Please stay tuned for important disclosure information at the conclusion of this episode.

Welcome to Investing Insights. I'm your host, Ivana Hampton. The summer travel season is taking off.

Many people are cashing in points and miles to pay for their flights and hotel stays.

Today, we're taking a trip into the land of credit car reward programs.

We'll talk about how they work, why points are not so-called free money, and why airlines have made earning miles part of their business model.

David Harold is the editor of Morningstar's

Dividend Investor newsletter. He's also a credit card points and Miles enthusiast who's written about

his own journey. Here's our conversation. Welcome back to the podcast, David. Great to be here again.

So let's start with what drew you into the world of credit

car rewards points. Sure. Well, it was probably about 12 years ago, and we were coming back from

a family trip. We had driven to the East Coast, and we stopped at a Marriott Hotel. Louis in

Maryland, and we were checking out the next morning up by the front desk

was the brochure for the Marriott Hotel credit card. And, you know, I've been vaguely aware

that there were airline credit cards and such, but I hadn't paid much attention to this. I picked

at the brochure, and there was a sign-up

bonus. I believe 75,000 hotel points if you met a certain amount of spending within a few months.

And there was a fee for it, but the fee was waived for the first year. So I'm reading this.

And I'm like, wow, this is great. And I think it was enough points that could be redeemed for five, quote-unquote,

free hotel nights. So I signed up for that card and that sort of began the journey or descent

into points and miles. So let's get into the nuts and bolts. How do these programs typically

work? Sure. So there was, the first card I mentioned was a hotel card. So it

earned, there was a sign-up bonus, and then it earned points for that specific hotel. So there's

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