Barclaycard Arrival Plus Credit Card
Over the next few days I'm going to make some posts in here regarding how I fund/afford most of our travel with credit card sign up bonuses (and still maintain a kick-ass credit score!). I thought I'd start out with this one, because as far as I'm concerned it's one of the best pure travel credit cards out there right now because it is not affiliated with any one program, rather it gives you 2.2% cash back as long as you use it on travel related purchases. It also has a great sign-up bonus of $400 cash back once you spend $3000 on the card within 90 days.
The link to apply:
http://www.findmybarclaycard.com/bar...d=BCSBA0315PRD
Here is a good post discussing the benefits of the credit card from one of my favorite blogs, The Frequent Miler.
http://frequentmiler.boardingarea.co...st-a-new-name/
The $89 annual fee is waived for the 1st year, so this means that you’re getting at least $400 in statement credits after spending $3,000 within 3 months.
Barclays says that you earn “miles” but you’re actually earning cash back with the card since you can’t transfer your Barclays miles to airlines. But you can redeem them for statement credits at 0.5 cents per mile (poor value) or 1.1 cent per mile if you redeem for travel.
You get 10% of your miles back if you redeem for travel, so 40,000 miles gets you $400 towards travel and 4,000 miles back (10% of your miles back). You can then redeem these 4,000 miles which you got back for $40 towards travel. And so on…
You earn 2X miles on all purchases, so you’re effectively getting 2% cash back for each purchase. But since you get 10% of your miles back when you redeem for travel, this is effectively a 2.2% cash back card when miles are redeemed for travel.
So for those of you on the fence for Lake Tahoe, @nhchris @dvandentop, this would be a good credit card to get! Even better is if you get one for yourself and one for your spouse, then you'll have $800 in travel credits to use in your household amongst the two cards. What I would suggest, say airfare pp is around $500, you put that on the card and that's already 1/6 of your $3000 required spend. And then since you have 120 days to reimburse yourself, and you're going to get the 40,000 miles within 90 days, your airfare is almost free! Reimbursing is incredibly simple online through your account login.
$3000 in minimum spend *may* sound like a lot (or $6000 for a couple), but it really isn't if you charge everything on the card, down to large diet cokes at McDonald's like I do! HHH! Little things that you'd normally use your debit card for, use this card for. As long as you pay it off every month!! Once you start incurring credit card interest then the miles and points game makes no sense.
I have had this card for a while now but Scott does not, and I think I'm going to apply for him as we have an upcoming Seattle trip planned. Even though we've used miles for the airfare and will use Hyatt points for the hotel, there will be a lot of other little expenses like a food tour, ferry tickets, etc.... all reimburseable with this card! It will be nice to get another $400 in free travel!
Let me know if you have any questions!!
~Jen
