Picking A Travel Credit Card

That $895 annual fee can either buy you real travel freedom or it can quietly drain your budget while you chase perks you never use. We put premium travel credit cards under a practical microscope and share what happens when you treat points like a tool instead of a hobby.

We walk through the exact cards we carry and why: what Amex Platinum is good for when you’re traveling heavily, why Amex Gold can be the smarter long-term play for dining and groceries, and why you still need a Visa like Chase Sapphire Preferred when you’re overseas and merchants refuse American Express. We also talk about booking travel through credit card portals, including when the multipliers and customer service make it worth it, and when you give up flexibility or hotel loyalty benefits. And yes, we tell the truth about airport lounge access, because “included” does not always mean “available.”

Then we get into the details that actually protect your wallet: how to think about a 3% credit card surcharge, what point values really look like in dollars, and how point maximizer services and award travel tools work behind the scenes. We share safer ways to find partner award redemptions, plus the biggest rule we follow when transferring points so you don’t get stuck with a one-way, non-reversible mistake. Finally, we cover underrated perks like foreign transaction fees, paying in local currency, rental car insurance options, trip interruption coverage, and purchase protection, along with scam red flags you should never ignore.

If you like practical travel strategies and real-world money decisions, subscribe, share this with a friend who loves points, and leave a quick review so more travelers can find us.

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"Wherever We May Roam: Finding Your Travel Style" - On Amazon

Transcript

Are Premium Travel Cards Worth It

Jim 0:00

We've tried three premium travel cards. One cost almost $900 a year. Is it actually worth it? Or are we just paying for a shiny piece of metal? Welcome to Wherever We May Roam, the new face of Travels with Jim and Rita. This podcast is about discovering your own travel style to explore the world. I'm Jim Santos, and along with my wife Rita, we spend more than 16 years traveling. Sometimes for a few weeks, sometimes for a few months, and sometimes a whole lot longer. And what we've learned is this: there's no right or wrong way to travel. Some people take extended getaways, some roam part-time, some work from the road, and some make travel a full-time lifestyle. This podcast is about helping you figure out what works for you and how to make it happen in the real world. So whether you're planning your next trip or thinking about something bigger, we're glad you're here. Let's get started. Welcome everybody to Wherever We May Roam. I'm Jim Santos alongside my wife and travel companion Rita, and today we're going to be talking about the best credit cards for travel. I should also mention there's a companion blog article on this topic with more details and comparison charts that you can find at jimsantosbooks.com. Now, in this episode, we're going to be talking about things like booking through card portals. We'll go into a little more detail about the cards that we use. The surcharge question, when you have to pay a 3% surcharge for using your card, paying for these point maximizer services that you see advertised on Facebook and other places, and other perks. We'll talk about the travel thresholds that you need to be hitting to make them worthwhile and cover some of the scams to avoid.

How We Use Cards For Points

Jim 1:46

So Rita start with the uh cards that we actually carry. Unlike a lot of people, I think we don't we don't carry a big balance on our credit card, so we pay a little bit on monthly.

Rita 1:56

No, we pay them every month.

Jim 1:58

Yeah, we use them off. We use them for just about everything, and uh then we pay them off each month, which you really have to do because they're they're charging 20 some percent.

Rita 2:07

Yeah, we'll make our do that. Yeah.

Jim 2:11

That becomes really ridiculous.

Rita 2:12

So but it is important to rack up those points.

Jim 2:16

Yeah, yeah. We're we're we're using them for the points, basically.

Platinum Versus Gold And Real Value

Jim 2:20

For when we were traveling a lot, we upgraded to the Amex Platinum card.

Rita 2:25

We did.

Jim 2:26

And the problem is that they raised the rates recently, it's up to $895 now uh for the card. And I think the second card is like another $295.

Rita 2:35

Yeah, yeah.

Jim 2:37

Now you can get anywhere from $1,500 to $2,500 back in bonuses for using the card.

Rita 2:44

Maybe.

Jim 2:44

Yeah, maybe. In theory, you can do that. You get you get credits for like streaming services, electronic subscriptions to New York Times and Washington Post. We had, I think it was a $15 or $25 a month credit on Uber.

Rita 2:58

Right.

Jim 2:59

You had the access to the lounges, and you know, a lounge visit can save you anywhere from $50 to $100.

Rita 3:05

Yeah, you figure every time you sit down in a restaurant in in an airport, it's at least for two people, more than $50.

Jim 3:14

Yeah, they also reimbursed us for our uh global entry fee.

Rita 3:18

Right.

Jim 3:18

For that. So when we were traveling a lot, that made sense. But now that we've cut back on the travel and gone back to just uh doing the extended getaways and the part-time roaming, we downgraded to the MX Gold. Right now, it was important that we checked before we did that to make sure we could keep the points that we already had on our platinum card because we did we didn't want to lose those. But that MX Gold card, we get four times points on dining out and at grocery stores.

Rita 3:49

Right.

Jim 3:50

So that really is a big deal. And the fee for that is $325 a year, and there's no fee for the second card.

Rita 3:57

Yeah, which is wonderful.

Jim 3:58

Yeah, so so that gives you a threshold that's pretty easy to hit there.

Rita 4:01

Right. And when we did have the platinum card, the platinum Amex, it it did allow us to go into lounges and it did have other perks.

Jim 4:12

The priority when you priority, the um ride service.

Rita 4:16

The ride service from airports to downtown and whatever city you were going to. So it it does have perks if you're going to actually use that service. Yes.

Jim 4:27

Yeah. One of the problems, though, of course, is especially in Europe, a lot of places do not like to take the American Express card.

Rita 4:33

Not at all.

Jim 4:34

Because they charge the vendors a higher processing fee.

Rita 4:36

Right.

Jim 4:37

For that. So you really also need to have at least one visa or MasterCard or something like that. And the best one that we've found for that is the Chase Sapphire Preferred.

Rita 4:48

Right.

Jim 4:48

That's only $95 a year and no fee for the second card. And you get a $100 hotel credit. So you can take the $100 off a hotel stay and have them reimburse you for that. So that alone covers the cost of the card. Uh they also have some point multipliers for for certain types of purchases. And like American Express, you can go to their site to book uh airlines and hotels uh using your points.

Rita 5:15

Yeah. And we we usually buy our tickets, I mean, are able to purchase our tickets with our points on airlines.

Jim 5:23

Yeah, I mean, on several of the trips that we've made, things like having that ride service, you know, somebody holding your name misspelled on a card when they get there.

unknown 5:31

Right.

Jim 5:31

Uh and you mentioned the lounge access. Uh also uh that uh hotel program through American Express. We found that great hotel in Prague.

Rita 5:40

Oh, yeah.

Jim 5:41

That really saved our lives when we had COVID.

Rita 5:43

Right.

Jim 5:44

Uh, because we had a nice, comfortable place.

Rita 5:46

And they catered to us.

Jim 5:47

They brought us all of our food brought up to our room. And I noticed the staff started wearing masks whenever they came up to our room took away. That's no joke. I think word got around.

Rita 5:55

Yeah, I think they knew we were dying in there.

Jim 5:58

Now,

Booking Portals Wins And Tradeoffs

Jim 5:59

speaking of booking through the card portals, the pros on that is that usually if you book your airline through the card or using the card through their service, you often get point multipliers for that. As many as five times the points. You do uh for booking that. It's one-stop booking. You know, you go to this one place, you pick it out, and you can get your airline reservation, your hotel reservation. They really helped us out with American Express when I booked a flight, I think it was the Thessaloniki, and I misread the schedule and booked us for 12 a.m. instead of twelve p.m. And normally with the airlines, if you're booking it just through like an aggregate service, once you book it, it's booked.

Rita 6:41

Yeah.

Jim 6:42

And and that's it. But I called them back and explained that I made a mistake and it was, oh no problem, let's see if we can move to a different flight.

Rita 6:49

Right. Was that American Express?

Jim 6:50

That was American Express, yeah. Uh so that was very good. Uh the cons, if you're in a hotel loyalty program, you may not be able to uh claim the points for that. Uh you do lose some booking flexibility, like for instance, say your flight gets canceled or something. You can't just contact the airline to make the changement or to make the change, you have to contact your credit card company uh to go through that. And like I say, it has made a big difference for us in the past. For instance, the last time we went to Europe and back, our flights cost us a total of $300.

Rita 7:24

Right.

Jim 7:25

So that was definitely worth that $895 fee at that time.

Rita 7:29

Right. Well, but actually we could have done that with points now.

Jim 7:34

Yeah, now we're looking at going flying to Madrid this spring. And looks like right now with our point total, we can get there for about $200.

Rita 7:43

Yeah.

Jim 7:44

And so by the time it comes around to buy the tickets, that'll probably be even less.

Rita 7:48

And the other big perk of the Platinum American Express was the lounges. However, we could not always get in the lounges because they were overcrowded, or there was a time limit. You could only get in like two hours before your flight.

Jim 8:07

Right. In Edinburgh, there were two lounges that were right next to each other.

Rita 8:11

And couldn't get in there.

Jim 8:12

Yeah, we couldn't get in either one. There was like a 45-minute to an hour waiting list. So we ended up at a at a restaurant in the world. Right. Yeah.

Rita 8:18

Yeah. But if you can get in, yes, it saves you at least $50 a person. Or yeah.

Jim 8:26

All right. Let's

The 3 Percent Surcharge Math

Jim 8:27

talk about that surcharge debate. This is coming up more and more often in the United States now. That companies, especially contractors, if you want to pay by credit card, they want to give you, they want to put a 3% surcharge.

Rita 8:39

Right. So we normally just pay by check.

Jim 8:42

Yeah, just go ahead and pay cash for those.

Rita 8:44

Right.

Jim 8:44

Sometimes it may be worth doing that. Like if you have a big contracting job, say five, ten thousand dollars.

Rita 8:50

Oh, yeah.

Jim 8:51

And you've just upgraded your card. And usually with those upgrades, you have to hit a certain dollar amount within a certain time period. So if you're trying to maximize points to hit a threshold like that, then it may be worth taking a bit of a loss to do that. Right. But you have to figure that when you're getting your points, they're generally one to one and a half cent each is what their dollar worth is. So it's really one to one and a half percent that you're getting in the form of points. If you're getting a multiplier, if you're getting two times the points, then it's a wash. If you're getting three or four times the points, then yeah, it may make sense to go ahead and do that. But generally on contracting services, things like that, you're not going to get any multiplier. So usually it's not going to be worth your while to go ahead and pay those large amounts if you have that 3% surcharge.

Rita 9:39

No.

Point Maximizers Tools And Safety

Jim 9:40

Now, something else that we see all the time, especially popping up in Facebook, are people who are offering to maximize your points. Uh they're telling you if you book through your credit card, you're going to use 15,000 points for this flight, but if you use our method, you only use 400 points and get the same flight.

Rita 9:59

If you pay them a monthly fee.

Jim 10:01

Yeah, they want a monthly fee of $10,000 to $20 a month, which may be worth it if you travel a lot and have a lot of points. But these paid tools, point.me and points yeah, uh are are two of the ones who offer these these services. What they're doing is that each credit card will have partners in the airline or hotel field. And they have arrangements to transfer points between them and their partners. So you just have to know which partners your particular cards are using. And you can find that information just by searching on the internet and make a list. So you'd have to go through a little bit of work yourself, but you can actually figure out which ones will offer that and then make the deal yourself. Uh there are Reddit communities that will help you find uh which which airlines match up to which cards. And there are some free tools. One's called Expert Flyer, and another's called Award Wallet that uh tell you the best place to try to exchange your points. One thing to keep in mind though is when you're transferring points like that, don't complete the transfer until the seats are confirmed. Because often that transfer of points is non-reversible.

Rita 11:10

Right.

Jim 11:11

So you could end up just losing the points and then losing the seats. So you want to make sure that if you're doing this, you have your seat confirmed and you have the amount confirmed before you actually transfer the points. Now there are a bunch of perks beyond the points. We've mentioned a few of these, like the uh lounge access and getting the global entry reimbursed. Uh

Perks Insurance Scams And Wrap Up

Jim 12:03

also these cards do not have foreign transaction fees. So when you're using them to make purchases in restaurants or shops overseas, you you pay in the local currency and you're not charged the fee for the transfer.

Rita 12:16

Yeah, you would have a transaction fee if you wanted to pay in local.

Jim 12:20

Yeah, if you said I want to pay in dollars, then there will be a transaction fee. So that's why we say to always pay in the local currency. If you don't have one of these cards we're talking about, be sure and check before you travel with them to see if they charge foreign transaction fees. Because if they do, you might end up paying no matter what you do. We've also been buying our uh trip interruption service on the American Express website. Technically, you don't have to have an American Express card to do that, but it has been very useful for us in the past. With American Express right now, we're paying a $25 fee whenever we rent a car and use their their card. Now, we get a special deal with Avis because of their program, but what that $25 gets you is insurance for up to 90 days on the vehicle, and it's just one $25 charge, not $25 a day.

Rita 13:10

Right.

Jim 13:10

So that in itself actually could pay for that platinum card.

Rita 13:14

Yeah, because when Ireland wasn't a country that we could do that with, it was $1,800 for a month.

Jim 13:21

Well, they started out wanting uh three times the amount of the car rental for the insurance.

Rita 13:25

Yeah.

Jim 13:26

So yeah, it's defin definitely something that can save you a lot of money on that.

Rita 13:30

Yes.

Jim 13:30

And then there are also services that the cards will have that aren't necessarily something you would think of right off the bat. Like I think we mentioned another episode we once had rented a van in Ecuador from a cheapo rental service.

Rita 13:45

Right.

Jim 13:45

And we were driving family all around the Andes. The car was not in very good shape. It struggled to get up hills.

Rita 13:52

It was a big van.

Jim 13:53

It was a big van. And when I returned it to Guayaquil, I was afraid to shut it off when I stopped for gas. It was running so poorly, I was afraid it wouldn't start again.

Rita 14:01

Right.

Jim 14:02

When I stopped. Also had an incident in a parking garage where there was a slight crumple on a fender.

Rita 14:08

Right.

Jim 14:09

And we had our insurance with that through Alliance and Through American Express. No, we we just had it through Alliance. When we booked it. And Alliance was willing to cover what they said to cost to repair the fender, but they also wanted us to pay to repair the engine, rebuild the entire engine.

Rita 14:27

That's right.

Jim 14:28

And that was about $5,000.

Rita 14:30

That was ridiculous.

Jim 14:31

They were trying to get us to pay for that too, and Alliance is saying, Oh, we don't cover that, we don't have anything to do with that. And I was talking to someone at American Express about a different issue, and I mentioned that as we were talking, and he said, Oh, why don't you just submit it to us? He said, But I didn't buy any insurance for that. He said, Well, did you pay American use American Express when you paid for it? And I said, Yes, I did. He says, Okay, well just submit it to us. And a few days later, we had the $5,000 credit on our account. So there are there can be some very big advantages to having these cards, and don't forget to check to see if you qualify for some of these things. Similar to getting the money back for the van, if you've lost items, say if you've rented your car using your credit card and something was stolen from the card, you can also have been re reimbursed part of the money for that. You can get purchase protection on uh expensive items that you've bought, like say uh cameras, TVs, computers, things like that. You can have purchase protection on that that goes beyond the general warranty coverage. So these are all things that you need to check into. And you know, if you can get those, you might as well know that you can get them so that you're prepared just in case something happens.

Rita 15:39

Yeah, you wouldn't take want to take a laptop if you didn't think it was covered. An expensive laptop anyway.

Jim 15:46

Yeah, and knowing the perks that go along with your card are the way that you can get that get your money's worth from having the cards. Right. Yeah.

Rita 15:55

Yeah, I uh and absolutely I wouldn't I wouldn't go out of the country without not just with one credit card. I suggest two or three and and your spouse have two or three as well. Yeah. Because we have had our cards compromised while we've been traveling.

Jim 16:14

Yeah, if you're getting any kind of credit fraud alert or something like that, you you can have your card suspended. And that's another reason that we keep them on our Apple wallet as well. Because you can get that updated immediately while you're traveling. But but yeah, if if each of you have two or more credit cards, you're not going to be able to do that. We should be good.

Rita 16:32

Especially, I mean, because when we travel, we're we're months out. We're not, it's not like we can come home and pick up the new card. We can't do that.

Jim 16:41

Or even have it FedEx to us because sometimes we're moving around too much.

Rita 16:44

Right. Every five days we're in a different city.

Jim 16:47

So let's break it down to those three cards. How much travel justifies those fees for having a fee? The no-brainer really is the Sapphire preferred $95 a year, and you have a $100 hotel uh reimbursement.

Rita 17:03

Right. So it pays for your fee.

Jim 17:05

Yeah, so that that's pretty much a a no-brainer.

Rita 17:07

And everybody takes visa. That's the other thing.

Jim 17:10

That's pretty much universally accepted.

Rita 17:11

Yeah.

Jim 17:12

That gold card, just a moderate amount of travel really pays for that.

Rita 17:16

It does.

Jim 17:16

It matters if you especially if you go to restaurants a lot, but everybody buys groceries.

Rita 17:22

Right.

Jim 17:22

And you're getting the four time points on those groceries. And if you're using it like we do, again, you really we don't carry a big balance on our cards. We pay them off every month. Every month. So we're not paying that 18 to 20 percent surcharge on it.

Rita 17:36

Right.

Jim 17:37

And then the platinum, of course, that's for the really dedicated traveler. I think you probably have to be taking more than three or four trips a year.

Rita 17:43

Be gone twelve months rather than Or at least nine months. Yeah, well, we were gone nine months when we got it.

Jim 17:49

Then you're definitely going to be getting your money's worth out of that. So probably the best thing to do is track your credit usage for a year or so before deciding on any major upgrade. Make a list of the streaming services you have, what they cost, and make sure you're comparing what you actually get from that card and what you're actually going to use. Uh for instance, that Uber credit that we got.

Rita 18:13

Right.

Jim 18:14

There were some months we didn't use Uber at all.

Rita 18:16

No, because we were because we weren't here.

Jim 18:18

Yeah.

Rita 18:18

Yeah, we weren't traveling.

Jim 18:20

So that $15 a month didn't equate to you know $150, $200 a year because we just weren't using it that often.

Rita 18:27

And we use, like in Europe, we use bolt.

Jim 18:30

Yeah, using bolt and lift. And oh actually Uber in Europe didn't count either. It was in the US. Yeah, so read the fine print.

Rita 18:38

Yeah.

Jim 18:38

This is really there's also some scams and some traps to avoid. The the scammers are really getting blatant. I I've just been fighting with or AI calls from people trying to sell Medicare Advantage programs.

Rita 18:54

Yeah.

Jim 18:54

And they always talk like they're an actual person, you know, hi, this is Sam, and then they'll go so that you think that they're actually a human. Right. But they all cough exactly the same way and at the same time. And they'll try to get you to say things that uh they can record and then say, Oh, well, you ordered this. You know, you said yes to this, so you wanted it. But in the credit card field, you're also going to see some scams and some traps. One thing are these uh point maximizers, the ones who tell you that they can get you know these flights for just a few points. Some of those are legitimate agencies, but some of them are not. And a key thing is if they ask for your credit card number so that they can look up your points or ask for your password so that they can connect to your points. No legitimate company is going to want to do that. So if you don't give anybody your credit card number, I'm I'm I'm surprised I have to say that. But don't give anybody your credit card number on the phone. There's also uh some people that will try to help you maximize your points. Uh, we mentioned if you get an upgrade, sometimes you'll get 50,000 bonus points, but you have to spend $10,000 in three months. So some companies will offer to sell you gift cards or bonus cards. You know, you buy these gift cards and then you can use them at Home Depot, and you know, you've got your points. But if the credit card companies flag on that that you're buying a bunch of gift cards, they can invalidate those purchases. So you want to be careful with what you're doing there. And also sometimes they'll just use that information to buy their own gift cards.

Rita 20:24

Right.

Jim 20:25

Yeah.

Rita 20:26

Lucky you.

Jim 20:26

Yep. Any third-party award booker who says that they can resell your miles, they can take them and resell them, that's generally a scam too. Again, you don't want to give them your private information. And always avoid people with the panic transfer. You know, your points are about to expire. You've got to transfer these now. You know, transfer them to us and then we'll keep them in reserve for you when you do this. You know, anytime somebody's trying to pressure you and get you to move quickly, that's a red flag. So if you've got any tips on the cards that you like to use, some things that have really helped you out in the past about your credit cards or some problems that you've had with that, just let us know about it by emailing us at jim@jimsantosbooks.com, or you can leave a note on our podcast page. So we've been talking credit cards and travel, and you'll find a link in the show notes to the companion blog article. And don't forget our book, Wherever We May Roam, Finding Your Travel Style, for more travel tips. Now, next week we'll show you how we're using AI tools to help us plan our next trip through Europe. Until then, remember we travel not to escape life, but so that life does not escape us. If you've been thinking about traveling longer or just traveling better, we hope this episode gave you a few more ideas. Remember, there's no right or wrong way to explore the world, only the way that works for you. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to follow the podcast, and if you have a moment, leave a quick review. It really helps more people find us. And if you want to go deeper, you can check out my book, Wherever We May Roam, Finding Your Travel Style, where I walk through all of this in more detail. You can search for it on Amazon in Kindle, Paperback, and Audiobook, or just use the link on our podcast page. If you have any questions, a topic you would like discussed, or would like to be on our show, email us at Jim @Jim Santosbooks.com. Thanks for listening, and as always, safe travels wherever you may roam.