How We Earn Credit Card Points (Keeping a Simple Wallet)
What if I told you that there’s a way to earn a lot of credit card points for your travel, while at the same time keeping your wallet simple? You’re probably thinking “there’s no way!” but hear me out. There are some that enjoy credit card churning. When I say credit card churning, I mean they will consistently open new credit cards to get the sign-up bonus and then get another card to get its sign-up bonus and so on. They will continue doing this and some end up with 20, 30, 40 cards or even more. I don’t know about you, but I’m not trying to keep track of that many credit cards, let alone any annual fees that may be associated with them. But there is a way to earn a lot of points all while keeping your wallet as simple as possible. Before I dive in, if you’re new to the blog I’d recommend starting HERE. If you’re returning or have already started your credit card journey continue reading.
In my time in the credit card game, I’ve held several different credit cards. Many I have stopped using and after a period of inactivity some of those accounts have been closed. However, even though I’ve had several different cards over the years, my strategy was always trying to find the most optimal setup without having a stack of credit cards in my wallet that I had to spend too much time trying to organize and manage. I carried this philosophy throughout my single years, and then when I met my wife and we started seriously dating back in 2020, I began looking at ways then to optimize our credit card setup to take advantage of 2-player mode for when we eventually got married. But we’ll get into 2-player mode a bit later. For now, let’s focus on a simple credit card setup.
My Approach
The key to my setup has always been simplicity. As of today, I have two cards that I use for the bulk of my purchases with two others as alternates for a total of 4 cards. Now you might be thinking “4 cards seems like a lot of credit cards”. I say this is simple because for those that are into credit card churning, trying to earn sign up bonuses and have binders full of credit cards, 4 cards is pretty simple at the end of the day. But like I said, I primarily use two cards for most things. The first is my Amex Gold Card. Because of its high earning categories for eating out and grocery shopping, I use it for just that and earn 4 points per dollar. For gas and everything else I use my Amex Hilton Surpass card that earns 6 points per dollar on gas and 3 points per dollar on non-category spend.
Since I use my flexible points currencies (Chase Ultimate Rewards and American Express Membership Rewards) for flights, using my Gold Card guarantees that I earn points for when my wife and I fly. Then my Hilton Surpass card guarantees that I’m earning hotel points for our travel stays. Now the reason I have two other main cards that I use is because I hold a Chase Sapphire Reserve and a Chase Ink Business Unlimited. When do I use those cards you may ask. I use my Sapphire Reserve for our travel spend and also for eating out if we happen to eat at a place that doesn’t take American Express. And then for my Chase Ink card, I use that as my catch all card when a vendor doesn’t accept American Express since it earns 1.5 points per dollar on all spend. This guarantees that I earn hotel points and points for airline flights all while keeping my overall setup simple.
2-Player Mode
So where does 2-player mode come into play? The way 2-player mode works is instead of adding my wife as an authorized user on my existing credit card accounts, I have her get her own credit cards. This ensures that she gets her own sign-up bonuses and earns her own points based off any spending that she does for our household. Now if I take it a step further, I can refer her to certain cards so that not only does she get a sign-up bonus, but I get a referral bonus on top of that. Now we can have multiple cards in the same points ecosystem that we can then pool together for one massive points redemption. This is what I’m planning in my Japan on Points series. The main ecosystem where we are utilizing 2-player mode is with Chase Ultimate Rewards. Under Chase’s rules, as long as we’re married and live in the same household address, I can call Chase and have all of my wife’s points transferred to my Ultimate Rewards account. This means we can work together and amass a huge amount of points that we can then put towards our travels.
Conclusion
And that’s my take on how to keep your wallet simple, but if you’re in the position to do so take advantage of being able to play the 2-player game. I personally feel it’s a more effective way to earn a lot of points without having to manage too many cards in the process.
