The Better Budgeting Podcast

How to Know You Are Ready to Use Credit Card Rewards

• Danielle Reese

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Discover how to harness the power of credit card rewards while staying financially fit. We dive deep into the essential strategies for wise spending, budgeting insights, and practical advice on mastering credit card points. 

• Key aspects of effectively using credit card points 
• Importance of contentment in financial decisions 
• Necessity of a proper budget when using credit cards 
• Consequences of failing to manage credit card limits 
• Accessing the Better Budgeting Playbook for further assistance 


Danielle is a money coach helping women and couples who have been trying to figure out their finances FINALLY create a clear plan so they don’t have to worry about waiting to refill their bank account the next payday.

She is the founder of The Financial Freedom Society on Facebook and her signature money coaching program, The Better Budgeting Playbook. You can sign up for her newsletter by clicking here.

Take the first step towards financial freedom and sign up for a complimentary assessment call with me, Danielle Reese.


Grab your copy of "Let's Talk Groceries" Your Guide to Reducing Your Grocery Bill" This is an ebook with over 30 pages of tips, tricks, and guidance to help you save hundreds on your grocery bill!

Sign up for the early release of The Better Budgeting Blueprint for $99 with a $50 refund once completed. The release is scheduled for April 1st 2025.

You can connect with her on Facebook or Instagram.

Speaker 1:

Hello and welcome to the Better Budgeting Podcast. I'm your host, danielle Reese. I'm a money coach and the founder of the Better Budgeting Playbook, and this is my one-on-one coaching program for women and couples who have been trying to figure out their finances, finally create a clear plan so they don't have to worry about waiting on payday anymore. I became a money coach in 2020 after paying off over $60,000 in debt, rekindling my marriage, becoming financially free and wanting others to experience the same. If you'd like to work with me, you can check out the link in the show notes there. Also, we have the Financial Freedom Society on Facebook. It's a free Facebook community focusing on debt payoff, saving strategies, budgeting and money mindset. You can find the link to that community in the show notes as well. One more little happy thing I want to add is that we have the grocery guide now. This is my hard-earned work of putting together all that I know about grocery shopping. How the heck do we save money on our grocery bills? And I have worked eight years in food retail, grocery retail. Actually, I have worked seven years in food distribution and I went to culinary school, so I know a lot about food, from the preparation side all the way through the purchasing side. So I created this guide. It's almost 40 pages long and is jam-packed with all kinds of tips and tricks and just knowledge about shopping, about grocery shopping and helping you reduce your grocery bill, and if you are going to take at least one to two of those and be able to implement them, you are going to save money. So you can grab your copy in the show notes.

Speaker 1:

Today's topic is all about credit card points and it is specifically about when should I use credit card points? Like when can I start getting into using credit cards for their rewards, whether it's cash rewards or travel rewards? When is it okay to start doing that? So I think it was the last podcast episode. I was talking about how I took my daughter to Disney World for her seventh birthday and I paid for that trip completely on credit card points. I had banked them up and I was able to get a hotel flights, travel, spending cash, buy the dang Disney tickets, which is astronomical in my opinion, like one day is plenty on spending wise for Disney World for me, but I paid for all of this with credit cards.

Speaker 1:

Now this is a new but not new like experience for me. I have used cash back rewards Many years, many years. I actually looked up my reward balance and I have gotten $8,000 in cash rewards over the years. Now this is probably seven or eight years at this point, but that's 1000 bucks a year. Like that's pretty cool, right. And those things were to pay for Christmas, or they paid down other purchases that we bought, or vacation, or you know whatever we wanted to use them for. It's more of a statement credit, so we would still budget for the things that we want to buy, but now it becomes a statement credit. So I really immersed myself in the cash back and I'm very familiar with that.

Speaker 1:

But I wanted to learn more about the travel part. How do we use travel rewards? And for me, right now I have a Chase Sapphire Preferred and then I also have a Southwest card and they're really great. They're great points, great all kinds of amenities like great shopping portals, a lot of stuff on there. But I really wanted to fly for free to places and I want to not have to pay money for hotels and that's why I chose those. So this is actually a new adventure for me and I did a lot of research. I actually went to a financial coaches conference back in October of 2024. And there was another financial coach. She actually started talking and did a seminar on using credit card points within your, with your clients, and I was like, oh, this is really great for just me to figure it out. So I did a lot of research, I used a lot of the notes that she has given me and resources I should say that she has given me to really start my journey with the travel rewards section of using credit cards. And here are a couple things that I have learned and also that I know is going to be really, really beneficial, just from my experience of using credit cards for cash rewards.

Speaker 1:

Number one learn contentment. Okay, learn contentment. You cannot, you can't progress in your financial state if you don't learn contentment, and that's not even just with credit cards, that's just in general. If you do not have contentment with what you have and where you are, you are always going to be uncontent and you're going to buy more or spend in areas so that you can achieve that contentment. We have to get that under control. Contentment 100%.

Speaker 1:

I'm a homebody. I'm cool with staying home. I like staying home, I love it. Like I was asked the question where's your best place to rest? In my bed, with Netflix on. That's the best place for me. Okay, I'm fully content with staying home on a Saturday night Some people are not wired that way but you are going to be the ones that are going to struggle the most with credit card spending, because you're always looking for the next thing, whether it's clothing or going out, going on vacation, traveling, whatever it is.

Speaker 1:

We need to learn to be content with where we are and what we have, and that buying more things is not going to be the answer, because with a credit card, you have a limit but you don't have the limit, and what I mean by that is if you have a credit card that has a credit limit of $10,000 in two swipes, you can swipe $10,000, right, and now you're $10,000 in debt, but you have to be able to reel that in. You have to know that just because you have a spending limit of 10,000, that does not mean that we get to go out and spend $10,000. And learning to be content with what you have and that you don't always have to go out and buy things and stuff just because you have the availability, is really, really important when we start mixing credit cards into our financial portfolio. Number two for me is you cannot, cannot be using credit cards If you don't have a budget. You cannot at all. It is just too messy it is. It's too much. Clients come to me and they'll say I've got this bank account, that bank account, this credit card has that bill on it, that other credit card has that bill I use this credit card for. You know blah, blah, blah, blah, and you know we're just all over the dang place. You need one concise place where everything flows out of.

Speaker 1:

And then, if we want to mix credit cards in, we have in the Better Budgeting Playbook. We have a system in place to help you to do that, because I bet you, if you're somebody, that you are using credit cards because of the rewards, you feel flustered. You feel like you have no control. Money is going here and there. The balance on the credit cards are going up. By the way, it has a balance on it and you're still consistently using it, so it's really hard to determine what's actually being paid off and what is actually being paid as a bill that you've put on as a charge for the month.

Speaker 1:

You really, really need to have a budget in place. I like to call it a spending plan. That's what we call it in the Better Budgeting Playbook, and if you need help with that, that was a fantastic time. We are coming into March. Right now, we are two months done with the year of 2025.

Speaker 1:

If you set those resolutions of, I'm trying to get my debt figured out, I'm trying to save this year and you have not made progress yet. I'm trying to save this year and you have not made progress yet. I'm here to help you. This is what the Better Budgeting Playbook is for. I've got multiple ways to work with me. I have different product solutions to help you. I guess I shouldn't say product solutions, because they're all the Better Budgeting Playbook. They're just different ways to work with me. I have the answer for you. If you do the work right, like if you need organization, if you need a mindset change, if you just need help with figuring out what to do with a lump sum money, I've got you covered.

Speaker 1:

But before you can actually reap the rewards of credit cards, you have to have a system in place. You gotta have a budget and an emergency fund. Credit cards are not to be used for emergency funds. We just can't. It's messy. It's terrible. It's always causing chaos. We're adding payments Like, no, no, no, we're not doing that. We're not doing it. My last one here on when you can start using, or should use, your credit card points is when you can successfully use debt without fees and without interest. Now, for instance, my Chase Sapphire. I think it's like a $95 a year in an annual subscription. I use my points to pay for that subscription. Okay, so if you are paying fees and you are paying interest, we should not be using travel rewards to go to Tahiti or Miami or Alaska or Greece or Italy or whatever the heck you want to do. We shouldn't be doing that. We need to get our debt paid off, because it's no different.

Speaker 1:

If you had credit card debt and you weren't using the credit cards and you wanted to go on vacation, I'd say, well, here's your options. We're going to go on vacation. It's going to push us back in getting. Here's your options we're going to go on vacation. It's going to push us back in getting this credit card paid off. You're going to pay X, y, z in interest. Is this a better option for you, or do you just want to knock out this debt and like, not go on this, whatever trip that you're trying to do. I know that's a hard decision.

Speaker 1:

I've had that conversation at least a hundred times in my coaching journey over the last almost five years oh my gosh, almost five years. I've had that conversation many, many times and I will tell you a lot of the times. People are like you know what? That vacation? No, I got to get this debt paid off. I got I'm going to get charged $700 to save up what I would to go on this vacation. Just an interest, because I'm waiting on the debt and I'm waiting to pay off the debt. I think not. So it's really, really important if you are getting charged interest and you are getting charged fees and you're not kind of like swindling it right, I guess that's a good word I went when I mean swindle is like not using your credit card points to pay for the fees or pay for the interest.

Speaker 1:

If you are just paying for that stuff outright or paying minimum on these balances, on these credit cards, don't be using the rewards to go on vacation. You're not in a position right now to go on vacation, okay, and I understand that things are going to happen. Right, I got clients their babies. It's their last year before they're shipping off to wherever they're going college or the armed forces and I get it. You want to spend that connection in that time, but that's what you really want. You don't really care if it's at the beach it's nice that it's at the beach or it's nice it's at the top of the Rocky Mountains. But what are you really trying to do? You're really trying to make connection with the family that you have.

Speaker 1:

That goes back to number one that I shared with you, which is learn contentment, learn contentment and create those experiences within your actual budget, your life budget that you have. If you can't afford to go on vacation because we've got tons of credit card interest and we've got balances out the wazoo, can we create that feeling of family and connection at home? So, running back through this list, when can we start using credit cards and implement the reward stuff going into our finances? When you've learned contentment? And this is so that you don't go off the rails and get a new credit card and be like, well, I need to spend the first $4,000 within the first three months, or something like slow down, slow down. I have a system in place to help you figure that out If it's even feasible for you to do that. But we need contentment, because a lot of times that push for okay, you need to spend the first $4,000 in three months and you'll get 40,000 rewards points or something like that. You're going to feel rushed to spend and you're going to spend more. So putting a plan in place making sure that you can do it correctly so you don't actually pay more interest than what the points are worth, okay.

Speaker 1:

Number two would be successfully having a budget, having a dang budget and listen, you're here. Now is the time. Join the Better Budgeting Playbook. All right, I've got so many different ways to work with me within all types of budget range, all types of accountability ranges, so fill out a form in the show notes If you want help with reducing your financial stress, getting your finances organized, being able to be on the same page as your partner with your finances.

Speaker 1:

If you are freaking out about summer coming and like, what are we going to be doing with the kids I got to spend for summer camp and all this other stuff, right, if you've got a lot of things coming up that are going to be costly, now is a great time to take some time to figure out your finances and work with somebody. You can pay to work with someone and get where you're going much faster, or you can still fumble around Google and it'll take forever and you probably won't even get there because there's no accountability. That's why I have the Better Budgeting Playbook, so you can get results quickly. Lastly is you can use credit card rewards and points when you can successfully not have fees and not have interest charges, which means no balance on those credit cards. You got no balance on the credit cards. Great. Now you can go and start using these points after one and two. Okay, all right, y'all. Thanks so much for listening to this week and we'll talk again soon. Bye-bye.