JerryFF

We have pretty much figured out how to use credit cards to pay for flights and hotels when on vacation. However, meals are another story. About the only thing I can come up with is to get one of those cash back cards, keep an account of the cash rewards, and mentally convince myself that I actually ony used the cash back from the card to pay for those expensive vacation dinners. Any other ideas?

I have not kept track of the cash back cards so I have two additional questions. Is 2% cash back basically the best one can hope for? Are there cash back cards that offer substantial sign up bonuses similar to the airline/hotel affinity cards?

Many thanks.

EmailKid

Some CCs offer 5% cash back on rotating quarterly basis, so I would check in case someone has restaurants coming up.

sdsearch

Use the points earned on meals to pay more hotel rooms?

Chase hotel cards often give double points for restaurants and have 0% forex.

Citi TYP Premier gives 2x points on restaurants (and 3x on gas, hotels, parking, and some other "travel") and has 0% forex.

And within the US, I look for Rewards Network restaurants, where I earn 5 UA/AS/DL/AA miles per $ spent on top of that.

And I don't find restaurants to be that much more expensive most places compared to home. So unless you never eat out at home (for comparison), I don't understand what you mean be expensive travel dining.

There are no cash back bonuses quite as big as airline/hotel bonuses, because giving away cash back bonuses is expensive (you have to give away hard money), while giving away airline miles or hotel points is cheap because it's essentially "excess capacity" inventory they're giving away. (You can't get cheap award seats on flights which are almost overbooked, and you can't get hotel awards in most programs for the last hotel room available. But cash is always the same cost, there's no "excess capacity" in cash!)

Hawaiian717

Citi Costco Anywhere Visa, Captial One Premier Dining Rewards, and Navy Federal Credit Union GoRewards all give 3% cash back on restaurants, and the latter two also have no forex fees.

I also feel like I'm seeing a fair amount of overlap between the Rewards Network, MOGL, and ThanksAgain networks, so dining at a participating restaurant sometimes will earn me cash back or miles in more than one of these programs.

JerryFF

Thanks for the suggestions.