My NEW 2025 Credit Card Strategy (Optimizing *EVERY* dollar)

00:00:00.000 | I've spent hundreds of hours figuring out the right credit cards to maximize the value I get

00:00:04.640 | from every dollar I spend. Whether it's travel, groceries, dining, or really anything. Today I'm

00:00:09.740 | sharing exactly what's in my wallet in 2025, reviewing each card as I go and breaking down

00:00:15.300 | the frameworks I use to evaluate new cards and decide which ones to keep or cut. I'll also run

00:00:20.500 | through every major spending category to identify the best cards for each and see if there are any

00:00:25.300 | gaps in my own setup. Whether you're optimizing for points, cashback, perks, or just simplicity,

00:00:30.640 | this episode will help you build a wallet that actually works for you. I'm Chris Hutchins. If

00:00:35.260 | you enjoy this episode, please share it with a friend or leave a comment or review. And if you

00:00:39.420 | want to keep upgrading your life, money, and travel, click follow or subscribe.

00:00:43.260 | All right. So I am excited to talk about what's in my wallet this year. We're in 2025, recording this

00:00:49.520 | on June 4th. The irony here is I don't actually carry a wallet, right? Well, technically I do.

00:00:54.700 | I carry this MOFT wallet that attaches to an iPhone. It really only holds two cards and a driver's

00:00:59.800 | license. I do have this giant book that has tons and tons of cards in it, like back to back to back

00:01:07.700 | to back. So this is where I keep all of my credit cards. I will put a link in the show notes if you

00:01:12.520 | have a bunch of cards and need something. It was the best one I've tried of a few things. So what is

00:01:18.460 | actually in my wallet is usually the Amex gold card and the bank of America travel rewards card,

00:01:24.860 | just a everything card and a, you know, four X on dining and groceries. Mostly because dining seems

00:01:31.020 | to be the one category where I need a physical card and then a everything catch all card. If I'm

00:01:36.900 | traveling and I grab a bunch of things, um, but most of the time I can use Apple pay. So just because I

00:01:41.940 | only have two cards on me doesn't mean I don't have every single card I have that I can in my

00:01:46.680 | Apple pay account. So as I go through this episode, I want to flag that I'm going to mention a lot of

00:01:51.440 | cards. And what I'm going to actually do instead of overwhelm the show notes too much is I'm going

00:01:56.140 | to put a link to a blog post version of this episode in the show notes, which will also have

00:02:00.700 | all the details of every card category, et cetera. And you can also find all the details, uh, on the

00:02:06.720 | website, all the hacks.com. If you want to go find anything links to cards, links to posts, we've

00:02:11.460 | written episodes, et cetera. So what I'll do today is I'm going to start by running through all of the

00:02:16.100 | cards. I have what we have, whether we should get rid of any, then I'll run through the major categories

00:02:21.480 | and talk about my favorites and ruminate a bit on what cards are missing that I might be opening up

00:02:26.840 | before the end of the year. And as I go through all of this, when I think of a credit card,

00:02:30.460 | I think there's really three reasons that I might want to have a credit card. And one of them is

00:02:35.940 | probably the obvious one most people think of. And that's because it earns a lot of points or cash

00:02:40.840 | back on categories I spend in. If you spend a lot of money on dining, having a card that rewards you

00:02:45.560 | for that dining. If you spend a lot of money on groceries, same thing. Or if you just spend a lot

00:02:50.560 | of money that doesn't fall into a specific category, having a card that rewards your everyday

00:02:55.420 | spending, whatever category that is, there are a lot of categories where there aren't cards for bonuses.

00:03:00.220 | So that could be another one. So that's one reason I have a card. Next reason I have a card is that it

00:03:05.640 | has perks that you really value. So for example, there are cards that give you access to lounges.

00:03:10.820 | There are cards that help you accrue elite status with airlines or hotel groups. There are cards that

00:03:16.060 | have free night certificates. There are some cards that just have so many benefits and perks that relative

00:03:21.840 | to the annual fee, you actually think that the card is a profitable card every single year.

00:03:26.700 | I know there are a handful of hotel cards that are maybe $95 a year, but give you a free night

00:03:32.040 | certificate, maybe some bonus points on anniversary every year. And so you're like, well, having this

00:03:37.000 | card is actually profitable to keep. I do think that one of the things that holds a lot of people back

00:03:41.660 | is that annual fee. And one of the challenges for people new to the credit card and points a mile

00:03:47.400 | space is this idea of a really high annual fee and how to approach it. Because I know a lot of people

00:03:52.960 | that hear about the Amex Platinum or the Chase Sapphire Reserve and think, wow, that annual fee

00:03:57.140 | is more than $500. How could I ever even consider that card? That's crazy. And I will just flag that

00:04:03.540 | for almost every card with a really high annual fee, there are perks, benefits, discounts, credits that

00:04:10.880 | when you add them all up pays way more than the annual fee. I think last time I looked, I probably have

00:04:16.740 | $3,000 or $4,000 a year of annual fees across all my cards. But for any card that's in the second year

00:04:23.580 | of that card, and I'll get to that in the next point, I can simply go in and say, how much are these cards

00:04:28.320 | worth to me? And if I'm getting an Indeed credit that I never use, it doesn't matter if that's a $400

00:04:34.880 | credit. To me, its value is zero. But if I'm getting a $10 a month Uber credit, and I spend more than $10

00:04:42.140 | on Uber every month, no matter what, then that really could be valued at $10. Now you could make

00:04:47.660 | an argument that maybe because normally I'd get three or four X points that you could value it at

00:04:52.220 | 95%. So instead of $10, it's worth 950, but it's pretty close to face value. So that's something I

00:05:00.080 | think about. So if I look at a card that has a $550 annual fee, but you get a $300 rebate on any

00:05:06.000 | purchases and travel, I view that $300 rebate as direct cash. So if it was a $550 annual fee,

00:05:12.000 | I'd view it as $250 just from that one credit. And as you go through different credits, you can

00:05:16.760 | figure that out. I'd encourage you to take a look at the premium card worksheet that the frequent

00:05:21.200 | miler produces. I'll put a link in the show notes. They go through for a lot of the major high fee

00:05:25.960 | cards, all the different perks, and you can go in and put your value of those perks and decide whether

00:05:31.320 | that card is worth it for you. So get a card because the bonuses you get match your spending,

00:05:36.080 | get a card because the perks are things you really value and maybe couldn't get otherwise. Or the third

00:05:41.020 | one is get a card because the welcome bonus or the welcome offer you get from opening up a card

00:05:45.140 | really makes that card worth it for you, at least in that year. Now, I love welcome bonuses. I think

00:05:51.440 | that anything over about 75,000 points is probably something interesting. There are so many offers worth

00:05:59.420 | that much or more. So I tend to be a little picky and I get really excited when I see the 100,000,

00:06:05.340 | 120,000 point offer or five free hotel night certificates offer. Anything like that's exciting.

00:06:11.780 | Sometimes there's business cards with two, 300,000 point welcome offers, and those are really exciting.

00:06:17.240 | And so that's something I think about all the time when I'm looking at why would I have a card?

00:06:22.420 | It's either going to improve my value proposition every year, it's going to give me perks I didn't

00:06:27.600 | have access to, or the welcome bonus is going to be really, really rewarding. And when it comes to

00:06:31.960 | those welcome bonuses, you know, you don't get them in the second year of the card. And sometimes those

00:06:35.960 | cards have high annual fees. So every time I'm looking at a card after the first year, I go through

00:06:41.240 | this kind of review process of, well, am I still valuing the perks enough to keep it? Am I still getting

00:06:46.220 | enough value from the spending to keep it? And if it really was, that welcome bonus was amazing,

00:06:50.540 | but there's no real ongoing value for the card, I'll go through a mental checklist because usually

00:06:55.720 | that card will have an annual fee. And so I'll say, okay, if it's not valuable to me, can I downgrade

00:07:01.060 | it to another card? And a lot of issuers will let you product change your card from one with a high

00:07:05.700 | annual fee to one with a really low annual fee, or no annual fee, or a card that's more valuable to

00:07:11.620 | you. I know within the city ecosystem, the custom cash card is one that people often would downgrade

00:07:17.860 | other cards they didn't want to, because it gave 5x points on up to $500 a month in categories that

00:07:24.280 | you chose. So that could be a really interesting card. So that's one option. Let's say that's not

00:07:30.260 | an option. Let's say there is no downgrade path for the card you have, then you could ask, is there any

00:07:34.740 | retention offer? You know, if you reach out to the issuer and say, hey, I have this card, I don't think

00:07:39.780 | the ongoing value is going to be worth keeping it given the annual fee. Is there anything you guys could

00:07:44.220 | do? Sometimes they'll say, oh, well, why don't we waive it this year? Or why don't we give you

00:07:48.220 | 30,000 points if you can spend $1,000 on the card, like a little mini welcome bonus. So that's an

00:07:53.280 | option. And then if neither of those things are possible, if downgrading the card doesn't make

00:07:57.620 | sense, if you know, getting a retention offer doesn't make sense, then it's not a terrible idea

00:08:03.200 | to cancel the card. But what I would say before you cancel the card is if the credit limit on that card

00:08:09.620 | is valuable to you, you could shift it to other cards from that issuer. There's a process sometimes

00:08:14.420 | online, sometimes on the phone where you can say, hey, I've got these two cards, each has a $10,000

00:08:19.000 | limit. Could we make one of them 18,000 and then leave the other at 2000? And they say, great, we did

00:08:24.920 | that. Great. Now can I close the one with the $2,000 limit? So that is something you can do before you

00:08:29.260 | cancel the card. I would just wait till after one full year to cancel the card, because there are some

00:08:34.680 | issuers that look down upon opening up a card, getting the welcome bonus and canceling it before

00:08:39.560 | the end of the year. Now, once that annual fee does post, you can still cancel the card, usually within

00:08:44.520 | 30 days of the statement closing with the annual fee on it and get that annual fee refunded. So that's

00:08:50.720 | how I think about canceling it. Let me talk a little bit about my goals for cards this year. So I am always

00:08:56.820 | looking to maximize the earnings I get from all my everyday spending, all the category spending I have,

00:09:03.680 | but I'm not just going to get a card because it earns more points on something I could spend on.

00:09:08.820 | Let's say I spend $500 a year on entertainment. And right now I would be putting it on a 2X points

00:09:15.480 | card. And now there's a card that offers 3X points on entertainment. I'm just going to get an extra 500

00:09:21.020 | points a year from that deal because I could have otherwise gotten the 2X. So getting 500 points,

00:09:25.800 | which might be valued no more than $5 to $10 is not worth me opening up a new card.

00:09:32.680 | So I really want to see that the value I'm going to get from a new card is probably going to exceed

00:09:37.240 | at least $200 a year is probably the floor before I'm interested in opening it. And that floor is

00:09:43.120 | likely higher because the average welcome bonus is probably worth somewhere around $750 to $1,000 or

00:09:52.060 | more. So if a card's only going to give me $200 of value, I would be better off opening up a new card,

00:09:58.820 | which by the way would give me $1,000 of value. So it's almost worth five years of

00:10:03.380 | that card. And that's kind of how I think about it. The earnings on a new card have to outweigh the

00:10:07.600 | opportunity cost of getting a new card with a welcome bonus. Now it could be a mix. That card

00:10:11.680 | could have a smaller welcome bonus plus a value every year, maybe plus a few extra perks, and then it's

00:10:17.380 | worth it. So that's one. Another goal for the year is I really love transferable points. This is not

00:10:24.540 | going to be an episode where we go deep on transferable points. We've done episodes in the

00:10:28.720 | past on redeeming your points for maximum value. In a couple weeks, I'm going to talk about some of the

00:10:33.580 | tricks you can use to book award travel. And then we're going to do an episode breaking down all the

00:10:38.120 | best transfer partners. But at the end of the day, I find the transferring points from your credit card

00:10:43.780 | to airlines and hotel groups is definitely the way I get the most value out of points. And so one of my

00:10:51.380 | goals this year, when I look at all my cards is I want to keep a pool of points in all of the

00:10:56.100 | transferable currencies I have, which includes Capital One, Amex, Built, Chase, and now Citi,

00:11:02.140 | which is new for me this year. So that's a goal. Next goal is I want some more welcome bonuses this

00:11:06.740 | year. I'm at $324, my wife's at $224, which is kind of a measurement in the industry for those not

00:11:14.020 | familiar. Chase tends to not approve anyone for new cards if they've had five cards opened in the last

00:11:20.340 | 24 months, at least five cards that show up on your credit report. So a business card might not count.

00:11:25.360 | And so we're below that threshold, which means we could open new Chase cards, we could open new cards

00:11:29.460 | from almost any issuer. And so that's something I'm thinking about. I also want to keep maintaining

00:11:34.040 | lounge access. We travel with kids all the time now. And kids are always hungry, we get to the

00:11:40.080 | airport earlier. So it's nice to have a quieter place to go to get some food and just have a place

00:11:45.800 | to relax. And a couple of these lounges actually have little kids play areas, which is makes them

00:11:50.040 | even better. So definitely want to maintain that. Another goal this year that's a little new from last

00:11:55.720 | year is that when cashback is more efficient than points, I'm willing to do that. It would have been

00:12:01.260 | crazy when I recorded the 2024 version of this episode almost 18 months ago to think about getting

00:12:06.780 | cashback. For some reason, I was just so wired to focus on points. But I think my mindset is that if

00:12:12.860 | I'm getting points instead of cashback, then I'm effectively just buying those points at whatever the

00:12:18.180 | rate is based on what cashback I would have gotten. So for example, if I'm spending money on just

00:12:24.020 | something that gets no bonus on any card, obviously, I could be using my Venture X card,

00:12:28.400 | get 2x points on everything. But I also have a Bank of America card with Platinum Honors, which is

00:12:34.900 | their program that elevates all of their rewards based on how many dollars you have on deposit at

00:12:40.360 | Bank of America, which brings up their unlimited cash and their travel rewards and their premium

00:12:45.740 | rewards cards all the way up to 2.625% cashback. And if you want to go deeper on that, I'll link to an

00:12:51.380 | episode in the show notes on the best cashback cards. But comparing 2.625% to 2x points means

00:13:00.180 | that I'm effectively buying points at around 1.3 cents each. Now, on top of that, within the Bank of

00:13:07.160 | America program, if you have the premium rewards elite card, those points or the cashback you earn

00:13:12.340 | can actually be used to book flights for 25% more value. So if you're using them in that way,

00:13:18.760 | it's effectively about a 3.28% cashback card, which means that using the Venture X card over the Bank

00:13:25.360 | of America card is effectively buying points at a little more than 1.6 cents each. Now, I have

00:13:31.580 | definitely been able to use Capital One, Amex, Chase points to get way more than 1.6 cents of value

00:13:38.520 | plenty and plenty of times. However, I'm sitting on a stash of a million Capital One points right now.

00:13:44.360 | So I'm not sure that at this point in time, I would be a buyer of more points at that value.

00:13:50.320 | If I knew that I was low on points, if I wanted to build up that stash, if I had a really big trip

00:13:55.740 | in mind and I didn't have enough points, absolutely. I think 1.6 cents is even a fair price to pay because

00:14:01.500 | sometimes we get 2, 3, 4, 5 cents a point. However, right now in my current situation,

00:14:08.940 | looking at Capital One points, I'm not sure that trade-off makes sense. Not to mention,

00:14:13.580 | I also still have the US Bank Altitude Reserve card, which gets 4.5% on Apple Pay, which isn't

00:14:21.120 | necessarily capable of being used for every purchase, but a lot of those purchases for an everything else

00:14:27.380 | card, home improvement store, a lot of places online, I can use Apple Pay and get 4.5 cents.

00:14:33.320 | And at 4.5 cents versus 2x points, it's as if I'm buying points for 2.25 cents, which I just don't

00:14:40.300 | think makes sense. Sure, I could get more value. Sure, if I needed to close the gap to get to a

00:14:44.880 | threshold of points that I could use for a trip I wanted, it would make sense. But because I already

00:14:49.440 | have enough points, I'm not sure it does. And so that's something that I think about when I'm

00:14:54.140 | trying to decide which new cards to get. It's not just which one gives me the most points,

00:14:59.020 | it's which one gives me the most return. And when I think of return, I'm thinking of the value of

00:15:03.540 | points somewhere around one and a half cents in my mind. Certain points I'd say are slightly more

00:15:09.000 | valuable. With Chase, I found that I've been able to get so much value out of Hyatt recently that I

00:15:14.120 | put those points a little more valuable than other ones. With Citibank, I find that we only have about

00:15:19.460 | 100,000 points right now. So I'm actually more willing to get Citi points than I would other programs

00:15:25.500 | because there are a couple of interesting uses with Leading Hotels and Preferred Hotels and

00:15:31.960 | Eva Air that I just couldn't do unless I have more points. So I'm actually willing to pay a little more

00:15:36.840 | premium for Citi points right now just because I have so few of them. Okay, so those are my goals this

00:15:41.800 | year. Let's review the cards I have. And before I review them, one of the things that I would encourage

00:15:46.940 | everyone to do if you go through this process yourself is first, go find some way to categorize

00:15:53.420 | where you spend money. Now, if you only have a couple credit cards, most issuers have like an

00:15:58.780 | annual summary. So you could go pull up the end of year 2024 summary, and it usually breaks down your

00:16:04.180 | spending by category. For us, we have so many cards across so many issuers that compiling all that data

00:16:09.040 | together would take a lot of work. And I know for some of them, it's a PDF. Obviously, I could probably

00:16:13.740 | just throw all those into ChatGPT and ask a question, which now that I'm thinking about that process

00:16:18.440 | might have been easier. But we also use a app called Copilot to do all of our budgeting. I'm a

00:16:24.080 | huge fan of it. And that makes it really easy for us to go and say, where do we spend all our money

00:16:28.500 | because we categorize all our transactions. So I can go in and say, how much did we spend on dining?

00:16:33.100 | How much did we spend on these various categories? So whatever tool you use to track your spending,

00:16:38.200 | or the end of year summaries from your bank, I think both of those are valid options. But realistically,

00:16:43.420 | even if it's just an estimate, even if you just think, okay, how much do we generally spend in the

00:16:48.520 | major categories you can earn bonuses on dining, groceries, travel, maybe specifically broken out

00:16:54.940 | to hotels and flights, entertainment, cell phone bills, or other bills like that. For me, those are

00:17:01.460 | things that I'm thinking about. And even if you just ballpark it, it might be fine. Then I'm going to go

00:17:06.280 | through all the cards and see how much value I get from that card. And so there's a tool I built to help me

00:17:12.000 | with this. It's a spreadsheet that kind of goes through and looks at all the different earnings

00:17:16.460 | possibilities for every single card, lets you put in how you spend your money, and then check different

00:17:21.920 | cards to see if adding that card to the mix will increase your average return, both in a relative

00:17:28.240 | sense, meaning you go from 2.6 to 2.5% back on everything or 2.5 to 2.8 X points. So it does that,

00:17:36.380 | but it also will tell you your total dollar return based on how you value points and a lot of other

00:17:40.960 | stuff. So if you want to check that out, it's at allthehacks.com slash card tool. I actually took a

00:17:45.880 | bunch of time to go update it with new cards that have come out recently, some of the changes in old

00:17:51.620 | cards. So hopefully that's really valuable to you. If there's a card missing, you're welcome to add it

00:17:56.300 | yourself. The instructions show you how to do that as well. So here's how I think about a value of a card.

00:18:01.720 | It's really just like I described earlier, the amount of spending allocated to it compared to the

00:18:07.200 | opportunity cost. So if you spend $500 a month on dining and you have a 3X dining card from Chase

00:18:12.760 | and you want to think about going to the Amex gold card, you're going to get one extra point per dollar,

00:18:17.800 | which is on $500 a month or $6,000 a year, 6,000 more points. Let's say you value points at one and a

00:18:25.380 | half cents. If you don't, you shouldn't be getting any of these points cards. That's only an extra $90.

00:18:30.140 | And the card has a $325 annual fee. Even if you subtract whatever those perks and credits are for

00:18:36.300 | you, I imagine that breakeven is not going to be very compelling. But if you spent $3,000 a month on

00:18:42.460 | dining or $5,000 a month on dining, now we're talking about 30 to 60,000 points a year, which could be

00:18:49.780 | hundreds and hundreds of dollars. And I think now that becomes really interesting. We also didn't talk

00:18:55.180 | about the fact that it gets 4X groceries and all that kind of stuff. So that's the framework I use. I

00:19:00.520 | wouldn't just think of it as well, what are 4X points worth a year on this category if you already have a

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00:21:16.860 | points on your rent payments today. So let's run through. First, I'm going to start with Chase.

00:21:21.900 | And I'm going to try to keep this process pretty quick because I want to get to the meat of this episode,

00:21:26.300 | which is me running through the major categories of spending thinking about what the best cards

00:21:30.540 | are in those categories. So you got a Chase Sapphire Reserve. I definitely want to keep

00:21:34.700 | that because it makes my Chase points more valuable because it unlocks so many transfer partners. It

00:21:38.940 | unlocks one and a half points in the portal and you get 3x on travel and dining and we have a huge limit

00:21:43.100 | on it. So that's a great card. The lounge access we use. I've had it for a really long time and I'm

00:21:48.700 | always curious what perks might be added to it. And it's kind of the marquee card of that brand.

00:21:53.820 | Chase Amazon Prime card. We used to use it for 5% off, but recently we've been buying a lot of gift

00:21:58.860 | cards at around 5% off, if not more. So the primary use case for it is anytime we're buying something

00:22:04.700 | where we want purchase protection and still want 5% off because if you use your gift cards,

00:22:09.100 | you wouldn't get that. It has no annual fee, so we'll probably just hold on to it in case the gift

00:22:13.020 | card market changes wildly. But if we lost it tomorrow for some reason, it wouldn't be a huge pain

00:22:18.140 | point. Hyatt business card. Love this card. We've been traveling and staying at Hyatt's a ton.

00:22:23.260 | Have really valued being a globalist and this card is probably the only way I would have closed the gap

00:22:27.660 | to get there. They've got a bunch of cool perks that come with the card like points rebates and

00:22:32.860 | credits for staying at Hyatt. Definitely a keeper. Next is the Southwest business card.

00:22:37.820 | This year we actually got a lot closer to Companion Pass than I thought, thanks to some Chase referrals

00:22:42.860 | posting. And so having this card was an excellent way for us to close the gap to get to Companion Pass.

00:22:48.620 | If anyone's not familiar, I'll link to a post about Companion Pass, but it's a level of status that

00:22:53.660 | Southwest gives you a person you can nominate to fly free and you just pay taxes and fees for the

00:22:58.700 | year you earn it and the following year. And so great card because the welcome bonus on these cards,

00:23:04.220 | all Southwest cards count towards that status. Next is the Chase Freedom Flex. You get 5x on these

00:23:10.220 | rotating categories every quarter. And I'd say two or three quarters a year, a category pops up that we

00:23:16.300 | actually spend enough on that we can hit that 5x. So love keeping this card. On the flip side, we have

00:23:21.180 | a Freedom Unlimited card which earns 1.5x on everything and we almost never use it if ever. Maybe we use it

00:23:27.500 | at drugstores where I think it gets 3x points or 3% back. So that card probably should be product

00:23:33.500 | change to another Freedom Flex so we can get 5x on another $1,500 in those quarters that matter.

00:23:38.540 | My wife has a United card. It's her oldest card. We don't use it for anything, but it's helping her

00:23:44.460 | average length of history on her credit report. So we'll probably hang on to that. And then on the

00:23:48.140 | business side, we've got a Chase Inc. Preferred, which is good for travel if you want to segregate

00:23:52.460 | personal and business expenses, but also it gets 3x on some bill payment platforms that we use for the

00:23:57.420 | business. We also have the Chase Inc. Cash Card which gets 5x on phone and office supply,

00:24:02.780 | which we don't nearly spend enough on to make it worth holding on to this card, but it's no annual

00:24:08.380 | fee. It doesn't really affect us. We wouldn't get a lot of benefit from canceling it or keeping it.

00:24:13.260 | So as long as we're getting some elevated points on phone and office supply, why not keep it even if we

00:24:17.580 | don't spend a lot in those categories? All right, Amex. Gold card, 4x on dining and grocery. We spend a ton

00:24:23.500 | in those categories. Absolutely keeping the card. We can make pretty good use out of the credits such that

00:24:28.780 | it's definitely a positive ROI. We do have two platinum cards. I think we probably opened the

00:24:32.700 | second one for a large welcome bonus, but kept it because they removed guest access for the Centurion

00:24:38.540 | Lounge and we wanted to have the ability to be able to go as a family or at least Amy and I go and get in.

00:24:43.980 | Now that our children are old enough, they either need their own card, which they're not old enough

00:24:47.820 | for, or you have to spend $75,000 on an Amex platinum card in order to get guest access.

00:24:54.380 | We actually did that this year on one of the business cards. And so it's not necessary to

00:24:59.340 | keep both of these TBD on whether we cancel one or not. We've been pretty good at getting value out of

00:25:04.460 | the perks. So we'll see what that looks like. Maybe what a retention offer looks like and make a call.

00:25:09.740 | Next is the Bonvoy Brilliant card. I am two years away, or I guess one year after this one from lifetime

00:25:16.620 | platinum on Marriott. So it made sense to upgrade to this card. It has a higher annual fee, but it gets me

00:25:23.260 | platinum for the year, which counts towards the last two years I need to hit lifetime platinum.

00:25:28.620 | So definitely keeping this card at least through next year. On the Hilton side, we have two Hilton

00:25:33.580 | Aspire cards that we will keep as long as they keep delivering an annual free night certificate,

00:25:38.220 | because we've been able to get tremendous value from these free night certificates,

00:25:41.740 | especially when you layer on the fact that the card comes with free diamond status on Hilton,

00:25:46.300 | which is their top tier of status. And we've been able to get free nights at the Caprocot in

00:25:52.140 | Mallorca, which was running at about $3,000 a night. We just used some free nights at the

00:25:56.700 | Waldorf Astoria that just opened in Costa Rica, which is running over $1,000 a night. So we get

00:26:01.420 | a ton of value from these free night certificates. Next is the Delta Business Platinum card. This is

00:26:06.620 | one that had a huge, I think it was 100 or 110,000 point signup bonus this year. Opened it not just for

00:26:12.700 | the signup bonus, but because we get free check bags on Delta, which we usually fly about once or twice a

00:26:18.460 | year, you get a free companion certificate, and you get 15% off anytime you're using your miles to book

00:26:24.620 | flights. So it pays dividends this year and years to come anytime you're trying to use your Delta miles.

00:26:31.260 | So if you figure we have a few hundred thousand Delta points, or at least I do in my account,

00:26:35.500 | because the benefit only applies to the account of the primary cardholder that makes all of my Delta

00:26:40.940 | miles more valuable. Also on the business side, we've got a couple of business Platinums and a couple

00:26:46.380 | business golds. And we probably don't need all of these though. We've gotten a few mailers in the

00:26:51.180 | mail offering some really great welcome bonuses, which led me and Amy to sign up for each of them.

00:26:56.300 | So not sure what we'll do with the business Platinums. They do have some changes to the perks.

00:27:01.180 | And I expect that as the Dell perks have gotten devalued, maybe in the second half of the year,

00:27:05.820 | we'll see something new, which will help us decide whether they actually make sense to hang on to.

00:27:10.780 | On the business gold side, the Forex points in a bunch of different categories,

00:27:15.740 | you get it in the top two categories you spend in. We've actually been able to get some decent value

00:27:20.140 | from that. So as long as we're able to get enough value to cover the annual fee, we'll probably keep

00:27:25.980 | them. If not, we'll drop them.

00:27:27.580 | Last two, we don't actually use that much. One is the Bonvoy business card, got it a long time ago because

00:27:33.020 | I was pretty excited about Marriott. We were trying to stay there more and more. And this

00:27:37.820 | helped give us 15 extra elite nights towards status each year. But this year we're not staying nearly

00:27:44.460 | enough that we're even going to get to any number of elite nights that give us status. And we're

00:27:48.700 | actually relying on the Bonvoy brilliant card to just get that status as one of the benefits.

00:27:53.100 | So I think you could view this card as we pay an annual fee to get a free night certificate,

00:27:58.060 | but I think it's capped at 35,000 points and we haven't had a ton of great use for those one-off

00:28:03.820 | low value certificates. If we are able to use it, then we probably get more than the annual fee of

00:28:08.140 | value. So it's probably a wash, but it's not a card that, you know, I'm not excited to be using that

00:28:13.180 | often. And then last, I have an Amex blue card that I've held for 20 plus years. I think it's my

00:28:17.740 | oldest card that I still have open. So I'll probably keep putting a couple of charges on that card

00:28:22.060 | every year just to make sure it stays open. Capital one, we opened two Venture X cards when

00:28:27.820 | they had a hundred thousand point welcome offer when they launched it have been using them a ton

00:28:31.820 | for two X points. I talked earlier about why we've moved some of that to cash back.

00:28:37.020 | Definitely. We'll keep one of these around, but probably don't need two of them, especially

00:28:40.940 | because capital one makes it really easy to move their miles from one card member to the other,

00:28:45.180 | even if you don't live in the same household.

00:28:46.700 | Also have a spark cash plus card that I opened on the business side, had a really big welcome offer,

00:28:52.540 | and we actually put a ton of spend on it even beyond the welcome offer just to get 2% back on

00:28:57.580 | everything. But as things have changed, I feel like there's more lucrative ways to earn points,

00:29:02.700 | miles and cash back than just 2%. So this is one where I haven't really been using it much at all,

00:29:08.140 | and probably just time for us to part ways. New addition this year is Bank of America,

00:29:12.380 | we've actually have four new cards, and three of them are all tied to their cashback platinum honor

00:29:18.060 | status. And so for those not familiar, if you're able to deposit $100,000 in a Bank of America account,

00:29:25.020 | or a Merrill Lynch account, it can be a self-directed brokerage account. So you can just move over some

00:29:29.340 | stocks, you can move over an old Roth IRA or anything like that. They multiply the earnings of

00:29:34.380 | the card by 1.75. They have tiers below that as well, that if you can only put $25,000 or $50,000,

00:29:40.940 | you'll still get rewarded, but not as much if you can meet the $100,000 requirement.

00:29:45.580 | And so the premium rewards elite card is the consumer version that we have. And because of

00:29:51.340 | that platinum honor status, and because we use the points that we earn from that card for a 25%

00:29:57.420 | boost to book travel, that card is effectively a 3.28% card on everything we spend, and then a 4.4%

00:30:05.740 | card on travel and dining. Now it's marketed as a 1.5x on everything, 2x on travel and dining. But when you

00:30:11.660 | multiply each of those by 1.75 for the platinum honor status, and then you multiply them by 1.25,

00:30:17.660 | because we can use the points we earn to book flights for a boosted value, that's where I get

00:30:22.860 | to those numbers. So that's a nice cashback everyday driver for a lot of the spend we do.

00:30:27.660 | On the business side, we've got the travel rewards card, which is the same thing on the everything

00:30:33.740 | spend, but doesn't have any boost for travel and dining. But you can transfer those business travel

00:30:38.380 | rewards points over to the premium rewards elite and use them for booking travel as well. And then

00:30:43.580 | we've got the customized cash business card, which is, I think it's 3x base earning on up to $50,000 a

00:30:50.780 | year in the category of your choice, of which there's a couple categories we spend that much

00:30:55.900 | or more on. And then when you multiply by platinum honors, you get up to 5.25% back for a no annual

00:31:02.140 | fee card, definitely pays for itself every year. And then we opened an Alaska business card this year,

00:31:07.500 | primarily because we've been flying Alaska a lot more, and I was gonna go for Alaska status. And so

00:31:12.700 | this card helps that. Also, you get an annual companion certificate, free check bags, and they

00:31:17.260 | had a 75,000 point welcome offer, which was interesting. But I'll talk a little bit in a

00:31:21.580 | few minutes with Citi about why maybe I'm not going for Alaska status, even though we're flying Alaska.

00:31:26.140 | We also opened two US bank altitude reserves when there was a rumor that the card was getting shut

00:31:31.020 | down. Since you can't have this card anymore, I won't talk about it too much. They might in the future

00:31:36.380 | let you product change other cards to it. But effectively, it is a 3x card or a 3% cashback card

00:31:43.740 | on mobile pay like Apple pay and travel because they have this real time rewards program where

00:31:49.340 | if you make a travel purchase, you can pay that travel purchase off with your rewards at a rate

00:31:54.860 | of 1 point to 1.5 cents. It's actually effectively a 4.5% cashback card on mobile wallet and travel,

00:32:02.300 | which is pretty compelling, doesn't even require you to book flights in their portal or anything

00:32:06.860 | like that. It's really a great card for us for mobile wallet spend. And for us, that's a lot of

00:32:11.100 | Costco and anywhere else that's kind of an alternative to 2x points. Over at Citi, I think there were 75,000

00:32:17.420 | point and mile welcome bonuses on both of these cards, which led me to open them up on the same day.

00:32:21.980 | The Citi premiere on the consumer side, which not only had a nice welcome bonus, but I've been excited

00:32:26.460 | to get into the Citi ecosystem. As I mentioned last month in the Citi episode,

00:32:30.620 | not to mention it's a card that earns 3x on flights, hotels, gas, groceries, and dining. So

00:32:38.540 | good all around spend card, especially if someone's just looking for a one single card for a lot of

00:32:44.140 | bonus categories, but I'm using it off and on just to kind of get to a point of Citi points that I have

00:32:50.460 | enough to use on a redemption so that I could kind of get a taste of what it's like to be able to use

00:32:54.860 | a few of the transfer partners that are unique to Citi. On the American side, we opened the Advantage

00:33:00.540 | business card, and I'm using it for a lot of other spending. And granted, those categories could

00:33:07.020 | otherwise earn, you know, 2x points or 2.625% cash back. And instead, I'm just getting one American mile.

00:33:13.740 | However, I'm also getting one loyalty point, which is how they track status and the nature of this card and

00:33:20.060 | a promotion they have this year. We're getting one loyalty point on the employee card, which Amy works

00:33:25.260 | at the company and she has an employee card. So she's getting a loyalty point and me as the primary

00:33:29.340 | cardholder are. So it's helping not only earn points that you can redeem, but earn status for both of us.

00:33:35.260 | And so there is a value to that. In fact, I think for us, earning status on American is even more valuable

00:33:42.300 | for flying on Alaska than earning status on Alaska, because we can actually earn a higher tier of status

00:33:49.740 | here than we could using just the Alaska card. So exciting to be in the Citi ecosystem this year.

00:33:54.620 | Next is the built card. And that's really the last credit card that I have in my wallet. I know it's a

00:34:00.140 | lot, but despite that we do not rent, the interesting thing about the built card is that they have been

00:34:07.020 | constantly doing promotions on their rent day, which is the first of the month that allow you with built

00:34:12.620 | status to transfer to their transfer partners, which by the way, I think they have the best lineup of

00:34:17.420 | transfer partners. If you could convert all my other points to built points, I would be stoked.

00:34:21.340 | And on rent day, they've had 100% transfer bonuses to Air France, Air Canada, Avianca Life Miles,

00:34:27.660 | British Airways, Avios. And those are all programs we've booked flights from in the last year.

00:34:32.300 | So if every built point I've earned, I've been able to redeem one to two, meaning twice as many points,

00:34:38.460 | then the fact that the built card is only earning 3x on dining and 2x on travel, which is not too different

00:34:45.260 | from other cards, though, keep in mind, no annual fee card, which is awesome. And if you rent up to

00:34:49.900 | 100,000 points paying your rent with no fee, amazing. But earning 3x on dining, if your points

00:34:57.500 | are always transferring at one to two is kind of like earning 6x on dining, and it's kind of like

00:35:01.980 | earning 4x on travel. And at that rate, it's a card that I'm pretty compelled to spend on at least to

00:35:07.820 | get to the point that I maintain that platinum status. So those points continue to be worth that much.

00:35:13.260 | Only other card we have is a target red card. Technically, it's a debit card. So it probably

00:35:16.940 | shouldn't be in here. It does earn 5% back, which is pretty good for a debit card, at least on target

00:35:21.740 | purchases. But we've been able to at least recently get target gift cards for slightly less than 5% off

00:35:28.380 | that we've been spending a lot of money at target just using target gift cards instead of the debit

00:35:32.220 | card. But it's a debit card, it doesn't impact your credit, it has no annual fee. So there's no real

00:35:37.020 | downside to keeping it. So now that I ran through all the cards I have, I talked a little about what I want to

00:35:41.260 | do with them. Let's talk about the major categories. Now, this episode is not meant to be the definitive

00:35:46.460 | guide to the best card in every single category. It doesn't include a lot of cards that have 5 to 6x

00:35:52.540 | points in those categories if it's capped at $500 a month or $1,500 a quarter, because in a lot of cases,

00:35:59.980 | the ROI of opening up a card for an extra 6000 points a year just doesn't make sense. Obviously,

00:36:06.300 | if you downgrade to that card, and you've already had it open and has no annual fee, why not? But those

00:36:10.620 | are cards that I'm usually not going to consider opening up for new, especially because they

00:36:15.100 | usually have lower welcome bonuses. So that's why they're not here. So what I'm going to do is run

00:36:19.260 | through the categories, talk about how I landed on the card I have and what some good alternatives are,

00:36:24.380 | just to kind of showcase my process here. So I'll start with dining, it's probably one of our biggest

00:36:28.620 | categories that we spend money on. And we use primarily the Amex gold at 4x points. But we have probably more

00:36:36.220 | than any other category, a lot of backups, the Chase Reserve, the Freedom Flex, the Freedom Unlimited,

00:36:42.860 | the Built Card, all those cards are earning 3x points. If we didn't have those, you could also

00:36:48.380 | earn the same 3x points with the Chase Preferred, with the Wells Fargo Autograph and Autograph Journey

00:36:52.940 | cards, the Amex Green, the Capital One Saver. So there are a lot of options there.

00:36:56.700 | And then if we wanted the cash back, depends on the mood, I guess. I'm still trying to grapple with

00:37:02.380 | this experiment where I told myself I'd spend money on cards with cash back this year to see how it

00:37:07.580 | feels. So stay tuned towards the end of the year when I can debrief on my feelings after doing that

00:37:12.540 | for a year. But on the cash back side, you've got the Bank of America Premium Rewards Elite card,

00:37:17.100 | which because I use those points spent on dining for flights ends up being about a 4.4%

00:37:23.020 | back card on dining. Now, would I rather have 4 Amex points or 4.4 cents? Probably the Amex points,

00:37:29.020 | but not a bad card for dining. Next is Groceries. And similarly, I'm still using the 4x Gold card,

00:37:36.300 | but good alternatives in my wallet are the City Premier at 3x points. And I don't have this card,

00:37:41.500 | but the Saver card at 3x points as well. And then also, I forgot to mention this in dining,

00:37:45.580 | but if you're a Verizon customer and you want cash back, the Verizon card I think earns 4%

00:37:50.220 | on gas, groceries and dining uncapped. So that's an interesting one if you're a Verizon customer,

00:37:55.020 | though I would argue if you're a Verizon customer, you're probably spending way more on your phone

00:37:59.580 | bill than an alternative carrier that probably doesn't make up for the extra cash back from that card.

00:38:05.020 | When it comes to travel, there's a bunch of categories within travel and not every card

00:38:10.220 | hits them all. So I'll start with the broad all/ other non-flight hotel travel. And in that category,

00:38:17.500 | I think the Chase Sapphire Reserve at 3x and the US Bank Altitude Reserve at 4.5% are pretty interesting.

00:38:23.900 | And they're probably my primary go-to's. But if I had a lot of spend in this category,

00:38:28.380 | and for whatever reason, I didn't want those cards, getting 3x at Wells Fargo with the Autograph

00:38:33.420 | Autograph Journey cards is interesting, though there are limited uses for their points because they have a

00:38:37.580 | smaller number of transfer partners. And then also, as I'm saying this, I'm wondering if given the value

00:38:43.340 | I've gotten from transferring built points, yes, it's a 2x travel. But if those 2x are worth 4x,

00:38:48.860 | then it would kind of accelerate it to be the primary travel card I should use.

00:38:52.300 | So I'm actually questioning my strategy, and I might shift it after this moment.

00:38:56.220 | The Amex green card also does 3x on travel. So that's interesting if you want to stay in the Amex

00:39:00.620 | ecosystem. And then on the cashback card, the premium rewards elite card is still, again,

00:39:05.100 | 3.5% back on travel if you have platinum honors. And then if you use it for flights, it can be all

00:39:10.300 | the way up to 4.4%. On flights, I think that there's a hands-down winner that's the platinum

00:39:17.980 | card where book a flight directly with airlines, you get 5x points. I have been asked to think about

00:39:23.980 | whether it's worth not getting the travel protections I would get if I were on another

00:39:28.780 | card. And so that's a really important consideration when you're booking travel is how important are

00:39:34.860 | those travel protections in case you have flight delays, canceled flights, lost bags. So that's

00:39:39.580 | something that I will give more credence to in a future episode. On the hotel side, I'm typically

00:39:46.300 | using the co-brand cards I have for those hotel chains. But outside of that, it's either the city

00:39:52.860 | premier card, which earns 3x on hotels. If I were spending a ton on hotels, I would consider the

00:39:58.860 | autographed journey card, which is 5x on hotels. And then outside of those, it's just whatever kind

00:40:04.620 | of all travel card. On rental cars, I'm always using the Chase Sapphire Reserve. It has excellent

00:40:09.420 | rental car coverage. It's primary coverage. It earns 3x points. And I didn't mention that before

00:40:13.660 | when I went through that card. But I don't rent enough cards that I'd necessarily say like,

00:40:18.540 | that's the card that I should definitely have. And it's worth the annual fee just for the rental

00:40:23.900 | car coverage. But it is a nice add on that I have one, my wife has one. If we're renting cars,

00:40:29.180 | we're always using that card. This episode is brought to you by Gelt. Now, when it comes to building wealth,

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00:42:57.100 | first order plus a free $60 gift. Now, notice I didn't mention anything about the travel portal earnings.

00:43:02.780 | Depending on your card, you might get 10x on hotels booking with the Venturex or the Chase Reserve card

00:43:08.860 | in your Chase travel portal, or 5x on flights. Or in Citi, you can get 10x on hotels, and built you get

00:43:14.940 | plus 1x points, and the platinum is 5x on hotels, and there's all these bonuses in the travel portals.

00:43:20.780 | Now, what I want to say about travel portals, I typically don't love booking in the travel portal,

00:43:24.860 | because on the hotel side, the hotels are usually booked through like Expedia or some other back-end

00:43:30.300 | engine that does not give you credit for the elite nights, doesn't give your status any perks, and really

00:43:36.540 | puts you at the very bottom rung of the ladder in the eyes of the hotel. And so, the last thing I want

00:43:42.140 | to do is go to a hotel and get no perks, no benefits, no treatment, and if they're going

00:43:46.620 | to have to walk someone, it's going to be whoever booked in that travel portal. So, if I'm booking

00:43:51.260 | at a boutique hotel where there's absolutely no way to get elite nights or perks or benefits or anything

00:43:56.780 | like that, maybe it's fine. Maybe I'd go for the 10x points over something else, and I think it's

00:44:03.340 | probably worth the trade-off in that point. On the flight side, the challenge, and this is also true

00:44:09.020 | on the hotel side, is you often can't manage any of the bookings you've made in a portal

00:44:13.260 | directly with the hotel. You can't reach out to the hotel or the airline for that matter and say,

00:44:17.580 | "Hey, can we manage this booking?" They usually defer and say, "Hey, actually go back to where

00:44:21.660 | you booked it." And that can be a pain when you're trying to deal with last-minute changes, and you have

00:44:27.020 | to wait on hold for Amex Travel to answer, which I've been in a circumstance where me and another person

00:44:33.100 | booked the same flight, and we were trying to cancel it, and I booked directly with the airline, and it took

00:44:37.660 | me seconds because we were already at the airport, and I just went to the desk and said, "Can we cancel

00:44:41.820 | it?" And they were on hold trying to figure out how to get this done because they'd already checked in.

00:44:45.660 | However, there's this thing called NDC, New Distribution Capability, and it's a technology

00:44:50.140 | within travel booking that is allowing you to book through travel portals in a way that shows up as if

00:44:58.140 | you're booking directly from the airline. And so you actually are able to manage your flight with

00:45:03.340 | the airline. You're able to cancel through the airline. You get all the same benefits as if you

00:45:07.980 | booked through the airline. And not every airline supports it, though I think the primary airlines in

00:45:13.100 | the U.S. except Delta do, but also most travel portals don't. However, the Built Travel Portal does.

00:45:19.340 | And so as that comes online more and more, I would have no qualms booking every single flight

00:45:25.660 | through the Built Travel Portal get an extra built point for a United flight. Now, I wouldn't do it for

00:45:30.380 | a Delta flight where it might be difficult to manage because they don't have NDC. And my understanding is

00:45:35.100 | built in the process of trying to make it easier for you to know which ones of those bookings are getting

00:45:41.020 | booked through NDC so you have that treatment versus not. And I hope all these portals adopt it. If they do,

00:45:47.500 | you will see me booking all my flights in the portals for elevated earnings. But earning a few

00:45:53.100 | extra points on a flight isn't worth the hassle of not being able to manage that flight directly with

00:45:57.500 | the airline. So as I know which portals can do this, I'm down to do it. But until then,

00:46:03.020 | I'm kind of holding off until I know exactly how it will work. Next spend category is Costco. We're

00:46:08.140 | probably using our U.S. Bank Altitude Reserve card. But since that card is not open, another card that's

00:46:12.860 | interesting is the Venmo card. Because I think in their grocery category, it also includes

00:46:18.300 | wholesale clubs and it's 3% cash back on everything. So obviously, you can't get the U.S. Bank Altitude

00:46:23.740 | Reserve card anymore. But 3% back at wholesale clubs and groceries is pretty compelling, especially if you

00:46:30.140 | want to start a budding Costco gold enterprise. Obviously, you could use the Bank of America cards and

00:46:35.980 | earn cash back there as well. On the points and miles side, I think your best option here is

00:46:41.260 | 2x points from the Capital One Venture card. On phone spending, the in cash is 5x. On the consumer

00:46:49.180 | side, I wouldn't actually focus on the card that earns you the most points with your phone. And

00:46:54.780 | instead, I'd focus on which card had the best cell phone coverage in terms of cracked screen,

00:46:59.660 | lost phone, damaged stuff. And that is probably going to be better than getting a couple of

00:47:04.700 | extra points per dollar on your phone bill. And so that's something to look in.

00:47:08.380 | A couple other categories. We don't have a gas car. So we don't use that category.

00:47:13.420 | But I was spending a ton on gas. I'd probably look at the Wyndham Business Earner card, which is

00:47:16.860 | 8x points on gas. And it's definitely interesting because of the way you can use Wyndham points,

00:47:22.780 | especially with Vacasa vacation rentals. But I don't have that card. And so a card I'd probably

00:47:28.780 | use instead is the Citi Premier card, which is 3x points on gas. So those are the major categories

00:47:34.380 | we spend on. Obviously, in the other category, I'm always jumping between the VentureX, the US Bank

00:47:39.980 | Altitude Reserve. I might think about picking up a Citi Double Cash card to start earning 2x Citi points,

00:47:46.380 | or just keep using the Bank of America card, which, because we redeem those points for flights,

00:47:50.620 | it's kind of like a 3.28% cashback card. There aren't a lot of other categories

00:47:55.100 | we spend money on right now. The ones that I know do have cards with elevated earnings potential

00:48:01.180 | are streaming and entertainment. Obviously, if you have rent, I would strongly encourage you to look

00:48:05.740 | at the Built card. Allthehacks.com/built is my link. But beyond that, there aren't any categories

00:48:11.980 | that I'm necessarily shopping for an elevated earnings card. That said, I will talk about some

00:48:16.700 | of the new cards I'm looking at this year. And one of them does hit on a category I didn't

00:48:22.140 | mention. When it comes to credit cards, I haven't really been distinguishing too clearly between

00:48:27.420 | business and personal cards. A year ago, when I recorded the episode for What's In My Wallet 2024,

00:48:33.340 | I talked a lot about the distinction because we were using QuickBooks. And QuickBooks sucks for

00:48:38.700 | this. And so we really tried when we were using QuickBooks to completely separate all of our spending

00:48:43.900 | so that we only linked certain cards. And it was kind of a mess. And then I started using a product

00:48:49.260 | called Kick for our bookkeeping. And it was so amazing that after using it for maybe two weeks,

00:48:55.420 | I asked if I could invest in the company, which I did. Then I asked if they wanted to sponsor the podcast.

00:48:59.420 | And so they did. So totally biased user here as an investor and a partner. But it is amazing at doing

00:49:07.100 | bookkeeping for your business and being able to use business and personal cards, and then just move

00:49:12.780 | transactions between them as they don't fall into one or the other, and makes the bookkeeping behind

00:49:18.220 | it really simple. You can go to allthehacks.com/kick to get a deal there. I think it's 50% off your first

00:49:23.020 | year of bookkeeping. But that has really made it so that I don't need as much delineation.

00:49:28.460 | So when we have two cards that earn the same amount, like 3x travel on Chase Reserve and the

00:49:32.380 | Chase thing preferred, then fine, we'll separate them out and make it easy. We do the same thing for

00:49:36.700 | cashback on Bank of America cards. But when we don't, I'll make a purchase on my personal card.

00:49:40.780 | And I think from a bookkeeping standpoint, I'm kind of expensing that to the business and then

00:49:45.660 | making that expense a contribution. And if for some reason I put a personal expense on the business card,

00:49:50.940 | then it's effectively a distribution from the business. Now, obviously, all this happens in the background

00:49:55.420 | with kick, it's not like I have to do all this filing with each transaction. But that's kind of how it happens.

00:50:00.540 | If you don't like that approach, one option is to get two versions of a personal card. So for example,

00:50:05.980 | if you wanted to get 5x points on all flights, whether they're business or personal, and you have a partner,

00:50:11.500 | then your partner could open up an Amex Platinum. You could open up an Amex Platinum and you use one of the cards

00:50:16.300 | all for personal flights and one of the cards all for business flights. Okay, so that's business cards.

00:50:19.980 | What do I want to do next year? What are the cards I'm excited about? Well, if you look at last year,

00:50:24.380 | in this episode, about 18 months ago, I was excited about the Built Card, the Delta Platinum,

00:50:29.020 | the Bonvoy Brilliant, Citi cards, the Capital One Saver, the US Bank Altitude Reserve,

00:50:35.260 | and the Wells Fargo Autograph or Autograph Journey. I ended up getting almost all of those cards. I

00:50:39.580 | never got the Capital One Saver and I never got the Wells Fargo cards. I didn't really see any elevated

00:50:44.140 | earnings potential, new kinds of points I'd be able to earn more of. So I passed on them. But I would say

00:50:49.100 | the cards I was excited about last year, I kind of ended up following through on. So I'm excited to see

00:50:53.660 | if that happens again this year. So this year, the cards I'm excited about that I don't already have,

00:50:58.060 | and that is obviously aside from any card with an exciting welcome bonus, which is probably

00:51:03.420 | something I'm going to focus a lot on this year. But the specific cards I'm interested in are the

00:51:08.940 | Venmo card I mentioned, because I'm spending a lot lately at Costco on gold. And that card is a great

00:51:14.380 | opportunity to get 3%, which gold is expensive, and I might max out on some of the other cards.

00:51:19.420 | I have a companion pass right now. But Amy, my wife does not. And we do have two children. And so

00:51:26.220 | if I have companion pass, and we're going to do a little bit more Southwest traveling, maybe it makes

00:51:29.980 | sense for her to get a Southwest card, that signup bonus will get her quite a bit of the ways towards

00:51:34.380 | companion pass. She could get two cards, or she could get one and do a little spending or flying.

00:51:39.660 | But it might be nice if we ended up having two companion passes, then it really is 50% off for

00:51:44.700 | the family, minus the taxes and fees on the kids, because we'd be able to both have companion pass.

00:51:49.900 | Now, the only downside there is, if we wanted to travel together as a couple, we wouldn't actually

00:51:54.220 | be able to benefit from the companion pass, because we would have named our children as our companions.

00:51:57.900 | But I think that is a champagne problem. I mentioned earlier, I'm excited about getting city points.

00:52:02.140 | So as a way to boost them, you might see me add the city double cash, which is a 2% card on

00:52:07.660 | everything. But those 2% can convert to 2x points. So that might be a way before they go away. I've

00:52:13.020 | been eyeing the Hawaiian cards, which have a 75,000 point welcome bonus, or at least have in the recent

00:52:18.620 | past, but also allow you to transfer points between people. And so if we wanted to aggregate all of our

00:52:26.220 | Alaska points into one account, that would allow us to do that. And who knows what will happen to that

00:52:31.340 | card after the merger is totally final, which is actually in 26 days right now at the end of June,

00:52:37.740 | the venture X business, this is a card I'm not eligible for because I have the spark cash plus

00:52:42.620 | card. But my wife is and for the next five days, they still have a huge 350,000 point signup bonus.

00:52:49.660 | And so that's one that's on a very tight fuse of do we go for this, it has a massive amount of minimum

00:52:55.180 | spend to hit that welcome bonus. But when you factor that welcome bonus in, it's a pretty elevated offer

00:53:00.940 | for a card that I think is interesting. And so we're thinking about it, it hasn't been enough to pull the

00:53:05.740 | trigger yet. But now we're kind of forced to make that decision. Also, now that Amy's working full time

00:53:11.500 | on the business, she doesn't actually have a lot of business cards. And so opening up the world of

00:53:15.900 | business cards to her portfolio is something we haven't done a ton of to date. And so that's

00:53:20.060 | something we're eyeing for this year. Business cards often have really great welcome bonuses. So excited

00:53:24.620 | for that. And then the last one is a new card. And I missed out on the opportunity to get a signup

00:53:30.940 | bonus for this card because it only lasted for a couple days. But that is the Mesa card. It is a

00:53:36.780 | card for homeowners. So if built is for renters, Mesa is for homeowners. It's a no annual fee card,

00:53:41.900 | no foreign transaction fee. And the primary benefit is that it earns 1x points on mortgage payments up to

00:53:47.500 | 100,000 points a year. I'm going to do a full breakdown of this card in next week's episode.

00:53:53.180 | So those are the cards that I'm interested in right now. You might be asking, okay, you just ran through

00:54:00.300 | and I don't even know the number now easily over 20 cards that we have. And now here's five or six more.

00:54:04.780 | I'm thinking of how do I keep track of this? And so the way I'll close out this episode is just share

00:54:09.340 | a little bit about how I keep track of all my cards. And so there are a handful of apps that

00:54:14.700 | make this a lot easier. There's card pointers, card right, travel freely. I think you might be able

00:54:19.980 | to do this with a ward wallet or the points guy app. And of course you can create your own spreadsheet

00:54:24.380 | to do this as well. Personally, I really liked the card pointers app and I've used it for a long time.

00:54:29.900 | I think it's easy to use. I think it does a lot more than what you need it to do when you think,

00:54:35.340 | how do I manage this? And I'm not saying you can't use the other ones, but I'll tell you why I like the

00:54:39.900 | app and why I decided to partner with card pointers to get a discount for all of you because I think it

00:54:44.860 | has a ton of value. So first you could just put all your cards in and you could do it without having

00:54:49.740 | to link your bank. So you could just say, I have an Amex Platinum and then it's added to your app and

00:54:55.020 | they keep track of all the perks and the benefits of that card because the app knows what the perks

00:55:00.380 | and benefits are of an Amex Platinum. Now, if you go in and tell it, here's the date I signed up for

00:55:04.940 | that card and then they'll know here's when your annual fees due and all that kind of stuff. So there's

00:55:09.020 | a view in the app where I could say, show me the calendar of all my upcoming annual fees so I can keep

00:55:13.500 | track on maybe I want to cancel a card before that happens. Maybe I want to call up and see if there's a

00:55:17.740 | retention offer, anything like that. It's also great because if you set it up with a partner,

00:55:22.300 | you can manage your and your partner's cards and you can actually give them a view, which is just

00:55:28.300 | here's the best card to use for different kinds of spending. So instead of maybe printing something

00:55:32.620 | out or putting labels on cards, you could say, Hey, look at the card pointers app and it'll tell you

00:55:36.460 | groceries, this card, gas, this card. So I like that. But the two things that I love the most is one,

00:55:42.940 | it is the place that I can manage all of the offers. And actually,

00:55:46.940 | this is two things, but it's one thing. It's all the standard offers and all the personal offers.

00:55:51.740 | And the difference being the standard offers are all the things that come with your cards,

00:55:55.500 | your $10 a month dining credit, $50 resi credit, Hilton resort credits, all that kind of stuff.

00:55:59.980 | It's a lot to keep track of. And so they have them all there. I can go in and I favorite all the offers

00:56:06.780 | that I like. And then I can say, filter this view for standard offers that I favorited, sort them by

00:56:11.580 | soon as to expire. And I can just scroll through a list of here's all the things I want to make sure I

00:56:16.140 | take advantage of before the end of the month, quarter or year. And it's how I make sure I don't

00:56:20.620 | lose track of the value I'm getting from all the cards I have. There's also personal offers. And

00:56:25.740 | those are the card linked offers you get. So with the browser extension from card pointers,

00:56:30.700 | anytime you log into your bank, it's going to one, check all of those offers and add them to the list.

00:56:37.500 | So you make sure you know about them, but it's also going to add them to your card. But the really

00:56:41.580 | cool thing it's going to do is if you were to go add an Amex offer to one card, they'd usually take

00:56:47.340 | it away from another card. So you couldn't add it to both. But if you hit their server at the exact same

00:56:51.740 | time for all your cards, you can add that card to multiple cards all at once. And so that's something

00:56:57.420 | the card pointers extension also does. And so it does all this without downloading your balance data

00:57:02.860 | and storing your login as well, which is really cool. And so that extension not only knows about

00:57:08.860 | all those offers, but then it alerts you. So the other day we were on the site Chewy to order some

00:57:14.380 | things for our dog. And it popped up and said, Hey, just so you know, you should use one of these

00:57:18.460 | two chase cards, which has a 15 off $49 purchase, which can be up to 30% cash back. I promise you

00:57:25.740 | that if I had not seen that notification from the card pointers extension, I would have used a different

00:57:29.740 | card and I definitely would have gotten 30% off my purchase. And so that extension has probably saved me

00:57:35.660 | at least a thousand dollars. And now I'm also using the app to basically favorite offers that I

00:57:41.900 | notice like Chewy as an example. Oh, we're going to use that. Oh, here's a store that we regularly shop

00:57:47.020 | from. Let's not forget that there's an offer that expires in two months for $30 off $100 or something

00:57:52.780 | like that. So I'm able to make sure that I'm not only getting all the benefits from the perks that are

00:57:56.860 | kind of recurring regular perks of the card, but all the card linked offers. And I went and looked at the

00:58:01.900 | different cards I have and there are cards where I've gotten five, six, $700 of card linked offer

00:58:06.700 | value from that card. And I'm certain I would have gotten that before. So I worked with Emmanuel,

00:58:11.500 | the founder, who's a member of all the hacks. He's a listener of the pod. You can all have 30%

00:58:16.220 | off. If you go to all the hacks.com slash card pointers, or if you're already a member of all

00:58:20.300 | the hacks, which you can do at all the hacks.com slash join, you get 50% off. So definitely check

00:58:25.260 | out card pointers. It's an app. I open up multiple times a week. I've got the extension running all the

00:58:29.740 | time and I love it. And if anyone listening is wondering why I don't include max rewards on this

00:58:35.100 | list of potential tools for this purpose, the last time I checked, they had an account linking

00:58:40.540 | implementation that required you link the app to your bank. And the way they implemented it was a

00:58:45.260 | way that at least from a security standpoint, I just wasn't comfortable with. I've shared this with

00:58:49.900 | them. I checked again, six or seven months later, they hadn't changed anything. If they ever do,

00:58:54.860 | I'm happy to try the app again. But until then, like, I just can't review that product because I do not

00:59:00.380 | trust the way that they've implemented the linking with my bank. I've emailed with the team. I don't believe

00:59:05.980 | they're doing anything nefarious. I think they are probably just implementing it in a way that was

00:59:10.460 | easiest for their engineering team to do, but I'm just not comfortable with it. And so I can't review

00:59:15.260 | it. I have heard other people use it and really enjoy it, but myself, I can't.

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