IMO, there is no substitute for having a stash of miles equal to the minimum cost of a ticket you would purchase. For example, my wife goes to Europe every summer. Even if I was going mostly for cash back, I would still make sure I always had 60,000 miles (on some airline) available. Even though availability can be awful sometimes, you just never know when you will get lucky and find a ticket that's a real bargain with miles. Of course, having points that convert to miles is just as good.

I find that the biggest "bang" for the buck are the signup bonuses. Like the 100K BA(better last year--what we took advantage of) , 50K Sapphire Preferred, 50K UA, 50K CO (last year), 40K US, 70K Marriott w/1 free nt, the hilton cards (60K AMEX, 50K Citi), Capitol One 100K (last year), etc. Also, about 300K pp AA cards in the past 2 years. Forgot about 2 free nights at any Hyatt for their card.

Also Starwood AMEX 30K personal/biz (2 yrs ago). We would do INK bold but we are over saturated with Chase at the moment.

As for which card is best for long term? It depends. We like the Starwood AMEX for the value of a point and its flexibility. For cash back, if one is not much of a traveler, the 2% Fidelity AMEX seems to be one of the better cash back cards for long term.

We do alot of travel cards because the stuff that shows up in our mailbox are 0% balance transfer offers & $50-100 cash bonuses. We don't need the balance transfer offers since we have plenty of funds in the bank earning very low interest and we do not carry balances on our credit cards.

Bottom line: Alot of the travel offers are worth between $500 and $1000 in equivalent value or even more if used for intl Business/First redemptions. We usually shred the $50-100 bonus offers since we do much better with what is posted on FT!!

My "strategy" has evolved over the past two years. It's certainly not something i thought of at first, but it really works for me now.

I started by accumulating a lot of miles and points, mostly thru credit card bonuses and a few bank/investment promos. My miles/points portfolio is now approaching 1 M and all of my recent air travel and most of my recent hotel stays were paid for by miles and points. So, I now have more than enough miles and points for my foreseeable travel needs.

I have never focused much of credit card spend because I am single and I have a simple lifestyle. But now I am saving considerable $$ using cash back. The AMEX Blue Cash preferred gives me 6% back for much of my basic needs (food and gas and certain key gift cards) and my next card will be a 2% cash back on other categories.

If I ever need miles and points again in the future, I will just readjust my strategy a bit. But for now with 1M in my travel portfolio, my focus will be almost totally on cash back.

So, while in the short term, one may have to choose to focus on travel rewards versus cash back, over time, one can have both.

This actually hits on a good point. Since I'm a single guy with a less-than-extravagant lifestyle, I can't really rely on my month spend (~2.4K a month) to accrue much in the way of points OR cash-back. I suppose what I should be doing is focusing on sign-up bonuses and doing all my spending with those cards. What would be interesting to see, is how much cash-back/points I'm forgoing by not using a good rewards card during the period of time it takes me to hit that minimum spending requirement on a new card I've taken out. Surely it wouldn't come close to what I'd be gaining through the bonus offer. It would however, be optimal to try to hit the minimum spending requirements on new cards I sign up for as quickly as possible using some sort of money shuffling trick (such as with Amazon Payments), so I could move on to spending with a different card.

You also need to take into account the value of each point.
I'd put the value of an HHonors point at ~$.005 and the value of a Starpoint at ~$.04. That gives a ratio of 1 Starpoint = 8 HHonors points. In that case, any spend that gives less than 8 HHonors points/$ would be better to use Starwood AmEx.

I think you are a little high on the Starpoint value. Its closer to .03 than .04 per pt

I won't haggle over Starpoint value; I just find that when I use them for cash + points, I get ~.04/pt. If it's less than that, I don't bother using Starpoints.
If you go with .03/starpoint, that's still a ratio of 1 Starpoint = 6 HHonors points.

With a baseline of 1 cent, how much do you think each type of rewards point is worth? --- Chase UR, Citi ThankYou, SPG Starpoint, Hilton HHonors, Priority Club, Southwest Rapid Rewards, AA miles, and United miles. Please include any I may have missed.

Welcome to Flyertalk.

This is perhaps the most frequently debated topic on all of Flyertalk. There is no answer because the value is established when you redeem, not when you earn, and it varies by individual.

To estimate your value think about how you would redeem: domestic vs international destinations, simple point-to-point trips or complex itineraries with stopovers or open-jaws, economy or a premium cabin, roadside inn or luxury resort, etc?

In general, airline miles (and points which can be converted to miles) are worth more than points with a fixed monetary value, but when evaluating credit cards you must also consider the amount of spending required to generate the points. One AA mile may be worth more than one ThankYou point, but if you can generate more TYP per dollar of spending the ThankYou card may offer better value.

Let me preface this by saying this I probably not the correct way to look at this. What I do is looks at what I normally buy and see how many points it would take to get it. For example a flight from mke to dfw may cost me 320 to 350 rt. I can use aa miles and that flight would cost me 25,000 miles. So to me an aa mile is 1.3 cents. Same with SPg points I love Maui and paid 360/night. At Sheraton Maui it's 12,000 pts/night so they are worth 3 cents to me. I use these numbers when determining if I want cash bck from discover or go through the aa portal. Ex. I could use the aa portal to shop at sears and earn 4 mile/dollar or go to the discover portal and earn 6% cash back

You can refine this by adjusting for the miles you would have earned if you paid for the flight. When you buy an airline ticket you are buying transporation plus credit toward future travel. When you redeem miles you receive only transporation.

In your example, if a purchased MKE-DFW-MKE flight would have generated, say, 2,500 miles (including the miles earned by paying with a card), you really redeemed 27,500 rather than 25,000 miles.

Well put, it's really how you plan on using them. They have different value to each of us because we all use them differently.
What you have to know is how you are going to use them and go from there.

Interesting, thanks for clarifying that for me!

Some cards give points, some give cash back others give miles.

When choosing between a card that gives miles vs. one that gives points that can become miles, how do you determine value of the point vs. the miles.

For example, I have Marriott Rewards that gives points. Since we have Marriott timeshares we already accumulate lots of MR points. If I get enough points in a year I can turn them in for travel package with discounted rate for points on room and miles at a 1:1 rate. I get good value for the annual certificate that comes with $65 fee.

Delta has 1:1 for miles and an annual companion ticket that I've been able to use successfully so the $85 fee is okay on that too.

I generally use my miles when a ticket is over $400. Looking at US Bank FlexPerks and others that change points for miles (like Capital 1) I see that the amount of points needed is higher than the regularly required amount of miles for higher priced fares. As in a domestic flight in Business that was $900 would cost 90,000 points/miles instead of the 45,000.

So I'm wondering why these cards look so attractive to some flyer talkers.

Discussion?

Thanks,
gg

gardengirl's post has been moved to this recent thread regarding the often discussed topic. Please review the preceding posts before replying.