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Tell me about Airline mile/points and best card for us...

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Anonymous
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Tell me about Airline mile/points and best card for us...

Atm we are not planning any vacation where we have to fly, we've been staycaying most of our vacations. However I would really love to get a card where we can rack up some mile/points over a long period of time without them expiring. I can't tell you what airline we use because I've never flown before (yes you heard right lol). DF has flown once or twice. We will be traveling eventually (in year or two) with our DS, he's almost 5. I don't want to get a card that's going to interfere with daily spends, groceries, util, etc. We don't eat out very often, I'd say on average every 2 months sometimes more. And our car gets great MPG. Should we get a card that has a large sign on bonus and then just use it for gas and restaurants? 

 

TIA

Message 1 of 4
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red259
Super Contributor

Re: Tell me about Airline mile/points and best card for us...


@Anonymous wrote:

Atm we are not planning any vacation where we have to fly, we've been staycaying most of our vacations. However I would really love to get a card where we can rack up some mile/points over a long period of time without them expiring. I can't tell you what airline we use because I've never flown before (yes you hear right lol). DF has flown once or twice. We will be traveling eventually (in year or two) with our DS, he's almost 5. I don't want to get a card that's going to interfere with daily spends, groceries, util, etc. We don't eat out very often, I'd say on average every 2 months sometimes more. And our car get greats MPG. Should we get a card that has a large sign on bonus and then just use it for gas and restaurants? 

 

TIA


Much more information is required. What you need to do is first determine where you want to go for vacation and also what airlines service your local airport. Then when you know where you are going and you have determined which airlines go there you would need to look  to see what hotels are available. Also you need to look at your spend and see what categories most of your spend falls into. Are you going to be able to make the min spend required for the travel cards? Hotel cards can give you two free nights, but those nights expire and they aren't good cards to put ongoing spend on. A lot of the value in travel credit cards is they have benefits for people who travel. If you do not travel very often or eat out or have local transportation costs I'm not sure a travel card is a good fit for you. A cashback card with a flat 2% may be better in your situation and maybe get a hotel card 4-5 months before your trip so you cna get the signup free nights to use on the vacation. 

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Message 2 of 4
Closingracer99
Valued Contributor

Re: Tell me about Airline mile/points and best card for us...

If you like staying in Marriott hotels their card is great if your open to going to one of their mid end hotels. The card is $85? AF and offers a free night coupon basically every year. When I had the card you had to use it in a 1-4 category hotel and then the others were 1-5 after that one. You have 12 months to use the coupon so basically a full year to go with the AF. 

 

Personally I closed that card and went with Hilton HHoners card from Amex which has a $0 AF and offers 40,000 point signup bonus from directly amex's website or you can get an offer on Hiltons website while booking a room ( you don't actually have to) it has an ad for the card with a $50 credit +50,000 points after spending $750 which i already acomplished. Basically offers 12X points at Hilton, 5X points on dining, groceries and gas and 3X on everything else. I went with Citi AA Plat card which has a $95 AF which is waived the first 12 months which is a 2X points on AA related purchases and 1X on everything else but offers 1 bag free for up to 4 people, early boarding and other stuff. If you want to spend less on an AF you can get the Citi AA Gold card which is $50. Personally I like flying with AA or Jetblue so thats why I got the AA card. Also Barclay's hates me so no luck for me signing up for the Jetblue card. 


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Message 3 of 4
Anonymous
Not applicable

Re: Tell me about Airline mile/points and best card for us...

 


Closingracer99 wrote:

If you like staying in Marriott hotels their card is great if your open to going to one of their mid end hotels. The card is $85? AF and offers a free night coupon basically every year. When I had the card you had to use it in a 1-4 category hotel and then the others were 1-5 after that one. You have 12 months to use the coupon so basically a full year to go with the AF. 

 

Personally I closed that card and went with Hilton HHoners card from Amex which has a $0 AF and offers 40,000 point signup bonus from directly amex's website or you can get an offer on Hiltons website while booking a room ( you don't actually have to) it has an ad for the card with a $50 credit +50,000 points after spending $750 which i already acomplished. Basically offers 12X points at Hilton, 5X points on dining, groceries and gas and 3X on everything else. I went with Citi AA Plat card which has a $95 AF which is waived the first 12 months which is a 2X points on AA related purchases and 1X on everything else but offers 1 bag free for up to 4 people, early boarding and other stuff. If you want to spend less on an AF you can get the Citi AA Gold card which is $50. Personally I like flying with AA or Jetblue so thats why I got the AA card. Also Barclay's hates me so no luck for me signing up for the Jetblue card. 


Sorry I quess I should have also mentioned that we own Wyndham points free and clear except monthly maintance fees. We'd be open to staying at a hotel if it had a small kitchenette and seperate bedroom. We like to stay up a little later and plan our next day while giving our LO some peace and quiet. We've never stayed anywhere else except Wyndham properties so I guess I'll have to check out what Hilton and Marriot has to offer.

 

Airline should be fairly easy as we live near Tampa right? 

 

Editing to add: I can run about 2K in monthly household expenses through a card...not including gas, groceries, occassional ordering/eating out. I'd like to add that we do spend quite a bit of money each month at a local gas station (in -store). We're in a very rural area with not many stores around, so it's just more convenient for DH to stop in and buy a few things...milk, bread, eggs, cigarettes etc. between $300-$500 a month.

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