The 2nd Best Credit Card

We all now know that The Best Credit Card you should get to begin your miles and points journey is the American Express Cobalt.

But what is the 2nd best credit card you should have in your wallet?

As I mentioned in my article; What We Did Next in our Credit Card Journey, the next credit card I got, and you should to, is get any Aeroplan VISA, whether its from TD or CIBC.

But..... this isn't the 2nd best credit card in my opinion, that title would go to the Marriott Bonvoy American Express Credit Card.

The main reason?

You receive an Annual Free Night Award after your anniversary each year.

What this means is after you hold the card for one year, they will gift you a free night stay, worth up to 35,000 points, to be used at mostly any hotel in the Marriott group. Which is huge, and surely covers the cost of the annual fee for this card, which is only $120/year.

You might think you won't get a nice hotel for 35,000 points, but you can easily find a very nice hotel in many major cities across the world, for this many points.

In fact, we just recently used out free night award at the Ritz Carlton in Chicago. One caveat however when we used it, was that the one night, the Sunday, required 49,000 points. But, Marriott allows you to top up the 35,000 points you get for your free night with another 15,000 points, which then allows you to book a room for up to 50,000 points, applying your free night worth 35,000 points to the reservation, and paying the balance with points, which is what we did.

This can all be done online as well in your Marriott account, which makes using your free night very easy to do. We ended up staying for 3 nights at the Ritz Carlton in Chicago, using our free night for one of the nights, and then transferring American Express points to Marriott Bonvoy points, at a conversion rate of 5 Amex points to 6 Marriott Bonvoy points, for the remaining 2 nights.

In the end, we paid zero dollars out of pocket for a 3 night getaway at a Ritz Carlton in Chicago!

Just remember, as long as 1 of the nights is less then 50K points, the system will automatically apply your free night to that night, and then show you the remaining points needed for the rest of the nights.

What's interesting about our credit card miles and points journey, is I actually got the Marriott Bonvoy American Express credit card back in May of 2022, a year before I started my journey. The main reason I got this card was because we were flying out of Toronto to Panama on an early flight, so we decided to stay at the Sheraton Gateway Hotel (which is part of the Marriott hotel group), in the Toronto airport the night before. And if I signed up for the credit card, I'd get a $100 credit on our stay, which was a great deal. Not knowing at the time all the benefits that the card offered, including the free night award stay.

So, when my first year anniversary came up in May 2023, and I got a free night for being a cardholder, just when I started down the rabbit hole of learning about miles and points, I was pumped, as it felt like I already had a head start on our journey.

Just this one perk with this credit card is why I chose it as my 2nd best credit card that I'd want in my wallet. It's also why Adding a Player 2 to Your Credit Card Game is very beneficial when collecting miles and points, as Ashley also has this credit card in her wallet, which provides us with 2 free nights a year.

We are also both applying for the The Marriott Bonvoy Business American Express credit card too next month, which will then provide us with 4 free nights per year, just from having these credit cards in our wallets!

What do you think about that!?