3 Ways We Maximize Points Earning - Without Signing Up For a New Card

In today's episode, we're chatting about

• Don’t want to open more credit cards? These 3 strategies still stack serious points
• Simple “2-card combo” that maximizes everyday spending without overthinking it
• Why shopping portals are the most overlooked (and easiest) way to earn extra points
• The mistake almost everyone makes with everyday spending—and how to fix it 
• How “player 2 mode” and referrals can double your points (and free hotel nights)

📋 SHOW NOTES

3x dining & online grocery - my go-to card

4x dining & grocery - this one is a forever keeper

Rakuten - Earning Bilt Points via Rakuten

Rakuten - Earning more points via Rakuten

Shopping portals - Overview, shopping portals explained

Calculating your 5/24 - Everything you need to know

Hilton - These Free Night Certificates are the best out there

📋 READY TO LEVEL UP YOUR POINTS TRAVEL?

Current Best Offers - My top choices this month

Free points & miles guide – PDF downloaded over 17K times

Free online, self-paced course – join over 2000 students

Fancy Travel Pointers Instagram – keep up to date on all the latest points news

Fancy Travel Pointers Facebook – great place to share wins, ask questions 

Fancy Travel Pointers Newsletter – sent weekly to over 24K points lovers!

👋 Hi! I'm Michele!

A points and miles expert, using points for family vacations to Japan, Hawaii, Thailand, Greece, Italy, Spain, theme parks and so much more. 

I don't believe in spending more to earn more points. The key is knowing how to earn the best points and getting massive value from them. 

With a teenager in competitive sports & public school, traveling during the busiest of times is our family's norm. I'll show you my best tips & strategies to use points for making incredible family travel happen. 

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Fancy Travel Pointers is part of an affiliate sales network and receives compensation for sending traffic to partner sites, such as Bankrate.com. This compensation may impact how and where links appear on this site. This site does not include all financial companies or all available financial offers.

Opinions expressed here are the author’s alone, not those of any bank, credit card issuer, hotel, airline, or other entity. This content has not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by any of the entities included within the post.

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Information was correct to the best of my knowledge at time of recording. Always double check/verify information about cards and or bookings. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Here's the truth. The best way to earn tons of points is through welcome offers. But guess what? We're not signing up for 20 cards a year and constantly working on welcome offers. So for us, the stuff we do in between really, really matters. Today I'm chatting about three things I make sure to do so I'm not leaving points on the table and I'm taking advantage of my everyday spend to earn more points. Welcome to the Points and Miles Travel Chats podcast. I'm Michelle from Fancy Travel Pointers, and I believe your everyday spend is the secret to extraordinary travel. If you've ever worried that points are too complicated or wondered if a busy family with public school attendance and competitive sports could really travel with points, I'm here to show you it's absolutely possible. Here's what I know for sure: it's not about spending more. And keeping my credit score sky high, that is always front and center. I'll give you actionable steps, teach real repeatable strategies that transform the way you earn points and the value you get from them. Thanks for being here and let's get to it. Welcome back to Points and Miles Travel Chats podcast. I'm Michelle from Fancy Travel Pointers, and today we will be chatting about my three favorite ways to earn points that don't require you opening a new credit card for that welcome offer. We will be chatting about that in a second, but first I will be answering a few of the questions that you asked over on Instagram. So I started this last week where I answered a couple of questions that I'd received and it was super popular. So I thought we would keep going down that road since you guys are enjoying it. And speaking of, if you are enjoying this podcast, it would mean a ton to me if you could just leave a quick review or give us a rating. It's super helpful in the podcast world to be seen and get out there. The more reviews you have, they're more likely to share your podcast. And you know I'm a newbie out here. So I always appreciate your love. Thank you so much for that, and thank you for being here. Question number one: Do you still worry about staying under 524? If you're not exactly sure what 524 is, it's a little confusing. So let me try to explain it as simply as I can. There is a bank with a 524 rule, and they say, if you have gotten five personal cards from any bank, us or any other bank, within 24 months, we will not give you any more of our credit cards, whether that's personal or business. So five personal cards total from any bank, then we cut you off. No business cards, no personal cards. The interesting thing is that they're only looking at personal cards. So what a lot of people do, and my strategy has been for a while, is to stay under 524 by getting more business cards than I do personal cards. Because let's say I have six business cards in that 24 month period, but only three personal cards, then I'm still only at 324 because we're only counting the personal cards. But then once you hit that magic number five, you're cut off from personal or business. So do I still feel concerned with that 524? It has been a really, really, really big deal in the points and miles world for a long time. And I'm guessing the reason this person is asking is because there's been a lot of eligibility rule changes with the bank. And so you're not as able to get as many cards as you were before. So do we really care anymore? Because a lot of us are branching out in other places. But here's the thing: I do still care about 524, and I think it's gonna depend who you are, how long you've been doing this, etc. I mean, I have been doing it for a really long time, but I still care about 524 because I really concentrate on getting business cards. If you are new to this game also, I think 524 is really important. You want to make sure you get the cards you want with the bank before you kind of shut yourself off. Because here's the thing it's only the certain bank that has that rule. So if you're at 624, Capital One doesn't care. That's not their rule. That's the other bank's rule. Here's my strategy. I try very hard to stay under 524. I'm almost always at 424. My husband, however, he has blown that number out. I think he's at like 724 or 824, and I don't care because I need him to be able to go after cards that I can't keep going after because I don't want to hit that number. I think that's the ideal situation where one of you tries to stay under 524 or close, and then the other one just does whatever they want because there's so many good offers. Okay, the second question was where is your next trip on points? My next big trip on points was actually one I wanted to share because I wanted to remind you that I have a weekly newsletter and I am doing like a pre-trip report in that newsletter. I think, you know, we hear about these trips after you take them, but you don't hear about the planning or the beginning. We are taking our big, big trip of the year is to Kosamui and to Bali. And we are flying Singapore business class there and back, which we booked directly on Singapore Airlines. And we booked like right when they released those seats, transferred points over Singapore to book those, and then we have some amazing hotel stays. There is the Conrad Kosamui, there is the Marriott Vonabel in Kosamui. We are also staying at one of the supposedly best Marriott's in the entire world in Bali, the Ritz-Carlton Mandipa. It's kind of mind-boggling how much money the points are saving us. But if you have not subscribed for my newsletter, I've got that link down for you below. And I will be doing a walkthrough of exactly what we booked and how we booked it. And then, of course, there'll be recaps in the newsletter as well after the trip, which is in June. It is for sure one of those examples of completely diversifying our points. We transferred Capital One Miles, like all of my Capital One Miles, to Singapore to book those tickets. And then for the Conrad, we're using Hilton points. For the Marriott, obviously, we're using Marriott points. And some of those we earned straight through Marriott, and some of them I transferred over because there's two bigs, you can transfer points from over to Marriott and over to Hilton. And that's kind of my game plan for most things. Have my little paws and a bunch of different buckets so that I can pull from them when need be. I think that's a big mistake people make is using one card forever or two cards forever, and you only have one or two points currencies, and it makes it really tough to book these complicated trips because you can't pull from all these different buckets. So stay tuned, there'll be more information on that, and I'm excited to share more. But let's get into the topic of the day chatting about earning more points without opening a card. I will say, tumble in the face, the best way to get a big chunk of points is through a welcome offer. And I practice what I preach. I open anywhere from I would say like four to six cards a year personally. My husband opens a few every year. That's how you get those big buckets of points. And of course, I'm paying off in full on time every single month. I'm spacing them out. You know, we're he's applying for one, I'm applying for one, that type of thing. That's how we can do things like that when you're getting that many cards. But that is just to say, like, know for sure that welcome offers are the biggest way. Having said that, maybe you'll only want to open one or two cards a year. So these three steps are super important to add to that points balance. And the first one is figure out what your biggest spends are. I think multipliers are very important because I don't open 20 cards a year and I'm not always going to be working on a welcome offer. There are some people that work on a welcome offer all the time. That's all they do. That is not for me. We do not do that. So I know what our biggest spends are. Our biggest spends for sure are dining out and groceries. I mean, really groceries. Groceries is our like really, really big one. It was important for me to find a card that had the best multipliers in that. And there's there's two really specific cards that I think are great for both of these options. And I'm going to put them in the show notes for you. Um, one earns four times on both of those, and one earns three times on both of those, but it has to be online grocery pickup, which is actually exactly what we do. We have been doing online grocery pickup for years and years. So that card really works for us. But first, you just have to figure out what is that area that I'm spending big in. If you have a business and you're spending a ton in advertising, you need to get a credit card that rewards that spend. There are credit cards that are giving you like three times or more for that spend. Or if you are shopping at office supplies a lot, there's a credit card that will give you five times for that office store spend. It's crazy because if you're just like swiping a card that gets you one time there, think about how much quicker you could be earning those points. And for grocery and dining, if you're getting that four times, that's incredible. I just think that's a really big category for a lot of us. And I would make sure that you have a card that is rewarding that spend. It is really easy to want to make things super simple, but I would say, even if that's you, get into like a two-card combo where you have one card that's where your grocery and your dining out that either earns the three times in both or earns the four times in both. And then a secondary card, uh for me, it's always gonna be one of the venture cards because they earn two times. So you'll kind of combine those two cards. Those are a really, really good pairing. You pick that first card that has the big spend on dining and grocery, and then you pick the second card, which is your swipe for everything else, two times. Like if you don't want to think about it, that is a dynamic duo. And I think it's a really good option when you don't want to be bogged down by things. There are some people that just, I mean, and I totally get this. You're so busy and you have so much going on, you don't want to be bothered, like, oh my gosh, which card do I have to use? I'm gonna go into one of the apps and it will tell me because there are a lot of apps that will actually tell you exactly which card you should use. So that is nice because that's a great avenue as well. But if that's not you and you want to make this as simple as possible, that's what I would do. Figure out your two or three biggest spends. Then figure out which cards earn on those. And when you're not working on a minimum spend for a welcome offer, just have those in your wallet. And then you only have two or three cards you have to deal with to make sure that you're maximizing everything you're buying on a daily basis. So first you just have to figure out where are you shopping most, where are you putting a lot of your money, and then make sure you have the card that matches that. This second one is a big one. This one is a doozy. Shopping portals. Firstly, kind of explain what they are. This is the way I describe a shopping portal. Okay, so people think it's very confusing because they're like, I don't understand. Why is this place paying you to shop through them? Here's what you do. Let's use Racketton as an example, because it's probably the biggest one. It's one of my favorites. You go to Rackiton, you put in the store you want to shop at, say it's Macy's, you put in Macy's, and it's gonna tell you, well, today you get 2% cash back if you just click through our link and then go to Macy's. That's all you have to do. Obviously, you have to have a Rackiton account because they have to have somewhere to, you know, give you back the thing. But I'm just explaining how it works in general. So you sign up for a racketon account, you've got the Rackiton account, you tell them what you want to earn. We'll get into that in a second, because there's different options, cashback or points. But then to actually use it, you go to their site, you put in Macy's, you click through, you go shop at Macy's, and you check out and buy something. And then later on, you see that in your Rackettin account. Oh, look, she spent$100 at Macy's and she's getting what did we say two times? She's getting$2 back. And I know that sounds ridiculous, but it really does add up. And the other thing is those rates fluctuate every day. So it's not always two times, but even when it is, I promise you it adds up. It does seem weird. Like, why are they paying you to just click through their site? This is how I explain it. Imagine Rakutin is like a lifestyle influencer. And the lifestyle influencer, when you click on their link to buy something, they get a little cutback. That's basically exactly what's happening with Rakutin. You click on Rackuten's link and Macy says, Oh my gosh, thank you so much for sending me the shopper. I'm gonna give you, I'm just making these numbers up, I'm gonna give you uh 4% back. And Rackutin says, Sweet, I'm gonna keep 2% for myself and give 2% for my shopper because I want them to keep coming back and back and back. So it's kind of like that, and we all definitely understand how lifestyle influencers work. Um, but that's like the same thing. So here's my story. You so many years ago, my friend Christy, I don't know if you're listening, Christy. Hi, um, in Austin, we lived in Austin for a long time. She loved Raccoutin, but at the time it was called eBates. And she would always be like, Are you using ebates? You need to sign up for ebates. Are you using ebates? And I was like, That sounds phony and like a waste of my time. And it's hysterical now because I earn so many points through Rackutin. That gets to my next point. This is what I love about Rackutin. This is why people love it so, so, so much. When you have a Rackutin account, there are two different points you can elect to earn or you can get cash back. For me, it's always gonna be points, right? Because do I want$50 back or do I want 5,000 points back? For me, I want 5,000 points back because I know how to take those 5,000 points and turn them into way, way more than$50 back. Over time, I'm getting a lot more points than that from Rackiton because I'm using it on a consistent basis. Just taking that extra step to click through a shopping portal, you honestly are gonna be shocked because I have people come to me all the time and be like, I can't believe I was leaving all this point on the table. But even if you don't want the points, then get the cash back. Or here's the other thing. I talk about Rackiton all the time because they have a lot of days when they're like, oh, it's 20 times points or 25 times points. That's what I mean. It's not always two times points and it fluctuates all the time. A couple rules with this. Once you click through and you go to your shopping site or whatever it is, you need to go ahead and check out and finish it because it's only tracking what you're doing for so long. So if you just leave the window open, but you clicked on it like two hours ago and then you come back, you're probably gonna lose that connection and you're not gonna get the racket payout. There's other shopping portals. A really, really, really good one is Capital One. And I'm not talking about the one anyone can use. I'm talking about the one you have to have a card for. And then you log into your Capital One site and you scroll down and there will be shopping. That is where the Capital One is, and they have some amazing, amazing deals. Sometimes they'll do this crazy thing where it's like, oh, if you spend$50 here, we'll give you 2,000 points. Well, that's a lot. I mean, that's a really good multiplier for somewhere you were already gonna shop, anyways. It's kind of fun looking through all of the different options there. The one thing I love about the Capital One shopping portal is you get your miles very quickly. I feel like they go into your account within a few days, whereas with Rackiton, they hold them and they only release them quarterly. So they'll have payouts quarterly, and so it's not as quick. Gotta say this about shopping portals too, though. I feel like there's so much to say about shopping portals. I probably should do a whole entire episode, but I just wanted to give you like the grand overlay, and I'm definitely gonna put lots of links in the show notes so you can see if it's something you want to do. But when I needed American Airline points, the American Airlines shopping portal was my absolute go-to. I would go there for every single thing, even if the multiplier wasn't as good as Raccoutin or Mate wasn't as good as Capital One, I really didn't care because I needed American Airline miles. It was helping me earn status, and there was a specific trip I needed more of those miles for. Here's the other big one. When we talk about the Southwest Companion Pass, the points you earn in their shopping portal, like just their regular points for shopping, not like necessarily bonuses or anything like that, those points count towards your Southwest Companion Pass. So if you are short on those points, that is an amazing way to earn them. Only thing I will say, there's a big caveat, is that a lot of us are buying a lot of stuff at Amazon and that is not on there. Definitely gonna be some stores that are not in these shopping portals, but it's worth checking, it's worth giving it a look. The big thing I usually do is I go to the site called cashbackmonitor.com. It monitors a bunch of different shopping portals. It does not do Capital One, but it does do Racketton, it does do Southwest, it does do American Airlines, it does do some of the bank ones. And so you go there and you can say, oh, okay, well, Racketton has two times today, but Southwest has eight times today, and I do need some Southwest points, so I'll I'll click through Southwest and get those. That's a great place to start all of your shopping, is Cashbackmonitor.com. Shopping portals should not be overlooked, guys. They just, they really, really, really shouldn't. And I did it for so long. Take it from me, take it from my many, many people in the fancy travel pointers community on Instagram. They tell me so many times, I cannot believe how many points I'm getting back. And you have a lot of options. It can be, you know, if you don't want to sign up for Rackiton, then still get yourself some Southwest points or American Airline Miles, United. I mean, there's a lot of different choices there. So that is my number two. And it will become a habit. When you go to shop online, it will become a habit to start at cashbackmonitor.com. It has for me. Number three, work in your two-player mode or your friend mode or whatever it is, referrals. This is so embarrassing. I sometimes forget to refer my husband or in such a rush, or something's happening, or I'm not thinking. I haven't done it in a really long time. But a few years ago, I remember I got a card. And I'm like, after I already applied for it, I'm like, he has the same card. I cannot believe I did not use his referral. Using your referral from your player two is an excellent way to earn more points. And I'm wondering if in your head you're saying, why in the world are you getting the exact same card that your player two has? My player two is my husband. Um, that's a good question. We actually have a lot of duplicate cards. Now that may not be for everyone if you are not a travel as much as we do. We travel a lot. For example, the Capital One Venture X rewards credit card. He has one and I have one, and we're never ever getting rid of them. Those benefits to us make sense to hold onto those cards and to both have the same exact card. But then there are other times where I have a card and I do plan to keep it. Don't necessarily need two of them, but that welcome offer is really good. So I'm gonna go ahead and get that for him too. And he'll keep it for one year before deciding if he should downgrade it, cancel it, keep it, whatever it is. But that welcome offer is so good, that's why it makes sense for your player two to get the same card as you. So, and the other thing with hotel cards, I want to bring this up too. We have many of the exact same hotel cards. And again, those are ones I will never get rid of. I love that we have so many free night certificates. We get every single year. We each have a Hyatt Free Night certificate. We each get the Marriott 35K free night certificate, but we also each get the Marriott 85K free night certificate. And we just signed up. So we're now gonna get Hilton free night certificates. Those are to me keepers. I know they have annual fees, but because we travel and we book those hotels, we come out far ahead. So that is a reason for you to refer your player to the same exact card. Either the welcome offer is so good, or he's gonna get a hotel free night certificate. I'm gonna get one. I'll book Saturday night, he'll book Friday night. Now we've got a weekend stay, and we'll just contact the hotel and say, hey, can you link these reservations so we don't have to change rooms? For me, that's a big one with the hotels. So, and it's really, really nice to have each have a free night certificate to make a nice weekend out of it. Those are my top three ways that we continuously add to our points bucket when we're not opening cards. We are, I would say, mostly working on minimum spends, but we have signed up for a lot of cards. I feel like between last fall and right now, the welcome offers have just been nonstop. And we probably are gonna need to take a break at some point. And these are the three things I'll fall back on. No matter what, I know what my big spend is. I know which card I should use for multipliers, and I always keep that in the back of my head. No matter what, I always use a shopping portal. And that really has nothing to do with working on minimum spends because here's the important thing when you are using those shopping portals, like let's say you're using the American Airlines one, or you're using the Southwest one, or you're earning points via Rackiton, doesn't matter what card you pay for. So if you are working on a minimum spend, use the card you're working on. minimum spend for you can use any card with shopping portals the points are on the back end that like you clicked through it's not about the card you use which is so cool right and then of course number three we do double up on cards sometimes for the welcome offer sometimes for the two nights of hotel offers or sometimes just because the cards are so good those benefits those credits we're getting make sense for each of us to hold them my big thing has always been about using your everyday spend to just get more points we don't want to spend more we just want to spend and earn strategically and so we're not spending unnecessarily we're just getting more for that we're just making smarter moves and these three things I hope that you will incorporate them into your point strategy. I really think they make a big difference over time especially you'll notice if you do this for one year and look back, I feel like you'll see a lot of accumulation with your points and it's been something that's really worked for us. Thank you so much for being here with me today. I have had a wonderful time chatting with you. And again if you've got a few seconds sleeper review I would appreciate it so very much. Thanks again and I will see you next week. Thank you for listening to the Points in Miles Travel Chats podcast. If you enjoyed this episode please leave a review give it a like and share it with a friend that loves to travel. In the show notes you'll find all the links and resources we talked about today. And if you're ready to take those next steps don't miss my free PDF guide. It's been downloaded over 17,000 times. I also launched an online self paced free course a few months ago you can join the over 1800 students who are loving this resource. Of course be sure to sign up for the weekly newsletter and you'll never miss the latest strategies, stories and offers. Until next time, here's to seeing the world on points