Well, firstly, congrats and happy travels - you and the family will have an absolutely splendid time in the US: a lot of fantastic, friendly, and interesting people; it really is a marvellous place to explore with much fun and many adventures to be had!
Preface: you'll need to consider and decide what financial products are suitable and appropriate for your own financial circumstances and capacity, and I am not recommending a card or financial product for you specifically.
Amex cards, this or others generally, will be widely accepted in the US but does incur fees as a % of transaction value (%value). Acceptance may vary at smaller merchants. Possible benefits aplenty but there are also benefits available with many other cards.
Visa and Mastercard are both also widely accepted in the US, and generally better abroad than AMEX. AMEX is less commonly accepted in some regions (EG Germany) or carries a steeper merchant fee (EG at home in Oz) than VISA or Mastercard. For my travel requirements and foreign currency, the AMEX only gets used in limited circumstances.
One thing to be aware of travelling is: Dynamic Currency Conversion (DCC), where the merchant offers to convert (or just doesn't even tell you) the purchase into and charge your card in AUD instead of the local currency. Generally, best rule of thumb is to decline it because the conversion rate is terrible. In some cases because the merchant is / transaction occurred overseas your card issuer may still apply the intl %value fee anyway (although in this scenario AMEX wouldn't). For at least VISA Mastercard and AMEX you can ALWAYS decline the merchant DCC.
In my experience, I've found the ANZ Rewards Travel Adventures (ANZ RTA) to be a very good value card for my travel requirements. Main benefits eg:
× Current 40K velocity rewards if meet a fairly easy spend target. $225 annual fee.
× No Intl transaction %value fees and processed at VISA exchange rate - almost matches wholesale rates and rate is published. Many other cards either have %value fee or no fee but process the transaction at their own exchange rates (which is usually a large gap to the market rate)
× 1x return domestic airfare on Virgin network (must book it >60days in advance), which to me is $300-500.
×
In my experience, providing you put the ANZ RTA into a positive balance (ie a card $ positive balance above your card limit) then you also get access to the VISA exchange rate and charged no cash advance interest fee and (as a standard feature) no cash advance withdrawal fees to withdraw some cash in the local currency. I presume no cash advance interest because they aren't advancing you any cash, you're simply drawing down from a surplus balance. If not in a positive balance you will get
stung hard by the cash advance interest rate of ~20%pa on RTA (and commonly the case for many other credit card products). So, you need to be careful how and when this is accessed / used and understand how charges are sequenced, pending and posted to your credit card account. This feature alone has saved me hundreds over a couple of years travel (especially cash based areas) and is really just a case of paying the card upfront before making purchases and withdrawing cash (same as any savings act card, or preload travel cards) instead of using the credit facility (buy first, pay later) and interest free days.
× There are substantially different insurance coverages associated with different card products and my circumstances definitely not similar to yours so you'll have to consider that aspect yourself.
For my needs of paying for purchases by credit abroad and convenience of withdrawing cash maybe once per week, the ANZ RTA is really hard to beat. In order to get the cash withdrawal fee and IR free I usually bump the card into a positive surplus balance (including enough to cover any existing previous, but still pending, credit purchase transactions
plus the amount I want to withdraw as cash) a day or 2 prior to making a cash withdrawal, and then make sure that cash withdrawal posts before making any further credit purchases. The ANZ app and net banking makes this very clear and obvious. Gotta remember AU wekends and bank transfer time frames also. Possibly sounds complicated, really isn't once you've got the hang of it.
I also have AMEX explorer and a couple of other cards, and have been cycling them for points or balance transfer cash for maybe 15yrs.
Anyway, hope you and the family have a brilliant trip and, most importantly, rest assured those memories and experiences are worth considerably more than any %value, exchange rate, or DCC etc fees. Have fun!
