Episode 09: Major Travel Credit Cards & Their Perks and Benefits

This episode will be a little bit longer only because I have gotten requests to kind of just kind of name out and list all the different credit cards especially the travel ones that I came across and used. So this one is going to be more comprehensive. I can understand the need for that because there's just so many travel credit card options available for us. So that being said I'll first name out kind of the five major banks with their credit cards. 

There's actually going to be way more bank credit cards out there with you know travel bonus points and stuff but you know it would take hours and hours for me to go through all of them but I want to go through the five major bank travel credit cards that are out there, and those include the: 

Chase Bank travel credit cards, the Bank of America travel credit cards, the Citi travel credit cards, the Barclay travel credit cards and the American Express Travel credit cards. So those are the five top. Bank travel credit cards that I usually go to to apply and get points. 

So we will start off with Chase Bank. 

And the first most popular card with them is the Chase Sapphire Preferred Credit Card. And as a new card member offer its usually fifty thousand bonus points after you spend four thousand on purchases in the first ninety days. And another card with Chase is Southwest Airlines Rapid Rewards premier credit card, and again they sometimes offer fifty thousand bonus points after you spend two thousand on purchases in ninety days. 

Followed by that is the United Mileage Plus Explorer card by Chase. Thirty thousand bonus points when you spend one thousand on purchases in the first ninety days in your account. Note that this United Mileage Plus card a lot of times the offer does go up to fifty thousand bonus miles during limited occasions. Along those lines Chase offers also an actual United Mileage Plus club card. So this is not necessarily a travel card with any bonus points but it allows you unlimited access to the United Club lounges for flying on the united mark flight but the annual fee for this is pretty hefty at four hundred fifty dollars a year. 

Chase Bank also has a British Airways Visa Signature card which offers fifty thousand bonus Avios points which are the airline point currency named for British Airways and also Iberia owned by British Airways, after you spend three thousand dollars on purchases during the first ninety days in that account. So that pretty much covers the Chase personal credit cards. 

Now Chase also offers business equivalent cards and these business equivalent cards are include the Southwest's Rapid Rewards Premier business credit card, the United Mileage Plus Explorer business card. So those are the two equivalents that they offer business cards with Southwest Airlines and the United Airlines card. And then also Chase has their own generic bank business credit card that offers travel points as well and that's called Ink plus business credit card. So the Chase Ink business credit card also works as well. 

So that's three Chase travel like airline credit cards that are available. Plus five personal travel airline credit cards. That being said Chase and all the other major banks have their hotel card equivalents but for now I'm not going to go over hotel and travel hacking just yet because you know it will just be all confusing and such. So that is the rundown for the Chase airline branded bank credit cards.

Will move onto Bank of America. 

Bank of America offers the Alaskan Airlines visa signature card. They also offer the Spirit Airlines travel credit card but with the measly fifteen thousand bonus miles. Not really that worth it unless you fly Spirit Airlines then yes. Bank of America also offers a Virgin Atlantic Master Card. Usually they offer twenty thousand flying club bonus miles after your first purchase. And then the generic travel bank card that Bank of America offers is the Bank of America travel awards card which offers a twenty thousand online bonus points offer. There's no annual fee or no transaction fee with that card, and I do know that the Alaskan Airlines card is offered as a business card as well. So that completes Bank of America in terms of the travel rewards card that they offer for airlines. 

Onwards to Citi Bank Credit Cards.

Citi they offer basically just American Airlines is basically the one card that they offer. So they offer several different kinds, there is Citi AAdvantage Platinum Select Master Card which gets you thirty thousand bonus points after spending one thousand in ninety days. And then on the higher level is the Citi AAdvantage Executive World Elite Master Card which offers sixty thousand American airlines bonus points after spending five thousand in ninety days but that comes with a four hundred fifty dollar annual fee, which is not waived in the first year. And then they also have a card Citi AAdvantage Gold Master Card which is just below the platinum select card in that offer that gives you twenty five thousand American Aid Airlines advantage cards after making seven hundred fifty dollars in purchases in ninety days which is pretty easy in itself. 

Interestingly they offer an Expedia credit card. Although not an airline credit card but obviously it can be used to book airline or hotel or car rentals through Expedia. So they have Expedia Plus card from Citi and the Expedia plus voyager card which just one of them has no annual fee the other has an annual fee and one has more bonus points that you can earn over the other. 

And then lastly Citi’s own generic bank cards include the Citi Thank You Premier card and the Citi Prestige card. Again similarly the annual fees differ. So definitely look up on to the Citi websites and look up those Thank You credit cards.

And then there are the equivalence of the business cards with the Citi Aid advantage cards. 

Next is Barclays Credit Cards. 

Barclays has several different travel cards. One of them is the Hawaiian Airlines Master Card which I personally have. So that's one of the credit cards that I've applied to and there's a business equivalent to that. There's also the Barclaycard Arrival Plus World Elite Master Card. And the equivalent of this that the smaller bonus point card is the Barclays Arrival World Master Card. So again what you'll find is with a lot of these banks is that they’ll offer a card with you know lots of bonus points or less bonus points. That really just has to depend on your kind of credit score and how much credit they're going to give up to you.  

Sometimes that cut off line is if they extend five thousand or more in credit then they’ll upgrade you to their elite cards. If it's five thousand or less in the credit that they extend to you then you'll get kind of the lesser bonus point card. And usually the lesser bonus point cards just has no annual fees on it but the more bonus point card has an annual fee that's maybe waived in the first year or not. So sometimes it's waived and sometimes it's not. 

Moving on to American Express cards.

You have the gold Delta Sky miles credit card. You also have the Premier Rewards Gold card from American Express which is a generic card and then on top of that even higher is the Amex Platinum card. 

They also have the Blue Sky from American Express which doesn't have any bonus points but it's for those who have a lower credit score that can first you know start applying to this card to build up credit so that you can apply to the larger cards with larger bonus points. 

And then American Express has higher a level Delta cards including the Platinum Delta Sky miles credit card which is just above the gold Delta Sky miles card and then the Delta Reserve credit card is basically having access to the Delta Sky Club which is the Delta lounge, obviously with a hefty annual fee of four hundred fifty dollars which is not waived.  

So hopefully this overview that I've given to you of all the airline travel credit cards again helps you kind of decide which credit card you should be applying both in the personal and business category or if it's the airline branded credit card or the generic bank credit card. 

Like I said so many choices to pick, and literally if you theoretically plighted all those credit cards and were able to get all approved or even if you did it within the year, they would all amount well over a million airline points of which you would accumulate all those points without even ever having to fly. 

Isn't that quite amazing. Well stay tuned in the next few episodes. We will start moving into discussing you know kind of applying these points towards redeeming them on airline routes.  

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How many travel credit cards do you have?

Just comment and let me know if you guys have any questions that you want me to address. 

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If you missed, Episode 08: Travel Credit Card Benefits and Perks

Next, Episode 10: How to Organize and Keep Track of All of Your Credit Cards

Follow me @hustletoparadise to stay up to date on future episodes of Travel Hacking with Hustle to Paradise.

(Introduction photo courtesy of Owen CL found on Unsplash)