My family uses credit cards for all purchases and we pay them off in full each month. Although sometimes we’ll use a 0% APR promotion for bigger purchases.
Which cards do you use for maximizing your rewards?
My family uses credit cards for all purchases and we pay them off in full each month. Although sometimes we’ll use a 0% APR promotion for bigger purchases.
Which cards do you use for maximizing your rewards?
It’s a cat and mouse game to achieve “the best” rewards. It’s made this way on purpose and they change monthly/on a cadence (as you most likely all know). I always look around to research and modify our usage per expenses.
That said:
Other than the Citi card, we pay our balances. Our rewards points are pretty built up at this point and we’ll use them for things like vacations, or vacation add-ons, rentals or gift cards for the kiddos.
I am planning to drop my Chase Sapphire Reserve because the service has suffered while the price increased (started at $250 and now it’s $500/yr).
About how much do you spend on hotels and flights to make the Amex worth it? They charge $750 a year!
Edit: I’m also bitter that Amex bought all of the airport lounges that I used to get into for free with my Chase card.
Yep, I agree about Chase. And the same could be said about Amex with the changes in perks + the Centurion lounges always being full. I have been an Amex customer for a long long time and regularly call to get my fee partially waived (it’s hit or miss). I stay for their customer service. It’s second to none. To answer your question, I travel a lot. I do gov consulting work so it’s all reimbursed :)
I’m glad I’m reading your comment. I had just called Chase this morning and the Chase Sapphire Reserve is now $550/annual fee and the bonus is now 60k points (i think.ot used to be 100k, which is what I got when I signed up.for the Chade Sapphire Preferred card). I was interested in order.to get the bonus points but also for the Chase airport lounges - if I can’t access those.lounges there.might not be any point (no pun intended). ETA: Can you use all of the Priority One lounges?
What other benefits do you get for that $550? Is the fee waived the first year?
They shuffled the rewards around a few years ago due to covid.
Oh and when I signed up they gave me almost $750 in travel credit as a premium. I think I’m going to start churning again because that was the best freakin’ reward.
Yeah I’m a bit sad that I picked the chase ecosystem instead of Amex now. I’ve got the non-business trifecta and don’t want to switch because I have a ton of points, but it seems like the Amex rewards are “nicer” these days. Even if it’s unlikely I’ll fully utilize most of them. Although Chase is working on opening their own airport lounges so maybe that will help.