With so many credit cards in my wallet, sometimes I get the question “how do you decide which cards to use?”

In a recent post, Is Travel Hacking for You?, I talked about the three types of travel hackers - beginner, intermediate, and advanced. In this post, I’m talking to those of you who identified as beginner travel hackers. Here’s how to pick your strategy and get started today!

One of my goals for 2022 is to be more organized and intentional with my credit cards and points. This will look like:

1. Maximizing the value of all my cards, and canceling or downgrading the cards that no longer provide value.

2. Planning my travel as far ahead of time as possible, and only signing up for new cards that are working towards a specific goal.

In early 2021, my husband and I decided that we wanted to take advantage of new post-Covid remote work opportunities and move across the country from San Francisco, CA to the Washington, DC area.