This Is When It Pays to Stay Loyal to a Rewards Credit Card

Author: Holly Johnson / Source: Wise Bread

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The best travel and rewards credit cards offer a tantalizing game of risk. If you can charge your purchases and rack up rewards without carrying a balance or paying interest, you usually win. If you overspend with credit and wind up in debt, on the other hand, you lose the game — and will pay through the nose.

Still, there are more facets to this game that extend far beyond the risk of debt. If you choose your rewards and travel cards wisely and use them strategically, you can earn a lot more points and miles over time. Staying loyal to a brand can also help you make the most of your efforts, but only in certain situations.

This is why it’s important to know when loyalty pays off. Here are some scenarios where sticking to one rewards credit card or one loyalty program can work in your favor.

When you can reach your redemption goals faster

Staying loyal to a rewards brand can pay off by helping you reach optimal redemptions faster. For example, let’s say you mostly stick with flexible rewards programs that let you transfer points to your favorite airline loyalty program. If you were to focus all your spending with one brand of cards that lets you transfer miles, your collective efforts with a single card brand would let you rack up points you can transfer a lot faster than attempting the same thing with several cards from different brands.

Or perhaps you’re loyal to a single airline or hotel loyalty program. So, imagine you want to fly first class with a particular airline to Europe for 115,000 miles round-trip. It might be difficult to secure this redemption if you were earning miles and sign-up bonuses with several airlines within a year. However, it would be a much easier task to earn the miles for…

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