Pentagon Federal Credit Union recently introduced the new american express card, which offers 5x points on airline ticket purchase, 3x on dining/hotel for first 2 years, and 1x for everything else, with $50 annual fee (waived for first year) They also throw in 20k bonus points if you spend $650 within 3 months of account opening. The good: 1. 5x earning on airline ticket purchase,  no upper limit (great for frequent traveller) 2. 20k points would get you a round-trip airline ticket (the detail is still ambigous on the website) The not-so-good: 1. annual fee, although it's not expensive. (You need to spend $1000 on airline tickets to break even) 2. point redemption is not as wide as possible, for instance, there's no cash redemption option. Gift card is valued roughly at 1 cent per point. The penfed is a reputable institution and they are strict on lending, in another word, you need to have good credit and negligible debt in order to get the card. The service is great though as you can get to the customer service (all us-based) very quick and they are usually helpful. Penfed has a policy of combined credit limit not exceeding $50k. If you already have that limit reached, you would most likely end up with splitting the credit limit among cards. This is a good card for the traveller, otherwise it's an average reward card. (more or less 1% straight reward card)  

friedfishy

Norwalk, CT