How to spread the points accumulation ?

So a lot of blogs suggest: pick an airline, pick a hotel and stick with those programs. The downside of this approach is that you are tied to them. You are tied to their schedules and hotel availability. And that is no freedom. Or fun. You want to experience the real matrix of having the flexibility to book anytime or time of your convenience and choose to reside at a place of your comfort. This relates to a recent experience of my flying between NYC and LA. Often times with a fixed airline and hotel approach I found that there were moments of anxiety around availability. This got somewhat mitigated as I expanded to other hotels and flight programs. This not only allowed to get cards from different banks and try them out and accumulate points in different places, but it also builds up a steady balance of diversification across various brands and thus gives you the freedom to choose geography over the math of limited choices. Hence, my strategy is now revised to go all out in o(n) fashion in just accumulating points after points from various banks. Just going all out also gives you this satisfaction that you have really tried out all available options out there. Just like in a buffet. Having said that, there are some default programs that are and should be the basis of this activity. I would say in airlines that would be Southwest and United. These are two solid airlines that cover US and good parts of this world like Asia that one would want to visit often. Of course there is Delta and American and Jetblue and others. For reason unknown I tend to avoid Delta while American is fine or Jetblue is cool and same with say, Frontier. Dont get me wrong. I am not against them. But the base is Southwest for me. There are plenty of them alright and many other airlines which are rather really good to travel and experience. Etihad or Emirates or Singapore Airlines or Cathay Pacific among others are all solid and so are national carriers of many countries (except China and Chinese airlines, avoid them at all cost!) . Same goes with Hotels. I like Marriot or Starwood a lot. Hilton is not bad too. IHG is good and their branded card is really worth the $49 annual cost since you are not going to find a hotel room anywhere in the US in one of the IHG hotels like Holiday Inn for 49 bucks a night. I used mine in the Big Island Hawaii! :D .. one of the best night stay ever! So the revised strategy is really avoid rental cars loyalty programs, go all out and apply one by one to each hotel and air cards and keep some of those that you like even if they charge you annual like the southwest cards or the marriott cards or IHG cards. And apply Starwood or Amex cards once every couple years. 

Current Credit Card offers..

To keep up with the point of this blog, some good current offers are:

1. American Express Platinum and Enchanced Business Platinum Card: This card has an annual fee of $450 so be careful. However, they also reimburse the portion should you cancel it earlier unlike Citi and Chase who do not. The funny thing is both Citi and Chase seem to hold a grudge should you cancel their paid credit cards as if you owe them that and that impacts your future credit cards applications in those banks. Amex is overall a bit cooler in that respect. I would say one platinum card per 2 years is not that bad to your relationship with Amex or your overall credit score health. This remains the best $450 card and the best in its league. Apart from the always dependable Customer service experience with Amex, the best thing is the $200 annual rebates, the unparalleled lounge access and the best offers floating around this time of the year. There is an unprecedented 100k offer here, visible right on the American Express website. The spending requirement is steep however at $15k. There are also offers of 75k points with $5k spend.
2. Chase  Sapphire Reserve:  The splashy card and a much hyped one for the last month or two, this is another $450 card but with same 100k offer as the Amex platinum card. A big plus is the $300 annual travel credit on any airline. Now that is a big benefit. However, the big downside is the strict rules in applying, the so called 5/24 rule which makes Chase deny any applications if you had applied for 5 credit cards anywhere in the last 24 months, rendering it useless to most people. That said, again $450 annual fee? That is too much. It is a decent card nevertheless. There are questionable lounge access features and does not seem to carry the same weight if you are looking for prestige or if you are into all that.
3. Citi Prestige card: Well, this card is dead. They downgraded the offer to 20k points. And with this, this card is simply not attractive enough. At the point of the release of this card last year, I had penned a post about how really silly it is to spend $450 on a credit card which one would normally not do even if it justifies some value in giving you back points. I still stand by the same and would expand on that briefly.

Most other cards did not top the above and were giving out anywhere in the equivalent of $100 to $400 - the latter being Barclays Arrival+ card. Amex and Chase are clearly duking it out in 2016 with Citi contended to sit back after the hit in Prestige from last year. For most of this year, Citi and the rest have been at the back. Amex and Chase upped their hotel game with Ritz card changes and Hilton Card changes. Amex went with a Delta platinum version which based on comments on Reddit and other online sites, seems to be a big hit with the Delta travellers. Mind you, a good chunk of Delta fliers are either Government workers or regular consultants who commute Monday - Thursday. 

The perils of an annual fee card: This is not for sub 100 annual fee card which still even if more is not as insane as the $450-$500 that the big "reserve" or "platinum" cards charge. Admittedly, I had applied for few of those in the past. With platinum, I always close after some period, ideally within 30-60 days. Chase Reserve also has a grace period of 60 days if that is something that they grudgingly will record against you. But the point that the other bloggers push is the value that you get out it. What value ??? Most likely you were not even thinking of travelling or taking that hotel or air fare in first place. If at all you do there is still generic branded cards ? You could always find and make money or points with your normal spend in no fee to sub-100 fee cards. So is it really some sort of high or this rush that is there with the sudden 50k or 100k bonuses? Obviously, if there is no 50k+ offer, no one is going to look twice at these cards. But even with that, are they really worth it?? I would say no. I regret paying and holding Citi prestige for a year and cancelled it despite their various offers and attempt to shell 450 for another year. I did get the 200 * 2 credit and 50k points. I took trips to Hawaii and got rentals based on that. I would deny that. But it is essentially the 450 that I paid from my pocket which contributed to a part of it. Bear in mind, that many also have a steep spending requirements. Chase Reserve has the 5k spend but they tend to have all these useless categories where they keep inducing you to spend more. I would not have really gone to that restaurant but hey, some one is giving me 5% cashback so why not try it .. really that is just 5 bucks on a 100 bucks bill. Anyhow, if I were to recommend, I would say no to Citi for sure. Maybe once give it a try to get a feeling of it and get some rewards but no point in doing it again. For chase, maybe no unless like citi you plan to keep it a whole year. For Amex, see if you are a good client with their regular cards and if you do this once every 2/3/4 years I would doubt they would seriously mind that much. In the past I have had the mercedes benz as well as the platinum card and both were closed soon. Given that Amex is the best credit card issuer and has been for quite some time, make sure that the bridges are not burned. Chase though good is a clear distant second and not to mention the rules there are getting stricter. The Citis and Bank of Americas or the rest are there but better to stick with the best. 

October updates

Phew!  After a long time !! There was barely any excitement in the credit card space to merit a writing these days. First off, the days of limited time deals are gone as most offers are only with big banks who offer a rather huge window to apply. Further, the rules of the game have been tightened so far that now only legitimate spenders are applying for cards since the avenues to spend artificially has reduced exponentially. So some general updates:

1. Many prepaid accounts such as Amex Serve or Bluebird or from other companies are practically gone or dead. The ones remaining are used for their primary purposes and are being viewed with hawkeyes.
2. Most gift card methods are hence a dead game now. There are some vanilla gift cards and other cards which can be used to meet those high spending requirements but overall, many are gone. Paypal and the big ones were anyway dead so now they are not all being used by anyone in the spending community.
3. The spending threshold is increasing and many banks are not afraid to ask you to spend upward of 10 grand, yes 10 grand!, before you see some good long term benefits.
4. This is not a very long term strategy if you could call that .. rather it is something that one does on the side, as a hustle maybe? as long as the expectation is set that it is something that gives yo some play money rather than anything concrete. 

The current big bonus cards are all having steep annual fees which are not waivable. Take for instance, Chase Sapphire Reserve card. At $450 annual fee that is not waived, it is by no means a cheap card. The argument that you can recoup this fee in rewards is extremely silly. I want to travel then I travel and not the other way round that you have some $300 gift card and hence you travel anyway to New York or some big city. That is really silly. In a way, one can clearly see that it induces spending. Had there been no rewards, would you really spend $450 on a credit card ? I mean seriously, for fuck's sake, how many can sanely think that you are going to spend $450 on a credit card ?? Anyways.

So in all, I see that this space is shrinking which reflects in lesser blog entries for this blog. Now, if you really follow the main blogs in this space, you would notice that they are all moving away from just credit card blog to broader "financial" blog and also advertise any amount of things .. they could say it is travel blog but they also cover a whole lot of ground other than travel tips or credit card tips. They do generate a lot of hype since they are anyways affiliates of big banks unlike this blog.

The downside of all this is that the banks have now realized that they can up the game and really come up with products that have high  premiums and fees and dole out some points for air travel or hotel points. For the regular customer anyways, this is a far cry from anything that they use the credit card for.