If you want to get into redeeming points and miles, you need to earn them first. So in our second installment of our Starter Kit series, Gunnar and Kyle break down the best strategies for earning tons of travel rewards. While it might start with credit cards as the engine of an earning strategy - and the guys spend some time outlining their strategies and busting credit score myths - there are plenty of other ways to rack up all the points and miles you need, too.
If you want to get into redeeming points and miles, you need to earn them first. So in our second installment of our Starter Kit series, Gunnar and Kyle break down the best strategies for earning tons of travel rewards. While it might start with credit cards as the engine of an earning strategy - and the guys spend some time outlining their strategies and busting credit score myths - there are plenty of other ways to rack up all the points and miles you need, too.
Our Starter Kit is sponsored by Thrifty Traveler Premium, the world’s best flight deal service. Get $20 off your first year of Thrifty Traveler Premium flight deal alerts - use promo code “START” at thriftytraveler.com/premium.
00:00 - What would do with a blank slate in points & miles?
02:35 - The most important step for earning tons of points
07:50 - Understanding award travel credit cards
15:40 - What to consider when signing up for a credit card?
22:20 - Our favorite starter travel rewards credit cards
29:30 - Go deeper: Sign up for our free Extra Mile newsletter!
30:00 - How to earn points & miles with strategic spending
37:30 - The ways to earn points & miles without credit cards
Volume 2 Flight Plan:
Related Episodes:
https://thriftytraveler.com/podcasts/ep-67-record-card-bonuses/
https://thriftytraveler.com/podcasts/bonus-ep-chase-sapphire-preferred-update/
https://thriftytraveler.com/podcasts/ep-61-how-to-earn-a-million-points/
https://thriftytraveler.com/podcasts/episode-46-whats-in-our-wallets/
https://thriftytraveler.com/podcasts/episode-30-award-travel-tools-of-the-trade/
Produced and edited by Sylvia Thomas
Video editing by Kyle Thomas
Show music: “All That” by Benjamin Tissot
Yo, welcome to the show. I'm Gunnar Olson, a reporter for Thrifty Traveler and a flight deal analyst for Thrifty Traveler Premium, and joining me for this special series on every episode of the Thrifty Traveler podcast is Thrifty Traveler executive editor and our points and miles head coach, it's Kyle Potter. Kyle, welcome to the show. Do you like head coach better than Sherpa? It's a low bar, but yeah. I think it suits you. Yeah. Yeah. Get a whistle out. We'll show people how to earn points and miles today. I'm gonna come in next week with a tracksuit on. I like that. I hope you do. All right, today is the second episode of Starter Kit. We're going over all the best strategies to earn the points and miles that we're gonna talk about spending in later episodes. But in many ways, actually getting these points and miles into your accounts is going to be the most important part of this process. And honestly, if you're just starting out, I'm kinda jealous, because having a clean slate in points and miles means that there's so much opportunity for you. So Kyle, uh, we always do this to start the show, but I wanna find something out. If you were given a blank slate like this, if you weren't in points and miles at all, you had no credit cards, you were just starting out, what would you do first? Nothing that you did probably. I think, uh, nothing that I did. I, this is the thing, this is why we're doing this, is we both feel like we made so many mistakes. Not, like, costly, fatal mistakes in points and miles, but things that we could have done better. I think the biggest thing, and I'll repeat this a handful of times throughout the episode, is to set a goal and work backwards. So I very vividly remember buying my wife's engagement ring in, like, 2016 and thought, "Oh, well, I'm, you know, I'm gonna spend a couple of thousand dollars. I should put this on a credit card." But I wasn't thinking at the time about the trips that we were going to take, and therefore, which kind of points I should earn. So I did what everybody in Minneapolis and Atlanta and Detroit and Salt Lake City and Seattle does, is I opened a Delta Sky Miles credit card. Was that the right choice? It probably wasn't. That's a big piece of what this is about, is guiding people to those right choices to earn points so that they can then spend those points wisely. Yeah. I think that's really smart, and I think it's, uh, i- if we had that blank slate, if we could do it all over again, we're gonna show you exactly in this episode what we would do with that opportunity. So today on episode two of Starter Kit, we're talking about the basics of award travel credit cards and understanding your credit score, then we're gonna talk about how to choose a travel credit card, how to spend smart to earn more points, and how to earn points without a card at all. All that and more. Welcome back to Starter Kit from the Thrifty Traveler podcast. Okay, welcome back to Starter Kit. Before we dive into credit cards and category bonuses and shopping portals and referral links and all of that, let's lay out some building blocks to help people get started. It's kind of what this whole series is about. So what is, Kyle, the most important thing to do just getting into this journey for earning points and miles? You know, I think there is an impulse to get all the credit cards and sign up for all the airline frequent flyer programs and their shopping portals, and to start earning stuff right away. But really, the most important part is before you do any of that. And if you can go into your everyday life with the mindset of, anytime before I swipe a credit card, before I make a purchase online, before I book flights, whatever, you need a mental block where you pause for, in some cases, just a couple of seconds, and you ask yourself, "How can I get the most amount of points out of this? How can I maximize my rewards out of every single purchase and interaction I make?" And that sounds really extreme, but it really is the single most important foundational element of doing this, because until you have that, you're gonna forget to look for the right credit card to swipe when you're at a grocery store or at a restaurant or at the gas pump. Or you're gonna f- you know, go through making that same big purchase that I did for an engagement ring or a house project without stopping and realizing, "Oh, you know what? I'm in a place where I could open a brand-new credit card, and instead of just earning 3,000 or 5,000 points, I could earn 80,000 points by knocking out a minimum spending requirement for a new credit card bonus in one fell swoop." That is the single most important change that anybody can make, and it's really just, like, elemental to making this work. Yeah. I think it's really smart. I, I think, uh, you've been talking about this, this mental block for a long time, but I think I have a better name for it. Because you came up with this, I'm calling it the Potter Pause. Is that P-A-U-S-E or P-A-W-S? P-A-U-S-E. It's, uh, it's just that pause that you make right before you make a big purchase, like you said, your mental block to decide, "How am I actually gonna earn the most on this?" It's the Potter Pause. I cannot stress this enough. I hope to God that this doesn't catch on. It's terrible. This is some of your worst work. Thank you. Thank you so much. Um, can we talk about the basics of award travel credit cards? Because credit cards are a huge part of this. Um, it's almost unavoidable in award travel. Uh, you can earn points without credit cards, and we'll talk about that later, uh, but it's a tiny, tiny fraction of what's available with credit cards. Um, first and foremost, we always talk about this, but credit cards are really serious business. This is not something you should do willy-nilly. You should be very aware of your financial situation before you go into this. Don't sign up for cards and then try and figure out how you're going to pay for all of this at the end, right? It, it's a disaster, and it's why I think, on the one hand, I'm glad more people are interested in this and learning about it, and learning about it through social media or podcasts like ours and others. But on the other hand, I think there is a temptation to talk about credit cards like it's a plaything. Or your favorite infl- travel influencer talking about the 11 credit cards that they've opened in 2026, which might actually work for them, as absurd as it may sound if you're new to this. But for somebody who is in fact new to this, that is a disaster in the making. You need to take this stuff seriously. I think above all, you need to start slow as you start getting into this. If you've been doing this for years, you know your financial situation, you know what's going to happen with your credit score. You know that you need to make purchases, pay them off in full every single month so that you're not carrying a balance and paying interest. But if you're just getting started in this, you need to start slow because this is, in fact, very serious business. Yeah. Okay, so if you are just getting started in this, here is a common question. Alan actually proposed this to us in the podcast Slack community. He said he gets this question all the time from friends. Why not just get into cash back cards? Why get into, uh, award, points and miles award cards in general? Uh, it's a fair question, and the answer will be different for everybody because like travel itself, like personal finance, credit cards are very personal. What is going to work for you is going, is not going to work for me and vice versa. It, it also comes down to how much work are you willing to put into this? Cash back is very simple. You know exactly the amount of cash that you're going to get in, in the form of rewards for every purchase that you make, and then that gets wiped off of your statement every single month. It is incredibly simple. If you're willing to trade that simplicity for more complexity of getting into this world of, um, transferable credit card points and booking portals and transfer bonuses and all of the stuff that we're gonna get into in this episode and future episodes, the return can be far, far much greater, not just earning 2% cash back, but, you know, in some cases, earning many, many multiples of that when you are spending on credit cards and earning these points and then turning it around into booking flights and hotels and other travel expenses. If you're okay with taking on that complexity, and it is work, the more you put into it, the more you will get, but if you're not willing to put into it, then maybe cash back is the answer. Yeah. Cash back is definitely the, the easy mode of all of this. All right, so when you are looking at getting a, an, an award travel credit card, uh, the sign-up bonus is usually what lures us in, right? It's, it's ... That's how you're gonna get the most amount of points all at once. Can you just explain to me what a sign-up bonus is? It's a marketing tool by the banks to get people into their ecosystem because they know that people are drawn by something like getting a $200 cash back bonus or 20,000 credit card points, and in many cases, it gets as high as 80,000 or 100,000 or even 175,000. And all of these things come with the very important caveat that in 99.9% of the cases, you're not just gonna get that for opening the card. There's a spending requirement attached to that. So in some cases, it can be as little as spending $500 on that new credit card within three months. In other cases, it's more like 8 to $10,000 over a three to six-month span. So this is where it really helps to get organized from the very start and track these things very closely because if you're trying to get a welcome bonus, which is far and away- The best way to earn points at scale. The, the points that you can earn from a new credit card, earning that welcome bonus by spending the correct amount, is going to dwarf every single other thing that we're going to talk about here, but you need to be on top of these details. Yeah, I think I've earned 90% of the points that I've earned in my entire life just on sign-up bonuses alone, just 'cause those lump sums are so much more than you could possibly earn unless you're spending a lot of money and you're very rich. I have never actually tallied how many points I've earned over the years. Have you? No, no. It was just a, an estimate. Yeah. But, I mean, I'm, I'm earning as best I can on all the other stuff, which we're gonna talk about how to do, but it's still, the sign-up bonuses are where you really earn points that lead to big, big travel expenses. Put it, put it this way, even on my best credit card that gives me the best return where I spend the most amount of money on an everyday basis, I might earn 40 to 50,000 additional points per year You can easily earn triple, quadruple, or more that amount with a single credit card just with a spending bonus by spending a fraction of the amount that I spent to earn those 40,000 points on, you know, say, dining in restaurants. Yeah, absolutely. Okay, um, I know if some people are gonna think that this whole credit cards thing is scary, right? We said it's serious business, but I don't think it has to be, like, actually nerve-wracking or scary for a lot of people, but I think there's, uh, some myths going around about credit cards and how they impact your credit score. Um, Lisa in our premium Facebook group said that she gets asked the same question over and over by people who are new to Points and Miles, and that question is, "Won't opening a lot of credit cards hurt my credit score?" What's the answer to the question Lisa gets? It can, but it doesn't have to if you're smart about it. There are so many misconceptions about how your credit score is al- actually calculated and why it truly matters. So let's start with this. There's this idea that just by virtue of opening a single credit card, let alone, you know, four in the space of a year or more like some of the people that you hear from or see online talking about the dozen credit cards that they have right now, that just by doing that, their credit score is going to tank, and you're gonna have the credit score, to quote, uh, the TV show New- New Girl, of a homeless ghost. That is not how credit scores are calculated. In reality, new credit, you know, and a brand-new application for a new credit card or a new loan for a car or a house or whatever, is a fraction of what determines your credit score. It's about 10% according to FICO. Here's what really matters. First and foremost, your payment history. Are you paying your credit card bills on time every single month? That alone is 35% of your credit score. The next 30% of your credit score is what's called your credit utilization ratio. How much of the credit that the banks have extended to you are you actually using and revolving? So if you have a total of $10,000 in credit to your name and you've got a $1,000 balance on your credit card, which, reminder, you shouldn't have because you should only be spending money that you have and paying it off in full, but let's say you have that $1,000. That means you have a 10% credit utilization ratio, which in the bank's eyes is very good and healthy. That means that your credit score is going to go up. So if you add another $10,000 in credit and you get to $20,000 total, but you still have that $1,000 balance, over time your credit score is only going to go up as long as you're being responsible, as long as you're paying your bills in full and you're not carrying a balance every single month. Yeah. If you can treat your credit card like a debit card, don't, don't extend yourself past what you have and you're able to pay off, your credit score is actually usually going to be helped by things like this. Um, what are some other considerations when, uh, you're thinking about your credit score and how a credit card impacts it? You will, in fact, see a, a hit if you open a new credit card. Every single time I apply for a credit card, I get an alert that my credit score has dropped, and it's usually somewhere in the neighborhood of eight to 15 points. So that is something to keep in mind. That is a part of the reason why, among others, that, you know, the general guidance is actually good, that you shouldn't, say, apply for a new credit card while you're trying to get a new home. Don't do that. Wait until the day your mortgage actually closes and then open that credit card for all of those new home expenses. I've done that f- with both homes that I've purchased, the first one, then we sold it, and then a couple of years later. So I bought two credit cards on the day that our mortgage actually closed. Um, so that, you know, that's a big one. It's, it's not that new credit cards won't hurt your credit score, because they will, but the, it will be temporary and it pales in comparison to how much your credit score can actually be helped by having credit and using it responsibly. Yeah. Um, what about average age of accounts? I've been, I've heard before, and I do this as well, that whatever your oldest credit card is, you should just keep it, keep it in the drawer because it helps your average age of accounts. Because 999 times out of 1,000, that oldest credit card is free. So it's not costing you money and it's doing your credit a world of good because it's still, it's increasing the average age of your account. So we've talked about a handful of different components of calculating your credit score. There's credit utilization, your payment history, new credit, then age of accounts, which is another 10 to 15% chunk, and then your credit mix is the final one, which is not just credit cards, but mortgage, auto loan, all of the other kinds of things if you have like a personal loan or something like that, uh, build into helping your credit score over time. Yeah. For sure. Um, I, I had my first ever travel rewards credit card was a Delta SkyMiles Gold card and then eventually over time as I started adding more cards, I just downgraded that to the Delta SkyMiles Blue card, which has zero annual fee and that card has seen zero dollars of my spend in very many years, so it- I'm in the exact same boat as you. Yeah, it just keeps it, just keeps that average age of credit longer and longer and longer as I continue to age on this earth. I w- I have a credit card that I've had since long before I got into this world of travel that doesn't cost me any money that I keep open Because there, it would actually hurt my credit score if I were to cancel it. I keep it in a drawer, but I charge, I think, Netflix to it or something, something that doesn't earn me points if I were to spend it on a better credit card, and then have it set up on auto-pay. So it's just constantly cycling a small charge every month or so in order to keep that card active and in good standing. Okay, let's talk about some things to consider when signing up for a card. So first we have a question from, and sorry if I mess this up, Nawahid. Uh, he asks, "Is there an ideal order in which I should sign up for cards?" Um, what would you say to Nawahid's question here? I mean, first of all, this is where I get to that evergreen advice of set a goal and work backwards. The right credit card, uh, to open at the right time is going to be different for everybody based upon, you know, if you're about to get married, you have a bunch of wedding expenses, and you're planning out this amazing honeymoon to Southeast Asia or Europe, you know, the right credit card for you is gonna be very different from somebody who has a, a ho- a big home, um, renovation project, and they're gonna be stuck around home working on that, and they might be doing some domestic travel. So the answer is, is always different. I think bigger picture Banks have different rules that can make it important to prioritize or deprioritize certain cards based upon where you are at in your travel credit card journey. Most famously, Chase has its 5/24 rule, which means that if you've opened more than f- five or more credit cards within the last 24 months, two years, not just Chase, but any bank period, Chase typically will not approve you for another credit card. Which means that if you're just getting started in this, Chase is, most of the time, the best place to start. Again, there's not a, a one-size-fits-all answer to anything in travel, but that is a good principle to keep in mind, that if you're just getting started, start with Chase. Yeah. If you're, if you're flirting with the 5/24 rule, I think that officially means that you're a points and miles sicko. That would be kinda level 201 stuff here. But for, if you're starting out, it is good, it's important to think about Chase first, just because they do have that restriction that other banks don't have. Speaking of restrictions, can you explain to me what family language is? You may have heard about this from your favorite influencer at some point, but what does a credit card family language mean? So over the course of the last two or so years, American Express has rolled out these so-called family restrictions on a handful of different credit cards. Amex membership rewards cards, so like the American Express Gold and Green and Platinum cards, as well as Delta Sky Miles cards and some Marriott cards, too, I think. What it means is that you have to start with these cards in the right order and kind of climb the ladder up to better, more expensive credit cards and not start at the top and work your way down. Because if you, for example, open the top-tier American Express Platinum card, which clocks in at almost n- nine hundred dollars a year And earn a bonus on that. Because of these family restrictions, you won't be eligible to earn a bonus on the American Express Gold card, which is much cheaper, is a great card for dining, but also offers a pretty significant welcome bonus. So you'd be missing out on as much as 100,000 points by not going in the reverse order, starting with the American Express Gold card and then eventually moving up to the Platinum card. Yeah. Okay, so, um, when choosing a credit card, that's, those are both things that you need to consider. There is a place that we've built that can help you do all of this. It's our card tracker, our credit card benefit tracker at Thrifty Traveler. Um, you can sign up for free. It takes, like, two minutes to put your information in, uh, and it also has a card recommendation tool in that tracker that kinda helps you decide, based on a short questionnaire, what cards are best for you to sign up for next. But especially if you're gon- if you're starting to get into travel rewards cards, getting organized right away is a really important aspect of it. So let's talk about just how to choose a credit card, and I think you've already brushed this a few times, Kyle, but just working backwards is so important. I think, you know, signing up for a card and then trying to figure out what to do with your points kinda puts you in the backseat. I think if you have the trip in mind or you have an idea of the trip in mind or you at least know what airline you wanna be flying, then you can work backwards from there. So pick your, set your travel goals first, then earn points to fulfill those travel goals. We know how important this is based on how effusive your hand gestures are when making this point, so thank you for that. Check it out on YouTube and don't flinch when I hand gesture straight at the camera. Um, Kyle, can you tell me about the difference between a co-branded credit card versus a flexible point credit card? Because I think the difference between these two is crucial when trying to figure out what to sign up for. Flexibility is everything in travel, and flexibility applies to travel credit cards as well. So these co-branded cards that you see, Delta has a relationship with American Express. You can open an American Express SkyMiles card. Same for Chase and United with United MileagePlus credit cards. American Advantage and Citi, Hilton and American Express, the list goes on. These co-branded cards have specific relationships with, uh, an airline or a hotel chain, which means once you have those points, once you have those miles that you earn from these co-branded credit cards, they are stuck in that account with very few exceptions. Once you have Delta SkyMiles, they are in your SkyMiles account. They cannot be turned into other currencies. So you have put all your eggs in that basket, which can be fine until there's too many eggs, or you need a different basket in order to try to do something. And that is where transferable credit card points become so much more valuable and are worth calling out here because y- you can earn Chase Ultimate Rewards on, say, a Chase Sapphire Preferred or a Chase Sapphire Reserve card, and you can turn those into United miles or Southwest Rapid Rewards or Air France KLM Flying Blue miles and use those to book Air France to France or to book Delta from Minneapolis to Chicago Every single point system that we have, from the likes of American Express, Chase, Capital One, Citi, you can turn those points into miles or hotel points with a dozen or more different partners. That just gives you so much more flexibility, and therefore so much more value. Yeah. The, the key difference here is, and you've heard us say points and miles, points and miles, points and miles many times, and if you listen to the back catalog of this podcast, it's even more. But points are, you know, the, the currency you get from the banks, from an Amex, from a Bilt, from a Capital One, from a Chase or a Citi, and miles are the ones that are already in your account with the airline or hotel that you're trying to book with. I really, really wish that the banks themselves would follow this rule, but Capital One calls its miles- Yeah ... VentureMiles, and Alaska at- Alaska Atmos calls them A- Atmos Points. I- just follow the rules, people. Come on. We need a summit. We need to get everybody together and get on the same page about this, and also to declare once and for all that it is not miles and points, it's points and miles. That has been established. Okay. Good. Um, let's talk about our favorite starter credit cards if you do have that kinda, that blank slate that we were talking about. So Simon in our premium Slack community said he gets the same question from friends and family all the time. The question is, "If I was to choose one low-fee credit card to start accumulating points and miles, which one would that be?" What would you say to Simon's, uh, friends and family so they can get off his back about this? I have two top choices for this that I recommend all the time in my personal life, and the, which specific one I would choose varies from person to person, again, trying to set a goal and work backwards to it based upon what points or miles they may actually need. Uh, the Chase Sapphire Preferred is far and away the number one. It helps that we've seen big welcome bonuses of as high as 100,000 points a handful of times within the past few years. These points you can transfer to more than a dozen different partners, both airlines and hotels. They're very easy to redeem through Chase's travel portal, so it's about as simple as it gets. But then on top of all of these points and the flexibility and the value, there are just a handful of different ways to offset the card's very reasonable $95 annual fee. Most recently, they bumped up a $50 hotel credit that you get annually on this card to $100. So right off the bat, you go to chase.com, you book a $100 hotel stay, and you're coming out ahead on this card, among a handful of other different benefits. Yeah, it's pretty amaz- You think about it, at that $95 annual fee is, you are, one, gaining access to some of the most, most valuable transferable points that exist in Chase Ultimate Rewards, but then you're just prepaying for a $100 hotel credit somewhere down the line in your travels. If you're not spending $100 at a hotel in a year, then maybe a travel card isn't right for you. Well, this is maybe the most important po- point, is there is such an aversion to annual fees, and I get why. People don't wanna spend money on a credit card when there are no annual fee, uh, alternatives. But especially when it comes to travel, I think people need to think about it less as money out the door and more of an investment in travel. And if you're not willing to invest in travel, you shouldn't get an, a credit card with an annual fee attached to it because that, that's not where you're going to be spending money. But if you're willing to put in some of the work, do the math, use a tool like our credit card benefit tracker to make sure you're coming out ahead on these things, you'll see that you pretty easily can, so long as you're diligent about actually using the benefits that these cards give you. Yeah, for sure. Um, w- a few more things on the Chase Sapphire Preferred, because I think we both agree, uh, it's number one with a bullet in our most recommended cards. I'd say it's a one... There's a 1A and a 1B- Okay ... and this is 1A. Okay. 1A at least. So the standard sign-up bonus on this one is usually 75,000 Chase Ultimate Rewards. Again, you're gonna have to spend a few thousand dollars in the first three months to get that, but that's a really good chunk of super valuable points. You also get Apple TV+ and you get, uh, TSA PreCheck or Global Entry credit when you sign up for those as well. What is it, what's your 1B, then? 1B is easily the Capital One Venture card, and the reason for this is with Capital One, there's an ace in the hole, which is that instead of going through a travel portal, you can also just go book a flight on any airline. You can book a flight with American Airlines, despite the fact that American is not a Capital One transfer partner. If it's a, again, a $500 flight- Wait a couple of days after charging it to your Capital One card, go back and erase that entire $500 travel expense with 50,000 points. Every single Capital One mile that you have is worth one cent towards travel. It is so, so easy, so flexible. This also opens up the world of covering Airbnbs and Vrbo and even bus fare with Capital One points, if that's what you want to do, which just gives this even more, um, like, broad uses to redeem for points that you otherwise might not be able to have an avenue to, to do. Yeah, that is also the Capital One Venture card, also a $95 card with a pretty standard 75,000-point sign-up bonus, and that also comes with a TSA PreCheck and Global Entry credit as well. Um, okay, are there any other kinda cards in this category that you could shout out for good starter cards? You know, I go against type on this one, and I say I think if you are flying one airline frequently enough, you know, may- let's maybe say four times a year or two round trips, then I do think it is worth getting a relatively low annual fee co-branded credit card with your airline of choice. All of the big airlines offer a credit card that where the annual fee starts somewhere in the neighborhood of $95 a year, goes as high as $150 with both Delta and United now. That is often, if not always, waived for the first year, but that gets you things like free bags, which, you know, now that bag fees cost you $45 each way in the United States and even more over to Europe. That can save you... You know, you can come out ahead on a $150 annual fee with just two round trips. The reason why I recommend a co-branded airline credit card when others may not is that I think it helps people see and start to do the math on the value of annual fees. I think without that it becomes pretty hard to make the next leap to those 300, 400, $900 annual fee credit cards that are becoming increasingly popular. Yeah. I, I, I used the kinda low-level Delta SkyMiles Gold Card as my gateway drug to points and miles. Right. It was that and a Rapid Rewards card, and I, I had these kind of currencies where I started to wrap my mind around, "Okay, here's what I need to earn in order to redeem for a flight," and that is what kinda led me to reading Thrifty Traveler back in the day and figuring out, "Okay, there's a lot more here that I could do. I could be doing a lot better." I've, I've spent some just atrocious numbers of SkyMiles on some ridiculous flights, just, uh, really, really bad redemptions over time. Again, we're getting very quickly to don't make the mistakes that Gunnar has made. Exactly. But I think, you know, I also would say don't shy away from these. If you really think you know you're gonna fly Delta that many times this year, having a, a, that lowest tier of co-branded credit card especially, same thing if you're flying United or if you wanna pick up the Citi AAdvantage Platinum Select World Elite MasterCard. You'd love that card name. God, that was the worst card name in all of credit cards in all of points and miles. Um, it is worth- looking at, at least, and maybe picking up one of these cards as part of your strategy. Uh, two more things to shout out with specifically Delta and United. Both of these cards get you discounts, and in some cases significant discounts redeeming those miles if you have United miles f- to fly United or Delta flights, booking Delta flights with Sky Miles. You get an automatic 15% discount, no questions asked, any time you're booking a Delta-operated flight using your Sky Miles, so every award is cheaper. Your miles go even further. With United, it's in, in many cases quite a bit better, where they have more award availability at even cheaper rates than what everyday members of the public would see. So both of those add a lot of value to any of those cards. All of this information that we've gone through so far, may be a little head-spinning for you all, but I promise we're covering this every day on our website. We're covering it every day in our Extra Mile newsletter. You can sign up for that newsletter at thriftytraveler.com/extramile. We're talking about all of these strategies every day, and it's, it's written in a really fun way, and I love to read it as much as I like to write in it. Um, can we talk about spending, Kyle? Just l- you know, we talked about how, how earning, uh, sign-up bonuses is really the biggest part of our kinda points-earning strategy, but you can earn meaningful points and miles just by spending in smart ways. Um, let's talk about once you've signed up for a card, you do have to hit that spending requirement, right? Your- the Chase Sapphire Preferred, they want, I think, $5,000 in your first three months of opening the card. Uh, if that sounds like a lot of money for you, what are some tips for, uh, hitting those spending requirements responsibly? I mean, I think the biggest one is to be strategic about when you open a credit card, so when you know you have that big home expense coming for that home project or repair or new appliance that you're buying, timing out a new credit card application around that. Or you know you're gonna have to put your kid in daycare, uh, coming up- Opening a new credit card around that for those recurring big monthly expenses. Anything that you can do in order to make that, you know, 500 to 5,000 to $10,000 or more minimum spending requirement easier, that you have the money to pay off right away, that is the single best thing that you can do in order to make this easy. Yeah, if you're living in a, in an apartment or a home where you're allowed to pay your rent through a portal as well, and you can use a credit card to do that, that's a very quick and easy way to spend lots of money. Um, you could also get help hitting your minimum spend requirement. Will you help me? Uh, no, not me. Not me. Oh. W- Gunner is offering himself up. I was thinking maybe your wife. You could start there. Sure. Uh, tell me about how to use what people in the industry call a player two. Yeah, this has a, a couple of different variations to it. First, you know, if you're trying to hit that welcome bonus, you can either just, you know, have a spouse or a family member who has a big expense of their own coming up spend it on your credit card and have them pay you back for it and cover that expense in the long run. You could also potentially add them as an authorized user to your credit card, where they get, you know, basically what is a copy of your credit card that they can make their own expenses on. You are still on the hook for making those final payments. That's really important to keep in mind, but that is another avenue to kind of spread the, the burden of meeting this minimum spending requirement. So if you have family members who aren't doing this that do have those big expenses c- coming up, consider going down that route. I think really importantly, especially for people with spouses Adding somebody as an authorized user or just having another person in your household changes nothing with their ability to then turn around and do the same thing, even with the exact same card. So, you know, my wife and I, years ago, both opened the Chase Sapphire Preferred card. I opened it before her, added her as an authorized user for this exact same reason after we purchased a house and had a bunch of home renovation expenses. Then she turned around and opened the same card. She was able to earn that bonus separately from me, despite having helped me earn the bonus in the first place. Yeah, that's a really good one. All right, let's talk about, um, using category multipliers on your card. So you, you'll probably see if you get, like, a mailer from Chase, or you see it in, in Capital One's TV ads with Jennifer Garner, you can earn 3X points on blank. What does that mean? What are, what are these actually doing? These are accelerating how many points you can earn, and I think the goal should always be to never settle, as best you can, for just earning one point per dollar. This is why earning a big welcome bonus is so powerful, because you're not earning 5,000 points on a $5,000 home renovation project by opening a new credit card. You might be earning 100,000 points, which I'm not gonna do that math on the fly, but that's a whole lot more than 1X points. The, the more you can get, the more points you're going to earn over time, which means that's why you need to be strategic about what cards you have in your wallet, which is personal, because it needs to be based on where you're spending the most money. So as millennials, you and I are probably spending most of our money either on grocery or restaurants or both. That's certainly where I spend the most money. So having a card in my wallet like the American Express Gold card, which offers four points per dollar on both, on both groceries and supermarkets, as well as restaurants everywhere in the world, is just the biggest no-brainer. That is the card where I earn 40 to 50,000 points every single year, just because I know to use that card every time I'm at the grocery store or checking out at dinner. Yeah, I... That Amex Gold card earning, is it 4X points on dining, I mean, that's one of the, like, really great multipliers out there. And you can also fi- you know, the Amex Platinum card, you earn 5X on your airfare. Uh, if you have a Venture, a Capital One Venture X card, you can earn up to 10X points when you book hotels and rental cars through Capital One, another great multiplier. These kind of range all over the place, um, from, you know, one or 2X points to all the way up to 10, or sometimes with Hilton cards, you can earn even more than that. Hilton cards are a different beast. You can stack a bunch of things and get up to 40. We don't- Yeah. That's, that is not starter kit stuff. But I will say, I think most people would be well-served by having- At least two credit cards over time is, again, take it slow, open them separately, make sure you know what you're getting into. But in order to earn points, those two cards serve two different purposes. One is for your biggest expe- monthly expenses, so if it's restaurants and groceries, something like that, something like the American Express Gold card to maximize those purchases, and then there should always be your other kinda catch-all go-to card, and something like a Capital One Venture or the Venture X card, which earns a flat no questions asked 2X points per dollar every dollar that you spend. And this is why the, the now dubbed Potter pause is so important, just, like, taking a second before you pull out your debit card or your airline co-branded card. Again, just think, like, "How am I actually gonna earn the most on this?" Um, my wife and I have a shared notes app where I have just put all of the multipliers that we wanna use for each category of spend that we always do. Um, sometimes she'll just text me if she needs, if it's something- Right ... that's a little complicated or whatever. I've heard of people who actually take out a piece of tape and write what each card is for and put it on the physical card itself, so yeah. Grocery, gas. Yeah. Yeah, whatever. Whatever you need to do to have that mental reminder and really install that mental block to make sure you're maximizing that purchase. Yeah. So basically, my house rule, I, I just talked about how my wife and I do it, our house rule is we don't pay full price, or we never earn 1X points, which is exactly what I did when I started in this with my, that first ever Delta Sky Miles card, where I just earned 1X Sky Miles on that card for years on huge purchases over time. Like, this is maybe my biggest advice to somebody who's getting started on this, don't swipe the same card, especially if it's just a co-branded airline card, over and over again. It's just not a good earning strategy. Exactly. That, I think, is, aside from, uh, you know, that mental block that, I... No, I'm not gonna say it. It's terrible. Aside from that mental block- The Potter pause ... it's maybe, it's... You did it It's maybe the biggest, easiest change to make because I think so many people, if you're in a Delta hub or in a United hub, it is just a reflex to slap down that Delta or United credit card everywhere you go 'cause you're always earning miles, and that's what you should be doing, right? And the answer is often no, that there's a better card for your everyday spending. That doesn't mean you get rid of that Delta or United card, but it does mean that those aren't the most valuable cards to earn, to use points. The goal is to maximize every purchase that you make, and again, 999 times out of 1,000, the right decision is going to be not using one of those cards. Yeah, absolutely. Okay, let's rapid fire at the end here just some ways to earn points and miles without a big sign-up bonus or without, like, spending a ton on your credit cards. The one that kind of, probably if we did this episode 10 years ago, we would've said, "Well, you gotta fly a lot of flights, and you gotta stay in a lot of hotels. That's gonna earn you the most points and miles." That's kinda gone the way of the dinosaur though, huh? I think it's probably been more than 10 years, but yeah, this is just n- because virtually every airline and hotel chain in the country has stopped rewarding miles based upon how far you fly or some, whatever terms of your stay and based only on how much you spend. It is just not a good way to scale how many points you can earn. Yeah. A nice, another nice little bonus, you actually touched on this when you were talking about your wife and you both signing up for the Chase Sapphire Preferred card, but referral bonuses can be a way to earn a, a decent chunk of miles, uh, f- on a card. If you have friends or family or interested parties, you send them your referral link for your credit card so that when they sign up, you get a little, a modest, sometimes it's, like, 10,000, sometimes it's, like, 20,000 kickback of miles into your account. You said you used this before. Uh, every year, you know, with those, those friends who are, you know, slowly dipping their toe into this, you know, and they're interested in the Amex Gold Card or the Chase Sapphire Preferred, it is, in, in some cases, you can actually give them a bigger bonus than what might be publicly available. You know, we saw Chase came out with its big 100,000-point bonus on the Sapphire Preferred card earlier this year. It ended earlier in the summer, but the referral bonuses lasted for, like, another week or more. So if you send that to some friends who are, were thinking about it but didn't have time or didn't get to it before that bonus expired, you can help them out. You can help yourself out, too. It's a win-win. Let's talk about shopping portals. Um, shopping portals can help you kinda earn big points on accident, uh, if you're... Or on purpose if you're, like, really hunting out a really good deal. So I'm talking about sites like Rakuten, like Capital One Shopping, Rove, uh, American Airlines, Delta, United all have their own shopping portals and more. Um, if it's too mind-spinning for you, you can use Cashback Monitor is a great site where they will find your best earning opportunities for the vendor that you want. Cashback Monitor is a good place to start, but then there's also the browser extensions, which really idiot-proof this thing for an idiot like me, where if I'm just online- You, you're the one who said that, not me If I'm online shopping, Rakuten will just hit me with a little, a, a very sleek pop-up on the right side being like, "By the way, you can earn 8X points on this purchase if you make it, uh, using your browser extension." How often do you use these? Almost every day. Uh, well, I'm not buying things online every day, but when I do shop online, every single time. And this is where that mental block is maybe most important, is, you know, before you actually click purchase on these things online, to remind yourself which is gonna give me the best return, and then click through that and then finish your purchase. A couple of weeks later, they're gonna kick over either some cashback or some points in order to reward you for making that one click. Um, let's talk about credit card offers really quickly. Uh, American Express, Capital One, Chase, Citi, they all offer, you know, some of these kinda bonus point, um, credit card offers where it'll say like, "Okay, uh, if you're gonna spend $50 at Lululemon, you can get 2,000 Amex membership rewards points as kind of a one-time bonus." Uh, more often you're gonna see these as like savings where it'll say, you know, "Spend $100 at Airbnb and get $30 back," or something like that. But in some cases it'll offer you like some bonus points to, uh, get a few extra points in the coffers too. And then finally, Kyle, I, I call these just the nibble around the edges partnerships. Uh, we get things like Starbucks and Delta where if you link your Starbucks and Delta accounts one time, you're gonna earn, uh, one Sky Mile per dollar that you spend at Starbucks. Uh, we see the same thing with Uber and Delta, Uber and Marriott. Uh, Lyft has a partnership with Alaska, Hilton, and Bilt where you can do that. And then Airbnb you can actually earn with Delta or you can earn 2X British Airways Avios with AirBnb as well. But these aren't meaningful ways to rack up a ton of points unless you're spending like 100 grand at Starbucks every year. Please don't do that. Uh, that's my financial advice at least for you. But- You are only a financial advisor in this very specific instance. Yeah. And then finally, I'll shout out Bilt Rewards. Um, they have ways that you can earn points on your rent and your mortgage. There are some hoops to jump through. I will point you to our guide on our website where we outline it all, but I do this with my mortgage. I pay my mortgage using a Bilt card. It just pulls from my, my, uh, checking account like normal, and then I still get the points, one point per dollar that I spend on my mortgage. It's a really good way to just get a few extra points in the account every single month. So there are a lotta trade-offs here, but mortgage is a huge, the biggest by far expense for basically everybody. This one is definitely worth considering if you're trying to figure out how to maximize that spend. Yeah. Okay. We gave people a lot of good ways to earn points and miles on this episode. At the end, at the end of every single one of these starter kit episodes, we wanna give you a flight plan or a little to-do list of the big takeaways from the episode, things you should be doing right away to get started on your award travel journey. Um, my number one thing on this list might be evergreen for all of these episodes- Mm-hmm ... is just get organized with your points and miles. Make sure that you're using something like our credit card benefit tracker, or you have your own spreadsheet or just a way to keep everything in front of you. Don't get behind on this hobby. It is so much harder to get organized once you're in it for a couple of years. If you can do that from the very beginning, even if it's only one credit card and three points programs- The sooner you get organized, the easier and better it's gonna be over time. My next thing on the flight plan would be to work backwards to find the right credit card signup bonus to earn the right points. Make sure that you have a goal in mind before you start earning. That's just the most responsible way to do it. Okay, the third thing on our flight plan, I'd say activate that mental block, what we're now all calling the Potter Pause. It's sweeping the nation. Uh, everyone's calling it the Potter Pause. It's just the moment that you take before you spend money to just spend a little smarter, to earn extra points on the, the purchase that you're making, or to just make sure that you're maximizing everything so that you have the points and miles that you want to travel better. Uh, and then finally, I would say dial in what I'd call your accidental earning. Use those shopping portals, uh, use your travel portals, all those weird credit card partnerships just to keep filling those points coffers up over time, that things you don't have to think about. It's spending you're already doing. Those are the four pieces of the flight plan. Um, Kyle, I think our listeners are well on their way to becoming, uh, sickos after an episode like this. What do you think we should cover next time? I think the next episode is, is gonna be maybe the most important because, uh, earning, earning points is a big piece of this, of course, but I think the harder part is redeeming them wisely. So the next episode of Starter Kit is how to transfer and redeem points, really making sure you're making the right moves with the points that you've just earned using what we outlined here. All right. That episode will be in your feed next Tuesday. For now, thank you all so much for listening to this episode of Starter Kit from the Thrifty Traveler Podcast. Please rate us five stars on your podcast platform of choice and like and subscribe to the show on YouTube, where you can watch all of our episodes. Send this episode to someone you know who needs a vacation. If you have feedback for us, send me a note at podcast@thriftytraveler.com. I would love to hear from you there. Kyle, tell us about the team. Uh, this episode was produced by your favorite host, who is going to be rejected by the US Patent Office for attempting to trademark the phrase Potter Pause, Gunnar Olson. It was produced and edited by Sylvia Thomas and edited by Kyle Thomas. Our theme music is by Benjamin Tissot. See you next Tuesday. See ya.