Originally Posted by
abhilife2001
Want to avoid paying AF wherever possible..
You should be considering total cost versus benefit instead of AF versus no AF. Otherwise you’re likely to overlook cards suited to you.
The first thing you need to do is sort out which rewards program you can leverage better and then start looking at cards in those programs instead of selecting a creditor first and then trying to justify cards from that creditor. UR may or may not be the best fit for you.
Originally Posted by
abhilife2001
CSP - This seems to be a top recommendation among many forums with the nice bonus post $4k spends and 1st year AF fee waived. Thing is my spending pattern's are not such that would justify paying the AF as even with some MS, I can use this not more than $2k a month.
Again, you need to consider what suits you best, not what’s popular. If you determine that you can get good value out of UR then you’re probably going to need one of the cards mentioned above so you can transfer to travel partners for redemptions as better value is generally attained by transferring.
However, even if you only redeem for cash with the CSP you can get 1 cent per point. At that redemption rate you only need $4,750 in annual spend on travel & dining (these categories earn at 2x) to break even on the $95 AF or $395.83 per month. As I said, though, that’s at a poor redemption rate and if you’re going with UR then you should be able to attain much better (at least $0.02 per UR) so your break even point should be lower.
If you can maximize the CF’s 5x categories and place noncategory spend on a CFU that can also help.