Hellobee Boards

I love Capital One Venture. We just took $500 off our trip to Korea.

We have the chase sapphire card and I think there are certain categories you sign up for every few months and you get a large percentage cash back in those categories (like 5% or something?).

@Mrs. High Heels: we basically do the same--using chase freedom now for amazon purchases! And Am Ex blue card for groceries always.

I'm going to "third" the Capital One Venture. In the few years we've had it, we've redeemed about 5 flights. If you and DH each have your own account, you can also transfer reward points to each other to make it more effective. We pretty much run everything through our credit cards so we can get the points now. And since you can erase the flight expense rather than having to book the flight through the rewards center, you can fly on any carrier or combine with any other deal.

We have the chase amazon rewards card, and order a lot on amazon and rack up points very quickly. The points can be used for anything, we just took $1k off flights to FL next month.

We also have the Amex true blue (jet blue) card. I haven't had it for very long, but so far the points seem fair, and you get 25k points on sign up. We try to fly JetBlue if we can.

Same as @Mrs. High Heels: AMEX is our main card. We also use Chase Sapphire as a secondary rewards card.

Capital one venture for all the reasons listed above! They also have great customer service.

We love or chase sapphire rewards

I refuse to pay an annual fee for a card, but over the years I've ended up with 3 or 4 cards I use regularly.
My main card is a Bank of America Cash rewards. 3% gas, 2% grocery/pharmacy and 1% all else, with a 10% bonus on the rewards for transferring the rewards back to a Bofa bank account.

I have a Citi Dividend and Discover with rotating 5% cashback categories. (Chase freedom has this too).

And Discover for the Merchant cash back rewards,typically 5%, 10% during holidays most the time, and sometimes as high as 15% for places like Target, Kohls, Macys, etc..

Between the 3 cards, I easily get back about 1k cash back a year. And then with the discover card, you can redeem that for discount gift cards too.

I have an Amex Platinum that makes up for the annual fee in perks + points conversion. I can use the points in so many different ways that it's worth it for me. some years I stock up on gift cards when they have specials (less points for $ value) and some years I'll use them for vacations. I pick an airline and they give me $200 worth of credit on that airline every year, plus free wifi through boingo. I got the global entry fee waived through amex. Plus I get to go into most airline lounges free. I also get free towing services through Amex which is nice and I've used twice already. plus they have pretty good amex specials every month at stores i frequent which is nice (costco, cheesecake factory, whole foods, etc). I use it to pay for daycare and then pay for it automatically every month so it doesn't accrue interest. I actually use the amex for most of my bills and for each bill, have an automatic payment to pay for it so it's like i'm cycling the payments around to get points. But it's a good way to get points on things I'm spending money on anyways.

I also have a chase sapphire that I love since amex isn't taken everywhere. Plus a gap card which I only use at gap stores for the rewards.

@yoursilverlining: they juuuust started letting us use credit cards in 2014. I think they don't want to pay for the cc processing fees, but it's easier for them to just do auto pay instead of checks every month. But I hear ya .... when i lived at a condo, it was SOOO nice paying rent via CC too.

@LindsayInNY: I'm not sure. I assume it is? I started with a gold account years ago and about 4 years ago I got a letter saying they would upgrade me to platinum and waive the yearly fee for a year. Couldn't say no to that! LOL

@shopaholic: are you willing to use more than 1 card or do you just want 1 card?

We have several we use for different purposes.

We have the Amex Blue Cash everyday for 3% on groceries (no annual fee).

We have the Chase Sapphire Preferred for 2x points on dining and travel.

We have the Chase Freedom & Discover card which are no annual fee cards which we use for the 5% quarterly bonuses. Discover also has a great online portal for extra cash back.

Finally, we have the Fidelity 2% amex and 1.5% visa for general cash back. I don't use these often anymore but if I am making a purchase that doesn't get a category bonus, I would use these.

If you don't want to use more than 1 card, I would try to figure out how much you spend in categories like groceries, gas, travel, dining and other and see which one fits your needs.

@shopaholic: Amex classifies all the typical places I buy groceries as "grocery store" except Costco, Target and Fred Meyer (kind of like Target).

@shopaholic: groceries is pretty much all grocery stores (sprouts, trader joe's, whole foods, ralph's, albertson's, gel son's, vons, h-mart, zion)... but not costco or target. for costco, we use our SPG amex card!

if you already have the capital venture and visa southwest cards i'd skip the sapphire - it's just another travel rewards card!

@shopaholic: We have a United card through Chase and the rewards aren't that great. After reading so many recommendations for the Capital One Venture and doing some research I decided to apply for that one today. The rewards look so much better! Did you ever decide?

@DisneyBee: sure! They have a section/tab when you login for special offers that you redeem for statement credit. For example, one that recently came out for us was spend $5 at McDonald's and get $5 statement credit, so basically that meal was free. Other ones we've gotten this year are spend $100 at staples or Home Depot and get $25 statement credit. What we do in places like that is just buy giftcards at those stores, and it's an easy free $25.

Another awesome thing about Amex is that they participate in small business Saturday every year, so if you use your card at any stores considered a small business, they will give you $10 statement credit back. You can use one card up to 3x throughout the day. I used mine 3x for 3 different meals of $10 each so our meals that day were considered free.

I'll take a screenshot of what the special offers/promo section looks like when I get to my computer, but hope this makes sense!

@DisneyBee: @Mrs. High Heels: I actually have the Amex blue (something), but it has no annual fee and it has the same cash back offers that you describe so you don't have to pay a fee for those perks or the cash back. I'm not sure what exactly the different in the fee vs non-fee card is though.

@Mrs. High Heels: ah. I think it was 2 % on groceries/gas/pharmacy and 1% on all else, and it was after the first $1500 that is only half of that. Something funky like that, I just tuck that card away until small business Sat or at Costco that only takes Amex now.