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What's In My Wallet? A 2024 Travel Card Breakdown
On this website, I espouse the value of points and miles to take the sting out of the price of travel. Whether you're using cash back from your "2% on everything" card that wwe can't stop seeing ads for during football games, or transferring points to partners like a pro, it's important to have a well-rounded selection of cards if you want to do the travel game properly. So that begs the question - what credit cards does the owner of a travel website use on a daily basis?
With that, let's hop into what's in my wallet, and maybe some cards I'm looking at for 2025 and beyond.
American Express Gold Card - The Daily Workhorse
Annual Fee: $350
Key Features: 4x Amex MR points on groceries and dining, monthly Uber credits, access to Amex Hotel Collection
If you're looking to open a new credit card for the purposes of getting into the points and miles game, your absolute first step should be to examine the last three months of spend to see where your money is going. For my family, we spend a depressing amount of money on groceries and dining out, resulting in our two biggest spend categories by a dramatic margin.
For this, there's only one card for the job: the American Express Gold Card. Netting me 4x American Express points per dollar spent on groceries up to $25,000 per year, and on dining out, this card is our Membership Points engine. Absolutely every dollar my wife and I spend on groceries and dining goes on this card, and we have seen the effects pretty dramatically in the last two years since opening this card.
Including the welcome bonus we leveraged through Resy, we have earned over 350,000 American Express Membership Rewards Points. Using these points, we've taken a free trip to Rome, flights to England in Virgin Atlantic's Upper Class and grabbed two First Class tickets on Delta to Costa Rica! Whenever any of my friends ask me which card they should open, I immediately steer them to this one. Not to mention that it now comes in a very handsome White Gold flavor.
American Express Delta Reserve Card - The All-Purpose Spender
Annual Fee: $650
Key Features: 3x SkyMiles on Delta purchases, annual companion pass good for First Class, 15% off SkyMiles redemptions, MQD Spend Boost, Delta SkyClub and American Express Centurion Lounge access
Immediately we are jumping into the controversial category. Most points and miles experts have two tenants:
Don't stay loyal to an airline
Don't use cards that have miles that have to stay with one airline and cannot be transferred out
The co-branded Delta American Express cards immediately violate both of these. However, it works for me because I'm in a weird spot: I live in Atlanta, GA. Our airport, Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, the busiest in the world, is also home to Delta Airlines. As a result, Delta has an absolute stranglehold on all routes into and out of Atlanta. This effectively changes the math on credit cards, meaning you have to assign a "Delta multiple" to your spend categories. Enter, the Delta Reserve Card.
Last year, Delta pulled the nuclear option on its Medallion program, dramatically changing its reward structure, requirements and categories. This also came with structural changes to its credit card program with American Express, with Delta admitting that, at this point, it's more of a credit card company that happens to have airplanes. As a result, this wiped many frequent fliers (including myself) off the map, with the only way to get back in to jump into the higher tier credit card.
Having already had the American Express Delta Platinum Card, the jump to the Reserve Card was a straightforward, albeit expensive, one. Delta's new calculation on credit card spend meant that the Platinum Card earned 1 Delta Dollar for every $20 spent, but the Reserve Card was 1 Delta Dollar per $10 spent. For me, the math was clear. I could achieve the same Medallion status for half the spend, all while keeping the things that were important to me (lounge access, annual companion pass, 15% off SkyMiles redemptions). So this card has become my catch-all spend card outside of a few categories so I can continue to work towards Delta Platinum Medallion status.
The final straw that swayed me? Call me shallow, but there was a limited run of cards made from an actual, retired 747. If it's limited edition, I'm all in, so I grabbed the design you see in the picture above.
Capital One Venture X - Hotels and Disney World
Annual Fee: $395
Key Features: 10x points on hotels and rental cars, 5x points on flights booked through the Capital One Travel Portal, annual $300 travel credit, annual 10,000 point "gift"
I've written on this site (I'm sure to some of you) to a nauseating degree about my adventures with the Walt Disney Company. Not growing up going to the House of Mouse, booking and scheduling these Orlando trips has been a Space Mountain-sized learning curve, and as a side note I'm hoping that me documenting these lessons I'm learning are helpful for your own Disney forays. Well, in an effort to be as cost-conscious as possible, I found my favorite Disney credit card.
No, it's not the Disney Rewards Visa with its absolutely heinous earning rates. It's the newest entrant to this list, the Capital One Venture X Rewards card. Launched in 2022, Capital One did a 180 on its brand image and immediately catapulted itself into the luxury card game. With that, it also launched the newly revamped Capital One Travel Portal, and a lowkey gamechanger was snatching the booking rights to Disney hotels around the world from Chase (which has also since been expanded to Citi and BILT, but more on that later).
This card gives you a 10x points multiplier on hotels booked through the portal, as well as an annual $300 travel credit and an annual 10,000 points as a "thank you." You also get 2x points on literally all spending outside the portal, meaning this could be a real workhorse card for pretty much anyone reading this article right now. Doing the math on the points and travel credit versus the $395 annual fee on the card, you are actually coming out $5 ahead without having to keep a spreadsheet of monthly and bi-annual credits.
As a real-world use case, my wife and I took a 4-day trip to Disney World in January 2024 and effectively only paid for the park tickets. Thanks to the $300 annual credit and the points amassed from the welcome bonus, we got a free 4-night stay in Coronado Springs, an official Disney property in their Moderate tier. Considering that these hotels can average between $400-$600 per night, we got an outsized $2,000 value out of our points and booking portal!
American Express Platinum - Luxury Benefits, Luxury Price
Annual Fee: $695
Key Features: 5x points on flights (booked via Amex Travel or directly with the airline), 5x points on hotels booked via Amex Travel, Delta SkyClub and Centurion Lounge access, annual $200 hotel credit, access to American Express Fine Hotels and Resorts, $100 annually to Saks Fifth Avenue, cell phone insurance protection, monthly Uber credits
In my first foray into the points and miles game in 2022, I for whatever reason decided that I needed to start at the top and work my way down. This meant that I opened the American Express Platinum Card via Resy, giving me 150,000 MR points as a welcome bonus, as well as 10x points on restaurants for the first six months. This is still the best offer I have ever seen for a credit card, and it made one hell of a first impression.
Over my first year with the card, I earned nearly 300,000 Membership Rewards points with the Platinum Card, which was enough for my wife and I, plus our in-laws, to use points to travel to Washington D.C in Christmas of 2022. It's there that I discovered my favorite part of this card: Fine Hotels and Resorts.
Using FHR, I was able to get an absolutely ludicrous rate on the newly opened Conrad Washington D.C. Thanks to my points haul, the annual credit and the deal found via FHR, I called my Amex-provided concierge and booked two rooms, completely for free. Once at the hotel, they let me know that, thanks to booking via FHR, we were eligible for a room upgrade! This double upgrade of the room led us to getting a suite, which again, we booked for free.
Since then, the card has moved down the priority list for me. It's still a good card with good benefits (I buy my skincare through Saks Fifth Avenue now thanks to the twice annual credit!), but the card is getting harder to justify. A quick search online for this card will throw up the term "coupon book," pretty frequently due to the number of credits (monthly, twice a year and annually) that takes actual work to keep up with. Go up to the top of this section and compare the "Key Features" list of this card versus the others in this article. Exactly.
If I had to eliminate a card going into next year, this one is firmly first on the chopping block.
American Express Blue Business Plus - Keeping Them Separate
When I started my last website, I set myself a goal: once I make $1,000 through advertising, I'll open up a business credit card to keep my expenses separate. Well...here we are! My last site made $1,000 cumulatively in early 2023, and I subsequently opened the American Express Blue Business Plus card.
This card is the less-discussed third leg of the "Amex Trifecta," commonly composed of the American Express Gold Card, American Express Platinum Card, and this one, the BBP. The "Trifecta" is meant to cover all spend categories as effectively as possible, providing points multipliers for food (Gold Card), travel (Platinum Card) and everything else (the BBP gives you 2x points on every dollar).
The other perk? No annual fee! A rarity in the points game, this is the card that I say should be discussed more, but is really never talked about online. It's like a secret that only the points and miles gurus have considered, but should likely find a way into your pocket if you like simplicity.
Cards I'm Considering for 2025
Just as I spent the last two years opening new cards, I'm going to spend the next 12 months refining my card stack. To do this, I need to dig into a few very popular cards that I just haven't considered. Here's my list:
Chase Sapphire Preferred
Points and miles warriors will notice a massive absence in my list of current cards: there's nothing from Chase. Chase is often viewed as the gold standard in the credit card game, and for good reason: the cards are great. Offering stellar bonus categories and useful card features, the Chase cards are some of the best in the game. For me, however, they don't quite fit.
There's a ton of overlap between what the Chase cards do well and what the American Express cards I already have. The Chase Sapphire Preferred card gets the Amex Platinum's 5x travel points (booked exclusively via Chase Travel), nearly gets to the Gold Card's food multiplier (the CSP has 3x on dining, but also adds streaming services!), and 2x on all other "travel" purchases (taxi's, public transit, parking, etc).
The ease of use and broad categories make this card a very popular beginner card, and it's all wrapped up in a very palatable $95 annual fee. 2025 might be the year I take the plunge on Chase.
BILT Rewards Card
This one is easily the most fascinating card on this whole list. Launched in 2021, the BILT Rewards card was created to solve a uniquely millennial crisis: what if you wanted to earn points and miles on your biggest expense, rent? Enter BILT.
BILT, at first glance, is amazing. With no annual fee, BILT offers you a way to earn miles on paying rent with no credit card transaction fee, as well as 3x points on dining, 2x points on travel and 1x points on all other purchases. It also has a bevy of transfer partners, its own travel booking portal (complete with those sought-after Disney hotels!) and also offers a monthly "Bilt Day" on the first of every month that offers one-day massive multipliers (6x on dining, for example). They're also adding new partners all the time, having added Lyft and Marriott in 2023.
However, I do have questions about the company itself, and the value of this card if you don't rent. I have a mortgage that I cannot pay with a credit card, including Bilt, so I feel like the main value prop is lost on me there. You also have to make more than 5 transactions per billing period, or you forfeit your points for that cycle.
Finally, there's the viability of the company. The Bilt Day promotion is already proving to be unsustainable with their multipliers, and July 2024 saw major changes to the promotion that infuriated existing customers. Bilt also erroneously sent out a mass email to their clients earlier this year that falsely stated that many of them were engaged in "sustained misconduct and wrongdoing in connection to the [Bilt] program." Finally, there's the damning Wall Street Journal article that profiled Bilt this summer, specifically highlighting the lack of profitability for Wells Fargo in the Bilt partnership.
According to the article, Wells Fargo "expected more revenue from interchange fees and interest income, which hasn't materialized." WSJ also noted that Wells Fargo is losing as much as $10 million per month on the partnership, with some sources in the Wells Fargo product team noting that Wells isn't interested in a partnership renewal come the expiration of their deal in 2029.
Conclusion
Here's a smattering of the reasons why I have the cards I have. From everyday spend workhorses (the Amex Gold and Delta Reserve) to use-case specific cards (booking Disney trips via Capital One), it's important to find the cards and programs that fit your lifestyle. The last thing you want to do is stretch financially to cater to a specific program, just to have unpaid credit card bills and interest bite you in the ass.
My pro tip? Like I said at the top, take a look at your spend from the last three months to get a representative sample. Then, examine your highest spend categories to understand where the money is going, and what you can take advantage of. From there, it's smooth sailing to pointstown (wish that was a real place), where you can begin to leverage these points into once-in-a-lifetime experiences!
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