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- Feb 12, 2008
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The best credit cards for accruing FF points are those with massive sign-on bonuses. Point in case, coughibank Platnium 60,000 QFF points for $298 mentioned in a previous post. At the end of the 12 month period threaten to cancel unless they waive your fee - nothing lost, onto another card with big sing-on bonus or even during that 12 month window. I've been doing this for years and currently hold 6 credit cards (only using two currently) purely for the sign-on bonuses. And although I can't say exactly how many points I've accrued in this manner, I'd say we're talking about 250,000 points over the past 3-4 years and have spent about $1,500 in upfront annual fees for the privelege. I won't go into how much 250,000 QFF points is worth to me or anyone else (see countless threads elsewhere) but at ~$1,500 the true value of a QFF earning CC is the sign-on bonus. And who said you can't buy QFF points?
The underlying rates of 1:1 or 1:1.5 are all good and dandy, but only if you spend big. Personally, my Amex Ultimate at 1.5 with free trip works fine for me. I get the free flight thrown in and have never paid an annual fee in the past 5 years since I put through more than $50K pa on it and always threaten to cancel at 11 months and voila! My backup card is currently the coughibank Plat Visa for non-Amex transactions. BTW, anyone else got creative with their free Amex flight routing? East Coast to West Coast return is not a limitation with some imaginative workarounds.
My default 'magic cash out of the wall' card is with ANZ simply because I'm too lazy to swap banks just for a convenient slush fund for transferring money between banks etc.
Now if only I could legitimately hold a Social Security Number and take advantage of the coutnless 100,000 point sign-on bonus promos the yank banks are offering every second week. Mileage heaven...
The underlying rates of 1:1 or 1:1.5 are all good and dandy, but only if you spend big. Personally, my Amex Ultimate at 1.5 with free trip works fine for me. I get the free flight thrown in and have never paid an annual fee in the past 5 years since I put through more than $50K pa on it and always threaten to cancel at 11 months and voila! My backup card is currently the coughibank Plat Visa for non-Amex transactions. BTW, anyone else got creative with their free Amex flight routing? East Coast to West Coast return is not a limitation with some imaginative workarounds.
My default 'magic cash out of the wall' card is with ANZ simply because I'm too lazy to swap banks just for a convenient slush fund for transferring money between banks etc.
Now if only I could legitimately hold a Social Security Number and take advantage of the coutnless 100,000 point sign-on bonus promos the yank banks are offering every second week. Mileage heaven...
