Maximizing Holiday Shopping Portals with Mari from @marionthemap

In this episode, I’m joined by Mari from Mari on the Map to talk about one of the easiest, most underrated ways to earn more points right now: shopping portals.

With banks tightening welcome offers and approvals getting harder, portals let you earn thousands of extra points on purchases you’re already making — no new cards required.

We cover:

• How Mari went from casual points user to running family trips on miles
• What shopping portals are (Rakuten, airline portals, bank offers)
• How to stack: portal → the right card → card-linked offers
• The Rakuten x Bilt (referral links) partnership and when it makes sense
• Common mistakes that break tracking (gift cards, coupon codes, ad blockers, apps)
• How portal earnings can turn into Hyatt nights, domestic flights, or even saver fares to Europe
• Tools that make it easier: SaveWise and CardPointers (my affiliate links)

Quick action steps:

• Check SaveWise (or Cashback Monitor) before you buy
• Install the Rakuten browser extension
• Use a card that earns more than 1X on everyday spend
• Turn on and activate card-linked offers
• Try one stacked purchase this week and watch the points roll in

Find Mari:

• Instagram: @marionthemap
• Website: https://marionthemap.com/
• Course: Mad Miles Masterclass

Transcript

Maximizing Holiday Shopping Portals with Mari from @marionthemap 

[00:00:00] Hey friends. Welcome back to the Lazy Budget Travel Tips podcast. I'm Genni Franklin, and today I'm joined by the amazing Mari from Mari on the map to talk about one of the most underrated ways to earn a ton of points. Shopping portals with banks tightening welcome offers and approvals. Getting tougher earning points for new cards is harder than ever.

That's why portals really matter right now. They're an easy and even a lazy way to earn points on things you're already buying. No credit pulls, no minimum spends, and no extra work. We're gonna break down how to maximize your holiday shopping using portal stacks, card multipliers, and browser extensions, plus a quick tie in to how these little wins can snowball into big redemptions like a Hyatt night, or even a saver fare to Europe.

If you wanna earn more points this season without opening a single new card, this [00:01:00] episode is for you. So let's jump in. Hey Mari, thanks for joining us. Hi. Thanks for having me. So why don't you tell us a little bit about how you got into points and Miles. Sure. So I've been really loosely into points and miles for like the last 11 years or so, but I didn't really get super serious about it until my family grew because my husband and I had two kids.

After the pandemic, we kind of quickly realized that we were not in a position to travel the same way we had when it was just the two of us. And we wanted to be able to share this hobby with our children, share the love of travel with them, but it's a lot more expensive when you're traveling, which is two people than with your traveling with four.

So we kind of decided like, okay, we have to figure out a way to do this, um, more cost effectively. And that was really where points and Miles came in. I had had. A Chase Sapphire preferred card for a really long time and it was earning points, but I really had no idea what to do with them except for use them in the [00:02:00] portal.

And when we decided to get into points and miles in a serious way, I was sitting on 500,000 chase points. So that's a lot of points. And you know, I realized really quickly, like once I learned how to use these in an effective way, that could get us several trips, not just one. So that kind of snowballed the whole thing.

And that was really where we started off. Then I started doing more research and learning, listening to podcasts and things like that, and it really just kept going from momentum, kept building, and now I share about points and miles on Instagram. And I also have a course that I do where I teach people about points and miles.

So it's certainly been a labor of love, but something that I really enjoy now. So how many years have you been doing this? You said you've been loosely doing it for like 10, 11 years. Yeah, so I got my, when I first started out, absolutely from the beginning, the only credit card I had was a Bank of America credit card that I had gotten in college.

And Bank of America does have a travel [00:03:00] rewards card that earns points that you can erase, travel purchases, kind of like the Capital One Venture cards. There's no transfer partners, so that's all you can do with it. And I was doing that for a really long time. You know, I would buy a train ticket and then erase it, buy a flight, and then erase it.

And I was like, okay, this is great. I, I know all about how to use points. And then I was living in a city and doing a lot of dining out. So I was like, okay, well let me find a card that's gonna earn me on dining. So that was when I opened the Chase Sapphire Preferred for the first time, and that one started earning me points too.

I wasn't doing anything with it more than just, you know, buying trips in the portal and using my points for that, which is not the most cost effective way to use them. So I had been doing that for probably a good six or seven years before I started getting really serious about it because, you know, just a pandemic.

When we started flying again in like 2021, which is about four years ago, that was when I started getting serious because I was traveling with two kids and a husband and we had to make. [00:04:00] Our travel budget stretch a lot further than it did when we were just a couple traveling. So that was when I started getting more serious about learning about transfer partners, how to earn a ton more points, which is great segue into what we're talking about today, because your regular, you know.

Spending in your regular online shopping is a way that you can earn just a ton of points without even really having to think about it and just making those like kind of micro changes to your habits as you're shopping. You know, taking a couple extra minutes to click through a portal or taking a couple extra minutes to see if you have a card link to offer.

Those are all things that can get you sometimes 10 or 20 x points without really having to make that much more effort and certainly without having to open a new credit card. Yeah, I was kind of in the same boat. I've been doing this for almost a decade, and when I first started, I mean our first redemption.

Was three nights free in London that I booked through the travel portal, but I wouldn't do anything differently because that was an easy way for me to just get [00:05:00] started. And I think it kind of gives you a good foundation, at least to kind of like get your feet wet when you're on Instagram or when you're following certain influencers.

It really gets a bad rap. You know, booking through the portal, they say that you have to transfer your points and transferring your points can be the most effective way depending on what you're gonna do. But starting off with something like booking through the portal, I think is really one of the best ways to just get started.

Yeah, I think in a lot of ways really like setting a good foundation for me, that I had that eraser card first because it really helped me understand the mindset of. I can exchange my points for a cash value. You know, like I can pay X amount of money for this plane ticket and I can cover that without having to understand like, oh, these points have like an actual monetary value, which can sometimes be challenging.

If you're a beginner, you're sort of like, well, what are these points? How do I know how much value they [00:06:00] have? And then what's the best way to use them? But certainly, um, you know, all of the different portals that exist, we will check and book things in and see if it's most cost effective, especially hotels.

Because a lot of times if you're traveling to areas of the world that don't have a lot of hotel chains or they don't have the more popular chains, you're not really gonna be able to get a great transferrable redemption on those. So the portal can be really great for that. It's just a matter of deciding how do you value your points and how much do you.

To spend in terms of, you know, either your cents per point or just your points in general to, you know, redeem a hotel and feel good about it. It's all about, it's all personal. It's all about what feels good for you. So do you feel good about this? Redemption is really all that matters. So I agree with what you're saying about how sometimes you see influencers who are like.

That's a bad redemption, or like this is a sexy redemption or something like that. If you feel good about it, it's a good redemption. If you're happy with it, if it's getting you where you wanna go [00:07:00] and it's stretching your travel budget further, that's a good redemption. Yeah. In our book, there's no such thing as a bad redemption.

So why do you think shopping portals matter so much right now? I mean, they mattered before, but especially right now. I think right now a lot of people are, you know, being faced with the situation where they're wanting to get the most out of every dollar they spend. And I kind of compare this to like the crazy couponers that used to exist, which I, maybe they still do exist, I'm not sure.

But it's sort of a way to like squeeze every tiny minute value out of the dollar you're spending. So you know, you can spend $1 and you can get one point and that's okay. Sometimes you're gonna do that. If you can spend $1 and get 10 points, why wouldn't you just go ahead and do that, especially if it's not gonna create a lot of extra effort for you.

Um, and I know we're on, you know, like we're all about being lazy and, you know, making your effort count. [00:08:00] Um, so this is a really easy way that you can be a little bit lazy and get more out of every single point. Um, I think also this is a wonderful time of year to be talking about this because a lot of the different shopping portals.

Are giving you exponentially higher amounts back than they normally would. So you might see a store that you shop at regularly, like Macy's, and they offer maybe two x back all year round. But around this time of year with the holidays and Black Friday, they might pop that up to five or 10 x and you're shopping this time of year anyway because have holiday gifts that you have to buy no matter what you're celebrating.

Um, there's end of year sales. There's seasonal things that you might need, you know, jacket, gloves and stuff depending on where you're living. So there's a lot of change happening this time of year, and it's a great time to take advantage of the sales that are going on and take advantage of the increase that you can get from some of the shopping portals in terms of the amount of points you'll get back.

So let's take a [00:09:00] step back just in case people don't really know what shopping portals are. Just like really quick, explain what it is and maybe a couple of examples that people can look up. So shopping portals are basically referrals that are, it's a website that you can go to and you look up the store that you would normally be shopping on.

You click on that referral link and go to the store and you would shop as normal. And because you clicked on that referral link, you're gonna get a benefit from that because you clicked through from that website instead of just going directly to where you wanted to shop. So some of the more popular ones right now I would say are Rakuten.

It's probably the most popular one. It gives you the ability to earn either. Points back from Amex or built or you can earn cash back, which can be a really simple way to get back if you don't wanna earn points or you're not sure how to use them. Um, so that one isn't easy, just like cash back or points back, uh, site that you can go through.

And then there's airline shopping portals. [00:10:00] Almost every single airline has their own, you know, American Airlines has a Delta, United, Southwest. Most of the major ones have one that you can click through and shop through. And the way that this kind of works, um, in practice is say you wanna buy a pair of gloves and you found them at Macy's, you type in rakuten.com, you go to the search bar and you type macy's dot com.

You see how much you're gonna get back at Macy's for sake of the example. Let's say it's five x. You click on that link to go to the Macy's website. You select the gloves you wanted to buy, put them in your cart, and you check out. And then Rakuten tracks. You had clicked through from there to go to Macy's and they will give you your points, the five x back on however much money you spent on macy's dot com within a certain timeframe.

It's usually around like 30 to 90 days. I think Rakuten is around like six weeks average right now, and then you'll get those points either as Amex points, if you selected that bill points, if you [00:11:00] selected that, or cash back, if you selected that just deposited directly into your Rakuten account. Then you can select the way that you want them delivered to you, so they can go directly into your Amex or built account or for cash back.

You can get a check or you can get put directly into your bank account. It's just like shopping normally at Macy's. The only difference is that you're clicking through Rakuten. Exactly. It's just a one extra click that you have to make, one extra website you have to go to. And many of these, um, shopping portals have browser extension, so sometimes you don't even have to click through to that website first.

If you have downloaded the browser extension, you can go ahead to the site that you would normally be shopping on. Just make sure it's activated, which you get a little green check mark to show that it's activated. And it'll track, and it's a really great, easy way to get points or cash back without making really a lot more effort on your end at all.

And what do you think about Rakuten and built this new partnership right now? So [00:12:00] I really like this partnership and I actually did change from earning Amex points to earning built points for the time being. But the one thing that I think is really important for people to know is with this built partnership built has different membership levels.

I think it's blue, um, silver, gold, and platinum. If you are a Blue Points earning member, which is the lowest level with build, you definitely wanna switch from earning build points after six months, which will be around the May timeframe because your points won't be worth as much. It's a one-to-one ratio right now for everyone, but starting in May it's gonna be 0.5 to one, so you won't get as much, um, from built as you would from Amex, which will still be one-to-one or cashback, which will still be one-to-one.

So I do really like this partnership right now. I'm hoping that in the future they're gonna make it more equitable, but they do have a timeframe limit on it. One of the reasons that I really do like this partnership is because we love Hyatt as it's like our hotel brand of choice. It is for most people in the points in Miles World, [00:13:00] because of the value you can get per night at a Hyatt stay.

You know, we have little kids, so we're not really staying in like luxury properties very frequently. And our points can go really far when you're staying in category one through four properties at Hyatt. The category one through four is for the people who don't know, they're more budget to mid-tier level Hyatt.

So they're not gonna be your, you know, fanciest Hyatts that you're gonna stay in if you're a luxury traveler. So our points can go really far. And because Built transfer is out to Hyatt. As I'm shopping, you know, I can be earning points, I can earn me free nights at Hyatt when I transfer them from built to Hyatt.

Yeah, and the thing with Hyatt and the reward chart, like you were saying, is you can get a free night at a Hyatt place or at Hyatt house for as low as like 6,000, 8,000 points. And some international ones like in Asia for example, go as low as 3,500 points, which is crazy. So that can be just, that is crazy.

One shop. Um, you know, yeah, you earn a small amount of points [00:14:00] back. You have a free night, so that's a lot of value, and you don't have to have a built credit card in order to benefit from This. Built is a free app, so you can just sign up for it. You don't have to, like I said, you don't have to have the credit card, you don't have to pay a membership fee and you can benefit from this.

Do you feel like. Built is a one of those things where people know about it, but they don't know that much. It can be a little confusing. Do you think so? I definitely think that built is confusing because I think it's really easy to understand the other transferable flexible currencies because they come from banks.

So you know you have Chase, American Express, capital One, Citi. It's like, this makes sense. I'm earning points with my bank and then I can use those with their partners. But Built isn't really a bank, it's not really a credit card company. It's got dining programs, it's got partnerships with Walgreens, so it's sort of just like a points earning conglomerate, I guess.

It's kind of all over the place. So I think a little bit confusing for people because [00:15:00] I, it's not really a clear definition of what they are. They are clear that they're not a credit card company, but they do have a credit card. Their credit card primarily now is used to for people who pay rent instead of who are homeowners, to help you earn points when you pay your rent.

They do have a mortgage option that is coming out next year. That will be really interesting to see what that ends up looking like. But you don't have to have the built credit card or be earning points towards your rent. Um. In order to take advantage of built in general, you can have a free membership that you just sign up for on their site.

You can earn points by shopping. Um, like I said, they have a partnership with Walgreens. They have a dining partnership, um, in, mostly in really big cities, but I heard they're expanding to some smaller ones. So because they transfer out to a lot of great partners like Hyatt, it'd be worthwhile for you to earn points there.

But it totally can be confusing for people who are starting out to understand what the company actually does. [00:16:00] Yeah, that's true. They're very clear that they're not a credit card company, but I'm like, okay, so if you're not a credit card company, what are you? And that part isn't clear. That part's not clear.

They're a little bit of everything. Yeah. Yeah. But I do think that it is worth looking into. It is easy to sign up for a built account. That's not complicated. So maybe just sign up for one. Try and use Rakuten and the built partnership, at least like you said, until May. It could be very lucrative and a good idea.

It's free to sign up for a built account. You don't have to have their credit card. And Built is making changes all the time, as are many of the credit card companies these days. I feel like the last two years especially, we've seen massive sweeping changes. Who knows, maybe come May Bill will make, uh, the earning with the Rakuten more equitable and you'll get a one-to-one again, and then you can keep earning towards your free high at nights.

So, going back to what things have changed with the [00:17:00] banks, but there's been a lot of changes with approval requirements, family rules, lifetime language. So you know, it, it feels like. I don't wanna say that Points of Miles is ever dead. 'cause I don't think it will be, I mean, unless legislation kills it. But, you know, I think even with all of the changes happening with banks, I mean, things change all the time and I think it, it doesn't mean that points of Miles is gonna go away, it just means that you might need to pivot.

So what do you think about the kind of climate that we're in? I think we're in a tough climate with points and miles. If have been doing this for a long time and you're used to the way things were, I think that there are opportunities with some of this murky language that we have, but it's not hard and fast.

One of the things that has really changed a lot in the last year has been chased. They've made broad sweeping changes, [00:18:00] especially to their Sapphire products. I mean, they came out with an entirely new, uh, chase Sapphire for business card. Um. They have changed sort of the rules around the Chase Sapphire Preferred and the Chase Sapphire Reserve.

We're now seeing that there's gonna be this lifetime language that we see with other banks in terms of you being able to earn welcome offers for one or both. So that's gonna be really interesting to see how that nets out because I think that those, that family of cards has been one that has been everybody's favorite really in points and miles for a long time, and has been one where you've been able to.

Strategically, um, close and re-earn the welcome offers for those cards again and again. But it seems like that's gonna be limited. Now, another place that Chase is really limiting us, and this just happened, is with the Chase Business Ink cards, and it used to be, I believe there are five ink cards. It used to be that you could keep opening and closing those all the time and continuing to earn these really great [00:19:00] welcome offers, which.

For those cards across all of them, the welcome offers would usually be somewhere between 75 to a hundred K, and if you were earning those over and over and over again, you can see how that would really rack up for you. But now they just had an elevated offer on two of those cards that ended. And once that ended, it seemed like immediately they, this new lifetime language that's not only gonna impact your ability to earn welcome offers on the individual.

Chase ink business cards, but also across the whole family of inks. So if you've ever earned a welcome offer before, you're now not gonna be able to earn it on any of them. And that new language is really limiting because you had an opportunity across five cards to earn five welcome offers, and now you're only gonna be eligible to earn one welcome offer across all five cards.

And there's a lot of people who hold multiples of those cards who have opened and closed them strategically over the years. And now it's kind of like. What's next because it seems like we're not gonna be able to earn on those cards [00:20:00] anymore. So for me, with Chase in particular, my strategy right now with all of the changes that have happened is that I feel like you have to hold a card that earns more than one X on your regular everyday purchases.

That's gonna be either a Freedom Unlimited that is gonna earn 1.5 x across everything, or a Freedom flex that has the five x rotating categories. If you're in the business cards, you're gonna have your ink unlimited that earns one point, unlimited five, and you're gonna have your chasing cash that you can get five x on anything at the office supply store.

So people love to use those for gift cards, which is really effective to use in your shopping stacks as well. Yeah, I think the card churning days for some of us are, it's slowing down. I mean, at least for me. I am really focusing on a core group of credit cards, the ones that are gonna earn me more than one x holding onto those and you know, not [00:21:00] using my chase points, like holding onto those.

I have, I think it's a little over 400,000 chase points and I'm like, okay, I, unless it's for Hyatt, I have to really think about whether or not it's worth using my chase points. And that's for me because I chose to. I think for someone who is looking for a laid back, lazy strategy, I think it's really important to focus on only a few types of currencies, and that includes for Rakuten or like the shopping portals in general as well, because you don't wanna have two little points in a bunch of different currencies.

It's like having a dollar and a hundred different currencies. You don't have a hundred dollars, you have a dollar. In a hundred different currencies. Yeah. There's a big difference, you know? Yeah. I think for me, one of the easiest ways to look at it strategically and be able to manage it, because it can be a lot to manage.

I mean, [00:22:00] especially if you're somebody who's opening a ton of cards and you've got rewards in all these different programs. You're flying different airlines, you're staying at different hotels. I like to look at it kind of the same way as you, so you've got a couple of different banks that you're prioritizing and a couple of different cards that you know are gonna earn you more so.

Right. Recently I've been focusing on, you know, just like really Chase and Capital One have been my big ones for my everyday purchases because I'll get the one and a half back with my Freedom Unlimited card. I have a Venture X, which earns me two XI everyday purchases. And then kind of looking at like one hotel chain and one airline and saying like, this is my preferred hotel chain.

This is my preferred airline. How can I maximize to earn at those? So when you get to a certain point, I think you're focusing more on your travel rewards going towards the chasing a deal instead of chasing the destination. Certainly there's places that you're gonna wanna go and you're gonna try to [00:23:00] make that happen too, but there's a little bit of a mindset switch when you're earning points.

If you're saying, I have to go to Italy, versus I would like to go somewhere in Europe this year, that can really have a big impact on how you earn and what you earn. And how you wanna actually go ahead and do your redemptions as well. So, but yeah, management is a huge piece of this because as you're earning your points, you have to be able to keep track of them.

And with your shopping portals, uh, for better or worse, you do have to make sure that you're aware of what you bought and make sure that you get those points put back in your account so that you're not losing out because you know it's technology. Technology's never perfect. Every so often, a purchase you made might not get tracked.

So you do wanna take the extra minute to make sure that's getting tracked. And if you have 20 programs you're trying to manage, it can be too much for most people. Yeah. So when it comes to maximizing shopping earnings, what are some tips for the listeners? I mean, [00:24:00] yes, you can earn the multiplier from the shopping portal, but choosing the right credit card is important.

Yeah, absolutely. So when you think about a stack, I think there's kind of like. Almost like a four or five step process that you go through. Like your first step is gonna be your referral. So the shopping portal, what shopping portal am I gonna use that's gonna get me the best back? So that can be Rakuten, it can be an airline shopping portal.

And like I said before, I would recommend, you know, just installing the browser extension for those. And it's kind of a set it and forget it. You've got, then go to the website, you wanna shop on the browser extension will. Click on, you can see them compare directly next to each other. Like for me, I primarily use Rakuten and American Airline shopping.

So they pop up right next to each other. I can see one of them is two x and one of them is five x. Okay, I am gonna use the one that's five x really easy. Click on it, I'm done. But then on the back end of that, it's your payment method. So you know, you do your referral, you do your shopping, and then [00:25:00] how are you gonna pay?

Part of what's really important is choosing a card that's gonna earn you more than one X on everyday purchases or one x on that category. There are gonna be credit cards that will earn you, uh, multiplier on online shopping, so you're gonna wanna potentially choose that one. Or, you know, you can even use this kind of stacking when you're shopping on Instacart for your groceries.

So you're gonna wanna choose one that earns more on groceries. So thinking about that kind of a thing, but assuming that it's just regular shopping, it's typically gonna count as just everything else. So you're gonna wanna use a card that's gonna earn you one x or two x on everyday spending. Um, for me, like I said, some of my favorite cards for that are gonna be Chase Freedom Unlimited, which earns 1.5 x.

Um, the venture cards, I have a Venture X that earns two x on everything else. I also have a Amex blue business that earns two X on everyday purchases as well. So those can be great for getting you the two x. But one thing [00:26:00] to not forget are the card linked offers. So now this is a little bit, I think, less of a laid back approach because you do have to remember to activate them and go into your account to do so.

But there are tools that can help you do that. So cardlink offers are gonna be, mm-hmm. Additional points back or additional cash back. Your bank is going to give you for shopping at a certain retailer. So just like Rakuten is gonna give you the referral on the front end. This is a, this is kind of a referral bonus you're gonna get on the back end.

So it's sort of the next step in that, you know, four step stack. Like step one is you have the referral. Step two, you shop as normal. Step three, you pick the right card that has the multiplier back. And step four, you wanna see if you have a card linked offer that you can use. So in order to get your card linked offers you have to go into your bank's website and each one of the banks calls it something a little different.

Some of them are called shopping offers, some of them are called offers. Some of them say earn points. You [00:27:00] click into the section of your website and it'll show hundreds of stores and it'll be very similar. Look to Rakuten, where it'll say you can get five x back on CVS, you can get 10 x back at, you know, Dick's Sporting Goods and stuff like that.

But. The kicker with these is that you have to activate them before you shop. Just like you have to click on Rakuten before you shop, so they won't give it to you retroactively. Sadly, if you shop and then you see you have one, you have to click it before you end up running that credit card to make that purchase.

So be another easy way to get extra points because you're gonna get your front end points for Matthew 10. You're gonna get your. Multiplier back just by using that card. And then these points are on top of it. So, you know, you're stacking all of these and really getting an exponential amount back on everything that you shop on.

So one of the best ways to find out about the card linked offers, which I think is the absolute easiest, is just sign up for your bank's emails. So if you, um, opt into e you'll get an email. I think I get them at least once a month. It's probably every couple [00:28:00] of weeks. And it'll say, don't forget to activate your offers.

Here's what's available. The email will typically just give you a taste, so it'll show you maybe five to 10 of what's available. If you click into that and go to the website, you'll be able to see everything. And if you use a tool like Card Pointers, which is a third party app that helps you track your rewards, you can activate them all at once.

So card pointers also has an extension on your browser that you can basically select every single offer that your bank has as a Cardlink offer, click activate and it'll activate them all at once. And then you don't have to worry about that, and then you could potentially be getting points back on purchases that you don't even realize you have an offer for.

Yeah, I love that. I love getting the notification that I'm getting. It's not, I think they call it cashback, but it's not really cashback for us, like, you know, getting points for going to a restaurant or shopping at a store, and I'm like, oh, I didn't even know that I activated the software because I'm using that browser extension.

So I [00:29:00] agree. I think that card pointers is definitely a good one. What about Save Wise? How does that work? Because I actually hadn't really heard of it until I went to Travel more. Okay. Yes. Tell us a little bit about that. I love, save Wise. Um, I started using Save Wise I think in the summer, so it's only been a couple of months, but it is a brand new tool and it's basically an aggregator of every single shopping portal that exists and it helps you kind of pit them against each other and see which one has the best offer.

So. This can be a really laid back way for you to get the best offer without having to do any research, because Save Wise does it all for you. So they have a couple of different levels. There's a free, um, version of it that you sign up for and it would be like, instead of going to Rakuten or American Airline Shopping first, you would go to Save Wise First and you would type in the store you wanted.

So we can keep going with the Macy's example. So you'd go to Save Wise, you would type in Macy's and it would show you. Every [00:30:00] single, um, opportunity for a referral. So it's gonna show you Rakuten, it's gonna show you American Airlines, Alaska Airlines, Southwest Delta, all of those. What cashback you get, it's gonna show you cashback Monitor is being offered through your bank.

So if Capital One offers has something, it's gonna show you that if Chase offers has something, it's gonna show you that. So it's a really easy way to see at a glance, like this is on this day, at this moment, this is what every single. Um, referral shopping portal is offering for the site that you wanna shop on.

And in their pro version, one of the things that I really like is that you can set an alert. So say you do wanna shop on Macy's, but you're not satisfied with two x back, you can set an alert that says, let me know when Macy's goes up to more than five x or more than 10 x. And you can have a time limit on it if you're only shopping for the holidays.

But if it's like a store that you shop at all the time and you always wanna know when it goes up to 10 x. You can leave the alert on forever and they'll send you an email and say, Hey, Macy's is up to [00:31:00] 10 x today, so this would be a good day for you to shop. So I love that. And then another That's awesome.

Yeah. I mean, talk about like being laid back about it. It's like, yeah, you tell me when I should shop. Like I'm not gonna bother looking at this myself. Yeah, love that. And then another thing that they have on the pro version, which I really love is, um, you can see the offer history. So, you know, looking at Macy's, you can see like, is this something that's always two x?

Does it ever go up? Like, is it fine for me to shop now or should I wait? And if you see that there's spikes, maybe like every three weeks or so that they will go up to 10 x, you can just wait and say, okay, well I'm not gonna shop today when it's low. I can see that this does go up and I'm gonna wait for that.

And then they have a tool also where you can activate all of your offers, just like card pointers has as a browser extension. So it can be really useful. Oh man, I love an all-in-one tool. That's awesome. Yes. Yeah, so definitely look into that one. I feel like if [00:32:00] whenever I'm shopping, it's like the first tool that I go to because I know that it's gonna show me all of the offers against each other and I can say like, okay, I am shopping right now.

Where am I gonna get the most back? And just a reminder for everybody you do wanna be careful about. Getting cash back or the multipliers and a bunch of different programs. So you really wanna try and stick with a handful, but it's still good to use a tool like Save Wise. 'cause then if you do have a handful in one place, you can see which one of those is offering the highest payout.

Yeah, basically. Totally. So for example, if you're like, I'm using Rakuten, I'm using American Airlines, I also have a Chase card and I also have a Capital One card. It'll show you all four of those so you can just. Mentally filter the other ones out and say, which one of these four is the best? They're gonna show you all right there.

And then you can decide which one to use that day and you can easily stack because it's, if it shows you rakuten's highest, but then also Capital One [00:33:00] has an offer, or your Chase card has an offer you can pick, which actually, no, sorry, the Capital, capital One, it's not Capital One, shoppings Capital One offers.

That's just like. A shopping portal, right? Yeah. So this is really confusing. Capital One has Capital One shopping and Capital One offers, and I sort of hate that they have both because it is so confusing for people. It was confusing for me in the beginning too. I was like so confusing. I don't understand what's happening.

Like why am I getting offered like cash discounts on this and this one has points like what's happening? They're two totally different programs. Capital One Shopping, capital One offers. Capital One offers is the card linked program that's gonna get you, you know, a certain amount in points. So it'll be like, you know, one to 20 x depending on the store you're, you're shopping at.

That's what you activate through, um, the credit card website, and you have to activate the offer before you shop. Capital One shopping is totally separate. You have to [00:34:00] make a separate account for it. That gives you a percentage of cash back, but I believe that the cash back has to be redeemed for gift cards in your Capital One accounts, your Capital One credit card card.

No points. No points. No, you're not getting money deposited into your account, so don't do that one unless you only wanna have money back when you're shopping that you can only redeem for gift cards, which that's too much work for me. And the thing, I believe Capital One shopping, you don't actually have to use your Capital One card.

Like you can stack it where you are gonna get cap. You're gonna get Capital One points if you go through Capital One offers, but then you can use like your Chase card. Yeah. Okay. So what I was trying to say, which I then had to backtrack, is that it sounded like you could go on Save Wise and see which is the best actual shopping portal.

But does it also show you your card link offer? So if there is an offer in Chase, for instance, so you [00:35:00] can stack that? Yes. So it will show you the main center area, shows you, okay, this is what you're gonna get as your percentage back for the shopping portal. And then there's a sidebar that says, Hey, you also have a card linked offer on the Amex Gold card or.

The, you know, chase Sapphire preferred card for this store. So it can help you say, okay, I'm gonna make sure that I click through from Rakuten to get my Amex points on the front end, but I'm gonna pay with my Chase Sapphire preferred card because I have a three x offer link to that card. So it kind of gives you both.

That's really good. And then, so it sounds like it's just like cashback monitor, but with some more perks. So I think, uh, if you want to go like a hundred percent free and there's no like pro opportunity for anything, cashback Monitor is essentially the same as the free version of Save Wise. They both do the same thing.

They compare all of the different shopping portals to each other. [00:36:00] But if you do have, you know. The desire to see, you know, kind of these extra things that you can do so you can get the history, you can set the alert so that you know when to the best time to shop is Save Wise does have a pro version that you can sign up for in order to get that extra bit of information if you really wanna maximize things.

Yeah, and I think Cashback Monitor shows you history too. It just doesn't have alerts, I think. Yeah. So whatever you guys, I mean, I would try both. I always am an advocate for just trying and see what works best for you. So definitely look into both of those options. What are some other maybe common mistakes that you think people should avoid?

I think some of the most common mistakes with using shopping portals is accidentally breaking the tracking and not getting credit for it. So one of the big ways that this can happen with Rakuten and I have seen recently that it seems like they have fixed it, [00:37:00] is if you are shopping on your phone and you are in the Rakuten app and then you somehow go to the mobile version of the, the retailer's website.

So, you know, keeping on with our Macy's example, if you go from the Rakuten app. Somehow it takes you out of the app and now you're suddenly shopping like in your Safari browser on your phone. That tracking is likely not working. You have to stay within the app and sign into macy's dot com within the app, the Rakuten app, to keep that tracking going.

And I think that's really confusing, and I don't think a lot of people realize they've accidentally broken the tracking. And sadly, if you reach out to Rakuten after that, they're usually like, well, you didn't actually complete this shop. Our app. So for that reason, I do prefer shopping on a computer whenever possible because with the phone, it's easy to break the tracking unfortunately.

Another thing that I think is really big that you have to pay attention to is a lot of offers are [00:38:00] not valid on certain products and certain gift cards. So always make sure you're reading the fine print when you're clicking through, because a lot of people will be like, oh, I'm just gonna buy a gift card and then I'm gonna get points back.

Usually gift cards don't count for any points back. If you're buying a gift card, with the exception of if you're shopping in store at like a Staples or an office Max and using your chasing cash, you, that does get you your five x back if you're buying gift cards. But I always recommend throwing in a little something extra, like a small hand sanitizer or like gum or something like that, so it doesn't look like you're just hoarding gift cards.

Um, but if you are just going from, from Rakuten to like. target.com or something. If you only buy a Target gift card, it's probably not gonna count and get you the cash or points back that you were accepting. And then the third thing that is a really big deal that people don't notice is that if you use a coupon code that for some reason is not recognized by the [00:39:00] shopping portal, they'll also not count it.

So oftentimes if you go into Rakuten, for example, you'll see at the bottom of the page for the retailer that you want shopping coupon code that they will recognize. And if you use one of those, you're good to go. You can keep shopping, you can use a coupon code. Everything is set. But if you found a coupon code somewhere else.

Retail me not, or something like that. They might not count it. And so you have to weigh, am I gonna get a better deal if I use this random coupon code I had, or am I gonna get a better deal if I get my points or cash back from the shopping portal? Yeah, that's a really good point. Then ad blockers. I know that some people have a ad blocker on their browser, and if you have that on there, sometimes things don't track.

Right? Right. Yeah. If you have ad blockers, it can prevent the tracking from working as well, so definitely be careful if you're using those. Okay, so earning these points, of course, is. [00:40:00] Part one, part two is what can you get with these points? How does your holiday shopping or your everyday shopping translate into actual travel?

Yeah, so this is a great question and one of the questions that I get most often from people in general is, why should I choose points instead of choosing cashback? Like what is the value of your points? And I think it's really hard to get. Your mind around what a point can get you until you start actually using your points.

And if you're somebody who is super laid back, you're very casual about this, which I assume most people are on here. Cash back is not wrong. There's nothing wrong with getting cash back if you are like, this is easier for me. I just wanna get my cash. I wanna be able to pay for my travel out of pocket, just using cash.

Okay, you can still earn, you can still use all of these tools and get your cash back, and that's not a wrong way to do it. [00:41:00] But once you get into using points and earning and using points, you can see that you'll get so much more value out of your points than you will just getting your cash back. So when you look at some of the examples we gave earlier, and we were talking about Hyatt Hotels.

You can get a level one through four category Hyatt Hotel Night Redemption for, like I said, in Asia, some of them are as low as 3,500. In America, some of the lowest are 5,000 to 6,500. So when you really look at that with like some simple math, it's not gonna take you that long. If you're spending a couple of hundred dollars over the holidays to earn 5,000, you know, points back.

For example, as built points that you can then transfer out to Hyatt and get a free night. So I have an example of this just for myself. I, in the, I tend to do all of my holiday shopping as early as possible because I just wanna get it out of the way. [00:42:00] And in the beginning of November, there were a couple of deals that came out.

I did some shopping and I already earned just by spending, you know, not really an insane amount of money. I think I only spent like a couple, like less than $200. I earned a thousand bill points. Just from that shop, and so I'm on my way to getting a free night at Hyatt just with that so you can kind of see how that can add up really quickly.

If you're spending a lot of money this time of year especially, or just over time, I mean, these are strategies that you can use all year. And then if you're thinking about flights, whether it's domestic flights within, you know, the US or you're thinking about going to Europe, I mean, right now I told Genni at the beginning of this episode that I'm currently in Florida.

I live in Pennsylvania, so that's a flight for me and my family to come to Florida for the holidays to visit my parents. And for our flights, we paid 7,500 points one way per person. So you can see that's really low, just like the Hyatt nights are that we started talking about. And you can start earning really quickly to get [00:43:00] that amount of points in order to get a one-way flight for you and your family.

And if you're thinking about going to Europe. There are flights from the east coast of the US to London, for example, on Virgin, with their saver fares that can be as low as 9,000 points. So we're not talking about that much shopping to earn that many points that you can't really start earning towards these goals.

You have free domestic flights, free international flights, you know, not considering the taxes and fees that come with all flights. Or free nights at hotels, which don't have taxes and fees on a lot of the redemption, so you're really paying zero out of pocket. If you can use your points for hotels, you can certainly earn your points really quickly.

They can add up to some of these different opportunities to get those free nights, get those discounted, heavily discounted flights that we're talking about, and it can happen faster than you think. A lot of times if you're looking at flights and you don't know exactly what to look at or when to look.[00:44:00]

You might see ones that are gonna be 50,000 points for one way, but that's not what everything is. And I think if you just get a little creative about searching and finding the right redemption, then you don't really need that many points to get started. Yeah. And if you're someone who's thinking like, oh my gosh, I know that this isn't that much work in, you know, quotes, because it can be, it's a little bit.

It's a little bit more work, but it's not a huge effort. Like I always say, anything worth doing takes a little bit of effort. Like anybody who's coming in here being like, I don't have time. Or maybe not, I don't have time, but maybe they're like, I don't wanna do anything. I am super lazy. It's like, well, this isn't for you.

Take a little bit of time. But if you're thinking, is this even worth it? The answer is yes. If you wanna travel and use points for that instead of cash. A hundred percent. It is worth it. Yeah. And it's all baby steps, right? Like pick one thing. Mm-hmm. Do [00:45:00] it for a couple of weeks until you feel comfortable with it and move on to the next thing.

So like the steps that we gave for stacking, just start off with a shopping portal. Just do your shopping over the next couple weeks with a shopping portal. Every time you're shopping online, say, Hey, can I click through to a shopping portal first, earn some points or cash back on this? Just see how that feels.

Another thing that I think that people don't realize that can be really. Easy with the shopping portals too, is that you can shop online and then pick up in store. So say you're a person who wants to go in the store, you can go ahead and go and, you know, click through Rakuten Shop on Target, do I wanna pick it up at Target?

And then you go pick it up in Target and you're earning your points by just doing the little extra step to shop online. So just pick one thing, start small. Do it for a couple of weeks until you feel comfortable and then move on to the next thing. And before you know it, in six months you could have racked up thousands of points that are gonna get you free hotel nights and really heavily discounted flights.

Yeah, doing something is [00:46:00] always better than nothing. And absolutely. I love preaching that. Like just do something, whatever, like you said, do step one. See how that feels, and don't worry about whether or not you're getting the absolute. Ultimate stack on every single purchase. I know some people are like, I hate to use the word crazy.

They're just like really passionate about that, and that's really great for them. But sometimes I don't have time if I can get points with the shopping portal and then even just. 1.5 x on my chase, freedom Unlimited. Then you know what? It's a good thing. Yeah. And that's better than nothing. That that's a stack you stacked, you know?

Right. You did step one, step two, step three. That's a stack. So as long as you're earning more than one X back on your purchases, you're doing it and you're doing great. Yeah. Love it. All right, so let's wrap up and get into the rapid fire questions. Are you ready? [00:47:00] Yes, I am. Okay. Question number one, what portal do you check first these days?

I'm always checking save wise first because it's gonna show me every single portal all against each other. Airline miles are cash back. I think we already know the answer to this, which motivates you more? I'm definitely more motivated by airline miles because for me, mentally, I'm thinking about trips instead of cash.

What's your favorite, underrated retailer for portal payouts? This is a really weird one, but it's CVS. So CVS sometimes goes up as high as like 20 or 25 x, especially on Capital One offers and CVS is obviously great for all of your toiletries and stuff like that, but you can also get a lot of other things there, especially this time of year.

You can get stocking stuffers, you can get holiday decor, they sell food there, candy, all kinds of stuff. So don't sleep on CVS. [00:48:00] And you can also definitely do the, um, you know, buy online and pick up in store thing that I talked about before. So if you do have like a prescription or something else you need to grab, it can be great to get a ton back.

And it goes up, like I said, as high as 20 or 25 x some of the time. Oh my gosh. I love that you said CVS totally underrated. I freaking love CVS. Yeah. And you would never think like, oh, maybe I should just buy this one thing I need at CVS 'cause I can get 20 x back. Love it. Okay. So what card are you always using during the holidays?

So right now I'm constantly using. My Chase Freedom Unlimited for the 1.5 x back because I do need to build up chase points right now because I just did an awesome redemption for Christmas that I'm gonna be going to The Bahamas and staying in a high end hotel. So I had to use a lot of Chase points for that.

But I also love the chasing cash this time of year to buy gift cards for stocking stuffers or for presents for people. And I also typically use my Venture X to [00:49:00] get the two X back on Capital One. If I, um, you know, for some reason didn't want to use one of the other ones, it's kind of like a go-to card for me all the time.

Love it. All right, so favorite European city you've booked with points? Okay. This one is so hard because we've done Europe the last couple of years. On points like 2024, we went to Rome Brew and Paris. In 2025, we went to London and Copenhagen, and then. Um, next year we're going to Italy and Greece, so there are so many, but I think probably my favorite one was Rome, because we stayed in this amazing Hyatt hotel in Rome that was totally kid friendly, but also like really beautiful.

Like we met Honeymooners who were there as well. So it was, it was kind of great in both ways. But one of the things that I love the best about this hotel was the free breakfast that came along with it. And, um, they had to. Nutella pump that had a, a [00:50:00] spigot kind of at the end of it that you could insert into like a cream puff and you could pump Nutella into the cream puff.

And when I tell you my kids went crazy for this, and honestly the adults did too. I was like, this is the most amazing thing that I've ever seen in a hotel and I want this all the time. So that was really fun for us. Oh my God, that sounds amazing. Yeah, it was like the coolest thing I've ever seen. Wow. And then aren't you guys doing like a big family trip to Italy next year?

Yeah. Is that, that's what you were talking about? That's, that's what part of that is. So next year we have 11 people going to Italy. We're trying to do as much of it as we possibly can on points and miles. Actually there transfer bonus that just came out recently from Amex to Virgin. So we're gonna be booking some flights in the next few weeks to take advantage of that.

I, it's my family of four, my parents and my sister's family of five who are all going and they're all absolute beginners in points and miles. So it's been quite a journey to kind of get them to sign up for the right cards, get them earning points. We obviously had to plan way ahead for this. It's gonna be the first part of the trip is that we're going [00:51:00] to Italy to see where my dad's family all came from before they immigrated to the us and then we're also doing a cruise.

Which is gonna go from Italy to Greece and kind of hit up a lot of the, you know, like lower portion of Italy and some of the Greek islands and stuff like that. Oh, that sounds like such a special trip. And you are posting all about that journey on Instagram, right? I am, yes. You can find me at Mari on the map on Instagram and I've been posting both how we are doing it with the points.

And then of course I'll post once we're actually there. And you know, we've done cruises before. They're really kind of challenging to do with points because not all of them have easy redemptions. Some of the cards that I talked about before, you know, like the Capital One Venture family, and then that Bank of America travel reward card that let you erase travel purchases can be really great for cruises and things like that that don't easily fit into some of the other categories that you can, you know, do transferable points to.

Yeah. Okay. So Mari, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast. I think that people are [00:52:00] really going to enjoy this episode. I've learned a lot, so thank you so much. Where else can they find you? They can find you on Instagram you mentioned, but can they find you anywhere else? Yeah, so you can find me on Instagram at Mari on the map, and then I also have a website, Mari on the map.com, and they also have a points in Miles course called the Mad Miles Masterclass.

I teach you how to go from beginner to advanced in points and miles using smart strategies. And it's a really fun, uh, way to learn with, you know, prerecorded videos, live videos, and then we do group coaching as well. So you're, you're in with a cohort of other students who are learning together at the same time as you.

Uh, amazing. So, all right, friends, that's a wrap on today's episode. I hope this conversation reminded you just how powerful shopping portals can be. Especially now with banks tightening welcome offers and approvals getting tougher. The holidays are truly the easiest time of year to earn thousands of extra points and those small everyday wins really [00:53:00] do add up fast.

If you want some quick, easy wins this season, here's where to start. Check safe wise, before every purchase, install at least one browser extension like Rakuten. Use a card that earns more than one x. Add your card link offers and try just one stacked purchase this week. You'll be shocked how fast those points really roll in.

Remember, you don't need to open a bunch of new cards to earn big. These simple portal wins are exactly what can turn a, your trip from a dream into a done deal. So thanks so much for listening and I'll see you in the next episode. I.