My Favorite Rewards Credit Cards

Best All-Around Card for Travel Rewards

Starwood Preferred Guest American Express Card - 1 point per $1 spent. 20,000 Starwood points = 25,000 airline miles (free ticket).

You can get 10,000 points or $100 gift certificate. (to stores like Amazon.com) just for signing up and making a purchase. Currently, you can also get an additional 15,000 points by spending $15,000 on the card within the first 6 months. That’s a potential total of 25,000 points, which can now be redeemed for any airline ticket priced up to $345.

This card is also great for people who like to travel and make the most of their existing frequent flier miles, and can be very useful for getting miles for many different airlines like Delta, American, and more. Click here for details. If you redeem for hotel rooms, you can get a cashback return of 6% or more. Annual fee is waived for the first year, and is $45 the second year if you keep it.

Best Rewards Card For General Spending (Costco members)

Costco Lovers: The Costco TrueEarnings American Express card is now offering $25 bonus after your first purchase. This is a good all-around cashback card, offering:

• 3% cash back on gasoline (any, including Costco gas, up to $3,000 a year)
• 3% cash back at all restaurants
• 2% cash back on travel (airline, lodging, car rental, cruise line, travel agency and tour operators)
• 1% cash back on everything else, including Costco

There is no limit on cashback you can earn, and no annual fee with your Costco membership. It also doubles as your membership card, preserving some of that precious wallet space.

Best Rewards Card for Eating Out & Amazon.com

The new Citi Forward card offers you 5x rewards on purchases at bookstores, on movies and music, and at restaurants. This is like getting 5% back towards gift cards, or more than 3% cash back on eating out and more. In addition, since Amazon.com is a bookstore, all your purchases there also qualify. You also get 100 points each month you pay your balance on time and don’t exceed your credit limit. See my Citi Forward review and rewards follow-up for more details.

There is also currently a sign-up bonus of 11,000 ThankYou points for making $250 in purchases and electing for paperless statements within 3 months of account opening. That’s enough points to exchange for $100 in gift cards from stores like Sears, Staples, Overstock.com, Macy’s, or Gap.

Best Rewards Card for College Students

The goal of every rewards card is to give you just enough good stuff to have you use it for everything, and this card is smart. What were my two top expenses as a college student besides rent? Eating out and textbooks. Fittingly, the Citi mtvU Platinum Select Visa card gives you 5 ThankYou Points for every dollar you spend at restaurants, bookstores, record stores, movie theaters and video rental stores. These points can be converted to up to 5% back in gift cards or 5% back in cash towards your student loans.

In addition, one perk is that everything you buy from Amazon.com gets 5% back as well, as it is categorized as a bookstore! They can’t tell if you bought books there, or went for some DVDs instead, or even a laptop.

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