Hi all, first post here from a long time lurker. This year, I was finally able to get approved for the Chase SP card. I was wondering if there was any benefit to joining any other transferrable points program (ie. Amex everyday, ThankYou points)? I have the United MilePlus Explorer as well, but am thinking of canceling that if its a good idea to join another program. To give you all a background on my spending, I'm a graduate student, so not too high spending but I travel between Boston and California decently frequently. I also use Amtrak a bunch.

If I should join another points program, should I go with the Southwest card with their current signup bonus or the Citi AAdvantage?

Thanks in advance for your help!

Welcome to FlyerTalk. There are five programs which offer transfers to a broad range of airline and hotel partners:

American Express Membership Rewards
Lowest cost card: American Express Everyday, $0
Transfer partners: 17 Airlines + 4 Hotels

Chase Ultimate Rewards
Lowest cost card: Sapphire Preferred VISA, $95
Transfer partners: 6 airlines + 3 Hotels + Amtrak

Diners Club Rewards
Lowest cost card: Diners Club Premier MasterCard, $95
Transfer partners: 14 airlines + 7 Hotels + Amtrak

Starwood Preferred Guest
Lowest cost card: SPG American Express, $65
Transfer partners: 30 Airlines + Redeem at Starwood Hotels + Amtrak

ThankYou Rewards
Lowest cost card: Citi Premier MasterCard, $125
Transfer partners: 9 airlines + 1 Hotel

Many cards offer a first year waiver of the annual fee. I have listed the fee which would apply after the introductory offer.

If you prefer United Airlines note that only Chase offers cards with 1:1 transfers to Mileage Plus.

American Express and Chase offer a much larger number of card which participate in their rewards program than do the others. This creates more opportunities to earn new card account bonuses over time.

Awesome thanks for the help! Considering my limited spending, but semi-frequent (4-5 RT tickets a year) travel across the country and overseas, is there any point in applying for another credit card where you can transfer points? Should I just spend all my money using my CSP?

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Well there can be lucrative sign up bonuses if you meet the minimum spend.

Once you hit min spend in CSP, evaluate the best use of your next 5k in spend. Most times you will get better return by hitting min spend on a new card.

Probably, but we need to know which airline(s) you use to provide useful advice.

That really doesn't tell us anything. Crunch the numbers and see if you can use the sign on bonuses and your spend. Another program could be beneficial but, on the other hand, spreading your spend too thinly could make it take longer for you to get where you need to be to redeem rewards.

What airline(s) have you actually flown?

If you've not flown either AA or Southwest, do you know whether you will want to fly them?

For example, assuming you have no status (though you could get first level status if you fly BOS<->California decently frequently with the same airline each time), you'll have no assigned seating on Southwest (but ability to choose your seat from the remaining ones as you board), while you'll have forced assigned seating on AA (often no ability to select anything other than middle seat without paying extra, until day of check-in). I thus don't know if you should pick an airline solely by picking its credit card first.

On the other hand, once you have elite status at AA (after 5 paid round trips BOS<->LAX in the same calendar year, for example), you'll have much better selection of seats, including half-price on Main Cabin Extra (extra legroom seats) in advance and free Main Cabin Extra at check-in, and you'll occasionally even be able to get an upgrade. While flying 5 paid round trips BOS<->LAX on Southwest won't change your flight experience much.

The status works a little differently at UA, because UA requires that you spend $2500 on those paid trips (not just that you fly 25000 miles), so it depends what sort of fares you're geting on your BOS<->California trips whether UA would get you to first-level status as quickly as AA would (AA at least for the next year doesn'te care what you pay, just that you fly 25000 miles).

But 5 BOS<->LAX trips is just barely over 25000 miles. So if you only do 4, you won't get any status.

Thanks for the help everyone! I fly Southwest and United frequently, and travel internationally via the Star alliance most of the time. I guess this reply was my biggest concern. Is it possible to spread my points too thin between two programs?

Who pays?

Southwest points redemption cost is proprotional to Southwest money ticket cost, so on paid Southwest flights you get a fairly fixed percentage of "cash back" equivalent. So if you're paying for all your Southwest flights yourself already, you presumably know how far the 50000 points from a Southwest Visa will take you (because you presumably already have a strategy for when to use Southwest points vs when to pay, even though the price of both goes up and down together).

United / Star Alliance redemption is by zones, so that's non-linear always. That means that if you can find "saver" redemtpions where the money ticket cost would be high, you get a much higher rate of return.

So with UA miles, you can pay for the flights which are cheap and redemptions are costly, and can redeem miles for the flights which are expensive and redemptions are cheap. With Southwest points, you don't get that "leverage"; it's just that one card signup with some spend can get you some number of free flights once.

So is your goal to save a couple percent "cash back" equivalent, or is your goal to save on the most expensive flights? If the latter, then it would seem to make sense to collect more UA miles in more ways than worrying about collecting Southwest points (especially since Southwest uses the same bank, Chase).

Btw, where do you stay after you get off the plane? Are you mostly visiting friends/family and staying with them, or mostly paying to stay somewhere? If you airline mile collection makes most sense on UA (and thus Chase), you may think about whether it's hotel points you should diversify to, and in that case pick hotels that have cards with banks other than Chase, so that you can concentrate your Chase applicaitons on getting more UA miles and balance that with applications to other banks to get hotel points.

I was definitely thinking of saving up on UA miles, and just apply for the two SW cards to get the 100K bonus towards the companion pass. I was also thinking of getting a card thats part of Amex MR or the Barclaycard Arrival+. I guess, like I stated before, Im just concerned with spreading my payments too thin over too many credit cards. Is that possible?

I guess the root of my question is as follows: Since I fly UA a bunch, I'm probably going to keep the CSP even year after year even with the AF. Is it worth getting another transferrable rewards card to keep with an AF? Or should I focus most of my spending on the CSP?

You can only earn United miles with cards issued by Chase. You could add a free Chase Freedom card. Chase markets Freedom as a "cash back" card but it actually earns Ultimate Rewards points, and each quarter there are categories which earn 5 points per dollar (registration required). You cannot transfer directly from Freedom to United, but you can transfer from Freedom to Sapphire Preferred, and then to United.

Do most people carry two "transferrable points" credit cards (ie both CSP and Amex Blue)?

Most people in what world?

FlyerTalk members are not representative of the general public, not even of the general frequent traveler public. Most people carry zero "transferrable points" credit cards. So I presume the number of people who carry one is greater than the number who carry two and that is in turn greater than the number who carry three, etc.

Also, another question worth asking is "carry for how long?". Ie, have had two briefly (Amex Gold twice), but only held one long term (Diners Club US).

Btw, Amex Blue is not a transferrable points card, unless you also have a "full" Membership Rewards card with Amex. I hold an Amex Blue, but I hold it just to keep some small MR points for expiring, but until I get another transferrable MR card, I can't move them anywhere with just the Blue.

Oh, and some people consider the SPG Amex a transferrable points card, though I don't (I consider it a hotel card, and I realize that every hotel program has points transferrable to airlines; but "true" transferrable points cards IMHO transfer to both multiple airlines and multiple hotels, but of course the SPG points that the SPG Amex earns are not transferable to any other hotel programs. Anyway, I have one, but I'm keeping my SPG points as SPG points for the foreseeable future, since I never know when I'll need an award stay at an SPG hotel somewhere (where there is other brand of hotel that's available on points).