Trying to decide between Southwest, Alaska, Starwood or Discover credit cards.

We basically travel between Portland, Oregon and Austin, Texas and I am trying to get free flights back and forth. I have never owned a reward card before. Southwest is tempting because there are no change fees when I book flights with them if I have to change my flight. Just curious if you can offer any suggestion. I also will have one transfer balance of a purchase I recently made that could add points if they offer that feature. I was planning on paying off the same month I made the charge but I could hold off until I received a card so I could get miles for transferring a fee.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks.
Holly

Answer – Holly, no fixed answers, but here are my thoughts. Firstly, you do not earn points or miles with balance transfers. So forget about it. You might as well pay it off first.

Back to your question. If you only fly Southwest, then perhaps the Southwest Airlines credit card appears to be your best bet. Just charge everything to it, pay it off every month and depending on how much you put on the card, get as many free flights as you can.

If you fly more than one airline, then the Starwood credit card will probably be better because they allow you to transfer points into miles for over 30 airline partners mostly on a one to one ratio. Furthermore, if you transfer 20,000 points, you get 5,000 bonus miles from Starwood. They also have this thing called Starflight, where you can book your flights directly with Starwood (using your points). It’s kind off like using an online travel agent.

Discover? – I’m assuming you are referring to either the Discover Miles Card or the Discover Escape Card. This is how both card works. You book any flight you want with anyone. Within 60 days, you should call Discover and tell them about the travel expense (it should be in your Discover card statement or records anyway). You will then get a statement credit once the process is through. Every 100 points or miles you accumulate is worth $1. These cards will work if you are the sort of person that likes to search your own deals and use different avenues to book all the time depending on who has the best deals. The only hassle is you have to tell them about the trip after you have booked it. If you are a forgetful person, then maybe these cards are not for you. But the advantage is that you have real flexibility in getting the best deals.

Should you go this route or the miles route? It depends on how much your ticket cost on average, and how many points are needed to redeem them. If the value you get from using miles instead of points is more than 1% then perhaps the Southwest or Starwood would be a better choice. If it is the other way round, then maybe Discover would be a better choice.

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