146. One Card From Each Bank: Our Top Picks

Points Talk®: Your Travel Dreams, Made Possible by Points

Alex, Pam and Jess

Places & Travel, Education, Society & Culture, How To

4.9 • 734 Ratings

🗓️ 16 September 2025

⏱️ 45 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Which credit card would you choose if you could only pick one from each major bank? In this episode, the Travel Mom Squad shares their top picks and explains why each card works best for their individual travel habits, home airports, and spending priorities. While there isn’t a single right answer for everyone, their discussion gives you a behind-the-scenes look at how they approach selecting cards for real-world travel.

The Squad debates and compares cards across categories, weighing benefits, earning potential, and annual fees. They highlight why some cards are better suited for certain spending patterns or travel goals, and what subtle perks can make a difference for one traveler versus another. As a bonus, they also reveal which hotel and airline card they would pick if they could only select one, giving you insight into how to think about those decisions as well.

You can find links to resources mentioned in this episode plus the transcript here: travelmomsquad.com/146

Ready to get started with NEARLY FREE travel? Click here for the exact offers we would sign up for this month: travelmomsquad.lpages.co/bestoffers/

The Travel Mom Squad is also on YouTube! You can watch this episode here: youtube.com/@travelmomsquad

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Transcript

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0:00.0	There are so many great credit cards out there, but what if we could only have one from each of the major banks?
0:06.2	Listen in as we share our picks.
0:08.7	Welcome to Points Talk with the Travel Mom Squad.
0:11.6	We are three moms who've discovered how to leverage credit card welcome offers to get hundreds of thousands of dollars of travel expenses for nearly free.
0:20.1	We've used credit card points of miles to
0:21.9	take vacations to places like Hawaii, Paris, Greece, Maldives, Japan, and so much more. And the best
0:28.6	part? We each still have 800 plus credit scores. Imagine being able to take the vacation of your dreams
0:34.5	for nearly free. It's totally possible and we're here to show you how.
0:39.6	Hey, I'm Alex. And I'm Pam, Alex's mom, and I'm Jess. Let's Talk Points. Thankfully, this is not the
0:47.7	case, but what if we could only have one transferable points card from each of the four major banks and just one hotel card
0:57.4	and one airline credit card. That's like a nightmare, but we're going to go into which
1:05.0	card we would pick and why. So we are going to start it off with American Express. All right, Pam, I know that you love you some Amex and you have like five million
1:15.5	MX points.
1:16.9	But if you could only open one card, one transferable points card from American Express, which one are you choosing?
1:24.1	I think I have an idea, but let me know.
1:29.4	Yeah, I'm excited to see how we agree and disagree on this. And I used to have five, I'm not really five million, but I used to
1:34.8	have a lot. But I have used so many of my American Express membership rewards that I would
1:41.0	love to get more. So I'm kind of at that position all of a sudden. But the card that I
1:47.3	opened fairly early and I've never canceled work that works really well for me is the American Express
1:55.0	Platinum card. That's the personal card. I have loved that card for forever. I know Jess, it made some changes
2:03.5	and just did a reel where she threw it in the garbage. And I was just like appalled. It's like,
2:08.5	no, I love that card. And I think one of the things is that it definitely, it has a higher annual fee. And that kind of just, you know, makes everybody upset.
	...

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