BEST FLEXIBLE POINTS EARNING PERSONAL CREDIT CARDS

Most of the airlines in US have a co-branded card between themselves and the merchant bank. But there are few credit cards which earn points that can be converted to miles of number of airlines. These cards have advantage of filling out the void of few thousand miles required in specific airline program as well as help in accumulating enough points which can be converted to miles for a reward travel. Lets explore these cards further:

1. American Express Premier Rewards Gold Card: This is one of the go-to card for earning points which can be converted to lot of partner programs, most of them at 1:1 ratio. This card has following features:

• 25k bonus points after spending $2k in 3 months.
• $175 annual fee waived for the 1st year.
• 3x points on airfare.
  
• 2x points on gas and groceries.
• 1x points on everything else.

The best part of this card is the redemption options available. You can redeem your points into miles for following airlines at the time of this writing:

• AeroMexico
• Air Canada
• Alitalia Airlines
• All Nippon Airways (ANA)
• Cathay Pacific
• British Airways
• Delta
• Air France
• Frontier Airlines
• Hawaiian Airlines
• Iberia Plus
• Jetblue
• Singapore Airlines
• Virgin America
• Virgin Atlantic

There are other airlines as partners but for them you can redeem the points only for specific tickets. You can also redeem for various hotel partners but that's not the focus of this article. The complete partner list can be found by going here and selecting "Use Points -> Airlines"

2. Chase Sapphire Preferred: This is one of the favorite personal credit card for lot of people simply because of the ability to earn bonus points on purchases through its "Ultimate Rewards Mall". This card has lot fewer airline partners compared to American Express Premier Rewards card and it transfers the points at 1:1 ratio as well. United and Korean airlines offer great redemption value. This card also has some great features as listed below:

• 40k bonus points after spending $3k in 3 months.
• $95 annual fee waived for the 1st year.
• 2x points on travel and dining. (This include cab, car rental, hotel stay etc)
• 1x points on everything else.
• 20% off when you redeem your points through Ultimate Rewards Travel service. That means a $100 redemption would give a value of $120.
• 7% annual points bonus every year on all new points earned in the year.
• No foreign transaction fee.

The airline partners are listed below:

• British Airways
• United Airlines
• Southwest Airlines
• Korean Air

There are other hotel and rail partners which include Hyatt, Marriott, Priority Club, Ritz-Carlton and Amtrak.

3. Starwood Preferred Guest: The value of this credit card lies in points+cash redemption in its brand hotels as well as 1:1.25 points to miles transfer ratio to most of its partner airlines. So for every transfer of 20k points you end up getting 25k miles. Also the long list of partner airlines makes this credit card a good to keep. Below are the features of this card:

• 10k bonus points on first purchase.
• 15k additional bonus points after spending $5k in 6 months.
• $65 annual fee waived for the first year.
• 2x points only on SPG hotel stays.
  
• 1x points on everything else.
  
• 25% bonus miles on transfer of every 20k points block

The amazing airlines partners list can be found here although few of them are listed below

• Air Canada
• Air New Zealand
• Alitalia
• All Nippon Airways (ANA)
• British Airways
• Delta
• Etihad Airways
• Iberia Plus
• Japan Airlines
• Lufthansa Airlines
• Qatar Airways
• Singapore Airlines
• US Airways
• United Mileage plus (Its 2:1 ratio though, so not a good value)
• LAN
• Virgin Atlantic

So if you are looking for flexibility of getting miles in the program you wish to fly then I would highly recommend to pick at-least 2 of above 3 cards for flexibility.

Note: I do not earn any referral credit from the links above. Also I advise to look for best available offer before applying for the credit cards.