21. The Art of Credit Card Points: Our Sign-Up Offers vs. Everyday Spending Strategies

Points Talk with the Travel Mom Squad

Alex, Pam and Jess

Places & Travel, Education, Society & Culture, How To

4.9 • 734 Ratings

🗓️ 25 April 2023

⏱️ 44 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In today's special episode, we'll be discussing the evolution of our credit card strategies over time. We will be sharing insights into our unique approaches and how we have adapted our points stratagies over the years!

Jess began her journey of traveling on points back in 2015, initially focusing on cards with no annual fees. She was hesitant to open business cards, and her primary goal was to secure flights for her family. However, her strategy has since evolved, and business cards now play a key role in her overall plan.

Pam's experience was quite different. She was unaware of the points world until her daughter, Alex, introduced her to the concept. Without a clear plan, Pam simply opened as many cards as possible, and surprisingly, this "no strategy" approach has proven to be quite successful over the years.

Meanwhile, Alex's journey began with a specific goal: a trip to Hawaii. She and her husband targeted particular cards to reach their dream destination. Once accomplished, Alex shifted her focus to cards offering the best deals at the time, accumulating a cache of points to plan trips based on her existing rewards.

One of our favorite parts of traveling on points is there is no RIGHT or WRONG way to do it! So, whether you're new to this or a seasoned pro, stick around and let's learn from each other's strategies and experiences! :)

Links For All Things Travel Mom Squad: stan.store/travelmomsquad

Links For This Episode:

Travel Freely App: Travel Freely | Free Travel App

Episode Minute By Minute:

0:00 Show Introduction
0:42 Afraid of annual fees? Listen to this
6:26 How Pam was a pseudo points master for years…and didn’t know it!
11:00 The real reason why Alex started traveling on points
15:33 Why opening new cards is typically worth it in the long run
18:00 Why there are actually less downsides to earning points than you think
22:39 Tips for getting the most points when you can’t do a lot of spending
25:00 Why Pam takes the “go big or go home” approach to earning
29:29 How we get around the Chase 5/24 rule
36:41 Cards that we will always keep

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to Points Talk with the Travel Mom Squad, previously known as the Travel Hacking Mom Show.
0:05.8	Follow the links in the show notes to stay up to date with what the Travel Mom Squad has been up to.
0:10.5	Want to take a sneak peek behind the curtain?
0:13.1	Stay tuned to hear how our credit card strategies have evolved over the years, how often we're opening cards,
0:19.1	how we deal with the 524 rule, and some of the cards will never close.
0:24.8	Welcome to the Travel Hacking Mom Show.
0:26.9	We are three moms who've discovered how to leverage credit card welcome offers to get hundreds of thousands of dollars in travel expenses for nearly free.
0:34.7	We've used credit card points and miles to take vacations to places like Hawaii,
0:38.9	Paris, Greece, the Maldives, Italy, and so much more. And the best part, we each still have an 800-plus
0:45.1	credit score. Imagine being able to book a vacation without having to check your bank account. It's
0:49.8	totally possible and we're here to show you how. Hey, I'm Alex. And I'm Pam, Alex's mom, and I'm Jess.
0:57.0	We are travel hacking moms.
0:59.2	We are super excited for today's episode and to give you a peek into our credit card strategies
1:04.9	and how they've evolved over the years.
1:08.6	So let's get to it.
1:10.0	I am going to kick it off.
1:12.0	So I have been travel hacking for eight years.
1:15.4	I started in 2015.
1:18.9	And I think this is similar for all three of us.
1:22.5	But back in the day, the Chase 524 rule did not exist.
1:27.1	And so starting with Chase cards was not really a thing,
1:32.7	although I did start with chase cards just by chance, but the biggest thing for me was that I
	...

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