Credit Cards for Consultants

why not pay with real money?

apparently the starwood cards are good

You could always pay with real money, but one of the perks about consulting is all the points/miles you get from traveling. Might as well rack up the points and let your company reimburse you for the expenses rather then just paying cash and getting no benefits out of it.

amex platinum if you can get your company to pay for the annual fee (some consulting firms do). Just make sure to sign up for all the airline frequent flier cards and register for hotel points.

1. American Express Starwood Preferred Guest card. Make sure to get 10k bonus SPG points when you sign up. This is huge, assuming your firm (like mine) stays primarily at Starwood Properties. Combine this card (2 points / $) and SPG Gold status (3 pts / $) and you really start to rack up the points for hotel stays.

2. Citi mtvU card. This isn't a typical consulting card (and it may even be a little embarrassment to whip out at a big case team dinner), but I **highly** recommend it. You get 5 "ThankYou Points" per $ spent at restaurants (and bookstores and a few other places). You can cash out the TY points for gift cards or student loan rebates at 1 cent per point, or use them on plane tickets at up to 2 cents per point (and you get miles for the flights!).

Those are the only two cards I used this summer - the mtvU at restaurants and the SPG for everything else. You could use an airline card instead of the SPG for non-hotel purchases, but I'd rather have SPG points.

I've had the AmEx platinum for the past year, but I just canceled. Using it for lounge access is nice if you can get the fee waived (or get someone else to pay for it), but the rewards aren't very good IMO.

Other random points tips - be sure to focus your flying on one airline, see if your firm has an agreement that will get you status automatically with their preferred airline, pay attention to SPG promos (the SPG forum on FlyerTalk.com is a good source of info), get staffed internationally :-P.

Thanks a lot Ringtail, I think I'm going to apply for the Starwood. I do have a question though...I remembered looking at the details, and it seems like you can either apply your points towards hotel stay or airfare miles, but not both.... Is that correct?

I'm not sure if it'd make a big difference. You typically charge to a corporate amex, no?

cyclone - Definitely choose Starwood points, not airline miles!

If you choose miles, (i.e. Delta Skymiles), your points from hotel stays + using the SPG AmEx will be automatically converted into SkyMiles when you earn them. But if you choose Starwood points, you have the ability to use your points for hotel stays (often a better value, since award plane tickets are impossible to find these days), or, if you'd like to transfer them to an airline, you get a 20% bonus if you transfer in increments of 20,000 points.

Basically, you lose a lot of option value by choosing miles, and gain nothing in return.

And @ebitdaplus - if you have to use a corporate AmEx, be sure to sign up for Membership Rewards (I think it costs $75/year, so it's worthwhile if you'll charge > $7,500/year).

what about cards like citi chairman card? any other lounge cards? etc

AmEx rewards are worth the fee. One manager I had was racking up ~30k/month and that wasn't particularly unusual.

Before the inevitable question on the breakdown...

London, Paris, NYC circuit once a week, business class ~7k
Room at the W or the Ritz ~400/night
He would usually put a card down for team dinners 1 or 2x a week ~800-1k/night