I figured I’d post a quick update of some credit card sign-up bonuses for American Express, since there are a couple of targeted and increased sign-up bonuses out there right now.

American Express Premier Rewards Gold Card — 25,000 points after spending $2,000 within three months

While the best published sign-up bonus for the American Express Premier Rewards Gold card is 15,000 points after spending $1,000 within three months, American Express is allowing existing cardholders to refer new members for a 25,000 point sign-up bonus after spending $2,000 within three months. The person making the referral also earns 10,000 Membership Rewards points. If you’re an existing member and want to refer a friend you can do so by logging into your American Express account, or if you’d like to be referred I’d be delighted to do so if you email me your first and last name at onemileatatime@hotmail.com. This offer expires February 13, 2012.

Reasons to get this card: Three points per dollar on airfare, two points per dollar on gas and groceries, and one point per dollar on everything else. You also get 15,000 bonus points when you spend $30,000 on the card in a calendar year. This is one of my top three credit cards, and what I charge my airfare, gas, and groceries to. In the past American Express had great sign-up bonuses whereby they would honor targeted sign-up bonuses for everyone, though that seems to be a thing of the past

American Express Platinum Card — 50,000 points after spending $3,000 within three months

While the published offer for the American Express Platinum card is 25,000 points after spending $1,000 within three months, American Express is allowing existing cardholders to refer new members for a 50,000 point sign-up bonus after spending $3,000 within three months. The person making the referral also earns 10,000 Membership Rewards points. If you’re an existing member and want to refer a friend you can do so by logging into your American Express account, or if you’d like to be referred I’d be delighted to do so if you email me your first and last name at onemileatatime@hotmail.com. This offer expires February 13, 2012.

Reasons to get this card: The $450 annual fee more than pays for itself. You get a $200 airline fee credit per calendar year, which in practice can be used to buy airline gift cards. Since it’s based on a calendar year, if you sign up for the card now you would get the $200 airline fee credit twice, meaning in practice you can get $400 in airline gift cards, bringing the annual fee down to $50. Beyond that you get complimentary Global Entry ($100 value) plus access to American, Delta, and US Airways lounges, as well as a Priority Pass membership. At the very least this card is worth having for one year for all the benefits, and then after that you can decide if it’s worth it to you or not. This is definitely a card I’d sign up for under this offer, as I can’t imagine we’ll see a better sign-up bonus anytime soon.

American Express Business Platinum Card — 25,000 points after spending $5,000 within three months

Just today American Express raised the bonus on the Business Platinum Card from zero to 25,000 Membership Rewards points after spending $5,000 within three months. While it’s not a great sign-up bonus, I do think it’s worth mentioning since the bonus went up and it’s the best published bonus. The link for the application can be found here.

Reasons to get this card: The benefits of this card are very similar to the American Express Platinum card, and the $450 annual fee more than pays for itself. You get a $200 airline fee credit per calendar year, which in practice can be used to buy airline gift cards. Since it’s based on a calendar year, if you sign up for the card now you would get the $200 airline fee credit twice, meaning in practice you can get $400 in airline gift cards, bringing the annual fee down to $50. Beyond that you get complimentary Global Entry ($100 value) plus access to American, Delta, and US Airways lounges, as well as a Priority Pass membership. At the very least this card is worth having for one year for all the benefits, and then after that you can decide if it’s worth it to you or not. I’m not sure if we’ll see a higher sign-up bonus of this anytime soon, though it sure wouldn’t surprise me.

Starwood American Express Card — 25,000 points after spending $5,000 within six months

While the sign-up bonus remains the same for both the Starwood Personal American Express and Starwood Business American Express credit cards, they have increased the referral bonus for consumers from 5,000 points to 10,000 points, through February 13, 2012. So you can now refer someone to the Starwood American Express and earn an even better referral bonus. If you’re an existing member and want to refer a friend you can do so by logging into your American Express account, or if you’d like to be referred I’d be delighted to do so if you email me your first and last name at onemileatatime@hotmail.com or you could apply through one of the above links.

Reasons to get this card: See this recent post.

Any questions?

Full disclosure: I receive a referral bonus for anyone that signs up through the above links.

The Chase Sapphire Preferred card (in the interest of full disclosure, I get a referral if you sign up through that link) has lots of benefits, though probably my favorite day-to-day (as in, every time I whip it out to pay for something) “benefit” is how sexy the card is. For those of you that have no clue what makes the card different, it’s really thick and the numbers are on the back, so it looks pretty snazzy.

In the past couple of weeks I’ve received the following comments when making purchases in the US:

• “That’s the coolest card I’ve ever seen.”
• “Is this the card that comes with a private jet?”
• “Wow, is this that special card with no spending limit?”
• “You know what they say about guys with thick credit cards?” (sadly I’m not joking on that one…)

Little do they know it’s a card with a $95 annual fee that’s waived the first year, and not the American Express Centurion credit card. But that hasn’t stopped me from almost for a second thinking I’m that much of a high roller. Until I go outside the US.

The Chase Sapphire Preferred card has no foreign transaction fees and offers double points on hotels, so it’s a no brainer to use abroad. But clearly the admiration of the card isn’t universal.

When checking in at the Park Hyatt Shanghai I gave my Chase Sapphire Preferred card for the guarantee, and the front desk agent asked me if I had a credit card instead of a debit card. I had to catch my tongue, because I was about to tell him all the things I’ve been told about the card that aren’t true — “Do you know who I am? Do you know that this credit card comes with a private jet and has no credit limit? I think it’ll suffice for this hotel stay.”

And this has actually been the case the last four times I checked in at hotels abroad. They either assume it’s a debit card or ask me why I’m giving them a useless card with my name on it.

Has anyone had similar issues abroad?

A few weeks ago I outlined my 2012 credit card strategy, and one of the cards I mentioned was the American Express Premier Rewards Gold card. This card accrues Membership Rewards points and is great because it offers triple points on airfare, double points on gas and groceries, and one point per dollar on everything else. Furthermore, when you spend $30,000 on the card annually you get a 15,000 point bonus.

As I explained:

If I could manage to put $30,000 of airfare on the card, that would translate to 90,000 Membership Rewards points, plus the 15,000 point bonus, for a total of 105,000 Membership Rewards points. Add in a 50% transfer bonus from Membership Rewards to Delta SkyMiles, and we’re looking at ~157,000 Delta SkyMiles, or about 5.2 Delta miles per dollar spent on airfare. While they’re “only” Delta miles, that’s still a pretty amazing return on credit card spend.

The one thing that has been not so great about the card lately (and just about all other American Express cards, for that matter) is the sign-up bonuses. The best publicly available sign-up bonus for the Premier Rewards Gold card has been 15,000 points after spending $1,000 within three months (for details on that offer, here’s the link).

Anyway, the Premier Rewards Gold card finally has a higher sign-up bonus of 25,000 Membership Rewards points after spending $2,000 within three months (double the amount of spend required for the public offer), but it’s only available to those being referred by existing members.

If you’re an existing member of the card and want to refer someone, you can follow this link to enter the name and email address of the person you’re referring, and an invitation will be sent to them. You’ll get 10,000 points for referring them, and they’ll get the better offer.

If you’re interested in signing up for the card but don’t have anyone to refer you, I’d of course be delighted/thrilled/exhilarated/eternally grateful to do so. Just email me (onemileatatime@hotmail.com) your first and last name along with your preferred email address, and I’ll get an invitation sent over right away from American Express.

While the sign-up bonus still isn’t great, frankly I don’t think we’ll see it go much higher. Last year a lot of people signed up for the card with a 75,000 point bonus, but that was only by using a targeted promotion ID, something which American Express has cracked down on in the meantime. But the card is still a must have for everyday spend, along with the Chase Sapphire Preferred card, of course.

(Tip of the hat to The Points Guy)

Over time from talking to people about credit cards, I’ve learned there are two general approaches people take towards credit card rewards.

The first approach is that credit card rewards earn miles and points that allow one to have experiences they couldn’t otherwise afford to have. This is the thought process I subscribe to, because as you can see from my trip report index, I’ve probably taken at least a million dollars worth of flights if I were to pay retail, while I end up paying next to nothing. Let’s keep in mind that international first class tickets typically retail for $20,000+, so it’s not too tough for the amounts to add up quickly. Just take a look at the retail cost of my recent trip to Tokyo:

I used 120,000 miles for a trip that would have retailed for $22,000+. Would I ever pay that much? Of course not. Though it was an awesome experience that I still value quite a bit.

Then there’s the psychology behind earning miles on a credit card. If I go to Starbucks and use my Chase Sapphire Preferred card (hey, double points!) I’m 15 miles closer to my next international first class ticket. I can taste the Diet Coke with lemon and macadamia nuts in Lufthansa first class already (and the caviar, begrudgingly).

If I had used a credit card that earns me cash back (let’s say 2%), that would be 15 cents. How many of those do I need for an international first class ticket? Besides, if I wanted to save 15 cents I wouldn’t have gone to Starbucks in the first place!

The other approach to take is that credit cards are a great way to earn cash back on purchases you’d make anyway. That’s a perfectly legitimate approach to take, in my opinion, since a lot of people would (understandably) rather earn cash back for their purchases than miles towards an award redemption. Besides, if you have a big family and don’t want to travel in an international premium cabin, your rewards might just add up faster if you use the cash back you earn towards coach tickets as opposed to using miles. The Costco American Express card is a pretty good cash back card, which earns you 3% cash back on gas, 2% on dining and travel, and 1% on everything else.

Okay, are we all on the same page so far? Because here’s where I get confused.

A lot of people will accrue miles/points through rewards credit cards and redeem their points towards a revenue ticket/hotel stay.

For example, one Ultimate Rewards point earned through the Chase Sapphire Preferred card can either be transferred to United, Continental, British Airways, Korean Air, Southwest, Hyatt, Marriott, or Priority Club, OR be redeemed at a rate of 1.25 cents towards the cost of travel.

For example, someone will use 40,000 points towards a $500 ticket, and say it’s a good value because they’re earning back 10,000 miles because it’s a revenue ticket and not an award. It’s easy to convince oneself that it’s a good value, given that you’re “only” paying 30,000 points for $500 worth of travel (since you earn back 10,000 points, indirectly). But that doesn’t really hold up, since the alternative would have been to spend the cash. And if the alternative would have been to spend cash, then you’re probably best off just getting a cash back credit card.

So I don’t want to make a blanket statement and say that it never makes sense to redeem a points currency for cash towards travel, because for some people it can make sense. This is especially true if someone is signing up for a credit card just for the sign-up bonus. So if you earn 100,000 Ultimate Rewards points by signing up for the Chase Sapphire Preferred card and Chase Ink Bold card, you could redeem that for $1,250 worth of travel. If it were me, I’d rather redeem those points for a Virgin Atlantic Upper Class ticket to Europe, though everyone is different. Even the $1,250 of “cash” towards travel is well worth it for two new credit cards.

But for actual everyday spend on credit cards (as opposed to the initial sign-up bonus), you’re almost always better off with a cash back credit card as opposed to a points earning credit card with the option of “paying with points,” assuming your goal is to apply points towards the cost of travel.

Make sense? Agree/Disagree?

Full disclosure: I receive a referral bonus for anyone that signs up through some of the above links. As always I will only provide a referral link if it offers the best publicly available sign-up bonus.

Application Links:

• Chase Sapphire Preferred Card
• American Express Premier Rewards Gold card
• American Express Gold Business card
• Delta Reserve American Express
• Starwood Preferred Guest American Express card
• Starwood Preferred Guest Business American Express card
• Citi AAdvantage Executive World Elite Mastercard

Reader Tiffani asks the following question on the Ask Lucky page of the blog:

Hi to my fellow Tampa Bay area person. I’m interested in the Sapphire Preferred card and I can’t find anywhere if I can transfer miles to either American or Delta.

If I can’t do it with that card, which card is the best one for me for each airline?

I have Delta status, someone else in my family has American status so we are looking at two different cards.

For a long time now the Chase Sapphire Preferred card has been my go to credit card for everyday spend, as I outlined here. Unfortunately in the process I somewhat neglected other credit cards, like the ones that would suit Tiffani’s travel patterns and elite status better. Admittedly the Chase Sapphire Preferred card is pretty Star Alliance centric on the airline front, since the best transfer partners are Continental and United. While they’re also transfer partners with British Airways (One World) and Korean Air (SkyTeam), their award charts aren’t as lucrative as their US alliance counterparts for the most part, so I wouldn’t suggest using the Chase Sapphire Preferred card as a means for earning One World or SkyTeam miles.

With that in mind, here are my picks for the best cards to earn American and Delta miles:

Best card for earning Delta SkyMiles:

There’s no doubt in my mind that the American Express Premier Rewards Gold card is by far the best card for accruing Delta SkyMiles. The card accrues Membership Rewards points at the rate of three points per dollar spent on airfare, two points per dollar spent on gas and groceries, and one point per dollar spent on everything else. Furthermore, if you spend $30,000 on the card per year, you earn an additional 15,000 Membership Rewards points. Also keep in mind that Membership Rewards points are much more valuable than Delta SkyMiles, since they can typically be transferred to Delta at a premium. For example, Membership Rewards is presently offering a 30% refund (equivalent to a 43% bonus) for points transfers from Membership Rewards to Delta in increments of 50,000 points.

I’m not a huge fan of Delta miles, though if your goal is to earn them, this is the card to use to earn an insane number of Delta miles per dollar spent. When you factor in the category points bonuses, the annual bonus for spending $30,000, and the transfer bonuses, you can earn an average of close to 3-5 Delta SkyMiles per dollar spent.

As an example, I put roughly $30,000 on the card this year, and for that earned about 60,000 base points (I had a lot of airfare, gas, and groceries on the card), plus the 15,000 point annual bonus, for a total of 75,000 base points. If I had transferred those to Delta while they were running the 50% transfer bonus recently, I would have earned around 112,000 Delta SkyMiles, which is nearly four SkyMiles per dollar spent.

If you’re looking for a business credit card to earn Delta miles, I recommend the American Express Gold Business card, which offers three points per dollar spent on airfare, two points per dollar on gas, and one point per dollar on everything else. Since the card also earns Membership Rewards points, you can earn huge bonuses when transferring those points to Delta. This card also comes with a sign-up bonus of 50,000 Membership Rewards points after spending $10,000 on the card within five months. While that’s high minimum spend, that’s a fairly good sign-up bonus by American Express standards, given that they’ve hugely reduced the amount of their non-targeted sign-up bonuses as of late.

The only other card worth considering is the Delta Reserve American Express. The key benefits are that the card comes with SkyClub access and earns you 15,000 bonus Medallion Qualifying Miles if you spend $30,000 on the card annually, and 30,000 Medallion Qualifying Miles when you spend $60,000 on the card annually. That being said, the card comes with a $450 annual fee, and if it’s redeemable miles you’re after, the card is less than stellar since they don’t have many category bonuses.

Best card for earning American AAdvantage miles:

I hate to say it, but American’s credit cards are downright boring, especially now that miles earned through them no longer count towards million miler status.

The only one of their co-branded credit cards that you should even be considering is the Citi AAdvantage Executive World Elite Mastercard. The card comes with an Admirals Club membership, 10,000 elite qualifying miles when you make $40,000 worth of purchases in a calendar year, priority check-in/security/boarding, and a free checked bag. That being said, the card comes with a $450 annual fee, so is only worth considering if you value each of the above benefits.

For the rest of us, the Starwood Preferred Guest American Express card is the way to go. The card offers one Starwood point per dollar spent, and those points can be converted 1:1 to American. Best of all, when you transfer in increments of 20,000 points, you earn a 5,000 point bonus, meaning you’re essentially earning 1.25 American miles per dollar spent. Beyond that, there are occasionally transfer bonuses from Starwood to American. In the past couple of years they have offered 25%-35% bonuses on top of the 1.25 miles per dollar, meaning you can earn close to 1.7 American miles per dollar spent if transferring while they’re running one of those promotions.

Starwood also offers the Starwood Preferred Guest Business American Express card, for those with a small business, which has the same benefits. Of course you also have added flexibility by using the Starwood card, since you can instead use those points on hotels, or if you prefer, transfer them to other airlines. Both of the Starwood cards come with a 25,000 point sign-up bonus after spending $5,000 on the card within six months.

Given that none of American’s co-branded credit cards offer bonus miles on spend categories other than American Airlines purchases, using the Starwood American Express is a no brainer.

Any questions? Anyone have different opinions on which cards are best for an American or Delta flyer?

Full disclosure: I receive a referral bonus for anyone that signs up through some of the above links. As always I will only provide a referral link if it offers the best publicly available sign-up bonus.

Chase has just announced that starting January 5, 2012, Southwest Rapid Rewards will become a transfer partner of Ultimate Rewards, the program associated with the Chase Sapphire Preferred card and Chase Ink Bold card.

Oddly Southwest has been the “missing link” for a while, given that you can transfer Ultimate Rewards points to just about any program they have a co-branded credit card with, including British Airways, Continental, and United on the airline front, and Hyatt, Marriott, and Priority Club on the hotel front.

Now of course I’m not rushing to transfer points to Southwest, but it’s yet another option that makes the Chase Sapphire Preferred card the most well rounded card in the industry.

The Chase Sapphire Preferred card is literally a Chase “super card,” worth well more than the $95 annual fee that comes with it. Hell, if they added a couple more benefits, they could slap on an American Express Platinum-esque annual fee and probably get away with it.

Per The Points Guy, the redemption values are something like this:

Southwest points can be redeemed towards any Southwest flight and each point varies in value depending on the type of fare you redeem for.

Wanna Get Away: 1.67 cents per point
Anytime: 1 cent per point
Business Select: .83 cents per point

I really have to wonder about the economics behind these cards as they relate to their airline and hotel partners. In other words, aren’t the airlines and hotels slowly getting miffed that Chase has created a card that earns more points for everyday spend than the individual card with the program does?

Take the Chase Southwest Visa, for example, which earns one point per dollar on all purchases and two points per dollar on select travel categories. The Chase Sapphire Preferred card offers the same, not to mention there’s a 7% annual points dividend, so you’re really earning more points for booking a ticket on Southwest with the Chase Sapphire Preferred card than you are with the Chase Southwest Visa. And that doesn’t even factor in that Ultimate Rewards points are so much more flexible than Rapid Rewards points, since you can transfer Ultimate Rewards points instantly to all of the above programs. The only thing worth noting is that points transfers from Ultimate Rewards don’t count towards a Southwest companion pass.

As more and more savvy consumers turn to the Chase Sapphire Preferred card, I have to wonder at which point Chase will get a bit of backlash from the airlines.

Full disclosure: I receive a referral bonus for anyone that signs up through the above links. As always I will only provide a referral link if it offers the best available sign-up bonus.