This gets somewhat complicated. Let me try to explain, with some background:
I have the following for business purposes: 1) Chase Ink. This earns chase miles, at a rate of 1 point per dollar for most things, plus 5 points per dollar for office supplies, cellular, internet, cable, and 2 points for gas stations and either restaurants (ink plus) or hotels (ink cash). The ink plus has an annual fee (I Think $95), and the ink cash doesn't. There's another bonus of the ink plus, I'll get to in a minute. 2) AMEX Starwood Preferred Guest Business Card. This earns 1 starwood point per dollar, plus more at starwood hotels (aka sheraton, westin, etc). ($95 Annual fee) 3) AMEX Business Rewards Gold. This earns 1 membership rewards point per dollar for everything, and 3 points per dollar on one of : Airfare from airlines, advertising, gas stations, shipping, and certain computer-related purchases. The remaining categories get 2 points per dollar. $175 annual fee. I use the Amex gold exclusively for shipping, and for everything else I alternate between the starwood and chase ink depending on which type of points I need. Mostly the starwood points, since I'm swimming in chase points right now. For personal I use the following cards: 1) Chase Sapphire Preferred. $95 annual fee. Earns *2* chase points per dollars on travel (hotels, airfare, etc, but not gas) and restaurants. 1 point everywhere else. This has the same bonus as the ink plus above... again, description in a minute. 2) Chase Freedom (original). NO annual fee. Earns 5 points on a different category every quarter, and 1 point everywhere else. The categories so far this year have included grocieries, movies, and right now costco and restaurants. These are limited by $1500 per quarter, BUT gift cards and similar count. So during the groceries month, we stocked up on canned goods, and then bought safeway and albertsons gift cards. Same for the movies (we have a few hundred dollars of gift cards now from the movie theatres). 3) Chase Unlimited. No annual fee. 1.5 points everywhere. I use the sapphire for all travel purchases, business or not. Bonus is that it includes primary auto rental insurance, along with a few other interesting travel benefits (no foreign transaction fee, etc). I use the Freedom for the first $1500 of whatever category it's earning on. I use the Unlimited for everything else. So here's the reason why I use the above cards: They all earn 'transferrable' miles. This means that you can transfer these points to other rewards programs where they can be worth more. For instance, Membership rewards points are transferrable to delta for delta miles, which is the primary reason I continue to earn membership rewards points. Most of the other transfer partners are kinda Meh, but a list is here: http://thetravelsisters.com/amex-membership-rewards-airline-hotel-transfer-partners/. The starwood points are also transferrable to a lot of other programs. See http://viewfromthewing.boardingarea.com/2015/08/12/starwood-transfer-partners-airlines/ for an example list. Personally I use the starwood points primarily for hotel rooms with starwood itself. As an example, I booked the westin Grand in berlin for 5 nights a total of 40,000 starwood points. Booking this same room right now would be $937.13 USD for the stay, which means each of those starwood points are worth over 2.3 cents per point for this booking. If I'm earning them at 1 cent per point, then this is a 2.3% redemption. The chase points are also transferrable, IF you have a premium card. This is the sapphire preferred or the Ink plus. A recent redemption for me was to move some chase points to hyatt, and book three nights in SLC at the hyatt place out by the airport. Total number of points, 15,000. That particular weekend, I couldn't find a decent hotel for less than $120/night, which means this redemption was worth 2.4 cents per point. This multiplication factor is why the transferrable programs are so useful. Without either of the premium cards, you basically get to redeem at 1 cent per point, making the points way less valuable. Chase also has a really nice portal for reserving rental cars, hotels, and airfare, often with prices below what you can obtain elsewhere. You can also use miles to pay for them, but only at 1.25 cents per point, which is fine if you've got more miles than you know what to do with. So, if I was starting from scratch, I would: 1) Get a chase ink plus card. This is no annual fee for the first year, and gives you 60,000 bonus miles after a $5K spend. 2) Get a chase sapphire preferred card. Excellent travel card. 50,000 bonus miles after $4,000 spend. No annual fee first year, $95 after. 3) Get both the sapphire freedom (original) and sapphire freedom (unlimited). Pay attention to signup bonuses. In a year the annual fee applied, I'd call chase and ask them to change either sapphire preferred or the ink to a no annual fee product. (This gets you the bonus, and a year of figuring out if you want to keep the sapphire or ink). Note the above should get you at least $1100 worth of travel at 1 cent per point, or $1375 if you use the rewards portal to book, or probably at least $2K if you are picky about your resumptions. I'd only consider the amex gold card if I knew I was spending enough on one of the categories for it to make sense to pay the annual fee. In relation to the starwood card: Starwood just got bought by Marriott. There are a lot of questions regarding the future of this program. Two final notes: Chase has a rule known not-so-affectionally as the 5/24 rule. This means that if you've opened more than 4 credit cards across ALL providers in the past 24 months you will be denied. So, you'd need to verify the timing of any cards you have applied for (including authorized users). Probably safest to look at 'date opened' on your credit file to determine if you're eligible. And finally, if you don't want to play the points game, I'd probably still recommend the chase ink, and then use either the new costco card or the citi double cash for personal items - or one of the the capital one 2% cards if you want to use your points for travel. Two websites which should become part of your reading: http://www.thepointsguy.com/ - higher end points travel, but good to know about what's going on in travel and earning. http://www.frugaltravelguy.com/ - similar focus, but more about 'budget' travel as opposed to getting high end travel for free. On Tue, Aug 2, 2016 at 2:34 PM, Chuck McCown <[email protected]> wrote: > A few months ago we had a pretty good discussion about the best deals for > credit cards. > Today, I am looking for a better deal for company purchases. I like my > Capital One Visa that gives good miles. I use the miles and like to store > them up for my annual trips to England. > > But I figured I may as well start getting either miles or dollars or super > low interest or something for the company credit card. > Anyone have favorites for company use? > -- *Forrest Christian* *CEO**, PacketFlux Technologies, Inc.* Tel: 406-449-3345 | Address: 3577 Countryside Road, Helena, MT 59602 [email protected] | http://www.packetflux.com <http://www.linkedin.com/in/fwchristian> <http://facebook.com/packetflux> <http://twitter.com/@packetflux>
