What’s the best credit card for points/miles my cruise
New York, NY · Member since 2017 · 81 posts · 19 votes
Hi so I’m going on a cruise in a few months and it’s gonna be quite costly. I’m trying to credit card hack and get the best in return.I have a American Express blue card which gives me money back on a lot of purchases but not specifically a cruise. Just trying to see if anybody here got good credit card hacking ideas
I've personally used the Chase Sapphire Reserve for several years and love it. It has a high nominal fee ($550 I think currently), but the perks are great for travel, especially flying. I'm not sure it would necessarily help if you've already paid for the cruise, but find a good referral link and the points you get would probably significantly reduce the price of your next one.
Just a few of the perks:
- Automatically reimbursed for the first $300 spent on travel each year (this even applies to gas stations, so this basically reduces the cost of the card to $250)
- Pays for TSA pre-check or Global Entry ($100ish)
- Priority Pass select membership at airport lounges
- DoorDash Dash Pass subscription
- Plus all the usual travel card stuff like trip insurance and car rental insurance that saves too
If you are applying for a new card based on a large purchase, the biggest financial impact is going to be how big the signup bonus is, and not necessarily how effectively you will earn points for this particular trip. It takes a whopping 40k in spend @2% cashback to earn 200 bucks, but its super easy to get a 200 signup bonus.
Otherwise getting a card designed for travel (or cruises in particular) doesn't really help much if you don't plan on regularly traveling. Instead it's probably better to get a card that you can use for everyday spend. If you have the Amex Blue Everyday that gets you 3x at gas and grocery which is pretty good. If you wanted to stay in the AMEX ecosystem and don't spend enough regularly to make cards with annual fees worth it then you are probably limited to the Amex Magnet card with its 200 bonus and flat 1.5% on everything (blue card is 1% on non-category spend so magnate is slightly better).
If you're not tied to Amex, and want to maximize individual categories then something like the Altitude Go card from USBank is decent with 200 bonus, and 4x points at restaurants and a $15 annual streaming credit.
Chase Freedom Flex is 200 bonus and a rotating 5x category that changes every 3 months (capped at 1500 spend per quarter), and a 5x on travel stuff purchased through the chase travel portal. For the first year you also get 5x on groceries. Chase points have a high number of affiliate partners to transfer points and get some pretty good value from each point. You do have to manually activate the quarterly bonus stuff which is kind of annoying.
If you currently rent an apartment, the Bilt credit card is pretty amazing since you earn 1x point by paying rent (can almost always be used since Bilt can even mail your landlord a check if need be). There is no signup bonus but points can rack up quick since no other card will earn you points for rent. You do have to make 5 normal transactions per month in order to get the rent bonus, but the card has 2x points on travel, 3x on dining, and 1x on everything else. Points are best used as a 1:1 redemption for travel partners , 1.25 cents each if you use their travel portal, or 1.5 cents per point if you save your points and eventually use them towards the down payment of owning a home.