re: Best credit card for me...

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Why is the chase Safire better than the Barclays for international flights?

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I'll do an example using Kayak.com.

Let's say a flight from MSY to Paris July 4 to July 15 is 1,583 dollars in economy.

When you use Barclay's Arrival points, you first purchase the ticket at the cost of $1,583. You then redeem your points to cover the cost. You earn 2 points per dollar spent. Points are worth 1 cent each. Therefore, you need to have 158,300 Arrival points which would require about $79,150 in spending.

Now, Chase Sapphire Preferred earns Chase UR points, which are worth at least 1.25 cents per point through their travel portal, but here's the deal, with a Chase SP you can transfer to select airlines and then redeem the points, which is a better deal. Chase UR points transfer to United at a 1:1 ratio.

Let's look at that same flight, assuming the same dates are available.

United award chart shows a one way saver award to Europe from North America is 30,000 points one way, so 60,000 total. Therefore, even if all my spending was in a 1x category, I would spend $60,000 to earn the same ticket. $20,000 less than Barclay's. If you take advantage of the award ticket booking features such as stopovers and open jaws (things that could add costs to your normal booked ticket), the separation gets bigger.

If you want to fly business class, this separation gets even bigger, where a business class ticket might require $140,000 in spending on the Chase card, but almost half a million dollars on the Arrival card.

This separation isn't as apparent when booking cheap coach domestic tickets because of the minimum point floor needed to book an airline award flight, and that is when the Arrival is very useful.

ETA: there could be a situation where you find some cheap international ticket, such as $500 flight deal out of IAD to Istanbul that they ran last year, in which case you could use Barclay's because that is essentially a "domestic coach flight." It pays to know how and have the option to book the best deal.

Also note: You may see $60,000 in spending and freak out, but signup bonuses quicken that pace. For example, Chase SP sign up bonus can be between 40 and 50,000 points. Freedom 10,000 to 20,000. Put those together, you only need about $6,500 in spending to reach your goal at worst.

You can also mix this with other offers. United offers 50,000 points for their credit card. Since I can transfer Chase UR points to United, boom, another boost to my next award ticket.