Credit Card Shuffle

Like most of the world's population my travel and even excursions from my home have been greatly curtailed this year. This did not stop the wanderlust but practicalities quickly tampered those thoughts. The grounded version of wanderlust is considering how to travel the most for the least dollars when it is again safe to do so.

At the beginning of the year I held three travel credit cards with annual fees and thought I was getting value above the fee from each. Home for me is MSP, Delta's second largest hub (suck it Detroit!), and nonstops have become increasing valuable to me over the absolute cheapest fare so the Delta and the SkyMiles American Express card made sense for me for the free bags alone. Earlier boarding makes basic economy a more attractive option and this year's revision of refunding the annual fee via Delta gift card if $10,000 was spent made it even sweeter. I generally use this card for purchases that I don't have a higher earnings rate for as I consider one SkyMile to be worth slightly more than one penny.

I have also been a Holiday Inn/IHG points slut for over a decade now. Each year they are by far my most frequented chain due to the lower price points and simple number of locations. I have had an IHG card for several years, last year I opted to upgrade to the Premier as I found the fourth award night free a greater value than the 10% points rebate. The card comes with an annual free night good at most properties, effectively all for my travel patterns. I have yet to stay at an IHG property in 2020 but this card will be a keeper for years to come even though I don't really spend on it outside of my stays. This is a card to have, not to use.

The third travel card I began the year with was the Hilton Surpass American Express. Hilton has become my second hotel chain and the appeal of free breakfast and the limited PriorityPass membership made this card very useful. Hilton has received all of my non work travel to date in 2020. The annual fee came due last month and I decided that it was time for some belt-tighting. The only time I used this card was for Hilton hotel stays and the odd convenience store purchase where the card was at front of wallet during those hotel stays. There was no offer of a retention bonus due to the low spend so I closed out this card. $95 stays in my wallet in exchange for loss of uncertain future perks, I think I will be keeping the gold status the card granted through early 2022 though. Closing a card did give me an excuse to consider a new card to replace it. More on that next time.