Newbie seeks advice
 

First of all, great site.

Looking for some help. The family and I are looking to book a trip in October of 2006 to Disney. We are looking for a credit card that can give us our best options in getting flyer miles and /or points towards our trip. I know Disney has their own card, but i'm unsure if it's what we want. We are hoping in the long run to pay our mortgage through the card to see if we can get a free flight for the trip.

Any advice on a card or other info I should look for?

thank you and i hope i'm in the right forum.

If you haven't thought of the American Express Starwoods card, it might work well for you. Read about it on the American Express site if you aren't familiar with it. You can exchange *wood points for most airline miles and get 25k miles for every 20k pts. Good luck! (Just noticed you are SPG Gold so you already know all this!)

2nd vote for SPG Amex. Great point scheme and good hotel options when visiting the Mouse!

Advice for Newbie: Newbie will get more information if Newbie uses more descriptive thread titles. Most experienced users will not bother clicking into threads with vague titles.

How much do you typically spend per month on the card? Given your goal is less than a year away, if your spend is low, you may be better with a Disney card (which may have lower award levels) than an airline card (which typically starts at 25,000 miles/dollars per ticket).

Have you checked if your mortgage payments can be charged? Most can't, unless you go thru a 3rd party service that charges fees high enough to make it un-worthwhile for the miles earned.

I'll also nominate the Starwood card.

If only!!! You and I and millions of others would love to do this, but there's no way I know of to make mortgage payments using a credit card. :(

I would suggest that you consider Diners Club. I know many people don't like it because of the very high annual fee and the charges they impose to transfer points to airline miles (though not hotels). However, there are two shortcomings with the SPG AMEX (which I agree is an excellent card) 1) there are still many merchants who do not accept AMEX, (Diners Club is now treated as a Mastercard and is universally accepted) and 2) Diners Club allows transfer to a few airlines and many hotel programs that SPG AMEX does not.

It can be well worth having more than one credit card, though of course for some people it may be risky (spending-wise, that is).

I find that more and more merchants do accept Amex; for example, some time ago, Safeway began accepting it.

I also vote for the Amex card, although I am using my BMW Visa, issued through BMW Finance of North America. this card has many advantages and lots of flexibility.