A Simple Two-Card Strategy for Beginners to Earn Travel Points

So, you’ve chosen your first credit card, and you’ve begun earning points for travel.  Your next logical step isn’t to try and fill your wallet with many different credit cards.  No, you want to find one other card that compliments the one you already have and won’t overload your brain with too much to remember.  That’s what we’ll focus on today, not to become a full-on credit card churner who has 10 plus cards to earn sign up bonuses or even an optimizer that uses multiple cards to earn in different key categories.  Let’s help you figure out how to add just one card and ways you can approach using two cards instead of one.  If you haven’t started your journey yet be sure to start with this post HERE.

Today’s topic is something that I struggled with in the beginning and honestly wish I had found a write up from others that helped me formulate a simple two-card strategy that didn’t require too much brain power.  Now I’m past the two-card setup phase and optimize different cards’ strengths to earn me the most amount of points that I can.  But if you’re reading this you’ve determined you’re not at the optimizer stage yet or maybe you don’t plan to get to that stage, you simply want the benefits that come with running two cards.

I’m going to go back to my earlier days when I first got my Hilton Honors card.  This was back when Hiltons Honors program had two Hs in its name (HHonors).  At this point in my credit card journey I feel I can confidently say that I had moved away from cashback cards and had begun focusing on points and miles.  But at this time, I didn’t have a cohesive strategy, let alone a two-card strategy.  If memory serves, I was still using a Discover It Miles card and I may have even had a Capital One Venture card.  Now those cards served me well in my early points and miles days, but it wasn’t until I’d say 2020 that I started developing a cohesive two-card strategy.  At this time, I was running my Hilton Honors Surpass card (yes by this time Hilton dropped an H from the program name) for majority of my spend.  I had upgraded from the base Hilton card and now I was earning 6 points per dollar in categories like restaurants, gas stations, and grocery stores.  And for non-category spend I was earning 3 points per dollar.  This was the moment I finally decided to get the Chase Sapphire Reserve.  I knew that I wanted to travel once the world re-opened from the pandemic and I felt the Sapphire Reserve had some perks that would serve me well in the future.

Now to keep things simpler for now, I’m not going to dive too much into point values, but Chase Ultimate Rewards points are some of the most valuable points that you can have.  Not to mention they’re a flexible points currency, meaning you have a number of hotel and airline transfer partners that you can transfer your points to.  Hilton Honors points aren’t as valuable from a cent per point perspective, but there’s another reason why I’ve chosen to have Hilton’s credit card in my wallet, and that reason is that I can earn a lot of Hilton points quickly that can then be redeemed for stays.  My strategy was simple; I would use my Chase Sapphire Reserve for dining out and my travel expenses (unless I was staying at a Hilton property) and for everything else I would use my Hilton Honors Surpass card.  For me, this strategy was a good way to begin getting my brain used to the routine of remembering what to use each card for.

Now I’m not saying you need to run these exact two cards.  At the time of writing this, the Chase Sapphire Reserve costs $795/year (before applying any credits) and the Hilton Honors Surpass costs $150/year (before applying any credits).  In my post “Credit Card Rewards for Beginners – What to Know Before You Start”, I go over some cards ranging from no annual fee cards, to moderate annual fee cards, to high annual fee cards.  Now in that post I don’t go over every single card out there, but I try to give you some popular options that I’m aware of.  And the nice thing about this whole credit card points game is that there is no right or wrong combination.  All of us have different travel goals and we all have different preferences, so it’s really about finding a two-card duo that complement each other well and help you meet your goals for your travel.

Once you have been approved and you have received both of your cards for your two-card strategy, your next step is to start using your cards for the spend you intended each for.  If there are any sign-up bonus spend you need to hit, make sure to note the criteria.  And be sure that you are using your credit cards responsibly and not carrying over balances and accruing interest.  Once you get your sign-up bonuses, your points balances will get a nice boost and from there you just continue using your cards for your normal spend and let the points accrue.  While you’re going about your daily routines you can start ideating on how you would like to use your points for your next trip.  You can either try and save up your points to pay for the trip in full or you can use points to heavily discount the total cost of your trip by using your points to pay for your airfare, to name an example.

At this point you have your two-card strategy set up and working.  You can run this for the foreseeable future so long as your strategy aligns with your travel goals.  Eventually you might be like me, where I’ve slowly added specific cards here and there to take advantage of specific categories and utilize other strategies.  This next stage is what you would call a credit card optimizer.  But for now, enjoy the simplicity of the two-card strategy!