My Go-To Credit Cards for Travel and Cash Back in August 2020 (2024)

There’s so many good credit cards on the market that it can be difficult to know which ones should be your go-to cards.

There are some general rules that you can follow. For example, because there are cash back credit cards that offer 2% cash back, those should be used over ones that offer 1%. But there are also cards that temporarily offer higher cash back, sometimes up to 5%. In these cases it typically makes sense to take advantage of the higher offer.

Travel credit cards get even more complicated because you typically get “miles” or “points” instead of a % cash back. It also depends on where you live and what companies you use the most. For example, if you are far away from a Delta hub and there are few, if any, Delta flights going in and out of your city, it likely doesn’t make sense to use a Delta credit card.

I wanted to share my go-to credit cards to give a shorter list of cards that I recommend. As I often say, there are many good cards out there but these are the ones that I personally have as my go-to.

Go-To Cash Back: Fidelity® Rewards Visa Signature® Card

The Fidelity® Rewards Visa Signature® Card is my default credit card for a simple reason: 2% cash back on every single purchase, no exceptions.

This card has the added benefit of being deposited directly into your Fidelity account. Naturally this makes it more likely that you will use your cash back to invest. This card has no annual fee.

This isn’t the only 2% cash back credit card that is available, as can be seen when you look through all the cash back credit cards. For example, the Citi® Double Cash Card offers 1% cash back when you make a purchase and 1% cash back on payments, essentially making it a 2% cash back credit card.

There are also other offers that trump 2% cash back. For example, the Chase Freedom Unlimited® offers 3% cash back on all purchases within your first year, up to $20,000 spent. After that you get 1.5% cash back on all purchases, which is the reason why long-term it’s not my go-to cash back credit card – though the first year it clearly trumps the Fidelity® Rewards Visa Signature®.

The Fidelity® Rewards Visa Signature® Card has a bonus as well, where you receive 10,000 Bonus Points—which equals $100 cash back, when deposited into an eligible Fidelity account—after you make at least $1,000 in eligible purchases within the first 90 days of account opening.

Go-To Travel Rewards Credit Card: Chase Sapphire Preferred®

The Chase Sapphire Preferred® has been one of the top – if not the top – travel rewards credit cards on the market for some time now. It’s so good that Chase consistently restricts access to it. If you have opened five or more credit cards in the past twenty four months (including being added as an authorized user on someone else’s account), you are out of luck: Chase won’t approve you for this card. This is commonly referred to as the “5/24 rule.”

That’s one reason why I consistently tell people who are new to travel credit cards to get the Chase Sapphire Preferred® as soon as possible.

The biggest draw of this card is the fact that there are so many partner programs that you can transfer your Chase Ultimate Rewards® to. The points transfer 1:1 to the following programs:

Airline Travel Partners

• Aer Lingus, AerClub
• British Airways Executive Club
• Emirates Skywards®
• Flying Blue AIR FRANCE KLM
• Iberia Plus
• JetBlue TrueBlue
• Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer
• Southwest Airlines Rapid Rewards®
• United MileagePlus®
• Virgin Atlantic Flying Club

Hotel Travel Partners

• IHG® Rewards Club
• Marriott Bonvoy™
• World of Hyatt®

Both my wife and I have signed up for this card and we transferred the points to our United MileagePlus® account. We’ve used it for trips to St. Martin, New York City, Houston, Fort Lauderdale, and Aruba.

The bonus that you get with this card is 60,000 Chase Ultimate Rewards® bonus points when you spend $4,000 within the first 3 months of account opening. You don’t have to transfer the points to a partner program. Instead, you can use the Chase travel portal, where the 60,000 bonus points are redeemable for $725 towards hotels, flights, car rentals, and cruises.

This card does come with a $95 annual fee that is not waived the first year.

There are a number of other benefits that come with the The Chase Sapphire Preferred® including 2x points on travel and dining at restaurants and 1 point per dollar spent on all other purchases. Additional benefits include trip cancellation/interruption insurance, no foreign transaction fees, purchase protection, and more.

These are my go-to cash back rewards and travel credit cards, but there are other options. You can browse all the cash back rewards cards here and all the travel rewards cards here.

Enjoy your rewards!

Other posts you may want to check out:

Chase Ultimate Rewards: Our Simple Guide to Maximizing Your Points

How to Double-Dip Cash Back Rewards (with Real Examples)

An Intro to Credit Card Rewards