Best Travel Credit Card

Travel Best Credit Card

 

travel best credit cards 

I write travel articles that are fun, informative, entertaining and if you like to travel for free, well you are in the right place because I will be counting down my 10 favorite cards, credit cards to use for travel to redeem for free travel, free awards.

The cards that are on this list, they will be on this list for one of three reasons or maybe three of three reasons. It depends on the card, but the first one could be that it earned a really good signup bonus. The second one is that it can earn really good points or mile per spend and the third is that there could be some really great ongoing benefits for having the card. 

The 10th best card for travel in 2020 is 

Citi Costco card

citi costco card

 Citi Costco card This card is a cash back card. It earns a percentage cash back based upon how much you spend. This card is on here because of the earn per spend. You get 4% cash back on gas, 3% cash back on travel,2% cash back on Costco and 1% cash back on anything else. There’s no annual fee. There’s no signup bonus, but if you are doing a lot of spend on Costco, travel and gas, this card could be pretty good for you because you don’t have to worry about miles and points and where you can redeem it and where you cant. CitiBank also offers a Sams Club version of the same card. Its just the Sam’s Club variant.

 Fidelity Cash Back card

fidelity cash back card

The ninth best card for travel in 2020 is the Fidelity Cash Back card. This is another cash back card.Its pretty simple. It earns 2% cash back on everything everywhere. No categories, no dates, no time and no gimmick. Just 2% cash back on everything that you buy. I mention this one because I think its the simplest. There’s a bunch of other 2% type cash back cards. You could take a look around and see which one you like. The other one I will mention is the Citi Double Cash Card. It earns 1% cash when you buy something and then 1% cash back when you pay off the bill, but it works off to be 2% either way. I prefer the Fidelity just for simpleness. These are the only two cash back cards I have on this list. All the other cards that I am going to talk about on this list earns some form of travel currency, being it membership rewards, ultimate rewards, United Miles, Marriott Points, things like that. So on with the list to number eight.

 American Express Gold Card

american express gold card

The eighth best card for travel in 2020 is the American Express Gold Card. This is a new Gold Card and so we will start with the signup bonus. It has a pretty good one. You can earn 25,000 membership rewards points by spending $2,000 in the first three months. Plus they have another bonus where if you spend at restaurants, you will get 20% back of your spend at restaurants in the first three months of card ownership up to $100 of the statement credit. Some perks for just having the card, it comes with $100 airline credit. You pick your airline at the beginning of the year, say like American Airlines, South West and then if you buy incidental things like baggage fees, seat upgrades, it will credit $100 back to your card for those purchases. The American Express Gold card also includes$120 dining credit that is given to you $10 per month that can be used on certain restaurants like Ruths Chris, Shake Shack, Cheesecake Factory or Grub hub. Basically you buy something from one of those restaurants and up to $10 per month is credited back to your statement. From an earning perspective based on dollar spent, this card is best at restaurants, supermarkets and travel. It earns 4X membership rewards points on restaurants and supermarkets and then it earns 3X points on travel. It earns 1X points on everything else. By the way, when I use the term 4X, 3X, 1X,thats the typical frequent flyer speak for just how many points you get per dollar spent on the card and the points earned in this card are membership rewards points, the typical currency that’s earned on most of the basic American Express cards that you can redeem and transfer to a lot of different programs. Now just a caveat on the travel, you can get the 3X points only if you book the travel directly through AmexTravel.com. This card does have kind of a middle of the pack annual fee.$250, but if you take a look at those perks with the airline credit and the dining credit, you pretty much make that back right away and the signup bonus, well then you’re way above that annual fee.

Chase World of Hyatt

The seventh best card for travel in 2020 is the Chase World of Hyatt Credit Card. This card has a lot of great perks. Let’s start with the bonus. It’s a tiered bonus. You can earn up to 60,000 World of Hyatt points, 40,000 World of Hyatt points after spending $3,000in the first three months and then if you spend$6,000 in the first six months, you can get another 20,000 World of Hyatt points. This card also has some pretty good ongoing benefits of having the card if you stay at Hyatt Hotels. The first one and a lot of hotel credit cards are rolling out is a free night at Hyatt Hotels every year that you have the card and if you spend$15,000 or more on the card each year, then you actually get another free night at Hyatt Hotels so that’s a pretty good benefit of just having the card and putting a little bit of spend on it. Also it comes with five elite nights that count to your Hyatt status and you get two more elite nights to your Hyatt status per every $5,000that you spend on the card and just by having the card, you get a little bit of elite status in Hyatt. It comes with Hyatt Discovery Status which is the basic status at Hyatt. The earn on this card, you get four points on every dollar you spend at Hyatt Hotels. You get two points in kind of a bunch of odd categories like restaurants, cafes, airline tickets, fitness clubs, gym memberships and then $1 on everything else. The annual fee on this card is $95 every year. That’s a pretty low annual fee for all those benefits, particularly if you’re regular at Hyatt Hotels which is one of my favorite chains to redeem points for.

 Capital One Spark Miles

capital one spark card for business

The sixth best credit card for travel in 2020 is the Capital One Spark Miles for Business card. This is a new card that was just released at the end of 2018.It is a business card so you have to own a business, be part of a business to apply for this card, but why is it interesting? Well because it potentially offers a 200,000 point signup bonus for getting the card and meeting the minimum spend. Now this signup bonus is another one of these two-tiered signup bonuses. You get 50,000 points if you spend $5,000 in three months and then you will get another 150,000 points if you spend $50,000 over six months. If you have a lot of spend that you can put on the credit card, well then that will be worth about $2,000.Thats what those points will be worth for if you redeem them for flights. Now this earns the Capital Ones currency which transfers two Capital One point to 1.5 miles in a variety of different programs which include 11 different airlines. None of the big US carriers, but there is a carrier in Star Alliance, One World and SkyTeam.So you could transfer there to book with most of your favorite airline carriers. Then from an earn perspective, this card earns two points for every dollar that you spend. No categories, none of that stuff. The annual fee is $0 the first year you have the card and then its $95 every year after.

Chase Ink Business Preferred

chase ink business preferred

The fifth best card for travel in 2020 is the Chase Ink Business Preferred. This is another business card. This is with Chase. It earns points in my favorite travel currency, Chase Ultimate Rewards points. We will talk more about Chase Ultimate Rewards points later when I get to number one and two cards, but Chase Ultimate Rewards transfers to what I consider to be the most widest variety of partners including Hyatt Hotels, United Airlines, at least, the places that I like to go and the things I like to travel a lot in so I find Travel Rewards to be the most flexible and valuable currency. The Chase Ink Business Preferred card earns a pretty good signup bonus.80,000 points if you spend $5,000 in the first three months. From an earn perspective, it earns three points per dollar spent on travel, internet, phone and an interesting category, social media advertising. If you do a lot of advertising on places like You Tube or Facebook or things like that, you could earn a lot of points on this card. There really aren’t any ongoing bonuses for having this card and the annual fee is $95.I will point out this one is also business card so you have to have a business to apply for it, but you know what? If you have a blog or a YouTube channel or anything that earns a little bit of revenue, well you might consider that a business for when you apply for these cards.

Citi Business AA Advantage Platinum 

citi business AA advantage platinum

The fourth best card for travel in 2020 and this one’s a mouthful so I’m just going to read it so I get it right. It’s the Citi Business AA Advantage Platinum Select World Master Card. Wow, that is a mouthful. American Airlines and Citi Bank have a ton of different American Airlines cards so its this particular one.Its also new for this year. It has quite a generous signup bonus. It has 70,000 American Airlines miles after spending $4,000 within the first four months of account opening. Some of the benefits for this card include a free check bag if you’re flying on American Airlines and a free companion ticket if you spend more than $30,000.It also comes with no foreign transaction fees and by the way, most of the cards on this list that have an annual fee come with no foreign transaction fees so I’m actually not mentioning it on every card because its actually such a common benefit. If you travel a lot and you don’t have at least one card with no foreign transaction fees, you should make sure you have at least one in your wallet for when you travel internationally. You earn two miles per dollar spent on American Airlines flights, telecommunications, cable and satellite providers ,rental cars and at gas stations. The annual fee is $99.Its waived the first year you have the card.

American Express Platinum card 

american express platinum card

The third best card for travel in 2020 is the Platinum card by American Express. This card comes in a lot of different variants. It comes in a lot of different countries, so if you’re not a US listener, like you’re in Canada, the UK, Australia, chances are, you can still get this card. Though the benefits might be a little bit different in your own country, the reason you get this card is for the benefits. The benefits are really good, but it also has a pretty good signup bonus too so lets start with the signup bonus. The signup bonus is 60,000 membership rewards points after spending $5,000 in the first three months. Membership rewards points transfer to 17 different transfer partners. I talked about this earlier about the value of having a flexible currency. Its one thing to have points in United or American Airlines and you have to fly with that airline or that alliance, but its so much better to have your currency, your travel currency or your points in something that transfers to a lot of different partners so when you’re going to some place like Fiji, you can find that you can transfer points into the alliance that you want to redeem flights for. I won’t read the whole list of 17.I will just put them right here so you can see what those 17 transfer partners are. And in addition to airlines, it also has three hotel transfer partners. It will transfer to choice hotels, Hilton hotels and Starwood hotels, but I will point out that I think the airline transfers for membership rewards are a better value. With earn perspective, the platinum card earns 5X points on air travel and prepaid hotels booked through American Express website. One point on everything else. Okay but now lets talk about the benefits. The benefits are really amazing. Starts with a $200 airline credit, similar to the American Express Gold card that I mentioned earlier. The way this works, you pick your airline, Southwest, American, United, whatever, and then your incidental expenses get credited back via American Express up to $200 per calendar year. It also comes with a credit for Uber. Its a $200 annual credit for Uber and that's parceled out per month. So you get $15 per month to basically use on Uber rides for free. You have to use it or lose it, but you can also use it on UberEats if you are not a big Uber rider to get Uber for free. It comes with a Global Entry credit,$100 that you could use for Global Entry membership or TSA Pre-check. Some of the other cards on this list have that too that I didn’t mention. A new benefit that they have added is$100 annual credit with Saks Fifth Avenue. You can buy free stuff on Saks Fifth Avenue on their website or on their stores. It comes with a bunch of different status perks like Hilton Gold, Hertz, Avis, national rental car perks so you get better treatment at those places, but my favorite perk is the lounge access and you get this in two different things. One, it comes with priority pass. This is a value of $99 per year and it gives you basically access into the priority pass network of lounges which is thousands of lounges around the world, but my favorite  perks the Centurion Lounge access. American Express runs its own collection of lounges at a number of airports. They are called the Centurion Lounge. The Centurion Lounges are great. By having this card, you have free access into the Centurion Lounges where you get lots of really great food, places to rest and if you are flying domestically in the US,I go through San Francisco a lot. Getting my meal at the Centurion Lounge, coming and going, I look at that as about a $20 value each way so that can really add up. Now this card does have a big annual fee. Its $550 a year is the annual fee, but if you take a look at the Uber credit, the travel credit, the earn, the lounge credit, it can really be worth it and American Express purchase protection is amazing. If you buy something on this card and you basically break it in the first months, American Express will replace it for free.

Chase Sapphire Preferred card

chase sapphire preferred card

The second best card for travel in 2020 is the Chase Sapphire Preferred card. This is number two, but its kind of tied with number one. Both these cards kind of go together. It depends how much you spend on a card ,but I consider the Chase Sapphire Preferred card to be the best all-around card if you are just getting started in this whole game of miles and points for travel and if you are going to get one card, you do not spend a lot yet, this is probably the one card you should get. It has all around a good signup bonus, all around good spend and all around pretty good benefits with not too high of an annual fee. So first lets talk about the signup bonus. You get 50,000 Ultimate Rewards points for spending $4,000 in the first three months of card ownership and if you add an authorized user, you can get another 5,000 Ultimate Rewards points. The annual fee is waived on this card for the first year. Its $95 every year after. The earning spend, you earn two points per dollar on travel and restaurants, one point everywhere else. Now this is earned in the Ultimate Rewards currency that transfers to a lot of great travel partners including Hyatt Hotels, one of my favorite hotels, which is not a transfer partner for American Express that I mentioned earlier. That’s one reason why I like these. I earn a lot of my Ultimate Rewards points ultimately to redeem at Hyatt Hotels.

 Chase Sapphire Reserve

chase sapphire reserve

The number one best card for travel in 2020.Its another Chase Sapphire card, but this is the Chase Sapphire Reserve. This is a card they have introduced recently in the last two years. This is Chase premium card. It does have a pretty high annual fee, but it can earn more points and so if you spend a lot, then you can earn even more on this card. But I should mention you can only have one of these Chase Sapphire cards. You can’t hold both of them currently. If you currently have both, you can, but Chase is not allowing you to sign up for one and the other .You can switch between the two products, but you can’t get both as new card holders. The Chase Sapphire Reserve has a similar signup bonus to the previous one.50,000 Ultimate Rewards points for spend in the first three months of card ownership. Now where this one differentiates itself, the annual fee is higher. Its $450 every year, but it comes with a $300 travel credit and they are very generous with the categories they consider travel.

There’s a lot of different things they consider travel and its much like that American Express credit I talked about. Basically you buy something they consider travel and they rebate it right back to you. It also comes with a $100 Global Entry or TSA Pre-check credit, pretty similar to some other cards I mentioned before and it comes with that same priority pass membership that I talked about in American Express except the Chase version has unlimited guests. So if you have a big family, you can bring them all into the lounge with you as you go in. So the other big differentiation between this card and the Preferred card is the earn. The Preferred card earns2X points on travel and restaurants. This card earns 3X points on travel and restaurants. So three points for every dollar spend. So if you spend more than $12,000 a year on travel and restaurants, travel being a really broad area, then you will definitely make your money back on the Chase Sapphire Reserve card.