With the recent draw down in our hotel and airline accounts, we need a plan to replenish them.  We have our travel plans set until December of 2017, so we have time to build our supply back up.  We plan to continue spending on the credit cards we have right now in order to maximize their bonus categories.  We also plan to sign up for some new cards, since we usually have lots of spending we can do in categories that we never get bonuses on.

Here are the choices of banks we can look at:

Chase – Right now, I think we have burned up our ability to get credit cards from Chase since Chase Bank has established new restrictions on extending credit.  Chase won’t give you any new credit cards if you have gotten more than five new credit cards, from any bank, within a 24 month period.  I’ve probably gotten more than 5 new cards in the past 6 months, so we are done with Chase for a while.

Citibank – We like to get American Airline and Hilton cards from Citibank.  Both have great sign up bonuses.  Unfortunately, we ran through both of them about eighteen months ago.  Citibank recently added language to the sign up terms that indicate you can only get the bonus two years after opening or closing the account.  So, I think we both have another year or so to go before we can cycle back through Citibank.  Citibank does offer the American AAdvantage Executive card, which we still hold.  We picked up that card when it had a sign up bonus of 100,000 miles plus a $200 credit.  The downside is the annual fee of $450.  The card gives you AA Lounge access, which is the main reason we keep it.  We do a lot of flying on AA with the miles we have, so its always nice to get free bags, priority boarding, and lounge access.  We could get another AAdvantage Executive card and cancel the old one, but we haven’t made that move yet.

American Express – Since AmEx and JetBlue have parted ways, we have less reason to consider a new American Express card.  I don’t usually try to get cash back cards because I like having free flights and hotel rooms available.  There are a number of Delta Airline AmEx cards available, but we haven’t stepped into the Delta waters yet.

Barclays – Barclays was a great source of miles when they offered the US Airways credit cards. We signed up for quite a few of them before they merged with American Airlines. We keep the cards open because Barclays waives the annual fees, gives us bonus spending on the cards (spend $1000, get 5,000 miles), and provides a 10% rebate on any AAdvantage miles that we use (up to 10,000 a year) for free flights.

Barclays is currently offering JetBlue credit cards, so that is something we may be leaning towards in the future.  Barclays also offers Hawaiian Airlines cards, which may be tempting if we do a return trip to Hawaii in the future.

Bank of America – We have settled on Alaska Airlines credit cards for now.  Bank of America offers Visa cards (which we can now use at Costco); there is a $75 annual fee, but they will give us 30,000 miles for $1,000 spent within the first three months.  When using the Alaska Airlines Visa to buy an airline ticket, you can also receive a companion ticket for $99 plus taxes, similar to the old US Airways credit cards from Barclays.  The miles earned through the Alaska Airlines credit cards can either be used on Alaska Airlines or on American Airlines, which should be more useful to us than Alaska Airlines.

So, that’s pretty much the landscape as we see it right now.

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