Both offer pretty sweet deals. The Venture card has a 2% rewards rate on all purchases, and you don’t have to deal with blackout dates or other typical redemption hassles. Instead, you book your flight or hotel room directly, and use your rewards points to pay for it. The $59 annual fee is waived the first year.

The Sapphire card is offering a 50,000-point signup bonus that can be worth up to $625 of free travel. You can earn a 2% rewards rate on travel and dining purchases and 1% everywhere else. Plus, you get an annual rewards bonus equal to 7% of the points you’ve earned for the year. The annual fee of $95 is waived for the first year.

A notable feature for travels: neither card charges foreign transaction fees, which typically add 3% to the cost of spending abroad (or ordering from foreign companies at home).

I still like my Starwood Amex card–mostly because we’ve been able to wrangle redemption rates of 4%+by using our points to book Hawaiian resort hotel rooms and sleeper-car accommodations on Amtrak. But we recently added a Venture card to our mix for those occasions when a merchant doesn’t accept American Express.

Remember, rewards cards only make sense for those who pay off their balances in full every month, and you need excellent credit scores to score these deals. Also, you shouldn’t apply for new accounts if you expect to get a major loan, such as a car loan or a mortgage refinance, in the next few months. Wait until that deal closes before you seek any more credit.

If you’re trying to pay off credit card balances, and don’t have the good scores needed to get low-rate balance transfer offers you find on NerdWallet and other sites, consider getting a three-year fixed-rate personal loan from a local credit union to help you pay off your debt. FindACreditUnion.com can help you if you’re not already a CU member.

If you’re hoping to improve your scores, check out my book “Your Credit Score,” which recently came out in its fourth edition.

Here’s how to make sure you’re not letting free money slip through your fingers:

Keep track. Just as it’s easier to monitor all your financial accounts if they’re aggregated on one Web page, it’s a lot easier to keep track of your loyalty rewards programs when you can see them at a glance and they’re automatically updated. I use TripIt Pro to track my travel-related points and miles, but also recently signed up for UsingMiles.com, a site that promises to help me use those rewards to find flights, hotel rooms and upgrades. Another site to check out is AwardWallet.com, which specializes in alerting you when your points and miles from a wide variety of programs are about to expire.

Know their value. When researching free travel, UsingMiles.com simultaneously shows you the lowest cash price for the same flight or hotel room, which can help you decide whether you’re getting good value for your points. That’s something you should check anytime you’re considering cashing in rewards. For example: we’re getting an exchange rate of nearly 4 cents per point by using Starwood Preferred rewards to pay for our hotel on an upcoming Hawaii vacation. When I looked into using Starwood points for a recent weekend jaunt, the exchange rate would have been less than a penny per point, so I paid cash instead. Likewise, airline miles typically have the most value when you can use them to upgrade to business or first class on an international flight. You’ll often get a worse-than-average exchange rate on short-haul domestic trips. Using miles for merchandise often results in a horrible exchange rate of half a cent per mile, or less. Keep that as a last resort option for points that are about to expire and that can’t be transferred or resuscitated. Speaking of which:

Keep them from expiring. Some rewards points are use-’em-or-lose-’em, but many programs now have alternatives that can keep your points alive longer. If you buy a few miles or use the program’s online mall to shop, you may be able to extend the due date. Check each program’s Web site for details.

Cash them in. Points and miles lose value pretty quickly as providers constantly ratchet up the “cost” of free travel and other goodies. There’s nothing quite like closing in on 40,000 miles only to have the airline jack up the cost of a free flight to 45,000–or twice that for peak-time travel. You’re likely to get the best value by either planning 6 to 9 months ahead, or using them at the last minute, when the airlines try to fill the last empty seats.

Rescue orphaned miles. Randy Petersen’s WebFlyer.com site has an excellent Mileage Converter calculator that can show you how to transfer miles and points between many programs. I used it to shepherd some points from Continental’s OnePass program which had languished for years into our Amtrak Guest Rewards accounts, where they’re far more valuable. It’s not unusual to get an exchange rate of 5 or 6 cents per point when you use rewards to pay for a roomette or bedroom on the train. If you can’t transfer miles and you’re a few shy of being able to cash them in, it can make sense to buy a few miles to make them useable. (United and British Airways are among the programs that don’t let you move miles out.)

Consider your alternatives. If you have lots of miles and points in lots of different programs, it may be time to rethink your strategy. It’s typically best to consolidate your travel with one airline and its partners and one or two hotel chains. There’s less hassle tracking your rewards, which reduces the risk of having them expire, plus you’ll earn points and upgrades faster. If you don’t travel much, on the other hand, you might find you’ll earn more by switching from a travel rewards card to a more general cash-back rewards card.

One thing you didn’t mention is that with many of the reward programs that many cards have, we’ve made out like bandits (“cash back,” free flights, etc.) simply by using our card to buy things that we would have bought for cash anyway if we didn’t have the cards.

One other point: It might be good to advise readers that if they have a card, they should use it occasionally. We had one bank cancel our card because we never used it (our others had better rewards programs!), and having a card canceled (for any reason) can look bad on one’s credit report, correct?

Answer: It can, which is why you should try to keep your accounts active if you’re trying to improve your scores or you’ll be in the market for a major loan, such as a mortgage or an auto loan, any time soon. You can keep a neglected account active with little effort by having a bill charged automatically to a card and then arranging an automatic payment from your checking account.

You shouldn’t, however, be fearful about closing an occasional account if your scores are already high and you won’t be applying for new credit soon. Closing an account or having one closed shouldn’t have a major effect on your scores, and any ding you suffer would be temporary.

An email from Delta’s mileage program recently announced that you could get 3 miles for every dollar spent at Home Depot. We’d been planning to buy a new grill there anyway, so I went through the SkyMiles Mall site to get to Home Depot, where I used a coupon from DealNews.com to get $100 off the purchase. We charged the grill and some accessories it to our Starwood Preferred Amex card, earning us 723 points in that program for future travel plus 1,977 frequent flier points in Delta’s program.

It’s not enough to get a free trip, of course, but the rewards do eventually add up. In recent months we’ve used various frequent traveler programs to:

• Get a free week at the Westin resort in Maui
• Book a bedroom on Amtrak for an overnight trip
• Get two free roundtrips to New York and one free roundtrip to Maui

Here’s how you can supercharge your travel rewards:

Use your rewards program’s shopping mall. For years I avoided these “malls,” thinking they were just online boutiques with overpriced merchandise. D’oh! In reality, the shopping malls operated by most frequent flier programs are simply portals that pass you through to the online merchants you already use. But by starting your shopping trip at the mall, you earn frequent flier rewards on the money you spend. You can use online coupons and other discounts just as if you’d started your trip at the retailer. The Mileage Mall at Webflyer.com keeps track of the offers at various frequent flyer online shopping malls and singles out the 20 best deals.

Spend money with program partners. You probably know you can earn frequent flier miles by renting cars or booking hotel nights with an airline program’s partner companies. But you also can get miles when you refinance your mortgage, sign up for cell service or eat a restaurant meal. It’s worth regularly reviewing the partner offers listed on your frequent traveler programs’ Web sites, and checking in with Webflyer’s Mileage Mall before you make a big purchase or open new accounts. Right now I’m kicking myself for not knowing that Mozy’s online backup service offered 3,000 Delta miles for new accounts, since I just opened one.

Sign up for your rewards programs’ email newsletters. You’ll be alerted to special deals you might miss otherwise. Virtually every program has limited-time offers that give you bonus miles or points. Right now, Continental offers double miles for La Quinta stays; Delta gives bonus miles for stays at Marriott and Hilton hotels, while American is offering up to 50,000 bonus miles for roundtrips between JFK and Los Angeles or San Francisco for first- and business-class trips, and 25,000 miles for coach tickets booked in Y, D or I categories.

Get elite status. Airline and hotel programs typically have multiple tiers of membership; the higher you go, the more rewards points you earn for the same travel. Best Western, for example, gives its most frequent travelers a 30% bonus on the points they earn; Hilton gives its top tier a 50% bonus, and Delta’s Diamond Medallion fliers get a 125% bonus on the miles they earn. If you travel a lot, concentrating your business on one airline or hotel chain can help you rack up the rewards.

Get the credit card. If you’re an elite traveler on an airline (flying 25,000 miles or more annually), it often makes sense to get the credit card affiliated with that frequent flier program. But airline-branded credit cards tend to come with hefty annual fees, so you need to either travel enough or charge enough to make the plastic earn its keep. If you have one of these cards, do an annual review to make sure that the value of the miles you earn are more than offsets the cost. Otherwise, consider your alternatives:

• Hotel-branded rewards cards are often a better deal; they typically don’t have annual fees or blackout dates for using your rewards.
• If you charge a lot and want the flexibility to deploy your points among different programs, consider an American Express Preferred Rewards Gold card (which allows you to transfer miles to 11 different airline programs) or the Diners Club International Charge Card (which allows transfers to 20 airline programs). For more, read Webflyer.com’s review by clicking HERE by Webflyer.com. Starwood Preferred Guest Card from American Express offers similar flexibility to transfer miles to 30 different programs.
• If you prefer simplicity, consider Escape by Discover Card, which gives you credits to offset travel purchases, and the Capital One No Hassles Card, which offers a better-than-average accumulation rate—1.25 miles per dollar spent—that can be used on any airline without blackout dates.

Answer: Credit card rewards programs usually get watered down over time, but that trend seems to be accelerating as card issuers look for new ways to contain costs and boost profits.

Typically, a card issuer will announce a generous new program and eventually tweak the rules to make miles, points or rebates harder to earn. At the same time, an affiliated airline — reacting in part to all the frequent flier miles being earned by the credit card customers — will increase the number of miles needed for a free flight or limit the number of free seats, making it harder to cash in rewards.

As issuers face high default rates and limits on their ability to raise interest rates, some are responding by weakening their rewards programs, raising annual fees or adding new fees, credit card experts say.

That makes it a good time to review your credit card programs to see whether they’re a good match for how you earn and use rewards.

Plenty of people do manage to fly for free using these programs, but they tend to work best for people who either charge a lot (so they quickly earn rewards) or people who fly a lot, since elite frequent fliers, or those who travel more than 25,000 miles a year with a single airline, usually have an easier time redeeming rewards.

You may be able to make rewards worthwhile simply by concentrating your flying with a single airline and its partners. Having miles scattered in a bunch of different programs makes it harder to earn free flights and makes you a less-valuable customer to any one airline.

In some cases, you can transfer miles between programs: WebFlyer has a mileage converter on its site that can show you possible routes for getting miles from one program to another.

Or it could be that you’re better off looking for a credit card program that offers different rewards. Cards affiliated with hotel chains are a popular choice, since the rewards tend to be easier to use. Or you could opt for a simple cash-back card and buy your own airline tickets with the proceeds.

photo credit: christopher.woo

The countdown to the holidays has begun, and if you’re like most people you’re trying not to spend a fortune this year. If the usual “make a pretty basket of soaps!” advice isn’t cutting it, here are some suggestions that might work for you:

Start later. Shopping all year round can help you snag some pretty good deals, but typically, the longer you shop, the more you spend. Retailers have been saving their biggest discounts until late in the season, so if you can stand to wait, consider doing the bulk of your shopping in one concentrated burst later in the season. (One example: DealNews.com says high-end, name-brand flat-screen LCD TVs were 8%-12% cheaper last December than at any point in November, including Black Friday and Cyber Monday.) Free shipping offers start to get scarce about a week before Christmas, but DealNews CEO Dan de Grandpre predicts you may be able to find free shipping as late as Dec. 22 or 23 at some sites. If you opt to do your shopping last minute at the mall, be sure to bring your helmet and pads.

Have the talk. The easiest way to trim costs is to trim the gift exchange. Many families buy gifts only for the kids, or pull names from a hat, or gang up to buy more expensive presents (which is a great approach for teenagers, mothers-in-law and other picky recipients). Suggest to friends that you bypass presents in favor of experiences—coffee out, a pedicure together, a movie and popcorn.

Use your rewards. Most credit cards these days have some kind of rewards program attached. You may be able to can use your rewards points to buy merchandise, gift cards and magazine subscriptions. If you’re feeling really generous, you can use frequent traveler points to get someone a free night at a hotel, a free airplane ticket or an upgrade to first class.

No “Secret Santas.” The recession should have killed this half-baked notion of buying presents for co-workers and others whose tastes and proclivities you shouldn’t be expected to know. If not, counter with a better idea: the white elephant gift exchange, which is at least fun for all participants. Set a low limit on the amount that can be spent ($10 is good, $5 is better), put the gifts in a pile and give each person a chance to pick. Each subsequent person can pick from the pile or steal from the previous pickers. Hilarity ensues.

Give heirlooms. Don’t wait until you’re dead to pass on family jewelry, china, photos or Great Uncle Phil’s banjo-playing taxidermied frogs. Declutter while you’re still around to enjoy the reaction.

Answer: Opening and closing accounts can hurt your more-than-decent score. That’s why the company that created the leading FICO credit scoring formula recommends we apply for credit sparingly.

At the same time, it’s a good idea to have more than one credit card. Having a “spare” card can be handy if your other card needs to be closed temporarily because of fraud, or if your issuer decides to change your terms for the worse.

Opening a card just to get an introductory benefit, such as a pile of miles, isn’t the best idea—particularly if you would have to pay a substantial annual fee, which is typically of frequent flyer cards, to keep the account open. Instead, look for a card you can live with for a good long time. Many rewards cards offer cash back or other benefits and don’t have an annual fee. You can find current card offers at CreditCards.com, CardRatings.com and Bankrate.com, among other sites.

photo credit: Qiao-Da-Ye賽門譙大爺

Behind on your credit-card payments? Your credit score isn’t the only thing at risk. You’re also very quickly blowing up any chance of collecting those rewards that come with your card.

CardHub.com, a leading online marketplace for credit cards, conducted a mini-study that examined the fine print of reward programs for the top six major credit-card issuers.  Among its findings:

• In the last 12 months, 15% of U.S. adults have been late making a credit-card payment. The credit-card default rate in 2009 is the highest since 1991.
• If an account becomes delinquent, all points earned under American Express rewards program may be lost.
• If an account becomes two months or more delinquent, all points under the Discover rewards program will be lost.
• Other issuers, such as Bank of America, Capital One and Citibank, generally will not allow you to earn rewards while your account is delinquent. (According to the survey, Chase did not disclose any information about its programs.)

What’s a cardholder to do?

Face the cold hard facts. Reward programs only make sense if you pay your balance in full each month. If you carry a balance or can’t make the payment on time, a reward program isn’t for you.  If you’re pinched, you need to curb your spending and pay off the debt.

And let’s be clear here: Issuers can change the terms and conditions of their reward programs at any time or for any reason. There’s no notification period. No warning needed. That’s different from the current rules that require at least 15 days notice before issuers change your interest rate or fees. (Under the new law, that notification must come at least 45 days before any changes are made to your account.)

Yes, rewards are super under the right conditions.  Just make sure you’ve picked a card and program that work for you – and pay on time so you don’t blow your bennies.

Want to learn more? Check out my columns for more tips:

• 20 cards that pay you back
• Credit cards with the happiest users
• 9 big credit card myths

• Increased their interest rate–19% (up from 15% in February survey)
• Increased their fees–14%
• Lowered their credit limit–14% (up from 8% in February survey)
• Increased their minimum payment due–12%
• Reduced their rewards program–9%

This national telephone poll was conducted for Credit.com by GfK Custom Research North America from June 12-14, 2009. A total of 1,000 interviews were completed, with roughly 500 female adults and 500 male adults. The margin of error is +/- 3 percentage points for the full sample.

For more on dealing with the credit crunch, read:

• Banks have declared war–on you
• 6 steps for paying off toxic debt
• The credit card party is officially over
• Thaw out your frozen credit

Banks are expected to look at reviving annual fees, curtailing cash-back and other rewards programs and charging interest immediately on a purchase instead of allowing a grace period of weeks, according to bank officials and trade groups.

No doubt some issuers will try each of those gambits–and then wind up backing off as their savviest (and most creditworthy) customers go to the competition.

Because the card industry is still highly competitive, and will remain so, at least when it comes to attracting and retaining low-risk customers. The only way I can see these threats sticking is if the card issuers collude (risking FTC intervention). While we waited for the lawsuits to grind through the system, we savvy consumers could use debit cards, checks or cash for our transactions–because heaven knows we’re not about to settle for a lousy credit card deal or pay a dime of unnecessary interest.

It’s true that it will be harder for college students to get credit cards, and those with poor or mediocre scores will continue to have trouble accessing credit, as they have since the credit crunch began.

NYT columnist Ron Lieber has it right: bankers’ ominous warnings about the credit-worthy paying the price for this legislation are so much sabre rattling.