Questions and Answers

My cousin’s husband may get to speak at a conference in Europe in the fall. She’s asked me what card(s) are their best bets to be able to cover as much of the airfare as possible for her in. He won’t know for sure if he’ll be speaking until August so they’ve got some time to hit a minimum spend.

His airfare would be covered so she’d need either cash back or a flexible currency so she can get on the same flight.

Not sure where they stand on 5/24 because they churn the Southwest cards.

Am leaning toward Barclay Arrival+ as the signup bonus is 50K, min spend is $3000 and they’d have 6 months after purchasing the ticket to continue to accumulate points to offset the charge.

But I’m open to other suggestions!

Do they know what airline he will be flying?

No. They don’t even know that he’ll actually get selected to speak until August. She’s just trying to get ahead of things in case he does.

Barclaycard is probably the best choice. The only other that comes to mind is the Discover It card. I know it doesn’t get a ton of press, but I picked it up last year when it offered double cash-back on everything for the first year. I was able to max out each quarterly bonus category and put some other non-bonus spend on it, and now have about $1000 in cash back bonus.

The only downside is you then have to use the card to get the cashback, and Discover travel insurance is pretty terrible compared to my other premium cards.

If you’re interested, I do have a referral link for $50 cashback after making 1 purchase. (Shameless plug ;))

If they can hit the bonus spend and have room with 5/24 it may be worth it for them to look at maybe a combo of the CSP and the Freedom Unlimited. They would get the 50,000 bonus points for the CSP and the freedom unlimited earns 1.5% on everything. And if they had left over points at the end could use them to transfer to their Southwest account.

Thanks guys, I will put together some choices for them and let them decide.

If they only churn SW, then they are probably safe on 5/24 as you usually only do a couple of cards every two years. I’d look at getting the CSR for one of them and then a CSR or CSP for the other partner. Given that they have no control on what flights to take, the 50k bonuses from both cards will give them $1500 for a paid flight through CSR. They could also pick up the Freedom/Freedom Unlimited as time allows to boost that total.