Best credit card for travelers- most rewards

RNERHOUSESUPOR · Dec 17, 2012

Can't stand to see a post that doesn't have at least one comment. Credit cards are very private and personal. What may work for you, may not work for others. My philosophy is, put on your Credit Card only what you can pay off at the end of the month. If you need a loan, then visit your local banker and see if you really can pay it back. Remember, nothing is free. Someone ( and probably you in one way or another) is paying for everything that is labeled as free. I would like that every Travel nurse would visit and frequent a local business person for all their needs during a travel assignment, but doing that is quite difficult. I am trying to avoid large corporations, they are only concerned about the bottom line. A smaller company will be more receptive to my concerns and most likely will serve my needs in a way that I try to serve the needs of my patients.

Rod

nursetaminator · Dec 18, 2012

I don't travel as a nurse (yet) but do a lot of personal traveling. Have used Discover since 1997 and am very pleased with them. The best thing you can do is research the credit cards, break down their rewards and what they equate to in dollars and go from there. I did this a few years ago and for the most part they're all about the same. My dad travels a lot for business and he uses a Delta Skymiles reward card and an American Airlines card.

As for hotels we use their rewards program (paying with Discover) and try to stay at one particular chain (usually Hilton). That's the best and quickest way to obtain points and free nights.

Credit cards can be great in the rewards you're given. Discover had alot of different programs throughout this past year that we made extra money with. I pay as many things with my cc as I can: utilities, cell phones, internet, etc. Just have to be very disciplined when using credit cards. We pay our balance in full each month.

NedRN · Dec 19, 2012

If you are a frequent flyer, those kinds of reward cards can give the greatest benefits. But lots of them are useless (I read). I have too many rewards credit cards, I believe four, that give cash back. This includes my primary bank, USAA (which I can't recommend enough). However, one of my hobbies is to pay the least I can for gasoline and my other rewards card give 5% off on gas (which at $4 a gallon recently is 20 cents a gallon)! They have recently changed the terms per quarter (every three months) so I have to rotate cards to always get that much off. They all revert to 1 percent off (as a minimum) on other purchases. USAA only offers 1/2% rebate on credit card purchases so I stopped using them much a few years ago.

USAA also rebates all ATM withdrawals fees at any ATM, and no fee credit card advances that come out of your bank account (useful for coming up with large sums of cash when leasing apartments on travel assignments).

Management is easy for all the cards I use. No interest and no fees because I pay them off automagically in full each month with a direct debit from a bank account. As I do with all my bills. I try first to pay bills with credit cards first because of the cash back. Not all utilities allow that, but eventually everything hits my bank account without any hands on. Good for traveling.

Finding cards is something else. If you google reward cards, you will find a site or two that reviews them so you can compare rewards, fees, and interest rates (since I pay in full every month, I don't care about rates). There are a lot of cards that you can't get without getting a promotional letter. If you have decent credit and have a few cards, you should eventually get a lot of offers you can chose from.

OBnurse95 · Dec 23, 2012

Nerdwallet.com is a great place to investigate the best credit card to suit your needs :)

SoJoFlo · Feb 4, 2014

It's not so much which one card to have, but where to use which card for the most points/rewards. I have multiple reward cards and accounts, so I use a website to compare deals I can get. If you're a traveler or just like dining and shopping, check it out: rewardassistant.com

morningland · Apr 8, 2014

Get the Chase Freedom.

There is no annual fees and you build big reward points on everything from gas, resturaunts, coffee, ect. I use it all the time and estimate that I rack in between 700-1000$ in rewards every year.

NedRN · Apr 8, 2014

I have Chase Freedom, but for me, the rotating gas credits means less than full time use. Since I wrote the post above, I now have a PenFed card that offers 5% on gas and 3% on groceries year round. In practice, it is a bit annoying as you can only get a credit card to cash the rewards, and works out at about 20% less than 5% and 3%. But that is still better than 1% for Chase Freedom much of the year. Chase also has 5% off of Amazon and Lowes for different quarters which is useful. I use both year round.

ASHRN828 · Apr 11, 2014

I thought it said NedWallet.com, lol..

NedRN · Apr 11, 2014

If I collect any more credit cards, I will need a bigger wallet to hold them all. As it is, I already carry three inches of affinity cards in my car for stores in different parts of the country. Plus library cards. NedWallet.com would be a great idea to put them all in the cloud!

brillohead, ADN, RN · Apr 17, 2014

If I collect any more credit cards, I will need a bigger wallet to hold them all. As it is, I already carry three inches of affinity cards in my car for stores in different parts of the country. Plus library cards. NedWallet.com would be a great idea to put them all in the cloud!

If you have a smartphone, there is an app (probably more than one!) that you can use to scan in all your various reward / frequent shopper / whatever cards. Then you just pull up the card in question on your screen and have the cashier scan the barcode image off your phone!

See: https://www.keyringapp.com/

NedRN · Apr 17, 2014

Yes, I probably should. However, I don't really trust the scanning process from a cellphone. I've had boarding tickets fail at airports.