Q4 2022: What cards are in your wallet?
Do you feel like your enthusiasm for points peaks at different points during the year? I find that I start off the calendar year with lots of excitement for using my miles and maximizing those points to access the most travel. Throughout the middle of the year, I’m changing up those plans as our family’s needs change. Then at the end of the year I focus on maximizing my points earned.
A big reason for this is because our family’s spending tends to ramp up at the end of the year due to a combination of holiday shopping, holiday travel, and end of the year exhaustion that leads to spending on conveniences. Sometimes the aforementioned exhaustion means that I don’t focus on the best ways to earn the most points on all of that spend.
This year I’m starting early with a plan to maximize that extra spending and setting up my wallet now to make it easy for my lazy future self to stick to the plan.
Goal setting
The best way for me to approach goal setting for credit card earning is via quarters, because many of my Chase cards have quarterly bonuses. For quarter four, or October - December, my main goal is to maximize my Southwest and Hyatt points. These are the “go-to” programs that I plan to use next year, so beefing up those points balances will give me a head start. Chase Ultimate Rewards points transfer to both Southwest and Hyatt, so that program is ideal to have a lot of points stored up. Bilt Rewards points also transfer directly to Hyatt, so I can easily use points from that program towards my goals.
We are also planning on taking a last minute international trip next year when some personal details become more clear, so I’d like to continue to keep my points balances in transferable currencies relatively high so we can jump on that last minute deal when it becomes available (I’m hoping I will finally be able to put my Straight to the Points newsletter subscription to use here). For me, this means Capital One Venture Rewards, Chase Ultimate Rewards, and American Express Membership Rewards because we haven’t dived deep into the Citi program yet.
My credit card plan
Amazon and Grocery: Three of my credit cards were targeted at chase.com/mybonus for a special offer this quarter of 10x points on gas stations + 5x points on Amazon and at grocery stores (up to $1500 of spending on each). Since I don’t spend at gas stations and prefer not to go out of my way to get gift cards, I decided to focus on the 5x categories where I actually spend most of my money.
As I mentioned above, Southwest points are a focus area for me, so I will first max out this bonus on my Southwest Rapid Rewards Priority card. To get started with this, I made this card default on my and my husband’s Amazon account and will keep it in my wallet and digital wallet for grocery purchases. I will carefully monitor the account to make sure I swap it out when I hit $1500.
Once I max out the Southwest, I’ll focus Amazon and Grocery purchases on my United Gateway card.
When I max that one out, I’ll focus on my IHG Premier card. My husband and I really like to stay in Kimpton hotels as a backup to Hyatt, so I like to keep some points in my IHG account and this will be a great way to top it up an extra 7500 points.
We have a big trip planned with friends this winter where we will be doing a big Costco run that we will get reimbursed for, so I don’t expect it to be a problem to hit the spend requirements on all of these cards, but if we don’t quite make it (which would be great for my budgeting!), I will probably hit up a gas station to purchase a few gift cards to use on early 2023 purchases and get 10x points on that.
Dining: This is one that I had to do some thinking around because I have multiple cards that are great for dining spend. My Amex Gold card earns 4x points on dining while my Chase Freedom Flex and Chase Sapphire Preferred earn 3x on dining. While 4x is definitely more points overall, I have more frequent uses for Chase points (Southwest & Hyatt) than I do for Amex. Right now, since my Amex points balance is pretty low (more on our Cancun trip that is the reason for this coming soon), I would like to focus on Chase points.
Rental Cars: For rental cars, I use my Amex Platinum card because I purchase additional rental car travel coverage using the card to put my mind at ease in case anything goes wrong. Although I don’t use gas in my regular life, I will need to make some gas purchases with the rental car, and will use whichever of my Southwest/United/IHG cards I am on in the rotation I outlined above.
Drugstores: Although drugstores aren’t a big category, the Chase Freedom Flex earns 3x. I have this card added to my digital wallet so I don’t have to have it in my wallet when I stop at a drugstore.
Online shopping: The Chase Freedom Flex is offering 5x points on Paypal purchases up to $1500 for one of their bonus quarterly categories (the other is Walmart but I typically don’t shop there). I will make sure to pay using Paypal when it is an option on a website so I can take advantage of this.
Rent: Rent purchases go on my Bilt card! Now that they are offering their Rent Day promotion, I will also put all my purchases on the first of the month on this card as well for 6x on dining, 4x on travel, and 2x everywhere else.
Everywhere else: The bonus I was offered on my World of Hyatt card via chase.com/mybonus this quarter is to earn 5,000 WOH points when you spend $3000 or more. I’m going to focus my purchases that don’t fit into one of the above categories here first. If I max that out, I’ll move this spending to my Capital One Venture X card, which earns 2x points everywhere and has a large balance of points that I’d like to add to.
Player Two’s credit card plan
That list of my credit cards turned out to be a little longer than I expected. While I’m down to keep all these cards in my wallet to maximize points earned, my husband isn’t quite so interested (and has a phone wallet that holds approximately two credit cards). Here’s where I would like him to focus his spending this quarter:
Digital Wallet: Discover It up to $1500 in purchases. The Discover It card hasn’t gotten much love from us in recent years. It’s mostly just been in the drawer because it doesn’t have an annual fee, but I love that digital wallet purchases are a bonus category this quarter! My husband loves using his Apple Watch to make purchases, so this one is a slam dunk for us. Although he will be earning cash back and not points in any of our focus areas, we can use the cash back for some expensive travel purchases this winter that won’t be covered by points, like ski rentals.
Dining: Dining is my husband’s biggest spending category so I like to optimize that one. The Chase Freedom Unlimited card is perfect for this because it earns 3x points on restaurants, plus 1.5x on everything else. This card is awesome for our situation because the points can be freely transferred between our accounts, so he can transfer Chase points to me that I can then transfer to my Hyatt account to take advantage of my Hyatt status.
Online Shopping: I’m throwing in an extra one because this can live on his desk and not in his actual wallet. He has a Chase Freedom card (the old version of the Freedom Flex not open to new applicants) with the same 5x on Paypal so I will encourage him to use Paypal for any non-Amazon online shopping purchases.
Foreign Transaction Fees
We have some out of the ordinary purchases in the fourth quarter that I wanted to look into as well.
We are traveling out of the country for a few days so I needed to make sure that my travel wallet only includes cards that don’t have foreign transaction fees. On my list of cards, these are the ones that don’t have foreign transaction fees:
Southwest Priority
United Gateway
IHG Premier
Chase Sapphire Preferred
Amex Platinum
Bilt Rewards
World of Hyatt
Venture X
Since I don’t need all of those, I will probably just bring the Chase Sapphire Preferred for dining, Amex Platinum for lounge access, Bilt for rent day rewards, and World of Hyatt or Venture X for everywhere else spending (depending on if I have maxed out my Hyatt bonus yet or not).
On my husband’s list, the Discover It is the only one without foreign transaction fees. Since I’m not sure how well this credit card issuer is accepted abroad, he will probably bring his Capital One Venture X card as well.
Ski rentals
Since my husband will be doing some skiing this winter, I was hoping to find a great way to earn a lot of points on some ski rentals. After reading through these articles from Travel Freely and The Points Guy, I don’t think there’s a great hack here, especially since we already purchased the lift tickets. We will likely use the Capital One Venture X to earn 2x points on the rentals. We did book our vacation home rental for the ski trip using this card as well, so we can apply our Venture points as a statement credit against this travel purchase and get a discount on that big expense!
How I’m planning to earn even more points
Here’s a few ways outside of credit cards that I’m planning to earn some extra points. If you don’t have as many cards as I do and want to earn more points, these are some free ways to add to your points balances!
Online shopping: Use the Southwest shopping portal or Rakuten shopping portal to earn extra Southwest or Amex Membership Rewards points on my online purchases. The Capital One shopping portal also has some deals that other shopping portals don’t (like this recent deal for 8% cashback at giftcards.com) so I may hop on some of those as well.
Dining portals: I signed up my Amex Gold card with the Southwest dining portal and my Freedom Flex card with the Alaska Airlines dining portal. I’ll also sign up my Chase Sapphire Preferred card for a portal since I will use that one for dining as well. There aren’t many restaurants in my neighborhood that are linked with one of these dining portals so I don’t expect to get many points out of these, but they will be a nice bonus when they come.
Offers: Chase and American Express both have “offers” that you can add to your card. I log in about once a week to see if there are any offers for discounts at stores that I already shop at or have plans to. If I think I might use the offer I add it to the card. At this time of year, there are often frequent good offers that I can use. In the last few weeks, I’ve seen discounts from Chase on Hyatt hotels and Potbelly. Some American Express I’ve liked recently are Lululemon and Uncommon Goods.
Important reminder
Sometimes when I look at all of these ways to earn points through spending, it makes me want to spend more money so I can earn more points. It’s important to remember that the majority of the time, this isn’t a good idea! Only spend the money you already were planning to spend and earn points on that spend. If you break the budget to earn more points, you are getting a bad deal. And remember the cardinal rule of travel hacking - never pay interest on your credit cards! This will negate any good deals you are getting. You would be better off paying cash for your travel purchases than paying interest charges.
Make your plan
Now that you know my plan for maximizing points this quarter, it’s time to make your plan! Let me know in the comments which cards you will be focusing on this quarter. If you read through this article and are left thinking “I don’t want to figure out the best credit card for every purchase,” that’s okay. If you only want to use one card, make sure you choose a rewards credit card that earns at least two points per dollar spent!
