Best cards to solely help fund holidays using points/cashback

moneyworrier2021

Morning. Sorry in advance as my question covers several forums areas but thought this is may be the best.
My husband and I are currently saving to buy Disney Vacation Club contract so we can maybe travel to Disneyworld once a year. The contract is expensive up front but then will cover all our hotel costs for the next 35 years or so. 

What i want to focus now is maximising things to reduce the cost on Flights, Food and the Vacation Club annual dues each year. I have a Topcashback account which Im using. Probably £200 a year there from Insurance, purchases etc. 

Previously i have flown with Virgin Atlantic and currently racked up 20K Airmiles so not much. Not too keen on flying with them as they don't seem in the best financial health and i find they are overall more expensive. Also liked flying Norwegian but they have now dropped their flights to Orlando. 

Other option now looks to be Nectar and Avios. Have an Nectar card, shop now and again at Sainsburys ( usually Asda, so need to see if it'a worth moving shopping) 
Would an Amex Nectar make the most sense to rack up the nectar points and convert to Avios Airmiles or would i benefit more in maybe a Credit card which offers decent % of cashback on all my purchases and put that into a savings pot?

I know im asking a very broad question here. I guess it comes down to how worthwhile Avios points are with British Airways? 

dcfc67

Amex gold card will get you 20,000 bonus points if you can spend £3000 in first 3 months. 
Get someone on here to refer you for bonus points.
The card is free in 1st year then £140 a year so may be worth it to cancel, however first before year is up refer your partner (get some bonus miles) and cancel your acoount.

I believe you get 2 lounge passes to use at airports then discounts on future visits

ratechaser

To your final key question about how much Avios are worth - that all comes down to how you choose to use them. If they are used carefully - for me this has traditionally been Reward Flight Savers within Europe (but NOT using extra Avios to bring the fees down to £1), or long haul upgrades from premium economy to Club World - then you can realise 2p+ per point.

The latest tie up between Avios and Nectar is also a game changer as it allows transfers of points in both directions. You could do worse than head over to the BA forum on Flyertalk if you want to get into the detail here. Sounds like shopping at Sainsbury (with all the extra points they offer) could be better than the old Tesco scheme.

I will just add that MCO is a very popular route and so reward flight availability is likely to be limited, but if you can be a bit creative (e.g. routing via MIA) then you should be able to realise value there. Just as long as you're not flying economy - which is about as bad a use of Avios as you can get...

moneyworrier2021

So collecting Nectar and converting to Avios works best when going for things like upgrades to premium economy rather than just economy flights? 

I’m happy to move to Sainsburys for food shopping to boost nectar points.

would the Amex make more sense than a nectar focused credit card? 

dazza.mk

Nectar Amex gives 2 Nectar points / pound which with the 400 Nectar points = 250 Avios conversion =  1.25 Avios / £
Nectar Gold = 1 Avios / £ (effectively)
BA Premium Plus Ames = 1.5 Avios / £ 

Although they have different fees / sign up bonus and specific benefits so you'd need to look at the detail ti see which suits you.

Thrugelmir

moneyworrier2021 said:

Previously i have flown with Virgin Atlantic and currently racked up 20K Airmiles so not much. Not too keen on flying with them as they don't seem in the best financial health and i find they are overall more expensive. Also liked flying Norwegian but they have now dropped their flights to Orlando. 

No airline is going to be in particularly good health for the foreseeable future. Higher prices may be a direct consequence as capacity is severely curtailed. 

Sandtree

moneyworrier2021 said:

So collecting Nectar and converting to Avios works best when going for things like upgrades to premium economy rather than just economy flights? 

I’m happy to move to Sainsburys for food shopping to boost nectar points.

would the Amex make more sense than a nectar focused credit card? 

When booking a flight with Avios etc you still have to pay the taxes, fuel surcharge etc which on long haul flights from the UK makes up most the cost of an economy ticket. You therefore tend to get better value by using airmiles to either upgrade class or to book a higher class (note that not all fares are upgradable in normal circumstances).

Value however is somewhat relative... flying first class would mean you were still paying about the price of an economy ticket but will have had to use up a large amount of points. If you calculate the price saved by points used you could easily be 2-3p per point or better but if you dont care about flying first class then its probably poor value for you as you could have gotten 0.5p cashback instead.

AmEx have a number of options to look at, BA, Nectar and Gold... they're in order of flexibility on what you can get with your points (MR with the Gold card can be transferred to a number of different airline schemes), AmEx have a refer a friend scheme that is generally slightly more beneficial to you and obviously massively more beneficial to your friend but they do have to have the sale class of card as you want to apply for. One of you could get a card and then refer the other so you get two intro bonuses plus the refer a friend but remember that you need to spend a certain amount to get the bonus so stagger the second application to ensure its affordable to hit the bonus.

moneyworrier2021

Premium economy appeals to me but i see what your saying, the tax and fuel surcharges will make up a bulk of the flight cost anyway 

Sandtree

moneyworrier2021 said:

Premium economy appeals to me but i see what your saying, the tax and fuel surcharges will make up a bulk of the flight cost anyway 

For economy... they make up less and less as you go up the classes hence the "cash value" per Avios goes up but its a pointless measure if you dont value the service you get.

For example I flew back from HK in First a while back and taxes out there are tiny so the flight cost me less than £5 plus a bunch of Avios. The first class tickets at the time were over £7,500 each but I struggled to accept that meant I was getting circa 7.5p per Avios because there is never a time in life that I would pay close to that for a flight.

Had I flown the other direction then taxes would have been £380, I didnt check economy tickets at the time but buy economy today to go to HK in April and tickets are £382 so you could say it saves no money but you get the first class experience (and its associated vintage Krug champagne etc) for the avios.

You can get tactical with these things too like only booking the return on avios if flying from somewhere with lower fees or buying separate tickets and going via Dublin or Frankfurt etc which all have lower taxes than LHR

ratechaser

moneyworrier2021 said:

Premium economy appeals to me but i see what your saying, the tax and fuel surcharges will make up a bulk of the flight cost anyway 

The other thing to bear in mind is when you typically travel - you didn't mention if this is a family thing and you have kids in tow that need to go in the school hols - if so I know that even in economy, MCO fares can be eye watering - have seen easters where there's been nothing sub-£1k pp. in that situation, you'd still get a decent return on your Avios as more of the overall ticket cost would be the 'base fare' price versus the taxes and fees. The flip side is that there will be a lot of competition to get those seats (BA currently commits to releasing at least 4 economy and 2 club world reward seats per flight) so you'd have to be quick to grab them!

If you're going outside the school hols and getting the bargain bucket sub-£400 fares then it would be a real waste of Avios to use on them. I think you need to look at some examples and work out for yourself what the value is to you based on when you would be traveling and in what class.

Plus I just have to say - you must be VERY taken with Disney to tie yourself in for 35 years of holidays!! Not really my thing although I know people that go multiple times a year, and there's whole books written on dining plan and rope-drop strategies. Each to their own...

moneyworrier2021

Yeah, its a family thing. Me, Husband and our son. 95% chance it will be in the school holidays when the prices are higher so i thought something like Avios may help soften the blow. Orlando will be our main destination because as i mentioned, we are looking to buy into Disney Vacation club and go once a year/ every other year at min. Also, somewhere like Hong Kong Disneyland is a dream location, Maybe saving Avios for those more obscure routes would be more beneficial. 

I think at the end of the day, im good with money and fine with paying off my CC bill each month and just want to gain as much back as possible. Disney and Disney holidays is a big thing for us so whatever helps those costs is good to me. I doubt going for a regular cashback credit card and just saving the cashback will as beneficial on returns?