Travel Party of 5 | Points & Miles for Family Travel

Strategies We Used to Earn OVER 2 MILLION POINTS in 2025!!

• Raya & Duane

Share episode

1:1 Points Travel Strategy Session - Book here!


What if your weekly groceries, Friday night dinners, and holiday shopping could fuel your next big family trip? We break down a four-bucket system that took us past two million points this year without gimmicks: strategic sign-up bonuses, smart category spending, thoughtful referrals, and powerful stacking tools that turn ordinary purchases into extraordinary travel.

We walk through the exact card moves we made, including timing the AA business “double dip,” choosing public offers over weaker referral paths when the math wins, and sequencing business cards to protect 5/24. Then we shift into everyday multipliers that quietly stack value: Amex Gold for 4x at dining and groceries, Strata Elite for 6x on weekend dining windows, and Freedom Flex quarterly caps. Gift cards become a multiplier key, from the DoorDash gift card store coding as dining to sub-$200 in-store buys that track on Rakuten during 12x promos.

The stacking chapter is where balances jump. We share how we earned 200k+ through Rakuten alone, the new Rakuten-to-Bilt 1:1 window, and how to layer card-linked offers from Chase and Amex for double-dip savings. We also cover underused levers that don’t require new accounts: Amex checking bonuses, retention asks after the annual fee posts, strategic downgrades to set up upgrade offers later, and targeted employee card offers on Amex business products that award points for manageable spend across multiple cards.

Looking ahead, we’re eyeing Bilt cards for mortgage earn, a rumored Chase-Hyatt premium card that pairs well with Globalist, and spring Hilton Surpass promos with free night certificates. For advanced players, we touch on Aspire–Surpass upgrade/downgrade sequencing to generate multiple uncapped Hilton free nights. For beginners, we keep it simple: anchor one great sign-up bonus, route your top categories into 3x–6x earners, and try one clean portal stack on a purchase you were already making.

If you found this helpful, follow the show, share it with a friend who wants to travel more for less, and leave a quick review. Your support helps more families learn how to turn everyday spend into real-world adventures.

SPEAKER_01:

We are on track to earn over 2 million points in 2025. And in today's episode, I am going to tell you exactly how we did it. So listen in. Hi, I'm Raya.

SPEAKER_00:

And I'm Dwayne.

SPEAKER_01:

And we are your hosts of the Travel Party of Five podcasts, where we share how we travel as a family of five around the world.

SPEAKER_00:

We will also share how we use points and miles to travel as affordably as possible, and sometimes even completely free.

SPEAKER_01:

So if you're wanting to travel more with your family, but you're not sure how, we'd love for you to listen in.

SPEAKER_00:

So welcome to our podcast where we hope you learn a thing or two to get you closer to your next trip.

SPEAKER_01:

Hello, friends, and welcome back to Travel Party of I podcast. My name is Rea. I am your host today, and Dwayne will not be joining us. He is currently putting up Christmas lights. So that's okay though. I have a jam-packed episode that I'm really excited for because I think you're gonna get a lot of value out of it, at least I hope. Um, before we jump into today's topic, which is how we will earn over 2 million points in 2025, a couple of people have recently reached out to me on Instagram basically just asking how you can support our podcast. So, first of all, I appreciate that so much, and that is so kind to think of us. And so I figured I would just share a couple of ways that you can support our podcast if you do enjoy the free content that would be helpful and beneficial to us. Um, so the first way would be just to share the podcast with a friend or family member that is maybe thinking of getting into points and isn't really sure how to make it work with a family, sharing our podcast would be incredibly helpful. Another way would be to leave us a review if you have not done so already on iTunes or Spotify or wherever it is that you listen. Um, that the more reviews, the more people find our podcast when they are searching. So that is super helpful as well. Another way to support the podcast is I do offer paid one-on-one like consulting sessions, basically, where we can talk about anything from your upcoming card strategy to helping you book a specific trip you have in mind. So that um I'll link in the show notes, but those are there are sessions available through the end of the year. Um, so that is another way you can help support. And then a third way would be referrals. So we don't have affiliate links for credit cards, which means we don't earn like a cash uh commission when you sign up for a credit card through one of our links, but we do have referral links for some cards that earn us a little bit of points, and those are always super helpful. We don't get a ton of them, but I have had people reach out and say, hey, do you have a link for this card? And if I have it and it's a good link, I'll share it. Um, that being said, you know, if you are referring like a P2 or whatever, you should absolutely use your link. But if you don't have the card and there potentially may be a referral involved, then you know definitely send me a DM and I'm happy to check whatever my offer is and send you that. Okay, so as always, if you are supporting our podcast in any way, sharing it with a friend, asking us for referrals, or even booking a session, we are super grateful and we appreciate that so much. So thank you in advance for that. Okay, now let's jump into today's topic because I'm super excited for this and we have a lot to cover. So I'm going to share with you exactly how we will earn over 2 million points in 2025 between the two of us. And the way that I have broken this down is there are essentially four buckets. Okay, so four buckets of earning. So the and we're gonna cover each one. So I'm gonna tell you the four and then we're gonna go one by one. So the first one is signup bonuses, so credit card signup bonuses. This is obviously the biggest bucket. The second one is an everyday spend strategy, the third bucket is potential referrals, and the fourth bucket is stacking tools slash retention offers slash how do I earn points without opening more cards. Okay. So first let's talk about bucket number one. Obviously, credit card subs are gonna be the biggest bucket, as I mentioned. So in 2025, thus far, we have opened a total of 16 cards between the two of us. 11 of those cards have been under my name, and then five of them have been under Dwayne's name. So for me, I'm gonna quickly list off. I have opened two Chase Inc. Business Unlimited cards, one at the beginning of the year and one about a month and a half ago. I have also opened up two City Advantage Business World Elite Mastercards. I did the AA double dip as it's kind of referred. Um, where that essentially that is where you apply for both cards within a four-month period. I'm sorry, let me be more clear. You apply for the first card, you wait 90 days, so really 91 days, then you apply for the second card. Meanwhile, you do not hit the sign-up bonus for the first card until after you've applied for the second card. Generally, the signup bonus window is four months for that card. So you want to apply for the second card on day 91 using your same like business name as you did for the first one, maybe adding in like a middle initial or taking off a middle initial. And then once approved, or hopefully you'll be approved, then you meet the signup bonus for the first card within, you know, to make sure that you're still meeting it within that four-month four-month window. And then you would meet the signup bonus for the second card thereafter. So that's the AA double dip. I did that earlier this year. Um, I've also opened up a Chasync Business Preferred, a Chase United Biz, an Amex Blue Business Plus, an Amex Hilton Aspire, an Amex Business Platinum. That was my second one. I got a mailer for it and was approved. I've opened the American Express Marriott Bonvoy business card. That actually had a sign-up bonus of three free 50k nights, so not even points. Um, I've also opened up a Barclays Hawaiian biz card, and that is it. So that is my 11. So two Chase Inc. Unlimited, two City Advantage business cards, an Ink preferred, and a bunch of others. Predominantly, if you notice, those were mostly business cards. So I am currently at 324. So eligible for a Chase card if I wanted to get one. However, I haven't opened up a card in my name in a couple of months, and we've kind of switched over to applying in Dwayne's name now through the end of the year. So he is um currently at 524 because of the card we just got for him. But so so far this year, he has opened the Chase Sapphire Reserve, the Barclays Hawaiian Business Card, same as me. We opened those on the same day actually. And he has opened an Amex Business Gold. He opened the City Strata Elite with the elevated 100k offer. And he was just approved for the Amex Biz Platinum card at a whopping 300k membership rewards. So that is exciting. Um, we have met the minimum spends on and earned the subs on all the cards that I just mentioned, except for the last one, the uh Amex Biz Platinum for Dwayne. That card actually has not even arrived yet. So I think it might arrive in the next couple of days, and then we will get started on that one. Okay, so just the sign-up bonuses alone on all of those cards have totaled 1,770,000 points. And that does not include the Amex Business Platinum because we haven't met that one yet. So even just with once we earn, I'm sorry, once we hit that sub, we will be over 2 million points. And I haven't even gotten into any of the other buckets yet. So, first of all, that's really exciting. That's more than we did last year, which was my goal. Um, but I do want to call something out, and that is that we have a high amount of spend, and not everybody does. So we've been able to meet some of these signup bonuses pretty easily. We did like a partial bathroom remodel earlier this year. We have a new dog that has done some very expensive training and also boarding. Um, we had to get a new gate installed, which was like thousands of dollars because it's a big RV gate. So I want to call out that you might not be able to earn two million points with your everyday spend, and that is totally fine, but you can absolutely earn some points, okay, without you know having to overspend or anything like that. So even if you are a low spend family, like there is still value in the points ecosystem for you. It just may be a little bit less than what I'm talking about today, but it doesn't mean that you shouldn't do it. I think even earning points for one trip a year is phenomenal and can really contribute so much to your budget, your financial goals down the road. You know, if you don't have to save so much for a vacation, you can put that into retirement or kids' college funds or your high yield savings account for an emergency fund. So don't discount points just because you don't earn a ton of spend. There are ways that you can be creative without, you know, opening a ton of cards or whatever. So I wanted to call that out that like we do have a high amount of spend. So some of the cards that I'm listing out here do have high minimum spends to earn the bonus. But again, like you don't have to do it at the speed that we are doing it, but you can still do it in your own way. So, anyways, okay, let me dive into bucket number two, which is everyday spend and maximizing categories. So if we are not working on a sub, which doesn't happen a ton, um given that we've opened 16 cards this year, that's and that's more than one a month, which is wild actually, when I think about it. Um but if I know that I can meet the sign-up bonus, maybe without using our grocery spend or without like putting our dining spend on the new card, then I will use a card that has a category multiplier. For example, the Amex Gold earns 4x on dining and groceries. So that's usually my go-to for that sort of thing. Again, if I know I can meet the minimum spend without our groceries, then I'm gonna use grow uh use this card for category spend. Um we also have the City Strata Elite card now that gets 6x on dining on Fridays and Saturday nights. There's specific hours, it's a whole thing. It's like I think it's like 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. Eastern time. So for us, currently right now, that's 4 p.m. Friday to like 4 a.m. Monday or Sun, no, Saturday, sorry, and then it repeats again Saturday night. So, anyways, um, those are kind of pretty basic multipliers. Um, there's also uh we have a Freedom Flex card that has every quarter rotating bonus categories, and so we try to max those out every quarter if we can. Last quarter, we actually didn't max it out because the categories were kind of weird. It was like gas and entertainment, which we just don't spend a ton on. Um, but this quarter it's like old Navy and department stores, and I think in December it's PayPal. So we'll definitely max out that one. And that if you can max it out every quarter, it's an extra 7,500 chase points per quarter that you can earn. So that's uh 30k a year, which is not too shabby. That's one night at a very nice Hyatt or several nights at a cheaper Hyatt. So another thing that I do for category spend that I don't hear people talk about a lot is that I'm thinking outside the box a little bit, and I'm using gift cards when possible to earn a few extra points. So let me give you an one example, and you can take this example to fit your needs. So I go to Starbucks almost every day, and one thing I've done recently to maximize the spend that I'm already doing at Starbucks is within the DoorDash app, there is a gift card store. So within the DoorDash app, there is a gift card store. I'm saying that twice. It is literally called gift card store. And you can buy gift cards from that store within the DoorDash app and it will code as dining. So if I go in on Friday night and I use my City Strata Elite card to buy a$100 Starbucks gift card, I'm gonna earn 600 points on that spend. Whereas normally, if I'm using a 1x card, I'm gonna earn 100 points. I also could use my Amex Gold to buy that gift card, and then I could earn 4x on that spend at any time, right? It doesn't have to be Friday or Saturday for that for the 4X, that's any time. And they have a ton of gift cards in there. I've seen Southwest, I've seen Lowe's, Chipotle, like there's a lot. They have Starbucks, obviously. Um, Best Buy, I think, is in there. So if you have a big purchase coming up, that could be a way to get three, four, or even six X on that spend. And I've even seen if you have Dash Pass, certain gift cards are sometimes discounted by like 10%. If you have Dash Pass again, you have, and we have Dash Pass because we have it free from several Chase credit cards. You probably do too. Um, but using using the that app to buy a few gift cards every month can just give you a little extra points, right? And all these little points add up. I've also done something else with gift cards, and I'm gonna talk about that in bucket four, which is stacking. Um, so just remember that. Um, the third bucket is referrals. So I think this year total, we've earned maybe six or seven referrals. Like, and that's it. And three of those were Dwayne referring me to Chase Ink cards before they discontinued referrals on the ink cards. So a couple of more were from referring friends and family, like people that I know, you know, in real life. And then I think one or two of them have been from either podcast listeners or Instagram followers who have DM'd me and asked me for a referral link. So I want to, I specifically wanted to put referrals in here because I think that there's sometimes a misconception that because we have this podcast and I post content on Instagram, that we are earning a ton of referral points and we are not. So I wanted to make sure to call that out because I think it can be really um disillusioning to listen to someone's podcast and think, oh, well, they're earning so many points and they have all these points because they're getting all these referrals. And that is not the case for us. Now, do we appreciate it when you reach out and ask if we have a referral link? Absolutely, we do. And if I have one that's good, I will give it to you. However, if you have the card and you want to refer your P2, you should obviously use your own link to refer if the referral is possible, right? With Chase, it is no longer, unless they're a brand new business customer. Um, it also makes sense to know if you're thinking about doing a referral, what the highest offer out there is and how your referral offer compares to that. For example, for the MX business platinum that Dwayne just opened, and by Dwayne I mean me, I opened it for him. The my referral offer from my business platinum was 200,000 points for 20,000 spend,$20,000 in spend in three months. So my I think my referral bonus was$220, or I'm sorry, it was$25k. So those two things added together is 225,000 points. But I knew that there's a public offer out there for 300,000 points, and obviously that is more than 225. So that's what we want. So that's a an uh a situation where it makes sense to forego the referral and just use the public offer because you're gonna come out ahead. You're gonna get more points that way. So that's what we did. We did not use my referral link, we just used the public offer link, and that worked out great. So keep in mind when you are considering doing a referral, just do a quick Google search and just search like what is the um highest available Southwest offer or the highest available, you know, AMX BizPlat offer, whatever the card you're looking for. Do a search, search around a little bit and just make sure you have a solid idea of what is available before you do the referral because you don't want to leave points on the table. Okay, so that is bucket three. And then bucket four is again stacking. So think like shopping portals and you know, Amex and Chase offers, but also other ways to earn points without opening up new cards. And I've got a few for you. So stacking first and foremost is huge. So with Racketton alone this year, and as a reminder, if you're new, Rackiton is a shopping portal where you can earn cash back, like actual cash. They send you a check in the mail every quarter. Or you can earn if you have an American Express card that earns membership rewards, you can earn membership rewards points instead of cash back. Um, you also now brand new in the last couple weeks, is you can also earn built points. So I did change my racketon from earning AMX points to earning built points. Let's talk about this briefly here for a minute before I go into the the details of the stacking. But for the first six months of this partnership, everybody's points are going to transfer one-to-one from racketon to built. After six months, in order to keep the one-to-one ratio, you need to have silver status or higher with built. Now, I do not have status with built. Um, matter of fact, before this partnership was announced, I had 784 built points. I'm pretty sure those came from me like having linked cards and just using those cards, you know, at restaurants and Walgreens. So, not a ton. So, my intention is to earn built points for the first six months and then reevaluate and potentially change it back to um American Express Points. Now, a couple of people asked me both on Instagram and in real life, they said, hey, like I don't think you can change it back to earning membership rewards, and yes, you can. So it says that directly on the Racketon website in the FAQ, you can change how you earn your cash back at any time. I do think in the past it was glitchy and gave you a hard time when you wanted to maybe switch back to membership rewards. So I do think that's where that misconception comes from, but you can switch back. So I wouldn't stress about it. I again have already changed mine to earn built points. And we just had the first payout like a couple days ago, and I now have roughly 32,000 build points, and 31,000 of those came from Racketton. So this year alone, between Duane and myself, we have earned 201,000 points from Racketton alone. That is a huge number. Most of those are from my account, so literally like 195,000 points were from my Racketton account, and then around 6,000 were from Dwayne's Rackettin account, which we don't use very much, but I did refer him this year. So that is where the majority of his 6,000 points came from, is I referred him, made a couple purchases through his account so that he could earn the points and I could earn the referral points. And so that if you haven't done that yet for your P2, I would recommend doing that. I think right now it's even elevated, and I think you get 5,000 points. When I did it, it was only 4,000. So if you haven't done that yet, quick and easy way to earn 5,000 points, you would refer your P2, and then they do have to spend, I think,$50 through Racketton in order to earn the 5,000 points, and then you would also earn uh the 5,000 points as well for the referral. So that's a quick way to earn 10k. But I just want to repeat that we earned 201,000 points just from Racketton alone. So that is like one to two sign up bonuses, depending on which bank, maybe even more. Now, a couple of things to call out there. So Racketon pays out on a quarterly basis, and we just received the last payout for 2025. So some of those points were earned at the end of 2024. I've talked about this in an episode before, but I had a huge payout from Q4 of last year because I had to send Christmas gifts for a couple of people that I support at my my like day job at work. And so I earned a ton of spend ordering through 1-800 flowers um just like for like work expenses. So um that was a big payout for me in terms of points. Um, Viator is a big one for us as well. So we book pretty much all of our travel excursions and activities through there. We did also use Cluke a bit from our Japan trip. I haven't gotten the payout for that yet. Those are still pending, so those I'm expecting to be confirmed in the February Racketon payout. Another big one was the SoFi Bank bonus. So that was a big chunk of points. And I did this for myself in 2024, but I signed Dwayne up for this in 2025. So he actually earned, um, I did it through my Rackettin account, but I signed him up for the account, and there was no issue with that because I already have the SoFi account from 2024. So again, something you can do for both your yourself and your P2. The signup bonus for that through Rackiton was 37,500 points, I believe. And there is a minimum deposit requirement. I I can't remember if it was 500 or 5,000, but you should check the terms anyways when you're signing up for it and just make sure that you can meet those requirements. We just updated our direct deposit from work and that worked just fine. So those were a couple of the big ones that allowed us to earn so many racketon points, but a couple of other things, and I mentioned when we talked about the everyday spend bonus categories that I also did like a similar stacking thing with racketon. So something that you have to pay attention for in Racketton is they also have in-store offers sometimes. So not all retailers and not all the time, but occasionally there are in-store offers. So there was a CVS in-store offer, and it was 12x. And this was, I don't know, a couple months ago. CVS sells gift cards, okay. And now the terms and conditions did say gift cards were not allowed, and it also said anything over$200 would not count basically. So here's what I did again with my Starbucks, okay? I went into CVS. First of all, I'm sorry, let me back up to take advantage of the in-store offer. Since you're not clicking through a browser and you know making sure that the Racketton extension is activated, the way that you activate and utilize the in-store offers is you link your credit cards in Rackiton. So there's a section for linked cards, and you just link one or two or 25 cards in there. And so then when you use one of those cards in the store and you have the in-store offer activated, that's how it tracks your cash back. So CVS had a 12x in-store offer. I I added my cards into Rackiton. I activated the in-store offer specifically. Then I went in and I bought a Starbucks gift card for like$199.92. It was one of those variable gift cards that you can load with whatever you want. I'm pretty sure I did it at the self-checkout, so I didn't even have to talk to anybody. And I literally just loaded like a random amount that was under$200, made sure to stay under$200 because I wanted it to track properly. And it tracked just fine. And I earned$22x on that spend. Now, I will say that the um the 12x in-sore offer is no longer available for me in my Racketton app. So I don't know if they were like, oh, she got enough points and that's good. So I don't know that you could really um exploit this, but 12x on$199 is over 2,000 points. So again, something to keep an eye out for and just, you know, I'm I'm always thinking of what am I spending money on, anyways, and how can I maximize that? So that's another example for you. And again, you can use that to fit your spending, right? Maybe you you hate Starbucks, but you eat at Chipotle every day. I don't know. Go buy a Chipotle gift card. Um, okay, another way to stack these offers, right, is um both American Express and Chase have what's called card-linked offers. So an example of this that I just recently used is Lululemon. So one of my Chase cards had, I want to say it was 10% off or$10 off, like, and you had to spend at least$100. And I had already planned to purchase some Lululemon because I had a gift card from my birthday that Dwayne had given me. So I saw a thing where Lululemon was going to be 15x on Rackatin on a certain day. This was just a few, maybe last week. And I went in on the day that it was 15x. I chose what I wanted to purchase. I activated the offer on my Chase card. Okay, so the way that you activate them is you go into your Chase account, and I'm sorry, there's a couple ways you can activate them. You can activate them manually one by one, or if you have the card pointers plus subscription, you can use card pointers to activate them all at the same time. Another subscription that I'm testing is called SaveWise. This also will auto-activate all of your um linked card offers. You have to push one button, but it it activates them all. So I will do a more in-depth session when I learn a little bit more. I haven't fully utilized it yet. I just signed up for the premium version within the last week. But that is another option to activate all your um card-linked offers. And I do get like I get like savings on spend that I didn't even know I had an offer on. So it there is a benefit there. And I'm always like, oh, like I just saw one for Chevron the other day that I must like linked and activated, but because I'm doing it in bulk, I don't know what they all are. And I think it Dwayne got gas on one of those cards at Chevron, and so it tracked like a few dollars back. So always exciting when that happens. Um, so back to my Lululemon example. So I activated the offer in my Chase card. Let's just say I can't remember the details, but let's say it was$10 off of$100 or more. Okay. So I go into Racketton, I find Lululemon, it is$15x back. Okay. So I go through and I complete my purchase. I use the card that has the the offer on it, the the$10 off$100. I make sure I even after my gift card, I spend at least$100. So now I'm going to earn the 15x through Rackaton on my spend that I was going to make, anyways. And I'm going to get$10 back from the Chase offer as well. So I'm a little unclear if the gift card amount is going to count for Rackettin. It is currently showing, but again, it's pending. But if it does, I spent around$300, including the gift card, and my cashback is tracking at over 4,000 points. So, and even if it doesn't, we're still looking at 1,500 points, right? Because that's the amount I actually spent after the gift card. Either way, a really great way to boost up our points balances without having to open a new card. And then the third kind of piece to think about this stacking slash how to earn points without opening more cards is retention offers andor upgrade offers. So once you've Had a card for a year, especially with Amex, this generally tends to work. You like let's say my Amex Biz Platinum is coming up on a year, and I don't want to keep it because the fee is$895, and that is a big fee. So I would then wait for my fee to post, and then I would go into the chat and I would basically just say, Hey, are there any retention offers on this card? And they they may offer you one and they may not. It's very hit or miss. And sometimes they're decent, right? Like, you know, spend five thousand dollars and earn 35,000 points. Like, I would I would do that. That's a decent offer. But sometimes it's like spend$20,000 and earn 10,000 points. I would not do that. So you have to kind of just think about what like what multiplier am I getting on my spend? And is it does it make sense or not? But that is one way that you can earn extra points is ask for retention offers. The other thing you can do is instead of asking for a retention offer, you can downgrade. So one mistake that I made earlier this year is I canceled one of my Amex business platinum cards because I didn't need two and I didn't want to pay the annual fee. In hindsight, what I should have done was downgrade it to the Amex green business card, which has a$95 annual fee and is much better to stomach than the$895. And then my thought process there is once you downgrade, sometimes they send you upgrade offers, right? And sometimes those offers are good. So then I could have, you know, upgraded my card. Yes, I would have had to pay the the new annual fee, but I would have gotten, you know, another good chunk of points without having to open up another card, without having that that ding on my credit report. So again, you want you can either ask for a retention offer or downgrade with the intention of hopefully getting an upgrade offer down the road. Or if you currently have, let's say, an Amex gold card, you might be able to get an upgrade offer to the Amex Platinum. Or same thing with the business gold. If you have the business gold, you might be able to get an upgrade to the business platinum. So sometimes these will just appear in your account. So keep an eye out, you know, for those. Um I think those can be a really great way to kind of shuffle around your cards again without having to get a new one. I'm starting to lose my voice, I feel like. So hopefully it holds out through the rest of this episode. So another way that we earned a good chunk of points this year without opening a new card was I got an offer. Actually, Dwayne and I both got offers to open an Amex checking account. And the offer was 70,000 membership rewards points. Um, I forget what the direct deposit requirements were, but it wasn't huge. Maybe$10,000. And we did that for both of us. So that's another 140,000 membership rewards points without opening a new credit card, without really anything. And that is also not factored into my 2 million points earned this year. So at the end, I'm gonna do a total um like I'm gonna add it all up, right? Um, but again, that's another sign a bonus or two, like that's huge. So don't skip out on that. And then there's one more thing that I do not hear people talk about a lot where you can earn a few extra points. Or if they do talk about it, they are not very explicit with how they're doing it. So sometimes in your Amex account, again, you have to have an Amex card for this to, you know, for you to be able to get targeted for any of the offers that I'm talking about. But once you do, pay attention because they will send you offers in your account. And sometimes they will offer you the ability to get an employee card. This is if you have Amex business cards, they will offer you the ability to get an employee card, and the offers on these vary a little bit. But the best one that I have seen is add an employee, add up to five employee cards and earn 15,000 points on each card when you spend a minimum of$4,000. That's the best one that I've seen. Sometimes I've seen 7.5,000 points for$4,000 in spend per card. That's not so good. So if you see that one, hold out because there's a better one. Now, you might be thinking, well, I don't have employees. My business does not have employees. Yes, neither does ours. However, what we have done is we have added employee cards under both my name and Duane's name. And this helps us keep some purchases separate. So, for example, I have one for Christmas shopping that I recently opened, and I'm gonna put all my Christmas shopping on there, and then I have like a basically a separate statement just for Christmas shopping. And so think of that as another creative way to earn a few extra points without having to open up a new card. Now, you do have to supply a social security number and date of birth and name for the cards, and in order to activate them, you you need those things. So don't do your kids' names because for Amex, I think they have to be 13 or older. You'll want to confirm that for me because we haven't done this because our none of our kids are that old. Um, so double check that that's the age. If you have kids that are 13 or older, then go crazy, I guess, if they are an employee of your business in some way. But for us, I just added myself a couple of times and Duane a couple of times. And we will use those cards. We have, I think, six months, and every time we spend 4,000 on one of them, I just kind of put it away, you know, and then the points generally post in, you know, a couple of days. So that can be another way if you're gonna get all five of those and you can meet the minimum spend to basically just bump up your points balance a little bit without opening a new card. And because it's business cards, you know, they're not they're not gonna count towards your 524 or personal credit or anything like that. So okay, so let me get to the totals, and then I'm gonna share kind of what I'm thinking of on the horizon for the next three to six months. So in this total, I've made a couple of assumptions. So for referrals, I think it was uh around 120,000 points. So I know I for sure did six referrals. I actually think I did seven, but one didn't track. So I'm doing, and it wasn't like it wasn't someone I know, so I can't ask them for the details and ask Chase to track it. That would be very invasive, and I would never do that. So I'm I'm calling it at six referrals for the year, um, plus the sign-up bonus spend, plus the Amex checking account bonuses, plus racketton, and I've done and completed the spend on two employee cards. Okay, and I'm working on the third for Christmas, but I don't know that that will um, I mean, I guess it should post by the end of the year, but I'm not I'm not factoring it in yet because it hasn't, I haven't completed it. So when I add all of those things together, okay, I arrive at 2,261,000 points. Okay, I have not factored in categories from everyday spend because that's actually really difficult to figure out, and I just didn't feel like doing the math. Um, and the year is not over yet. So TBD on that. Um, but again, 2.2 million points, and that does not factor in the 300,000 points from the Amex Business Platinum that we are going to start working on here shortly. So, really, if you add that in, it's over 2.5 million points earned this year. That is huge. Like, um like that's almost a million points more than what we earned last year. So that is insane to me. Um, I hope some of the tips that I gave were helpful for maybe just some creative ways of how you can get a few extra points without, you know, new cards or whatever. Um, but let's talk about the next, you know, one or two months left in 2025 plus the first few months of 2026 because there are both some new cards upcoming that I want to make sure we are able to apply for if we can and if it makes sense. And then I I'm not sure if we will get one more card this year or not. I'm considering getting Dwayne an AMX personal platinum card. Now, there's a way that you can kind of triple dip the credits on really the any card, but that for us, we would be doing it on the personal platinum card. A couple things to note about the personal platinum, they just did a revamp of it. The credits are actually really great and are in line with a lot of stuff we buy, anyways. So that would actually probably be a keeper card for us. But if you just wanted to get the card for one year and then cancel it because it does have a very high annual fee, let me explain what the triple dip is. So these cards have quarterly um like credits, basically. So it's like the coupon book, right? They have quarterly credits that you can use. So the triple dip is you apply for the card like second week of December, okay? It's a premium card, so it should arrive pretty quickly. And you utilize all of the Q4 credits that you can before the end of December. Then you have the card for the entire year, you utilize all of the quarterly and biannual credits through the all of 2026, and then middle of December 2026 is when you hit your one-year anniversary and the annual fee will post. And then from that date, you have 30 days to basically request that you want to either downgrade or cancel the card, and they will refund the annual fee. So then you wait until the first week of January, and in the first week of January, you utilize all the Q1 2027 credits that you can, and then once those credits have posted, then you message Amex and you again either cancel or downgrade if you don't want to keep the card more than a year. So that's essentially giving you six quarters worth of credits on a one-year annual fee. So we are maybe going to do that. I say maybe because the current offer that's publicly available on that card is um it's as high as 175,000 points, I think. But it's like hard to know what your offer will be, especially if you get the pop-up. And I haven't tried for for this card yet. I just don't like the as high as language because it um it like leaves a lot of of things open for interpretation, right? And so if I don't know what the offer will be, I don't know if I want it, and we're not even in a place right now where we could accept it because we just got the business platinum, so TBD, but I am considering getting that card in Dwayne's name. That would put him at 624, which is a little bit of a concern because he does not drop down until um July. If he got that card and he was at 624, he would drop back down to 524 in July, and not a he wouldn't be under 524 for a full year, essentially. So that's something else to keep in mind. But I am 324, but I cannot get the Amex personal platinum because I do not have the Amex gold card. So we do have an Amex personal gold, but it is in Dwayne's name, so I have not gotten that card yet. Um, let me use this as an opportunity to call out that there are still so many cards available that we do not have, and we have been doing this for four years now and going hard. Okay. We opened 16 cards this year between the two of us, and there are still so many cards that we do not have. So, one thing people get concerned about is I'm gonna run out of cards. You are not, I can assure you. The list of cards that I want is still very long, so do not stress about that. Just wanted to make sure to call that out. Um, okay, so in it, other than the personal platinum card, the cards that I am thinking about for 2026 are a little bit up in the air because there are rumored to be some new cards coming out. Well, some are rumored and some we know are coming. And I need to see what those are in order to decide what's going to make the most sense. Um, here's a couple of examples. So Built has three new cards coming for sure in February, and I am likely getting one of those because that is going to allow us to utilize um, or I'm sorry, to earn points on our mortgage. That's how I understand it. And I want that because that's money we spent, anyways. However, that it will take a 524 spot, so I need to be a little bit cautious of that. And then Chase and Hyatt are also rumored to have a new premium card coming soon. And we know with Chase that again to get approved, you need to be under 524 or so it seems. And so I want to make sure that I have a spot for that card because I do think that I likely will want it, um, given that we, you know, have Hyatt Globalist status. Um, we did earn our globalist status already, again, for uh 2026. And so I'm assuming that I'm gonna want that card, but again, TBD, because we don't know what it is or what the offer is. So that's another kind of potential that I'm thinking about. I also really want the Chase Sapphire Reserve for Business. I got denied Dwayne and I were both denied for that card this year, so I am hoping that by utilizing all of my existing Chase cards that I can apply for that sometime in the first half of 2026 and get approved because that is a monster sign-up bonus at 200,000 points. Chase points, that's huge. And then the other thing on my radar is in the spring, AMX generally does elevated offers on their Hilton cards. So Dwayne and I currently each have the Hilton Aspire, which is the um premium Hilton card, it gives diamond status and a free night certificate every year. And those free night certificates are still currently uncapped, meaning you can use them at any Hilton where there is standard award availability. And so I would also like to get us each a Hilton surpass card when there is an elevated offer. Generally, the elevated offers come with a free night certificate and then points. The amount of points varies, but I I want to say it's around 150,000, 170,000 Hilton points plus the free night certificate. Now, the free night certificate you do not get every year on the surpass unless you spend$15,000 or more. However, when it's when the offer is elevated, it does come with one free night certificate immediately. And so I would want the elevated offer so that I could pair that with the free night certificates that we already have. And then I have the option, if I need more for whatever reason, if I spend$15,000 on the card, I can earn another one. There is also a strategy where you play the upgrade-downgrade game between the surpass and the aspire, um, and kind of navigate earning um free night certificates that way. So I'm not going to go into too much detail. I will once I have done it, but I have not done it. But the way that I understand it, so the Hilton Surpass card, you earn a free night certificate every year if you spend$15,000 or more on the card. The AMX Aspire card, you earn a second free night certificate beyond the one that the card comes with if you spend$30,000 or more on the card each year. So the way that I understand it is that you could spend$15,000 on the surpass, you could get the free night certificate, then you could upgrade to the Hilton Aspire, you could spend another$15,000, and then you would effectively have hit$30,000 in spend on the Aspire card, even though it wasn't always the Aspire, and you would earn then a second free night certificate. So again, that's super high level. I haven't done that yet. Um, I do think there's also a way you can do it in reverse, where if you have the aspire card and you spend$30,000 on it, you get the free night certificate, then you downgrade to the surpass and you get a second free night certificate automatically because it tracks that you have hit$15,000 that year. That is very much, I would say, an intermediate to advanced strategy. So if you are brand new and you are listening to this and you are like, what on earth is she talking about? Just forget about it for now. Don't even worry about it. I just wanted to briefly address it because that is kind of how I'm thinking through getting these cards next year. So I think that about wraps it up. Um, hopefully this episode was helpful. I feel like I jam-packed it. So sorry that I've been prattling on for the last 45-ish minutes. Um, but hopefully you got something valuable out of this. If you have any questions about anything that I talked about, send me a DM on Instagram. I will link a few of the things that I referenced in the show notes, including if you do want a book a points consultation with me, I will put the link in there for you to do that. Um, and anything else that I referenced, I'll link it in the show notes. Thank you so much for listening. If you liked this episode, please leave us a five star rating and review wherever you listen, as that helps more people find the podcast. And we appreciate you so much, and we will catch you on the next episode. Bye.