How To Choose A Travel Credit Card (This Is What We Use)

there are so many different credit cards out there especially when it comes to travel credit cards but from our research a lot of them involve spending a lot of money in order to get those really good perks and points now we're going to explain more about what we mean by that in just a second but in this video we really wanted to walk you through our process in researching travel credit cards and also let you know which one we ended up going with now before this year we'd actually never had a travel credit card before we weren't doing a lot of traveling it made a lot more sense for us to have cashback credit cards and that's what we'd focused on but when we realized that we were doing a lot more traveling this year especially then even anticipated at the beginning of the year it just made sense for us to start getting rewarded with points for the spending we were doing anyways now when it comes to the research process me and Steph made sure that we were looking into a whole bunch of different cards and by no means did we look at like an exhaustive list of just every single card credit card that's out there on the market but it was really important for us to make sure that we're hitting at least the main ones so the ones that you would see on different blogs or at least ones that are being introduced by different travel influencers so to kick things off the American Express Club as I like to call it is a really interesting one because you'll find that even amongst your family and your friends there's a whole bunch of people that are using either the Platinum the gold or even the Cobalt card just to name a few from their lineup for a different number of reasons right with the vast majority of reasons either rooted in assumptions around the cards benefits or because they were referred to the to that particular card by someone else for us when we were looking for a travel card earlier this year it was because we knew that we were going to be traveling a lot over the next couple months so whether it was going to be for work or for the vacation that we had planned now similar to everyone else we follow and we also get served to us the videos where you have all these people that are talking about credit card hacking right they're using the credit card they're optimizing they're doing all these different things and they're getting all these different benefits now what's interesting is that when you're listening to a bunch of these people sometimes you're even hearing them talk about benefits where they're even getting free flights or they're getting into some of these lounges these exclusive lounges that we all hear about now basically all of this is to say that this was the first time that I had actually thought about getting a credit card specifically for the travel B benefits now when we were looking into the American Express cards we'd had a few friends recommend the platinum and the Cobalt cards specifically but obviously with me being me it was really important that I took a look a deeper look into their three feature travel credit cards so we're talking the Platinum the gold and the Cobalt card I didn't really bother looking into their co-branded cards so for example the aopl and the Marriott card because on the surface those cards were number one cards that we could get with our banks if we wanted to and number two they just seemed a little bit too specific especially in the case of the marot Kart where I I would all of a sudden have to start planning my travel around specifically going to Marriott hotels in order to get the most out of that card it just didn't really make sense to me I was mainly looking for a card that made sense in terms of having a really great signup bonus at least to kick things off for the first year and when I looked into all the different cards including the TD Aeroplan Visa infinite card what I realized is that we needed to balance our travel for the upcoming year versus our travel moving forward and beyond that so basically what I mean by this is that when I was doing all of this research what I ultimately ultimately realized was that it's all about how much you spend so if you're someone who spends a lot normally like on a day-to-day basis then you might as well be rewarded for that spend so you might as well maximize the Rewards or benefits that you're getting whether it's from a cash back dollars perspective or from a travel benefits perspective the problem though going back to that whole balancing our travel for the year versus our travel moving forward was that Beyond this year I knew that we weren't all of a sudden going to become jet Setters who all of a sudden would be would to justify spending $800 a year on an ax Platinum Card don't get me wrong the ax Platinum Card currently has a 100,000 Point sign up bonus but the minimum spend is $110,000 in order for you to start reaping some of those points and actually start bringing them in now on top of that let's say you know you do spend a lot in that first year on travel and you do get the points if you're not planning on continuing that type of spend moving forward then guess what you're not really getting the most out of the cards benefits which by the way are mainly travel related and on top of that you're still paying the $799 a year or $800 a year for that cart and guess what they also don't make it easy for you to downgrade your card to one that doesn't have a fee which by the way is what we thought we might do had we gotten some sort of American Express card so ultimately what's going to happen is that you might you might have to either cancel your card which by the way is not good for your credit score or you might have to go back and forth with American Express which could ultimately lead to them having you blacklisted from their products which has happened in the past so ultimately this this all happens or is going to happen because you wanted a car that didn't really meet your lifestyle or your long-term goals you know it's funny cuz after doing all this research I actually said to Steph that I understand why people get the Cobalt card specifically it's funny because they don't they don't have the highest first year signup bonus or or any big bonus really at all for the first year but what they do have is that they really reward you for your spend in the areas that the vast majority of people for better and For Worse are more likely to be spending their money so we're talking about getting five times the points on on restaurants three times the points on subscriptions and two times the points on travel related purchases which by the way the 2x on travel related purchases that matches exactly what you're going to get with the platinum card so you know from a spending perspective the Cobalt actually isn't that bad for us it would actually make a lot of sense to combine the Cobalt card and the TD Aeroplan Visa infinite card where the Aeroplan card that's where you're buying a lot of your flights and then everything else you just put that on the covalt card now Steph also has a cash back card with Neo Financial that we really love because they give almost as much as 5% cash back on a lot of the restaurants and a lot of the stores that we go to a lot by the way the link is in the bio but yeah there is a lot for us to think of think about at least moving forward from a credit card perspective and what would be the most optimized way okay now let's talk a little bit more about the travel credit card that we did end up going with so this year at the end of March we ended up opening Aeroplan accounts which is specifically the rewards point system that goes with Air Canada which is the airline we normally fly so we open that up at the the end of March before our first trip of the year and then we ended up going with the TD airoplan Visa infinite card I always get that wrong TD airoplan Visa infinite card at the end of September so that's the travel credit card that we opened up the annual fee that we pay is $139 and yeah that's what we've had for the last few months now to kind of complement the aopl points now so far we've accumulated 92,000 points that's the types of points that can go towards potentially getting a free flight in the future now the way that we've started to accumulate them is obviously from just putting our flight purchases and getting the points from purchasing flights but on top of that we got a from the credit card specifically the 10,000 Point welcome bonus that was after you make your first purchase you get that and then once you spend $5,000 on the card you get an additional 25,000 points so of the 92,000 points we' accumulated so far 35,000 of them have come from those welcome and like first threshold bonus points situation so then on top of the 92,000 points that we have that'll hopefully be accumulating towards a free flight or free flights in the future there's also $20,000 in sqm points that we have now that's their lingo for status qualifying miles this is something that I feel like a lot of people are interested in when it comes to travel credit cards cuz status levels or would get you things like lounge access potential upgrades I think the higher your status is the more likely you are to get different upgrades right upgrade meaning from like basic economy seats to business class let's say premium economy whatever it might be so so far we have 20,000 points that are going towards our status quality ifying miles literally that's what it's called we need 5,000 more to get the first status level so technically we haven't reached that first status yet we don't have lounge access yet and all of that but it should come as we get those additional points now side note really quick some travel credit cards you can actually get that access and that status right away by paying a higher fee right so some of the cards that we were talking about before that Dennis was mentioning on you can pay this High fee and get all the status and stuff right away for us that's not worth it we don't want to pay more money to go into these things any anyway and then feel like it was a free perk now if we're going to qualify it for it eventually anyway but the purchases that we would be making great but we didn't want to actually bake that into the fee that we were paying now something else that I wanted to mention is how you get these status qualifying miles I feel like even on our videos this year even though it's our first time traveling in years people are commenting on our very first trip video why didn't you guys like get all this for free from points and we're like yeah but we haven't traveled and accumulated these points yet right you actually have to take some time to build up these different points in order to get the free perks now something I really wanted to mention is that the tiers I'm going to be talking about right now are specific to Air Canada flights but it's going to be similar on different flights too so when you're picking your seats um even I guess it does not even really just based on seats but for the economy section you can get a basic flight which means like no refunds you bored last all of that stuff but it's cheaper typically by several hundred or potentially more if it's a more expensive flight then there's just the standard tickets and then you go up to premium economy business class first class all of that now for our last two flights this year or last two trips I guess one for our friend's wedding in Lake comoo one to La we decided to go with the basic flights cuz we were trying to go as low cost as possible on our trip now because we bought those basic tickets which saved us hundreds of dollars for each flight for each of those trips so definitely worth it in our books something to note is that we didn't earn any status qualifying Miles because of that now is any other seat preference that you get including just the standard ones you earn some points towards the status qualifying miles but we didn't get any for going basic now the 20,000 that we did get this year most of them came from the one time that we flew to Kenya with premium economy seats now we did that because we weren't paying for those flights for ourselves YouTube flew us out to to Kenya which was really awesome we loved that trip we loved the premium economy seats too but we normally wouldn't pay that money ourselves but that is what gets you more miles as well it's kind of like anything else in life the more you spend the more points you get the more you end up getting for free it's kind of the same here but I just really wanted to highlight that cuz I feel like people don't realize a lot of the time that you are spending a lot of money before you get the free perks so that's the travel credit card that we have have right now like Dennis said maybe we'll change up our credit card situation in the future but we're happy with the setup right now and we'll keep you guys posted on how it goes for us over the next few months and as we continue to use the credit card especially you know I think that one of the biggest takeaways for us has to be the fact that when it comes to credit cards and credit card shuring or credit card hacking ultimately What It ultimately ultimately comes down to is how much you yourself actually spend so if you're someone who's not planning on spending more money or don't have the ability to spend more money then it's probably not going to make sense for you to get some of these crazy credit cards that offer these crazy ridiculous fees right cuz you're just not going to you're not going to have the number one you're not going to have to spend to actually get the most points or to get the most benefits and two you're not going to be able to utilize the benefits so yeah I mean ultimately if you guys have any thoughts you any questions uh let us know down in the comment box below if you haven't checked out any of our previous videos make sure you check them out next door and let's go

Channel: Steph & Den

Views: 8,722

Keywords: Steph & Den, How To Choose A Travel Credit Card, Credit Card, Credit Cards, Top Credit Cards, Best Credit Cards, Travel Credit Cards, Best Travel Credit Card, Best Travel Credit Cards, Best Credit Cards For Travel, Best Credit Card For Travel, AMEX Travel Credit Cards, American Express, American Express Travel Credit Card, AMEX Platinum, Travel Credit Card Tips, How To Choose A Credit Card For Travel, TD Aeroplan Visa Infinite, TD Aeroplan Visa Infinite Credit Card

Id: ic1OT5rZHfs

Length: 10min 53sec (653 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 03 2023