E56: Strategy Shifts for 2027 + Three-Year Plan Update

Why The Plan Needed Updates

SPEAKER_00 0:09

This year we've seen quite the upheaval with miles and points with some of the old standby methods for earning and redeeming points. That means we all have to adjust our strategies. Today I'm talking about broad strategy shifts as well as specific ways I've updated my three-year plan to accommodate these changes. You'll see my thought process and why I'm making changes, which I hope helps you as you build your own strategy. And if you're not interested in taking the time to build your own strategy, that's where I've got you covered with the three-year plan, where you can follow along and earn over a million points basically on autopilot. Welcome back to Points for Normal People. 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. That's why on Points for Normal People I share the tips and tricks that my family has been using for over a decade to help you use your everyday expenses and credit card welcome offers to supercharge your travel points so that you can pay for entire vacations every year. My three-year plan debuted two years ago, and since then hundreds of people have told me how helpful it has been to have a simple plan to follow along with as they get started in points and miles. There's so many factors that you're thinking about when you start with miles and points, and endless options. So the three-year plan allows you to get started without decision-making fatigue. So you know that you're earning some really solid points right off the bat. When I first sat down to write it, it was really hard for me to write at first because I wanted to make it general enough so that it could apply to a lot of different people, but also have some specific strategy behind it. Every fall, I go through the plan and update based on new card policies, new cards that have come out, and bigger shifts in the miles and points world. This year, when I sat down to do my updates, my brain started hurting again because it really is hard to pick between options sometimes. The good news is that the way the plan is written, you can easily adapt it according to your own preferences. So this episode will help you adjust the plan if you're already in the midst of it. It will help you if you're just getting started with a three-year plan, and it'll help you even if you don't want to follow the three-year plan at all, because you'll see the broader shifts I'm flagging. I'm not going to read the plan to you today card by card and list out every single change. Everything is on the blog post that's dedicated to the three-year plan. Today I want to go over the big picture changes. I'm also not going to explain every single term that I use, so if you're brand new to points, be sure to go back to season one, episode one, and listen especially to the first five or six episodes to give yourself a really good foundation. So I have two different versions of my three-year plan on my website, creatively called the one-person and two-person versions. Use the one person if only one person in your household will be opening credit cards. Use the two-person version if you have two adults in your household willing and able to open credit cards.

Sapphire Preferred Still Comes First

SPEAKER_00 3:06

Both plans start off with the Chase Sapphire Preferred card, so that's where I'll start too. The placement of this card in the plan hasn't changed. And for many people, in fact, the Chase Sapphire Preferred became a stronger first card option this year. So this year it added some new benefits like a trusted traveler credit so that you can get TSA Precheck or Global Entry covered. It beefed up the travel protections that are already pretty robust, but it lost one thing that was a very easy and common use of its points, and that was a one-to-one transfer ratio to Hyatt. Now it's certainly not the only way to use Chase Ultimate Rewards, but it was one that was very beginner-friendly and popular. So I debated whether it would actually be better to recommend the Chase Sapphire Reserve to people instead, because that one still keeps the one-to-one transfer ratio to Hyatt. Ultimately, though, I decided to stick with the Chase Sapphire Preferred as the default recommendation. It's a $95 annual fee card, and I just think most people find it easier to start with a card at that price point. I personally really like the Chase Sapphire Reserve, but it's $795 a year, so it's harder for a lot of people to start with. It also takes more management to make sure you use the credits. And because the eligibility rules changed, the Chase Sapphire Reserve is still something you'll be able to get later on, when you're ready to use those credits, when you're ready to earn more ultimate rewards, or if you want to use a lot of points with Hyatt. Any of those scenarios are when it would make sense to get one. It's definitely an alternative option if you're someone who starts off the three-year plan and knows right away that you like those benefits on the card. And over time, I think it makes sense for a lot of people to get both cards and try each one out. So in fact, that's actually not a change, but there is a broader strategy change to consider. I think it makes sense for people to start with the lower fee Sapphire preferred, because for a lot of people, they might spend a year just learning and earning before they're ready to start booking travel with their points. And if in that time that you're learning and earning, you realize you're gonna want to transfer a bunch of points to Hyatt because that seems great to you and you want to book some Hyatt stays, then I think it makes sense at that point to get a Sapphire reserve. And by that point, you'll probably be more comfortable with credit card benefits and it won't feel so overwhelming. So again, it's not really a change, just something to keep in the back of your head.

Venture X Downgrade Decision

SPEAKER_00 5:30

The first real change is that I'm switching the plan from recommending the Capital One Venture X Rewards credit card to the plain Capital One Venture Rewards Credit Card. This year the Venture X lost guest access for lounges. Capital One also changed the family eligibility rules. Now, if you open a Venture X card, you aren't eligible for a bonus on the lower fee venture cards, like the Venture Rewards card, for 48 months after opening it. Now, I've said before in a podcast that I don't think this restriction is a huge deal, because there are business versions of Capital One cards that can earn you more venture miles. In addition, it's pretty hard to get approved for more than two Capital One cards anyway, because they're pretty stingy. But I think the Venture X just isn't as worth it as it used to be. I personally am closing mine this year. If you're not using the lounge benefits for yourself, I think it's just as easy to get the venture rewards card for the lower fee and not have to worry about making a specific use of the $300 travel credit each year in order to make up that annual fee. It could still be worth it if the $300 credit is really easy for you to use. It's a really decent card, but it's certainly not a no-brainer anymore without the extra lounge benefits. So that's why I changed the default to recommending the venture instead. The venture card is still recommended very early on because it's much easier to get approved for it earlier. Now, in the first year of the plan, I want to be really clear that the order of the cards really doesn't matter. So you could look at those first four cards, and if there is an elevated offer on one of them, that's what I would recommend that you get first. I don't want to over-emphasize elevated offers because I think overall it's more important to just keep opening cards at regular intervals. That's more valuable than waiting around and doing nothing and hoping for an elevated offer. But you can certainly move these around if you see elevated offers pop up. Beyond the first year of the three-year plan, it gets a little trickier when it comes to moving cards around. And that's because of some of the new restrictions that have rolled out from Chase, which I'll talk about in a minute.

Why Companion Pass Is Out

SPEAKER_00 7:42

And then another really big change is that I dropped the Southwest cards, specifically the Southwest Companion Pass, from the plan altogether. The change to the whole earning structure of the companion pass was covered really in depth in the previous episode, so you can go back and listen to that if you need that information. Basically, it will no longer be possible to earn a companion pass with methods like credit card welcome offers, referral bonuses, Southwest hotels, stays, and more. Now it will be tied dollar to dollar for spending on the credit card or spending directly on Southwest flights, or flying a hundred times a year on Southwest. And I don't think any of those are in the realm of most people in this audience, or what I like to call us normal people. So I'm no longer recommending going for a companion pass as the strategy here in the first year. Instead, I've substituted in a more generic airline card because I still think it's valuable to get a co-branded airline card, but I've left it more open-ended as to which one makes sense for you. I know some people get analysis paralysis when it comes to picking a card when I leave it open-ended. But really, I don't want you to overthink this. If it comes time to apply for an airline card, it really can be as simple as going to my best offers page, going down the list of airlines, and just picking one. If possible, especially when you're starting out, it really helps if you can get a business version of an airline card because that's going to keep your X slash 24 account lower and help your credit score out a little bit, and keep it easier to get approved with Chase. Pretty much every airline has a business card that's going to be around $100 for the annual fee, so there's a lot of great options.

The New Chase Business Crackdown

SPEAKER_00 9:21

The next slew of changes have to do with the new Chase restrictions. Some of these rolled out toward the beginning of 2026, so they might already be familiar to listeners of this podcast because I've talked about them a little bit before. And some we just started seeing in September 2026. So today I'll talk more in detail about those. The first changes, these are the ones I've discussed before. These happened at the end of 2025. Chase changed the eligibility rules for the ink cards, giving them language that's pretty restrictive and seems to indicate that you can have them essentially only one time in your lifetime. Even worse, they grouped the two no annual fee inks together. The Ink Business Cash Credit Card and the Ink Business Unlimited Credit Card both share eligibility. So if you get one of them, you won't be able to get the welcome offer on the other one. You can still get the Ink Business Preferred Credit Card or other Chase business cards. Now there's one exception here that I've mentioned in the past, and I want to mention it again. If you have a registered business, whether that's an LLC, a nonprofit, or an S Corps, we are seeing those registered businesses get approved for an Ink Cash, even if they have an Ink unlimited. Or sometimes an Ink unlimited gets approved even if they already have an Ink Unlimited for a different business. There definitely seems to be wiggle room if you have a registered business. But I've written my three-year plan assuming that most people might not have a registered business. So to those eligibility restrictions, they added another rule. If you are referring somebody to an ink card or a Chase Sapphire Reserve for business credit card, and they already have an ink card or a chase sapphire reserve for business, you will not earn any referral points. In the past, a lot of households would get ink cards with some regularity and they would refer each other back and forth for extra bonus points. Now, with referrals, that will only work if the person that you're referring to has no cards when you refer them. Both of these changes meant that I had to rework the plan to be sure the same person wasn't applying for two different no annual fee ink cards, for instance, and that it wasn't relying on frequent referrals within a household. Then, even worse, in September of 2026, we started abruptly seeing even more restricted approvals from Chase on all business cards for people who are applying as sole proprietors. As I like to do, I immediately started collecting actual data points instead of just looking at assertions or anecdotes online, and we started a reader survey. As of the date when I'm recording this episode, we have 154 applications that we've analyzed. These are people who had applications between September 15th and October 26th. So about a six-week period where we believe this new rule has been in effect. This new rule seems to be that if you apply for Chase business cards as a sole proprietor, and if you have opened three or more personal cards in the past 24 months, which we would call being at 324 or above, it is very unlikely that you will get approved. This is essentially a tightening of what we used to know as the 524 rule, which does apply to all Chase cards, but now has tightened down to a 324 rule for sole proprietors applying for business cards. There are a lot of opinions and rumors floating around via anecdotes. Some people seem to think that Chase business cards also count towards this 324 count, but that is not what I've found in the data that I've collected. I think that people who are repeating that are misinformed. And yes, I'm aware there are even some agents saying this, and yes, I still think they are misinformed as well. There is a separate rule that we've been aware of for two years. This is unofficial, but this is what we found throughout data points. If a sole proprietor already holds three or more Chase business cards, they're also very unlikely to get approved. I think some of the confusion here comes from these two rules, both having to do with the number three and both having to do with Chase business cards. And people are starting to conflate them and confuse them. I'm continuing to collect data and we will continue to publish updates on my site. The link, of course, is in the show notes for the analysis as well as the survey. So to go through what we've found so far, we've analyzed 154 applications, 128 of which are for sole proprietors. And frankly, the data is pretty clear. For sole proprietors who are under 324, we saw 25 out of 31 approved, which is an 81% approval rate. For sole proprietors who are at 324 or higher, we saw only 15 out of 97 approved for a 15% approval rate. So contrast that with registered businesses. We only had nine applications in our data points for people who were under 324, and eight of those were approved, which is 89%. For registered businesses who are at 324 or higher, we still saw 12 out of 17 approved, which is 71%. I ask additional questions on the survey to see if there are any other patterns that we can pick up on that might be influencing these approval and denials. But really, it seems to be it's whether people are at 324 and above, or if you're at 224 and below, that's the breaking point. Unfortunately, the data is pretty clear that it's also applying to co-branded cards. For the Southwest cards, for instance, we have 23 data points of sole proprietors who applied at 324 or above, and only two out of those 23 were approved. Now, it might be that people are more likely to fill out the survey if they get denied. It's not a true scientific, unbiased survey, but I do think it's pretty clear that this change has happened. The one thing the data seems to show is that there is a possible second factor, which is total chase cards opened in the past 12 months. That seems to be something we're seeing among the exceptions, but it's certainly not a guarantee. But all five United approvals that we saw at 324 or above, and five of the six Inc. approvals had opened zero to one Chase cards in the last 12 months. Overall, the takeaway here is that if you're applying for business cards from Chase as a sole proprietor, you really need to be at 224 or below. Otherwise, you are very unlikely to get approved. So let's talk about what that means for both my three-year plan and for your own personal

Rebuilding The Plan Around 3/24

SPEAKER_00 15:49

strategy. And what that means if you're already over 224. For my three-year plan, what I had to do was go in and change the order of cards, as well as take into account this new 324 rule. I rebuilt both the one-person and two-person plans so that every time it calls for someone to open a Chase business card, they will be at 224 or below. Now, again, if you have a registered business, you don't have to worry about this quite so much. But for everyone else, you do need to be thinking about this. Now, like many rules when they come out, we didn't have any advance notice on this. So if you're over 224 and you want to get back under, you can. It's just going to take time. Basically, you're just going to have to figure out exactly what date you would be at 224 or below. And between now and then, just apply for business cards from banks that aren't Chase. And that's something my husband and I had to do when the Chase 524 rule abruptly came out in 2016. And in my three-year plan, I have a whole list of cards in the facts section that are business cards from banks that aren't Chase. I think these are good options to get at any time. These are cards that you can always add into the three-year plan whenever you have enough spending to meet the minimum spend requirements. So to sum this section up, I built the plans around these four new guidelines. Every Chase business application happens when you're at 224 or below. I also built it so that you hold no more than two Chase business cards when you apply for another. That means they're spaced out so that if you have one for a year, you don't have to keep it for a second year if you're finding that it's not working out for you. I changed it so each person is only getting one no annual fee ink instead of two. And then I adjusted it with the ink referrals so that if you're in two-person mode, when you refer someone to an ink card, they should not have any other ink cards at that time. So here's some of the changes I made to give you an understanding of a few of these specifics. In the two-person plan, I removed the US Bank Altitude Connect card. This is still a decent card, I think, just because it has no annual fee and it does give you four lounge visits per year. But because of the new rules with Chase, where you have to be at 224 in order to get the ink cards or other Chase business cards, I felt like it wasn't necessarily worth, as a general rule, to give up one of your slots in your X slash 24 count in order to get those four lounge visits a year. Now, of course, anyone is welcome to add this in. Another card you could get for a year to give yourself a little bit of lounge access would be the business version, the US Bank Business Altitude Connect. This typically has the annual fee waived for the first year. So you might not want to keep it long term because then it does have a $99 annual fee after that, but you could get it for a year in order to get four lounge visits. In years two and three of the two-person plan, I also reshuffled some of the cards because of those ink changes. The one-person plan had to have even more changes than the two-person plan, because it's even more sensitive to how many personal cards someone is opening, because it's just one person opening all the cards. With the two-person plan, because you have two people opening cards, they can both stay at 224 much easier while still opening one personal card per year each. With the one-person plan, I did take out the Chase Freedom card that was in year two, and I made year two all business cards because of this new Chase 324 rule. My goal with this one person plan is to give you a chance to open a number of different Chase business cards during the three years. Then when you get to the end of the plan, you can probably move on from Chase business cards and move into other banks and ecosystems at that time. Because of that, with the one person plan, I added two different open-ended Chase business card slots. This allows you to pick either a hotel business card or an airline business card from Chase. And you can pick one of those to get before moving on from Chase business cards after year three.

A High-Fee Card Worth Timing

SPEAKER_00 19:55

In the one person plan, I also swapped the City Strata Elite in for the City Strata Premiere card. I also moved it specifically to December of year two. The City Strata Elite was a new card last year, and I didn't pay too much attention to it until December of 2025 when I started thinking about possibilities of how the calendar year credits work. Now, this is a fairly high annual fee card, but most of the credits run on a calendar year. And anytime you see credits running on a calendar year, you know there's a good value opportunity, especially in the first 12 months that you hold the card. In the case of this card, these are the benefits and annual fee as of fall 2026. This could, of course, change, but the annual fee right now is $595. But then it has a $200 splurge credit every calendar year. One of the easiest ways to use the splurge credit is at Best Buy. And one of the easiest ways to use it as Best Buy is to go to Best Buy.com and buy a $200 gift card to wherever you want to shop because Best Buy sells a lot of them. So if you get this card in December and you can get that splurge credit in December before December 31st, that's $200. Then you can get it again in January because it resets with the calendar year. Then a year is going to pass and you can get it again the following January. The reason you can get it the following January as well is that your second annual fee doesn't post exactly a year from when you applied. It typically posts about 13 months from when you applied, because it posts at the end of that statement. But even if you only use it twice, you're still doubling up on that credit in the first 12 months of the card. This card also has a hotel credit that's fairly easy to use. It's $300 off when you book a hotel stay of two nights or more at City Travel. And it has some decent lounge access as well as some other little credits. I debated putting this card into the two person plan as well. I think for the two person plan, it would be a great one to add at the very end of year three in December, if you're ready for the next card then. And I want to emphasize again, you can always adjust. Can always move cards around within a year to catch the best offers. You just have to check a few things first. If the card you want to apply for is a Chase business card, then you want to make sure that if you're applying as a sole proprietor, that you are at 224 or below and that you're holding no more than two Chase business cards. And if you're moving a personal card earlier, you just want to be aware if that's going to put you above 224 for a later Chase business card. Or if you move a Chase business card earlier, you want to make sure that you'll still be under 224. The other thing is that picking a Chase card, if the plan is suggesting a non-chase card, might add to the Chase business cards that you hold. It might add to your number of Chase cards in the past 12 months. So it might make it a little harder to get approved for some other chase card in the future. If you're partway through the plan, you may be wondering where to go from here. The first thing that you can do if you're over 324 and you want to just continue on the plan and you don't want to make a lot of adjustments is this. I would suggest you pause the plan right where you're at and then calculate when you're going to be under 324 again. Just open business cards from my list of non-Chase business cards. You could focus on the ones that are elevated until you're at 224, and then just pick up the plan from there. I really think that even opening a card like a Bank of America business card that's giving you $500 cash back is still better than opening nothing because you're still getting $500 cash back that you can use for whatever you want. Even with all the changes that I made to the plan and the adjustments, the totals are almost exactly the same. The one-person plan actually went up a little bit in the totals that it's earning. The two-person plan is earning about 20,000 points less over the course of three years. But both are still well over a million points. And again, what I like so much about these plans is that they give you points that are going to be so flexible and give you so many different travel options. And add, I would estimate, $15,000 of travel or more into your life. And I don't think it's going to take very much effort because, like we've talked about in other episodes, the amount of time is mostly opening a card, and that takes about 30 minutes, and setting up auto pay, which might take about another 30 minutes. There's not that much more that goes into it. But I think what can prevent people from getting started is worrying that they're getting good offers and that they're getting good cards. So that's what I've tried to take the guesswork out of for you. I've also fully updated the tracker that you can get. That's a spreadsheet, so that's available for download as well now. I have a fun reader success story to share, and then I'll wrap up with action

Real-Life Points Win And Next Steps

SPEAKER_00 24:44

steps. So she wrote in and said, following the more extreme points and miles enthusiasts originally was making me want to hoard my points for the best possible trips that truly aren't what I value. But I had FOMO from their experiences. Your advice brought me down to Earth a few years ago, and I've been content ever since with what works best for our family of six. This came into play a few months ago when our college-age son mentioned bringing his friends home for a long weekend. He's in college 10 hours south, and he wanted to bring friends home for the weekend flying in and out of Chicago. He is my travel planning partner, so he has a good sense of points and miles. He and I got to work and found inexpensive southwest flights. I was able to use our points to pay for five people to fly here, totaling only 32,500 points. They spent a few nights at our house. I was also able to book them two rooms at the Hyatt near O'Hare with our points. They finished with a day and a half touring downtown Chicago. We were able to get to know his college friends and give them a chance to spend time in Chicago. It was such a rewarding way to use our points. If I didn't follow you, I would have been selfish with our points and missed out on this priceless time with our son and his friends. Thank you. So I cry at everything. You can ask my kids. I even cry in the movie Cars every single time when Lightning McQueen pushes the king over the finish line. So I did tear up a little bit when I was reading that. But this story made me so happy and it made me tear up when I read it from her too. Because this is what I want. I want you to have the freedom to use your points however you want and to not feel bad about it and to feel proud of how you're using them. Okay, but let's move on to some action steps here. I think it's helpful for everyone to take a check and see where you are with your X slash 24 count. This is gonna help you know when you're going to be eligible for Chase business cards if you're a sole proprietor and where you stand. If you're gonna apply for a Chase business card as a sole proprietor, you wanna check and make sure you're at 224 or below. Or you can give it a try and maybe you'll get lucky. Either way, if you do one of those Chase business applications, whether it is successful or not, please, please, please fill out our survey so we can continue to get more data on this. If you're on the three-year plan already, you can pull up the updated plan page, get the new tracker, compare it to where you are, and see if you want to make any adjustments. If you haven't started and you want to get started, you can start right now. You could also start January 1st. It all works out. If you haven't started yet, be sure you download the new tracker and follow along with it.

Affiliate Links And How To Use Them

SPEAKER_00 27:17

And then one more housekeeping note is about my affiliate links. As you know, I keep all my content free, my course, my podcast, and I can do all of that because people use my affiliate links when they go to apply for cards. I love this business model because it means you don't have to pay anything to learn how to save money. I also promise that I will always show the best offers, even if they aren't affiliate offers. There are many times when I am switching a card that I have an affiliate link for over to a different offer that is a non-affiliate offer and a higher offer. There are also, though, a number of cards that I have indirect affiliate links for. I am not allowed to link directly to these cards on the card name on my blog, but I am allowed to link to a more generic page that might have general airline cards or general flexible points cards. Those have my affiliate links for those cards, but I can't advertise them directly. These are the hardest ones for me to explain how to use my affiliate links for, obviously, because I am not allowed to do it directly. But I always really appreciate when people take the extra time to find them, because they are a little bit buried on my site, and that is to follow the compliance rules. I can't even say the direct names here, but I will give you some other information. I have direct links that are really easy to use from Chase, Capital One, and American Express. There are other major banks in the United States that have great credit cards, even some cards I mentioned today on this podcast that I cannot link directly, but they are in my generic affiliate offer section. If you're on my site and you see a card and you see something like this, click here for curated card offers, or to see affiliate offers, click here. That's a really good indication for you that this card is one I can't link directly to an affiliate offer for, but I have on my More Affiliate Offers page. I know it's a pain, but I really appreciate it when you do that. I like to think of it like you're paying it forward for my team and myself to continue to create more content to teach more people like you how to use points. Thanks so much for listening today. I look forward to seeing you next time where we will continue to unlock these secrets of travel points together.