levistrauss

TravelinSperry

I just found a card that has a high everyday spend.

The Radisson Rewards Premier Signature Visa Card from US Bank. I have redeemed rewards from Radisson at .005 cents per and at .65 cents per. Let's assume each point is worth .6 cent per on average. Obviously if you value them less (e.g., .5 cents per you can run the math differently).

The card offers 5x on everyday spend. So at .6 cents that earns us 3 cents per (which is a higher value than our legacy Starwood Amex at 2.7 cents per). Of course the reason this thread exists is because that card is going down to 1.8 cents per. Even if one values Radisson points at .5 cents per - that's still 2.5 cents per for everyday spend. This is better than CSR imo. Sadly, what is NOT better than CSR is that we are solely earning Radisson points good at Radisson, Park Plaza, Park Inn and a few others chains in their group. However if you do travel to Scandinavia or Europe - there are some nice properties to redeem at. Their US footprint is quite low and wouldn't be a worthy choice if you can't find your way abroad for redemptions. https://www.radisson.com/destinations/

Another huge plus is the bonus for joining... 85,000 points for just $2,500 spend. (a $500 value). And you get instant Radisson Gold status with the card as well. It provides these benefits.

Plus, you earn a free e-cert for every $10k in spend. Up to 3 per year. All this for a $75 annual fee - AND none of this impacts 5/24 with Chase or the 5 card limit at Amex.

One other thing to note - do NOT use this card abroad. It has a foreign transaction fee. If it weren't for this last point I would absolutely get the card. Still because I would only use it for everyday (non-targeted) spend, it may not matter as I'd just use it here in the USA and leave it behind when traveling.

Might be going in my wallet soon.

chazas

Good conclusion for you, but I have a different opinion based on my upcoming trip to Hawaii. I used some miles sitting in my UA and AA accounts, topped off with converted miles from SPG. First class on UA on the way there required a 95,000 mile everyday award. First class on the AA return was a much better Aanytime award of 67,500 miles. (Each for me and my spouse, but ignore him for simplicity.) That's 162,500 miles. I looked into an award stay at an SPG or Marriott property, but I used to live in Honolulu and am not a fan of ANY Waikiki hotel, particularly at lower quality rooms without a huge upgrade. The former JW Marriott at Ko'Olina is now a Four Seasons starting at $1000 for my dates with the worst rooms, and the Marriott timeshare property is not where I want to be. So I instead rented us a gorgeous newly renovated three bedroom house on VRBO in one of the best neighborhoods in Honolulu, with an ocean view and infinity pool, for $600/night.

I couldn't use any amount of points for the hotel stay to get anything close to what I'm getting for cash. I could have bought a reasonable round-trip first class air fare with mostly lie flat seats for around $2000. So for the miles I used I only got 1.23 cents value per mile, and didn't even get to use points for the hotel. (I'm ignoring the effect of transfer bonuses here, so it was likely a little better, but not so much as to affect my conclusion.) So my big depreciating stash of points is still mostly sitting there.

Yes, I could have gotten a much better return on a different trip at a different time with lots of advance planning and flexibility, but I just don't have that so much any more. I have concluded I would rather have 2 cents per dollar (or more based on spend categories) and just buy my travel.

christianj

I've held the card for a while and it used to be even more lucrative when they offered 2for1 redemptions when it was first introduced. People got in an uproar when they removed that but it was just too costly. One thing to also keep in mind is that they give you 40k points annually at renewal. These points can be used towards any redemption and you are not locked into a specific category redemption like you are with so many other cards. I used to use the card a lot but stopped due to a balance of over 1 million points. I need to use them before I decide to accumulate more. (Right now everyday non-bonus goes on either Chase FU or Amex EDP for me.)

Good high-end hotel redemptions in the US are a problem but I get to Europe often so I see some use in the points. Just booked two nights in London and 2 nights in NYC as redemptions I plan on using by years end...that is unless I need more SPG nights to qualify for Platinum this year as I am in my last year of Lifetime Platinum qualification.

rct12345

I have mixed and matched the first 2 categories

Restaurants & Travel - Chase Sapphire Reserve - 3xUR
Gas & Groceries/wholesale - BofA Cash Rewards w/ Plat Honors, gas - 5.25%; groceries/wholesale - 3.5%
Cell Phone, Internet, Cable/Satellite, Amazon GC from Staples - Chase Ink Cash Biz - 5xUR
Other - BofA Travel/Premier Rewards w/ Plat Honors - 2.625%
Rotating categories - Discover - 5% and Chase Freedom - 5xUR

TravelinSperry

Yes, I forgot to mention the renewal 40,000 point bonus. That's $200-$240 in additional value. Really quite a good card for everyday spend assuming one can redeem in Europe. In fact, assuming you can redeem at the higher end Radisson's in Europe, I'd say it's the best everyday spend coming in at 3 cents per.

dparkinson

This card is the only one you should consider switching too if you're drowning in UR/MR:
Visa Signature Card | Alliant Credit Union

At 2.5% cash back you can literally buy starpoints for less (2.275 based on recent sale) and at 3% cash back for the first year it's a tremendous deal.

digimon

christianj

jmj9905

Well thanks for all the incite full information. As I mentioned in a much earlier post on this thread my primary purpose with the spg amex was mileage accumulation on AA. I am now retired an doing a lot of international travel with ow airlines. I primarily book f & j,depending on availability, on BA, JL, QF, CX. So it seems to me , for the time being I will stick with citi executive whatever with a 1:1 transfer and see what shakes out.

As with all things FF you have to roll with the punches. YMMY.

phltraveler

It's a shame that Rakuten bought Fatwallet for their cashback program and spun off their cashback onto a separate site (eBates) because the finance subforum was one of the best forums anywhere on the internet, period (before Fatwallet shut it down). There was a comprehensive thread with wikipost on the best credit card offers by category (overall to industry to airlines) with links to specific threads for specific cards where people talked about manufactured spend and the best credit card offers.

(I'm aware we talk about manufactured spend here, but the overall discussion generally among credit card vs. non-credit card products was great, as was the timeliness of info).

It's where I found out about the US Bank Cash+ and was getting 6.25% effective cashback (5% cashback + $25 visa giftcard for every $100 cashback redeemed) on hotel + rental car spend (only because my company didn't allow me to charge airfare to a personal credit card...)

Trouble with rumor is taking seriously or not. You can miss opportunities if you don't listen (or if you do).

I heard rumors Amex would get tougher on product changes. I didn't listen. Now I have an SPG Amex with an annual fee I don't need (already have Marriott visa) and I can't convert it to a no annual fee card because they killed switching between branded cards and SPG has zero annual fee Amex cards.

Particularly for earning points though, the value per point depends on how quickly you can redeem it. If you hear that you can consolidate to another chase card and get 1.5 cents/point effective transferring to partners, that's one calculation on the worthiness of your spend. If you hear that you can only get 1 cent/pt effective and that it won't transfer to travel partners, then that's a totally different game, you're saying the points are worth 66% of the optimistic scenario. Might not want to start to begin with.

Always mileage might vary, but usually rumors/confirmation of devaluations come well ahead of actual devaluation. And for the fact that Chase is offering general 3% back on the CFU, if it's attracting big spenders who are looking to trade the points out to travel cards, I would be completely unsurprising if they limited redemption within the card instead of allowing the transfer of points.

christianj

I would tend to agree that there sometimes there are truths to the rumor mill and sadly in the last couple of years the rumors that became truths ended up impacting me negatively. Based on the numerous devaluations we have seen from airlines, hotels and credit card issuers I have been more cautious and assumed the worst when I hear something like this. For this reason, I moved all my points which were under my Chase Freedom Unlimited account to my UR rewards account associated with my CSR card yesterday. They are worth much more under the CSR and I would hate for this rumor to be true and then they either don't give us advanced warning or they limit the number of points we can transfer at a time. Just being proactive due to my distrusting nature right now. I also plan on transferring the monthly Freedom Unlimited points I get to the CSR on a monthly basis moving forward.

digimon

So would yous suggest that I get the CSR card now and transfer points monthly? I was planning to wait a year until the 3% promo expired on the freedom card.

christianj

My crystal ball says...... Seriously that is a question only you can answer! It doesn't sound like you are near the 5/24 rule if you are asking if you should apply for the CSR after just getting the Freedom Unlimited. You could pull the trigger on the CSR or even just the CS and transfer on a monthly basis from the FU or just hold tight using the FU and if they announce a change in the transfer rules apply for one of the other products then. Even if you just earned on FU and never transferred to UR a 3% return is still a good return.

zorbachs

Is everyone here just accumulating as many SPG points as possible before 8/1 and then cutting ties with the card? I have the SPG card for another year after getting a retention. I have 67k SPG points currently but no plans to use them before 8/1. Does it make sense to even bother anymore?