Reward cards : Best one for Airline tickets/Rewards when you have £20K of spends planned

WillPS

dcfc67 said:

A quick look on MSE homepage under reward credit cards shows that AMEX Gold offers best rewards for Avios.

Think you can add a partner then just before the year is up refer them for a card of their own cancel yours (both get a reward) then get her to add you.

After 2 years you can apply again and get a reward

Look again.

Amex Gold (as well as the Rewards credit card and the Green/Platinum charge cards) all pay rewards at 1 pt per £ spent, which is convertible to 1 Avios per £. The standard BA (blue) Credit Card also pays 1 Avios per £, as does the Barclaycard Avios credit card.

The Nectar credit card earns 2 Nectar points per £, which can be converted in to Avios giving an effective earning rate of 1.25 Avios per £ spent (free in year 1, £25 annual fee thereafter). The card has a 20,000 point (so 12500 Avios)  sign up offer (can't have held an Amex within 2 years).

MSE don't review the BA Premium Plus (£250 annual fee) nor the Barclaycard Avios Plus (£20 monthly fee) which offer 1.5 Avios per £ on spending. They both have a 25,000 Avios sign up bonus too. They both offer a voucher which would be triggered on a £20k spend easily too - the Amex one is a companion voucher (2 travel for the Avios of 1) and the Barclaycard is an upgrade (pay the Avios for the cabin grade beneath the one you travel in).

There is no end of optimisation you can do potentially, but really we need to know more about the timing of the OP's purchases (i.e. how much can be done in the 3 months immediately after opening the card), what is it for (or rather will their suppliers accept Amex and/or Mastercard) and how they would ideally redeem their points (in particular if they are a solo traveller).