Credit card issuers love to say their perks are worth thousands of dollars, but the real question is,

what would you actually pay for them? That one shift completely changed how I evaluate every

card in my wallet, and this year it actually led me to cancel half a dozen of them. Today, I'm using

it to break down my entire 2026 credit card lineup. I'll share the framework I use to figure out

what any card costs,

run through the best card across every major spending category, and reveal what happened when I

built an algorithm to test every card combination against real spending data. Whether you carry two

cards or 20, this episode will give you a framework to make sure your wallet is working as hard

as you are. I'm Chris Hutchins. If you enjoy this episode, leave a comment or share it with a friend. And if you want to keep upgrading your money, points in life, click follow or subscribe. All right. I'm excited to do this episode again. The funniest thing about the name, What's in my wallet, is that I don't actually carry a wallet unless I'm traveling. And usually it's just in my bag. I carry this kind of magnetic wallet that attaches to my iPhone. It holds one or two credit cards and a driver's license. So thank you, Apple Pay, for making my wallet pretty much fully digital and one password for making it really easy to access everything on the internet. All right. So I'm going to mention a lot of cards today. And there's going to be a lot of info in the show notes. I'll also link to a blog post version of this episode. So you can find those details. We'll put it on the website, Allthehacks.com. And if you go to Allthehacks.com slash cards, you can find our cards page. and on the cards page, you'll see all the cards, the bonuses. If you want to support us, you can use those links. Some of them are just links straight to the issuer website. Some of them are referral links from our members. Some of them are affiliate links where we earn a small commission. We try to put the best links on there, whether we're going to earn anything or not. So that's the way I've decided to run that site. So hopefully it's a place you can find the best bonuses. And sometimes they might support us, but sometimes they won't because I want you to get the most points possible. So here's how I'm going to structure this episode. There are timestamps in the show notes. There should be chapters on YouTube. I'm going to start by sharing some high level thoughts on how I think about cards, what's in my wallet, and my goals

for cards right now. I'll review all the cards I have in my wallet. And then I'll decide real time

with you guys what I think I'm going to keep and cancel. Then I'm going to run through some of the

major spending categories, talk about the best cards in each. Then I'll talk to run through some of the major spending categories, talk about

the best cards in each. Then I'll talk about what I learned running this optimization algorithm

on my portfolio and across all cards out there to identify the best card combos. And then finally,

I'll take all that and consider if there are any new cards, I think, are worth adding to my lineup

and what the future of cards

for me in 2026 and maybe early 2027 looks like. And then finally I'll talk about some of the

tools I use to make all of this stuff easier. So when I think about this, there's really three

reasons to kind of have or get a credit card. One is that it helps you earn a lot, which means

that you spend in whatever category that

card earns in. Now, if you only have a debit card, this is going to be a huge impact by getting

any card. But once you have a few credit cards, I wouldn't think about adding a card in this

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