<p>The reason we don’t accept AA is that they charge the merchant more than the approximately 2% other cards charge. They also assume that most people don’t pay their credit cards in full every month, so in addition to what they charge the merchant, they make money in interest and fees.</p>
<p>We do however, USE our AA costco for almost everything. I not only get the money back from AA, but also whatever we’ve used it for at Costco. It runs into more than a thousand a year. We pay our card off in full every month.</p>
<p>I also have a Discover card because Sams club takes it. And we have a couple of visa or mastercards for those rare companies that don’t take the other two.</p>
<p>I use a Discover for most every routine purchase (groceries, gas, meals). The 1% rebate is usually supplimented with some 5% rebates - gas and hotels thru september. Really excellent on-line tools and features. They also have a nice feature where you can pay your bill at any Sears right up the the close of business on your due date.</p>
<p>I also use a Fidelity Worldpoints Visa that gives 1.5% if you redeem it in your Fidelity brokerage account - $75 at a time. I pay tuition with it, and other fixed expenses that are automatically billed. The 30 days float is like a free loan, too.</p>
<p>Use the Chase Cash Back visa exclusively. Get greater percentage back on most purchased category each billing cycle, ie, gas, dining, etc. Bonus is when you have accumulated 200 points, you can request $250 cash back. Can only do that with 200 points. Once you accumulate 50 points, you can begin to request cash back in $50 increments. It pays to wait until you get 200 to get the $50 bonus.</p>
<p>I agree about the Southwest Visa card. We charge almost everything on ours and pay it off in full every month. We’ve taken our family of four on 3 vacations using free tickets we’ve earned and plan to earn enough (between travel credits and charges) to cover all our son’s travel to college. </p>
<p>Also have a Kroger Mastercard because they offer 15 cents/gallon off gas, but that is all we use it for.</p>
<p>Have a MC that we’ve had for more almost 30 years that doesn’t offer any particular benefits but is now platinum. It came in handy when we needed to rent a car in Europe in an emergency and they would only accept AmEx or a platinum card if you hadn’t reserved ahead of time.</p>
<p>To the the AE costco people-do you get the same benefits of AE? is it similar to the regular AE w/o the fee?</p>
<p>We use our AE a lot, love not having to worry about limits and love the way they back up purchases. Husband has “bought” some great golf clubs and a camera for me with our bonus points. We do pay off each month. The exchange fees from our Canada trip were minimal-maybe 2%?? I was afraid of a 2% plus a flat fee charge. Used the card anyway because I didn’t bring much cash. Hotel was already paid for.</p>
<p>Wonder if it would be worth it to get a costco AE and keep the reg gold AE, I like that son has one for emergencies-used only once. </p>
<p>Also have a Discover for the rebate money, and it is usually accepted when AE isn’t.</p>
<p>I like the Costco AE Business card. No annual fee & you get 5% back on gas, 3% back on restaurants, 2% back on travel & 1% back on everything else. I mainly use it for gas, restaurants & travel. </p>
<p>Use my elite card for everything else so I can get free plane tickets. The tickets are a pretty good deal because there are no blackouts & you can choose the carrier & times you want. For flights w/in the continental US valued at or under $400, it only takes 20,000 points. You earn points when you charge any plane ticket for anyone on any airlines (e.g. I get points for all the miles flown by my kids from HNL to Taiwan this summer, R/T, plus the points for the $ value of the ticket). Tickets from mainland US to HNL are generally 50,000+ points.</p>
<p>They have a special promotion going so if you PM me, I can give you details & you will get a free credit for signing up & I will get a free credit for referring you. Read the fine print before you decide whether it’s a good card for you.</p>
<p>I LOVE the Capital one no hassle miles. They do exchange dollars for miles at a higher rate, but you have the choice of either using their travel services, or booking your own flights using your card and then having them credit actual cash back to your account. For S2s college trip, two out of three multiple stop tickets were paid for. We also have a business Amex, and were able to use that account for some pretty good discounts at hotels.</p>
<p>Well, technically there is a fee to qualify for the card that I have. You have to be an REI member, which I have been for many a year. I think it’s a one time $20 fee now. There is a “waiting period” to cash out the rebate (though you can use it directly on REI purchases once it’s issued). You can find the details at the REI site.</p>
<p>I have been tempted by the Costco AmEx, but as a general rule I tend to stay away from AmEx because of the higher discount fees it charges to retailers. (And the fact that for small businesses to work with AmEx is a royal accounting pain!) I may rethink and dedicate it to Costco only purchases since Costco keeps pushing me to go that route.</p>
<p>Thanks for all those great, additional suggestions & explanations!</p>
<p>Maybe I’ll go w/Discover–simple cash back is probably best for me, now. Our other card accumulates FF miles, but I don’t recall that we’ve used them very often (w/family of four, we never have enough points). What happens is at the end of the year our miles are translated into free magazine subscriptions. It’s kind of neat getting “Marie Claire” when I’d never buy it on a newsstand, but I don’t know if it’s the best use of our credit!</p>
<p>Since it’s so hard to compare the various rewards, I try to figure out the % return we are getting (not always easy).</p>
<p>For instance, with SW Airlines card, you spend $1,200 for a credit. It takes 16 credits for a RT, but they give you 2 free credits per year. So, you will need to charge $1,200 x 14 to earn 14 credits. That’s $16,800. If I get a ticket that would cost me $340 (which is what we’d likely get), that means a 2.02% return. That’s pretty good. With some of my other cards, I figured we were getting 1.5%. </p>
<p>However, the 2 free credits are only once per year, so without free credits, we’d have to spend $19,200 for the 16 credits, so the return would be 1.77%. That’s still good.</p>
<p>With our Citi Elite card, we get 1 point/mile flown OR $ charged, so it’s a bit tougher to calculate. You need 20,000 points to get a “free” ticket worth up to $400. If you fly 10,000 miles & charge $10,000, you get $400 for charging $10,000. The return is about 4%. I consider that good. If your miles are all from charges, then it’s only about 2%.</p>
<p>With my 5% cards, I get 5% on every $ spent on the stated categories–gas, drugstores & markets.</p>
<p>I just called Discover (they had an ad for a platinum card–no fee, 5% back per year, sounded good). Before I could order it, husband said Discover is notorious for causing people to have bad credit (e.g., they don’t record your payments, you are considered delinquent & don’t find out for years, very hard to fix).</p>