143. Your Holiday Points Prep Checklist: 5 Steps to Maximize Seasonal Spending

Point Me To First Class

Devon Gimbel MD

Finances, Education, How To, Travel, Credit, Expenses, Card, Cards, Society & Culture, Professionals, Tips, Personal, Places & Travel, Business, Points, Rewards

5 • 1K Ratings

🗓️ 24 November 2025

⏱️ 12 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This week marks the biggest points-earning opportunity of the entire year—especially if you're planning to shop online. While everyone else is focused on Thanksgiving prep, points and miles travelers know this is the week to turn everyday purchases into tens of thousands (or more) of bonus points.

In this short and focused episode, I'm sharing my 5-step points-earning prep checklist for holiday spend—the exact steps I complete before, during, and after the holiday shopping surge to stay organized, stay strategic, and maximize every earning opportunity.

We'll cover how to identify what to purchase ahead of time, how to choose which rewards cards to use based on your earning goals or spend-related bonuses, how to set up the shopping portals and tools that streamline your holiday purchases, and the simple steps that help ensure your bonus points track correctly.

This checklist walks you through what to do before, during, and after your holiday shopping so you can maximize the points you earn while keeping the process as stress-free as possible.

Get full show notes and transcript: https://pointmetofirstclass.com/holiday-points-earning-checklist/

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Point Me to First Class, the only show for employed professionals, entrepreneurs, and business owners who are looking to optimize their higher than average expenses to travel the world.
0:10.7	I'm your host, Devin Gimble, and I believe that your expenses are your greatest untapped asset, if you know how to leverage them.
0:17.8	Ready to dive into the world of credit card points and miles so you can travel
0:20.9	more, travel better, and travel often. Let's get started.
0:29.7	Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the podcast. It is officially that time of year. While
0:36.6	regular folks are gearing up for the Thanksgiving holiday
0:39.3	and creating their holiday dinner prep list, points and miles enthusiasts are preparing
0:44.0	themselves for something entirely different. Because of all the weeks throughout the year,
0:48.9	it's this week that stands out for the massive points earning opportunities that are available,
0:54.6	particularly through online shopping portals. In fact, if award travel had a Super Bowl, this would be it.
1:01.6	Play your cards right, both literally and figuratively, and you could easily turn your online
1:06.7	holiday shopping into tens of thousands, if not 100,000 or more points. But time is ticking down for you to get
1:13.7	your points earning plan in place to take advantage not only of the upcoming holiday sales, but also
1:19.6	the outsized shopping portal payouts that accompany them. So this episode is going to be your
1:24.7	shortcut to maximizing the points potential of your holiday
1:28.0	shopping period. Today, I'm sharing my points earning prep for holiday spend checklist. These are the
1:34.5	five action items that help me prepare for and stay on track to maximizing my points earning this week.
1:40.3	And because I know that even as great as points are, they likely aren't the only thing on your
1:45.4	mind or your schedule this week, this episode is going to be short and sweet so that you can get the
1:50.6	points planning advice you need and then get back to all of the other important things in your life.
1:55.2	Three of the five items on the points earning prep checklist happen before the sales even drop and the shopping portal
2:02.2	bonuses rise later this week. So now is the perfect time to get them done if you haven't already.
	...

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