Credit card strategy

[fedemenni]

Hello all,

I need some advice suggestions. My current credit card holding are:

– Barclaycard avios basic where I pay my rent and council tax on it and use it where Amex isn’t accepted (£20k spent target each year for the upgrade voucher)
– BA Amex Premium cost £250 per year, when I hit the £10k for the voucher I kinda stop using it
– Amex Platinum cost £650 per year, I have recently upgraded it from gold due to the very generous upgrade offer so will need to spend £10k here by June to get the bonus

I would like to reduce the number of cards that I hold so I was thinking to close the BA AMex premium and upgrade the barclaycard avios to premium to reduce the minimum spend for the voucher but I need to understand the following:

– which voucher is more powerful for a single person travelling? the BA or the barclays?
– will barclay allow me to upgrade the card?

Many thanks in advance!

[SteveJ]

– which voucher is more powerful for a single person travelling? the BA or the barclays?

Do some dummy booking based on where you would like to go and which class you’d elect to travel in. Amex is pay Avios for one-way for a return. Barclaycard is pay Avios for lower class for travel in a higher class. In my experience the Amex is more powerful in most scenarios, but YMMV.
Amex voucher also opens up more availability than the Barclaycard so in pretty much all ways I find it superior.

– will barclay allow me to upgrade the card?

In the Barclaycard app click:
More > Cards > Change to a different card

If you have the option for the Avios Plus card there you can upgrade, if you don’t you can’t.

[fedemenni]

SteveJ wrote:

– which voucher is more powerful for a single person travelling? the BA or the barclays?

Do some dummy booking based on where you would like to go and which class you’d elect to travel in. Amex is pay Avios for one-way for a return. Barclaycard is pay Avios for lower class for travel in a higher class. In my experience the Amex is more powerful in most scenarios, but YMMV.
Amex voucher also opens up more availability than the Barclaycard so in pretty much all ways I find it superior.

– will barclay allow me to upgrade the card?

In the Barclaycard app click:
More > Cards > Change to a different card

If you have the option for the Avios Plus card there you can upgrade, if you don’t you can’t.

thank you, suddenly the offer have now appeared for me to upgrade to Barclay premium. I have BA Amex voucher which I haven’t used yet, would it be make sense to upgrade to Barclays premium and close the BA Amex one? from next year I will struggle to hit £20k on the barclaycard but at the same I want to keep it because allows me to get avios in places where amex isn’t accepted

[Reney]

It’s hard to tell you what make sense u need to do what @SteveJ told you to. Try a few dummy bookings to see if you can find availabilities in business if not try with your voucher. If you can’t find availability with or without the amex voucher then neither voucher can help you, if you can find it with both then which voucher will ‘cost you less’ both in terms of the cost of the cards and how much avios vs cash to redeem (that you are ok with). Barclaycard need the max avios option, do you earn enough avios to redeem your voucher?

[fedemenni]

Reney wrote:

It’s hard to tell you what make sense u need to do what @SteveJ told you to. Try a few dummy bookings to see if you can find availabilities in business if not try with your voucher. If you can’t find availability with or without the amex voucher then neither voucher can help you, if you can find it with both then which voucher will ‘cost you less’ both in terms of the cost of the cards and how much avios vs cash to redeem (that you are ok with). Barclaycard need the max avios option, do you earn enough avios to redeem your voucher?

mine is more a question re credit card strategy than the use of the voucher itself, i have used the barclaycard voucher last summer and indeed you need to use the maximum avios option and the lowest amount of cash. currently i have 100k points but about 75k coming in the next month.

also i didnt find any comparison between the ba and barclay voucher