[Kailyn]

Credit card travel hack questions….
I’m ready to start looking into this but I’m trying to decide if it’s worth more than what our current credit card offers at our bank.

I haven’t been hands on with travel hacking though, so I don’t have hard numbers to compare, which is why I’m looking for advice from those who have.

Currently we have the typical 3%, 2% and 1% that we can choose what gets 3%.

It caps our % at $2,500 spend quarterly before going to 1% on everything. BUT we then have a 75% booster on the earnings.

For Example: a $180 annual cash back turns into $315 for us. But there’s a cap.

So typically we spend around 60k annually on this card and have around $1,700-2k cash back every year.

We do also have a travel CC with the same bank that has the same booster, but in points. I honestly dont know if points equate to more than our hard cash back.

We got it for when my husband was deployed to waive all foreign fees so we dont really use it besides every couple of months to keep it open.

I’m trying to see if we CC travel hacked, if in the long run we could get more benefits than the current cash rewards we are getting annually, for our average spend annually of around 60k on the CC.

We do travel at minimum once a year out of the country but would like to start adding another consistent one every year with our kids too.

Notes *** we are diligent about paying off CC every week.

We also have as many of our bills on our CC as we can.

Being responsible with whatever needs done to get the best rewards will not be a problem for us. Just need a guide.

[Barbara]

The “simple” answer is that yes, you absolutely *could* get much more out of points and miles than out of cash back. We’ve taken multiple long-haul flights in business class over the past couple of years that we could never have afforded.

Definitely worth much more than what those same points would have gotten us as cash back.

The “real” answer is that you have to decide if it’s something you’re interested in doing.

Getting the really good value is not as simple as just getting cash back. And it has to fit with your travel style too.

if you don’t often fly (especially internationally) or stay at hotel chains that can be leveraged with points, it’s harder to get value out of it

It doesn’t have to be extreme and take up all your time, but there are a lot of things to learn.

Some good groups focused on travel hacking have already been mentioned in the comments, start by joining some of them and getting a feel for it.

[Catherine]

You can easily make more points than cash make. A sign up bonus with Amex gold is 90k. The cash value is worth $900. 1 point = 0.01.

My husband and I have gotten 1 one way business class to Europe for 50k points each.

There were card promotional offers that 1000 points = 1200 miles even you transfer. One way business seats cost $3500-6000 give time of the year and destination.

Cash back is easy and simple. Point redemption takes planning and research and being intentional. There is a learning curve.

If we want to travel to Europe, I don’t even have to think how to find those flight.

Now, Japan was trickier for me because we are coming from the east coast but ultimately we paid outright because economy was 65k points one way, when round trip was $650.

That wasn’t a good redemption.

[Valerie]

The Points Guy has a new book out. Jen Hatmaker had him on her podcast and went over all kinds of good tips.

It was enough to convince me to open the travel card he recommended and closed a few old cards.

[Jessica]

I second 10x Travel. They have a free travel hacking course and a podcast.

[Cassidi]

You can absolutely get more value out of points than taking the cash value. I recently booked a flight to Europe for my family of 6 for 65,000 points.

Cash price was over $6,000.

[Megan]

Cashback is like checks, miles and points is like chess
Cashback is fairly simply get good, but isn’t as lucrative a game and miles and points.

Miles and points has huge potential and is “won” by playing a SUB focused game and building strong redemption skills.

[Author]

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