Credit card spend strategies

[wileeeeeey]

Does anyone here with up for or use multiple credit cards which they spend on throughout the year to hit certain tiers/bonuses then switch to a different cards when the reward for each card is unlocked?

I use a cashback credit card for nearly every single spend I make and pay it off in full each month to achieve cashback. I had £430 cashback last year and this year I'm on track for a bit more but have read that it might be better to have more than one card and move spend onto different cards. Does anyone do this?

I was thinking about getting the paid for BA Amex for the first £10k to unlock the main reward and then after that moving to a different card, so on and so forth. I'm not sure I want to go through as many sign up bonuses as I can as I don't really want to continually open multiple credit lines, would prefer 2-4 cards which are good for long term spending.

Does anyone here do this and if so what do you recommend? I am normally against paying annual fees for credit cards after finding a top tier charge card utterly useless and awful value for money previously but the BA Amex seems worth the cost?

[Devonian]

I do quite a bit of travelling and love flying in Upper class (but don't like paying full whack) so I use air miles credit cards. I've had the Virgin one for maybe 15 years and flown upper at least 10 times and all through using the miles gained on the spend. Normally used going to Vegas, Miami or Orlando. Virgin is probably the best one for the U.S.A or Caribbean. I always pay for the card which is £140 I think as you get double the air miles. I use it for my business as well which really boosts it up. That said the cost of a flight has risen. I flew last year to Vegas for 100,000 miles and I'm going this June and it was 160,000. Since they change the credit card rules (about not being able to charge you) the perks have reduced.

I've just applied for the BA Amex card as going forward I'm more likely to travel to the Far East and Australia and am sure that card will benefit me more, so I may switch to the free Virgin one. It's worth checking out 'headforpoints' to see what they say about the card. Also 'seatspy' for looking at availability of air miles with Virgin and BA. Loads of people say that they struggle to use air miles and so its a waste of time - I've used mine every year without a problem, you just need to look at how to use them best.

[senwar]

I have numerous:

IHG Rewards - hotel points - this is my main card, use it for most of my spend and get shedloads of free nights.
Virgin Atlantic - use for booking flights and upgrades
Hilton - similar to IHG but don't use as much
Halifax Clarity - use for overseas spend.

Pay each off every month - but similar reasons to yourself

[wileeeeeey]

HFP is a good site and I got the Amex Platinum a few years ago after reading it. Some years of spending and 190k membership rewards points into Virgin later and I got 2x upper class return tickets to New York. Very nice but still paid over £1k in taxes and still have about 150k miles left over with Virgin that I need to use.

Back then I figured the airmiles route was a bit complicated for me (membership rewards, Avois, constantly converting etc) so moved to the cashback card. Now I'm thinking the opposite and a mix of cards might be smarter.

Tempted to get the BA Amex (£195) and possibly the HSBC Premier world elite card (£195+£60) for the combination of 2-for1 travel, Avois and lounge access. With no kids the Platinum charge card at £575 is still the same poor value it was before and I don't care if my card is metal or plastic.

[MrSmith]

I have switched to the BA/Amex card purely to go go business class next year to Japan with my partner and intend to refer her (more bonus points) for a card and pool the Avios. Have upgraded to the paid card as was unlikely to hit the 20k spend in time for the companion voucher, but will downgrade at some point.

I’m only bothering as there is an ‘end game’ of a long haul business class trip. I’m self employed so don’t tend to go on long haul holidays or take big blocks of time off.

I couldn’t be bothered to chase deals/swap cards without a good reason though. Collecting Avios is easy and a quick check on Amex to see if there are any point multiples at shops/services takes a few seconds.
I do Quidco but only on larger items or insurance etc so get about £100 a year back.

I’m not a huge spender though (no kids or car) so never going to get loads back but work travel and expenses on the card means I can acquire enough points.

[Peck]

I have built up an enormous pile of Avios over the years so the paid BA Amex card has always been a no brainer. Like Mr Devonian I’ve never struggled to use Avios, but you do need to do your research and sometimes book almost a year out because availability can be limited on popular routes (Australia is a notorious one for example). Me and the mrs have probably taken a dozen long haul business class flights over the last few years on miles using the 2-4-1 voucher.

However other than that I’ve never really played the credit card game. I’ve always been under the impression you need to have very high spend to make it worthwhile. The hotel credit cards for example... I’ve yet to find a better programme to use than hotels.com especially in recent years as joining bonuses seem to have been cut heavily.

As mentioned above head for points is a great resource for stuff like this. Also FlyerTalk has loads of good info to wade through.