When "Free" Travel Isn't Really Free - Realistic Cash Back Options for Families!

https://5calls.org/

https://www.standwithminnesota.com/

Chase Ink Premier Referral Link (Also 100K Ink Preferred!!!)

Never used Rakuten? Join now and earn $50 cash back! www.rakuten.com/r/RAYAPI6?eeid=28187 

Free flights don’t feed your kids on vacation. That’s the real truth because even with points and miles, we still need to fund the real costs of travel - meals, trains, tips, tours, and all the little line items that don't fit inside award charts. 

We break the plan into four parts. First, bank account bonuses: what they are, how to hit the requirements, why “push” ACH often matters, and simple tracking to avoid early‑closure fees. We point you to trusted resources like Doctor of Credit and explain how to double up when there’s no household cap. Second, cashback portals: Rakuten, Capital One Shopping, and TopCashback can sometimes stack with bank bonuses on select fintech signups, and quarterly payouts make a solid travel fund if you plan ahead. Third, cashback credit cards: we highlight business options like Chase Ink Business Premier and U.S. Bank Triple Cash Rewards, plus family‑friendly picks like Capital One Savor and Amex Blue Cash Preferred for groceries, dining, and gas. Fourth, purchase erasers: use Capital One miles at a clean one cent per mile to wipe rentals, trains, and boutique stays that don’t play nicely with points.

We also share real‑life tactics: split hotel bills to trigger Amex Offers, volunteer for reimbursable school or work expenses to earn rewards without extra out‑of‑pocket costs, and choose when to prioritize cash over points based on your season of life. The outcome is a strategy that pairs your favorite points redemptions with dependable cash streams so your next family trip feels affordable from takeoff to taxi back home.

If this helps you rethink “free travel,” tap follow, share with a friend who loves a deal, and leave a quick review telling us your favorite cashback win.

Transcript

Welcome And Today’s Focus

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Points and Miles might get you flights and hotels for next to nothing, but what about all the other expenses while traveling? In today's episode, we're diving into a few ways to earn some cold hard cash for your next trip or really for anything you want. So listen in. Hi, I'm Raya.

SPEAKER_00 0:29

And I'm Dwayne.

SPEAKER_01 0:30

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

SPEAKER_00 0:38

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

SPEAKER_01 0:45

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 0:50

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

A Heavy Week And Small Ways To Help

SPEAKER_01 1:15

Dwayne will not be joining for this episode. And I hope everyone is having a fantastic week. We are going to be talking all things cash back today, but before I dive into that, I did want to just share something that has been on my mind recently, I think for a lot of us. I almost actually did not record an episode today because I have been feeling sad and helpless and hopeless all weekend and just kind of feeling like, you know, the points and miles and traveling and whatever feels very trivial to me at this time. It feels like what is the point? And there are so many more important things and issues happening in our country right now that this all feels kind of silly. However, um, I am going, I've obviously am recording an episode. Um and I promise we'll get to it. But I I thought I could share a few things that either I'm gonna do this week or have been doing that have been helping me to feel like I am, you know, contributing positively in a small way. And I thought I would share a few of those in case you you are feeling similarly and are just not sure what to do. So, number one is something we can't do right this second, but please vote. Um, we vote in every election, and while there is not one happening currently, um, that is absolutely something that every single one of us can do to try to make our country a better place. Um, in the meantime, the other thing I will be doing this week is using the Five Calls website. It is five calls, the number five, c all s dot org. It is basically a

Donate Credits And Support Minnesota

SPEAKER_01 3:00

way for you to easily and quickly contact your state representatives about issues that you feel strongly about, and it kind of walks you through the whole process and again makes it very easy and seamless for a busy, you know, working mom like myself. I will put a link to that in the comments. I will also be donating all of our Instacart credits this month to food banks in Minnesota that I can find um through the Instacart community carts um donation thing. I talked about this in much more depth in a podcast at the end of December. And so if you're kind of wondering what I'm talking about, you know, go back and listen because I go into a lot more detail. But essentially, any of the Chase co-branded or ink cards have Instacart credits. And if you don't utilize them for your own use, you can utilize them to donate food to either a local food bank or really a food bank anywhere in the country, and someone will, you know, deliver those donations on your behalf. So it is an easy way to contribute a little bit. And then one other thing is donating. Um, there is a website that is called standwithminnesota.com, and they have quite a few um, you know, ways that you can can donate to different organizations that will go to help the people in Minnesota. And so those are a few things that we can do from afar. And if you've made it this far already, thank you for listening and appreciate that we can make this a safe place to talk about things like this on occasion.

Why “Free Travel” Isn’t Free

SPEAKER_01 4:36

Now, let's jump into the meat of today's episode, which is all about cash back. One of the biggest misconceptions in the points and miles travel hacking world is that we we like to call it free travel. And it's not free. It's just not. Is it heavily discounted? Yes. Are we getting, you know, maybe a higher level of experience or a more luxury experience than we would have gotten without it? Also, yes. But is it free? No, it is not. Okay, we spent $2,000 just on bullet trains in Japan. Okay, that's that's a lot of money.

Four Buckets For Earning Cash

SPEAKER_01 5:13

So I've got a few ideas and and ways that you can earn actual cash that you can put towards the other expenses on a trip. So, you know, food, um, excursions or tour guides or transportation, or maybe if you even just need to cover the taxes and fees because you're, you know, doing business class and it's $500 a person or whatever just for the taxes and fees, like whatever it is, you know, or maybe you're in a season of life where you're not traveling right now, right? Maybe you just had a new baby, or you know, you've got a new job and you can't take a lot of time off. And, you know, maybe this is just a way to earn a little bit of extra spending money, right? Maybe you want to donate it. Maybe, you know, you just want to put it in your retirement account. Um, I actually read an article that I think was from Travel on Points last year around how they tried to use um bank account bonuses to fund a retirement account. And I thought that is a genius idea. So I basically got kind of four buckets of which you can earn cash back from. And so those four buckets are gonna be um one I already mentioned, number one is bank account bonuses. Um, number two would be things like um racketin or other shopping portals. Uh, number three would be cashback cards. Um, and then sort of in a fourth bucket would be like a travel or purchase eraser, which some credit cards

Bank Bonuses: How They Work

SPEAKER_01 6:51

offer. So let's jump in to um bank account bonuses because this is something that I have been talking about on this podcast for two years, but I just don't hear it mentioned like as often as I think it should be mentioned. Like it doesn't appear to be very mainstream unless you're like deep into the points and miles ecosystem, which I am. Um, but otherwise, like I see a few people talk about them here and there, but it it's it should be talked about more. So a bank account bonus is essentially a similar to a credit card signup bonus where you would earn points for a certain amount of spend. A bank account bonus will give you cash for basically meeting whatever their requirements are. And typically there is some sort of direct deposit requirement or account funding requirement, right? So that could look like um, you know, uh, earn $500 cash after a, you know, $5,000 in direct deposits on this new account. And so the way that it works is you open the bank account, and this doesn't really affect your your credit in any way. Um, it's not gonna affect you being able to get credit cards, certainly. Um, they do use a system kind of similar to like a credit score, and it's called checks systems. Um, but it's it's not gonna be a hard pull on your credit or anything like that. So you apply for the the bank account. Most times I'll say that you're generally approved. And then you just have to read the fine print to understand what the requirements are and make sure that you are going to be able to hit them. Um, sometimes there are really high direct deposit requirements, in which case, you know, probably not worth it. But like, I don't know, if it's five or ten thousand dollars over the course of three months, I feel like that's generally feasible for most people. The best resource to find out what um what current bank account bonuses are available is gonna be Doctor of Credit. So go to Google, type in doctor of credit bank account bonuses, and you're gonna get a very long list. And the list will be broken down into like checking accounts, savings accounts, and then business accounts. The business accounts almost always have a very high direct deposit requirement or funding requirement in order to get the bonus, but the bonuses are also generally higher. So, you know, that's gonna be up to you and your comfort level. I generally stick to the checking or the savings accounts. And then Doctor of Credit is also gonna tell you like if it says, okay, $5,000 in direct deposits, it will tell you if an ACH push will work in lieu of a direct deposit. So if you either

Direct Deposits, Push vs Pull

SPEAKER_01 9:41

don't have a direct deposit that you can easily move around or you just don't have one at all, sometimes you can push money from another account where it currently lives into the new account and that will trigger the requirement of the direct deposit. And Doctor of Credit will kind of crowdsource this and people will report back, okay, you know, I did the SoFi bonus and, you know, I pushed a deposit from whatever XYZ bank into SoFi and it did work for the bonus or it did not. And you'll be able to look through like the comments basically and read, okay, you know, a push from Chase seemed to work, but a push from Bank of America did not. That's just an example that's completely not true. So I'm just giving you an example. Um, and if you're not sure what a push is, so there's push and pull, okay. So a pull would be if I go into my bank account and I tell tell my, let's just say my Chase bank account that I want to take money from my Capital One account, my Capital One checking account. Okay. So then I'm I'm in my Chase account and I like basically set up a transfer and I'm pulling that money from Capital One into my Chase account. Okay. A push is where again I'm in my Chase account and let's say I want to push to a Bank of America checking account. So again, I'm in my Chase account and I am going to say, I want to send this money to Bank of America and I'm gonna do it from my Chase account. Okay. A pull would be going into Bank of America and saying, I want to take this money from Chase. So hopefully that makes sense, push or pull. But for a direct deposit requirement, it's it's you're gonna always want to do a push, right? So if I open up a new Bank of America account and I'm gonna send the money from my Chase account, I'm gonna go into my Chase account and I'm going to set up a transfer into a new new bank, right? Add the account info, and then I'm going to send the money from Chase. I'm going to push it from Chase to Bank of America. And then, you know, hopefully that will trigger the bonus. Um and so Doctor of Credit has it's a fantastic resource. It is free. They probably get some sort of a commission if you um sign up for an account using their link, I'm sure. But it's a fantastic resource, and I use it all the time. I do have a goal of doing quite a few bank account bonuses in 2026. Last year we only did a few, and I think we earned maybe around $1,000. So not a ton. I do plan to ramp that up this year. Um, a few other things to keep

Timelines, Tracking, And Household Strategy

SPEAKER_01 12:20

in mind for bank account bonuses is they gener like you generally need to allow a solid 90 days before you'll have the cash on hand to utilize. So, really anything that I'm gonna do this year is gonna like I'll have that cash on hand for like trips later this year or maybe even next year. And so keep that in mind. It's not quick or instant by any means. And then obviously, once you have earned the bonus, you'll want to just review if there were any requirements on how long the account had to be open. Sometimes they have early termination fees. So if you open the an account today and you get the bonus and then you close it in March, you know, if they have like a six-month window where you need to keep it open, you're gonna be charged like an early termination fee. So just read all the fine print. It's all spelled out for you on Doctor of Credit. You really can't miss it. And I just keep a little spreadsheet where I just keep track of, you know, the account I opened, who did I open it for? I'll come back to that in a second. What was the bonus? Did I meet the direct deposit requirements? Did I earn the bonus? And then did I close the account? And and if there's a date, then I'll put like, you know, I have to wait until April 15th and then I can close it or whatever it may be. So the other thing is that if you have a player two in your household, you can do this for both of you. Doctor of Credit will also tell you if there is a household limit. So if there is a household limit, then only one of you can get the account at one time and and therefore the bonus. But if there is no household limit, then technically you could both earn the bonus on that um bank account bonus. So you could easily earn several thousand dollars a year just by doing bank account bonuses and nothing else. You just need to be organized about it and, you know, kind of continually moving money around is how I look at it. Unless you have the direct deposit and it's easy for you to update, then by all means, just do that and you know, don't even worry about the push or the pull

Stacking Portals With Bank Bonuses

SPEAKER_01 14:29

thing. So bank account bonuses, I think, are like number one. That is if I like wanted to earn a lot of cash for a trip, that is where I would start. Um, I generally like them to be $300, but I will do them for $200 if the requirements are like low and or are not a lot. Um, the other thing to keep in mind is sometimes they do have like the minimum account balance has to be above a certain amount for a certain amount of time. And so you just have to think that through as well of like, okay, well, if this, you know, if this $5,000 needs to sit here for like 60 days or 30 days or whatever it may be, like just make sure that that's not gonna get you into any trouble, right? Make sure that you you have the the funds to make that happen. Um, and yeah, I think so I think bank account bonuses are a phenomenal way to earn some cash to pay for all these kids and all their expenses on a trip. Another way to kind of accelerate the bank account bonus is occasionally there will be shopping portals like Rackaton that also offer you a bonus in addition to the bonus you would get from the bank. So, right now, if you haven't done the SoFi banking, that is $250 cash back on Racketton, right? Plus the bonus you would get from the SoFi bank. Dwayne and I have already done this. We did this uh either last year or the year before, I can't remember. And we they're actually both still open. So um we are cannot do that again. Um, but there is another one that we have not done yet that we will likely do, and that is through Chime. Um, and so Chime is basically another like banking app, and you can open up an account and earn right now on my Racketton, it's $250 cash back. Um, and so stacking the bank account bonuses with a cashback portal is another great way to basically boost your earnings.

Cashback Portals You Should Use

SPEAKER_01 16:34

Cashback portals are my second bucket. Okay. So those are going to be things like Rackiton, Capital One shopping, top cashback. Um, I don't know, there's there's a bunch of others. Uh cashbackmonitor.com is actually a great site to look at different cashback sites and choose which one has the highest offer if you're buying something specific. So definitely check that out. All cashback portals are a little bit different in the way that they work, and this is certainly not going to be an exhaustive list by any means. I'm just going to talk about a few of the more popular ones. Uh, but Capital One Shopping, for example, which is different than Capital One Offers. As a side note, Capital One offers is when you're logged into your Capital One account and those earn Capital One points. But separate from that, there is Capital One Shopping, which is a cashback portal. That one specifically earns cash back via gift cards. So that one I think is maybe a little harder to use, but I guess you know, if you probably could find like Walmart or something on there and utilize that as a gift card, you could um, you know, use that for groceries and then kind of take your grocery money and put that towards your vacation budget that week or that month or whatever. Um another one is obviously going to be top cashback. That's one I actually haven't used myself, but I do see that sometimes they have kind of elevated offers, depending on what you're buying. And then obviously the most popular one that we all know and love is racketon. And yes, racketon earns points, and that's how we choose to earn our cash back. But I think that sometimes we can forget that with Rackiton, you can literally just earn cash and they will mail you a check every quarter. And so, and some of these, like $250 cash back, that's a big amount. Um, now again, it's similar to the bank account bonuses, it's not instant cash. You do have to plan ahead and you have to wait um until you are um until the quarter is over, right? And then they'll mail you the check. So I just went into my Racketton account and checked, and my cash back for this quarter alone is $251.99. That is just the confirmed amount. I have another $153 pending, and my lifetime cash back since July of 2023 is $2,785.58. So that is quite a nice chunk. Now, of course, I've

Cashback Cards And Why They’re Underrated

SPEAKER_01 19:05

been earning it uh in points the majority of this time. First AMX points, and now I've transferred over to built points, at least through the May payout. But I mean, that's it's nothing to sneeze at, certainly. That would pay for a couple of days of food on a trip for all five of us. So again, just don't sleep on the cashback portal options. The last of the three main cashback buckets that I think of are cards that earn cashback. So, like credit cards that earn cash back instead of points. These are not talked about very often in the points and miles world because well, I think primarily because there are typically not affiliate links for these cards. And a lot of points and miles creators, the way that they make the bulk of their money doing this as like a job, because it is a job, um, is through credit. Credit card affiliate links, which means they promote a credit card, you sign up for the card using their affiliate link, and then they earn money for you doing that, kind of like a referral fee almost. And there are, you know, some cards just don't have affiliate um links, and that's fine. But I do think that's why cashback cards are not talked about as often. Uh, we do not have affiliate links for any credit cards ever. And so, as much as that sucks, because I would love the income from that, you have to be able to meet certain thresholds in terms of volume in order to get affiliate links, is how I understand it, anyway, anyways. But it also comes with a ton of restrictions. I'm sure you guys have seen people on, you know, creators online talking about their favorite bank, but they can't say the name of the bank. And I don't know, it all feels very weird. I don't know why the banks have the rules they do, but we don't have any of those links. So we're not incentivized one way or another, you know, for you to sign up for one card versus another. Sometimes we do put our referral links, which means we would earn some points for you signing up. But um, at this point, I feel like most of our listeners already have a lot of the cards that we could earn points on for referrals. And so it's it's not a huge um point generator for us either. Um, but I digress. So back to the cashback cards. I think that's the main reason these are not talked about a lot, but there are some really good cashback cards. If you are just maybe in a season of life where you don't really care about the points, or maybe you have a lot of points and you're just not in a place to use them right now, um, or whatever the case may be, everybody has a different situation. But if cashback is your main focus, then there are some potentially really good cards out there. Um, or if you again, if you're just looking to offset some of your trip costs, you know, then this can be a great way to do that as well. So similarly to the the shopping portals,

Standout Business And Personal Picks

SPEAKER_01 22:01

this will not be an exhaustive list of cashback cards because there are a lot of them, but I do have a few that I think are talked about more often than others because they have good offers. So the first one is going to be actually the Chase Inc. Premier business card. Now, this is a card that we often say you should not apply for because it doesn't earn points and the cashback cannot be converted into Chase Ultimate Rewards points. However, if you can get the card and meet the minimum spend, then the cashback is $1,000. And that can go a very long way towards, you know, a kind of like a vacation budget, right? And so the Chase Inc. Premier business card, it is a business card, so it does not count towards your 524 status. The minimum spend for the Ink business premiere card is $10,000. So you do have to be able to meet that in the first 90 days. But again, the cashback is $1,000 and this card earns 2% cash back on all purchases and it's unlimited. So really, when you're spending $10,000, you're gonna earn the thousand dollars, but you're also gonna earn another $200 cashback on your spend, right? Because it the card earns 2% cash back. So really it's $1,200 cash back. And for without taking a $524 spot, I think that's a really, really great card to get. Um, if I if we for some reason have a referral link for this, I will link it in the show notes. Um, I don't really know how that works because we don't have neither one of us have this card, but I'm not opposed to it. I absolutely think that there's a place for this card. Another card that I hear people talk about a lot is the Venmo card. This is a personal card, however, and I believe it currently earns 3% cash back. Um, I do think that Costco is um like they count Costco as grocery on that card. So I guess if you spend a lot at Costco, that could be an option. Um, but again, it is a personal card, so it will take up a 524 spot. The other one that I wanted to highlight though is the US Bank Triple Cash Rewards card. This is a business rewards credit card, and I believe that the sign-up bonus right now is $500. I have seen it be higher. So there, I think I believe at one point it was $750. That would be phenomenal. Um, but even $500 is not too terrible. Um, there's no annual fee, and this one gives you cash back in certain categories: um, gas, office supply stores, and restaurants, it earns 3% cash back, um, 1% on all other eligible purchases, but again, no annual fee on this card either. And I think a 0% APR for the first 12 months. So again, like if you had a big you know purchase coming up and needed to float it for a little bit while you have time to pay it off or whatever, um, this is another really popular card that again is a business card. It's US bank, so it's a different bank

Category Leaders For Families

SPEAKER_01 25:15

than most, you know, most other credit cards. It's it's not like a Chase or an Amex. And so I think that the US Bank Triple Cash Rewards Visa Business Credit Card could also be a really great option if you're looking to bulk up your cash back. To earn the $500 cash back on this card, you have to make purchases totaling $4,500 or more in the first 90. No, I'm sorry, in the first 150 days from account opening. So that's five months actually. So that is even easier. I want to give a quick mention to two other cashback cards that I think could be really great depending on where you spend the bulk of your money. So, number one is gonna be the Capital One Saver Cash Rewards Credit Card. This earns an unlimited 3% cash back on dining, entertainment, streaming, and grocery, which is huge. So if you have a big grocery spend every month or every year, that could be a really good option. And if you pair it with a like a venture or venture X card, you can convert the cash back into Capital One points. But again, you don't have to. You can just keep it as straight cash back. The other one is an Amex card. It is the Blue Cash Preferred from American Express. And this one earns 6% cash back at uh US supermarkets up to $6,000 per year, 6% on streaming and 3% on gas. So both of those, I think, for a family, those are definitely some of our higher spend categories. So those could be great options as well. Now, of course, there are ways to like convert your points into cash

Erasing Travel Purchases With Points

SPEAKER_01 26:49

back. And we're not gonna dive into that today, but it is an option, especially if you are just wanting to erase a few travel purchases, like with your capital one card, for example. That can also be a phenomenal way to you know bring your trip cost closer to zero. Maybe you need to do a rental car, right? That will it all it needs to do is code as travel. You pay for it with your capital one card, and then you can go back and erase either all or part of the purchase with your points. You're getting a one cent per point value. So again, it's not going to be outsized value, but if your if your goal is as close to zero as possible, then absolutely this is a very valid option that you should absolutely consider. Do not let anyone else tell you how you should spend your points. Okay. And then if you're using cashback cards, think of things that you can pay for that you're gonna get reimbursed for.

Get Reimbursed While Earning Cash Back

SPEAKER_01 27:50

So think a little bit outside of the box. I'm I was talking with a friend about this episode, and so I'm I want to give credit where credit is due. Um, she works at a school and she had some really fantastic ideas for just ways that you can kind of increase your spend a little bit without actually spending any of your own money. So things like volunteering with your school's PTO organization, offering to arrange the staff appreciation lunches, or um volunteering to do shopping for a school event, a school party, teacher gifts, whatever. Um, and then put that on your card and then let the PTO or the school or your job or whatever reimburse you for that money. All last week I was out of town for a work event, and we do this event every year. It's always in January. And this year we happen to be staying at an omni hotel, and we don't get to choose the hotel, obviously. Like there's an event rate, and we, you know, we pay it on our card and then we submit it as an expense. Uh, but the Amex cards or some of them had an offer for Omni hotels where if you spend $500 or more at an omni hotel or resort, then you get $100 back. And I had this offer on multiple cards, and my bill for the hotel was over $1,000.

Key Takeaways And Next Steps

SPEAKER_01 29:12

So I made sure to add those offers to my account. I asked at checkout to split the bill between two EMX cards. And it's only been a few days, and I've already gotten notice that I will be getting my two $100 credits for that spend. And I'm gonna submit the full amount for reimbursement, just like everybody else I work with. So there we have it, folks. Three and a half buckets of different ways you can earn cash back. We've got bank account bonuses, we've got shopping portals, sometimes shopping portals to get a bank account bonus, and then we've got cashback cards, which none of these things are talked about, I think, in my opinion, enough. Um but when you're traveling with a family, especially four, five, six people, the all the other expenses add up tremendously. So hopefully this episode has been helpful. I think that if you can combine some points earning cards with some cashback cards every year, uh and bank account bonuses, of course, and shopping portals, that I think you could easily offset a significant amount of your um travel expenses outside of flights and hotels utilizing these cashback options. And you could easily, I think, get, you know, a couple vacations each year, which is what I think the average family takes, anyways. And so hopefully this episode was helpful. I will put links to anything that I talked about in the comments, including maybe a Chase Inc. premiere referral link if I can find one. Um, and I am now gonna go sign up for that chime bank account bonus. Thank you and see you on the next one. Bye.