I have never made flight reservations through the cc company. I’ve also never really gotten into the “general points” kind of card like the Chase ones (Reserve, Sapphire) that people do tend to love. I might be in the “medium” not “advanced” category of cc player, but it works for us.
I have a mixture of free, low-fee, and one high-fee (“premium”) cards, as follows: free-Discover (small cash back for some recurring charges that I don’t want to worry about, plus these are the cards with my kids on them for their ‘emergency’ use), LLBean and Landsend branded cards for those merchants to get free shipping and monogramming and some rewards back, not a huge amount, Nordstrom card because they have some perks and no foreign fees as a “visa” which oddly most of my cards are not. Small fee - JetBlue Plus card (99/year but that is waived if you hit minimum spend, which I do because I put spend on that card until I hit what I need to get Mosaic status), Hilton Surpass card (150/year but that is eclipsed by the 200/year in Hilton cash back even before the other substantial benefits like the free nights). Large fee - Delta AmEx Platinum (350/year) - this was my first year and I got it because I got a large enough signup bonus plus the Global Entry benefit to completely allay the fee and then some.
Note that the fee-containing cards, all of which pay for themselves before the points/miles, also give a lot of points/miles which then add up. As I mentioned upthread, I paid for 20 hotel nights last month at a Hilton in Rome with my points that I’d saved along with my status that I’d earned (which also included breakfast and a few other goodies). On Jetblue, I never have to pay for baggage and now I think I also am getting even more for free but I forgot which status I have.
Landsend, LLBean, Nordstrom, and Discover all have zero fee and a nonzero amount of money back. They are no-brainers, but their utility is less than the fee cards when I can get big points/miles/rewards or for specific things like how AmEx gives cash back on uber rides
Car rental - I just use whichever fee card I’m “doing spend” on at the time, because it seemed that the benefit was largely similar. There are two exceptions: I have found that Barclay, which is the JetBlue partner, is a crummy place to deal with if you need help or a chargeback etc. So I won’t use them anymore for a car. And, if you are in certain countries (e.g. Israel, Ireland) you need to be sure you are using the right card without exclusions there, or perhaps the right card e.g. Visa vs. MC for certain kinds of coverage. BTW I did have to use trip interruption coverage from the Barclay card for my middle son’s college trip, and that experience colored what I said above (not good, though we did get the $$ eventually).
We don’t pay for any credit cards but do have rewards cards. We don’t fly often enough to use an airlines card, and when we lived in Chicagoland we always flew Southwest,.
Husband has had a Hilton Am Ex for decades and we’ve had tons of free HHonors stays. We always check actual prices to see if using points is worth it. Our latest deal is four nights in Sydney, saving us about $1400.
Then Chase VISA points back although their quarterly bonus categories have become less and less useful for us. Amazon VISA, 5% points on purchase and sometimes 6%. My USAA Am Ex for personal purchases, also cash back.
Kohls discounts and rewards used to be very useful. But they closed the only reasonably close local store, and I’d pretty much given up on them anyway. There’s a nearby Postal Annex which I could use for any Amazon returns but husband goes to Whole Foods every weekend anyway so we use that.
I only make airline reservations through each specific airline, much to avoid the problems you listed. Airline flights can change, things get messed up all the time, prices change, and I want to deal directly with the airline. I never book through Chase, Expedia, any of those. Airlines only.
Free stays are definitely worthwhile. I target Marriott, because Hilton requires far too many points for the same sort of hotel. $650 for the Bonvoy Brilliant card, but $300 goes to restaraunt credit, and this helps keep status (upgrades plus more free nights) plus you get annual free nights and accelerated points. Not worthwhile if one didn’t stay at Marriotts often. You definitely have to look closely at each card. What’s the signup bonus (150K points right now for the BB card, which is huge). Promotions change all the time. I hate paying actual money for hotels and flights, and if you do it right, it’s a big moneymaker.
Agree about airline reservations directly through specific airline - and use my airline credit card linked to my airline passenger ID info. Both DH and I on different recent travel had AA reroute our flights, and that extra service was great. Due to weather, DH had to leave home a day later (bad weather canceled a lot of flights that day). One leg of a flight home for me got canceled, but was early enough in the day for me to route through another city (2-leg to get home), and got home only a few hours later than the original plan. I was able to eat a nice lunch in the airport before flights (the change happened on my transport to the airport).
Usually we buy tickets directly from the airline or hotel. Ocassionally, we will book hotels with American Express as they will have a deal like 4th night free at a hotel I want to stay at. In addition, we sometimes use a high-end travel agent who also has deals at high-end hotels like the Conrad.
With respect to airlines, again usually directly with the airline. For years, we we often worked with a travel agent on foreign flights as they had a way of getting big reductions on first and business class tickets. Usually required purchase a week in advance and a cancellation fee that could go toward the next ticket. But they would sometimes get me first class tickets for less than the cost of business. Also, it would turn out that a Europe-Boston-Europe business or first class ticket was frequently a lot cheaper than a Boston-Europe-Boston ticket. If I had a lot of flights, this travel agent would figure out how to utilize that price differential. [For a number of years, I was in Europe twice a month and had other trips as well. Dec 2019 was a fun month: Boston-London-Vienna-DC-Boston-London-Mexico City-Boston-Toronto-San Francisco]. In those months, he was often able to work out great savings. Recently, he has been less valuable. I don’t know whether the airlines have changed pricing or my reduced frequency of travel thanks to Covid/Zoom/Teams means that he does not have the same opportunity to work his magic.
I don’t think it’s worth upgrading because you don’t get the signup bonuses, so I’d get a new card. If you use Marriott a lot, there are two cards I like. One, my husband just got turned down for (even though his credit score is 846😡) because he got a different Chase card a month ago. Apparently they don’t let you get new cards in such a short space of time. This is the Chase Bonvoy Boundless, fee is $95/yr. Right now they’re giving three 50K point nights as a signup bonus, though if you get a referral from a Chase cardholder, they get 40K points and you get 5 free nights. Think this deal ends tomorrow, though.
And Amex Bonvoy Brilliant for all the reasons I listed before. Neither of these worthwhile if you aren’t a heavy Marriott user, though.
It sounds like I have fewer credit cards than many on this thread. My list is:
2+% Cashback on Everything Card – There are many such cards. I use Citi Double Cash card. If I didn’t have the decades long credit history on this card, I’d probably instead choose Fidelity since I use my Fidelity brokerage as my primary bank. This is my default card for purchases.
Costco Card – It like that it serves as my Costco ID. The 5% cashback on gas is also worthwhile. I use this for gas purchases and Costco purchases. Given the relatively small amount of gas I purchase, I don’t get much financial benefit over the 2% cashback on everything card, but also don’t feel a need to close.
Two High Sign-up Bonus Cards – As discussed earlier in the thread, I open and close 2 high sign-up bonus cards per year, such as the Amex Platinum. I also utilize the benefits of the card, making this like a better than free 1-year trial of the card. During these free trials, I haven’t found any cards that I consider worthwhile enough to keep without the sign-up bonus. All such high SUB cards have an annual fee, and my personal value of the benefits (compared to alternative) does not exceed this fee because I prefer different types of travel, and I don’t have high enough spending to accumulate a large number of points without SUB.
The pig-butchering scam is sad – it is just a sad world in which people think it is OK to do this kind of stuff.
I have set things up so that there is only one account as a savings bank from which we can get cash and we limit the total amount in that account. We have numerous accounts at brokerage firms/Schwab that can transfer money to each other but not outside the system. We can wire from a few of those accounts but in both cases, we have to request a wire in writing and the financial advisors have to verbally confirm with me before they will send out any wire. I don’t think I am prone to being scammed, and the difficulty in taking money out does not prevent someone from tricking me or ShawWife, but I suspect that the FAs would work very hard to put a stop to wiring to suspicious accounts.
The chase points are usually the most valuable when transferred to their partners. I have found great value transferring to Hyatt and Southwest . If you make any international trips and value business class, transferring to airline partners can be extremely lucrative.
For people who play the sign on bonus game by rotating cards, as of June 2025 for Chase sign-up bonuses (SUBs), if you’ve ever received the bonus on a specific card, you likely won’t get it again on that same card. The old “48‑month rule” has been replaced by a stricter, lifetime-type restriction per card product, That is, if you currently hold a Sapphire card or received its bonus at any point, you’re likely ineligible for the bonus again if you reapply.
However, the Bonvoy Boundless card that my husband just applied for, the fine print said that you couldn’t have gotten the bonus in the last 24 months, and I think it was not holding the card within the last month or so. It was less restrictive than I thought it would be.
I have a Wells Fargo 2% cashback card where I use the 2% credit on the next credit card payment. I use that for pretty much everything. Too much brain damage for me to choose a card(s) that have different cash back levels depending on use with limits. I also have an Amex Platinum. I make good use of the lounge access, credit for Uber, baggage credit, credit for the WSJ, the occasional discount for certain vendors, cell phone insurance when we pay our service provider with Amex. There is also a great rental car insurance policy. For a flat $20 (depends on coverage limit you choose), you get primary coverage for rentals for as long as 42 days. I pay for an additional card for D so she can access the lounge. W has an airline card to accumulate mileage and gets a baggage allowance and priority boarding.
Glad to hear you’ve taken these steps. That’s very smart, and good that you realize you may be more prone to scams as you age. My spouse and I can see how easy it is for even young people to get scammed, and are concerned about how much harder it is for older people to detect and avoid scams. We self-manage our finances, with occasional queries to our workplace reps, and intend to keep it that way until things get too complicated.
My mom has low financial literacy and I handle all her finances, so she’d have to go through me to be scammed out of any large amount.
Fear of scams is the main reason my spouse and I have never tried to meddle with my in-laws’ financial planner relationship. They’re probably overpaying and don’t need white glove treatment (not a huge or complicated portfolio). But he’s our age, has been at the same local branch of a big firm his whole career, and is a fiduciary. We’ve never seen their details but believe him to be trustworthy. He’s involved enough that I know they’d have to go through him to get scammed, and he’d never let it happen.
The next best reason he’s likely worth it is that they’re always watching the stock market like hawks, even though they have plenty of money, and I’m sure he keeps them on a steady course. Just talking to him once or twice a week keeps them from doing anything unwise. I don’t know what he fiddles with, but it’s probably the minimum he needs to do to get them to calm them down from whatever they’re fretting about. As they get older perhaps they’ll feel comfortable giving us an idea of what’s going on under the hood. At this point, we’re guessing they would have lost more making their own decisions than whatever they’re paying him.
He also manages the much smaller portfolios for my spouse’s siblings, which I just recently learned. I asked one of them what his fee is and she couldn’t even tell me, but knew it was some percentage, so it’s probably good that she has a fiduciary financial advisor. She maxes out her retirement accounts and asked me what she should do with the $100K she has just sitting in her wells fargo savings account, lol. I said open a brokerage account and just leave it in the sweep money market fund, since you want to use it for a downpayment in the next year. It was like I was speaking greek. So then I said “just tell your FA you have $100K in your bank and he’ll help you with it, probably by putting it a money market fund in a brokerage account.” She and her girlfriend were also talking a bunch about what their coworkers were doing with their stocks during the recent market downturn. So yeah, whatever percentage she’s paying the FA is likely worth it, just to not do dumb stuff.
And one side of the aisle screamed bloody murder when the other side required 401k automatic enrollment but you have to opt out - now, the screamers say it’s okay to automatically enroll in worse health coverage (opinion) for much higher expense to the government. Most folks on this site understand how to read through the details but there are many seniors where I live that have no clue how read through the info and figure out what is best for them. This will help Dr Oz’s grandkids stay wealthy and wonder if you will have to have a physical assessment if you decide after 3 years you want to go with Original Medicare - that’s a problem now, it could cost you significantly more if you don’t select it from the start.
For the past several years I have used my points to pay for the Sapphire Reserve fee . I then get the travel credits for “free” . If I am still able to cover the cost of the new fee with the points I accumulate during the year, I will hold on to it, otherwise I will give it up.