Chase Sapphire is a good choice but the number of transfer partners vs. SPG is very limited- so you lose a lot of the flexibility involved. One of the main selling points of SPG and to a lesser extent Amex MR is their transfer ability so you can essentially customise your award spending by transfering to the program that costs the least miles. If you only have a few transfer partners, a lot of that flexibility is lost.

Thanks, Mia -- that's the exact information I was looking for!

If UA becomes a transfer partner after the CO/UA merger then it becomes a lot more attractive due to the the crappy 2:1 transfer for SPG.

Especially for those of us who have IAD/DCA as our home airport.

Still, you're more or less -tied- to UA- and considering US and often ANA have more competitively priced awards in the *A field, the flexibility of SPG should still be superior.

But I get that the Chase Sapphire Preferred looks cool though ;)

The no-fee Hilton HHonors Amex also gives 6 points per dollars on grocery stores, drug stores, gas, wireless phone, satellite/cable and internet. I just got it.

http://hhonors1.hilton.com/en_US/hh/about/creditamex.do

At least where I live there are no more grocery stores, just supermarkets and convenience stores.

American Express uses the words "grocery store" and "supermarket" interchangeably. However, the exclusion of club stores (e.g. Walmart, Sams, Costco, BJ's) is important, and the geographic restriction may be important in your case. The advertising copy is not important, read the terms:

Thanks for the clarification. I was actually thinking about the situation in New York city. I

Miles/Points vs Cash Back
 

I have been a member of this great forum with a deluge of information available for the last 3 months. I will be glad if you could correct my opinion.

To make things clear, my job does not require me to travel. So, I only travel on vacations - may be twice a year domestic and once a year international - mostly to Asia.

I have always been under the impression if a card offers you cash back take it as you get cash that you could use to do whatever you want. This was my favorite as this does not limit you to just one category - like say having miles would limit you to use all the miles only to purchase travel.

I'm a cheapo - in the sense I scavenge the internet to find a better deal before I buy anything. So, stores like UR, or any other 'deals' offered by card issuer/card provider stores almost always get beaten by a deal I find online somewhere on the go... So, at least for me it is out of question.

Now coming to valuation of points/miles - I will agree that if the card only gives you a 1% cash back on most items then may be it is still a better bet to use a miles rewarding card as they seem to be valued much higher than just 1 penny. But, if you have cards that offer 5% on certain purchases, like the Discover/Chase Freedom .. not sure if there are more... I definitely think getting cash back is a better deal.


I currently own both these cards with a multitude of citi cards which include the AAdvantage card. Use the discover/chase depending on the category 5% is offered for that quarter. For all other purchases, I use the AAdvantage card.

Recently, opened a slate to take advantage of the 0% APR with $0 transfer fee offer. Other than that don't use it at all.

Want to make sure I am using them to yield me the utmost benefit.

Please correct me if I am missing out on something here.

Moderator action
 

Question appended to previous discussions of same topic.

Cash provides no arbitrage opportunity. $0.01 costs the card issuer $0.01 and is worth $0.01 to you. Miles or points cost the issuer less than their redemption value because they are redeemed for seats or rooms which would otherwise be unsold.

As a practical matter cash back cards have lower new account bonuses, lower category bonuses and fewer promotions than cards which offer miles or points. Over the lifetime of the card you should do better, much better, with miles or points than with cash.

@therealintellectual - Big picture it depends a lot depends on how much work you are willing to do. Generally the most valuable use of your spending is to hit the minimum spend on a bonus offer. This is often equivalent to getting 25% back or more (eg you can get a Southwest credit card that gives you over $800 in airfare for spending $3k). The second best use is usually category bonus spend largely limited only by how many cards you want to keep in your wallet (e.g., Citi Forward is 5% in gift cards back on Restaurants and Amazon, Amex Blue Cash Pref with an annual fee has 6% back on supermarkets and 3% on gas...). Finally there is your "other" spend that doesn't fit a good category bonus. I usually don't have much spending left for this category. For general spend, the top cash back offers are around 2% (e.g., Fidelity Investment Rewards Amex). Personally though, I use the Starwood Amex since it I believe a SPG point is worth more than 2 cents to me. For Visa/MC spend that doesn't fit another need above (and most of my international spend), I use a Capital One 1.5% cash back (they call it 1% +5 50% bonus later on, but it is 1.5% at the end of the day) visa with no foreign transaction fees and no annual fee. You may need to get the 1.25% cash back card and then call them to get it upgraded to 1.5% (at least that is what I did). There are also 2% Visas (such as a Capital One Business Card) but they have an annual fee.