I have a Hilton Amex and DH has an American Airlines Citi card. I personally like mine better. There is no annual fee and we seem to rack up points faster. We haven't paid for a hotel in years. My parents however are big fans of the cash back cards. We had one for a while but I feel like I only got like $50 back total and I would rather have free hotel stays especially to use in big cities where the nightly rate is high.
BFP #1 December 2012 - MMC January 2013, D&C February 2013 BFP #2 October 2014 - DD arrived July 16, 2015 BFP #3 July 2016 - MC @ 9 weeks August 2016 BFP #4 Due January 2, 2018 - Please stick baby!
I don't have a great suggestion (I have a Southwest card for that purpose since we fly that airline the most). But I do have a great tip for earning points if you pay for preschool: Put your monthly tuition on the card to rack up the points. I pay the bill off in full each month, but if I'm gonna pay through the nose for preschool, I might as well earn free flights.
I like cash back, so we have Discover cards. No free, and we rack up the cash all year. It links to your amazon account, which is amazeballs IMO. We typically save it all, and our rewards cover all christmas presents.
My husband works in exactly this space (credit card rewards)!
The Chase Sapphire Preferred card is the best on the market in terms of the value of the points and sign-up bonus. So if you have great credit, that is the one to get for at least the first year. I think we got nearly $2K in flight value from the points from the sign-up incentive.
We also always have an airline card for our hub airlines (used to be Delta and JetBlue in NYC, now American, womp womp), a Hyatt card (we were married at a Hyatt and same principle as lawandorder - if I had to give them tens of thousands of dollars, I wanted additional perks - and we've gone on so many vacations using points from our wedding!), and the Amex Everyday card that Tina Fey advertises for groceries.
Aside from flights and hotels, we generally redeem for gift cards. They aren't the best redemption value, but it works for us. We then use the gift cards for things like furniture.
Edited to add - like lawandorder said, we put EVERYTHING we can on our cards, and then pay in full every month.
We put literally everything we can on our credit cards. We have the Chase Sapphire Preferred, which is fab. We also have had a Starwood AmEX for ages, but until we see what happens with the Marriott merger, that might be a risky acquisition. I will say, we haven't paid for a hotel room in a REALLY long time.
I have an Amazon card. I buy lots on Amazon and the rewards just got even better with Prime, so I get 5% back at Amazon, 2% at restaurants and gas stations, and 1% back on everything else. You can redeem points for all sorts of things, but I usually just use my credits for amazon purchases, which equates to free diapers, wipes, etc. We don't travel too much, so we don't have an airline card or anything, but were thinking about getting one since we have some trips coming up.
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