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:
Amex Platinum for travel (hotels, flights)
Chase Freedom for gas (rewards are sometimes targeted)
Chase Sapphire for streaming, bills and randoms because I like their points incentive(s)
Citi Simplicity for balance transfers, since they tend to target my family for generous offers (like when we had to buy a new living room :/)
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.
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.
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.
Free instacart. We used the crap out of it for the first year during covid. Then the terms eroded and it got really expensive.
Free Uber priority or Lyft Pink or whatever. That saved us… maybe $10.
Free TSA PreCheck. It’s worth $75 every 3 years or so. Maybe prices have gone up.
Priority Pass - yeah that thing that gives you access to like 0 lounges now. It was great when I got my card nearly 10 years ago.
Rewards points. They dropped Travelocity (thank god) as an intermediary. But now their booking costs are about 10-20% higher than booking directly with the airline/hotel/etc. So we try to bank up our points and use them to purchase whole tickets and we never spend cash through their portal anymore.
$300 of travel cash. We’re careful to not book travel with that reimbursement through their portal. The 10-20% markup translates to $30-60 in rewards which, at a 5% cash back rate costs $1200 in travel to recoup.
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.