Well, I must confess that if it weren’t for a diligent PIQ reader, I never would have even known about the existence of the Fannie Mae Visa Signature Card. Yup—overnight my impression of Sallie Mae has transformed from fuddy-duddy student loan processing company, to issuer of bad-ass credit cards. And lest Sallie fool you, this card is available to anybody, not just students or those with student loans.

“So what’s the big deal?”, you ask. Simple. The Sallie Mae Visa Visa card is a 2% cash back card with no annual fee. Doesn’t sound like much (certainly not as cool as “this card turns into Thor’s hammer on command”), but really that’s an amazing thing, and nearly impossible to find these days.

There is one “catch” when you go to redeem your points, but in my opinion it’s not a big deal, and you can read about it in full in the redemption section below.

You can apply for the Sallie Mae Visa Card here, or keep reading to get into the details.

Earning Points with the Sallie Mae Visa Card

You earn 2 points per dollar spent on all purchases, with no earning limits. Additionally, points never expire. You’ll also earn 10,000 points if you spend $500 within 3 months of card approval. A pretty average spend target bonus, and not the main attractive feature of the card.

Redeeming Sallie Mae Visa Points

So while you can redeem your points for statement credits (same as cash), in order to capture the maximum value of your points (the full 2% cash back effect), you’ll need to make sure to redeem in increments of 25,000 points ($12,500 of spend) or more. Otherwise, your points won’t be worth quite as much, as the table below shows. While somewhat annoying, in my opinion this is a small price to pay for having such a piece of plastic firepower in your wallet.

Quick Comparison To Some Other 2% Cash Back Credit Cards

The Fidelity Amex card is also a 2% card, but it’s main drawback is that it’s an Amex (accepted in fewer places than Visa). A minor disadvantage is that you need to open and link a Fidelity account to your card, but we think this is a non-issue, since you don’t pay any fees for the account and don’t need to maintain a minimum balance (and can withdraw cash freely from it).

The Capital One Spark Business Card (which you can still get even as an individual), has a better 2% cash back program as there are no redemption tiers. However, you do pay a $59 annual fee after the first year. It also has the awesome no-foreign-transaction-fees feature, so that needs to be added into the mix. You can use the PIQ Ranking Engine (which even allows you to specify the percent of your spend overseas) to run a true head-to-head comparison based on your own unique spending profile.

So What Do We Really Think About The Sallie Mae Visa Card?

Well, if you haven’t guessed it by now, let me spell it out to you: we really, really dig it. Man. This card is the 36-24-36 of plastic. With 2% effective cash back (assuming you are patient in your redemption strategy) and no annual fee, it’s a sure thing;) Now go and get her.

Apply for the Sallie Mae Visa Card.

If you are looking for a credit card that can turn you into a zombie, then Capital One’s Spark Business card may be the one for you. “Why?” you ask. Simple. With Spark’s 2% cashback rewards on purchases, you don’t need to think (unlike certain credit cards who’s rewards vary by time of year or by spend category). Sometimes, not thinking is nice.

It’s most folks’ inclination that since CapOne’s Spark is a small business credit card, and since they don’t have a business, they aren’t eligible to apply for the card. Nothing could be further from the truth. Read this nice post from My Money Blog on how individuals can apply for business cards to learn more.

You can apply for the CapOne Spark Business Card, or keep reading to get into the details.

Helpful Tip: Remember, if you use your social security number to apply for a business card, creditors are still evaluating your personal credit history, and if you default on the card, it’s your own credit score that will be tarnished. This is one benefit to applying for a business card as a business entity if you already have business credit established.

Earning Miles with Capital One’s Spark Business Card

Well, what can I say, the Visigoths have gotten it right this time. You earn 2% cash back on just about any purchases you make, with no earnings caps and no worries about your rewards ever expiring. Finding 2% cashback cards on the Visa and/or Mastercard network is the stuff of Mission Impossible, so Spark gets major PIQ points for that (too bad PIQ points aren’t worth shite).

The $100 spend-range bonus (earned after spending $1K within 3 months of card approval), isn’t all that great, and is a bit of a red herring. The real story of Spark is the 2% rewards. Period.

Redeeming Your Cash Back Rewards with CapOne’s Spark Small Business Card

Redemptions are a breeze with the Capital One Spark Card. You can redeem your rewards on demand, no matter how little or how much cash back you’ve earned. This won’t affect other automatic redemptions you’ve established. Capital One doesn’t hold your cash rewards hostage until you reach a certain amount or a certain date.

A Quick Examination of Spark’s Balance Transfer Capabilities

I was a bit surprised to read that there’s no balance transfer fee for Capital One Spark Cash. However, with a 13.9% APR (as of the writing of this post) that kicks in immediately when you transfer the funds, the Spark Cash card isn’t cut out for balance transfer work. Hey, nothing is perfect.

For instance, suppose you wanted to transfer $10,000 to your new Spark Cash card and pay it off within a year. At the end of 12 months, you’d have paid $768.80 in interest. On the other hand, if you found a credit card with a 0% promotional APR on balance transfers for 12 months and a 3.0% balance transfer fee (pretty typical), you’d only pay $300 due to the transfer fee. We’ve excluded sign-up bonuses, cash rewards, etc to simplify the analysis. The PIQ Credit Card Finder can point you in the right direction for balance transfer cards, but until Spark has a 0% APR offer out there, it ain’t the one.

Taking A Closer Look At the $59 Annual Fee

One question folks might ask themselves is, “Why should I pay a $59 annual fee (after the first year, which is free of annual fees), when I could just get a 1% cashback card with no annual fee?” It’s a fair question, and proves you aren’t a zombie (mind you, we have nothing against zombies). The answer is based on simple math: if you spend $493 or more per month, the Capital One Spark Card will leave you ahead of the game. Anything below that level of spend, and the 1% card is a better gig, all else equal.

Our Final Thoughts On The CapitalOne Spark Small Business Card

Whether you want this card for personal or business use, or you’re tired of dealing with rotating rewards categories (I’m bad at rotation in general—I don’t even rotate my tires), Spark has definitely put an elf-like sparkle in our heavily be-spectacled eyes here at PIQ. In case all that made no sense: we recommend it.

Again, here’s the link to apply for the CapOne Spark Business Card.

When evaluating this card, one of your main decisions will be to get the Capital One Venture One credit card, or the Capital One Venture Rewards Card which offers bigger rewards (but has an annual fee). We’ve dedicated a section below to help you make that decision.

Earning Miles with CapitalOne’s VentureOne Card

The earnings structure for the VentureOne credit card is quite straightforward—1.25 miles per dollar of spend. Miles don’t expire, and there’s no limit to the number of miles you can earn.

You’ll also earn 10,000 additional miles if you spend $1,000 within the first 3 months of getting your credit card approved. If you’re in the market for sign-up bonuses, this is just an OK deal, but you can check out our post on killer sign-up bonuses to see what’s brewing in that department.

To The Point: Deciding Between the Capital One Venture Rewards and Venture One Rewards Cards

While we encourage you to read our detailed post comparing the Capital One Venture versus the Capital One Venture Rewards credit cards, the simple answer is if you plan to hold onto either card for the long haul (5+ years), then you should go with the Venture Rewards Card (with the annual fee) if you plan on spending more than about $500 per year (the math is slightly more complex, but again read the detailed post to get more precise answers). For shorter durations, definitely read the post.

Redeeming Miles with the Venture One Card

Redemption of your miles is also straight-forward. Basically, you can either call up CapOne and book any sort of travel (flight, hotel, auto rental, cruises, etc) or you can just purchase the travel yourself using your Venture One Card, and then call up those Visigoths to get reimbursed. Your rewards are valued at $0.01 per mile. Note that you have 10 months from the date of the travel item posting to your statement to call up and apply for reimbursement.

That’s why, as we said above, we view this card more as a cashback card than a travel rewards card. We define travel cards as those that earn miles on a specific carrier, whereas the Venture One card simply lets you take your miles and get a direct statement credit (same thing as cash)—with the only restriction being you can only apply it to travel purchases.

Closing Thoughts on the Capital One Venture One Travel Rewards Card

While the Venture One card’s 1.25 miles per dollar and no annual fee are reasonably nice, we feel that both the Venture One card and the Venture Rewards card are designed to be primary use cards (versus niche gas or restaurant cards, for example). Thus, we believe that many folks will do better off with the Venture Rewards Card—assuming they spend more than approximately $500-$600 per month on the card.

Apply for the Capital One Venture One Card here.

Last Reviewed: 1/22/2012

The source of this plastic’s power doesn’t come from years spent on the planet Krypton, nor is it derived from the sheer number of SPG points you earn. Rather, the secret is in the potential redemption value of each SPG point earned. PlasticIQ has estimated that Starpoints are worth 2.26 cents each when redeemed for stays at Starwood hotels. Impressive, most impressive…

Going a Bit Deeper on Earning Starwood Rewards with the SPG Amex Card

If you’re serious about amassing a large number of SPG rewards which you can then deploy, like a digital army, for free stays at Starwood hotels around the globe, then for sure you’ll need a Starwood credit card in your arsenal–just belonging to the loyalty program itself won’t be enough.

If the Starwood business credit card was a story, then the protagonist would be the sign-up and spend range bonuses (so, 2 protagonists–perhaps a romcom?), which, combined, give you a nuclear-warhead-esque yield of 25,000 Starpoints. At a value of 2.26 cents per point, that’s a cool $565 in savings that you otherwise would have shelled out on SPG hotel rooms.

The actual base rewards are 1 SPG point per dollar of spend (although again if you use for hotels, that’s like earning 2.3% cashback). You also earn a total of 4 SPG points for every dollar of spend at Starwood hotels (although hopefully that will be minimal since you’ll be using your Starpoints to stay for free at SPG locations.

5 Nights Towards Elite Business Status

No, Elite Status does not mean you’ll all of a sudden become an elite commando, or be whisked away by helicopter from some corporate highrise. It just means you’ll get treated a little bit nicer, maybe get a nicer looking room with fewer stains.(ewww, sorry). So, every year you have the Starwood Business Credit Card, you’ll get 5 nights towards the next status level (to be clear, these are NOT free nights, you can think of them as special points that help you move up in status). The details of how many points are required to move to the next level, along with commensurate benefits, can be found in our detailed post, Starwood Preferred Guest Program Review.

So What Can You Get with your Starwood Preferred Guest Points?

Starpoints can be redeemed through the SPG website for a variety of rewards, including hotel stays (of course!), airline tickets, and gift cards. You can even transfer your SPG points to any one of more than 30 frequent flyer programs, mostly at a 1:1 exchange rate.

However, according to our own analysis of the value of Starpoints, your best bet is to redeem your SPG points for hotel stays at Starwood properties, where they are valued at around 2.26 cents each. Gift card redemptions represent the worst strategy (imagine placing your Spy in the front row in a game of Risk), at roughly 1.05 cents per SPG point.

Getting Starry-Eyed Over the Starwood Preferred Guest Business Credit Card

Well, there you have it. If you’re pre-disposed to staying at Starwood Hotels, and want to rack up more SPG points, then the American Express SPG Business Card may be right for you–as long as you primarily redeem your points for SPG Hotel stays.

The 25,000 SPG points that can be earned through a combination of sign-up and spend-range bonuses is also no laughing matter, and could ultimately save you more than $500 in Starwood hotel stays.

It would have been nice to see some additional earnings power on the Amex SPG Card (for example, 2 points at gas and restaurants, etc), but alas you only earn extra points when you stay at a Starwood property. But overall this is a highly performant card, and we generally recommend it.

Amex Starwood Preferred Guest Business Card
Apply for the Amex Starwood Preferred Business Credit Card

Last Reviewed: 1/8/2012

The Starwood Prefereed Guest (SPG) Loyalty program enables its members to earn Starpoints for stays at Starwood properties which can then be redeemed for a variety of benefits, including free hotel stays (of course!), flights, and more.

In this overview we’ll cover everything a smart otter would expect:

• Quick facts about Starwood Hotels and brands.
• Earning points and perks with membership tiers and the Amex Starwood Credit Card
• A quick note on valuin Starpoints
• Redemption methods and best redemption strategies

Overview of the Starwood Hotels Group

Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide is headquartered in White Plains New York. As of 2010, they either owned or managed nearly 1,000 properties, employing more than 140,000 people worldwide.

Starwood owns 9 highly recognizable brands encompassing around 940 hotels: Sheraton, FourPoints, W Hotels, aLoft, Meridien, The Luxury Collection, Le Meridien, Westin Hotels and Resorts, Element and St. Regis. Nearly 50 of their hotels have been named to Conde Nast Traveler’s respected Gold List.

Starwood Preferred Membership Tiers and Benefits by Tier

The SPG program has 3 distinct membership levels (tiers):

1. Preferred Guest (entry level)
2. Gold Preferred Guest
3. Platinum Preferred Guest

The table below summarizes the key benefits and differences between the 3 SPG tiers.

Earning Even More Starpoints with the Starwood Amex Credit Card

If you’re really committed to racking up points in the SPG program, then the Amex SPG card will be one of your main weapons for earnings SPG points. While you can read the full review of the AMEX SPG card, here are some of the key benefits:

• Earn 2 additional Starpoints (on top of the 2 you’ll earn just by being in the SPG program), for a total of 4 points per dollar of spend at Starwood properties. Earn 1 SPG point on all other purchases.
• Nice 10K sign-up bonus and another 15K points if you spend $5K in 1st 6 months

How Much are Starwood Points Really Worth?

We’re not going to spend too much time in this post discussing the value of Starpoints, since we have a separate post on the value of starpoints where you can go fairly deep on this subject. But we have highlighted the key takeaways from that analysis in the table below, which shows the value of Starpoints for various rewards.

Redeeming Starwood Points

There are various redemption methods for your Starpoints. Below we provide high level information on each redemption approach, and we also deep dive on a couple of nuances.

Redeeming Starwood Points for Hotel Stays

Starwood classifies its hotels into 7 categories. Category 1 being the worst (these hotels often include free DEA surveillance) to category 7 (you can pretend to be a filthy rich tycoon, like Mr. Howell).

As noted above, this is definitely the superior redemption method, as you really max out the value of your points. The screen capture below from the Starwood website gives you an idea of the number of points you’d need for various categories of hotels, along with information on other possible uses of your Starwood points.

50% Off Rack Rates: Deal or Dud?

For 1,000 Starpoints, you can purchase a certificate that will give you 50% of the “rack rate” at the given hotel–for up to 5 nights. The “rack rate” is basically the highest published price for the room in question. However, these certificates are subject to availability, and also there seems to be some (rather heated) debate as to whether they are beneficial or not. You can check out this Flyertalk thread on the 50% rack rate issue.
 

5th Night Free: The Real Deal

If you redeem 5 nights at the same Starwood Hotel (category 3-7 only), then your sixth night is on the house. That equates to a 17% discount off of what you’re paying (in points). This is a very straight-forward (and nice) benefit.

Redeeming Starwood Points by Transferring to Frequent Flyer Loyalty Programs

The Starwood Preferred Rewards Program also allows you to transfer your points to more than 30 airlines at (mostly) 1:1 rates. One especially nice feature here is that if you redeem in chunks of 20,000 points, you’ll get a bonus 5,000 miles added to whichever program you transferred your points too. That’s a nice 25% bump in the value of your points.

While we calculate the value of those transfers in our post “Value of SPG miles”, some of the airline loyalty programs include:

• AA Advantage (1:1 exchange)
• BA Executive Club (1:1 exchange)
• Continental OnePass (2 Starpoints for 1 Mile)
• US Airways Dividend Miles (1:1 exchange)
• United Mileage Plus (2 Starpoints for 1 Mile)
• Virgin Atlantic Flying Club (1:1 exchange)

You can see the full list of airlines and exchange ratios here.

Redeeming Starwood Preferred Guest Points by Purchasing Airline Tickets

You can actually purchase airline tickets directly through the SPG website. The nice aspect of this method is that by actually (technically) purchasing an airline ticket with your points, you’ll also earn frequent flyer miles, which of course can really add up. Also, you don’t have to worry about blackout dates associated with flying loyalty programs.

The main concern with this approach is that the ticket prices (whether in points or converted to dollars) won’t be competitive with what you might get on the “open market” (somewhere like Kayak.com, for example). Well, it turns out you needn’t be concerned in this case, as Starwood’s pricing is actually slightly more competitive than the open market. More on this in our SPG post on the value of Starwood Points.

Redeeming your SPG Points for Gift Cards

Of course, the folks here at PlasticIQ have always been big anti-fans of gift cards in general (you can read our post on why gift cards suck here). It turns out that redeeming your hard-earned SPG points for gift cards is also the most sub-optimal approach to maximizing their value (your miles will be worth a meager 1.05 cents each). You’re basically getting less than half of the economic benefit you would receive if you just stayed in a Starwood Hotel room.

PlasticIQ’s Closing Thoughts on the Starwood Preferred Guest Program

Well, like most hotel loyalty programs, there’s a lot going on, and I could probably have filled 3 more pages (or just made one really long-ass web page) with tons more detail on the program. But our intent here was to give you the broad strokes of the program, along with links to more detailed information when deeemed useful.

The bottom line: if you like Starwood hotels (and I personally do think they have some dragon-slaying brands and properties), and you’re OK using your Starwood points for hotel room stays, then you should definitely join their program (you can sign up here). If you are serious about the program, you’ll also want to get the Amex Starwood credit card, as it’ll allow you to accumulate Starpoints much more quickly.

While the Citi Thank You Preferred credit card is normally positioned as the no-fee (and thus, fewer rewards) version of the Citi Thankyou Premier Card, we’ve uncovered a hidden offer that gives you the same sign-up bonus as the fancy-schmancy Premier card, but with no annual fee (compared to the $125 annual fee on the premier version).  As Saka of Airbender fame would say, “we’ve got your back.”

While we present details on both the standard offer and the hidden offer, given that the hidden offer far outperforms the standard version, we’ll dedicated most of this post to the hidden offer.

Earning Rewards with the Citi Thank You Preferred Credit Card

The real story here is the voluptuous sign-up bonus. You can earn 2 bonuses of 25K points each; you’ll earn the first 25K if you spend $5K within 6 months of card ownership, and you’ll get the 2nd 25K after you spend another $5K in the 2nd 6 months of the first year of card ownership. This seems within the realm of achievability for many folks.

The actual points you earn on daily purchases are as skimpy as this gal’s outfit—-1 point per dollar of spend. Therefore, we recommend this card primarily for its sign-up bonus, and not as a daily use card (except for the fact that you’ve got to use it quite a bit that first year to earn the bonus).

A Quick Note on the Citi Preferred Anniversary Bonus

The Citi Preferred credit card gives you an annual bonus which increases each year you own the card, maxing out at 3%. It’s fairly straightforward: at the end of year 1, Citi adds up all the TY points you earned from purchases (your spend target bonus is not included) and then gives you 1% more points on top of that total. In year 2, the bonus goes up to 2%, and by year 3 you’ve reached the peak bonus of 3%, which then continues on each year ad infinitum.

While this one may look nice on paper, the fact is this bonus isn’t worth that much to most people. If you earn 60,000 Thank You points during the year (which is $5,000 of spend each month on your Preferred Card), you’d get at most 1,800 bonus points (assuming you’ve had the card for 3 years or more). Those 1,800 points are worth roughly $18. Nice? Sure…Life changing? I hope not.

Your Best Strategy For Redeeming Thank You Points Earned with the Citi Preferred Credit Card

The folks at PlasticIQ value Citi ThankYou points anywhere from abou $0.006 to around $0.01, depending on what you redeem them for.

While you can read an in-depth article on the value of Citi ThankYou points here, the long and short of it is that you should redeem your points for either airline travel, or (if you have one of these loans) student loan rebates or mortgage rebates. For any of these redemption methods, your Citi TY points will redeem at $0.01 per point.

PlasticIQ’s Closing Thoughts on the Citi ThankYou Preferred Credit Card

The hidden offer is simply a monster of a sign-up bonus card—-the only downside being you need to hold onto it for a full year to realize the full 50K bonus. But with no annual fee, there’s not a huge downside to that. We can’t recommend it, though, as a daily use card since there are no spending categories where you can earn bonus points, and a 1 point-per-dollar-of-spend reward is very ho-hum.

You can apply for the Citi ThankYou Preferred hidden gem offer, or, if you’re feeling like you want to underachieve, you can go for the Citi Preferred Standard Offer.

Today I’m taking a break from writing about credit card reward programs and new credit regulations and such, and instead meandering into the realm of the “thought experiment”. Indulge me. 

So here’s my grand vision on how to slay the evil OPEC monster, get free gas in the process, and maybe even get paid  (a microscopic amount) for pumping it, all using your plastic Excalibur Chase Freedom credit card.  Since gas purchases earn 5% cashback in Q1 and Q3 of 2012, we’ll use those quarters for our example, though in theory it could work even at the 1% cashback rate.

Major Disclaimer 1: the plan below is economically irrational unless you value your hourly rate at something south of $2.

Major disclaimer 2:  I don’t recommend you actually try this, as you might really upset the economic machinery of the world.

This all hinges on the little-known fact that if you link your Chase Freedom credit card to your Chase Checking account, 2 interesting things happen (kind of like crossing the streams in Ghostbusters).

1. You’ll earn an additional 10% increase in your baseline cash back earnings.  For the 5% reward categories, the baseline is actually 1% (with the bonus being an additional 4%), thus you would earn 5.1% 4% + (1% *1/1).
2. And, most critical to our juvenile plot, you’ll earn an additional 10 points on every Chase Freedom credit card purchase.

Let’s assume you want $5 worth of free gas….Here’s the play-by-play:

1. Go to the pump of your nearest gas station.
2. Swipe your Chase Freedom card.
3. Pump 10 cents worth of gas, then hang up the pump.
4. Repeat 49 more times.

Assuming all goes as planned (and the guy waiting behind you doesn’t attack you), when your credit card statement arrives you should see the following:

1. A charge of $5 for gas
2. Earnings of 25 points (worth $0.25 in cash back)–assuming you executed this during Q1 or Q3 of 2012, when you get the 5% cashback rewards on gas purchases.
3. Most importantly, an additional 500 points earned due to the linkage of your Freedom card to your Chase checking account.

Thus, on a $5 transaction you would have earned $5.25 (with Chase Freedom points valued at $0.01 each).  So you just got paid $0.25 for pumping gas. If you performed the same technique when you were only getting 1% cash back on gas, then you’d expect to get the free gas plus a nice, shiny nickel.

Of course, even the less astute amongst us will quickly and rightly point out that you’d spend the better part of an afternoon on such a shenanigan, putting you well below minimum wage.  But hey, consider this a “thought experiment”.

Say Hello To My Little Friend

So, if you’re that hungry to save money on gas (and who isn’t?), and you aren’t in the mood to wrap your car in a full-body advertisement for $200 a month (yes, I’ve thought about it), then check out the PenFed Visa Platinum Cashback Card.  It provides you with a whopping 5% cash back on gas, 365 days a year.  It’s in my wallet–shouldn’t that be enough for you??;)  Peace. Marc.

The Citi ThankYou Premier Card is a cornerstone of Citi’s credit card offerings, and a solid one at that. With a bone-crushing 50K spend target bonus  (you just need to spend $2,500 in 3 months to earn these points), plus the potential to have this card perform at or near the 2% cashback level (read on to find out how), along with a 33% boost in the value of your points when you redeem for airfare, this card could make a fox smile. Perhaps it’s only drawback is the $125 annual fee, which is waived for the first year.

Earning Rewards with the Citi Thank You Premier Card

If you weren’t a careful reader of this offer, you might arrive at the conclusion that the Citi Thank You Premier card lacks an earnings punch, getting you 1 point for all purchases, and an additional (measley) 0.2 points on gas, supermarket, drug store, and commuter/parking purchases.

However, a more careful read yields a markedly different conclusion. When you purchase airline tickets using your Citi Premier Card (including tickets you purchase for other people), you’ll earn 1 Citi Flight point for each mile flown. So, 3 roundtrip tickets from Boston to LA will earn you about 18,000 Citi Flight points. “So what?”, you ask.

The trick here is that Citi Flight Points convert to normal (redeemable) Citi ThankYou Points on a 1:1 basis as you earn Citi Thankyou points. Example: let’s say you have 18K Citi Flight Points, but have only spent $5,000 on your Citi Premier credit card this year. You’ll only be able to convert 5K of the 18K Citi Flight Points into useable Thankyou Points.

But the interesting news here is that if you earn more miles flying than you spend on the card (which is quite possible), then all of a sudden you now have a card that functions like a 2% cashback card (assuming you redeem for rewards yielding $0.01 per point, more on that in the redemption section). We at PIQ refer to this sort of credit card as a “quasi-cashback credit card”, since when the correct earning and/or redemption strategy is followed, the credit card becomes indistinguishable from a legitimate cash-back card.

So, taking into account a really awesome spend target bonus of 50K TY Points plus the opportunity to have up to a 2% quasi-cashback card, all-in-all it’s a pretty amazing deal.

Of course, offsetting the great earnings is the $125 annual fee (waived for the first year), which is quite painful. But the 50K spend target bonus alone covers you for 5 years (including year 1 where the fee is waived!).

Quick Discussion of the Anniversary Bonus

The Citi Premier credit card gives you an annual bonus which increases each year you own the card, maxing out at 5%. The way it works is simple. At the end of the year, Citi tallies up all the ThankYou Points you earned fronm purchases during that year, and then gives you an additional bonus. In year 1, it’s a 1% bonus; year 2 is 2%, and so on until you reach the 5% maximum.

While it looks nice on paper, frankly it doesn’t amount to a hill of beans and really doesn’t move the needle much. If, for example, you earned 50K TY points (roughly $4K of spend each month on the Premier card) at the maximum 5% bonus level, you’d earn an additional 2,500 TY points, or about a $25 bonus. But hey, it’s something…

Redemption Strategies for the Citi Premier Card

With the Citi Thankyou Rewards Program, while there are a number of redemption options, a couple of which even get you $0.01 per point in value, there is one killer (and thus highly recommended) redemption method: redemption for flights using Citi’s booking site.

This is because when you redeem for flights, Citi boosts the value of your TY points by 33% right out of the gate. As a Bostonian might say, that’s “wicked”. Your natural next question is probably going to be, “Well, are the rates on the Citi site competitive with open market rates to purchase airline tickets?” The short answer is “yes”, but you can read our post analyzing the Citi ThankYou Rewards Program to learn more.

If you carry a student loan or mortgage, you can apply your rewards against that debt at the rate of $0.01, which isn’t shabby at all (but again—go for the flights!).

PlasticIQ’s Final Ruminations on the Citi Premier Credit Card

Well, there you have it, our complete workup of the Citi Thankyou Premier card with 50K spend-target bonus points. I would recommend this card under 2 circumstances:

• If you are just interested in the sign-up bonus (and thus plan to not hold the card for very long). 50K points (worth $665 if you redeem for airfare) is nothing to sneeze at!
• If you believe that you will purchase enough airline tickets each year (and thus earn enough miles) with the card to just about match the amount of total dollar purchases you make with the card (thus turning the Citi Premier card into a quasi-2% cashback card).

If you aren’t interested in pursuing the sign-up bonus, and don’t think you will be able to make good use of the ThankYou Flight Points, then this card probably doesn’t make sense for you.

Well, that’s our IQ exercise of the day. Cheerio!

Simply follow this link to apply for the Citi ThankYou Premier Card with 50K bonus points.

The Capital One MTV Visa credit card probably won’t impress the ladies when you flash it at some swanky club, but it may get you back-stage at some concert where you could then pretend to be a band member or roadie, and that could certainly be used to your advantage.

I’ll cut right to the chase on my assessment. If you spend a good amount of money on entertainment (movies, theme parks, video rentals, etc) then the Visa MTV card could make a nice addition to your arsenal given you’ll earn 5 points per dollar of spend n this category. However, if you want to get good value for your points (and who doesn’t!), you’ll need to redeem for travel purchases. Keep reading to learn more…

Earning Rewards with the Capital One MTV Visa Card

The obvious stand-out with the MTV Visa card is the 5 points per dollar of spend on entertainment. Now, of course, the logical follow-up question is: “Well, what categories of spend are included in ‘entertainment’?” (and I suppose a more introspective question: “Do I spend enough on “entertaining” to justify going through the trouble of getting this card?”)

So here are the spend categories included within entertainment: music stores, concert tickets, movie theaters, bowling alleys, amusement parks, video & video game rentals, public golf courses, tourist attractions, arcades, live theater, professional sporting events, aquariums, campgrounds, and boat rentals.

I’m bummed that hot air balloon rides aren’t included, that’s plenty entertaining…and why would Tinkerbell’s Dad let her out of the house like that?

The 2 points per dollar of spend earned on restaurants is nice too, although if restaurants are your game, then the Citi Forward Card (which I carry) is the way to go (giving you 5 points per dollar of restaurant spend!).

Seeking Redemption Through MTV

The MTV visa belongs to the uber-secret Capital One No Hassle Rewards program. I say “secret” because unless you have a card belonging to this rewards program, you can’t get access to the site to check out your redemption options. Furthermore, the rewards operators are no help whatsoever. When I called and asked about this card, their mantra was “every offer is different, both on what can be earned and redeemed”—and so thus they couldn’t tell me anything.

So while that’s a bummer, we do have some information to go on, based on the fine print in the application, and with the exception of travel redemptions (and possibly MTV exclusives), it doesn’t look good. The table below lays it out.

Deep Dive on Travel Rewards

As you can see from the rewards table above, by far and away the best redemption method is for travel (which includes airfare, hotels, cruises, car rentals and potentially other travel expenses). However, there is a catch. To get maximum value, you’ll either need to redeem $600 or more worth of travel expenses, or be lucky or clever enough to redeem right at or near the top of each redemption band (for example, if you redeem $350 worth of travel, your points will also be worth $0.01 each). This table shows the redemption bands:

The graphic below illustrates how the value of your points, when redeemed for travel, fluctuates within each redemption band. At the low end of each band, you get really bad value for your MTV points, while at the top end of each band, and for any redemption amount above $600 of travel spend, you get $0.01.

One other small note: you can’t do “partial redemptions”…meaning, if you spent $350 on a plane ticket, but you only have 15,000 points, you won’t be able to redeem a portion of the $350; it’s all or nothing.

Redeeming for MTV Exclusives

It’s quite possible that if this card caught your attention in the first place, you either you still have a crush on Martha Quinn, or, more likely, you enjoy concerts and such. Redeeming for MTV events and shows ranges from 10,000 to 30,000 points. You can also “build your own” experiences, which could include getting backstage, VIP treatment at an exclusive MTV event, maybe even meeting an MTV star. In short, this card could get you an autograph and lead to a series of adventures you can recount to your grandchildren.

PlasticIQ’s Closing Thoughts on the Capital One MTV Visa Card

The primary benefit of the MTV Visa card is the 5 points per dollar on entertainment. If you spend $100 per month in this category, you’d earn $60 per year. Since there’s no annual fee, there’s not much downside, it’s more a question of whether you spend enough to justify adding this card to your collection (and it definitely should not be your primary credit card unless you truly are craving for some special back-stage access or red carpet treatment that can’t be purchased on the open market). Party on.

Follow this link to apply for the Capital One MTV Visa Card.

The CapitalOne Cash Rewards credit card personifies delayed gratification (think: ketchup).   It’s ultimately a 1.5% cashback card, which is fairly respectable. But there’s a bit of a catch: you need to wait until the end of each card anniversary year to collect the 0.5% extra of CapitalOne rewards (in other words, you get 1% cashback throughout the year, and then a 50% bonus at the end of the year).

Earning Cash Back with the Capital One Cash Rewards Card

As noted above, this is a 1.5% cash back card, where you have to wait till the end of the year to get that extra 0.5% component. There are obviously a couple of drawbacks to that:

• If you decide to cancel the card any time during the year, you’re leaving that year’s 50% bonus behind.
• You’ve lost the use of that extra 50% bonus for a good deal of time (on average, 6 months). For those familiar with the concept of the time value of money, the 50% bonus is actually worth a bit less due to this.

Redeeming your Capital One Rewards

Redemption is definitely not an issue with this card. Capital One lets you redeem rewards whenever you want, in any amount you want. You can get a statement credit (our favorite) or a check (for those who just love snail mail!). You can also have rewards automatically redeem when you hit pre-defined amounts—a nice touch.

Fees: A Happy Ending

With no annual fee and no foreign transaction fee, the CapitalOne Cash Rewards Card gets an A+ in this department. We love cards with no foreign transaction fees!

Wrapping Up With Some Alternates

Overall, the Capital One Cash Rewards card is a solid, respectable citizen of PlasticVille. However, there are alternatives (quote from Obi-WanKenobi: “You can’t win, but there are alternatives…”).

The Chase Sapphire Preferred Card often dominates our ranking engine due to it’s crazy huge sign-up bonus ($625!).

If you are OK with American Express, then the Blue Cash Preferred Card (6% cashback at supermarkets, 3% at gas stations and department stores) is a force to be reckoned with.

The Fidelity Investment Rewards Amex is a no-nonsense 2% cashback card, and definitely worth your consideration as well.

That’s it for Capital One Cash Rewards…may the force be with you (I wonder if Lucas will sue me??)