Banks offer benefits to customers to entice them to sign up for, use, and hopefully keep travel credit cards. One common perk of high-annual-fee cards is a travel credit—a statement credit that offsets charges in qualifying categories. The types of eligible charges vary, ranging from the Sapphire Reserve’s broad travel categories to AMEX’s restrictive airline fee credit.
If you have multiple cards offering travel credits, keeping track of which ones you’ve used can be a challenge. This becomes even trickier because some credits reset on the card anniversary date while others reset at the end of the calendar year.
Popular Travel Credit Cards and Their Benefits
Here are some of the available travel credits from various cards:
- American Express Platinum – $200 Airline Incidental Fee Credit
- Chase Sapphire Reserve – $300 Travel Credit
- Citi Prestige – $250 Travel Credit
- Capital One Venture X – $300 Credit for bookings using Capital One Travel.
- Southwest Airlines Rapid Rewards Priority – $75 Southwest Credit
- Hilton Aspire AMEX – $200 Flight Credit
- Ritz Carlton Card – $300 Annual Travel Credit
And that’s not even counting other credits, like those for CLEAR, streaming services, TSA PreCheck, and food delivery services.
Tools and Strategies to Stay Organized
When I only had a few of these credits, it was easy to keep track of which ones I’d used and which were still available. But now that seemingly every card offers some kind of rebate, it’s become more challenging to keep them straight. Awardwallet, the travel account tracking website, has added tracking for some travel credits and expiration dates, but not all.
The more restrictive a credit is, the more likely I’ll forget about it. For example, I don’t use Capital One Travel often, so I need to remember to book through their website to take advantage of the $300 Venture X credit.
What’s Your Best Method?
With so many credits to juggle, it’s easy to leave money on the table. I try to stay on top of them with a spreadsheet, but I know there has to be a better way. How do you keep track of your travel credits? Let me know in the comments—I’d love to hear your strategies!
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1 comment
I have over 50 credits and hotel free nights to track each year. I’ve been using spreadsheet mainly but awardwalet as a backup after they started tracking those. If there are better tools to consider, I would love to hear about it. It’s a full time job. Not only to track but to contantly think and plan the uses