Description: This article is going to talk about the four best credit card that have sign up offers above normal which are Chase Southwest, Amex Hilton, Chase Marriott, FNB TravElite.
Today we’re going to talk about the best credit card offers. This article is focused on cards that have sign up offers above normal. We’re going to talk about the four cards, the first one is a chase Marriott card, we are not going to talk about it much because we have another article that is specifically about it. The next ones are the Southwest cards, all three of the chase Southwest cards have offers that are above normal.
Most people who go for Southwest cards are going after companion pass, which means that if you get 110,000 Southwest points in one calendar year, your companions get stuff for free for two years, that can be a lot of savings.
Most people open up one business card and one personal card if they have a business, so it is 50,000 plus 60,000, that equals to 110,000. If you don’t have the business or if you don’t want a business card, then you can do both personal cards and you’re going to be close to 110,000 points. So Southwest usually have these promotions throughout the year but they usually wait till close the end of year to have an offer like this.
You can get two credit cards to get companion pass and they will give it to you in the year because once you get the companion pass for the current year, you get a 110,000 points for this year and next year. If you get a companion pass in September, then it is only available for the next three months and next year.
But with the business Southwest card, you get 60,000 Southwest points after $3,000 to spend in the first three months. If you value it at 1.5 cents per point, then it is worth about $900, which is 30% in return. However with the personal cards, you get 50,000 points, that is worth about $750, given that the minimum spend is $2,000, you get 25% in return.
Next we are going to talk about another set of cards, Amex Hilton Honors normal one card and the Amex Hilton Honors Surpass card. Both cards have offers that are above normal. The normal one card has no annual fee and it offers 75,000 point. And the Surpass one is 100,000 points. So both offers might sound good but it depends on if you could use the points.
So most people value Hilton points a 0.5 cents per point, which means that 75,000 points is $350 in value and 100,000 is $500 in value. For normal cards, you are doing $350 of value for $1,000 of spend, which means it is a 35% return, with a Surpass card, you are getting $500 of value for $3,000 of spend, which means it is a 16.7% in return.
For Hilton cards, there is an ADK point offer for $2,000 spend, and extra 5,000 points for an additional $1,000 spend, which means you are going to get 25 more dollars in value for an extra $1,000. If you are going to redeem them stateside, it doesn’t make sense because you can only get 0.4 or 0.5 cents per point, if you look in Asian countries, in Europe or in South America, it will make more value.
For example, I use it on my trip to Asia, and a five-star hotel is $75 to $100 a night, then it is 0.75 cents per point to 1 cent per point, it is way above the 0.5 cents per point. $75 a night times 7 nights is $525 divided by the thousand dollars that you are spending, you getting a 50% return on spend.
Now we are going to talk about First National Bank TravElite American Express Card. There’s one thing I want to mention is that there is no specific date, for most other promotions, they tell you when it is going to end, here it says limited time offer, and it is 25,000 points for 2,500 of spend in the first three months, which is $250.
The main reason I bring it up is that it has a lot of perks and it has no annual fee. You can see the perks in a lot of traditional high-end trouble cards as well, you get $100 Global Entry credit and $100 discretionary travel funds for baggage fee, for food and for other things like seat upgrades, without annual fees and a lot of spending requirements. As far as I thought, it is a great card because you have a zero dollar annual fee and you will get stuff for free, so you can spend $10 on the card and you are going to get $100 in value from the travel credit that you can use.
If you are someone that doesn’t have a Chase Sapphire Preferred or Reserve or any of those other trouble cards, this one has a lot of the perks focused on that area and you don’t have to pay a big annual fee.