How to pick the right cards

Transcript

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Not picking the right credit card is a huge fear for a lot of people going into travel points.

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It's a double-edged sword, because a lot of people have a fear about it and a lot of people make mistakes when it comes to picking credit cards, and that's what we're going to be talking about today.

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Welcome back to Points for Normal People.

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I'm Katie and I'm here because I know that travel costs add up, especially for a family, but I believe that travel isn't just for the rich and that's why, on Points for Normal People, we dive into ways that you can use everyday expenses and credit card welcome offers to supercharge your points so that you can take entire family vacations or not family vacations every year, paid for with points.

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Once you start to pay attention to travel points, you are going to start noticing credit card offers everywhere you look.

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Some of that is because of the way that internet advertising works.

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As soon as you start searching for something, or even talking about something near your phone, you're going to see those advertisements popping up on your phone.

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You'll also start to notice this in places you may have previously ignored.

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It's like when you go to buy a new car and you start noticing that car everywhere on the road because you're starting to tune into it.

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You're going to start noticing credit card offers more and more, but it is really important that you don't open every single card that you see, even the ones that might seem to have really good bonuses.

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The first thing that I recommend is putting some blinders up.

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You're going to have to tune out the noise of credit card marketers.

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They are really good at doing their job.

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Credit cards spend a ton of money to get you to turn your head towards their offer, because credit cards are huge money for banks.

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They are also huge money for airlines.

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Airlines sell their miles to banks when they have an agreement about a co-branded credit card.

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So in the case of a United credit card, it's issued by Chase, but it earns you United miles.

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So every time you earn United miles from that card, chase is paying United for those miles.

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There are stats that show how loyalty programs accounted for roughly 40 to 50% of airlines market values back in 2019.

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In that year, united generated over $5 billion from the sale of miles.

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Delta sold $4 billion in airline miles to banks, which is equal to 14% of its operational revenue.

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So airlines want you to sign up for their card because banks pay them for those bonus miles.

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Banks want you to sign up for their card because banks pay them for those bonus miles.

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Banks want you to sign up for their credit card because they make a lot of money when people don't pay off their cards on time and they can charge them upwards of 20% interest.

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They also make money every time you swipe your card at a merchant.

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Everybody wants your business, so you will get mailers and see flyers and see ads to try to convince you to sign up for an offer.

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To make it even more confusing, how far a point can go towards a trip can vary widely depending on the loyalty program.

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You might see a welcome offer for 150,000 points in a magazine and think, wow, that's a great offer, I should get that one.

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But I can tell you right now that there are some 150,000 point offers out there that don't go nearly as far as some 60,000 point offers.

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It is the learning of all of this that takes time, right?

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I've been doing this for over a decade and I have an internal sense about different points programs.

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You can't learn all of those point systems and kind of have a sense of how far those points will go instantly.

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In addition, many people starting off are only loosely familiar with an airline program and usually even less familiar with hotel loyalty programs, so it can be really hard to figure out which offers can go the furthest.

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The other thing you have to be aware of is that offers change throughout the year on the same credit card.

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So, to take Delta as an example, it's not uncommon to see the same Delta cards vary from a 40,000-mile welcome offer all the way up to a 90,000-mile welcome offer.

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Just because you see an ad for a 40,000 mile offer on a Delta card doesn't mean it's a great offer to jump on.

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My point here is that you can't trust the banks or the airlines to be marketing what are truly the best offers for you.

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You have to tune it out.

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So where do I recommend starting and why?

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This is actually something that most creators and bloggers in the TravelPoint space most creators agree on.

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I recommend starting with the Chase Sapphire Preferred.

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The Chase Sapphire Preferred has an annual fee of $95 and earns a points, currency that is specific to Chase, called Chase Ultimate Rewards.

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If you listened to episode one of season one, you know that I'm spending season one diving into Chase Ultimate Rewards.

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That's because Chase Ultimate Rewards is such an important and valuable rewards currency and I want to make sure you have a really good background with it.

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I also really like Ultimate Rewards because there are multiple card options to earn it and, as far as flexible points currencies go, I think it's one of the easier ones to understand options to earn it and, as far as flexible points currencies go, I think it's one of the easier ones to understand how to redeem points and, as I said in episode one, it's powerful enough that you could hang out in the ultimate rewards ecosystem forever and keep getting good value.

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The points that you're going to earn on your Chase Sapphire Preferred are a flexible rewards currency.

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That means you can use them in a variety of ways.

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They're so flexible that I have several episodes later in the season to talk about the different ways that you can use them.

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Overall, being a flexible rewards currency is really good news.

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That's why I can recommend this card to everyone, because I know there is a way that everyone I know can use these points for something that they value.

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Here's a broad overview.

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You can cash out your Chase Ultimate Rewards for straight cash back.

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If you have 60,000 Ultimate Rewards, you can get $600 cash back.

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You can use your Ultimate Rewards to book a flight, a hotel or a car rental through Chase Travel.

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If you do this, your 60,000 ultimate rewards are worth $750 of travel, so they go a little further than cash back.

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You can also take those 60,000 points and transfer them to some of Chase's airline and hotel partners to book flights and hotels directly with those airlines or hotels.

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I'll be spending episodes on each of these options so that you have a good overview and can decide how to use the points in a way that matches what you value.

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All that to say, those Chase Ultimate Rewards they're really valuable and they're really flexible.

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They're partly so valuable because they're so flexible, so it's a win-win.

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Another really important reason I recommend that you start with a Chase Sapphire Preferred is that Chase has some of the most clear rules when it comes to when they will approve you for credit cards.

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Overall, this travel points hobby is a dance with the banks that issue cards.

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We are not profitable customers for them.

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They prefer a customer who's carrying a balance on their card so they can charge them interest.

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If they can't have that, they prefer a customer who is charging a lot of expenses onto the same card because at least they're earning on swipe fees.

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It's not profitable for a bank to have a customer sign up for a credit card, spend the bare minimum required to earn a welcome offer and then move on.

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So through the years, banks have created different rules and added terms into card applications to try to curtail gaming of the system.

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This is one reason why you should never open a card, earn a bonus and then cancel right away.

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This is clear gaming.

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You should always keep your card at least a full year.

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It's also a reason why it can be better to downgrade a card than to just cancel it if possible.

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This helps keep your relationship going with a bank More so than other banks.

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Chase has a clear rule on the frequency you can be opening credit cards if you want to be approved by Chase.

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In the Chase world, this is known as the Chase 524 rule.

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Now, chase does not publish this on their website or in the card terms.

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This is more something that has been discerned over time, with people coming up with data points.

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I have a full episode on building a whole strategy around the Chase 524 rule right after this.

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I wanted to keep it as a separate resource because I get a lot of questions about 524 and I want to be able to point people to that direct podcast episode.

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It is because of the Chase 524 rule that it is best to start with Chase cards early on.

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I think it's actually a genius move on behalf of Chase, because it forced a lot of people to turn towards them first.

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If you don't focus on Chase cards first, you may lock yourself out of the ability to get them later.

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So that's why I recommend tuning out all other noise and starting with Chase first, and specifically with the Chase Sapphire Preferred For a card with a $95 annual fee, it has some of the best travel protections included.

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So right off the bat with this card, you're helping to protect any trips that you do take.

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One example is benefits like baggage delay insurance.

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So if your bags are delayed and you paid for the taxes and fees or your airline ticket with your Chase Sapphire Preferred, you can get reimbursed for the time that you didn't have your bags so that you can go out and buy stuff that you actually need.

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It also has the basic benefits that I think everyone should have a card with, like extended warranty benefits.

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All of these things we're going to go into detail on in future episodes.

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I'm painting the big picture here of how this is a great all-around card and how it checks all my boxes for why it's a great beginner card and again, this is one I can pretty confidently say makes sense for anybody to open if you can meet the minimum spend.

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The welcome offer on this card is pretty steady and for years and years was the same.

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I don't want to say the welcome offer on this episode because if I do, it will probably change and be outdated.

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I will put a link in the show notes with more information and a link to whatever the current offer is.

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The minimum spend on a Sapphire Preferred generally requires you to spend $4,000 in the first three months, so you have to be able to do that and you have to be able to pay it off in order to get the welcome offer on this card.

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You get the welcome offer regardless of whether you pay it off, but you need to pay it off in order for this to be worthwhile, because paying interest would negate any additional value you're getting from your points.

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This offer does sometimes change, but as a general rule, I don't recommend waiting to start opening cards until you see an elevated offer or a limited time offer.

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That's because you'll earn more by just regularly opening offers than by always waiting for an elevated offer.

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Opening offers than by always waiting for an elevated offer, and I can tell you that with Chase, typically if they do raise an offer, they will match that offer if you applied at a lower one.

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If it goes up shortly after you had applied for a lower offer.

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If this happens to you, you just need to send a secure message to them to ask to be matched to the current, better offer.

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Another great perk of this card is that it almost always has a referral bonus, which means that you can refer a spouse or a partner or a friend to this card and earn some points for yourself.

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This is accounted for as part of my three-year plan.

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Even if you mostly do solo travel, you very well might find yourself talking about all the travel you're doing with points and having friends who want to sign up for a card and go on a trip with you.

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Now, how much do you have to know about the points system before you apply for a card?

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I think it can be tempting to want to wait to open a card until you feel like you understand everything.

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But one thing I would encourage you to do is just open a card one card and see how it goes from there.

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If you open a card today, you have three months where you're doing your spending to learn more before you're even going to have your bonus.

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You already have three months built in in the time that you're doing your minimum spend where you can continue to learn more.

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I have a few quotes and stories I'm going to read from people who sent me messages about this very thing.

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So one person sent me this message on Instagram in reply to something that I had posted and had been talking about in my Instagram story, and she said yes, yes, yes, start somewhere.

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I waited eight to nine months, thinking I needed to learn everything first.

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I wish I would have just tried one card.

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So she said she waited eight or nine months while she was trying to learn.

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That's significant.

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That's three cards.

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If you're opening one card every quarter for your regular everyday expenses, that's a few thousand dollars in travel that she could have had just by starting sooner.

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I have another story from someone who said this in my Facebook group, who also essentially said I wish I had started earlier.

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She wrote I heard about credit card points a decade ago, but I thought it was too good to be true.

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That's a lot of us right.

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It seems too good to be true.

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She went on to say that she had just intentionally started two years ago and at first she just dabbled with booking Hyatt places with her Chase Ultimate Rewards and she was pretty happy with that.

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But she posted this in the group because she had just finished booking her first really big trip with points.

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It was a trip to Hawaii that she had planned, planned and she paid for the flights and 10 nights of lodging with points for her whole family.

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I hear that so often from people saying, man, I really wish I would have started right when I heard about this.

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So if that's you, if you've just heard about this and you're just getting started, I encourage you to just pick a card and sign up and continue learning while you're earning your bonus.

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Again, my top recommendation for a card to start with is the Chase Sapphire Preferred.

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It fits right in with this podcast season one, because we're going to be going over all the things to help you learn all the things about how to use the points and the benefits of this card, if you do decide to apply for that card, I will put my affiliate link for it down in the show notes as a reminder.

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I get paid a cash commission on certain cards when people apply for them with my links.

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My business model is largely dependent on the goodwill of people who choose to use my links instead of just googling the offer to sign up for it.

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I appreciate it so much when you take the extra step to use my links.

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That is the reason I'm able to keep my resources free, everything from my guides to my comprehensive free course and, of course, this podcast.

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I just don't think that you should have to spend a lot of money in order to learn how to save money.

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As someone who has been on a tight budget, I want to make sure that my information could be accessible to anybody, regardless of their ability to pay for that information.

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Anytime that you are able to open a card and use my affiliate link, just know that it is supporting my business and allowing me to keep creating content.

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It has also allowed me to build a team of other people who help me out, because I just can't do it all on my own.

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Thanks to the hard work of my team, we're able to answer every question we get, and sometimes we get a thousand messages a week.

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I'm also able to invest in research projects and in developing really great resources specific to the kind of travel that normal people want to do.

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I am so grateful to be able to do that, so your action step today might seem like a big one.

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If you aren't currently working on a spend for a credit card, I encourage you to start working on one.

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If you're brand new to points, like I've said, chase Sapphire Preferred is my top recommendation for pretty much everybody.

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If you've already had the Chase Sapphire Preferred, refer your partner or spouse to it if they don't already have their own.

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If you're already beyond that, I recommend you go to the show notes and read my three-year plan.

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In that post I explain my whole methodology so it's easy to adapt.

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If you're partway through it and you can see that you've done some of it, you can see in order the cards that I would recommend over your first three years.

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A lot of people think that there's a lot more personalization to credit card strategy than there actually is.

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After advising literally thousands of people on credit card strategy for travel points, I realized it's a pretty similar strategy for almost everybody.

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For the vast majority of people, the same credit card strategy works pretty well.

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I think that that's really good news, because it means we're not recreating the wheel for every person that comes along with an interest in points.

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There's a really solid strategy that works for almost everyone, and that's exactly what I put into my three-year plan.

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I took my 13 years of personal experience with points and my six years of professionally advising people on how to earn and redeem points and made a plan that everyone can find value in and that's easy to follow and easy to sustain, because that's my big purpose here.

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I want to break this down into the absolute easiest ways to earn and redeem points.

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You don't need to recreate the wheel with your strategy.

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If you want to, you can.

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You can absolutely DIY your strategy, but if you want a solid, proven plan, follow my three-year plan.

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For those who want to DIY a plan, I will also leave a link to my best offers page on my blog, and this is where I do put any offers that I think are notable, especially limited time offers.

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I also want to mention that on my best offers page and on my blog, I do my absolute best to truly include the best offers, whether or not they earn me an affiliate commission.

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So sometimes I have affiliate offers for cards that just don't match the best offer that's out there, and so I will do my best to substitute in whatever link I find that is truly the best offer out there, even if it doesn't earn me anything, so that you know that you're getting the best deal when you're on my website.

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Also, on the best offers page of my blog and throughout my blog when I have cards mentioned, I have a little section for each card on other recent offers for a card so you can gauge the current offer versus recent historic offers.

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I'll also link in the show notes to a site that does this well with graphs US Credit Card Guide and you can use that to see what other reason offers on cards have been.

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Typically, I pull up that site and use their search box to find info on a card I'm looking at if it's one I'm not as familiar with.

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Next episode, when I go into the Chase 524 rule, I will also be giving more detailed strategy tips that you could be using to create your own strategy, if that's something you want to do.

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I'm really looking forward to this season, because I've never produced content in a way like this.

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That really goes into a deep dive right off the bat into one rewards program, and I'm really excited for that because, like I said, chase Ultimate Rewards is a great all-around program.

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I'm so excited to see you leave this season with confidence and then you can make the decision about the things that you value and how you want to use your points.

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Can't wait to see you next time and let's keep unlocking these secrets of travel points together.

How to pick the right cards

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How to pick the right cards

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