Hi friends! I'm so glad you're here! While we've been traveling both casually on points for years as well as exclusively on points in more recent years, I understand it's daunting when you want to start collecting points and traveling for free, but don't know where or how to start. There's A LOT of information out there and it can be overwhelming!
I'm taking this post to break down my recommendations on how to start in the points game; whether you want to jump right in and get card after card, or grab one card and dip your toes, here's a general frame work of what I would do and some essential rules/knowledge you need to have.
How and Where to Start with Points/Miles
Now before I even get to step one, I want to remind you of a few things:
The easiest and quickest way to earn a lot of points is by opening a new credit card and spending the minimum spend amount in the allotted time given (commonly 3 months, up to 6 months), in order to obtain the card's sign up bonus. Sign up bonuses ARE the reason to get a new credit card. Earning a sign up bonus will typically, if not always, outweigh the amount of points you'll earn verse using the same credit card daily for all of your expenses.
This WILL lead to you having more credit cards opened and more management on your end; however, you also don't HAVE to keep getting new credit cards if you don't want to. You can simply start with one new card, get the sign up bonus, and utilize those points and be done. How many cards you want to get (and manage) is up to you and your spend.
I have drafted a separate post about closing credit cards; but I'll stick in here, never close a credit card until you've had it open at least 12 months. Closing a card any sooner than the one year mark will jeopardize your relationship and ability to get future cards with that bank.
1. Identify Your Budget
Before you open any new credit card, you need to know what the minimum spend to hit the sign up bonus is and you need a plan to hit that minimum spend.
Minimum spend amount will vary depending on which card you're opening and also typically corresponds to the sign up bonus offer (ie: higher spends may yield higher sign up bonus). A minimum spend on a credit card sign up offer can be anywhere from $1,000 to $30,000.
Since we need to make sure you have a plan how to hit the minimum spend, before opening a new card, you need to know how many you spend in given month. If you have no idea, I recommend looking at your current credit card(s) and checking account and coming up with a rough idea of what your basic monthly costs are.
Below I'm providing examples of what reoccurring costs and one-time costs, I rely on and consider before opening a new card (note: these are items we can charge to a credit card if needed/wanted)
Common Monthly Expenses: Childcare (including after-school care), groceries, internet, gas/electric utility, car insurance, dining out, sports/activities, beer/alcohol, prescriptions, cell phone streaming services (Spotify, Netflix, Disney, etc), Nuuly rental, coffee subscription, gas (for driving), therapy, etc
(even excluding some of these smaller items, we easily hit $1,500/mo on these items; but I wanted to list out our reoccurring costs to help you think about your own)
One-time/Less Frequent Expenses: These are costs you don't necessarily have every month, but are worth considering when looking ahead the next few months prior to opening a credit card, that may help you hit a minimum spend easier or quicker. Some of my households considerations are items like: Summer camp, taxes, car repair, home repair, large item purchase, medical/dental costs, car down payment, HOA, ski passes, travel, concert/sports tickets, birthdays, holidays, etc
Based on the lists above, and your own habits/spending, you should identify a rough number of what you spend in a month. Then multiply that by three and that will give you an idea of what kind of minimum spend on a new credit card that you can hit WITHOUT going in debt and simply leveraging your normal routine costs.
From there, then it's ideal if you can preemptively think ahead of upcoming larger purchases you need to make to help to plan if and when you could take advantage of getting a new credit card and hitting the minimum spend to get the sign up bonus.
2. Identify Your 5/24 Count
Ugh, I know, we're back to this rule again! If you've been here a little while, hopefully you've already seen me talk about Chase 5/24 rule. I'll continue to do this because it is *so* critical for long term strategy.
If you have no idea what I'm talking about, Chase will NOT approve you for new credit cards (personal or business cards) if you've got 5 or more personal* credit cards of any time in the last 24 month period. This can include bank cards (Chase, Amex, Capital One, Wells Fargo, etc), store cards (Old Navy, Lowes, Nordstrom, you name it), etc. This also includes if you have been added as an authorized user to someone else's credit card**
Ideally, there are no "joint" cards in this game. To maximize your point earn, each adult in your relationship should have credit cards in their own name; if you have others willing to participate. This also helps from a point earning perspective because not only can you earn a sign up bonus by hitting the minimum spend on a new credit card; the person who already has the credit card can refer the second person (referred to as "player", ie "player 2" or "P2") to the card, that way in total you earn points for referring P2 to a card, and P2 earns points for the sign up bonus!
*Generally, business cards do not count in your 5/24 count (Capital One business cards do). However, you must be under 5/24 to be able to get approved for a Chase business card.
**If you are an authorized user (AU) on someone's credit card, or if you have authorized users on your credit card; you can call the issuing financial institution and ask to have the AU removed. This should free up a "spot" on your 5/24 account.
The 5/24-rule is why it's worth considering if you can add business cards to your wallet. Read up here on business cards for "non-traditional" businesses and how to apply.
3. Understand Thy Partners
Each bank has different travel partners (airlines and hotels) that you can transfer your bank points to, in order to book directly for lower points cost. There are some overlaps in travel partners and some companies that only transfer from one bank. For example - Chase is the only bank that has a direct transfer option for United, Southwest, and Hyatt.
American Express, Chase, and Capital One all transfer to British Airways, Air France/KLM (Flying Blue Program); which is really nice because you can pool your points from all of these banks to the travel partner to book!
While it is nice to collect a variety of bank ecosystem points, at the same time, especially when you're first starting off, it's important to know which travel partners your points can be transferred to. If you want to use points to book a domestic trip, more than likely you should focus on Chase instead of going for Capital One points.
It's not a bad thing to start with just one bank, learn their in's and out's and as you gain comfort and knowledge to then expand to other banks. In the opposite token, if you're able to continually hit minimum spends, it's not a bad thing to open up cards across various banks to earn various points. Just know that different banks have different partners that you can transfer to.
4. Apply!
While, I have my top-3 cards I recommend, I recommend these with a grain of salt because they span across three different banks (see above). I truly think that Chase is the easiest/most beginner friendly of all the banks when it comes to wanting to earn and redeem points (especially for domestic US travel), which is why I recommend the Chase Sapphire Preferred as the very first points card to open.
I am working on a google docs form to offer free credit card consultation to help you figure out what card to open next. Once that's complete, I'll add a link here :) in the meantime, feel free to reach out via email! justcallmehaha @ gmail.com
Keep in mind Step 2 - the 5/24 rule.
FAQ
Now that we've covered the basic steps to earn points and points strategy, let's talk about commonly asked questions. (If I missed a burning question from you - feel free to DM me on IG or email me: justcallmehaha@gmail . com)
How Do You Keep This All Straight?!
I get asked this questions all.the.time. I know that the thought of having multiple credit cards, let alone across multiple banks is overwhelming to a lot of people (you're not alone!). If this is you - I would recommend starting out only focusing on Chase and earning Ultimate Rewards points. You don't have to be an expert across all bank ecosystems - but you do need to choose a starting point and Chase really is the most beginner friendly (especially for US domestic trips).
I promise, once you get in a groove and find a comfort level, opening more cards and expanding across banks becomes a little less daunting.
But, I also am a numbers/Type A person, and it may not surprise you that I LOVE a good spreadsheet. I've built out a spreadsheet that I utilize to track and remind myself about our cards, benefits, trips, etc. It all lives right here in this Google Sheet! You can save a copy of for yourself and modify as you like. (I'll do a separate post to walk through each worksheet).
- Credit Score is made up of several factors:
- Payment History (35%)
- We pay off our credit cards in full, every month. Just because we are spending on credit cards, doesn't mean that we are spending outside of our means. Because of this, I put all of our credit cards on auto-pay to pay off the statement balance. I do still frequently check our checking account, just to make sure that the funds needed to pay the cards are there.
- Note: when you're paying off your credit card, you need to pay off the statement balance to avoid incurring interest charges. If you pay just the minimum balance then you will incur interest charges.
- Did you know that it's actually better to wait for a monthly balance and pay once a month to improve your score? I used to pay off our credit card as we spent (say you look at your credit card balance daily and pay it off right away, or if you pay weekly, every Friday); then when your monthly statement closes, if your account is paid off, you report a balance of $0 to the credit bureaus. This isn't necessarily helpful to your credit score. By letting your credit card statement close with a balance on it and then paying off the statement balance, you report credit USE to the bureaus and this actually helps your credit score increase because they see that you are utilizing credit AND paying it off!
- Amount Owed (30%)
- This is another large chunk of your credit score and another area where opening multiple cards can actually help increase your score.
- Why? Because this is also referred to as credit utilization. The more credit you have available to you and the less of that credit you use, the lower your credit utilization; which in turn can increase your credit score.
- Let's say you have one household credit card with a $20K credit limit. Each monthly you charge $4K to that one credit card. That means you're utilizing 20% of your credit each month ( [$4k/$20k]*100 = 20%). If you were to open a second credit card and receive a second $20K limit, but maintain your monthly $4K spend on the credit cards, then your credit utilization decreases in half, to 10% (amount owed/credit available, ie ([$4k/$40k]*100 = 10%).
- Having more credit available (again, used responsibly!) can increase your score!
Those two factors above account for 60% of your credit score, and as you can see, you can actually benefit from having multiple credit cards to increase your credit score!
- Length of History (15%)
- With opening multiple cards a year, our credit histories to get impacted - however, to offset this, we both keep open our oldest credit card(s) with 15 year+ history - simply to help average out a longer length of credit history.
- Do NOT close your oldest credit cards. If you have a card with an annual fee that you no longer benefit from, before you close it, call the bank to see if you can downgrade the card to one without an annual fee. Downgrading a credit keeps the original length of credit history
- Credit Mix (10%)
- This simply accounts for the different types of debt you have and your success in managing them (credit cards, student loans, mortgage, car loan, etc)
- New Credit (10%)
- This accounts for hard pulls (inquiries) on your credit history.
- This is one area where opening credit cards can have a slightly ding to your score and cause a temporary decrease in your score when you apply. However, this generally jumps back up and levels your score with time.
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