How we increase spend to earn big card bonuses | Frequent Miler on the Air Ep343 | 1-30-26
Frequent Miler on the Air
Frequent Miler
4.9 • 640 Ratings
🗓️ 30 January 2026
⏱️ 94 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In today's episode, we discover that not all heroes have capes, some redeem rewards! We learn a trick for extending Southwest flight credits, and we tell all: how we increase our credit card spend.
(01:06) - See our podcast episode 197, "13 ways to increase credit card spend" here
Giant Mailbag
(01:37) - Mike: We can be heroes...just for one day
Listen to our episode about sharing miles and points here
(03:58) - Brent: Charitable giving
Listen to our podcast about rewards from giving here
Card News
(09:15) - Bilt quietly removed eBay & Facebook Marketplace as exclusions
Read more about this here
Mattress Running the Numbers
(10:39) - Bilt Rent Day transfer bonus to Accor
Awards, Points, and More
(19:21) - Southwest credits are valid for 60 months in some situations
(23:22) - JetBlue 25for25 stats
(29:16) - Capital One Shopping Home Page Bonus Offers
Read more about Capital One Shopping home page bonus offers here
Main Event: How we increase spend to earn big card bonuses
(32:55) - See our podcast episode 197, "13 ways to increase credit card spend" here
(33:57) - Today, we'll describe the ways we (Nick and I) increase spend in real life
(34:15) - About paying fees
(37:43) - Pay taxes
Read about paying taxes via credit card here
(45:23) - Use a service to pay bills that don’t ordinarily accept a credit card, like Plastiq
Learn more about Plastiq here
(52:07) - Melio
Learn more about Melio here
(53:49) - Fund college savings or pay student loans
Learn about miles for college here
(1:01:12) - Make loans through Kiva
Learn about Kiva here
(1:03:40) - Pay bills for friends or family
(1:07:10) - Fund new bank accounts
Learn more about funding a bank account with a credit card here
(1:11:52) - Buy and sell merchandise
Learn about buying groups here
(1:13:13) - Buy and sell gift cards
Learn about buying and selling gift cards here
(1:16:09) - Donate to charity
Learn about earning rewards for charitable giving here
Or listen to our podcast about rewards from giving here
(1:18:14) - Cruise ship spend
(1:23:03) - SUMMARY
Question of the Week
(1:24:02) - How do you decide when to downgrade vs when to cancel, and how do you keep the banks happy?
See our episode about discarding cards here
Subscribe and Follow
Visit https://frequentmiler.com/subscribe/ to get updated on in-depth points and miles content like this, and don’t forget to like and follow us on social media.
Music Credit – “Ocean Deep” by Annie Yoder
Mentioned in this episode:
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is a Voyescape podcast. |
| 0:03.9 | You can find all of our travel podcasts from around the world at voyescape.com. |
| 0:10.8 | On today's show, not all heroes have capes. |
| 0:14.5 | Some redeem rewards. |
| 0:15.8 | We'll discuss a trick for extending Southwest flight credits. |
| 0:19.8 | And we'll tell it all how we Nick and I |
| 0:22.6 | increase credit card spend frequentiler on the air starts now today's main event how we |
| 0:30.5 | increase spend to earn big card bonuses credit card bonuses can be fantastic you might might earn 100,000, 150,000, 200,000 points with a single |
| 0:42.1 | new card. But in order to do that, you also have to not just get approved for the new card, but |
| 0:47.8 | usually spend a lot to meet the minimum spend requirements. I mean, used to be that $10,000 spend was like the biggest we'd see, but these days, 15,000, |
| 1:00.3 | 20,000, 30,000, we've even seen as high as 50,000, is not, you know, is not out of the question. |
| 1:08.5 | So given that to get the biggest rewards, we have to spend a lot, |
| 1:13.6 | how do we do it? We've talked about different ways of doing that on a past episode, which we'll |
| 1:19.7 | link to in the show notes. But on today's episode, Nick and I are going to talk about the |
| 1:25.0 | things we actually do in order to meet our spend requirements so we can get new big bonuses. |
| 1:32.8 | And if you want to jump ahead to that or you want to come back to something later on, don't forget, you can always find the timestamps in the show notes. |
| 1:38.2 | And wherever you're watching or listening to this, don't forget to give us a thumbs up, leave us some stars, leave us a review, leave us your comments with what you're doing to increase your spend. We love to hear from you. |
| 1:48.2 | Let's drag out this week's giant mailbag. |
| 1:50.7 | In today's giant mail bag, we have two pieces of mail from people who did some good |
| 1:56.1 | with their points and miles and other rewards. So first is a message from Mike who writes, within about a week |
| 2:05.2 | of listening to your podcast on January 9th, best ways to share rewards. My wife and I were having |
| 2:11.4 | lunch with a dear family friend of many years. The friend told us about how she had not seen |
... |
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