How to choose a miles credit card If you don't want to read through, and want straight card-specific recommendations, please see our Editors Choice page for the best cards of 2007. Before we begin, please note that our advice is based on a few basic facts we've come across in dealing with mileage awards, many of which are seen in our PurchasingPower calculations. - International first/business class tickets or upgrades of paid tickets give you the most dollar value for your points. Although they are among the toughest in terms of availability, many people will cater their schedules to accomodate. - Many hotel awards are productive uses of points and relatively easy to attain and redeem with minimal spending, especially if you don't want to travel internationally. - Domestic airline tickets are among the most inefficient uses of your earned points, and sometimes hard to get unless you opt for a generic points card that has no capacity controls. - Earning points by traveling is the most efficient way to build balances  . Card offers are nice and generous, but really the most productive way to up your balance is through frequent travel. However, there are plenty of ways to earn nice rewards as an occasional traveler by being a frequent spender, and we help you with that here. Occasional travelers: frequent spenders, not frequent flyers You don't get a lot of travel in, and have relatively low existing point balances (not yet enough for a free ticket), and you want to build up to make parts of your vacations free I may include international travel for my awards I really tend to stick to domestic travel for my award trips Our PurchasingPower rantings show the most productive point awards are on international business class tickets or upgrades of paid coach tickets overseas. Consider a traditional airline miles card from your favorite major carrier  or a card that transfers to a traditional airline miles program like the Starwood American Express , Diners Club , or American Express Membership Rewards. Traditional airline miles programs are still the best way to achieve those awards in first or business class. If you want the upgraded lifestyle during your air travel, stick to something that earns in a traditional program, or can convert its points to a traditional program. We particularly like theStarwood American Express . While it is a hotel card, the points can be converted to most traditional airline programs one for one (except United) with no fee. Moreover you are given a valuable 5,000 point bonus for every 20,000 points you convert to an airline program. In effect, you get 1.25 miles for every dollar spent. Our favorite strategy is to use Starwood points for hotel stays during domestic travel, and to transfer them to your home airline program for the big international business class awards. Take a look at the PurchasingPower ratings and you'll see why. The Delta SkyMiles Amex has been offering a number of ongoing double and triple point bonuses on all purchases, which would make it more lucrative than the Starwood card for airline awards. However, they are promotional in nature and we don't include them in the ratings. You should consider accruing points in a good hotel program like Starwood or Hilton, as domestic airline awards are realtively inefficient uses of points, according to our PurchasingPower ratings. If you spend a little, some hotel rewards like those at Starwood are as few as 3-5,000 points (or about $3-$5,000 spent on your card). However, if you are set on earning points for domestic airline tickets , good options are the generic Citibank PremierPass Elite , the no annual fee Discover Miles card or JetBlue TrueBlue card (if you only fly domestic/south of the border and in their markets), and the  Starwood American Express   which lets you use your points for boht hotels and miles on over 20 major airlines.  The Citibank PremierPass Elite  , Discover Miles, and Amex BlueSky have the advantage of letting you book on any date with no blackouts or capacity restrictions. You just pay with points based on the price of the airline tickets or fixed redemption chart. However, you can't merge these points with existing airline miles. The Starwood American Express has similar efficiency, but adds  flexibliity to book hotel awards and merge the points with miles in native airline programs for upgrades and other rewards. If you're using the Starwood Amex, a strategy is to sign up for a traditional airline miles card if it has a large signon bonus to pump up an account once, then use the purchases on your Starwood account to top it off. We think a signon bonus of 10,000 miles or more is worth a typical year's annual fee. Frequent travelers: frequent flyers and buyers You have medium to high existing point balances (already a free ticket or much more) and tend to add to them through paid travel My points are generally earned in one or two airline or hotel programs My miles and travel are scattered across several programs  You want to capitalize on your invested points and take advantage of your focus. Keep in mind international business class awards and upgrades are the most efficient use of your airline balances, and if you're thinking of traveling abroad, these awards are good goals to target. You should take a look at your home airline's traditional card . The promotional bonuses and benefits may help you in ways beyond those seen on this site. However, we also recommend the Starwood Preferred Guest American Express as long as you're not earning for United or Continental Airlines. It lets you transfer your points to most airline programs at 1:1, and includes 5,000 point bonuses that effectively let you earn points at 1.25 per dollar spent, 25% better than many traditional airline cards. Many people use this as their primary unless their airline has a lucrative bonus offer in action...as it earns at 1.25:1 for airline miles versus the usual 1:1 of airline cards without bonuses. Our favorite strategy is to use the Starwood points for hotel rewards when traveling domestically, or save them up for a big upgrade when going abroad.  Hotel rewards are as little as 3,000 points (or, $3,000 spent on the card). If you spend a lot, you'll reach your big international airline award faster with the 5,000 point bonus for every 20,000 points transfered to an airline program. However, if you tend to stay at a hotel chain other than Starwood, you may be better off focusing points into that program, as most hotel programs realy kick in for people who earn points through stays, rather than just through credit card purchases. Marriott and Priority Club cards are especially geared to customers who already stay in their properties, and plan to continue to do so. You're probably also a very frequent traveler, and heavy spender. While you may already have a traditional airline miles card, you should consider focusing spending on a card like the Diners Club MasterCard charge card, or Starwood American Express . These cards let you transfer points to multiple programs. Our favorite card is the Starwood American Express as it lets you transfer points to over 20 top airlines, most of the time at 1:1 (except Continental and United Airlines), with a 5,000 point bonus for every 20,000 miles you transfer. The only downside is is limited on the hotel side to Starwood properties. Not such a bad thing, given their lack of capacity controls on awards, and many worldwide hotels.   We are like the Diners Club for people with lots of existing point balances across airlines and hotels because of its flexibility to transfer points at fair 1:1 rates to more programs than any other. It may not have the depth of lounge memerships of Amex Platinum, but savvy travelers find the flexibility more important. This lets you keep your points earned through purchsaes in a common currency easily exchanged to top off your accounts wherever an award may be available. However, as you travel frequently, you may want to pull out your home airline card if they are offering special bonus offers for purchases. If you're purchasing a lot of airline tickets on your own, and don't have to use the corporate card, also consider the Citibank PremierPass Elite . It offers the ability to earn Citi Thank You Points for both the dollar purchse of a ticket, and the total miles flown on the ticket. This is on top of whatever your frequent flyer program offers. How do I know if a card is worth the annual fee? One way to estimate if a card is worth the annual fee is to look at our PurchasePower rating for the card and type of award you're saving up for. Just multiply the PurchasePower percentage by the number of dollars you think you'll spend on the card in a year. If the number you get is greater than the annual fee, then it's probably worth it. If not, you may want to think about other options. Here's an example: Nick wants to use the Citibank AAdvantage Platinum World MasterCard to save up for a Europe Business Class ticket on American Airlines. He plans on spending about $2000 a month, or $24,000 a year on his card. The PurchasePower chart shows the Citi AAdvantage card returns about 3.9% when you use it toward a Europe Business Class ticket.  3.9% * $24,000 = $936 The annual fee on the card is $85, which is much less than the $936 in value he's banking each year, so the card is worth keeping.