Recommend me a new Credit Card for POINTS

[onecoolcat]

So I spend ALOT on gas and eating out every month.  Don't judge me, its reimbursed from my job because I have to travel alot.  I end up swiping my personal card on everything and get reimbursed later.  Right now, I have a Chase Sapphire Preferred card (need to cancel in a few months because I will have a annual fee in June that I dont want to pay).  I only get 1 point per dollar with this card.  I was thinking I should get a different card that will give me greater cashback or more points.  Anyone have any recommendations?  Its for eating out and gas.

[waltworks]

How much is a LOT? If you can hit, say, $2k in 3 months or so, you should do something like the Chase SW airlines card that will give you a huge pile of signup bonus points/miles. If a "lot" is a few hundred bucks, then honestly it's not worth worrying about anyway but go on nerdwallet and you can find lots of gas/restaurant cards easily.

-W

[onecoolcat]

About $600 a month.

[waltworks]

Yeah, that's only going to be $12 vs $6 or something, then, if you just do a 2x points gas/restaurants card. Not worth bothering.

Go fire up Nerdwallet (or look on the MMM credit card page). If you are getting to $1800 over 3 months, could you manufacture some spending or pre-purchase some stuff you know you'll need? If you can hit $2-3k in that 3 month period, there is a whole world of cards that will return $500+ worth of rewards as a signup bonus.

-W

About $600 a month.

[Calvawt]

The Barclays Arrival Plus is a good card that isn't tied to any one travel program.  I like the Chase Sapphire Preferred, too.  Both have excellent sign-up offers as well.

[aschmidt2930]

So I spend ALOT on gas and eating out every month.  Don't judge me, its reimbursed from my job because I have to travel alot.  I end up swiping my personal card on everything and get reimbursed later.  Right now, I have a Chase Sapphire Preferred card (need to cancel in a few months because I will have a annual fee in June that I dont want to pay).  I only get 1 point per dollar with this card.  I was thinking I should get a different card that will give me greater cashback or more points.  Anyone have any recommendations?  Its for eating out and gas.

For someone who travels a lot, the Chase Sapphire Preferred card is about as good as it gets, with 2x points on travel and dining expenses.  I'm confused by you saying you "only get 1 dollar per point with this card."

I would re-think cancelling it.  When you redeem through the Ultimate Rewards portal, you save 25% of your points.  This means every dollar spent on dining and travel has a 2.5% cash value.  Also, you can get the Chase Freedom card (No fee), which has rotating 5% categories (Gas is frequently one), and transfer the points to use in the Ultimate Rewards portal.  For the quarter that gas is a 5% category, you would get a return of 6.25% on every dollar spent.  This is a fantastic value, especially when we're talking about company money. 

[PilotsWife]

I agree with the above poster. The CSP is also worth keeping because you can use it to transfer your Ultimate Rewards points to other travel partners like United, Hyatt, Southwest, Marriott, etc. That's a pretty useful reason to keep it.

If you absolutely don't want this card anymore, call Chase & downgrade it to the no-annual-fee Sapphire. The Freedom card does have some nice bonuses, but the sign-up bonus isn't that great. If you do go with the Freedom, try to max out the categories by buying gift cards. They usually run the gas 5% category twice a year, so buy gift cards to keep you in gas for the other 6 months. I'm doing that right now with the grocery store so I'll effectively be savings 5% on groceries for all of 2015. It's not a ton of money, but an extra $150 isn't too shabby.

ETA: here's a link to a blog post about using UR points with the transfer partners. http://www.richmondsavers.com/how-much-are-my-chase-ultimate-rewards-points-really-worth/

[aschmidt2930]

I agree with the above poster. The CSP is also worth keeping because you can use it to transfer your Ultimate Rewards points to other travel partners like United, Hyatt, Southwest, Marriott, etc. That's a pretty useful reason to keep it.

If you absolutely don't want this card anymore, call Chase & downgrade it to the no-annual-fee Sapphire. The Freedom card does have some nice bonuses, but the sign-up bonus isn't that great. If you do go with the Freedom, try to max out the categories by buying gift cards. They usually run the gas 5% category twice a year, so buy gift cards to keep you in gas for the other 6 months. I'm doing that right now with the grocery store so I'll effectively be savings 5% on groceries for all of 2015. It's not a ton of money, but an extra $150 isn't too shabby.

ETA: here's a link to a blog post about using UR points with the transfer partners. http://www.richmondsavers.com/how-much-are-my-chase-ultimate-rewards-points-really-worth/

I knew they had some great transfer options, but after reading that post I may have to start being more proactive about point transfers.  If those types of deals are available where and when I want to travel, the value of each point would skyrocket.

Also, if you rent a car a handful of days a year, the insurance coverage from CSP can easily make up for the annual fee. 

[Richmond Savers]

Thanks for linking to my post on Chase Ultimate Rewards.  These are my absolute favorite points and while the 25% bonus on the Chase UR portal redemptions is solid, transferring the points to one of the 11 transfer partners is where the real value lies.

My four favorite transfer partners are without question United, British Airways, Hyatt and Southwest

For example, you can get a round-trip to Europe with a "free stopover" for 60,000 points on United.

There are a lot of nice Hyatt options for only 5,000 or 8,000 points per night.  I'm planning to go to the Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting in Omaha this May, so in May 2014 I reserved the Hyatt Place there for 2015 for only 8,000 points per night!  The hotel was going for $500/night that weekend, but because I knew the rules, I was able to maximize this Mustachian-style.

The best redemptions I've found are actually using British Airways miles on American Airlines, US Airways and Alaska Airlines here in the US (and Americas generally). 

I just recorded a video on this: 

http://www.richmondsavers.com/qa-video-how-to-book-flights-for-only-9000-points-with-british-airways-avios/

We fly from Richmond to visit our family in NY quite often and it only costs 9,000 miles for the round-trip on an American Airlines flight that normally runs $450+!  It would have been 25,000 American Airlines miles for that exact same flight.