Credit Card Travel Rewards Game

[alek]

Does anyone else play this game?

My wife and I recently flew grandma to our place round-trip, flew to El Paso round-trip to see some national parks, rented a car, and paid for two nights at a hotel all with rewards points that we earned while meeting the minimum spend on a couple of credit cards. We did pay money for two nights at a hotel since it was "cheaper" to use money rather than points; we used a hotel credit card to do so, which means we get some number of points for that purchase that we'll use towards another night's stay elsewhere.

Caveats:

1) The money spent meeting the minimum spend on those cards would have been spent anyway.
2) We didn't spend more money than we otherwise would have--just made our normal purchases.
3) We don't carry a balance on a credit card--ever. Well, not unless it has a 0% rate for 12 months or whatever. Only one card I have is like that.
4) Yes, my credit score is fine; it was 841 according to the last credit card I opened.

[hsilman]

Yes. Every major vacation I've taken in the past decade has been from points. I currently have 175k AAdvantage points saved for whatever our next trip is. It's gotten a LOT harder to game the system. When I started you could buy a few hundred in dollar coins direct from the US mint with free shipping on a credit card. It was a cakewalk to make minimum spends for just about any card.

Places my wife and I have gone on points:

Amsterdam

Dublin
Copenhagan
Rome

Barcelona
Madrid
Seville

London
Edinburgh
Skye
Oban

Jamaica(all inclusive, not to a town)

Denver

NorCal

Charleston

Was gonna go to Japan but Covid...

[alek]

Very nice, @hsilman!!

We've essentially just started, but our plan is to ride this gravy train as long as we can.

[hsilman]

https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/credit- ... first.html

If you don't know about the flyertalk forum, it's the number one place for info on this stuff.

if you're looking for information that is good but not the absolute best super-secret double probation deals, https://onemileatatime.com/ or https://viewfromthewing.com/. Much easier to digest andvery useful. It's like the difference between wikipedia and the source material. Wiki is a lot easier to read, but if you REALLY want to find the best possible things, you gotta go searching. A lot of stuff, especially surrounding what they call "manufactured spend" is seriously wink wink, nudge nudge. They want to be friendly and encouraging, but not kill the goose since they know the forum is browsed by some companies looking to clamp down on "free money".

[Hardartery]

I usually pay the taxes on my rentals with a card we get specifically for this purpose. I carry one that gives me Priority Pass and no foreign exchange fees when I use it (Important in some countries) and pays for my Global Entry. We started "Churning" cards when I was flipping houses. We have been a very long list of places now, and France and Spain were scheduled when Covid killed things. When it actually opens up for real, I'll be figuring out France again and maybe somewhere else. I still want to lift rocks on Scotland and Iceland. It's a great thing, if you stick to only spending what you would have anyway and paying them off every month. Hasn't bothered my credit score at all, but I get annoyed now if I have to pay cash and not get some points on something.

The Points Guy puts out some good leads and info on stuff. There are a few others.

[JonA]

We usually just go the cashback route rather than points or rewards. It's usually only a slightly smaller amount, but the convenience of being able to immediately reap the rewards and save or spend it however we wish is nice.

[GrainsAndGains]

My wife does, and the best thing she's ever accomplished is getting us Business Class seats with the lie-flat beds from Tokyo for something crazy low, like only 50k Delta Skymiles a head. Probably the closest I'll ever come to experiencing what it's like to be truly wealthy, being able to lie down comfortably on an airplane is something everyone should experience once.

[alek]

We usually just go the cashback route rather than points or rewards. It's usually only a slightly smaller amount, but the convenience of being able to immediately reap the rewards and save or spend it however we wish is nice.

We still use our Fidelity Visa for monthly bills/subscriptions since it's just a pain in the ass to change them all the time. I get 2% of purchases dumped into my brokerage account.

But, the Chase Sapphire Preferred my wife and I got with 100,000 bonus points equates to $1,000 apiece if you "cash out and cancel". You'd be down the $95 annual fee, but $905 for spending $4,000 is about a 23% return.

[alek]

The Points Guy puts out some good leads and info on stuff. There are a few others.

One of my colleagues really likes The Points Guy.

[Hardartery]

We usually just go the cashback route rather than points or rewards. It's usually only a slightly smaller amount, but the convenience of being able to immediately reap the rewards and save or spend it however we wish is nice.

We still use our Fidelity Visa for monthly bills/subscriptions since it's just a pain in the ass to change them all the time. I get 2% of purchases dumped into my brokerage account.

But, the Chase Sapphire Preferred my wife and I got with 100,000 bonus points equates to $1,000 apiece if you "cash out and cancel". You'd be down the $95 annual fee, but $905 for spending $4,000 is about a 23% return.

Chase has the best value for points, they go the furthest with them.

[hector]

I scored a shitload of points a few years ago when I had more free time and could go deep on this stuff and traveled for work anyway.

Like @hsilman said, much harder to game the system now. Barely looks like it's worth it anymore if you spend as little as I do.

[hsilman]

I scored a shitload of points a few years ago when I had more free time and could go deep on this stuff and traveled for work anyway.

Like @hsilman said, much harder to game the system now. Barely looks like it's worth it anymore if you spend as little as I do.

Yeah, gotta find big spends to make it worth it. My rent & utils is close to $2000/month and I can pay it with a cc with a 3% fee, so I just have to calculate if it's worth it. I generally get cards with spends at 5k or less because I can make it/mostly make it in the timeframe, and just use the rent payment if needed at the end.

[alek]

I scored a shitload of points a few years ago when I had more free time and could go deep on this stuff and traveled for work anyway.

Like @hsilman said, much harder to game the system now. Barely looks like it's worth it anymore if you spend as little as I do.

Yeah, gotta find big spends to make it worth it. My rent & utils is close to $2000/month and I can pay it with a cc with a 3% fee, so I just have to calculate if it's worth it. I generally get cards with spends at 5k or less because I can make it/mostly make it in the timeframe, and just use the rent payment if needed at the end.

Same here with the minimum spends. The only exception is one I used to pay for roof repairs at $3600. That was on a $7500 spend card, which is also the 0% apr for 12 months card.