Previously, I posted about the Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card, which is currently offering 40,000 bonus points after you spend $4,000 in purchases within the first 3 months. This is quite a good deal, as 50,000 points can be redeemed for $625 in travel when you redeem through Chase Ultimate Rewards™ (you can buy a more expensive ticket from any website and simply pay the difference). The Preferred card has no annual fee for the first year, but is $95 in future years. See the original post for more details.

If you don’t want to deal having to remember to cancel your card, the regular non-Preferred Chase Sapphire® Card is now offering 10,000 points worth $100 in travel rewards when you redeem through Chase Ultimate Rewards, after you spend $500 in purchases within the first 3 months, and an additional 2,500 bonus points after you add the first authorized user and make a purchase in the first 3 months from account opening. There is no annual fee in the first year or subsequent years. The non-preferred used to give out their bonus with no minimum purchase requirement, so personally I’d rather take the extra $500 travel bonus via the Preferred.

Ideas for reaching the purchase limit without spending more money that you would otherwise include: prepaying any monthly bills like utilities and let the credit go down over time, pay your 6-month auto insurance or home insurance bills via lump sum, buy American Express gift cards that don’t expire and then spend them gradually, purchase gift cards at a discount from places you will shop at eventually through PlasticJungle or similar (Home Depot, Target, etc.), buying $1 coins from the US Mint (you’re basically buying cash), or buying grocery store gift cards (Safeway cards at Safeway). Basically just shift your usual expenses.

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Update: This card offer is now expired.

A final reminder that this offer is scheduled to end on Friday actually more specifically on Thursday night 5/5/11 at 11:59PM EST. It is not being extended.

This is the highest credit card mileage bonus I have ever seen. The Chase British Airways Visa Signature card (expired) is offering 50,000 British Airways (BA) Executive Club miles for new cardmembers with first purchase, and another 50,000 BA miles after spending $2,500 within 3 months of opening, for a total of 100,000 miles. There is an annual fee of $95, but you should be able to easily get $1,000 worth of value from this deal, if not more. We took advantage of the last time this deal was around, and ended up flying to Europe in business class with fully lie-flat seats across the Atlantic Ocean, on tickets that retailed for over $8,000 each.

To quickly recap, for those of you that primarily travel within the US, you can redeem British Airlines miles on American Airlines. You can get 4 roundtrip coach tickets within the continental US for 100,000 miles, or 3 round-trips to Hawaii for 105,000 miles. For those of you that like to travel internationally, in addition to British Airways destinations in Europe, you can redeem your miles on Cathay Pacific to Asia, or redeem on LAN to South America. 100,000 BA miles could get you a roundtrip, business class ticket to these destinations. More details in previous post here.

Via a specific banner ad, the Chase AARP Visa has a introductory promo of 5% cash back on all purchases for the first 6 months (specifically, 6 billing cycles). There appears to be no limit to their cashback awards and their reported credit limits are about the same as other Chase cards, so if you have the ability to charge a lot of money on your card within the next 6 months, this card is for you. Selected fine print:

For the first 6 billing cycles from your enrollment date in the program, you will earn 4 bonus points in addition to your 1 base point (total 5 points) for each $1 of net purchases. You do not earn points on balance transfers, cash advances, cash-like charges such as travelers checks, foreign currency, and money orders, any checks that are used to access your account, overdraft advances, interest, unauthorized or fraudulent charges, or fees of any kind, including fees for products that protect or insure the balances of your account. There is no maximum number of points that you can accumulate in the program.

Doing the math, if you can charge $2,000 total, you’ll get $100 back. Up that to $20,000, and you’ll get $1,000 back. The usual ideas include charging any medical bills, homeowners/car/life insurance, travel expenses, or large home improvement purchases. Some people even prepay their utility bills. If you haven’t already, you could also pay any income taxes owed on the card, and you’d still come out slightly ahead after their usual ~2.5% fees.

Catches? Well, you’ll have to be a member of AARP first. That costs $16 a year and is actually open to those under 50, and although you won’t get full benefits, reportedly it will let you get this card. Otherwise, just avoid doing any funny business that will close your card before you cash out your rewards.