a Geographer's Place

Recently I came across a post on one of the travel Facebook groups I follow. The person was frustrated because the card they selected and had been earning points on for five years did not have airfare transfer partners that flew from her home/preferred airport. While I could write a post about how researching beforehand could have helped, I also know the frustration of trying to book things through a travel portal/third party vendor (like non-co-branded cards  make you do). What I've noticed over the years is there's a big difference between co-branded and non-co-branded cards in terms of ease of redemption. And for the occasional traveler, the person who makes a couple trips a year for, say, maybe visiting family who live across the country, redeeming through a portal can be super frustrating. In fact, I know people who prefer to be brand loyal simply for ease of redemption. Side note: I play the points game well, and use only co-branded cards. Yes, both my wife and I have non...

The first thing to know about credit card perks is, they are ever-changing and always evolving. So you need to KEEP UP with the promotions for each card you have, especially if your card(s) have an annual fee. Second, most banks have different "tiers" of cards, and some can be co-branded , like the cards my wife and I personally use . These tiers represent this post's focus. Most every bank has a basic, no annual fee card . These usually have no perks, though some co-branded cards might come with basic/limited perks like low-tier hotel elite status, point earning bonuses for certain purchases, and interesting redemption/credit offers. By and large, however, if you want to utilize your points and miles for travel on a yearly basis, consider at least a mid-tier or higher card, which will likely represent a better value than a no-fee card which offers no perks – as long as you are only spending what you normally spend and pay off your credit card bill monthly. Mid-tier car...

As noted in another post , we utilize co-branded credit cards almost exclusively. This post details those (few) cards we tend to use and why  –  basically the story of how we got into the points & miles game. Even before I started playing the points & miles game I traveled internationally a couple times each year. Throughout all of it, I mainly flew American Airlines (or its partners). I believe this stems from my first "real" job after college, which sent me to Chile. While waiting at the airport (almost 30 years ago), I thought: it's a lot of miles to Santiago, I should probably sign up for their frequent flier program. I should have done it earlier of course, but didn't know what it really entailed. Nowadays it's easy to glean information from a Google search, but back then, pre-internet, it all was kind of word-of-mouth, and I was totally a cheap-ass budget traveler, and didn't think the frequent flyer community would be beneficial (nor did I reall...