to London. What is the best credit card for air miles, hotel, etc.? Can we get a nearly free trip out of this?

[Rick Lee]

You will be able to go to Europe plenty of times for that kind of spend. I have the Chase United/Continental MC and I get at least one ticket to Europe or Asia a year with about $30k worth of spend. Most of the cards give to 30-40k miles just for signing up. You might actually be better off with a cash back card, but you'll easily get to London with six figures of spend, probably first class airfare with nice hotels too.

[ckissick]

Cool. Thanks, Rick. We are a family of four. I'd like to throw in a week in Sweden, too. Sounds like it's doable. A cash reward card may be best. Then we can use that cash to pay for everything.

[dennis in se pa]

Amazon's new Chase card give 1% back. No limit.

[porsche4life]

Priority club is good for hotel rewards, but most of them are stateside.

[ckissick]

Originally Posted by dennis in se pa

Amazon's new Chase card give 1% back. No limit.

So if I spend $300K, I get $3000. Is that the best anyone can do?

[LakeCleElum]

I use Alaska Airlines Visa....Based in Seattle so, a good choice in flights.

Been to Europe twice with wife on "air miles"......Recently went to Australia with a 4 day stop in Fiji, business class.....When I built this house in 2007, I put everything I could on the card....

I got 17,000 miles by paying for surgery on my credit card. I got the insurance check for the whole thing before my Visa bill was due that month.

Plan to have enough miles to return to Europe in 2014......

[Neilk]

Your best bet then would be to figure out what airline you would fly on and then get their reward card. 200k miles should get a family of 4 across the pond in coach.

[Trog]

You will do better negotiating a cash discount with your suppliers.

[Rick Lee]

Yeah, the miles are worth a lot more than the 1% cash back. I have sold miles on Chinese chat boards for crazy money. For some reason, the Chinese are really into them. I don't know how it works, but we made out like bandits last year by getting one RT ticket to Munich with my miles and the other one with cash we got for selling my remaining miles, which were too few for a second RT ticket.

[Reg]

I will take 2% off a cash buyer on bigger ticket items. 2% of 200,000 is a nice trip to be sure.

[motion]

Originally Posted by Rick Lee

You will be able to go to Europe plenty of times for that kind of spend. I have the Chase United/Continental MC and I get at least one ticket to Europe or Asia a year with about $30k worth of spend. Most of the cards give to 30-40k miles just for signing up. You might actually be better off with a cash back card, but you'll easily get to London with six figures of spend, probably first class airfare with nice hotels too.

I wish I knew how you get stuff like this, Rick. 30,000 miles really isn't enough for a domestic RT, much less asia. I would think you'd need 100k miles for asia.

I have a Delta Gold AMEX and get 1 mile per dollar spent. I am at 180K miles on it now, and plan on using it for a round the world trip. The ticket for my wife will cost 3500ish.

Just used United miles for a roundtrip domestic at 25,000 miles, but those are hard to find these days.

[Rick Lee]

Originally Posted by motion

I wish I knew how you get stuff like this, Rick. 30,000 miles really isn't enough for a domestic RT, much less asia. I would think you'd need 100k miles for asia.

I have a Delta Gold AMEX and get 1 mile per dollar spent. I am at 180K miles on it now, and plan on using it for a round the world trip. The ticket for my wife will cost 3500ish.

Just used United miles for a roundtrip domestic at 25,000 miles, but those are hard to find these days.

I didn't say 30k is enough to go overseas. But you get around that many miles just for signing up. I live on a credit card and pay the balance off each month, so much that it takes me usually over a month to go through $100 cash in my wallet. So, if you get one of those rewards credit cards once a year and really use it, your spend, in addition to the miles you get for signing up, can pretty easily amount to a free RT ticket after a while. I haven't even looked at what kind of mileage one needs for Europe since I did it last year. But I got an email from my MC the other day that said I was 4k miles short of being eligible for another RT to Europe. So I figure I'll be there in two more cc statements.

Unfortunately, my company just made me get a corp. Amex for my business travel. So I'm not supposed to use my own MC anymore. But since I still have to pay that Amex on my own and then get reimbursed, for individual receipts, I think I can probably still use my own MC and they won't know about it.

[Rick Lee]

BTW, I think United gives you double miles for travel you book on UAL with their credit card. So, when I bought two RT tix to China last year, that was 28k miles right there, add the 40k miles I got for getting their rewards card and I had enough for another ticket to Europe right there. I never see a bill for my business airfare and can use my frequent flyer numbers when I book. So, unless it's a lot more expensive, I always try to use the airlines for which I get miles. I'll soon have enough on US Airways to make it worth getting their credit card and then I'll have enough with them for a ticket to Europe.

[porsche4life]

How can they force you to use Amex if you still have to pay the bill? If I use my corp Amex, they pick up the bill....

[Rick Lee]

Originally Posted by porsche4life

How can they force you to use Amex if you still have to pay the bill? If I use my corp Amex, they pick up the bill....

I get reimbursed after submitting my expense report, but I have to pay the bill. Total BS, but it's otherwise a good gig.

[porsche4life]

That's how my company does if you use your own card... Which I do and is accepted. But if you use the corporate card, they pay the bill once it's reported. Sounds like someone at corp is getting a kickback from Amex for forcing you guys to use the card....

[MRM]

You absolutely should be able to get a free trip to London in Business Class with all hotels paid for with that amount of spending.

There are many cards that will give you very favorable redemption rates with spend like that. In fact, there is a subculture dedicated to maximizing credit card points that is at least as robust as the PP Fraternity. There are hundreds of very helpful blogs that will educate you on how to maximize your points to the nth degree. These people consider the failure to maximize points and redemption rates to be as great of a sin as we would consider dropping a V8 into a 73 S and jacking up the rear end to make a street racer.

As an entry point, try Flyertalk.com and look to their credit card forum Credit Card Programs/Partners - FlyerTalk Forums

Post your exact question to their Amex forum and their other forum and you'll get great advice. You will want to get several cards. You will want to apply to a number of cards that give you free points for signing up and spending a certain amount within a specific time. Many times the sign up bonuses will equal your spending bonus. You get maximum benefits at different levels on different cards, so you'll want to get one of each of the best kinds of cards and spend the threshold on them and move on to the next card.

Don't sign up for any new credit cards until you hear from the experts because they all run promos where they give extra bonus points for a limited time. For example, the AMEX Platinum card usually gives you 25,000 bonus Membership Rewards points for signing up (worth a minimum of $250; more if you're clever at redeeming them) but anyone who knows anything signs up on the 50,000, 75,000 or 100,000 bonus offers.

You'll really maximize your rewards by applying for many cards and hitting the spend threshold on all to maximize your signing bonuses. Several million points, worth tens of thousands of dollars should be well within your abilities. It's really worth educating yourself and getting good at it. The insider jargon for applying for a lot of cards at once to maximize signing bonuses is App-O-Ramma. You can do several AORs per year, if you know what you're doing. If done right you can get between 5 and 10 percent value in return for your spending. Well worth the effort. Keep that 73S concourse-perfect; don't turn it into a Chevy stoplight racer!

Specifically look at this post and the link contained in the thread:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/american-express-membership-rewards/1445827-amex-gold-business-card-make-home-remodeling-expense-count-spend.html

[MRM]

Double Post for emphasis!

[Hugh R]

I've got something like 300,000 miles on United actual miles alone. I have to use the Disney CC when I travel for work and don't get FF miles on it. I do get the
Airline miles. Wifey and I should take a flight somewhere, but getting on a plane for vacation is too much like work for me. I'll probably take her to OZ this Summer on FF miles for our remake of 20,000 Leaques Under the Sea.