Which Cards give you the most Value? Which ones do you want?

[Anonymous]

Hello all. Me and my wife are new to this whole credit card business because we never had decent credit until recently. So, we are wondering which cards give you all the most value..... be it monetarily or maybe the card just has a great perk which you value.

As for me, I have family of four who like to travel a few times a year so my cards tend to be travel cards and we like to apply for these cards in twos. One applies and the other applies after we send a referral to double up on SUB and get referral bonus when applicable

Our keeper cards are:

Amex Platinum: SUB, travel credits, Uber credits, and lounge access for food and drinks for 2 adults and 2 hungry growing kids worth the annual fee for us.

Amex Hilton Aspire: SUB, $250 travel credit, $250 resort credit, free weekend night certificate, diamond status to access executive lounge for free food, drinks and breakfast for all of us. We each have one to get all the benefits x2 since we throw the kids in their own room usually.

Discover it: 5% cash back on rotational categories plus 5% cash match. We’re taking turns applying so we are now starting year 2 of of getting 10% for category spend. Since you are allowed two discover it we are hoping to be able to get 2 more years after this one.

PenFed power cash Rewards: just as good as Citi DC but with no foreign transaction fees.

We Hope to get :
Amex Delta Platinum for 70K SUB, annual companion pass and free check luggage for each of us.

Alaska Airlines from BOA: again for SUB and companion pass, and checked bag fee waiver again for each of us.

Amex Blue Cash Preferred: did I mention we have the hungriest kids on 🌏. Would love 6% cash back on groceries and 3% on gas and department stores... need only 1 of us to get it this one.

Would love CSR but way over 5/24. Maybe in 2 years.

[Anonymous]

The secret is matching cards to your lifestyle and not letting cards drive a behavior. We have an Amex BCP which we max out on grocery, a regular Blue Cash when we are out of 6% BCP grocery, Citi Dc great misc card, Disco love those 5% and Disco deals, DW misc favorite is Cap 1 QS (she has good service that she loves), US Bank Cash plus for utility bills    For our Biz we have a Chase Ink and a cap 1 Spark.  We  have others but these get regular use. 

[Anonymous]

For being new you got a pretty good setup going on,  since you already have the amex plat you thought about SPG cards from amex,  plat card gives you gold status at spg, Marriott and ritz,  since your doubling up if you and wife get both the personal and biz spg the signup bonus on all 4 will be more then enough points for a Marriott nights and flights package, that’s good for 7 nights stay and 120k miles on most airlines,   As long as can meet the signup bonus that’s a free nice vacation,   If you do go that route make sure you refer each other for the extra pts.   And then whatever airlines you fly on go for them next 

[Anonymous]

I value those that compliment our spending most along with a travel card to catch some of our largest purchases and provide useful perks. For our family of me, the wife & a 3 year old that means:

Citi Costco - heavy Costco shoppers so 2% is a no brainer plus their gas is at least 15c/gal cheaper than any other station even before the 4% back. I don't buy gas anywhere else unless I'm traveling and have no other option. The added 2 year warranty is great, picked up new OLED today and by buying it from Costco and using my Costco Visa I get a whopping 4 years additional warranty on top of the 1 year from LG.

Amex blue everyday - like you grocery is huge spend for us. I'll be upgrading this to BCP in August.

DiscoverIT: extremely useful as a category 10%-2% cashback card until the first year cb match ends. Large CL and killer customer service.

CSP & chase freedom : travel protection, excellent signup bonus & lots of transfer and redemption options for UR. Bonus points for allowing transfer of UR from the wife's freedom to my CSP. Allows us to double up on UR without needing to open another account. The bonus would be nice if we alternated but it's not worth the effort or meeting sub for us. CSP sees heavy use for dining and catches all travel spend. Second in totally $ spend behind disco.

I've also got nfcu cashRewards in the single digit APR range that I am building up for an emergency high limit balance carry card. Only card I really want still is the CSR, which I'll be upgrading to from the preferred sometime in the next year or two.