Your choice of cards depends on how you earn the credit and how you prefer to use it. Overall, your most important choice is between cards that earn credit in airline frequent-flier programs and cards that earn credit -- whether it's called "miles" or points -- in bank programs. Next, you have to look at your own travel patterns. Let's look at a few scenarios.
Occasional traveler. You're in this group if (1) you don't fly enough to play the frequent-flier game seriously, (2) you spread your business around among different lines, and (3) you want to use credit toward air trips in coach/economy. My recommendation is that you forget about cards that earn airline miles and instead concentrate on one of the bank programs. The best of those return either the equivalent of 2 percent on every dollar you charge to the card or offer variable returns of 1 percent to 5 percent depending on where you charge, sometimes a rotating series of categories such as drugstores, gas stations, crockery stores and such. You use the cash value -- typically one cent per point or mile, and maybe a bit more -- to "buy" travel on any airline, at any time.
• Nerdwallet (nerdwallet.com) likes Barclaycard Arrival World MasterCard, which earns 2 miles per dollar spent on anything and also returns 10 percent of the miles you use for travel purchases. There's an $89 fee, waived the first year, plus a 40,000-mile bonus for spending $3,000 in first 90 days.
• NextAdvisor (nextadvisor.com) likes the Barclaycard, as well as the Capital One Venture Rewards card, also a 2 percent earner, plus BankAmerica Cash Rewards card, AmEx Blue Cash Preferred Card, and several others with variable rewards of 1 percent to 6 percent and annual fees less than $100.
• Churn 'em. Several card authorities urge you to "churn" your card accounts, moving around each year, to take advantage of the one-time 20,000- to 40,000-point "enrollment" bonuses many offer.
Airline loyalist. You're in this group if you fly one airline at least two round-trips a year -- and it flies where you want to take your award trips. Use that airline's co-branded card. Typically, these cards carry an annual fee up to $100 a year, often waived the first year. American, Delta and United base cards include a no-charge checked bag on each trip plus other benefits, and other lines' cards offer various benefits. American, Delta and United also offer more expensive cards (around $400 to $500 annual fee) that add membership in the airline's lounge club system. But for Delta miles, MileCards (milecards.com) concludes that, based on typical spending patterns, the AmEx EveryDay Preferred card generates more Delta miles per dollar than Delta's own card.
Undecided. If you aren't sure about where you will want to "spend" your miles, three cards give you wider options:
• Miles you earn on the Alaska Airlines Visa card can be used for award travel on American, Delta, and a few international partner lines as well as on Alaska -- although Alaska's partnership with Delta is a bit iffy these days.
• AmEx Platinum card ($450 a year) allows one-to-one point transfers to Delta, Air Canada, and a bunch of foreign lines, plus access to the Priority Pass worldwide network of airport lounges.
• Starwood Preferred Guest AmEx cards allow you to transfer points into miles at a bunch of airlines, including Alaska, American, Delta, and several foreign lines, at a one-to-one rate, with a 25 percent bonus for transfers of 20,000 miles or more. With the bonus, this card earns more miles per dollar charged than the airlines' own cards.
Send email to Ed Perkins at
eperkins@mind.net
Travel on 06/08/2014