We have seventeen credit cards between us.
You almost certainly should not.
That sentence is the whole point of this post. Most advice about travel credit cards for occasional travelers is written by people who treat it as a hobby, and it shows. Spreadsheets. Application sequencing. Quarterly bonus calendars. If that sounds like a second job, it’s because it is one.
We’re both working full time. We have two teenagers at home. We are not looking for another project. So this post is in two halves: what you actually need, and what we ended up with after doing the complicated version for years.
Start with the first half. The second half is there to show our work.
The two-card answer
If you fly a few times a year, take a handful of weekend trips, and want the travel to be meaningfully cheaper without thinking about it, you need two cards.
Card one: a flexible points earner
One card that earns transferable points on everyday spending. Groceries, gas, restaurants, the stuff you’re buying anyway.
“Transferable” is the important word. Points that only work with one airline are worth exactly what that airline says they’re worth on the day you want to fly. Transferable points move to a range of airline and hotel partners, which means you’re not stuck when one program devalues or has no availability.
The mid-tier versions of these cards carry a modest annual fee and are the right starting point. The premium versions carry a much larger fee that only makes sense if you’ll genuinely use the lounge access and travel credits attached. Most people won’t. Start mid-tier.
We use: Chase Sapphire Preferred and Citi Strata Premier. Either one on its own does the job. We hold both because we were already deep in each bank’s ecosystem, not because you need two.
Card two: a hotel card for the one chain you’ll actually use
Pick one hotel chain. Not three. One.
Then get that chain’s credit card, which usually comes with automatic mid-tier status just for holding it. Status is where the real value sits for people who travel a few times a year: free breakfast, room upgrades when they’re available, late checkout when you need the extra couple of hours. Those benefits show up on every single stay. Points only show up when you redeem them.
Which chain? Whichever one has properties where you actually go. That’s the entire decision. Hilton has the largest footprint in most of the US. IHG runs cheaper. Hyatt has the strongest points value but the smallest footprint. If you’re not sure, look at your last five trips and see which name comes up most.
We use: Hilton and IHG as our primary two.
- Hilton — start with Hilton Honors Surpass. It’s the mid-tier card and it carries status on its own. We also hold Hilton Honors Aspire, which is the premium version. Only worth the step up if you’ll use what comes attached to it.
- IHG — IHG One Rewards Premier. Our value option, and the status comes with the card.
That’s it
Two cards. One that earns flexible points on daily spending, one that gives you hotel status at a chain you’ll actually stay in. Put your normal spending on the first, book hotels with the second, pay both off every month.
That setup gets you most of the available value for about ten minutes of setup and zero ongoing effort. Everything past this point is optimization, and optimization has a cost measured in your attention.
What we actually carry, and why
We didn’t start with seventeen cards. We got there over several years, one decision at a time, each of which made sense on its own.
Here’s the honest inventory, grouped by what each one is for. No links in this section on purpose. It’s here to show our working, not to sell you anything.
Everyday spending
- Amex Blue Business Plus — 2x points on everything, up to the annual cap, with no annual fee. This is the best catch-all card Amex makes and it’s the one we reach for when nothing else has a bonus category.
- Amex Gold — strong earning on groceries and restaurants, which for a family of four is most of the monthly budget.
- Amex Green — travel and transit earning. Amex stopped taking new applications for this one in July 2026, so we have not linked it below.
- Chase Freedom Unlimited (we each have one) — flat-rate earning that feeds the Sapphire.
- Chase Freedom Flex — rotating quarterly bonus categories. Honestly, this is the one that most resembles homework.
- Citi Double Cash — flat cash back, no thinking required.
Flexible points
- Chase Sapphire Preferred — the transfer hub for the Chase cards.
- Citi Strata Premier — the same idea on the Citi side.
Hotels
- Hilton Aspire and Hilton Surpass (we each hold a Surpass) — Hilton is our most-used chain, and these carry the status that makes the stays better.
- IHG Premier — our value option, and the status comes with the card.
- World of Hyatt — the smallest footprint of the three, but the points go furthest when there’s a property where we’re headed.
- Marriott Bonvoy Boundless — the one we use least, which tells you something.
Premium travel
- Amex Platinum, and a second Platinum through Morgan Stanley — lounge access and travel credits. Worth it only if you actually use them, and we’ll be honest below about whether two is defensible.
What we’d skip if we started over
- The rotating-category card. The quarterly activation and the shifting bonus categories cost more attention than the extra points are worth to us.
- The second premium travel card. One is defensible if you use the credits. Two is difficult to justify unless the benefits genuinely don’t overlap.
- Spreading across four hotel chains. We did it chasing individual deals, and the result is that our nights are split four ways instead of concentrated where they’d earn real status. Pick one chain, stay loyal, get treated better. We know this and we still got it wrong.
- Applying in a hurry. Every card we regret is one we opened for a welcome bonus without a plan for what it does in year two.
If one of the others fits, the links are here
The two-card setup above is the answer for most people, and we’d rather you stopped reading there. But a few of the cards in our inventory make sense on their own if they match how you already spend. If one of them fits, these go to our referral links.
Everyday spending
- Amex Blue Business Plus — the no-annual-fee catch-all
- Amex Gold — groceries and restaurants
- Chase Freedom Unlimited — flat-rate, pairs with the Sapphire
- Chase Freedom Flex — rotating categories, if you don’t mind the admin
- Citi Double Cash — flat cash back
Hotels
- World of Hyatt — best points value, smallest footprint
- Marriott Bonvoy Boundless — the biggest footprint of the lot
Premium travel
- Amex Platinum — only if the lounge access and credits are ones you’d use anyway
The short version
Two cards will get you most of the way. One flexible points earner for daily spending, one hotel card for the single chain you actually use.
We have seventeen because we’ve been doing this a long time and we enjoy the puzzle more than we’ll admit. If you don’t enjoy the puzzle, don’t play it. Get the two, pay them off every month, and spend the time you saved actually going somewhere.
Speaking of which, here’s what we pack it all into, the camera gear that comes with us, and a weekend in Nashville that these cards paid for most of.
Some links in this post are referral or affiliate links. If you use them we may earn a commission or bonus points at no additional cost to you. We only link cards we actually hold and use.
Card benefits, annual fees, and welcome offers change constantly. Everything here reflects what we were seeing when we wrote it, so always confirm current terms with the issuer before applying. We’re not financial advisors, and this is what works for our family, not advice for yours.
