Holy cow, lots of posts since I made my original post. I really don't have good answers to everyone's questions. We don't have any specific travel dates in mind. As a family we usually go to one of the Disney parks every year. We are in the Houston area, so going to DL or WDW is just a matter of what we feel like doing. We are originally from CA and were AP's for many years, so we have been going to WDW more often. But I think a DL trip is in the near future.
My real goal was to find something that would earn greater rewards than $1 per $100 and we could use for the trips. Whether it be airline miles, hotels, etc.
Credit cards are all recently paid off, so that is also what is triggering the switch. Reconciling the bank account is so much easier when you limit the activity coming through it and just paying one payment to the credit card.
I agree it's much easier to just pay one sum each month. That's what I told myself when I first started years ago, but I juggled a couple cards when I was building credit so 3 payments wasn't much more than 1, and then eventually I've got 4-5 going each month cuz each card does certain things for me and I can't give it up
But it's still much better than seeing all the individual transactions on a bank statement.
If you're only looking for one card, for me, there's a couple options to start with. If you want to start slow I think either one of the Chase Freedom's will set you up for future travel hacking. They earn the UR points we've mentioned and if you go for the travel cards later you can transfer those points earned on the freedom's to the travel card to get a better value on redemption. But to start there's the Freedom Unlimited that earns 1.5% on every purchase, so off the bat a bit better than the Disney Visa. Redemption is easy with all options at 1 cent per point (i.e. 100 pts gets you $1), statement credit or bank deposit is the easiest I believe. I like the CFU, in fact I plan to downgrade one of my cards next year to it for anything I'd normally only get 1% back on, but I prefer the plain Freedom card if I could only have one. That earns 1% on every purchase and has rotating 5% back categories that changes each quarter. Up to $1,500 each quarter is eligible to earn 5% back on the category, so a maximum of $75 in cashback. This quarter is gas stations, Walgreens and Lyft, last quarter was grocery stores, there's usually a restaurants or entertainment, department stores and/or
amazon last quarter for the holidays. Long way of saying there's usually a few quarters that you can use and I've found even if you're not maxing out the category you'll come out ahead over the CFU.
Here's an example with a random amount of annual spend on the card:
$3000 on the CFU at 1.5% gets $45 cashback (4500 UR)
$3000 on the CF with half being 5% and half at 1% gets $90 cashback (9000 UR)
So even if you don't max out the quarters, if you can get at least 15% of that spend at the higher return you'll come out ahead with the CF.
($450 @ 5% + $2550 @ 1% = $48)
Each Freedom card has a sign up bonus (I think both are 15000 UR points, equal to $150) and no annual fee, so they're nice keeper cards if you want to look into them further.
If you want to go fast can go straight out for one of the travel cards from Chase, the Sapphire line. Each card has a 50,000 pt sign up bonus if you spend $4,000 in the first three months. That's either $500 cash or, depending on the card, either $625 or $750 in travel redemptions. You can book your Disney trip or tickets through the Chase travel portal to get the higher redemption value. There's pros and cons to each one and get discussed here semi regularly because they are easy to use to earn points and easy to use to redeem them. They both have annual fees for the privilege but depending on your travel goals they may be worth paying either for a year or two or long term. If that sounds interesting we're happy to discuss more
The thing to keep in mind if you want to go this long term route is the Chase 5/24 rule. Many Chase cards require that you haven't opened 5 credit cards in the last 24 months in order to get them. So that's why we tend to ask what all you've opened in the last 2 years to see if Chase cards would be an option for you.
Alternatively, if that's too involved for right now, it's hard to pass up the Citi Double Cash. You get 1% when you make the charge and then 1% again when you make a payment, therefore it's effectively a 2%. I don't have this myself so I'm not fully knowledgeable on it but I believe there are other experts on the thread if you're interested in how that works out for redemptions.
ETA: How fortuitous, we just had a post about the card with a new sign up bonus:
@SouthFayetteFan's Citi DC link
Discover It cards also offer a cashback match for the first year; all the cashback you earn in the first year is doubled at the end of the 12 months. If you choose the rotating categories card, like the CF, then for the first year you effectively get a 2% on everything, 10% on the categories. (same restriction of up to $1,500 each quarter) If you can time it to get 5 quarters and manage to max out each quarter, that's at least $750 cash. There's other It cards, the It chrome doesn't have rotating categories, it's fixed categories are 2% gas and restaurants, 1% everything else; but it'll double first year too for 4/2%. I'm not totally familiar with the It miles card but some people like it. I think all of them have a sign up bonus of a $50 statement credit with your first purchase within 3 months.
Cashback redemption is easy, either a statement credit or deposit into your bank, or redeem it for gift cards and get a little bonus on top. For some GC redemptions you redeem $20 for a $25 gift card; makes that theoretical $750 go further. One option that works for some is redeeming for Bed Bath & Beyond GC's and then using those GC's to buy Disney GC's to discount the trip. I did that for our
DCL cruise earlier this year. But not all BB&B carry 3rd party GC's and then others if they do give a hard time paying for a GC with a GC, so it's not a strategy to bank on. Need some recognizance first and a backup plan
Then of course are the hotel and airline cards. Swan and Dolphin are part of the SPG brand which is currently merging with Marriott so there several cards that can get you points there. If you've got access to Southwest there's a way to get a bunch of points and a companion pass so you only have to pay for 1 ticket, with either points or cash. Several other airlines have cards too to help with the travel to Disney.
Phew, that was a lot
Hopefully that gives you some stuff to think about and research. Ask any questions. Some cards require good or higher credit scores or certain amount of credit history to get, to just keep in mind while researching info.
