Sunday Reader Question: How Do You Value Your Credit Card Points and What Are Best Cashback Credit Cards?

What airlines can you transfer Amex points to? I know Delta, British Airways, Virgin America are options. Any other popular domestic airlines? Trying to find a good option to transfer Amex points and book a round-trip flight from MSP to LAS. I would have already jumped on the Delta 30% bonus, but I only have 41,000 Amex points…

NYT reader Roger is wrong about the gift cards. Except for Amex GCs, all other GCs (Home Depot, etc) , are exchanged one point = one cent. I went that route until I became points focused. Amex GCs are an awful use of points.

Good call. I just added four of Discover’s cards into the mix. I personally don’t have any Discover cards, but I would love to hear which ones you carry and why.

This is nothing but a list of credit cards which pay you a commision (until someone mentioned Discover) to take advantage of the traffic from the New York Times.

Talk about a new low!

Discover More Card earns me several hundred dollars per year, when I take cash. This can easily be doubled, if I use my cash for a reward through Discover travel. For example, when I book a cruise, I can cash in $80 cash for $160 cash credit off the booking. Not the most knowledgeable agents, IMO; however, the rates are the same as booking elsewhere. So, I do my own research, then contact them when I am ready to book.

Depending on the route and award availability you may have even able to book the same flight by transferring to British airways and booking the AA flight since they are oneworld partners

don’t forget Chase AARP card gives 5% cash back for the first six months.

So let me get this straight. You’re pissed because a blogger put up credit card links on his blog. Somebody emailed thepointsguy and asked him about how he evaluates credit card rewards. Then he makes a list for people interested in cash back cards rather than rewards. Some he gets a commission on, but some he doesn’t. (If he’s making a list anyway, why wouldn’t he use links that give him a little something back.) Exactly what is wrong with this? I didn’t see him trying to convince everybody to go get these credit cards and use his links. He’s merely answering a question and giving us something to think about when it comes time for the next churn.

Thanks for the tip, I just added a mention of this card and links to the application in.

Valuation is different for every person. I’m 6’7 and I put a premium on business class that is apparently worth more than yours.

I am not an expert on cashback cards, and almost all the content about credit cards on my site is about those that earn you points or miles, and then maximizing those. I am not “pushing” these credit cards. The bottom line is that credit cards are the single most lucrative way to accrue points and miles these days, and anyone who deals with points on a regular basis would tell you the same thing.

This list does contain referral links, but it also contains a lot of links that go directly to the credit cards’ or banks’ sites, regardless of whether I get a referral fee. This is just a list of the major cashback cards out there, and I asked readers to comment and add ones they felt I left off. It’s meant to be a discussion, and I want to hear from readers who have cashback cards, and what they like about them.

As with any card, a consumer should do their research and apply for the best one for their specific circumstances.

I carry the Discover More card. Starting in 2012, they are matching Chase with 5% cashback in the quarterly categories up to $1500 in spend (up from $300). Also, along with Chase, I’d say they have the best online rewards portal with an extra 5%-20% cashback at many retailers (you aren’t going to have to chase them down for your cashback a la Cartera).

In my opinion, it’s a good card to have if for nothing else than to use your cashback to pay the taxes on those longhaul premium cabin redemptions to truly fly for free.

Does Capital One give different values for their points/miles depending on which card you have? For example, is a point/mile earned on the Capital One Venture Card worth the same as a point earned on the Capital One LSU credit card?

ain’t nothin’ buy a SAUSAGE LINK FARM!!!

http://thepointsguy.com/2011/04/maximizing-amex-post-2-understanding-membership-rewards/

Sorry I meant add two to the list…

“I gain well more than 5 points on ave for my dollar spent with SIGNON offers but each point DOES NOT save me more than 2 cents “I dont think credit card points is worth more than 2 cents net saving the way I used to fly. A CO far east r/t costs about $1000 ( more miles) verus 65K (no miles)+$83 fees and tax I redeem CO 25 K for EWR-SNA run if ticket costs more than 375 You can certainly argue the Avios points worth a lot they TPE-HKG RT only takes away 9K ( ~7K MR+ 30 % bonus)=7K+$50 can fly r/t
while the r/t ticket can cost close to $500

I was a bit surprised when Chase Freedom started the 5% quarterly rebate items very similarly to Discover card but outgunned the spend to 1500 (6000 MAX) instead of 800, 400+200Grocery, 300, 300 =2000 MAX. Now Discover has upped the quarterly spend to 1500 while Chase moved away to well different categories..Check them out yourself. I was joking with a CHase rep: I am going to buy 3000 gift cards ( MC and Visa I have) for my grandchildren’s AMAZON diaper formula express etc..

our better days should be: what ever you are buying you can get 5% off be they from Chase or Discover Citi or Amex or BofA NOT all of them offerring 5 % on same items at the same time..

By the way, Discover just gave me the $1 extra rebate for my each of my 20 purchases regardless of the transaction amount. I was joking with the rep: you are getting a few amazon gc from me

I have to say I am surprised by the vitriol being spewed towards Brian. This recap was timely as I had just started making of list of bonus categories for the cards I and my wife have or may want to get, in large part thanks to TPG. Heaven forbid someone makes a few dollars for supplying information to the public. We are in a capitalist society, right?

If you’re not happy here go to a blog that updates maybe twice a month. You’ll be back here real soon.

Merry Christmas Brian!

If you value biz at ~50% higher than coach, there are a lot of award charts that agree with you for certain routes. This is great, because you can get what you’d perhaps never purchase at full price, for around what you value it at.

Personally, I try to use miles for trips that I likely would not pay cash for even coach tickets. Yes, you can certainly redeem for tickets you would otherwise buy, and that’s the easiest way to communicate the basic value proposition offered, but you can also redeem similar amounts for much more exotic or expensive trips that you might otherwise never even consider.

My next redemption (120k skymiles each for 2 tickets) involves 20k+ flown miles spanning 3 continents, with 3 separate longhaul overnight flights, and a 4th daytime longhaul. I’ll be seeing destinations I’d never even heard of prior to miles. I’d never dream of booking it in coach – it’d wear me out, and it’d also cost something over 8k per ticket (and I’m going with my wife). The $20k it’d currently cost to buy a business seat is absolutely irrelevant to my situation – as I said even the coach wouldn’t make sense for my budget. Obviously at this point a “realistic” valuation is completely personal – I would not be taking the same trip with cash, regardless of cabin, and I certainly would not be dropping $40k on a couple of tickets in biz class.

The advantage opens right back up when you maximize routings (assuming that that fits in with your travel style). “Best” valuation is always up to the individual – in terms of dollar value to purchase there’s a definite optimum corner case with most programs for complex itineraries in premium international cabins, but if you’re not interested in that then your best value is somewhere else.

My valuations change depending on where I’m going. From the Northeast US, the premium for an 8-hour flight to Europe isn’t much to me. I’d easily fly UA and just pay the extra for E+.

However, when we’re talking about trips to Asia, where we can be looking at close to 20 hours in the air each way, it’s a different story. I’d easily pay 100% more for a J seat than a Y, and, in fact, my wife and I did that by outright buying AS miles for a trip on CX. Well worth it at $2300/pp, round trip. Keep in mind that many carriers offer a flat bed in J, and, well, it’s no comparison to 31″ pitch in coach. Add comfortable lounges and priority check-in, and it’s quite nice.

But, even your position simplifies things too much. We really have to break down points earned from credit card sign-up bonuses, and points earned from every-day spend. Why? Because lately, cards have been pushing massive sign-up bonuses that can’t generally be turned into cash. I’ve picked up 850,000 miles from credit cards over the last 1/1.5 years. Would I trade them in at $0.02 each? Well, maybe, because we’re talking about $17,000 if I could get it straight cash back. But I can’t get that much. *Maybe* I could get a penny/point from some programs in cash or gift cards, so now we’re talking about $8500. Would I trade them in for that? Probably not.

Amex Fidelity Reward credit card is hands down the best cashback credit card. Flat 2 point per dollar on everything. If you have a Fidelity retail account you can redeem for cash at 5,000 points for $50. If you don’t, you have to wait until you have 25,000 points to redeem for $250. And the world points can be transferred to Aeroplan at 1:1. NO ANNUAL FEE!! I don’t know why this card has not been mentioned here. It is a no annual fee 2% cashback card with the ability to transfer points to Aeroplan at 1:1.

For those places that don’t take Amex, there is a Visa Fidelity Reward card for 1.5% cash back on everything. (5,000 points for $75). No annual fee. My employer has our retirement account managed through them anyway, and I found Fidelity’s aggregation layout of taxable/retirement/cc very easy to deal with.

Dear SoCal traveler,

You are not required to listen to The Points Guy. Find another site that meets your needs.

All I can tell you is the I have listened to his advise since August, 2011 and have so far accumulated almost 1,000,000 award points, have booked a trip for two to New Orleans ($700), a trip for two to Panama ($1,400), a trip for one to Arizona ($338), a Starwood hotel in New orleans for 3 nights ($1,000), and a trip for two to Calgary, Canada for two in business/ist class($3,300) AND I still have over 600,000 points left on various cards.

This is someone that you think has gone too far! Please points Guy, keep up your blog exactly as you have been doing, which allows novices like me to become experts always looking forward to your next piece of news.

Appreciatively