50+ Ways to Earn More Points and Miles Without Spending More

00:00:00.000 | If you're looking to rack up way more points and miles,

00:00:02.960 | but without spending more money

00:00:04.400 | or opening up another credit card,

00:00:05.960 | you are in luck because today,

00:00:07.480 | I'm gonna share over 50 of my favorite tactics

00:00:10.560 | that you can use to earn more points,

00:00:12.720 | travel more for free, but without increasing your spending.

00:00:16.040 | Some of these little known tricks are so great and easy

00:00:18.720 | for anyone to use to earn more points

00:00:21.120 | on everything from buying gas and coffee

00:00:24.280 | while you're traveling,

00:00:25.280 | or even from your utilities or banks.

00:00:27.920 | I'm Chris Hutchins.

00:00:28.800 | I love helping others find deals and earn more points.

00:00:31.760 | And if you enjoy this video, give us a thumbs up,

00:00:34.400 | or if you have a question, leave it in the comments.

00:00:36.680 | And if you wanna keep upgrading your life, money,

00:00:38.680 | and travel, consider subscribing.

00:00:41.080 | Let's jump in first and start talking about shopping portals

00:00:44.800 | because I think this is one of the biggest ways

00:00:47.120 | that you can earn extra points without spending money

00:00:50.320 | beyond what you're already spending.

00:00:52.440 | So I personally love Cashback Monitor.

00:00:55.440 | And the reason I love it is because you can go

00:00:57.480 | into any retailer.

00:00:59.000 | So I'm looking right now and say,

00:01:00.160 | oh, I wanna buy something at Nike.

00:01:01.640 | And it'll actually show you where you can earn

00:01:04.600 | the most points per dollar or cashback

00:01:07.320 | across all the different programs.

00:01:08.680 | They have credit card point programs.

00:01:10.240 | They have travel points and miles programs,

00:01:12.040 | meaning airlines and hotel groups.

00:01:14.280 | But then they also have other programs like Rakuten,

00:01:17.400 | which I will get to.

00:01:18.640 | So there are a bunch of different ways

00:01:20.480 | that anytime you're looking at any retailer online,

00:01:23.760 | I think you should probably go in and look

00:01:26.360 | at whether there is cashback.

00:01:28.360 | There are browser extensions for certain ones,

00:01:30.520 | but I like Cashback Monitor

00:01:32.560 | 'cause you can actually pick the best place.

00:01:34.800 | Now, almost every airline offers

00:01:38.000 | some sort of shopping portal.

00:01:39.200 | United, Delta, American, Southwest, Alaska, JetBlue,

00:01:41.840 | some of the international ones as well.

00:01:43.600 | And then Wyndham is probably one of the only

00:01:45.400 | hotel programs that does.

00:01:47.160 | And then Rakuten is also a really great option

00:01:50.400 | because you can link your Rakuten account

00:01:52.560 | to your Amex account and earn Amex points.

00:01:55.520 | So instead of just earning United points

00:01:57.320 | or Southwest points, you can actually earn Amex points,

00:02:00.400 | which as you all know, are a transferable point

00:02:03.120 | that makes it really, really easy

00:02:05.040 | to transfer to lots of different airlines and hotels.

00:02:07.680 | Rakuten also usually has a referral promo

00:02:11.000 | that you can check out on the deals page on our website.

00:02:13.680 | I'm actually just looking at the Rakuten site right now.

00:02:15.840 | And there's a ton of stuff here

00:02:17.280 | that I think are pretty obvious things people might use.

00:02:19.760 | Choice Hotels, Sixt, Viator, Old Navy, Zappos.

00:02:24.600 | I didn't even think about that.

00:02:25.520 | We just ordered from Zappos.

00:02:26.960 | I'm gonna ask Amy whether she thought to use Rakuten.

00:02:30.040 | Knowing her, she probably did.

00:02:31.200 | She's more on top of the cash back than I am usually,

00:02:34.200 | but lots of great options.

00:02:35.760 | Some of these like Rakuten, United, Alaska, and JetBlue

00:02:39.640 | also have card-linked features

00:02:42.200 | so that you can link your card

00:02:44.200 | and earn when you're shopping in-store.

00:02:46.640 | Also keep your eye out for Shopping Portal bonuses

00:02:49.760 | because sometimes they have bonuses and elevated rates.

00:02:53.080 | There are some weeks where Rakuten is 10X on everything.

00:02:56.520 | It's changing all the time.

00:02:58.160 | One really cool thing that you can get on Cashback Monitor

00:03:01.400 | is you can actually see the history of the earnings.

00:03:04.840 | So you can look at what's the best cash back rates.

00:03:07.280 | You can look at what are the best point rate histories,

00:03:09.520 | credit card points.

00:03:10.680 | And so you can get a sense of,

00:03:12.640 | wow, is this often a category

00:03:14.880 | where I could earn 10% back on Rakuten,

00:03:17.480 | which is effectively 10 Amex points per dollar?

00:03:20.280 | And right now it might be two,

00:03:21.520 | but it looks like it goes to 10 every couple of weeks.

00:03:24.120 | Maybe if I'm making a really big purchase,

00:03:26.200 | I should hold out.

00:03:27.280 | So Shopping Portals is a massive place

00:03:30.280 | that I earn a bunch of points.

00:03:31.680 | Now I'll keep in mind,

00:03:32.520 | if going to Cashback Monitor is too much work

00:03:34.920 | that you don't do anything,

00:03:36.440 | you're probably better off just picking one.

00:03:38.600 | Maybe it's Rakuten where you can get transferable points,

00:03:41.120 | installing their browser extension,

00:03:42.680 | and not really worrying about it.

00:03:44.120 | The only other thing I'll make sure

00:03:45.280 | that is worth calling out

00:03:46.600 | that applies to a lot of the things

00:03:48.080 | we're talking about today

00:03:49.720 | is that this episode is all about earning more points.

00:03:52.760 | So I'm not gonna talk about ways

00:03:54.160 | that you can earn more money,

00:03:55.760 | but there are times where you might say,

00:03:58.120 | well, the United Portal will give me one point per dollar,

00:04:01.720 | but some cashback portal might give me 20% cashback.

00:04:05.800 | Well, in that case,

00:04:06.940 | you're probably gonna wanna optimize for the cashback

00:04:09.000 | and not optimize for the points.

00:04:10.760 | So I'm gonna focus only on ways to earn points today,

00:04:14.520 | but you always wanna make sure

00:04:15.840 | that you're not giving up something worth more

00:04:18.120 | than those points to get them.

00:04:19.560 | Okay, so shopping portals, great option.

00:04:22.760 | Unfortunately, you won't find Amazon

00:04:24.840 | on a lot of those shopping portals.

00:04:27.160 | However, I did find a little trick

00:04:29.360 | reading an article on Frequent Miler

00:04:31.400 | that you can get 3x JetBlue points on Amazon

00:04:35.400 | if you're making purchases

00:04:37.160 | while you're on their Wi-Fi on flight.

00:04:39.400 | I haven't confirmed that this is always working,

00:04:41.520 | but at least according to the internet, it is.

00:04:43.440 | So if you do have a JetBlue flight coming up,

00:04:46.000 | might be a great time to do some of your Amazon shopping

00:04:48.800 | and get 3x points on that flight.

00:04:50.580 | Another option for earning extra points

00:04:52.600 | when you're shopping online, if you have an Amex card,

00:04:55.520 | is to go look at all of the card-linked offers they have.

00:04:58.400 | Right now, I'm looking, there's 267.

00:05:00.840 | Most of them are gonna be cashback offers,

00:05:03.480 | but there are 19 right now that are points-related offers.

00:05:07.420 | So if you're trying to get more points, for example, here,

00:05:10.640 | it says spend $25 or more at Pete's Coffee

00:05:15.180 | and get 1,000 membership rewards points up to three times.

00:05:18.560 | That's actually a pretty good offer from an ROI standpoint.

00:05:21.160 | I'm surprised I didn't see that and talk about it sooner,

00:05:22.960 | but it expires in four days,

00:05:24.520 | which means by the time you hear this, it will be expired.

00:05:27.000 | But there are often things in here

00:05:28.480 | where you can earn extra points

00:05:30.640 | in addition to cashback offers

00:05:33.360 | that are there much more frequently.

00:05:35.040 | If you wanna make sure that all of these offers

00:05:37.040 | are just auto-added to your cards,

00:05:39.100 | definitely check out Card Pointers

00:05:40.840 | and specifically Card Pointers Pro.

00:05:42.720 | If you're watching the video,

00:05:43.760 | you would have seen that as soon as I went to this site

00:05:46.240 | just now, Card Pointers auto-loaded every offer

00:05:48.960 | on every card, so it's always there.

00:05:50.940 | And then it actually makes it easy

00:05:51.960 | in the Card Pointers app to search,

00:05:53.560 | "Hey, do I have any offers for Macy's?"

00:05:55.380 | And it'll tell you where you have those offers

00:05:57.320 | and which cards, so you know which card to use.

00:05:59.300 | A few others worth calling out,

00:06:00.980 | United has this app called United Mileage Plus X,

00:06:04.440 | and it's kind of like a shopping portal app

00:06:06.720 | bundled around one particular program, which is United.

00:06:09.880 | Unfortunately, it doesn't work on the web,

00:06:11.280 | but fortunately, one of the things that's unique about it

00:06:14.320 | is that it lets you buy gift cards

00:06:16.460 | and earn United Miles doing that.

00:06:18.660 | So if you wanted a lot of United Miles

00:06:20.440 | and you knew you were about to make a purchase

00:06:22.140 | at Airbnb for a trip, you could go buy an Airbnb gift card

00:06:25.760 | in the Mileage Plus X app.

00:06:28.220 | And I have heard that they pass along the merchant code

00:06:32.060 | of the gift card, so if you're buying a travel gift card,

00:06:35.740 | you can still get the points as if you spent on travel.

00:06:39.060 | And then sometimes they even give bonuses

00:06:41.660 | if you use a United card to do that.

00:06:44.420 | That said, there are a lot of places online

00:06:46.940 | where you can get cash back for gift cards

00:06:50.620 | or you can buy gift cards at a discount.

00:06:52.580 | So always make sure you're not buying a full price gift card

00:06:56.240 | to get three points per dollar

00:06:57.580 | when you could have bought that gift card for 15% off.

00:07:00.180 | So keep that in mind.

00:07:01.500 | And then the other site worth bringing up here

00:07:03.500 | is Simply Miles, which is a similar platform

00:07:06.140 | that American has where you can find a lot of offers

00:07:09.280 | to earn bonus miles and loyalty points on American.

00:07:13.260 | When I logged in, there were 72 offers

00:07:15.380 | that I could link to my card, but you do need a master card.

00:07:18.740 | It's similar to the offers you get when you log in

00:07:20.780 | and link your Citi, Bank of America,

00:07:22.460 | or Amex offers to your cards,

00:07:24.380 | but it doesn't require you to have those

00:07:25.800 | and they're slightly different offers.

00:07:27.460 | So Simply Miles is an interesting one

00:07:29.540 | that'll actually come up again at the very end of this

00:07:32.380 | because there is one of the best opportunities

00:07:34.860 | for miles ever through Simply Miles.

00:07:37.140 | On shopping, there's also a site called MyPoints.

00:07:39.900 | And right now, if you just sign up for MyPoints,

00:07:42.580 | which is a little bit of a shopping portal,

00:07:44.660 | but it also does a few other things.

00:07:46.400 | Right now, when you shop and spend $50

00:07:48.700 | in your first 30 days, you get 1500 bonus miles on United

00:07:52.500 | plus 250 when you sign up.

00:07:54.420 | So you can get almost 2000 miles

00:07:56.100 | just for a pretty small amount of work.

00:07:58.340 | And then you also earn points when you're shopping,

00:08:00.940 | when you're filling out surveys.

00:08:02.420 | And then you can also scan your grocery receipts

00:08:04.620 | to get more points.

00:08:06.220 | It's a little unclear how you redeem those points.

00:08:09.180 | It seems to imply that you can redeem them for United,

00:08:11.980 | but I haven't actually created the account.

00:08:14.400 | So I don't know the answer to that question,

00:08:16.100 | but you could definitely earn almost 2000 miles

00:08:19.340 | just by signing up.

00:08:20.360 | So worth being in here.

00:08:21.840 | And speaking of surveys,

00:08:23.120 | there are a handful of survey programs.

00:08:24.840 | So on almost every website for an airline,

00:08:27.680 | you can find a list of all of the programs

00:08:30.220 | they have that are partners.

00:08:31.780 | And that's actually an important thing

00:08:32.900 | because I'm not gonna mention every single partnership.

00:08:36.900 | So when I look at United's website right now,

00:08:39.300 | I'm gonna mention the highlights.

00:08:40.500 | They have a shopping portal,

00:08:41.900 | but there's some small things in here like Therabody.

00:08:44.620 | You can earn six miles per dollar

00:08:46.060 | spent on Therabody products.

00:08:48.260 | I didn't go through and include every single merchant

00:08:50.180 | and every single deal because that would just be a lot.

00:08:53.180 | I tried to include the bigger ones

00:08:55.140 | that were broadly applicable.

00:08:57.300 | But one category, for example, flowers.

00:08:59.700 | Pretty much every single airline,

00:09:02.740 | if you go to their website,

00:09:04.160 | or if you look at the cashback portals,

00:09:06.260 | there are massive returns on flowers.

00:09:08.520 | There must be really, really high margins in flowers.

00:09:10.860 | So I would say if you go to any of the airline,

00:09:13.340 | go to like earn miles, name of airline,

00:09:15.860 | name of hotel group,

00:09:17.140 | and almost every single one of them

00:09:18.460 | has a place on the website

00:09:19.820 | where you can find all the different ways

00:09:21.600 | that you can earn points outside of just flying.

00:09:24.500 | When it comes to surveys,

00:09:25.680 | there is a site called eRewards.

00:09:28.180 | And on eRewards, you take surveys, you earn points,

00:09:31.620 | and then you can redeem those points.

00:09:33.100 | And they have a bunch of partners

00:09:35.060 | where you can redeem them for American,

00:09:37.820 | Hilton, Alaska, United, JetBlue.

00:09:41.180 | So pretty wide ability to use your points.

00:09:44.780 | Downside is it didn't seem like the best use of time.

00:09:47.680 | So there were a couple of surveys

00:09:49.240 | that I had the option to take.

00:09:50.680 | There was an eight-minute survey that offered one point

00:09:54.020 | and a 37-minute survey that offered eight points.

00:09:57.300 | So I guess from points per minute,

00:10:00.580 | it's like that last one was about a little more than four.

00:10:04.540 | So let's round up to be generous

00:10:05.900 | and say five minutes per point.

00:10:08.260 | And it took 25 points to get 500 miles from an airline.

00:10:12.980 | So if you're spending five minutes per point,

00:10:15.460 | that means that you're gonna spend 125 minutes

00:10:17.620 | to get 500 miles.

00:10:18.900 | 125 minutes for 500 miles is,

00:10:23.140 | I don't know if that's the best use of time.

00:10:25.240 | Spend two hours of your time to earn 500 miles,

00:10:27.800 | which typically let's say are worth 2 cents, $10.

00:10:31.900 | Probably not a good use of time.

00:10:33.620 | If you happen to have a job

00:10:34.740 | where you're required to sit in front of a computer

00:10:36.420 | and you can't do anything else, but you don't have to work,

00:10:38.860 | maybe it's worth filling out surveys.

00:10:40.580 | If you wanna encourage your kids

00:10:41.840 | to fill out surveys for you, maybe that works,

00:10:43.600 | but I doubt they'll meet the panel requirements.

00:10:45.740 | But it is an option to earn points.

00:10:47.460 | And most of the airlines, as well as Hilton,

00:10:50.020 | have their own white label survey for points programs.

00:10:53.380 | I have noticed that depending on your role

00:10:56.140 | and function in your career,

00:10:58.280 | there might be better opportunities.

00:10:59.800 | So if you're a senior executive,

00:11:01.240 | maybe there are some of these panels that you could be on

00:11:03.880 | that will pay a lot more.

00:11:05.800 | When I went in as someone who was self-employed,

00:11:08.080 | the best I got was 37-minute survey for eight points.

00:11:11.000 | Now, I didn't take the survey.

00:11:12.600 | Maybe I could have taken it a little faster,

00:11:14.320 | but it seemed like not a good use of time.

00:11:17.240 | Let's think about a little bit more ways

00:11:18.640 | that you spend money locally

00:11:19.960 | that you might be able to earn a lot more points.

00:11:21.840 | So a big one is dining.

00:11:24.180 | And most airline and hotel loyalty programs

00:11:27.040 | also have a dining program.

00:11:28.980 | They're almost all run by the same underlying company.

00:11:32.300 | And so if you link your credit card, which is how it works,

00:11:34.940 | you link any card.

00:11:36.280 | So let's say you go to your Delta dining program,

00:11:38.460 | you could link your Amex card.

00:11:40.240 | And then when you go to a restaurant,

00:11:41.780 | you earn Delta points.

00:11:43.500 | Now, if you go and link that card

00:11:45.380 | to another dining program,

00:11:46.580 | you get removed from the other one.

00:11:48.020 | So you can only have your cards linked

00:11:49.980 | to one dining program at a time,

00:11:51.780 | but you usually earn points for dining.

00:11:54.100 | And sometimes if you opt into their emails,

00:11:56.580 | you get a higher earn rate.

00:11:58.460 | And sometimes if you review a restaurant,

00:12:00.240 | you get extra points.

00:12:02.460 | And so I currently have all of my cards

00:12:05.140 | linked to Built's dining program,

00:12:07.240 | because I find their points the hardest for me to earn

00:12:10.620 | and the most valuable.

00:12:11.940 | So for me, I'm like,

00:12:13.340 | let's earn as many built points as I can.

00:12:15.060 | So that's a great way to earn points on dining.

00:12:16.980 | There's often restaurants that you're already going to

00:12:19.500 | that you can earn points on.

00:12:20.760 | So great option there.

00:12:22.060 | And to be clear, you don't need a Built card

00:12:25.080 | to use the Built Rewards dining program.

00:12:27.300 | And that's actually true of a lot

00:12:28.500 | of the Built Rewards program.

00:12:29.760 | You don't need their credit card

00:12:31.640 | to get a lot of their benefits.

00:12:33.480 | So you can sign up for Built Rewards.

00:12:35.000 | You can play some of their games every month

00:12:36.980 | and earn points.

00:12:37.980 | And there are actually a lot of ways to earn points

00:12:39.740 | through Built without having their credit card.

00:12:41.700 | On the dining front,

00:12:42.540 | there's also a website that IHG has,

00:12:45.540 | where if you book an open table reservation

00:12:47.920 | through the IHG site,

00:12:49.900 | you earn 150 IHG points per reservation.

00:12:53.460 | So easy to bookmark that.

00:12:55.260 | Anytime you're making a restaurant reservation,

00:12:57.000 | if it's on open table, you can earn some IHG points.

00:12:59.500 | When it comes to drugstores,

00:13:00.880 | as of recording this,

00:13:02.060 | Built just announced a partnership with Walgreens,

00:13:05.880 | where again, a Built Rewards member,

00:13:08.180 | not necessary to have the card,

00:13:10.040 | you can link any of your existing credit cards

00:13:12.900 | to their program.

00:13:14.300 | And they'll do a few things.

00:13:15.340 | One, anytime you shop at Walgreens,

00:13:17.500 | you'll earn 1X Built points on everything.

00:13:19.700 | You'll earn 2X points on Walgreen branded purchases,

00:13:23.260 | and then another 100 points for every prescription refill.

00:13:26.780 | And so that's on top of whatever

00:13:28.340 | your linked card is getting.

00:13:29.780 | So if you link a card that earns three points per dollar

00:13:32.220 | at drugstores, you could get another one point

00:13:35.100 | on everything, two on Walgreens,

00:13:36.520 | and then prescription points on top of that.

00:13:39.060 | On top of that, Walgreens is passing along data

00:13:42.020 | about what products that you're purchasing are FSA eligible.

00:13:45.940 | And Built's gonna notify you,

00:13:47.180 | "Hey, here's a product you could reimburse

00:13:49.500 | with your FSA if you have one at work."

00:13:51.960 | So it has a little side benefit as well.

00:13:54.020 | I've already gone in and linked my drugstore card

00:13:56.380 | in that program.

00:13:57.500 | And it'll be a great way to earn a few extra points a year.

00:13:59.860 | If you're a Starbucks fan,

00:14:00.900 | they have a partnership with Delta,

00:14:02.380 | where you get double stars on your Delta travel days,

00:14:06.300 | as well as anytime you reload your Starbucks account

00:14:09.460 | with $25 or more, you get bonus miles for Delta.

00:14:13.580 | And it's a sliding scale.

00:14:14.660 | If you load $25, you get 25 miles,

00:14:17.060 | but if you load $100, you get 200 miles.

00:14:19.480 | So this is on top of whatever you're earning, of course,

00:14:22.280 | for your credit card

00:14:23.120 | and whatever Starbucks rewards you're getting.

00:14:25.140 | So this is one where, if you're a Starbucks fan,

00:14:27.260 | you should just be earning free Delta miles,

00:14:29.340 | and you should just reload your balance

00:14:31.180 | instead of spend your credit card,

00:14:32.980 | and you'll get extra points on Delta,

00:14:35.140 | which who doesn't want some free miles?

00:14:36.820 | When it comes to groceries, this isn't that straightforward,

00:14:39.720 | but there is a way to get points on groceries.

00:14:42.900 | And if you live near and shop at a Safeway,

00:14:45.580 | Cars, or Albertson's Grocery Store,

00:14:47.840 | they have a Just For You program.

00:14:49.540 | It's part of their rewards,

00:14:51.040 | where as you spend money, you earn reward points.

00:14:53.700 | Sometimes you can use those for discounts on fuel,

00:14:56.400 | but it turns out that they have a promotion

00:14:58.980 | with Alaska Airlines, where you can redeem

00:15:01.820 | those Just For You points for Alaska miles.

00:15:04.580 | And it turns out the program is actually pretty good.

00:15:06.980 | Like the value of the redeeming towards your groceries

00:15:10.040 | is not as good as the value of getting Alaska miles.

00:15:13.120 | However, you do need to go in and put in a zip code

00:15:17.700 | for your local store address in Alaska for it to work,

00:15:20.700 | and you end up being able to get a reward

00:15:22.980 | is worth anywhere from one reward is 100 miles,

00:15:26.340 | all the way up to seven rewards is 1300 miles,

00:15:29.120 | but it's a pretty decent redemption.

00:15:30.660 | I'll link to a article in the show notes

00:15:33.060 | that Frequent Miler wrote about how to do this

00:15:35.340 | and how to set it up.

00:15:36.500 | But if you shop at any of those grocery stores,

00:15:39.280 | definitely a way to earn some extra points.

00:15:41.020 | Speaking of local, if you happen to live in Washington State

00:15:44.900 | or the address on your Delta account

00:15:47.620 | is in Washington State, there is a site

00:15:50.340 | that went live this week at 12status.com

00:15:55.340 | where you earn one mile on Delta

00:15:57.700 | for every Seattle Seahawks passing yard the entire season.

00:16:01.820 | Last season, it would have been 4,167 miles,

00:16:05.140 | at least according to ChatGPT.

00:16:07.140 | And so if you live in Washington State

00:16:09.100 | or at least the address of your Delta account

00:16:11.740 | is in Washington State,

00:16:13.300 | definitely register at 12status.com

00:16:15.780 | to get some free miles this football season.

00:16:17.900 | As far as going to live events,

00:16:19.660 | there are two ways to do that.

00:16:21.020 | Ticketmaster does have a program with Delta also

00:16:24.320 | where you get one mile per dollar

00:16:26.060 | on eligible Ticketmaster purchases in the US.

00:16:28.840 | I will say that oftentimes Ticketmaster shows up

00:16:31.300 | on a lot of shopping portals.

00:16:33.140 | So you definitely wanna make sure

00:16:34.320 | if you're buying something on Ticketmaster,

00:16:36.400 | yes, you could get one Delta mile,

00:16:37.940 | but if you could get 10% cash back,

00:16:39.980 | maybe that'd be a lot better.

00:16:41.100 | There's also a site called Audience Rewards,

00:16:43.540 | which is where you can go

00:16:44.620 | and to book Broadway and off-Broadway shows.

00:16:47.180 | And they have a partnership with United

00:16:48.980 | that you can find on their website

00:16:50.540 | where when you book shows, you can earn miles.

00:16:53.340 | And so sometimes it's 100 miles a ticket,

00:16:55.540 | sometimes it's 700 miles a ticket,

00:16:57.740 | but if you're already gonna go buy tickets,

00:16:59.740 | might be worth just getting a few extra miles

00:17:01.740 | anytime you're doing that.

00:17:03.020 | There are sometimes some bonus offers

00:17:04.700 | up to about 2,000 miles on certain shows.

00:17:07.180 | Last, I mentioned fuel briefly.

00:17:09.460 | If you buy fuel at a Shell station

00:17:12.060 | and you wanna earn some American Airlines points,

00:17:14.900 | you can link your Shell rewards to your AA account

00:17:18.380 | and end up getting more points that way.

00:17:20.860 | So you get 250 points when you enroll

00:17:23.640 | and then you get another three miles on AA

00:17:26.540 | for every gallon of fuel you buy.

00:17:28.260 | Obviously, I wouldn't go spend more money

00:17:29.820 | to buy gas at Shell just to earn points

00:17:31.720 | if it's an extra 30, 40 cents a gallon.

00:17:34.100 | But if you regularly shop at Shell, great option.

00:17:37.160 | We actually have electric cars,

00:17:38.300 | so the only thing I'd be filling up is a Vespa

00:17:40.820 | where we fill up like a gallon of gas

00:17:43.100 | every two to three months.

00:17:44.660 | So not one that I'm taking advantage of,

00:17:47.240 | but if you fill up at Shell a lot for gas,

00:17:49.580 | great way to earn some American miles,

00:17:51.420 | which by the way are pretty difficult to earn

00:17:53.420 | because they're not a transfer partner of any program.

00:17:55.460 | Now let's talk about travel.

00:17:56.540 | Now, the obvious way to earn points and miles

00:17:59.180 | when traveling is on your airline flights,

00:18:02.020 | you put in your mileage number for your airline program

00:18:04.980 | and you earn miles.

00:18:05.820 | Some programs even let you earn miles

00:18:07.840 | when you're booking flights with miles.

00:18:10.140 | Used to be that flights with miles are nothing.

00:18:12.640 | Now that's not the case on certain airlines.

00:18:15.660 | So I figured that's a bit obvious.

00:18:17.340 | The two edge cases that are maybe not obvious are one,

00:18:21.100 | when you're flying on airlines

00:18:23.040 | that you aren't familiar with overseas,

00:18:26.460 | you might not realize that they sometimes are partners

00:18:29.000 | of airlines that are worth collecting miles in.

00:18:31.820 | So in the case of our trip to Europe,

00:18:34.460 | we flew on Transavia, which if they had a loyalty program,

00:18:37.980 | I probably wouldn't enroll in it,

00:18:39.340 | but they were partnered with Flying Blue

00:18:41.100 | so I could earn some Air France points.

00:18:43.180 | And then we flew on Condor Airlines,

00:18:45.720 | which surprisingly is partnered with Alaska.

00:18:48.380 | So I earned a bunch of Alaska miles flying on Condor,

00:18:52.300 | which is great as well.

00:18:53.220 | So anytime you're flying on an international airline,

00:18:56.100 | take a look and see if they're partnered with any airlines

00:18:58.740 | that you try to collect points and miles with

00:19:00.940 | because you might be able to earn your points there.

00:19:02.900 | The last one is if you have children,

00:19:04.960 | you should definitely be opening up accounts in their name

00:19:07.780 | for their mileage programs.

00:19:09.420 | So they start earning miles

00:19:10.700 | as soon as you're buying paid seats for them.

00:19:12.820 | So about two years old,

00:19:14.100 | if you're doing the lap infant thing before that,

00:19:16.020 | which is what we did.

00:19:17.700 | Both of our daughters have mileage accounts

00:19:19.880 | on every airline that they've flown on.

00:19:22.220 | And so they've built up a little bit of a balance.

00:19:24.720 | It's not too big, but I'm hoping that by the time

00:19:27.760 | they're ready to start booking their own travel,

00:19:30.000 | maybe they've racked up enough points

00:19:31.520 | to give them a little bit of a headstart on something.

00:19:33.640 | So that's how to earn airline miles.

00:19:35.300 | On flights, let's talk about hotels and home rentals

00:19:38.700 | 'cause there are a lot of interesting partnerships here.

00:19:40.620 | Obviously you can earn hotel points

00:19:42.240 | when you're staying in hotel rooms.

00:19:44.040 | The only hack here would be if you wanna really try

00:19:46.780 | to aggregate points in one place.

00:19:49.060 | So for example, when my wife and I are traveling,

00:19:51.620 | I earn all the Marriott and Hyatt points,

00:19:53.780 | she earns all the Hilton points.

00:19:55.740 | Something that works pretty well is you could book a room

00:19:58.940 | in whoever's name earns the points, put in the notes,

00:20:02.540 | the other person is checking in.

00:20:04.040 | And usually it's no problem for the other person to check in

00:20:07.780 | and keep the other person on the reservation.

00:20:09.820 | So if I were gonna stay at a Hilton without my wife,

00:20:12.380 | I would probably still book it in her name

00:20:14.260 | and have a note that says,

00:20:15.500 | "My husband will be checking in before me."

00:20:18.140 | So that we could just continue to both use her status

00:20:20.980 | and earn points there.

00:20:22.180 | But you can actually also earn airline points

00:20:25.220 | sometimes booking hotels.

00:20:26.960 | And you could do it in about three different ways.

00:20:29.460 | So one way that I'm not a big fan of is some hotel programs

00:20:33.020 | will let you actually opt out of earning points

00:20:35.340 | in the hotel program and earn airline points.

00:20:37.900 | So you can go into Marriott and say,

00:20:39.220 | "I don't wanna earn Marriott points."

00:20:40.460 | And pick an airline and earn those points.

00:20:42.340 | It's not really a great deal.

00:20:43.660 | So I pretty much never do that.

00:20:45.220 | And by pretty much I don't.

00:20:46.860 | Though, if you were a diehard loyalist to one hotel chain,

00:20:51.340 | and you happen to have a stay at one hotel chain

00:20:54.300 | where you don't even care about earning points,

00:20:56.380 | maybe it would be worth doing.

00:20:57.800 | But the programs I really like are ones

00:20:59.360 | that stack on top of that.

00:21:00.960 | And so United and Marriott have a partnership that stacks.

00:21:05.200 | Hyatt and American have a partnership that stacks.

00:21:07.960 | And Emirates and Marriott have a partnership that stacks.

00:21:10.920 | So if you're staying at a Hyatt,

00:21:12.760 | you can earn some extra AA miles.

00:21:15.000 | If you're staying at a Marriott,

00:21:16.000 | you can earn United or Emirates points.

00:21:18.440 | So those are good options.

00:21:19.720 | On top of that, there are hotel booking platforms

00:21:22.700 | that almost every airline has.

00:21:24.320 | So JetBlue has a program called Paisley,

00:21:26.900 | and you can go to the Paisley website,

00:21:28.460 | which I think is just paisley.com,

00:21:29.940 | and you can go book hotels.

00:21:31.820 | And what effectively is happening

00:21:33.940 | is they're taking the hotel commissions they earn

00:21:37.860 | from that platform and giving you JetBlue points in return.

00:21:42.300 | So they're not allowed to give you their commission,

00:21:43.940 | but they can give you some points.

00:21:45.260 | And Paisley is cool because it also includes

00:21:47.700 | the inventory from VRBO.

00:21:49.740 | So if you're booking a vacation rental on VRBO,

00:21:52.940 | or I guess I'm supposed to say VRBO,

00:21:54.460 | you can book it through JetBlue Paisley's site,

00:21:57.020 | and then you can actually earn JetBlue points

00:21:59.060 | on top of booking that vacation rental.

00:22:01.740 | Delta has a site called Delta Stays,

00:22:03.980 | and Alaska has a site called Alaska Vacations.

00:22:06.820 | They're both powered by Expedia.

00:22:08.660 | So when you book hotels there,

00:22:10.100 | you earn points in their mileage programs.

00:22:13.180 | American and Southwest have hotel programs.

00:22:15.940 | Then also there's a site called Rocket Miles.

00:22:18.340 | And separate from all the airline programs,

00:22:21.260 | it's independent site, but you can earn points

00:22:23.860 | in 40 different airline partners.

00:22:25.700 | So Rocket Miles, for example,

00:22:27.060 | has some pretty decent ways to earn points.

00:22:29.340 | I just did a really quick search right here.

00:22:31.220 | I'm looking in New York City for a couple nights,

00:22:33.740 | and I chose that I wanna earn United Miles.

00:22:36.100 | You can obviously choose Aeroplane, Delta, Southwest.

00:22:39.540 | And it says, okay, I'm gonna book this hotel stay

00:22:41.940 | for two nights, it's $1,400,

00:22:44.860 | and I'm gonna earn 15,000 miles for this day.

00:22:48.300 | So not a bad redemption.

00:22:50.300 | If you value United points at, you know,

00:22:53.140 | let's call it two cents, that's a $300 back.

00:22:56.820 | $300 out of $1,400 is like a 20% return.

00:23:01.140 | Now you value it one cent per mile, it's a 10% return,

00:23:04.140 | but definitely a decent option.

00:23:05.640 | So if you're booking a hotel

00:23:07.500 | and you wanna earn some extra points,

00:23:09.300 | those are great options.

00:23:10.820 | However, I will say,

00:23:12.980 | just like I've said many times in the past,

00:23:15.420 | when you book through

00:23:16.260 | any of these third-party travel portals,

00:23:18.420 | you're often having to deal with the travel portal

00:23:21.100 | if anything goes wrong.

00:23:22.580 | And in many cases for the hotel chain,

00:23:25.640 | you're not gonna be able to earn points on their chain,

00:23:28.140 | and you're probably not gonna get your elite benefits

00:23:30.260 | in many cases as well.

00:23:31.460 | So I'll flag that if you're staying at a boutique hotel

00:23:35.080 | where there's no loyalty program,

00:23:36.680 | there's no elite status, it might not matter as much,

00:23:39.860 | but if you have a lot of status

00:23:41.580 | and you wanna earn points at Marriott,

00:23:43.500 | you might not wanna book a Marriott stay

00:23:45.460 | through any of these programs.

00:23:46.660 | Also with hotels, if you are booking a event or a meeting,

00:23:51.260 | you can often get really, really great earnings.

00:23:54.260 | So something on the order of,

00:23:56.500 | let's call it one to three X points per dollar,

00:24:00.880 | if you book a meeting or a wedding or an event at a hotel.

00:24:04.300 | So definitely make sure you go through

00:24:06.060 | whatever meeting program they have to earn that.

00:24:09.400 | And in some cases on Hyatt and Marriott,

00:24:12.420 | and I think Accor, you can actually earn elite status

00:24:17.060 | through booking events.

00:24:18.900 | So I think Marriott gives you one elite night credit

00:24:21.220 | for every 20 room nights booked,

00:24:23.020 | and I think Hyatt gives you two elite night credits

00:24:25.140 | for every $5,000 spent.

00:24:27.380 | Unfortunately, I'm not planning any events,

00:24:29.020 | otherwise it would be a great way

00:24:30.560 | to really rack up some status and points.

00:24:32.780 | On the home rental front, Delta, British Airways,

00:24:36.100 | and Qantas have a partnership with Airbnb,

00:24:38.860 | so you can earn points on Airbnb bookings

00:24:41.920 | through those partnerships.

00:24:43.100 | I think British Airways also works on Airbnb experiences.

00:24:46.860 | I mentioned that you can search Vrbo

00:24:49.340 | through the JetBlue site.

00:24:51.740 | They also have a partnership with United

00:24:53.420 | that lets you earn points from there.

00:24:55.740 | United also has a partnership with Villas of Distinction,

00:24:59.180 | which is like a really high-end luxury villa site,

00:25:02.100 | but you can earn extra points booking through that.

00:25:05.500 | I think you get three miles per dollar spent

00:25:08.800 | on luxury villas, which is not a bad return, right?

00:25:11.100 | That's somewhere between, depending on how you value it,

00:25:13.700 | 3% to 6% off.

00:25:15.020 | So if you're already booking a luxury villa

00:25:17.020 | and you can book it on that site,

00:25:18.540 | why not get some extra points

00:25:19.980 | in addition to whatever points you get from your credit card?

00:25:22.540 | So that's hotels.

00:25:23.720 | When it comes to car rentals, similar to hotels,

00:25:26.380 | the car rental company often says,

00:25:27.980 | "Hey, do you wanna earn miles,

00:25:29.780 | "or do you wanna earn whatever rewards we have

00:25:32.060 | "in our car rental program?"

00:25:33.760 | I used to opt for the car rental program rewards

00:25:36.400 | because I thought they were a better deal,

00:25:37.940 | which I think they are.

00:25:39.800 | If you rent frequently enough,

00:25:41.500 | then you're gonna be able to use them.

00:25:43.020 | Hertz's new rules about expiring your points

00:25:46.300 | are such that I've actually earned Hertz points

00:25:48.820 | every Hertz rental I've had,

00:25:50.380 | and never been able to use them

00:25:51.660 | 'cause they've either expired or been hard to use.

00:25:54.140 | And so I probably would have been better off

00:25:55.820 | earning miles the whole time.

00:25:57.700 | You know, for example, on United,

00:25:59.100 | if you do that with Avis or Budget,

00:26:01.380 | you get 500 to 1,200 miles per rental,

00:26:04.820 | depending on your United status.

00:26:06.580 | If you're renting from Turo, which is a site

00:26:08.780 | kind of like Vrbo and Airbnb, but for car rentals,

00:26:11.380 | they do have a partnership with Delta

00:26:13.280 | where you're able to earn 2,000 miles on your first trip,

00:26:17.740 | and then another 500 miles for every trip after that.

00:26:21.140 | So if you're trying to earn some Delta points,

00:26:24.160 | or if you're trying to rent on Turo, great option.

00:26:26.580 | I feel bad because our au pair just rented on Turo,

00:26:29.020 | and I forgot to tell her,

00:26:29.980 | and this could have been an extra 2,000 miles.

00:26:32.700 | So shame on me.

00:26:33.700 | If you're taking a cruise,

00:26:35.060 | I can't promise it's the best deal.

00:26:36.900 | So shop around, but almost every single airline

00:26:40.320 | has a cruise portal where if you book a cruise

00:26:43.020 | through their portal, you earn a bunch of points.

00:26:45.500 | Similar to hotels, there's kind of a standard

00:26:48.120 | industry commission in the cruise world

00:26:50.160 | where you can earn, you know,

00:26:51.260 | somewhere on the order of 10% as a travel agent.

00:26:54.140 | So effectively here, the airline's program

00:26:56.720 | is acting as the travel agent

00:26:58.180 | and giving you some of their commission

00:26:59.580 | in the form of points.

00:27:00.460 | If you take Lyfts and Ubers, on Uber,

00:27:02.860 | they have a partnership with Marriott Bonvoy.

00:27:05.700 | It's not that great.

00:27:06.640 | It really only works on premium rides.

00:27:08.580 | So it doesn't work on UberX.

00:27:10.140 | And it does work on Uber Eats orders if they're over $40.

00:27:13.940 | And it can get as lucrative as 6X points

00:27:17.000 | if you're ordering on Uber Eats while staying at a Marriott.

00:27:20.500 | So that's one option.

00:27:21.380 | On Lyft, you actually have to pick,

00:27:23.500 | do you wanna partner with Alaska, Delta, Hilton, or Bilt?

00:27:26.760 | And then you earn bonus points in those rewards programs

00:27:30.540 | anytime you are riding with Lyft.

00:27:32.400 | Right now, if you link your Hilton account to Lyft,

00:27:35.720 | you're gonna get 1,500 bonus points when you take five rides.

00:27:39.120 | Now, that's in the next six days.

00:27:40.720 | So by the time this comes out,

00:27:41.920 | hopefully there's another promotion,

00:27:43.280 | but always good to just check, you know,

00:27:45.360 | maybe you've been earning, you know,

00:27:47.000 | Bilt points for Lyft the entire time,

00:27:49.720 | but now there's this great promotion with Hilton,

00:27:51.460 | swap it over, earn some Hilton points.

00:27:53.200 | You can always swap it back.

00:27:54.440 | Also when traveling, there's a site

00:27:56.240 | that I'd never actually been familiar with

00:27:58.280 | until I started doing this research called Thanks Again.

00:28:01.800 | And it's a site where you can basically earn points

00:28:05.120 | on a lot of the stuff you do at the airport.

00:28:07.760 | So parking, shopping, dining at the airport.

00:28:10.620 | Looks like they have a lot of chains in here.

00:28:12.820 | Sbarro, Dunkin' Donuts, the CNBC store, Chipotle,

00:28:16.920 | Auntie Annie's pretzels.

00:28:18.520 | And so you sign up there and you're able to earn points

00:28:21.360 | anytime you're spending money at the airport,

00:28:22.980 | and you can redeem those points for Alaska miles.

00:28:25.460 | So another option there.

00:28:26.440 | Last one on travel is all the activities

00:28:28.140 | you're gonna do in a place.

00:28:29.480 | And so I mentioned you might be able to earn some points

00:28:31.240 | on Airbnb experiences.

00:28:32.840 | If you're trying to book something through Viator,

00:28:35.120 | you could actually do that through a Wyndham site

00:28:37.880 | or an IHG site.

00:28:39.640 | And so I'm looking right now at Hawaii on the Wyndham site.

00:28:44.200 | And I assume Hawaii will show up

00:28:46.440 | because there are lots of activities to book.

00:28:48.800 | You end up seeing all the same activities

00:28:50.720 | 'cause it's powered by Viator,

00:28:52.280 | but you earn Wyndham points when you book it.

00:28:54.480 | You could do the same with IHG.

00:28:56.160 | There's another site called Get Your Guide,

00:28:58.360 | and they have a partnership with Alaska.

00:29:00.160 | So if you wanna book any of those experiences,

00:29:02.680 | you can do that and earn Alaska points when you do it.

00:29:06.280 | And so great option to earn some extra points

00:29:09.600 | when you are booking things.

00:29:11.480 | It's not actually clear how many points you're going to earn.

00:29:14.200 | I'm looking at this site right now,

00:29:15.440 | and it says you earn four miles per dollar spent.

00:29:18.040 | You get them within two weeks.

00:29:19.040 | So if you figure four miles on Alaska could be worth,

00:29:22.380 | let's call it 2 cents, 8% back, not bad,

00:29:25.520 | though obviously compare that to what you could get

00:29:27.860 | on a cashback portal.

00:29:28.960 | And I'm gonna take this example

00:29:30.560 | because I've said that reminder three or four times,

00:29:32.960 | and I'll just go in here and search for Get Your Guide

00:29:35.660 | on Cashback Monitor.

00:29:37.420 | And we'll see, I can get 7% back on RetailMeNot.

00:29:41.560 | I can get one mile per dollar on United,

00:29:44.280 | and I can get two Rakuten points per dollar.

00:29:46.560 | So in this particular case, I'd say getting four Alaska miles

00:29:50.920 | is probably the best, at least in my opinion.

00:29:53.080 | Just for fun, I'll go back and look at Ticketmaster.

00:29:55.320 | Ranges from like half a percent to 5%,

00:29:57.720 | but up to 3% on Rakuten.

00:29:59.480 | So it looks like you can go on Rakuten

00:30:01.600 | and get 1% on ticket purchases, 3% on resales.

00:30:06.600 | So would you rather have one Delta mile or one Amex point?

00:30:09.600 | I'd probably go on Amex point.

00:30:10.820 | So yes, Delta has that Ticketmaster partnership,

00:30:13.480 | but I probably wouldn't do that.

00:30:14.520 | The last platform here is Hyatt.

00:30:16.040 | They have this Find Experiences program,

00:30:19.000 | and it's kind of unique.

00:30:20.200 | I haven't really seen anything like it before

00:30:23.240 | where the hotel chain,

00:30:25.000 | kind of like how Airbnb has experiences,

00:30:27.040 | has a whole experience program

00:30:29.400 | that's not necessarily linked

00:30:30.860 | to having to stay at the hotel.

00:30:32.520 | So I did a search.

00:30:34.000 | There's more than 500 experiences around the country.

00:30:36.800 | You get 10 points per dollar spent,

00:30:39.660 | plus additional if you have a credit card from Hyatt.

00:30:42.920 | Really interesting program.

00:30:44.400 | In San Francisco,

00:30:45.440 | there was a really cool Japanese whiskey tasting.

00:30:47.960 | There was an Alcatraz tour and a few other things.

00:30:50.920 | Definitely worth looking around

00:30:52.400 | to see if there are any activities here that are good.

00:30:54.640 | I would say getting 10 Hyatt points per dollar

00:30:56.960 | on an experience,

00:30:58.240 | I probably value Hyatt points at like 1.5 or more cents.

00:31:02.800 | That's like 15% cash back.

00:31:04.560 | So next time I'm looking to book an experience,

00:31:07.080 | I'm definitely gonna take a look here.

00:31:08.780 | Also, it feels a bit more curated.

00:31:11.220 | When you go to Viator, you go to Get Your Guide,

00:31:13.240 | you go to Airbnb Experiences,

00:31:14.480 | it can be a little bit overwhelming.

00:31:15.880 | I can't speak to the quality,

00:31:17.280 | but I don't know, it feels a little more curated,

00:31:19.440 | which I like.

00:31:20.880 | And then last one, I forgot to say,

00:31:22.680 | when you're traveling,

00:31:24.120 | if you have a pet

00:31:25.120 | and you need to find someone to watch that pet

00:31:26.840 | and you happen to wanna use Rover,

00:31:28.720 | Alaska and American each have a partnership with Rover

00:31:31.720 | to get one point per dollar

00:31:33.880 | or one mile per dollar when using Rover.

00:31:36.400 | So that's an option.

00:31:37.680 | Another big category here

00:31:39.320 | is kind of on the banking, money, personal finance side.

00:31:42.760 | First, let's talk about rent.

00:31:44.220 | If you pay rent,

00:31:45.280 | you really should be checking out Built Rewards.

00:31:47.680 | You can earn points through the rewards program,

00:31:50.000 | through their card up to 100,000 points a year.

00:31:52.880 | Highly recommend, built points are fantastic.

00:31:55.280 | Definitely worth checking out if you are a renter.

00:31:59.680 | Another option on the finance side

00:32:01.520 | is a little bit interesting,

00:32:02.960 | but I've been digging in a bit,

00:32:04.440 | which is around debit card spend.

00:32:07.560 | So I said this whole episode is about earning points

00:32:09.840 | without spending more money.

00:32:10.960 | Let me explain.

00:32:11.880 | So Amex actually has a rewards checking account.

00:32:15.560 | They say it earns a high interest of 1%,

00:32:17.880 | not exciting to me.

00:32:19.400 | But what is interesting

00:32:20.600 | is you earn rewards on debit card purchases.

00:32:23.920 | And you get one Amex point

00:32:26.040 | for every $2 of debit card purchases.

00:32:28.600 | So not a crazy earning rate,

00:32:31.200 | but there are a lot of cases

00:32:33.320 | where there are things that you can spend money on

00:32:36.020 | with a debit card

00:32:37.060 | that you just can't use a credit card for

00:32:38.860 | without paying a fee.

00:32:40.280 | And so if you live somewhere

00:32:42.300 | where your property tax can be paid

00:32:44.280 | with a debit card for free,

00:32:45.640 | or maybe it can be paid for a small fee,

00:32:48.260 | sometimes if you look at different places

00:32:50.000 | to pay your taxes online,

00:32:51.320 | which we'll get to,

00:32:52.320 | there's just a small fixed fee to use a debit card

00:32:54.880 | where there's a percentage fee to use a credit card.

00:32:56.920 | Some bills can be paid with a debit card for free,

00:32:59.520 | but not with a credit card.

00:33:00.720 | PayPal BillPay lets you use your debit card

00:33:03.600 | to pay a lot of bills in places

00:33:05.480 | that otherwise maybe don't take debit cards.

00:33:08.160 | And then I've heard that there are a lot of credit unions

00:33:10.980 | that will let you make auto loan payments

00:33:13.440 | and home equity loan payments

00:33:15.480 | and even mortgage payments with a debit card.

00:33:17.200 | So if I had a credit union loan,

00:33:18.640 | I would ask this question,

00:33:19.720 | which I actually did for our car loan.

00:33:21.760 | And they said, yes, of course you can use a debit card.

00:33:24.400 | Turns out it had almost a 3% fee,

00:33:26.580 | so it wasn't worth it.

00:33:27.720 | But if there are a lot of things

00:33:29.320 | that you spend money on already,

00:33:30.900 | where you're paying through a bank transfer

00:33:33.200 | or using a debit card that doesn't earn anything,

00:33:35.720 | I think it could be worth checking out

00:33:37.160 | this Amex checking account

00:33:38.600 | where you can earn Amex points with your debit card.

00:33:41.280 | Also, there are some bank accounts

00:33:43.000 | where when you open up a bank account,

00:33:44.880 | they'll let you fund that account with a credit card.

00:33:47.640 | So if you're opening up an account

00:33:49.320 | at a bank or a credit union,

00:33:50.840 | you could earn some extra points doing that.

00:33:52.960 | I did say at the beginning of this episode,

00:33:54.560 | I was talking about ways to earn points

00:33:56.280 | without spending money.

00:33:57.880 | And so I guess if you load your bank account

00:33:59.680 | with your credit card,

00:34:00.800 | you get that money right away

00:34:02.020 | so you don't have to actually spend it.

00:34:03.500 | So that I'll say counts.

00:34:05.040 | You'll notice I'm not talking about welcome bonuses,

00:34:07.920 | category bonuses, 'cause that's spending money.

00:34:10.080 | And we've talked about that in the past,

00:34:11.640 | we'll talk about it in the future.

00:34:13.040 | It's just not this episode.

00:34:14.320 | I did mention taxes,

00:34:15.520 | and I went a lot deeper on that in episode 164.

00:34:19.040 | But if you're already paying taxes,

00:34:20.920 | which most of us are,

00:34:22.460 | there is an opportunity to earn points

00:34:24.880 | when paying your taxes.

00:34:26.400 | Now, that usually comes with a fee

00:34:28.340 | when you're using a credit card,

00:34:29.520 | though this debit card option is interesting.

00:34:31.640 | I haven't actually experimented with it.

00:34:33.240 | But in some cases,

00:34:35.200 | you'll earn more rewards than the fee costs.

00:34:38.520 | And especially if it's a business

00:34:40.740 | that you're paying taxes for,

00:34:42.520 | the cost of that fee might be a business expense,

00:34:45.440 | making it even better deal.

00:34:47.200 | So if you have a card that earns two points on everything,

00:34:51.300 | and you're paying a 1.83% fee,

00:34:54.000 | which is kind of, I think the lowest it goes,

00:34:55.580 | or maybe it's 1.82,

00:34:57.040 | it could make sense.

00:34:58.800 | I'd say that's a little bit more in the buying points

00:35:01.240 | for Cheap Camp than earning points for free.

00:35:04.080 | So let's brush that off.

00:35:05.700 | The next one is one that I've used a lot in the past,

00:35:08.880 | which is there's a bank called Basque Bank,

00:35:11.240 | which has a partnership with American Airlines

00:35:13.680 | that lets you earn American miles

00:35:15.800 | instead of earning interest on your account.

00:35:18.920 | Now, funny enough,

00:35:19.760 | Basque Bank also has savings accounts that earn interest

00:35:22.320 | and checkings accounts that do the same,

00:35:24.000 | but the mileage account is a mileage savings account

00:35:28.000 | that earns two and a half American miles

00:35:30.680 | for every $1 you've saved.

00:35:32.960 | And you also get a bonus of 20,000 miles

00:35:36.080 | if you deposit $50,000 and keep it there for six months.

00:35:39.280 | Now, if you do the math

00:35:40.320 | in today's interest rate environment,

00:35:42.760 | where we're earning 5% on savings or more,

00:35:47.200 | I'm not sure how much sense it makes.

00:35:49.160 | So I ran the quick numbers.

00:35:50.480 | So if you put your $50,000 in

00:35:52.760 | and you leave it there for six months,

00:35:54.360 | you'd earn your 20,000 point bonus.

00:35:56.640 | You'd also earn half of the 125,000 points you'd earn

00:36:01.120 | if you put it in there for a year.

00:36:02.760 | So that's 62,500 points for a total of 82,500 points.

00:36:08.920 | Now, obviously it depends on how you value

00:36:11.320 | American Airlines points or miles

00:36:14.340 | to decide whether this is worth it.

00:36:16.400 | But I'll say that if you're earning 5% interest

00:36:20.120 | on that same amount, it'd be about $1,250.

00:36:23.160 | So if you value American points at one and a half cents,

00:36:26.720 | it's not quite as good a deal.

00:36:28.280 | If you value them at two cents, it's a better deal.

00:36:30.640 | The only thing that I didn't factor in here,

00:36:32.700 | which I think is relevant,

00:36:33.760 | is that you do pay taxes

00:36:35.840 | on the interest you earn in your account,

00:36:37.880 | and you do pay taxes on the miles you earn.

00:36:40.640 | However, last I remember,

00:36:42.480 | and I could be off on this number,

00:36:44.440 | the value of each mile they give you for tax purposes

00:36:48.960 | when they send you a 1099,

00:36:51.200 | is something like 0.4 cents per mile.

00:36:54.760 | So if you wanted to look at this math

00:36:57.160 | and adjust for the fact that

00:36:59.080 | for every penny of interest you earn,

00:37:01.560 | you're gonna pay taxes as if it was a penny,

00:37:04.080 | but for every mile you earn,

00:37:05.680 | you're gonna pay taxes on it as if it's 0.42 cents,

00:37:09.520 | then you might come out a little bit ahead

00:37:11.640 | depending on your tax rate,

00:37:13.160 | depending on how you value these points,

00:37:15.060 | but it's an interesting option.

00:37:16.320 | However, when interest rates change, assuming they do,

00:37:20.480 | this can get a lot more lucrative.

00:37:22.240 | And so back when interest rates were almost zero,

00:37:25.200 | I was using the BASC account to earn one mile per dollar,

00:37:29.520 | which I valued way more

00:37:30.800 | than the interest I was getting anywhere else.

00:37:32.680 | And so if interest rates drop again,

00:37:34.900 | this is a place where I'm gonna be looking,

00:37:36.440 | especially because American miles are so hard to get.

00:37:39.060 | American does partner a lot with Citi

00:37:41.120 | for a lot of their cards.

00:37:42.320 | And from time to time, there are Citi bonuses

00:37:44.500 | that give you extra American Airlines miles

00:37:47.100 | for opening a Citi account.

00:37:48.680 | There aren't any of those right now, but that's an option.

00:37:51.920 | And then the last one on this finances side is,

00:37:55.640 | if you're shopping for mortgages,

00:37:57.520 | there are a couple of partnerships

00:37:59.160 | between airlines and mortgage companies.

00:38:01.320 | So Rocket Mortgage, I think, and Guaranteed Rate

00:38:04.760 | have partnerships with United,

00:38:06.460 | where if you get a mortgage through them,

00:38:08.340 | you actually get 25,000 mileage plus miles

00:38:11.060 | if you close that mortgage or refinance.

00:38:13.980 | I have looked in the past.

00:38:15.420 | If the best rate you're getting is at Rocket Mortgage,

00:38:17.580 | awesome, go for it, get your 25,000 points,

00:38:20.820 | but don't go get a bad mortgage rate

00:38:22.660 | to get some extra points.

00:38:23.860 | So keep that in mind when you're looking at this.

00:38:26.500 | Better Mortgage has done some of these promotions

00:38:28.740 | in the past as well, but I couldn't find one right now.

00:38:31.300 | Then there was this other bucket of five or six things

00:38:34.280 | that I didn't even know where to put them

00:38:35.800 | that I'm gonna wrap us up on.

00:38:37.060 | One is, if you switch energy providers,

00:38:39.940 | most airlines have a partnership

00:38:41.820 | with two or three energy companies.

00:38:45.060 | It seemed like all of the energy companies

00:38:47.700 | that you could earn miles from switching to

00:38:50.260 | are NRG, Reliant, Zoom Energy, and Energy Plus.

00:38:54.420 | So I'm not too familiar with what it looks like

00:38:57.340 | to pick your energy company, because in the Bay Area,

00:39:00.300 | it seems like everyone just has PG&E.

00:39:02.060 | But if you live somewhere where one of these

00:39:04.240 | might be a better deal,

00:39:05.560 | you can absolutely earn airline miles switching to them.

00:39:08.180 | For example, if you switch to Reliant,

00:39:10.080 | you can earn up to 27,000 miles.

00:39:12.440 | You get 15,000 when you sign up.

00:39:14.320 | You get 500 each month for 24 months.

00:39:16.960 | So definitely worth looking into

00:39:19.320 | if you are in the area of any of these energy companies,

00:39:21.920 | and obviously you're not gonna have to pay more

00:39:24.040 | for your energy to switch.

00:39:25.440 | Another one that I haven't mentioned here,

00:39:27.360 | but I've talked about a lot on the show,

00:39:29.040 | is transfer bonuses.

00:39:30.720 | And I guess the reason I'm saying that is

00:39:32.720 | if you have a bunch of points at a credit card company,

00:39:36.520 | and they're offering you 15, 20, 100% transfer bonus,

00:39:41.440 | Bilt just recently did for Virgin on September 1st,

00:39:45.580 | you could get 20 to 100% transfer bonus.

00:39:48.560 | One way to get extra points without having to spend money

00:39:51.720 | is to transfer your points during a transfer bonus.

00:39:55.120 | Now, I don't like the idea of locking your points

00:39:58.560 | into one airline when they otherwise could have been flexible

00:40:03.120 | because airlines are devaluing their miles all the time.

00:40:07.400 | However, in some cases, I find that it's worth it.

00:40:10.500 | When Bilt had a 100% transfer bonus to Aeroplan,

00:40:14.560 | I transferred a ton of my Bilt points over to Aeroplan

00:40:18.300 | because I could turn 100,000 Bilt points

00:40:20.480 | into 200,000 Aeroplan.

00:40:22.240 | And so that to me was absolutely worth it.

00:40:24.840 | I felt reasonably confident given that Aeroplan

00:40:27.920 | I think has more airline partners

00:40:29.800 | than any airline in the world,

00:40:31.480 | that I would be able to get good value.

00:40:33.560 | And even if those awards went up 50% in cost,

00:40:37.080 | I'd still come out ahead.

00:40:38.640 | So one way to get more miles and points

00:40:40.680 | is to take advantage of transfer bonuses,

00:40:42.960 | but I'd just be really careful to make sure

00:40:45.040 | you're transferring to a program you understand,

00:40:47.880 | you're getting a bonus that is worth the fact

00:40:50.120 | that you're giving up some of that flexibility

00:40:52.480 | of being able to transfer anywhere.

00:40:54.600 | So if you had 5 million Amex points,

00:40:57.920 | would it make sense to transfer two or 300,000

00:41:00.240 | over during a great bonus?

00:41:01.660 | Yes.

00:41:02.500 | If you only had 100,000 Amex points,

00:41:04.600 | I probably wouldn't risk it

00:41:06.080 | because I would wanna make sure you had the most flexibility.

00:41:09.120 | However, another way to earn extra Amex points

00:41:11.440 | or other credit card points is looking at card referrals.

00:41:14.680 | So not every card can earn points on referral.

00:41:17.640 | Not every referral offer is as good as public offers,

00:41:21.880 | but from time to time, there are referral offers

00:41:24.200 | where if you were to refer someone from one of your cards

00:41:27.640 | from Amex or another popular bank,

00:41:30.600 | you'd be able to earn extra points

00:41:32.680 | if someone signs up for that card.

00:41:34.400 | I know a lot of people do this between their partners

00:41:36.760 | to earn some extra points.

00:41:38.040 | And two last ones.

00:41:39.240 | And the first one I thought was obvious,

00:41:40.780 | but I met a few people who didn't think about it this way.

00:41:43.320 | And that is that if you work for a company

00:41:45.860 | and you have business expenses,

00:41:48.120 | you might not be required to use a company credit card

00:41:51.820 | if they issue you one.

00:41:53.560 | So at Google, I remember they issued a G-card to everyone.

00:41:57.260 | And frankly, they made expensing things a lot easier

00:42:00.920 | if you were using your corporate card,

00:42:02.640 | but you were also allowed to use your personal card.

00:42:05.000 | And so if I was gonna go buy a flight to Europe,

00:42:07.680 | I'd definitely rather put it on my Amex Platinum

00:42:10.400 | and earn five points per dollar

00:42:12.160 | than putting it on the G-card and earning nothing.

00:42:15.440 | So definitely if you work at a company

00:42:18.160 | and you have lots of business expenses

00:42:19.800 | and you haven't considered finding out

00:42:21.520 | whether you can use your personal card,

00:42:23.360 | it might be a way to earn a lot of points.

00:42:25.480 | And I know early on in my career,

00:42:27.120 | that's how I was earning a ton of points,

00:42:29.060 | especially if I had to stay at a hotel

00:42:31.920 | and I could use that hotel's credit card.

00:42:34.600 | You know, you could be earning, depending on the chain,

00:42:37.280 | upwards of 10, 15, 20 points per dollar spent on a hotel.

00:42:41.320 | And so I would absolutely love to use my card

00:42:44.360 | earning those points than the company I work for.

00:42:47.360 | Obviously this does mean

00:42:48.620 | that you are personally loaning your employer money.

00:42:51.440 | And so I would do this only in the case

00:42:53.680 | where you are extremely confident

00:42:55.880 | your employer is stable enough to pay you back.

00:42:58.120 | If you work for a company that doesn't meet that criteria,

00:43:00.480 | I would definitely not be willing to risk

00:43:02.600 | losing the money to earn the points.

00:43:04.360 | And then last, I'll talk about donations.

00:43:06.560 | And so there are a couple options

00:43:08.740 | for earning points when donating money.

00:43:11.600 | Now, this isn't a way right now

00:43:14.560 | where you can actually earn enough points

00:43:16.560 | that it's worth donating if you didn't want to already.

00:43:19.600 | But if you wanna donate money

00:43:20.760 | to the National Cancer Research Foundation

00:43:22.960 | and you do it through the United Portal,

00:43:24.720 | you get 10 miles per dollar donated.

00:43:26.800 | And then right now there's a program

00:43:28.960 | for donating to Stand Up to Cancer through American

00:43:33.040 | that depending on a few circumstances

00:43:35.160 | can be 25 or 50 miles per dollar,

00:43:38.200 | which is a great amount of miles to get back

00:43:40.640 | for a donation you wanna make.

00:43:42.360 | And obviously I'm all for being charitable,

00:43:45.040 | but these two examples are not examples of ones

00:43:48.500 | where it's worth it to donate money

00:43:50.760 | you don't want to donate just to get the miles.

00:43:53.720 | However, in 2021, there was a absolutely crazy deal

00:43:58.040 | where if you donated money through Simply Miles

00:44:00.720 | to Conservation International,

00:44:03.000 | you got a whopping 240 American miles per dollar,

00:44:08.000 | which effectively brought the price of American miles down

00:44:10.880 | to 0.42 cents, which I think mainly by coincidence

00:44:14.960 | is the exact same price that they are valued for

00:44:17.960 | when you look at Basque Bank earning,

00:44:19.440 | but I think that's purely coincidence.

00:44:21.700 | Now, this was an incredible opportunity.

00:44:23.940 | I think it's very easy to make American miles

00:44:26.380 | worth at least one cent, if not two cents or more.

00:44:29.380 | And so I personally know a handful of people

00:44:31.660 | who bought millions and millions of miles.

00:44:34.020 | I think if you spent, let's call it $20,000,

00:44:37.600 | getting 240 American Airlines points per dollar,

00:44:40.980 | you would have ended up with 4.8 million American miles.

00:44:44.080 | Honestly, I wish I could go back in time

00:44:45.700 | and take advantage of this.

00:44:46.820 | I don't know how I missed it.

00:44:48.080 | I was in the space, this podcast existed,

00:44:50.300 | but it happened during the holidays.

00:44:52.300 | I keep waiting for something crazy like this

00:44:54.220 | to happen again, but it hasn't.

00:44:56.100 | I am ready for the next time it does.

00:44:58.120 | And I will absolutely let you guys know.

00:45:00.180 | However, some of these things are really timely.

00:45:02.060 | So this is a great example of something

00:45:04.620 | where it might not come out on the podcast fast enough,

00:45:07.520 | and it's why you'd wanna be subscribed to the newsletter,

00:45:09.820 | because we send the newsletter every week.

00:45:11.380 | So you can subscribe at allthehacks.com/email.

00:45:14.340 | Every Saturday, I send an email with all the great deals,

00:45:18.000 | some of the news and interesting things that are happening,

00:45:20.060 | some of my top recommendations from the last week.

00:45:22.460 | Sometimes they're actually deals that are even more timely.

00:45:25.020 | They're only live for an hour, a day, a couple days.

00:45:28.140 | When that happens, I send them to the All The Hacks members

00:45:31.260 | in our member site.

00:45:32.500 | That's something that I just can't do to the public

00:45:34.460 | because I'm not gonna spam tens of thousands of people

00:45:37.180 | every time there's a deal.

00:45:38.500 | But if you're interested in getting those deal alerts

00:45:40.820 | anytime they happen, it's usually maybe once

00:45:43.740 | every month or two, but sometimes they're really great.

00:45:46.820 | We'd love to have you in the All The Hacks membership.

00:45:49.060 | In addition to that,

00:45:51.180 | there's a lot of other stuff we're doing in there.

00:45:52.980 | We have a bunch of member-only discounts.

00:45:55.220 | You get free access to a lot of the products and tools

00:45:57.580 | I've built, like my credit card optimizer,

00:45:59.880 | and priority access to any events we're doing.

00:46:02.640 | But the big change that's happened recently

00:46:05.100 | that has either already happened

00:46:06.580 | and you've seen it in the podcast feed

00:46:08.020 | or is about to happen,

00:46:09.460 | is that we're gonna start creating member-only content.

00:46:12.480 | And we're doing that for a couple of reasons.

00:46:14.100 | One, there's some content that we just can't talk about

00:46:16.740 | to the entire audience of the podcast.

00:46:19.260 | And so we're gonna have to do that in a smaller group.

00:46:21.340 | And so that's part of it.

00:46:22.280 | There's also some AMA content where I do episodes

00:46:25.060 | with members where you can ask questions

00:46:26.660 | and we do some of those live.

00:46:28.060 | So that's the All The Hacks membership.

00:46:30.160 | It's now going to come with this extra podcast feed

00:46:33.460 | that'll probably have an episode once a month.

00:46:36.360 | And we'll try to put a preview of those episodes

00:46:38.580 | out to the main feed so you can get a sense

00:46:40.780 | of what's going on to the extent we can.

00:46:42.920 | So that's all thehacks.com/join if you're interested.

00:46:45.960 | I think that's it for this week.

00:46:47.080 | I just want to point out that these deals

00:46:49.220 | that we ran through to earn extra points and miles,

00:46:51.560 | they're changing all the time.

00:46:53.520 | So if there's an airline you're looking to earn in,

00:46:56.000 | definitely go to their partnerships page.

00:46:58.200 | Definitely subscribe to the newsletter

00:46:59.440 | where I'll send out updates as things change as well.

00:47:01.920 | Hopefully by the end of all this process,

00:47:04.040 | you're just racking up tons and tons of points,

00:47:06.000 | taking awesome vacations.

00:47:07.400 | If I missed anything, send me an email.

00:47:09.300 | I'll make sure we update the post for this episode

00:47:11.820 | with a list of everything in there.

00:47:13.760 | So the show notes will have links

00:47:15.160 | to everything we talked about,

00:47:16.440 | and you can get all those at allthehacks.com,

00:47:18.880 | which if you notice has also been chrishutchens.com

00:47:22.200 | for some compliance reasons,

00:47:24.000 | but all the links I've ever shared,

00:47:25.600 | allthehacks.com/anything will still work

00:47:28.300 | and will forever work.

00:47:29.540 | So go check that out.

00:47:30.840 | Look at the show notes, grab those links,

50+ Ways to Earn More Points and Miles Without Spending More

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