A hard hitting credit card trio that provides over $4,000 in potential welcome bonus value

After writing the piece on How the current TD Aeroplan Visa Infinite Card sign up offer of up to 30,000 miles can provide huge value, I started thinking that you could nearly triple that value with just two more cards. How so? There are two other cards on the market  that will get you at least 25,000 Aeroplan Miles with their welcome bonuses and come with reasonable annual gees. In fact, if you end up taking all three cards you could end up with 80,000 Aeroplan Miles. Those cards are the TD Aeroplan Visa Infinite Card, the Marriott Bonvoy American Express Card and the American Express Gold Rewards Card.

At the time of posting the welcome bonuses on the three cards are as follows:

  • TD Aeroplan Visa Infinite Card
    Up to 30,000 Aeroplan® Miles (that’s the equivalent to 2 short-haul
    roundtrip flight rewards+). Plus get a 1st year annual fee rebate for
    the primary cardholder as follows: Welcome Bonus of 15,000 Aeroplan
    Miles when you make your first Purchase with your Card + 15,000 Aeroplan
    Miles when you spend $1,000 within 90 days of Account opening
  • Marriott Bonvoy American Express Card

    New Marriott Bonvoy™* American Express® Cardmembers earn 60,000 Marriott
    Bonvoy points enough for 4 free nights at a Category 2 hotel after you
    charge $1,500 in purchases to your Card in your first three months of
    Cardmembership.*Offer subject to change at any time

  • American Express Gold Rewards Card
    New American Express® Gold Rewards Cardmembers can earn a Welcome Bonus
    of 25,000 Membership Rewards® points just by making $1,500 in purchases
    in the first three months of Cardmembership * 

Now you may be asking, the latter two cards aren’t showing Aeroplan Miles as their currency. You are correct however the points they earn can be converted to Aeroplan. For the Marriott Bonvoy American Express Card, Marriott points transfer at a 3 to 1 ratio to Aeroplan. That means the 60,000 points will net 20,000 Aeroplan miles, however Marriott kicks in an additional 5,000 miles for every 60,000 points transferred which means you would receive 25,000 Aeroplan Miles. For the American Express Gold Rewards Card, the Membership Rewards points it earns transfer to Aeroplan 1:1 so its 25,000 point welcome bonus equals 25,000 Aeroplan Miles.

Between the three cards you would have 80,000 Aeroplan Miles and based on the TD post we mentioned earlier we found redemption values as high as 5.8 cents per mile. 80,000 miles at 5.8 cents equates to $4,640 of value from the three welcome bonuses. Now the TD card is first year free at time of posting (offer ends June 2, 2019) however both of the Amex cards are not. They have annual fees of $120 and $150 which when subtracted from the $4,640 of value gives you net value of $4,370.

That’s right $4,370 in travel value from three credit card sign up bonuses.

Here’s an excerpt of how we got the 5.8 cents valuation from that previous post:

How about doing a one-way in business class on the same route as above on the same outbound date – and there’s a bonus – it is on Boeing 777-300 with lie flat seats:

This round trip flight is 25,000 miles + $124.69 in taxes and fees. To buy the flight outright with Air Canada would cost $1573.21. The savings is $1448.52 or 5.8 cents per mile. Taking that 5.8 cents per mile value means the 30,000 Mile sign up bonus from the TD Aeroplan Visa Infinite Card would be worth $1,738!

This is just one example of how the miles can be used to extract lots of value. For some of you out there you will be able pull even higher value than 5.8 cents per mile while for others it will be lower. It really depends on what you redeem for, when you redeem for it and when you travel. No matter what, scoring 80,000 Aeroplan Miles for $270 in credit card fees is a pretty amazing deal.

Here are further details on these three cards:


Title Image via Air Canada

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