We have been getting more involved in the travel credit card miles and points game since we have retired and started traveling. It is a really easy way to get free flights and hotel rooms just by signing up for the right cards and putting all of our spending on them. I wish we would have been more into this when we were still working because we could have piled up even more miles and points. We have always had Alaska Airlines and United cards and regularly used them for domestic flights but we never really put all our spending on them like we do now.
This year we are going to taking our first “free” business class flights in lie-down seats from Athens to Mexico City through Istanbul. We transferred 45,000 Capital One Points each to Turkish Airlines to buy those expensive seats that I am too cheap to ever pay for with cash. It is very difficult to find these deals but I really enjoy the hunt and treat it like a game. Sometimes you need to book on other airline partners in the alliances to find the best deal so it can be a bit tricky. We are flying Seattle to Paris this September transferring 30,000 Chase points each to Virgin Atlantic to buy coach seats on Delta. We also bought flights from Seattle to Seoul next year by transferring 31,000 Chase points to Virgin to buy coach seats on Korean Air. So while a bit confusing, you can sometimes purchase better priced (or points redemption) flights through a partner airline, rather than directly with the airline on which you are flying.
I used to hear these fabulous stories of using credit card points for award flights and I thought that wouldn’t be possible when we were retired – we wouldn’t be able to generate enough spend to make it work so the yearly fees wouldn’t be worth it. But there are definitely ways to make it feasible. The cards often have benefits that make the yearly fees cancel out. We put everything on credit cards and are able to use the 2X and 3X spend multipliers or more to keep the points coming. But most of our points have been from the sign up bonuses. Sign up bonuses of 60k or more are common for the best travel cards and are the reason it makes sense to regularly get new cards. Of course, none of this makes sense if you don’t pay off your credit cards in full each month. The credit card hacking game is not for people who have credit card debt.
I am not an expert on this stuff but I have learned a lot in the past couple of years to make it beneficial for us and I can share the cards that we are using (and seems most travel hackers are using), with the hope that this might benefit someone with no knowledge of the credit card point games. There are a lot of great websites and youtube videos about this but it can be a bit overwhelming because there is so much information. I will try to keep it simple for those looking to get started. I will include some links to sign up for them if you are interested. If you use those links it will also give me some referral points but I am not writing this blog because of that. I really wish I had got these cards years ago and I am hoping this post will help someone get started in this game. You can get the same deal without my referral links.
The first card that I would recommend is the Capital One Venture X. The $395 annual fee seems scary but it comes with a $300 travel credit. You now have to use their travel portal to get this credit, which I usually don’t like to use because I prefer to book direct on flights, but it is easy to book one week hotel stay for us to get the $300 credit. So, after the credit the card only costs $95 per year which seems reasonable. Especially after their benefit of free Priority Pass Lounge Access. Lounges are awesome (internationally especially, domestic lounges are hit and miss) and I didn’t think I would ever be a lounge person but I can’t imagine traveling without them. Free food and free beer and wine in most of them. So far in 2024 we have used lounges 16 times so we saved way more than $95 in wine alone. The card also has a spending bonus of 2X points on everything. When I don’t know which card to use, I use the Venture X because I know I will get my 2X. Currently the sign up bonus is 75,000 points if you spend $4000 in the first 3 months. Easy. Here is our referral link.
The other Capital One card we have is the Savor One. It has no annual fee :>) It doesn’t give points for sign up but instead gives you $200 back after $500 of spend. The reason we like this is because of the 3X multipliers on grocery and restaurants. This is a cash-back card, but if you already have a Capital One Venture X points account, you can transfer the “cash back” into points. The points go directly into the same bucket as the Venture X points so this is a fantastic card to get after you have the Venture X. Here is our referral link.
The biggest competitor to the Venture X is the Chase Sapphire Preferred. It recently had a sign up bonus offer of 75,000 but now it is back to 60,000 points after spending $4000 in 3 months. It might be better to wait for a better offer but it could be a year or more before they go back to 75k. We just got a 2nd card with the 75k offer and I got 10k because M used my referral link. People with partners can also use the Player 2 approach and refer each other to get double the sign up bonuses and also referral bonuses. The Sapphire Preferred has a $95 annual fee but also has a $50 credit if you book a hotel through their portal. Easy. It also has 3X points on restaurants and 2X on travel. Here is our referral link.
Chase also has the Chase Freedom Flex that is an excellent no annual fee card to work with the Chase Sapphire Preferred. It has no sign up bonus points but has a $200 cash bonus if you spend $500 in the first 3 months. I think this might be able to be converted to points if you have the Sapphire Preferred but I haven’t gotten mine yet. This has some great spending multipliers but you really have to pay attention. They change every quarter. Right now, it is 7X on dining 5X on Amazon and hotels which is crazy good but next quarter it changes to 5X on gas. I don’t drive much. It also always has at least 3X on dining and drugstores all the time. This is the only card that I have that doesn’t waive foreign transaction fees. This doesn’t work well for those of us spending most of the time out of the country. Here is our referral link.
This summer I also signed up for the Chase Business Ink Preferred card. But wait a second… I don’t have a business. I do write a blog that could technically be monetized so I called that my “business” on my application and I got approved. Some people sell things on Craigslist and Ebay and call that their business. The sign up bonus is currently at 100,000 points after $8000 of spend in 3 months. We ended up booking flights and Airbnb’s and hotels for upcoming several months of travel so it wasn’t that hard to hit the $8000. The card has 3X on travel which is very useful for us. It has a $99 annual fee but we think the signup bonus and the 3X on travel makes it worth it to us. Here is our referral link.
This year we also got our first hotel card- the Chase IHG One Rewards Premier. The sign up bonus is for 140,000 points after $3000 spend in 3 months. The hotel points aren’t worth as much as airline points so it isn’t as great as it sounds. It has a $99 annual fee but it gives a free hotel night once a year so it should pay for itself every year. The card has 5X on travel, gas and restaurants and also 26X if you use it to book an IHG hotel. We aren’t really hotel people but we are going to give it a shot. Many people are using these hotel point programs frequently and staying in upgraded suites for less than $50 a night. You get every 4th night free for long term stays if you are paying with points or with cash. It can be a really good hack but we still aren’t sure that we want to stay in hotels for long stays. Here is our referral link.
We have not applied for any American Express cards. They have great point travel partners and some pretty good sign up bonuses but they also have some big annual fees. Their Gold card has benefits like $10 a month on Uber and $10 a month on dining which can make the $250 annual fee worth it but we would struggle to use that every month. We also don’t have any Citibank or Wells Fargo cards. Those banks are trying to compete with Chase, AmEx and Capital One but right now their points transfer partners aren’t as good. We might get these cards in the future for their sign up bonuses if they continue to improve their travel portals.
There is so much to learn about this credit card game. Many of these cards have travel insurance and car insurance on rental cars. Many will pay for Global Entry or TSA Precheck. This post is already too long to make a comprehensive benefit list for each card. I also don’t need to do that because sites like The Points Guy and 10XTravel already do that. I also watch youtube videos on the cards if I want to know more. For us, cards have really been a benefit in keeping our travel costs down. It takes work to get the right cards and know which ones to used for each purchase but it is kind of fun for me to play the game. I just wish I had started a bit earlier.