Easy Question: Southwest or Chase Credit Card

[Stribs]

First off, I'm a newbie to credit cards!

Second, I have a credit card through my bank (Bank of America) that I NEVER use. My wife and I pay for everything with cash but I have skimmed through some pages here on THP about earning free trips and all with the Southwest Airlines Rapid Rewards Premier Card and the Chase Sapphire Preferred Card and I'd like to take advantage of theses benefits.

I mean why not just put our expenses on one of these cards and pay the card off at the end of the month...it's all getting paid regardless of how we do it.

I just need to know which one is better! Please don't get all technical on me as you'll cause some major confusion to me...lol.

 

[JB]

It really depends. If you fly primarily SW, the card is solid and gives you a great bonus for signing up (assuming you meet the spend). The Chase SP, is a wonderful card, but with many of the programs devaluing, unless you are putting your monthly expenses on it, and using it as a primary source, the points are not worth as much as they were a bit ago. But they are good anywhere, which is nice.

Based on your scenario, the SP could be a great option for you. Its a solid card and has wonderful features.

 

[Nebgolfer]

I don't know about the SP card, but my wife and I use the chase freedom card exactly how you described and it works great. You can redeem the points for cash money, so that's been nice instead of having to get gift cards or other items at a lower conversion rate.

 

[sparksjr]

It really depends. If you fly primarily SW, the card is solid and gives you a great bonus for signing up (assuming you meet the spend). The Chase SP, is a wonderful card, but with many of the programs devaluing, unless you are putting your monthly expenses on it, and using it as a primary source, the points are not worth as much as they were a bit ago. But they are good anywhere, which is nice.

Based on your scenario, the SP could be a great option for you. Its a solid card and has wonderful features.

What he said. We burned the SW card after getting our bonus and have 54k points waiting to be used next summer. We kept Chase Sapphire because they can be used anywhere and the closest airport with Southwest is 3 hours away.

Also, you can turn chase points into SW points 1:1 so out plan is to build Chase points and transfer to SW points and combine with our 54k point balance. We hope to fly four of us for free next summer for vacation. We are also gonna burn a Captial One card once/if their signup bonus increases.

It's not an exact science, for instance we are flying to the Bridgestone Championship out of Knoxville for less than if we went to Nashville and used Southwest (minus burning our points).

The heavy duty Chase card is pretty cool too!

 

[ohio_striker]

i have been using the Capital one Quicksilver for about 4 months. i think it has the best no limit cash rewards at this time i could be wrong. 1.5% on every purchase.