Frequent Miler on the Air - What's the Best Starter Rewards Card? | Coffee Break Ep52 | 4-15-25

Episode Date: April 15, 2025

On a recent podcast episode, we talked about all the important considerations when you're just getting start in the points and miles game. But in this episode, we'll go one step further and talk about which credit cards you might want to consider as someone just getting started. (00:10) - Listen to our "Getting started with points & miles" Ep298 here. (01:12) - Some of the things you might ideally look for are: great welcome bonuses, transferable points, a good way to use points without transferring, and maybe a card that's good for everyday spend... (02:00) - For those who want to go even further with hobby, you may want the many options to expand point earnings (02:39) - Read about the offer here. (07:01) - Read our review of the Capital One Venture card here. (10:25) - Read our review of the Citi Strata Premier card here. (13:27) - Read more about the Bilt card here. Visit https://frequentmiler.com/subscribe to get updated on in-depth points and miles content like this, and don’t forget to like and follow us on social media. Music Credit – Beach Walk by Unicorn Heads

Welcome to Coffee Break, where we focus on a single topic related to miles and points. And each Coffee Break is limited to 20 minutes or less for your money back. Today's Coffee Break. What's the best starter rewards card? On a recent show called Getting Started with Points and Miles, which was episode 298, we walk through at a high level how to get started with points and miles, how to apply for new credit cards, get big welcome bonuses, and what to do from there on.

Today we're gonna drill way down onto that. What's the very, very first step? And especially, this is like, you wanna recommend to someone who's kind of interested, but they're not sure whether they're going to be going all in, but they're not sure whether they're going to be going all in. You know, but they want to go ahead and get their first card, get the excitement of the welcome bonus, use those points.

Which one should they get? Yeah, I mean, this is a question we get all the time. I mean, not only from people who are new to reading the blog, but people in our day to day lives ask us all the time, which is the card I should get right now so today we'll kind of debate some of the best options out there but we're gonna look at some of the different aspects of what could help you choose so ideally you want to get something with a great welcome bonus something that offers you a lot of points up front for meeting a minimum amount of spend that way you've

immediately got enough points or relatively soon after opening the card got enough points to do something fun and exciting with the points. Ideally you want transferable points. I talk about this all the time when I introduce somebody to the idea of reward travel because if you can transfer your points to different airline and hotel partners it gives you a lot of different ways to use them to good value and it gives you maximum opportunity to really score a great deal. You want to have a good way to use the points without transferring them because if you can't find a good award, you want to still have a good way to use your points in order to get some travel for what feels like free.

And then you want a card that's good for everyday spend in an ideal world that you can put all your purchases on and feel pretty good about it. For those who do want to go on and go forward with the hobby, you also want to have a lot of different options to expand your point earnings. And so some cards pair really well with others. And so we'll talk about that a little bit too, as we decide which of these is the best. Yeah. All right. First up, so we've got four candidates for this. And it could be that we're forgetting some good ones, but we'll go with this anyway. First up,

that we're forgetting some good ones, but we'll go with this anyway. First up, Chase Sapphire Preferred. That's a perennial favorite. Next one, Capital One Venture. Then you've got the Citi Strata Premier card. And then we've got the Built card. So let's start with a Sapphire Preferred and walk down those categories that Nick read out before. Does it

have a great welcome bonus? Certainly at the time that we're recording this it does and it often has a good welcome bonus a good way to get started with miles and points and at the time we're recording it it's a fantastic bonus so you know yes answer that in short yes. And it also does it have transferable points? Yes absolutely and the transferable, yes it does, absolutely. And the programs that you can transfer to are, I kind of think, beginner-friendly to some extent, because you have things like United, which a lot of, you know, especially United States residents are very familiar with using United points or the idea

of it. So that's friendly. Hyatt is a very easy hotel chain to both use the points but also get good value from. So I like their program for that with transferable points. Yeah, do you have a good way to use points without transferring? You do because you can book travel through their travel portal, through Chase Travel. And if you have the Sapphire Preferred card, you get 1.25 cents per point in value. So if you redeem, for instance, 10,000 points, you could buy $125 worth of travel with that.

So that's a good way to use your points potentially to book flights or hotels and get better than one cent per point in value. Yeah, now is it good for everyday spend? This category is mostly important because I think a lot of people jump into this, you know, get their one card or maybe two cards and then stop there. And so they get a couple of welcome bonuses, one or two, but then just start using those cards for everyday spend.

And that's not necessarily a great way to earn rewards. And in the case of the Sapphire Preferred, I have to say no, it's not great for everyday spend. You do have good rewards for dining and travel and for online grocery purchases, but for everything else, you're only getting one point per dollar, and you could do a lot better than that with a lot of other cards. You can fix that a little bit.

So if you wanna earn Chase Ultimate Rewards points for your everyday spend, what you could do is tack on, for example, the Freedom Unlimited card, which will give you a minimum of one and a half points per dollar and then you're at least earning decent rewards if not best possible for all your spend. Yeah, so that's really, I mean that's the technique. If you're going to get this card, certainly it's worth considering for the welcome bonus alone, but if you're going to want to

continue to spend and earn these points and you want to also get a freedom unlimited at some point after you've earned the welcome bonus probably on the Sapphire Preferred or the Inc. Business Unlimited, which offers a similar earning structure, not quite the same, but similar anyway, 1.5 points per dollar on unbonus purchases still on that card. So that's pretty good. And you know, the good news there to kind of expand on that is that if you do want to go forward and kind of dive into this hobby and start earning more miles and points, you got a lot of different options to earn more Chase Ultimate Rewards points, right?

Yeah, you do. I mean, there are a lot of cards in the Chase Ultimate Rewards ecosystem, and so you could, you know, wait for great welcome bonuses on the, there's two different freedom cards you can apply to, and you can have both. So, you know, getting one isn't stopping you from getting the bonus on the other. And there are three different chasing business cards that you could get that generally have fantastic welcome bonuses. So there's a lot of opportunity to get more points and, you know, keep racking them up over time. Yeah, yeah. And also, I guess we should probably also mention here, too, if you have an additional person in your household that you're going to kind of get into this with you can pretty easily combine your points with one other person in your household.

So, you know, if you get a Sapphire preferred and your husband, wife, partner, significant other brother, sister, whoever it is that you're kind of getting into this game with if If they also get a card, like a Freedom Unlimited, for instance, you can combine forces and put those points together. So that's a nice feature, too, to be able to build up more points. Yeah, totally. All right. So that's the Sapphire Preferred. So overall, pretty strong. Not great if you're going to just want just one card for your everyday spend, right? Next up, Capital One Venture. Yeah. So the Venture card usually has a very good welcome bonus, not quite as good at the

time that we're recording this as a Sapphire Preferred, but oftentimes it has one that's equally good or arguably even better. So it does have a good welcome bonus. The points are transferable, but they have limited US partners. So if you're not going to learn about foreign airline and hotel partners, actually not hotel, foreign airline partners, then this might not be the best fit for you, though they do have a good stable of foreign airline transfer partners. So don't take that to mean that they don't have good partners. They do, just not very many that you'd be as familiar with if you aren't into the reward travel game.

as familiar with if you aren't into the reward travel game. Yeah, totally. Then is there a good way to use points without transferring? Yes, sort of. So you're only gonna get one cent per point value, but it's very easy to use. So I think for people getting started, there could be like quick, you know, great feeling from this, because all you have to do is use this card to purchase travel of any sort, and then you can

erase those purchases using your points at one cent per point value. And so, you know, I kind of think that even if it's not sort of mathematically the best way to use points for great value It's it's a way that's like easy for people to do and I think would would make people who are getting started feel really good About that totally great Is it good for everyday spend? Yeah, this card offers two points per dollar everywhere I know foreign transaction fees so at a baseline level level, every dollar you spend, you're essentially getting 2% back towards travel if you're going to use your points for travel at that one cent per point value.

So that's good for all of your purchases. It's not great. Let's be clear. There are cards that offer better category bonuses in specific categories. But for something that's not going to be bonus by a category bonus on some card, this is a good card to be using for it. Yeah, yeah. And then finally, if you do want to go forward with this hobby, are there many ways to expand your point earnings? Yes-ish. So, yes, there are a lot of other cards you can apply for that have big welcome

bonuses. The reason I put in an ish is that Capital One is not as easy as some other banks for approving getting many cards. So you might find that you hit a wall after getting one Capital One card or after getting two. But to the extent that you do get approved, they have a bunch of different cards that earn miles that can be combined with the venture, your venture miles, but they also have cash back cards that have big welcome bonuses

sometimes and that cash back can also be moved into your miles account and turned into miles that are transferable. So for all those reasons, this gets a yes if. Yeah, you know, and I think another good point we should make about all the cards we're talking about today is that there are a lot of common transfer partners that that match between these different programs. So sometimes you can also mix and match. I mean, you may absolutely get one card from this bank and another card from the other bank. And you could still potentially combine forces by transferring to partners that they share in common because many of them do share common partners. Yep. Yep. All right. Next up, Strata Premier. Yeah. Okay. The Strata Premier

that generally has a very good welcome bonus. Oh, this is from Citibank, by the way, the City Strata Premier. It also has a transferable points system. Like Capital One, it doesn't have the super friendly US based airline programs, except I guess JetBlue is one that has one to one. And so you do need to learn the ins and outs to really make the most of the transfer program, but it does have some good partners from that point of view. Are there good ways to use points without transferring? I'm going to say not really. So you can just cash out the points for once in each. So in a way, you know, the points are just as valuable or you could argue more valuable than the capital one points. But

there's no like travel portal where you can use your points to get more than one cent per point value. So it's it's not really right. Right. Okay. Good. Is it good for everyday spend? This card is there. I mean, it depends on how you spend your money, because it does have some good category bonuses that are really common ones that people spend a lot of money in like grocery and gas and travel. So there are some very good category bonuses, but when it comes to purchases that don't fall within those category bonuses, then it's not very good for everyday spend, though it can be quite good if you add another card, right? Yeah, you know, they have the city double cash card that earns two points per dollar everywhere

So if you just have that combination of two cards and and if you know to use the double cash anytime your Strata premier is not earning 3x then you can get 2x on everything else and that's that's actually You know, I think that Citi has one of the best combinations for if you're willing to juggle cards. So I just mentioned two, but there's others that you could throw in as well. If you're willing to juggle cards, you could earn an incredible number of points per dollar for your spend. Yeah, yeah, Citi is great for that. So if you are going to go forward, then you have some opportunities to go forward and expand your point earnings via category bonuses, but not very many welcome bonuses are not

very big welcome bonuses on the city side. That's kind of your downside. I can earn a ton in welcome bonuses outside of the city strata premier. That's right. It seems to be like the one and only really good welcome bonus card that they have in their lineup, although there have been rumors for a very long time that they'll be adding a more premium card and if or when they do, I expect we'll see a big welcome bonus there. Yep. Yep. And if then when they add additional features, we might have to redo this because they're

rumored to have other things in the works and we'll see what happens later on this year. But anyway, that's not the last one. They're rumored to have other things in the works and we'll see what happens later on this year. But anyway, that's not the last one. We have one more card here, the built rewards master card. So does this one have a good welcome bonus? No, it has no welcome bonus or at least no official welcome bonus. Very often when people are approved for this card, they get an offer to earn five points per dollar for all spend up to a limit and

so that's kind of a welcome bonus, but It's not guaranteed and it's not like one of those where you just get a big chunk of points all at once from meeting a Spend target we should mention by the way that built rewards is kind of a neighborhood reward network it really started out as Rewards for people who rent for renting an apartment being able to earn points from rent. We'll talk about that in a second. And they've added a lot of other neighborhood stuff over time. I feel like we should probably mention that because many people listening to this who are newcomers might not be familiar with build. They probably heard of chase and city and some of the other cards that we've talked about here. But this might be one you haven't heard of if you don't live in one of the cities where it's pretty heavily advertised. Yeah, yeah. So you might be wondering why we even brought up this card though in this particular show because of not really having a welcome bonus.

Well, it's the only one in this roundup that has a great transferable points program and no annual fee. So for people getting started, it's really compelling from that point of view, but it is missing that, like, you know, sudden influx of points to make you feel really good. So, and their transferable points program, by the way, is really good.

So it has, you know, transfers to Alaska, which is a very good rewards program, a transfer to Hyatt, Transfer United, and other good programs. So probably the best set of transfer partners in this roundup. For sure, and is it good for everyday spend? No, not for your everyday unbonus purchases,

but if you rent, if you have an apartment and you rent, then it's great for that because you can pay your rent with no fee right now. And you can do that each month to earn more and more points. And so that's nice as long as you meet the minimum transaction requirements they have. And then there's opportunities like Rent Day, where they'll have different bonuses, where you can either earn more points or you can get better value for transferring your points to specific partners or a specific partner.

Yeah, yeah. And then are there good ways to use the points without transferring? Yes, you can buy travel through their travel portal and get 1.25 cents per point value, just like the Sapphire Preferred. They also have a slew of other ways, even more than most other cards, to use your points for terrible value. You could use your points to pay your rent, to buy things, to pay for Lyft rides, pay for Amazon stuff, but we don't recommend any of that because you're going to get much less than one cent per point

value from any of those things. Yeah, and if you want to expand with this hobby, right now as we record this, there aren't any other cards in this lineup so very limited opportunities to expand your earnings. There are some things like we said with rent and mortgage is expected to be coming at some point this year so that might be a game changer for a lot of people but for now anyway there aren't very many ways to expand. Yeah, yeah. Alright, so we went through four different candidates.

Now, alright Nick, someone comes up to you and says, yeah, I'm kind of interested. So we went through four different candidates now. All right, Nick, someone comes up to you and says, yeah, I'm kind of interested. This sounds intriguing, this hobby. Tell me which card should I get? I'm gonna try out, I'm gonna get one card, see if I like the hobby and then go from there. Which card should I get?

Yeah, so I think that if it's a level playing field here, I would say the Capital One Venture card because I think that there's a lot of value in being able to use points in a way that makes it feel like you got something for free and be able to book the travel wherever you want to book it. Use your points at one cent per point to erase it. To be clear, that's not the best use of Capital One points. But I think that when you're getting started, getting that first award redemption, that is a big motivator to become more interested

and learn more about the hobby. And so I think it's a really good introduction because super easy to understand, good value everywhere. So you're not gonna be making a mistake by putting expensive purchases on a card that offers subpar return. And I think it's a great introduction and their transfer partners are very good. So if you start to learn more about the transfer partners

you can do well with those points and then they've got other stuff we didn't even talk about like the Major League Baseball tickets for some games or 5,000 points a seed and so there's some other other stuff involved too where I think you can have a better chance of getting that first redemption dopamine hit and being like okay maybe I need to pay more attention to this hobby. So I think it's a good place to start. That's what I would say. It's hard to argue with any of that. But I'm going to go with the Sapphire preferred. You know, you tend to get a great big welcome bonus from it. And especially right now as we're recording this. And with the points worth $0.125 for travel book through

Chase, you can get that quick dopamine hit. Plus, I think that to really get into this hobby, you need to get into transferring points. And I think that someone who's new is much more likely to have success transferring points to one of Chase's partners like Hyatt or United and getting that quick, you know, ooh, this is actually really great. Look how much value I got. Very good. There you have it.

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