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.

Now I realize Spirit has half of a bright idea. They just didn’t take it far enough.

What airlines should be doing is charging for rollaboard carry-ons (those small suitcases with wheels), while allowing at least one checked bag per ticket for free.

Those of us who spend a lot of time traveling would happily (or at least grudgingly) pay a fee to avoid spending half of our life in check-in lines and waiting at the carousel. Those two lines add at least half an hour and usually an hour to every trip. Multiply by a few flights a month and you could spend literally days each year just waiting on your bag.

Charging for carry-ons would eliminate the scrum most flights have become, with inexperienced flyers trying to cram too-big rollaboards into too little space. The most clueless are the ones who drag their rollaboards onto the plane even though they’re among the last to board and have zero chance of finding space. (Experienced flyers, by contrast, travel with bags that will fit in all but the smallest regional planes, and gate check whenever they’re too far back in line to be assured of overhead space.)

In short, airlines fees are currently set up to maximize inconvenience. Maybe airlines couldn’t make quite as much money with a fee policy that actually makes sense and gets us out of the gate quicker. But one of them should at least try it and see what happens.

Of course, you can always skip bags altogether. For more on traveling light, read this.

Booking now can save you money, as can avoiding the peak travel periods where airlines typically tack on $30 surcharges. Peak travel days include Nov. 19-24 and 26-29, Dec. 17-24 and Dec. 26-Jan.3.

In addition, CNN writes:

Be flexible on dates for the best fares. According to Farecompare.com, the cheapest days to fly are Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Saturdays. The cheapest time to fly is typically the first flight out in the morning.

“Sundays are the absolute worst days to fly, and the worst time slot to try to book is the Sunday after Christmas through the Sunday after the New Year’s holiday,” [Bestfares.com's Tom] Parsons said.

For more on cutting the cost of travel, see:

• The fastest ways to get free travel
• No more stupid bag fees
• Surviving holiday travel
• How to get luxury perks for your travel buck

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.

Below are some ideas for reducing or eliminating bag fees. But what we really need to do is kick our government into action, as travel columnist Christopher Elliott pointed out recently:

… our government can say, “enough!” It wouldn’t take much. The Transportation Department could rule that the price of an airline ticket must include at least one piece of checked luggage, and that would pretty much end this debate.Will it? If the government hears from enough air travelers, sure. Here’s how to contact them: http://www.dot.gov/contact.html.

In the meantime, here’s how to save money:

Use a good carryon. For most trips, I use a Delsey Helium Fusion suiter trolley which is light and surprisingly tough. It comes with an attachable “personal bag” that’s big enough to carry my laptop, a small purse and other sundries (that counts as my second “personal bag”). For tips on how to pack 10 days of clothes into one, check out this excellent slide-show tutorial at the New York Times site.

Gate check. Family trips entail bringing more stuff. Rather than pay baggage fees, we take our carry-ons through security and then ask for a “gate check.” We get a special tag, attach it to the bags, drop them off in the jet bridge just before entering the plane door, and pick them up at the baggage carousel at our destination. It sure beats jockeying for limited overhead bin space with all the other folks trying to avoid baggage fees, and gate agents have so far been delighted to accommodate us, since it means less hassle and faster boarding.

Pay online. If you have to check a bag, you get a few bucks off if you pay the fee online. Just remember to print out and bring your receipt to prove you paid .

Fly Southwest or JetBlue. Southwest lets you check two bags free. JetBlue allows one.

Avoid Spirit Airlines. This carrier will be the first to start charging for carryons that don’t fit under the seat in front of you. Starting Aug. 1, flyers would have to pay as much as $45 per carryon.

Look for other exceptions. First- and business-class tickets usually waive bag fees for the first two items, but some airlines also waive fees for members of their elite frequent fliers (typically travelers who fly more than 25,000 miles with the airline). Military personnel may get one or two bags free. Your credit card may offer relief, as well: users of the American Express Delta SkyMiles card, for example, will get a waiver on the first bag they check on Delta starting June 1.

Ultimately, though, the best solution is to level the playing field by requiring all airlines to include one checked bag with each ticket. Use the DOT link to find the address where you can write your regulators a letter urging them to get on it.

How to find the gas tank on the rental car. For most of my car-renting life I’d just guess as I drove up to gas station—and usually, I’d guess wrong. I didn’t know that the little gas pump icon on the fuel gauge tells you which side the tank is on. Either there’s a little arrow pointing the way, or it’s on the same side as the hose on the icon.

Don’t leave for the airport hungry. In the unlikely event you’ll have time to eat—the worst delays always happen when you’re already starving—you’ll wind up paying a small fortune for something nasty. Becoming a mom taught me the importance of many things, including the need to have a good meal before you travel and to carry lots of healthy snacks.

It pays to be loyal. Until I read Joel Widzer’s “The Penny Pincher’s Passport to Luxury Travel,” I usually went for the cheapest flight, hotel and car rental. Widzer showed me the value in concentrating my travel with one airline (and its partners), one or two hotel chains and one or two car rental outfits. I still pay competitive rates, but now I get lots of extra perks like early boarding, easier upgrades, free breakfasts and free hotel nights. A recent score: I booked a compact car at Enterprise, and wound up in a G-35. Sweet.

I’ll parcel out a few more of my “d’oh!” moments in coming days, but if you’ve got a travel hack you wish you’d learned earlier, add it in the comments.

photo credit: Albert Mata

You have to be a hardy soul to survive holiday travel, especially this year, when there are fewer flights, fewer airline employees and more security restrictions.

The Wall Street Journal’s Middle Seat columnist Scott McCartney had an excellent story today about what to expect. Here are five important tips:

1. Print out your boarding pass at home the day before. You typically can print out your pass 24 hours in advance of the flight, and you should. Getting that pass helps you secure a seat and reduces your chances of getting involuntarily bumped.
2. Sign up for flight alerts. McCartney recommends signing up with the airline as well as with FlightStats.com, which he says picks up some changes the airlines don’t.
3. Know the rules for security and baggage. Almost all the airlines charge for the first checked bag, but paying these fees online before you get to the airport may save you money. Also, no matter how frequent a flier you are, you’ll want to take a few minutes to review TSA security rules, which change constantly.
4. Don’t volunteer to get bumped without a confirmed seat on the next flight. Giving up your seat can be a great way to score free travel and even cash, but fewer, more crowded flights mean you could be waiting days on standby.
5. Consider an airport lounge day pass. These run about $50 and give you access not only to a sanctuary in a crowded airport, but to airline agents who are typically the most experienced. If anything goes wrong, they can help you rebook your flight.

photo credit: Lensaku

So you just graduated into the worst recession since the Great Depression with a boatload of debt and no job.

My question is: why are you still here?

There will never be a better time in your life to travel the world than right now. You’ve got months until your first loan payment is due, the world is on sale thanks to the downturn, and you’re young enough that hostels, third-class railway cars and street vendor food don’t scare you.

So go.

Got no money? Get a crap job for a couple of months, stock shelves or flip burgers or whatever, and then go. Pick regions where your money goes farther–South America, Indonesia, India. You may well be able to live for far less than you can at home, while expanding your horizons, meeting new people and having the adventure of a lifetime.

Then go. Just go.

You have the rest of your life to get ahead, climb the ladder, pay the bills, work the overtime. You have this special time, right now, to wander the earth while you’re young, curious and healthy. Your mind is open to new experiences and new people. It’s time to make the memories and friendships that may last the rest of your life.

So. Just. Go.

If you’ve still got a job, some money in the bank and your other financial plans are on track–you’re saving for retirement, paying down debt–you should seriously consider a real summer vacation this year. Here’s why:

Staycations don’t work. Staying home may save money, but it won’t provide the break you need to relax and “sharpen the saw.” For that, you need a change of scenery. Otherwise, you’ll spend a good chunk of your time being constantly reminded of all the things you “should” be doing (“I really should clean that closet. The hallway needs a coat of paint. When am I going to take that load of clothes to the Goodwill?”)

The deals are amazing. The recession is forcing hotels, airlines and restaurants to cut prices. Some of the most impressive deals are at the higher end, making it easier to upgrade to a more swank experience if you want. Shop for 4- and 5-star hotels at Hotwire or Priceline; the savings can be tremendous and you’re guaranteed a decent place to sleep. Sign up for email updates from your favorite airlines and hotel chains to get first crack at the deals. Also, if you have kids, check out KidsEatFree.com for child-friendly restaurant deals in all 50 states.

It’s easier to use points and miles. Fewer travelers mean more opportunities to score airplane seats and hotel rooms with your frequent traveler programs. Since these programs are constantly being changed and watered down, you’re smart to use your rewards as you accumulate them rather than wait and see them devalued.

Memories matter. Studies about what makes us happy agree: experiences matter more than stuff. Making memories with family and friends can be an investment that offers lifelong returns. So go visit your college roommate or your Aunt Zelda or take the kids fishing.

Travel can make you a better person. Not every trip to every place, of course, but if you take time to appreciate a new place and its residents, the experience will change you–make you smarter, wiser, more understanding.

So pack up.

Afternoon update: If you are sticking close to home, check out this excellent Trent Hamm post: “10 resources to find cheap or free summer fun.”