Can someone recommend a Credit Card?
 

Hi everyone!

I have a good credit and I want to start saving up miles, can someone recommend a good program?

Thanks,
Antonio.

Welcome to FT!

It might help to know some background info... do you already have substantial miles with a particular FF program? Do you have to or prefer to fly with a specific carrier or alliance?

One general purpose card that is highly recommended (though I don't yet have one myself) is the Starwood Preferred Guest AMEX as it allows transfer of points into several FF programs. https://www143.americanexpress.com/a...landingCode=74But there are, of course, many others and it can depend upon your specific preferences and needs.

Hi fiero! Thanks!

Well, no I don't have anything yet. I just want something that I can up miles and might give me benefits like access to the airline lounge or upgrades. I usually travel about 4 times a year, domestic and internationally, but I don't tend to use one specific airlines, just the best available fare.

I will check out the link you sent me. Thanks

For most airline specific cards, they generally tend to have signup bonuses in the 25-30K or so range. There have been some recent promotions for 100K (British Airways) and 50K (United) bonuses but those aren't active any longer. Spend a little time in the MilesBuzz, Credit Card, and FF program-specific forums and you'll find out some more details on different ones.

You might want to take advantage of two current miles offers that I think are worthwhile:

1) 25,000 Continental Airlines miles (for opening a Chase debit card checking account): https://www.chase.com/index.jsp?pg_n..._Consumer_9938

See here as well: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/miles...g-account.html

2) Also 35,000 American Airlines miles (with no annual fee for the first year) through a CITI bank credit card offer: http://creditcards.citicards.com/usc...765FA42CC149C9

See here as well: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/other...citi-card.html

Gary Leff wrote an article on credit cards last year. I believe it will be very useful and most of information should be still applicable.

http://boardingarea.com/blogs/viewfr...s-credit-card/

Thanks,

Dracs

Be careful what you wish for
 

Although a very careful consumer can probably avoid the pain of a high-cost credit card, I would have nothing to do with the c/c companies mentioned so far in this thread. They're not in business to give away "free" miles - I suspect that internally they refer to them as "bait".

If you never carry a balance and do nothing to attract fees (e.g. don't charge anything outside the US), you can ignore my thoughts and enjoy the benefit.

For the rest of us, a generous credit union is probably a better choice. They still depend on people paying interest on carried balances to pay for those miles, but often don't surcharge forex transactions and aren't so quick to pile on fees and penalties. But ymmv so read the fine print.

That was a good write up. answered some of my questions I had.