<p>If our son goes to a college in a city that is served by Southwest (e.g. Rice, Tulsa or Trinity), then it would be a good idea to switch to a Southwest rewards card. I'll have to keep that in mind.</p>
<p>I have a Citi card for which I get United miles; these can be used on several overseas carriers as well. I got this last year to get something besides a marriage certificate and husband out of all the wedding costs. :-D There is an annual fee for this card.</p>
<p>We are hoping to take our little family to Italy next year with the miles earned on this card. We use it alllll the time, as we have part of our grocery funds dedicated to it. We also use this card for the purchase of musical instruments (H just bought a saxophone), to pay for CTY (rackin' up the miles there!), car repair (one stolen/found car, one accident, and general maintenance on two 10-year-old cars), and visiting his family. If I could make mortgage payments with this card, I would, just for the miles!</p>
<p>Another fan of the costco amex here - they give back cash, not miles, so you redeem your cash annually and can pay for whatever you want. they give 3% back on gas and restaurants, 2% back on travel and 1% on everything else. I also have bank card that gives cash back 3% on pharmacy and grocery stores. The % and rules change sometimes, so you need to keep track of who gives more back where.</p>
<p>I've had credit cards for American, Alaska and United. Our family of 4 has gone to Europe and Hawaii several times on free tickets, just because we put as much as possible on the cards (and pay the full balance every month!). I like Alaska VISA best right now, but plan to get S a card on whatever airline works best for whatever college he ends up at. If you do sign up for an airline card, most of them offer huge mileage bonuses and no fee for the first year. If you want to get really into the frequent flyer game, you should check out the forums at flyertalk.com. My CC addiction has cut into my flyertalk time, but it's worth a visit if you're planning any trips.</p>
<p>I think it depends on ones individual situation, they can be good but there also several factors to consider. </p>
<p>Most of these cards give you a huge chunk of bonus miles right up front (or after the first set of purchases) and those are often enough or nearly enough for a free domestic ticket. However, after the first year many cards start charging you a large annual fee (often $75-100). Once that happens, unless you're earning a lot of miles via the card then you actually risk starting to lose money on the deal. For example, if you're paying $75 per year for the card but it takes you 3 years to spend $25k on it and get enough miles for a free ticket you will have actually spent 75x3= $225 for your 'free' ticket... depending on where you're going you might be able to buy a ticket on an airline with cash, and less time restrictions, for less than that. So if you spend and travel a lot then it can pay off, but if you're just a small time casual traveler and don't spend huge sums on the card then it might not be a good deal. </p>
<p>For these programs to really pay off in the longer run you either have to spend large sums on your card (e.g. >$25k per year) or fly a lot of miles each year or both. I fly long international trips quite frequently and thus most of my air mile come from that. I've considered signing up for one of these cards but haven't done it just yet, but perhaps I should have (if I booked those long trips on my card I guess I could have gotten even more miles). </p>
<p>I suppose one cheeky option is to sign up for the card, use up the up front bonus miles and then cancel it after a year before the annual fee kicks in. Canceling a credit card will hurt your credit score, but only in the shorter term so it only matters if you're applying for additional credit. </p>
<p>Obviously too of course there's no point at all using any 'bonus' credit card of any type if you're going to carry a balance on the card as of course the interest payments will almost certainly far outweigh any 'bonus' you might get (you'd be surprised at the number of people who don't understand this! ;-) ). Pay it of in full each month!</p>
<p>Thank you SO much everyone for all the information and advice about these different cards and their benefits and shortcomings.</p>
<p>The cash back cards sound pretty good, but we're pretty far from the nearest Costco. I'd probably spend more in gas to get there than I'd save on groceries -- plus WAY too much travel time and trouble.</p>
<p>We are not big spenders or big travelers, so it might take a really, really long time to earn a free ticket. I have heard about those cards that give you a huge first year bonus in miles and no annual fee for that first year.</p>
<p>I've never had a card with an annual fee. That would be a hard pill to swallow, but if it saved money on plane fares, I suppose it would be a good move. We're probably one of those families for whom it would be a great deal the first year, and a much less-good deal after that.</p>
<p>I will explore all the suggestions here, though, and see if I can figure out if this is worth it for us. Thanks again so much! This is the best informed group of people anywhere on the internet, methinks.</p>
<p>I have used the Aadvantage Citicard, and it worked well for me. However, I have switched to the NW Visa now & really like it. Northwest has much better flight availability for frequent flyer miles, and I even scored a ticket for 15,000 miles for Parent Weekend. D goes to school in an area with ridiculously overpriced airfare, so the frequent flyer tickets are wonderful. We have used points for 7 flights in the past year (including Thanksgiving week). We charge everything & pay it off each month. It's worth it.</p>
<p>At BankAmerica yesterday, they encouraged me to apply for their Amex card. Card has no fee, and gives points for airfare etc. Anyone have experience with this card?</p>
<p>The biggest problem with an Amex card is its limited acceptance. There are many places that I shop that accept only Visa, MasterCard or Discover. That's because Amex charges the merchants a higher transaction fee than the others.</p>
<p>Lots of places don't take Discover (though not as many as don't take AmX) - I get cash back on it, but I don't get to use it everywhere.</p>
<p>we took out a card with Juniper bank through the Orbitz website. In the 4 years our D went to school in Vermont (we are in Oregon) I think that about 80% of the time I was able to get her ticket discounted. They give you miles that you can use on almost any airline and you can use these in increments-$100 off for X number of miles. We then used our CC for everything possible-even a $2 item went on the card. We paid the balance 2 times a month as I hate CC debt and just paid it on line out of our bank account. Also, I posted everything as if I had written a check in my bank ledger so that we always knew exactly what we had spent.
I know that Orbitz is not as popular as it was-but this saved us a lot of $$$ and was very convenient and liked that we did not need a whole ticket's worth of points to use.</p>
<p>Another alternative to consider is a card with points credited to a major hotel chain. We have this with Marriott; stays are as low as 10,000 points, and the card offers a 20,000 bonus for signing. The opportunities to use the points are, for us, more frequent, and the longer you stay somewhere on points, the greater the discount.</p>
<p>For the kind of traveling we do, the hotel freebies work out much better. We have had a Citibank/AA card for years, but the free flights on American have become too hard to fit into our schedules, so the miles just pile up.</p>
<p>we use capital one and put tuition on that card too. Don't know how it stacks up in terms of number of points per flight but my son gets about 2 free flights from coast to coast a year which helps. You can book the flights on any airline at any time and as long as you book the flight using the capital one card you can get miles rewards after the fact. That means you can shop around for the cheapest flight without worrying about using any particular airline.</p>
<p>If you charge a lot on a credit card and you like cash back, check out Blue Cash from American Express. No annual fee; for the first $6500 of charges you get 1.5% back on gas, groceries, and drugstore purchases and 0.5% back on everything else. Then it gets A LOT better--5% back on gas, groceries and drugstores and 1.5% back on everything else. No upper limit on how much cash back you can get. Amex also has Blue (points reward card) and Blue Miles (airline miles).</p>
<p>Watch out for paying tuition with a credit card! Both of my kids' colleges charged a 3% fee for taking a credit card.</p>