The Best Travel Credit Card Strategy If You Mostly Fly Inside The U.S. — Since Most Advice Is Built For Trips You Won’t Take

Nick Reyes addresses the best rewards credit cards for domestic travelers, someone for whom redeeming points for long haul business class isn’t relevant. Most advice is predicated on business class travel because that’s where points transfers can deliver outsized value.

His take, in essence (which is largely correct) centers around:

• Bilt Palladium Card (See rates and fees): earn 2 Bilt Points per dollar on all of your spending, and these are the best points. You can transfer to Alaska Atmos, United, Southwest and Hyatt, and the card gives you a Priority Pass. They have the biggest transfer bonuses. And you can also use the points at 1.25 cents apiece towards paid trips through their portal.

  Plus, you can use Bilt Cash to earn 3x on up to $25,000 in purchases, you get a $200 twice annual hotel credit (with a 2-night minimum stay), and earning the card’s 50,000 point bonus after $4,000 in non-housing spend in the first 3 months also gives you Gold status for a year and that lets you earn Bilt points through Rakutent at 1:1.

• Southwest Rapid Rewards® Priority Credit Card (See rates and fees) currently has a limited-time offer to earn 90,000 bonus points after spending $3,000 on purchases in the first 3 months from account opening.

  Having the card gets you back a lot of what Southwest took away in recent changes to its business model. That includes getting first checked bag free for cardmembers and up to 8 additional passengers in the same reservation; select a Preferred seat at booking at no additional charge when available; and getting earlier boarding which means better access to overhead bins.

• Best hotel card I think is right to be a free agent unless you’re earning Globalist status with Hyatt, the returns to hotel loyalty aren’t high enough in other programs and for those earning valuable enough status to matter the card doesn’t add enough at the margin for most. There are exception cases!

• Citi Strata Premier® Card (See rates and fees.) if you’re exceeding the spend you can do on a Bilt Palladium Card at 3 points per dollar since this will get you 3x earning on air travel, hotels, restaurants, supermarkets, gas and EV charging stations and you get the ability to transfer to American Airlines.

I’m going to push back a little bit on the theory. First, I think the Bilt Palladium Card is even better than this because you can earn 3.3 points per dollar when spending 75% of the amount of your rent or mortgage and then using Bilt Cash to earn points when paying through through Bilt, and then earn 3 points per dollar redeeming Bilt Cash for points accelerator.

So the cap on earning 3 points or more is much higher than that. There’s actually a strategy to earn 4 points per dollar on all of your spending by foregoing Bilt Cash entirely. Bilt’s Palladium Card is more powerful than Nick lays out.

I am going to push back a little bit on best airline card. I think that Nick is absolutely right that Southwest Rapid Rewards® Priority Credit Card can be the right one, and the bonus now gets you most of the way to a Companion Pass which remains the best accessible benefit in travel.

• But I think the best airline card is the one with the airline you fly most, if you don’t have status with the airline.

• And the only reason to actually spend money on an airline card is to earn credit towards status (or Companion Pass).

• They all offer benefits that approximate some sort of status, like free checked bags or earlier boarding. So if you fly one airline semi-regularly but not enough to earn status, get that airline’s card, but do not necessarily spend money on the card. It usually offers a poor return for your spending, especially compared to something like Bilt Palladium.

• Arguably right now the most indispensible airline card is the United^SM Explorer Card (See rates and fees) because as a cardmember you earn more points flying United, and your miles go farther when redeeming for travel.

  Although I would say Citi® / AAdvantage Business^TM World Elite Mastercard® has an offer to earn 65,000 American Airlines AAdvantage® bonus miles after spending $4,000 in purchases within the first 4 months of account opening. [See rates and fees] is pretty compelling because it opens up double dipping in the AAdvantage Business program and earns extra status credit on every flight.

And I’m going to also suggest that where you travel from matters because you may want one lounge access card, and the one you get should be based on where you fly from and where you travel to most often.

• The American Express Platinum Card® (see rates and fees) gets you access to Centurion lounges. And it has the most lucrative statement credits. In my view this is not a card to use for spending other than airfare.

• Chase Sapphire Reserve® (See rates and fees) gets you Sapphire Lounge access with two guests. Right now it has an unprecedented offer to earn 150,000 bonus points after you spend $6,000 on purchases in the first 3 months from account opening. And it’s a card worth putting direct air and hotel (4x) spend and dining (3x) spend on. Plus there’s 8x earn on spend through Citi Travel.

• Capital One Venture X Rewards Credit Card gets you access to Capital One lounges and landings and the annual $300 travel credit plus 10,000 points at cardmember renewal can cover the annual fee.

If I lived in Washington, DC still then Venture X would be my no-brainer for the Dulles lounge and DCA landing (Capital One landings have the best food of any U.S. airport lounges I believe). If I lived in New York, their Delta JFK terminal 4 lounge plus LaGuardia landing make Venture X a no-brainer as well.

Capital One Landing New York LaGuardia

Capital One Landind Food Washington National

Capital One Lounge JFK Cheese Counter

In Philadelphia Sapphire Reserve is clearly king. Plus their lounge is good at LaGuardia. If I were flying from and to places without a Capital One lounge and with no Sapphire lounge, but where there was an Amex lounge I’d go for Platinum.

Chase Sapphire Lounge Philadelphia

For rates and fees of the American Express Platinum Card®, click here.