<p>What is the best credit card for accumulating airline miles? Is there one without the 1% foreign transaction fee?</p>
<p>Depends upon whom you usually fly with. I know nothing about the transaction fee, though.</p>
<p>If you fly a lot on Delta, their Amex platinum card is pretty good. Get a companion pass along with it. Great deal is one they run on Amex for a day or two every month, for a Business Amex card, promotion is 0 fees the first year and 75K points (converts to 75K airmiles, or in our case, we got $800 worth of REI gift cards…then cancelled when the renewal fee came up).</p>
<p>Best advice is to go to the pointsguy.com. He has it all broken down for you, and you can probably find info about the transaction fees too.</p>
<p>In fact the pointsguy has an amazing deal alert for 2 Amex cards, the Premier awards gold, and the Amex gold. If I didn’t have these products, I’d apply for both cards, for both me and my husband separately, right now. One has a 50K offer, the other 45K offer, no fee the first year. The offer is usually 25K and 30K. You convert the points to miles or gift cards, and that’s a lot of tickets. If you play the game, you just keep getting these credit cards, getting the miles/points, canceling, and then when you are eligible (usually a year later), applying again. He’s got all sorts of info about churning cards.</p>
<p>I also follow thepointsguy, and have the Delta card. Very happy with it, however miles are reputedly harder to book than on some sites. Paying a little extra to book by phone has been helpful to me. One downside is that AMEX is not accepted as widely as Visa, therefore few points. So…I just got the United Card, which allows points for one way travel. Will probably ditch the Delta card, sadly, for a few years. </p>
<p>Getting the card for the airline with the best access for your travel probably makes good sense, other things being equal. </p>
<p>busdriver, so are there downsides to churning that you know of? Credit rating?</p>
<p>Several things we like about the Capital One card: no foreign transaction fees, points can be used on any airline, no blackouts, points count toward travel related expenses such as hotel, rental car, points can be used in partial increments. We’ve been very happy with it. Points guy likes it too, I believe.</p>
<p>The other thing about the Amex Platinum is that you can pick one airline per year and they credit you up to $200 for baggage fees. It helps offset the annual cost of the card($450 IIRC)</p>
<p>I posted a thread about this recently - for what it’s worth you can refer to it here:</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parent-cafe/1414178-credit-card-recommendations-w-airfare-miles.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parent-cafe/1414178-credit-card-recommendations-w-airfare-miles.html</a></p>
<p>I could never made a decision which to go with so at this point, I haven’t!!! However after booking recently with Southwest and liking their perks/procedures I may consider going with one that has SW miles.</p>
<p>I believe AMEX has a version that you can use the points on various airlines. We have a Jetblue Amex as we fly them a lot to go to the west coast. It only accrues points for Jet blue but at a higher rate. </p>
<p>We recently got a United Airlines visa since they are the only airline at our local airport that flies to S’s school. I have also Capital one as a back up credit card but you have to have enough points for the total purchase of an airline ticket or car rental to use it.</p>
<p>Lakemom, there are several Capital One cards, each with different plans. We can pay partial amounts for airline tix, car rental, etc. with our CO visa–one of the things I appreciate about the card.</p>
<p>Since we live near a Delta hub, I have the Delta AMEX card. I really like it because it also gives our family free luggage (as long as the tickets were charged with the card). And when I was still paying DD’s college, her school accepted AMEX for all tuition and fees!</p>
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<p>My wife and I just jumped on this deal. I’ve been a little bored this Winter and have been on a credit card points collection spree…picked up well over 500,000 points since the new year. Hey, mind as well take advantage of our good credit ratings.</p>
<p>Thanks masslou, good to know. Right now the card we have is the free one. If I decide to upgrade I will keep that in mind.</p>
<p>One extra point worth checking with credit cards is whether they cover car rental insurance. With most credit cards, the insurance coverage is secondary so your own auto insurance is primary. With the United Visa, they are primary so we use it for car rentals.</p>
<p>Re: are there downsides to churning that you know of? Credit rating? </p>
<p>There is a tiny downside to credit inquiries and opening more credit cards in terms of your credit score. If you are carrying balances, applying for a mortgage, etc it is not a good idea to be playing this game. But if you have a high FICO, no credit card balances, and don’t plan to apply for a mortgage or car loan anytime soon, you won’t notice any impact. In other words, dropping your FICO from 780 to 750 doesn’t matter in the above scenario.</p>
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Which one do you have? Mine won’t let me do a partial redemption; ponts are in “tiers” and it’s a pain trying to determine how not to “waste” points.</p>