Are Credit Card Points Still Worth It? and More Listener Q&A

Summary

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All the Hacks: Money, Points & Life

Episode: Are Credit Card Points Still Worth It? and More Listener Q&A

Host: Chris Hutchins
Date: July 8, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this AMA (Ask Me Anything) episode, Chris Hutchins takes deep dives into a wide range of listener questions about the current state of credit card points and miles. Facing rising annual fees, trickier redemption processes, and more frequent award devaluations, Chris provides a comprehensive look at whether points cards are still worthwhile versus cashback cards, who should stick with points, what mistakes to avoid, and exactly how he would approach the credit card game if starting from scratch today. He unpacks everything from optimizing card perks to playing the game with a partner, handling annual fees, and what to do with points if you’re thinking of canceling a card. The episode is stacked with tactical moves, detailed breakdowns, and real-world math to help listeners make smarter credit card decisions.

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Key Discussion Points

1. Are Credit Card Points Still Worth It?

(00:00 – 04:00)

• Rising credit card fees and worsening point redemptions have led many to consider a switch to cashback.
• Chris acknowledges the real frustration: “Credit card fees keep going up. Some are almost $1,000. The credits those cards offer are getting harder to use and there's constant point devaluation.” (00:00)
• Distinction: The declining value of points mainly affects premium, high-fee cards filled with coupons; many lower-fee cards still offer healthy earning potential and relatively straightforward rewards.

2. Cash Back vs. Points: Direct Comparison

(04:00 – 14:00)

• Many lower-fee points cards earn 2–4x on everyday spending categories and are less “coupon booky.” Notable cards: Citi Strata Premier, Chase Sapphire Preferred, Capital One Venture, Amex Green, etc.
• Even after devaluations, cash out floors remain: Amex (1.1c with Schwab), Capital One (1c), Built (up to 1.25c in portal).
• Math: If you spend $50k/year and travel makes up even just 2–3% of that, points cards can effectively give you 2% cash back or better (not including upside from transfer partners).
• “If you look at points cards as cash back cards… then you’ve kind of got a situation where points cards are effectively cashback cards. The difference is a lot of points cards earn more than a lot of cashback cards.” (02:25)
• Travel protections are often much better on points cards vs. cashback cards.

Notable Quote

“If you’re willing to do a quick look when you’re planning a trip at whether there are higher upside options transferring your points, it can be really lucrative.” (06:55)

3. The Best Cashback Cards (and Why the Landscape Changed)

(14:00 – 18:30)

• 2% cashback is now the “going rate,” with Citi Double Cash, Wells Fargo Active Cash, and Fidelity’s card being notable options.
• Capital One Venture’s “2x on everything” is positioned as preferable (travel protections/transfer option).
• Bank of America’s premium cards: previously standout (2.625%+ on everything if $100k+ in assets), but the threshold is now $1M—“most people don’t just have a million dollars they can move into a Merrill Lynch account…” (09:38)
• Robinhood Card’s 3% back is interesting, but mixed reviews about category eligibility; Navy Federal Flagship card flagged as a strong, overlooked contender.

Notable Quote

“At 2%, I’d rather have a 2x everything points card—unless you never spend on travel.” (20:12)

4. Signup Bonuses: The Biggest Differentiator

(18:30 – 25:00)

• Point card signup bonuses can dwarf cashback offers—$1,000+ value is common; even if you “just book travel in the portal.”
• Examples: Chase Sapphire Preferred’s 100,000 points on $5,000 spend is a 21% effective cashback rate; Amex Platinum (up to 175k points).
• “If a welcome bonus is going to be worth less than $1,000, it’s just not that interesting to me unless there’s something else about the card.” (22:30)

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Practical Starter Advice: What If You’re New?

(30:00 – 33:00)

• Chris’s formula: Start with a single, low-annual-fee, flexible points card with a strong bonus and bonuses in relevant categories.
• Example: “Chase Sapphire Preferred right now… 100,000 point bonus, 3x on dining, vacation homes, gas, EV charging, 2x on travel.”
• Once you’ve taken a trip/redeemed points, reassess if you want to dive deeper (transfers, more cards, etc).
• Suggested tool for learning: Points Path extension for Google Flights (shows when/how to use points vs. pay cash).

Episode Reference:

• Go to episode 227 for the full “from scratch to expert” journey (w/ Devon Gimble).

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Annual Fees: Who Should Pay and Why?

(33:00 – 40:00)

• Most enthusiasts pay the fee for at least one year—sign-up bonuses and perks usually offset it.
• After year one, always reassess:
  • Downgrade, negotiate for retention offers, or cancel if the value isn’t there.
  • Chris does detailed math on every card: Chase Sapphire Reserve ($795 fee) provides ~$945 value if he uses the perks; “There’s overhead to all of that, so there needs to be other value. And that other value for me comes in the form of the travel protections, the chase lounges, the 4x on hotels and airlines…” (36:31)
• Military members/spouses get annual fees waived from most issuers—Chris strongly recommends maxing out high-fee, high-perk cards if eligible (see question from Brian).

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Card Strategies for Different Types of Listeners

(40:00 – 55:00)

1. Simplicity Seekers & Families

• Many lock their spend into a single airline card (e.g., Southwest), earning poor returns; better to use flexible 2x everything cards to avoid devaluation and increase utility.
• “If you earned that 125,000 points [for Southwest Companion Pass] at 1x when you could be using another card to get even 2% cash back…is it actually worth it?” (41:48)
• General advice: Use airline/hotel cards sparingly (free bags, status perks), do your everyday spend on flexible points/cashback cards.

2. Category Spend Maximizers (Gas, etc.)

• Don’t chase marginal increases (4x vs 3x on gas) unless spend is huge; focus on big welcome bonuses and overall flexible earning.
• Wyndham Business Earner card used to be a standout (8x on gas), but loss of Vacasa partnership and devaluation reduces practical value.

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Advanced Topics for Points Enthusiasts

1. RVs, Cruises, and Unusual Categories

• RV rentals: Rarely code as travel on most cards; check carefully. Amex Green, Wells Fargo Autograph, or Chase (3x on travel) are options.
• Cruise cards: “I can’t see a situation in which I would recommend them…none of them are that exciting.” (48:52)
  • The likely reason: less frequent travel, older demographics, not enough volume for lucrative offers.

2. Priority Pass & Lounge Access

• With higher Chase Sapphire fees, alternatives for lounge access: Venture X, Built Palladium, or Bank of America Premium Rewards Elite (allows four independent Priority Pass users).
• Direct airline club access may be better if you always fly the same airline.

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Playing the Points Game with a Partner

(55:00 – 65:00)

• Referral Offers: Always compare referral vs. public offers—Amex can be tricky (referral links sometimes have lower bonuses than direct public links, and bonus amounts can change depending on browser/incognito mode).
• Authorized Users: Rarely necessary unless you want separate lounge access, status perks, or to split free night certificates. Built’s innovative AU program lets you direct points to either partner to help reach status.
• Points Pooling: United’s pooling is good; caution on how pooled points can be used. For programs that don’t pool, you can almost always transfer to airline/hotel frequent flyer accounts and book for each other.
• Combining Finances: Chris’s experience assumes joint finances, which may not map to everyone.

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Managing Points When Closing or Downgrading Cards

(65:00 – End)

• Don’t close your only card just to avoid the annual fee—if you do, you’ll forfeit your points (unless you have another card with that issuer).
• You can often downgrade to a no-fee card to preserve your points; some restrictions (e.g., no transfers to partners with no-fee Chase or Amex consumer cards).
• On Amex, the Blue Business Plus is a no-fee Membership Rewards card that keeps your points alive.
• With a huge stash of points (ex: listener with 5 million Amex points), consider keeping a Business Platinum open to use the 35% rebate option (effectively 1.54 cents/point in value).

Notable Quote

“If you have travel to book, you could just book travel and use the credit in the portal to book it. But let’s say those aren’t options…If I look at where I’ve used my Amex points, I’d probably split between Air Canada Aeroplan and Air France/KLM Flying Blue, because they seem to be the places I’ve gotten the most value.” (77:10)

• On Delta: Amex transfers aren’t great because Delta’s dynamic pricing rarely beats the cash out floor, and you don’t earn miles/status on award tickets.
• For American Express Gold’s high fee, Chris finds it increasingly hard to justify—most of the credits are difficult to use fully, and alternate cards are close in category rates without the high cost.

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

• “I would argue [hotel] cash prices have gone up a lot more than they might be going up with devaluations on points.” (07:35)
• “The signup bonuses on points cards just so, so much better than on cashback cards. I mean, it just dwarfs the returns.” (19:15)
• “If you’re someone who wants simplicity, there is something nice and alluring about let’s just get a 2% cash back card…I don’t have to think. But…if you spend a little bit of time upfront…you can get a lot higher rewards on an ongoing basis.” (27:02)
• “If I were in the military, I would be having all of the card slots filled with high annual fee cards that have as much recurring benefit as possible.” (39:29)
• “If you haven’t had the Chase Sapphire Preferred before, [the 100,000 point offer] is one of the highest ROI and value bonuses that is out there for a low-fee annual card.” (18:58)

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Key Timestamps

• 00:00 – Points devaluation and high annual fees: Are points still worth it?
• 04:43 – Coupon book issue: Premium cards vs. ecosystem overall
• 11:45 – Cashout floors and points as cashback
• 18:35 – Welcome bonuses: A critical advantage for points cards
• 33:00 – Rationalizing annual fees; example breakdown
• 39:29 – Military strategy: Maximize perks with zero annual fees
• 41:48 – Why airline cards can be suboptimal for families
• 50:30 – Dealing with cruise cards and niche travel categories
• 58:20 – Partner play, referral bonuses, authorized users, and points pooling
• 67:15 – What to do with points when canceling/downgrading a card
• 77:10 – Where to transfer/burn large stashes of Amex points

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Takeaways and Next Steps

• For most listeners, points cards (especially with big signup bonuses and paired with a bit of learning) still beat cashback on overall value, provided you’re willing to manage them a little.
• Avoid locking your spend into airline/hotel cards unless you have a specific, recurring use case.
• Always check referral and public offers before applying; maximize bonuses.
• Use points cards with strong cash out floors (Amex/Schwab, Capital One, Built, Chase) if you want a “cashback experience with upside.”
• If annual fees become a burden, downgrade to no-fee options before canceling, or transfer points out with a plan.
• Military members/spouses should load up on high annual fee, high perk cards.
• Be honest about your willingness to deal with overhead, and remember: “If it’s a hobby, and you enjoy it, then the overhead is part of the fun.”
• Newbies: Start simple, avoid high-fee cards, and focus on building knowledge with your first big welcome bonus.

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For more deep dives, tools, and the latest card offers, visit allthehacks.com/cards and check out referenced episodes:

• Starting Fresh to Expert Path: Episode 227
• Built Loyalty Deep Dive: Episode 264
• What’s in Chris’s Wallet: Episode 267
• Points Gaming with a Partner: Episode 249

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End of Summary

Transcript

[A]

Credit card fees keep going up. Some are almost $1,000. The credits those cards offer are getting harder to use and there's constant point devaluation. So it is fair to ask, is

[B]

earning points and miles even worth it anymore?

[A]

Well, as someone who pays probably more than $10,000 a year in credit card

[B]

annual fees, for me it's still worth it. But that might not be true for everyone.

[A]

So today in this AMA episode, I'm going to break down why all those

[B]

fees are still worth it for me, who they might not be worth it

[A]

for, some mistakes people make when they

[B]

run the numbers, when it could make

[A]

sense to just do cash back, what I would do if I were starting over, and a lot more. I'm Chris Hutchins. If you enjoy this episode and you want to keep upgrading your money points

[B]

in life, click follow or subscribe.

[A]

Okay, let's start with a question from Michael. He said with the card market becoming more coupon book like and transfer partner devaluations and award program devaluations, it seems more frustrating to earn and use points or even make high annual fee cards worth it. I I've been tempted to switch to a simpler cashback system for a while. What's changed? What's the best cashback card if I do it? What do you think of the fidelity 2%? Right. So let's jump into this and then come back to a couple other questions that tie in. So first off, I think the coupon book question is real, but it's a premium card problem. It's not really a problem with the entire points ecosystem. I was looking at a bunch of cards that have no high annual fees, no coupons, or if they do, they're very, very minimal. And cards like the City Strata Premier, the Chase Sapphire Preferred, the Wells Far Autograph and Autograph Journey Built, Obsidian, Amex Green, the Capital One Venture Card, all of those cards have much lower annual fees. I think almost every one of them is in the zero to $150 range. They're not full of tons of coupons and they all earn somewhere between 2 and 3 and even 4x on major categories. The Venture cards, 2x on everything. So I think that there are a ton of low fee, no coupon or very minimal coupon cards out there that earn points. So I agree the premium card coupon thing is real, but let's set that aside and we can come back to it. Now the other argument, devaluation has been a problem. That is definitely true. But devaluation programs from airlines and hotel Groups, even from award programs, changing the transfer ratios. That's all happening, but it doesn't really affect the cash out floor. Four points. So if you're someone who just wants to earn points and then cash them out and effectively treat points cards like cash back cards, with the exception of some changes to the way the Chase travel portal is working, not much has changed in that world. If you have Capital One, you have Amex. Those points can be cashed out for one cent, in some cases a little higher.

[B]

Amex.

[A]

If you use Schwab for the first million points a year, you can cash them out for 1.1 cents.

[B]

Built.

[A]

If you want to book in the travel portal, you, you can book for 1.25 cents. And so points are still worth it. Chase is a little bit of a mixed bag. It used to be a little more straightforward. I would say for any Chase card, you can cash out at $0.01. For some bookings and for some legacy points that are still kind of carrying over that value, it might go as high as 1.25, 1.5 even. I've seen a couple points boost bookings at 2 cents. So if you look at points cards as cash back cards, you say, I'm just going to earn points and cash them out. I'm not going to try to do anything fancy. I'm just going to book my travel in the portal and I'm going to get back statement credit or use points to book it. Then you've kind of got a situation where points cards are effectively cash back cards. The difference is a lot of points cards earn more than a lot of cash back cards. And I'll get to that. The only catch is that for a lot of those programs, you do need to spend the money in the travel portal or on travel expenses and get reimbursed in order to get that cash out rate. So that Capital One Venture card you can reimburse yourself, but it has to be travel spend. So I'd say as long as your travel spend is kind of in the 2 to 3% of your total credit card spend, which is not that high. If you spend $50,000 a year on a credit card, that means 1,000 to $1,500 of your spend needs to be in travel, which I'm guessing for most people that spend that much, it is. And so that kind of gets you to a point where a points card where you might have 2x on everything, combined with a card that earns 3x and a handful of categories, it's going to be a 2% cashback card, even if you ignore the entire concept of using those points, transferring to airlines, everything like that. So I still think the points cards win in that scenario. Now I also still think that if you are willing to do a quick look when you're planning a trip at whether there are higher upside options transferring your points, it can be really lucrative. Now I'm not saying go and replan your entire trip just to focus on that, but this summer I have been seeing so much availability for so many destinations in coach, premium, economy and business class, using points at 1.5 all the way up to like 5 cents a point, which would make any points earning card more valuable than a cashback card. And that's not just to a couple destinations. I've seen it to Europe, to Fiji, to French Polynesia, to Japan, to South America. It is actually pretty wild how much award booking space there is right now in premium cabins on good travel, even with airlines that I don't see opening up space that often. We're in the middle of trying to decide where we're going in a couple weeks and once I report back I'll share more details. But I've been seeing some awesome options for using our points. Now I mentioned devaluation does affect the ability to transfer points to partners and get a lot of value. And you know, there have been some big devaluations recently, Wyndham and especially Hyatt. Though I did look at the data that Frequent Miler just published on the Hyatt devaluation and it looks like they're seeing the value of Hyatt points down only about 8 to 12%. And that does mean your points are worth a little bit less. However, I want to make sure everyone also realizes that if you start looking at hotel cash prices right now and compare them to where they were a year two years ago, I would argue they've gone up a lot, A lot more. I'm seeing some hotels at just such astronomical prices that it's almost crazy. I know in The Bay Area 10, 15 years ago looked at going up to Napa for the weekend and we might spend a few hundred dollars at a nice hotel. Maybe it was $500. Now it's like over a thousand, sometimes over 1500 for a high end resort in Napa for the weekend. Now fortunately I have family there. We don't have to stay at a hotel anymore. But I am seeing travel going up for what you need on cash even more than it might be going up with devaluations on points that Said, if you do want to say, look, I understand, I hear you, but I'd still rather just not have to think about it, then let's talk about cashback. So I think cashback makes sense for the person who just doesn't want the overhead, right? Because even if you wipe all the overhead of transferring to airline partners off and you just say, I'm going to have one or two cards. And I think in the past, kind of the best combo has been a 2x everything and a card that earns in your category. So if you wanted to stick to Citi, you could do the Citi Double Cash and the City Strata premiere. You'd get 2x on everything plus 3x on. I'm going to do this from memory. It's like hotels, flights, gas, grocery and dining. I might be missing one other one. But that combo, even if you just took all those points booked in the travel portal and reimbursed yourself, would probably do better than almost every cashback card, with a couple exceptions. And I'll talk about it. And that just gets better and better if you start to look at other cards or you layer on more cards. But if you're looking at cash back, there have been a few changes that I think are worth kind of looking into because the cash back ecosystem has actually gotten a little bit worse in terms of cards that get you more than 2%. So there are a ton of cards that will get you 2%, the city double Cash, Wells Fargo, Active Cash, the Fidelity card, and plenty of others that are 2% on everything. Really straightforward, really easy. But at the 2% level, I would argue that I would rather have the Capital One Venture card earning 2x on everything. Don't even have to book in the portal to get that 2% converted to effectively 2%. You can just book travel and reimburse yourself. So that makes it kind of really on par with a 2% card. And then it has the upside of, if you want, you could transfer it to partners, but you don't have to. And so I would say at 2%, I would rather have a 2x card than that is effectively the same for almost every situation, except for people who don't spend 2% of their credit card spend on travel. Because if you spend, let's say $50,000 a year on your card and you don't spend $1,000 a year on travel, well, then you'll have some capital one points that you can't cash out as easily. So I will say yes for that one small segment of people Another thing that I think's been tricky with cashback cards is the travel protections just aren't always there. I did an episode a few weeks ago about travel insurance and a lot of the really good travel protections exist on points cards and premium cards. And they just don't exist on most cashback cards. That's not to say they don't on all of them. It's just on many of them they don't. So let's talk about the cards that are greater than 2%, because that's where I think the math could play a little bit more in the cashback favor for someone who doesn't want to have to think about this. And kind of the best card. I'd always told people that if you can park a six figure balance, $100,000 or more in a Bank of America or a Merrill lynch account, the bank of America Premium Rewards, Premium Rewards, Elite, Unlimited Cash, all of those cards ended up getting boosted to be 2.625% everywhere cashback cards. And if you did the Premium Rewards or the Premium Rewards Elite, that took the travel and dining category up to three and a half percent. That to me was the contender, like that combo of 2.6 to 5 and 3.5% really held up strong to a 2x everything points card. And unfortunately, bank of America increased that requirement from 100,000 to a million dollars. And look, if you have a million dollars in stocks or IRAs or something that is very easy to transfer over to a Merrill lynch account and doesn't require earning, you know, subpar interest in a savings account, then by all means, that actually might be still a great path. However, most people don't just have a million dollars. They can move into a Bank of America Merrill lynch account and continue earning at that rate.

[B]

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[A]

Trustandwill.com allthehills now the business cards still have the 100k minimum but, but I just have to assume that's changing eventually. So you know, I don't want to say just go get a Bank of America business card and that will solve all the problems because I have to assume that changes are going to eventually come there as well. So that takes that one off the table. You still get a, I think 50% boost at the 100k level which is a 2.25% on everything. And for the dining and travel, if you have the Premium Rewards or Premium Rewards elite that goes up to 3% instead of three and a half. So that's still a pretty good contender, right? If you could put 100k from an old IRA or a brokerage account and you can move that over to Merrill lynch, then I actually do think and by the way, if you do that into a joint Merrill lynch account, then both people on the account get preferred reward status or I guess now it's called bank of America my rewards. So I do think that's still a decent option and it's better than a 2% card. And I have to assume they're not going to make any major changes to that program for the personal side for a while because they just made some really big changes Outside of that, you know, there's the Robinhood Card, which offers 3% on everything. I think it has a low annual fee because you need Robinhood Gold. There are mixed reports. I've heard some people use it all the time, love it, have no issues. I've heard other people, it doesn't earn on taxes, or if you put some large business expenses on it, it might not earn rewards or they might get upset about that. So I think it's up to you whether Robinhood is going to be, you know, your primary credit card platform. For me, I don't think it makes sense. A lot of the categories that we might spend on might be things that could come across as large business expenses or things that are tax payments or things like that. So it doesn't really do that much for me. A card that someone recently flagged to me that's kind of interesting that I hadn't ever really considered is the Navy Federal flagship card. And this one, I think for anyone who likes playing the cashback game, is definitely interesting because best I can tell, for a $49 annual fee, you. You get 3% back on travel and 2% back on everything else. So that feels to me like a really great cashback card. Now, it's marketed as 3x points and 2x points, but it does look like those points are pretty easy to just convert to statement credits or deposit into your bank account. And the only caveat here is that you need to be a member of Navy Federal. That said, unlike some credit unions, it is a little bit easier. Any relative of yours needs to have served in the military or be a Navy Federal member. So a grandfather, a parent, something like that. Or if your housemate happens to be a member, or maybe, you know, I'm not going to push these rules or tell you what's appropriate, but it's anyone living at your address. So if someone who's a member maybe lives at your address for a little bit of time, maybe that counts. So if any of those things qualify, then you could become a member. And that's a decent cashback card, right? I think the bank of America card beats it if you have $100,000 balance, but it doesn't if you don't. And then, you know, the kind of tried and true 2% on everything. Simple Fidelity, Wells Fargo, Active Cash, Citi Double Cash. Those also work as well. I would probably lean towards something like the Wells Fargo or the City Double Cash only because the points you earn do have the upside to be converted to points if you want, and you pair them with, you know, a Wells Fargo autograph or autograph Journey card or the City Strata Premier, the City Strata Elite. So I think those are options. That said, I think at 2% I'd rather go with the Capital One Venture card and get 2x points because I guess I spend at least 2% of my annual credit card spend on travel. So, so that would get me some better protections and some more upside for how I redeem those points. On the downside, it's a 2% cashback card. But there's another real reason that I think points cards outperform cashback cards, even if you factor in everything we talked about and that is that the signup bonuses are just so, so much better on points cards. And if you look at the earnings from welcome bonuses, it just dwarfs everything else. So let's take the Chase Sapphire Preferred card, which currently has a best ever a hundred thousand point offer on spending $5,000 in three months. Now if you've ever had the Chase Sapphire Preferred, you're not going to be eligible for the bonus. But if you haven't, spending $5,000 in three months will earn you a hundred thousand points. Those points at a cash out value are worth $0.01. So that's $1,000 plus you're going to get 1 point on those $5,000 you spend. So another 5,000 points. That $5,000 of spend is, it's effectively a 21% cashback using those points as cashing out in the travel portal for booking regular flights. And by the way, those flights in the travel portal still earn points, should still earn you status on airlines at least. Maybe not on all hotel bookings, but you know, they do come with some hassle for managing those bookings. You can't always manage those bookings directly with airlines and hotel groups. So I do get that there's that little caveat. But 21% is unreal. So first off, if you haven't had the Chase Sapphire Preferred card before, you know this is one of the highest ROI and value bonuses that is kind of out there for a low fee annual card. And if you want to support me or the show, go to allthehacks.com cards. We have links for all these cards and every card that has an interesting bonus sorted by what I think are the best bonuses. We keep that up to date all the time. If the best bonus isn't a link that supports us, that's fine. We'll Put that link instead. I want you to get the most points possible, even if it doesn't support me. So I want to make it easy for you to have one place to go and find the best offers. Sometimes they're offers that support us, sometimes they're referral links from our members, and sometimes they're just public links because that's the best link I could find. Similarly, there are some really big offers on the business side I'm seeing right now. The Chase Sapphire reserve business earn 200,000 points after spending 30,000 in the first six months. Both the Ink Business Cash and the Ink Business Unlimited are earn $1,000 which is earned in the form of Ultimate Rewards points, which can be converted to 100,000 points after you spend $8,000 in the first four months. And those are both no annual fee cards. So for a card that's going to earn 100,000 points for no annual fee, that's just wild. It's effectively the equivalent. Let's just look at this. If you take the Ink Business Cash or the Ink Business unlimited, you're earning 100,000 points plus 8,000 points from the spend and you're earning that on 8,000 spend. So it's about 13 and a half thousand x points or 13 and a half percent cash back on that welcome bonus. So that's really the argument for points cards is that if you're going to go open up the 2% fidelity card, I don't even know if there is a welcome bonus right now. That's Chase on the Amex side. You know, the Personal Platinum, yes it has high annual fees, but you know, offers right now are up to 175,000 points, which I think is worth more than $1750. But you know, at a floor, you know, should be worth at least $1,750. If you were to get the Schwab version of the card. I think the offer is only 150,000 points, but you can cash those points out at 1.1 cents. So you're going to get 150,000 points that you can cash out for $1,650. Not only do you get all the credits from the card that you can use to offset the annual fee, but you also get, you know, over $1,500 in value. So that's the thing that I love about points cards. Aside from the upside of transferring the points, it's that getting a new points card usually comes with a thousand dollar or more bonus. Let's jump to this question. Manny had which is when do you think a cashback welcome offer is worth it? He sees a lot of 200 offers, but you know, he's asking me when that makes sense. I think that unless there's a really strong reason to have a card for the long haul, there are just almost always an unlimited number of offers for cards where the value of the welcome bonus is a thousand dollars or more, even if you're just going to use it to book travel in the portal and not mess with points and miles. And so for me, if a welcome bonus is going to be worth Less than $1,000, it's just not that interesting to me unless there's something else about the card. Now, I did get the bank of America Premium Rewards Elite card and I got that when the welcome bonus was, you know, basically $750. Now that card also earned a lot of cash back in a lot of areas, as I mentioned earlier. So I wanted it for a different reason. But I was willing to say, look, I really want this card. I'm willing to accept that the welcome bonus is a little bit less than I would normally want. Now, there is one other feature of that Premium Rewards Elite card which is if you use your cash back towards booking travel, it's worth 25% more. So that $750 would actually be worth 937, 50, which I've done. And so, you know, it is pretty close to that thousand dollars minimum. That that also is worth mentioning that that card in particular, even if you don't meet the new million dollar threshold and only meet the $100,000 threshold, you know, if it's earning 2.25%, but you use that for booking travel, it's actually going to be worth 2.81%. So it's actually a pretty lucrative card from that perspective. So when it comes to cashback welcome bonuses, I've rarely if ever seen one that is worth signing up for a card for. If I have, it's almost always on a business card. So when Amex launched this new graphite card, it had a fifteen hundred dollars bonus. So I have seen cashback cards offer welcome bonuses worth getting over that thousand dollar minimum, but it's almost always on a business card. On the personal side, it is very, very rare. And then one other card that's interesting to mention is that in a couple of the forums I'm in where people who maybe don't like points are debating what is the best cashback card, the card that keeps coming up the most is actually the Built Palladium card. I get that it's not a cashback card. However, if you earn 2x points on the Built Palladium card, like you would on the Venture X card or the Venture Card, and those points can be used for 1.25 cents on travel, well then you're effectively getting 2.5% back on everything. And that's just the base rate. Right? You're also earning this Built Cash, which if you are interested in going deeper on Built Cash, this is not the episode to do it. Go to episode 264. I did a really big deep dive on the Built program. But the upside, you're also earning Built Cash. And that Built Cash can be used for a lot of things, some of which might feel a little difficult to use. But if you have rent or mortgage, you can use that Built Cash to earn points on your rent or mortgage. So you have to have the card, you have to earn the Built Cash and then you can unlock those points. And what's really interesting here is that let's say you spend $50,000 a year on rent or mortgage, then you can unlock up to. And it really depends on how much you spend. But let's just say if you pick the simple program, you, you know, if you spend $50,000 a year on your card, you can earn 1.25x points on your housing payments. So that means that it goes from a 2x card to a 3.25x card. And if you're earning 3.25x points that are worth 1.25 cents, that's a little over 4% of value. In all those conversations about what's the best cashback card, the general consensus for a lot of people is the Built Palladium card is the most effective kind of quote unquote, cashback card because you can use all the points you earn in their Travel portal at 1.25 cents and you can earn 2x on everything. So at a floor it's 2 and a half percent cash back effectively. But on top of that, you get the upside of if you have rent or housing payments, you can stack that even higher. And so that is kind of become my everything card. And it's beat out everything else. Even though it is not a cash back card. Now, it does have a higher annual fee than a lot of the kind of low annual fee cards. Now there is a welcome bonus. There are some kind of coupons and perks that you get with the card that can offset some of that annual fee. But I think if you're earning an effective 4% cash back. Hopefully earning that, you know, higher rate offsets the rest of the annual fee that you maybe you aren't able to recoup in other ways. I also think that if you put that much money on your built card, you end up earning built status, which comes with a bunch of really interesting things, right? If you transfer your points, they can be worth up to 2x as valuable during some of these transfer bonuses. If you get a certain level of status, you get a free blade helicopter ride in New York. So there's a lot of things going on in the built program, which is probably why I love it, because if you learn how to optimize it and maximize it, you can get a ton of value. But I do understand that if you're someone who wants simplicity, there is something nice and alluring about let's just get a 2% cash back card. I don't have to think. But I will say if you spend a little bit of time upfront understanding the how do I take a points card and treat it like a cash back card, then I think that upfront understanding will reduce a lot of the complexity on an ongoing basis and get you a lot higher rewards on an ongoing basis. So hopefully that makes sense. I forgot to mention that Sebastian was the one who asked about that Navy Federal Flagship card, so thank you for reaching out and asking that question because it's an interesting card that I hadn't really considered. So that's generally how I'm thinking about this. But I got a fun question from two people, Emma and Horatio, who kind of said, hey, I'm new to this. Where should I start? Like what steps would you follow if you had to start over all over again? And it's probably not everything I just walked through, right? I would not start there. That's kind of the result of me doing this for 20 years. If I were getting started right now, I would probably pick one card. I'd avoid the high annual fees, so I'm not trying to learn how to recoup credits all at once. And I would pick a card that has a nice welcome bonus and rewards me in some categories that I'm spending on. So example would be that Chase Sapphire preferred right now, 100,000 points, 3x on some really popular categories like dining, vacation homes, gas, EV charging, 2x on all travel purchases and 1x on everything else. That's a great starter card. That 100,000 point welcome bonus is going to give you enough points that you're probably going to be able to take a trip out the gate, you'll start to understand, okay, how does this whole thing work? Do I feel comfortable booking in the portal or do I want to explore booking with some other programs where I'd transfer my points? I think Chase has a pretty good set of transfer partners for someone new to this, because you could transfer to programs like Hyatt and United, which are a little bit more familiar than kind of going and transferring to programs like Air France or Aeroplan from Air Canada, which I think can have a lot of value, but, you know, it could be a little bit more of a learning curve. Other cards that I'd consider the Capital One Venture Card 2X on everything, pretty straightforward, easy to use the points both in travel and not. And then if you've got housing payments, rent or mortgage, I feel like it's hard for the built card, whether that's the Obsidian or the Palladium, to beat out some of these other cards. Not factoring in the welcome bonus. Right. I think if it were me right now, the Chase half I preferred, if I didn't have it, that'd probably be my starter card. Especially today when this welcome bonus is so high. But the other two are probably good alternatives of where I'd start and I would stay there until I booked a trip and understood how I like to use my points and what feels too stressful. Right. Do I want to start with just booking in the travel portal? Do I want to start to book, you know, look at transfer partners. If you're doing transfer partners and you're looking at airlines, I would encourage you to start with Points Path, which is a browser extension. They have a free version, it sits on top of Google Flights. And it'll just start to give you an idea of, oh, here's how I could book my points versus pay cash. So that's where I would start. After that, I would then go and look at how do I want to think about getting other cards, getting other welcome bonuses. But if I were starting, it would be a one card, a low annual fee and a high welcome bonus and keeping it straightforward. And then over time, I'd probably layer in a second card or a third card, either because it rewards a category I spend, whether it's everything else, or some other, or because has another really great welcome bonus. I think both of those are good. If you are new to this, go back and listen to episode 227 with Devon Gimble, and we kind of talked about the path from starting fresh to becoming an expert in the game. And some of the feelings that you experience along the way because I think some of them can be frustrating. The more you know, the harder it gets until you become a, you know, an expert in that area. So it's like every time you unlock something new now you're like oh my gosh, now I know too much and I wish I just didn't know this cuz life was easier when I just went online and booked the trip. So I totally get that perspective.

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To follow up, Jordan actually said, I'm aware of signup bonuses and transfer bonuses, but do people really pay these annual fees? Like, how do you avoid that? And I think that's a great question. It's a good follow up to the like, where do I start? And then how do I keep going? Because when you think about how you keep going, you look at a lot of these cards and you think, gosh, $795 annual fee, $500 annual fee. There's a lot of really, really high annual fees. And I think the honest answer is people pay them. They often pay them in the first year because the combination of the perks and the benefits that the card comes with and the welcome bonus wildly offset the annual fee in that first year. And then at the end of the year, they ask themselves, am I continuing to get enough value from this card or not? And if they aren't, there's a really clean ramp to, in most cases, downgrade the card, ask for a retention bonus. Hey, I'm going to cancel this card. You know, call in chat support. Is there any offers right now? And sometimes you might get an offer to waive it or, you know, some extra bonus points or, you know, you decide to keep it because you're sure you can get that value. Now, I went and ran the math here, and I've talked about this before, but I spend a large amount of money on annual fees over $10,000, which sounds crazy, but it's because I've gone through and done the math and I reliably get that much back. Now, some of those cards, it might be break even. And if I weren't making content about this, I probably would say the work it takes to recoup that is probably not worth it. But if I'm not getting the value back, I don't care if I can make content around it, I don't want to keep the card. And so I thought I'd break down just one card right now and just kind of explain my thinking on that one card. Because, you know, if you look at the Chase Sapphire reserve card right now, I think a lot of people look at it and say, wow, 795 annual fee. I'm not really interested in spending that much on a credit card. And you're not wrong, right? That is a large amount of money to spend on an annual fee on a card. But if you break down everything that comes with it, here's how I think about it. So here are the perks that this card comes with and how I think about them. So Apple TV plus and Apple Music. I don't pay for Apple Music. I never did. But I do pay for Apple TV plus, or at least I did before this card, and I was paying for it at the full 1299amonth. So if I were already paying 1299amonth and now I'm not, then that benefit is worth 1299amonth or around $155 then. Dining credit. So one of the credits that you get from this card is $150 every six months for the first half of the second half of the year towards a handful of of restaurants that are bookable through this open table program. And there are at least three or four restaurants in the Bay Area where I live that in the course of a year I will absolutely go to. Even if there were no dining credit, I would go to these restaurants. And so the idea that I can spend $150 every six months is something I was pretty much already doing. Now if you came to me and said, would you pay $300 a year to get these credits? I would say no. Like, I would rather just not have the overhead of it. But I would probably spend $250 a year because there are restaurants I'm actually going to. It's not like I'm choosing a subpar experience for me. If I didn't live near any of these restaurants, it'd be way harder for me to get that value. So I probably pay $250 day market that you get $20 a month in door dash. Non restaurant credits. I get no value from that. We don't use doordash for non restaurants. It would be too much of a pain for us to change our process for ordering groceries to doordash. So that's to me worth zero. You know, they do give you $5 a month off at restaurants. We probably doordash six or seven times a year. At least there are six or seven months a year where we doordash once. I would certainly not pay that much for the credit because it's just overhead. But I might pay 20 bucks to be able to get $5 a month on doordash. Global entry. You get global entry covered every four years. We have enough cards to cover this. I would not pay for this. Like, if I didn't have it from this card, I would have it on another card. And so that's worth Nothing to me. $10 a month of Lyft credit. On months we travel, we probably use that credit. On months we don't travel, we don't Maybe I'd pay 40 bucks for it. Peloton, $10 off a month. We have a peloton, so I would be paying more than $10 a month. I'd be paying whatever it is, $44 a month through our Peloton. Now I pay $34 a month. So this one, it's worth almost face value. Let's call it a hundred bucks. The StubHub credit one is interesting because you get $150 every six months. And I would say one of those times a year we probably actually want to go to do something and the next time we don't. So I don't know. I pay like 100 bucks. They'll market it as 300. I would probably say it's worth 100. The $250 twice a year credit on the edit hotels. Given all the points bookings we do, given everything I do all the hotel credits, I'm honestly going to value this at 0. There are other people that value this way higher, but we just don't make enough cash. Hotel bookings. I've never even used this credit. So for me it's zero. The $300 travel credit, on the other hand, is the easiest credit to use. Of almost every credit, you just put travel on the card and they reimburse you. Would I pay full 300? Probably not, but I probably pay 2 80. And so you can sum all those up. And I left a few things off that I'm not even going to value, which is like Chase Sapphire Reserve had a deal where you could buy a whoop and basically get the full value back. They had a promo this year where you get a $250 credit on certain hotel brands that stacks on top of that edit credit. So I'm not going to include those. And the total value from all those comes out to $945. So at a $795 annual fee relative to $945 of benefits, it pays for itself. There's overhead to all of that, so there needs to be other value. And that other value for me comes in the form of the travel protections, the chase lounges, the 4x on hotels and airlines, and all of those things together, plus the kind of random things they sometimes do, like a free whoop makes it worth keeping that card. Now the second one is worth way less because I don't have two Apple TV subscriptions and you know, I don't take enough Lyft rides or, you know, don't have a second peloton and that kind of stuff. So I will say that if you had a partner and you were both having this card, I wouldn't value them each at the same amount. But that's my math for how I actually get back the value from this card. And so that's how it's worth it for me. Now, I'm not going to run through every single other card and how to take advantage of those perks, but I will flag if you have an AMEX Platinum card right now, the Aura, at least as of recording Gen4 Ring. The last Gen ring is discounted so much that when you stack it with the Amazon $200 Aura credit, you can get that Oura ring for $44. So if you've been looking for an OURA ring, great time to get one. I'm still on the Gen 3 and it's great. So I'm sure the Gen 4 is also great. It does have a monthly subscription, so like keep that in mind. But if it's something you are already going to get on a normal year, I might not value that credit at much, but this year it might be great. So obviously there's a lot to manage there. There are no shortage of spreadsheets and websites and apps to kind of explore all of this. I've built one. I'm pretty close to sharing it. I know I've said that for like six months now, but I just built the iOS app version of it. And so go to cardtool app/waitlist if you're interested, just to help keep track of all the cards in your wallet and all the credits you have and which ones are the best in different categories. So that's something I'm working on. I really hope that before the end of the summer I reach out to everyone on the waitlist and find a way to give people access. Or if you join our membership, you can get access sooner. So that's something mentioned on the site. But like I said, not every card is like that. For me, the Chase Sapphire Reserve business, I summed up the credits. It didn't make sense. Cancel the card. That doesn't mean that right now when the welcome bonus is 200,000 points, it's not worth getting. It just means that after one year you might want to downgrade the card, ask for a retention offer or cancel the card. And so that's how I Kind of think about the decision making here. But I think most people who do this, you know, more than someone getting started, have a lot of annual fees and feel good about recouping the value. But I think we probably could all be a little bit more honest about how much we'd be willing to pay for those things because there is overhead. But also some of us love this. And if you love this and it doesn't feel like overhead, then that's a whole different thing, right? Like if it's a hobby, truly. On the topic of annual fees, I got a question from Brian. Said for those of us in the military, is there any reason not to keep and have as many cards open as possible for the perks, especially if we plan to stay in for 15 plus years? So for those who don't know, most military members and military spouses get their annual fees waived on their cards from most issuers. I don't have the exact list, but if you search, you'll find it. But most of the main issuers, that is the case and so absolutely right. I'm not eligible for this. Neither me or my spouse are in the military. This also does work as reservists because I remember getting an email from someone that told me they make more in annual fee savings than they do in their reservist salary because they have so many cards. But absolutely, if I were getting all my annual fees waived, I would be having as many high annual fee cards with perks I get value for as possible. My wife and I would probably each have 5 Hilton Aspires printing a free night certificate on Hilton on each card every year we'd have 10 free nights that we could use at Hilton every year for free because we don't pay annual fees on the cards. So I would be adding as many high annual fee cards as I could. And if you go back and listen to the episode I did on credit card denials, you kind of get some insight as to what order I would apply for them. Because you know, the last thing you want to do is apply for all those cards with one issuer that's very tolerant to recent card openings and then try to do another issuer next that is not very tolerant and kind of be stuck. So there, there is an order you might want to think about to how you would open cards. But 100%, if I were in the military, I would be having all of the card slots filled with high annual fee cards that have as much recurring benefit as possible. Lounge access, free night certificates, credits. I can actually Use and whatnot. So that would definitely be a strategy. So really quick, I'm going to tackle a couple of specific people's questions that I think might be good examples. Jamie says, you know, we're a family of four. We've got Amazon card and Costco card and a Southwest card for everything else. I want to keep things pretty simple, but I feel like I'm missing out a little. We really only take one vacation a year, maybe a couple hotel stays. What do you think? Now, I don't think someone needs to make this more complicated if they don't want to. But I will react to the main thing here, which is your Southwest card as your main card, which is a very common thing. I see people do they open up a airline card, maybe they got marketed to it on an airplane for the signup bonus, and then that's become their everything card and they earn points and they're able to take them on trips. And that's awesome. So I'm not going to say you have to do this, but most of those airline cards are pretty poor earning cards for most categories. Oftentimes, even the own purchase on the airline, you might want to have them for some free bags or, you know, skip the line or priority seating or something like that. But outside of that, actually spending on them in the Southwest card, for example, is typically a 1x card and sometimes, you know, up to 2x depending on the card on dining or gas or grocery. I have heard an argument with Southwest that a lot of people make, which is why I want Companion Pass. If you earn 125,000 points on the card, you'll earn a Companion Pass. You can bring someone for free, but I would just push you to think about if you earned that 125,000 points by spending $125,000 at 1x when you could be using another card to get even 2% cash back. Like, is the amount of Companion pass usage you're getting actually worth it? So for me, if I were making one modification to this kind of family strategy, I would say I would just switch to something that is good for everything. That is an Amazon and Costco, which I guess Costco is probably also gas for them and just get like a 2x everything card. Could use that 2x like we talked about earlier, to cash out as 2% or points and not worry as much about having to be in a situation where you're always using this 1x card and you're always earning points locked to one airline. Right. If something changes with that airline Then all of a sudden you're stuck with a bunch of points that are now not really that interesting. Right. I think Alaska is a great program, but if you live in the Bay Area, they cut so many of their routes that if you were stuck with a lot of Alaska points and you don't really fly internationally, you're going to have to be changing planes a lot to get to most places. So that's just something I think about a lot for someone getting started is I like flexible points because you can book in the portal, you can transfer to other airlines. You're not locked into one program. The other question from Drew and JR actually was all around what cards to both get for gas and pair with a gas card. So Drew's like, I'm going to be driving a ton of what should I be doing here to kind of maximize gas? And then JR says, I actually have the Wyndham Business earner card. So I maximize on gas. What else should I be doing? And so when I think about these questions, it's always kind of the same. It's like, how much are you really spending and is it enough to move the needle? You might think, I spend a lot on gas. But if you spend $3,000 a year on gas and you can get a card that's going to earn 3 or 4x on gas instead of 2x, well, that might be, you know, 4 to 8,000 points a year versus go open up some card with a huge welcome bonus and get a hundred thousand points for doing it. You know, the payoff might be, you know, you got a better deal on the gas card, but it took 12 to 20 years to pay off or something. So I would keep that in mind when you think about opening up a card just to earn points on a category, unless it also happens to have a huge welcome bonus when it comes to gas, I think two things to think about, and this is probably true of every category. There are a lot of cards that offer really high 5 to 7% or 5 to 7x points on various categories, often gas. They're usually capped at $5,000 a month, fifteen hundred dollars a quarter, you know, five to seven thousand dollars a year. So if your spend is within that, oftentimes the best cards for these categories are these cards with high earnings but capped. If you're spending a lot of money, 10, 20, 30, 40, $50,000 a year on gas, then that's not going to be the right answer. And the right answer is a card that bonus is high on gas. And you know, the Wyndham business earner has often been one of the highest earning cards on gas. You get 8x points, however, you're earning 8x windham points. Wyndham points used to be interesting for a couple of reasons. One, you could transfer them to Vacasa. You could use them to book higher end Wyndham properties. But they lost the Vacasa partnership and Wyndham just went through a big devaluation. So for me, even though 8x Wyndham points is way more than you know, the city Strata premieres 3x on gas or the Chase Sapphire preferreds 3x on gas, I think I'd rather have 3x points that I could put anywhere I want than 8x points in a program that honestly I've never used once in my life. And I don't think I've ever stayed at a Wyndham hotel. And so as much as it is more points if I don't know how I'm going to use them, they're kind of stuck there. So that said, if you do use Wyndham and you want to pair a card with that for all your other spending, then I would just target an everything else card, the Venture card, the Citi Double Cash, the Venture card, or the Built Palladium card if you're in the points kind of earning mindset. Both are 2x on everything but the upside on housing payments on Built. But if you go to episode 267, it's the episode I did this year on what's in my wallet. And it kind of ran through all the cards that I have and how I'm thinking about different categories. Another interesting question we got was on travel, but two areas of travel that we don't often talk about. One is, you know, an RV trip. This person said, hey, what's the best way to rent an rv? And there's not a lot to say here, so it'll be a quick one, which is renting an RV might often fall under the travel category, but not the rental car or the, you know, hotel airline card categories. So it might not bonus on a lot of cards. So if I were spending money, you know, a large amount of money on renting an rv, I'd want to make sure I had a card that was going to bonus on it. And I wouldn't actually optimize for travel insurance here because RVs are excluded from almost every car's programs. Just like peer to peer car rentals are often as well. And so here I would say, okay, I'd either be looking for what am I going to spend more on the gas for the RV or the RV itself? And if it's gas, you know, like I mentioned, there are a couple of gas cards that are kind of great. City Strata, Premier, Chase. I preferred Wyndham Business Owner. If you're staying at Wyndham's or if the RV company is going to code as travel, then you know, I'd maybe consider a card that earns on all travel, not just specific types of travel. And that might be the Amex green card is 3x on travel. I think the Wells Fargo autograph card is 3x on travel, so those could be some interesting options as well. If you have a business, the chasing business Preferred is also 3x on travel.

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This episode is brought to you by Whisper Flow.

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And then next Steve sent in why are there no good cruise cards? Why are the credit card partners almost always airline and hotel groups? And there are cruise credit cards? And I don't have a perfect answer here because if I looked at all the cruise cards, which I did when I was kind of Building the card database for Car Tool. None of them are that exciting. Like, I can't see a situation in which I would recommend them to almost anyone. And I was wondering why, like, why aren't they trying to be more interesting? And I think I have some theories, but none of these I have any data behind one is that the audience skews differently. It's, you know, maybe it's families or older people and they're not high spend travelers. So the credit card companies aren't willing to give lucrative bonuses and earning categories because they're just, they don't know if they'll recoup it. Cruises are pretty infrequent. So, you know, you might get a United card thinking, well, I'm gonna fly United a lot this year. And United might say, well, let's give them a huge welcome bonus to kind convince them that maybe they should be more loyal to United. You know, if you opened up a Royal Caribbean card, you're probably not taking 10 cruises a year such that your Royal Caribbean card is going to convince you to take them all on Royal Caribbean, you're probably going to take a cruise, I don't know, once every year to five years. So, you know, that's another one. And then the category of die hard Loyalist, they might get that card no matter what, they might find that there's people that will and won't get the card and the people that will are going to get it even if it's a bad card and the people that won't are never going to get it. And so that could be another reason. But I have not seen a cruise card that has any offer or benefit worth getting. One question. I probably should have done this earlier. Brandy asks, with the Chase Sapphire annual costs going up so much, how do you think about priority pass for someone who travels and wants priority pass lounge access but doesn't want to pay this high annual fee, what should you do? And I would say, well, first off, maybe like I mentioned, the annual fee going up isn't a bad thing for me. When I looked at the pre and post Chase Sapphire reserve card, I'll take the post. I'd rather have the high annual fee because I believe they added the dining, the StubHub credits, oh, and the Apple TV credits, and maybe even the peloton credits. Like if you add all the Chase Sapphire reserve benefits that got added relative to the annual fee change, I thought it was an upgrade, but let's say you decide that's not for me. But I still want priority Pass. I'd push back and then I'll give you an answer. So the pushback is Priority Pass just feels like it's not what it used to be. More and more, I'm seeing a lot of lounges get opened by airlines and by credit card issuers. So like the Chase Lounge, the Amex Lounge, the Capital One Lounge. And so Priority Pass lounges are kind of less and less popular. And the ones that do exist have huge lines. Every time I go to SFO, I walk past the club lounge and see 30, 40 people in line waiting, you know, getting to the airport early so they can get in line early. So then go to the lounge before they fly, which I feel like defeats the a lot of the purpose. And then I walk by like the Alaska Lounge and I've never seen a line at all. And so that's not always the case. Internationally, it could be a way different story. We were just in Cabo and the lounge there, basic lounge, but very functional, no line to get in. Ask yourself whether Priority Pass actually is as useful. And if you fly the same airline most frequently, you might actually be better off if it's always United, getting a United Club card and being able to go to the United Club. Or if you fly out of three or four airports that all have Chase Amex, CAP1 lounges, maybe that's the right path. Most of those cars will also come with Priority Pass, so that's another option. But let's say you really want Priority Pass. I think you've kind of got two paths. One, if you can find someone who has a card that can add you as an authorized user and get you a Priority Pass membership for a low fee, maybe that's the best path. Maybe you cover the annual authorized user card fee and then all of a sudden you get Priority Pass without needing a card. That could be an option for a lower cost card. The Venture X and the Venture X business are both $395 annual fees with a travel credit that I think is easier to use, just a 1 $300 credit and a 10,000 point bonus each year to help offset that fee. So that might be an easier path for Priority Pass membership. Built Palladium comes with Priority Pass membership. Slightly higher annual feed in the Venture X but still lower than the Chase Sapphire Reserve. And so that's an option. And then a Bank of America Premium Rewards Elite card is super interesting for this one benefit because it includes four Priority Pass memberships not related to authorized users for anyone. So one person could have this card and they could add three Other people give them Priority Pass memberships without ever needing to give them authorized user cards or anything like that. So if you know someone with that card, maybe you can work out a deal there because they get to name three other people as Priority Pass members, or four if they don't even want to use that themselves. And when it comes to others, Stephanie sent a question about explaining the P1, P2 thing when it comes to referral bonuses. And for people who have heard me lament about this in the past, like the industry standard amongst points enthusiasts is to call your partner or the person you play this game with your P2. I don't say P2 because I don't want to name my spouse or I want to consider her a player instead of my wife. My wife is Amy. She's my spouse. That is the standard language that most people use. It's not meant to be anything else. But the question they had was, how do you think about playing with this with a partner and specifically around referral bonuses? And so I will say, if you want to go a little bit deeper, I did an episode last year with my friend Kai about earning more points in multiplayer mode. We went into a lot of detail in episode 2 49, but high level. The question they had, I'm not sure if we covered which was if I send my wife or my husband a referral offer, I know I earn some points and then they get the offer. But how do those offers always compare to other offers? Because sometimes Amex says up to 175,000 points. How do I know that the referral offer is going to get them a better deal than they would have gotten on their own? And for most issuers, this is pretty straightforward. For Amex, it can be a little annoying. So Amex has started doing this thing where they say, you know, you're going to get up to 175,000 points and you fill out the application. Then they tell you after they do a soft pull on your credit, before you do the final application process and you find out what your offer is. So it could be a bit of a process to learn what your offer is. I will say there have been some people that I've seen share that referral offers are often low on that threshold. So if it's up to 175 and maybe the floor is often 100,000, you know, referral offers might often be at 100, but if you applied without a referral offer, it might be 150, in which case that's not the better deal, right? The better deal is to have your spouse get 150,000 points, then get 100,000 points and you get 20. And so Amex has made this a little annoying. Most of the other issuers have not. I found with Chase and Capital One, when you have referral offers for those cards, they're usually, almost always going to show the exact same offer you would get somewhere else. And with Amex, it's a little bit of a crapshoot. You could find out, right? You can open up an incognito window and test them. Amex is also crazy because depending on the day, the browser, the VPN, the IP, you know, you might open that up to 175 link and it could be 175 and it could be 100, it could be 125. You know, it changes all the time. And it's one of the reasons I don't love the new system from amex. That said, if you do get a mailer in the mail that says, hey, open up this business platinum card, it's 200,000 points. That is a very clear number of points. There's no up to shenanigans. And that works really well. But it is not a referral offer. So you're not going to get any referral points from that. So when I think about referring my wife to these things, it really comes down to is the offer she's going to get the same or not? And if it's the same, then do the referral. If it's not, don't, but make sure you do the referral. I've had multiple people email me saying I forgot to use the link. Can I call Chase and ask them to apply it? And the answer based on the experience of them trying has always been no. There was one other question about, well, when you're earning points with your partner, you know, do you have a strategy for whether you have authorized user cards, how you keep things separate or combined with your partner? And I would say this is probably a much bigger question that I know we went into a little bit in episode 2 49. The quick answer I'll give you is that first off, you should know my wife and I combine all our finances. So if that's not how you manage your finances in general, then my advice might not be helpful. The second part is my advice for a married couple is really the same as a non married couple. So it doesn't really change anything in today's world, between Apple Pay and 1Password and the fact that I'm almost Never asked when I swipe a card in person, when I actually need the physical card, whether that's actually my card and someone's not actually checking whether I have a card or my wife has a card, we effectively both have the same card and we don't even need to issue an authorized user card for it. So if we're doing that rare case of an in person transaction, we just grab the other person's card before we do it. Or if it's just which card do we keep in our wallet? Because we might need to buy something and not be a big purchase we planned. Sometimes we just forego the extra points if they don't have Apple pay. Okay, fine, like it's usually a small purchase that's not going to change anything and we just don't worry about it. So we have not added each other as authorized users on almost any of our cards, with one exception, and that is the Built Palladium card. And we recently did this because they have one of the most unique authorized user programs. And this is true across all the built cards that I've ever seen. And when you add someone as an authorized user which does have a cost, at least for the Palladium card, you know, you pay the cost, they get a card. But the cool thing is you get to choose where the built points and where the built cash accrues to. And so on my wife's card, she can spend money on her authorized user card, or in some cases I'm spending money on her authorized user card because we've set for all the points from that card to go into her account. And the reason we did that was that I wanted to make sure that all of the points she earns in her account can help her hit built status because there are a bunch of perks that come with that. She has some legacy points from Rakuten. When you earn points on Rakuten, you could transfer them to built and if you have status, you get more. And so I wanted her to have built status because I'd already earned built status for the year, I'd already spent enough on the card to get built status. And so I didn't really need more built points in my account as long as she had built status in her account. And so you can actually change that in real time and switch it and it applies. I can't remember if it's instantly or at the end of the next statement period, but you could basically choose where the cash goes, the built cash, and where the built points go. And so I Thought that was really cool. And the built cash still goes into my account because that's where we pay our housing payments from. But the built points go to her account and the spend counts towards the spend for her status. And so that's just something that is fun. You can both earn built status without having to both get the card. Now, someone might argue, well, if you both get the card, you get the welcome bonus. But in our case, we just wanted to keep it simple and we didn't want to add another card. Now, the only other reasons I could argue that it would make sense to get an authorized user card for someone else or open the same card twice for someone else, aside from welcome bonuses all the time. We might open the same card, both get it for a welcome bonus, and close one at the end or downgrade it. But the reasons to keep them would be if you wanted lounge access. Right. If I have a card and I add my wife as an authorized user, depending on the program, almost every card where there is a lounge access component of the card, you would need to either pay an annual fee for your authorized user, or that authorized user just wouldn't get to use the lounges. If there's a card that comes with some type of status or helps you accrue status other than the built example, that status doesn't usually get accrued for the authorized user. If the card comes with perks like free night certificates, they kind of get awarded to the primary cardholder. So if my wife happens to have a Hilton card and she earns Hilton free night certificates, we have to use them booked under her name. And so if I was going to plan to use them, you'd want that card in your name. And then the one that really gets me is the cardholder discounts. And so in the case of Delta, you get 15% off Delta awards if you have a Delta card, but your spouse doesn't get to use that. And so, you know, my wife has a bunch of Delta points, but there's no way to combine them with me. They don't have any points pulling. There's no way to transfer them to me without spending a ton of money and she doesn't get that discount. And so using my Delta points is a better deal than hers. So one day, if we ever need to, maybe we will add a Delta card for her so we can use those points. But it's probably not enough points that it's worth getting that Delta card over something else. Though Delta sometimes does have really huge welcome bonuses. So I imagine there might Be a huge Delta welcome bonus. That is the reason at which time we we do that. And it would be timed probably with the fact that we have a Delta booking we want to make. On the flip side, United has just added that if you hold the United card, you get a discount on your bookings as well. While that discount only applies to your account, United points pooling makes it really easy for you to add up to five total people, I think. And so I could add my kids, my wife, and we could all pull our points together, book them out of my account, which I have the United card, and then I get the discount versus if any of my family members book from their account, they wouldn't get the discount. So United's actually made that really, really easy. There's some nuance to points pooling that's worth looking up about what happens if you leave a pool and how the points kind of stay in the pool and whatnot. But they make it really easy that if one person has a United card and everyone pulls their points together, that's great. And the other downside of points pooling used to be that pulled points don't work on partner airlines. It only works on United, and with one or two very minor exceptions, they've changed that and now they do work on partner airlines. The only annoying thing is you have to wait three days after joining a pool to add points, and then you have to wait 24 hours for the points to show up once you transfer them. So if it's your family and you just put everything in the pool anyways, then it's pretty easy. But otherwise you need to plan for a couple days. I will say, if you're managing all of this, one of the other challenges is where those points go. And so if you earn a bunch of points in one person's account, some programs make it easy if someone's an authorized user or not, to transfer the points around. But even if they don't, even if there's no way to get the points from your Citi account to your partners, you can always transfer points from your Citi account to your frequent flyer account at some airline and book a flight for them. And with the exception of a couple airlines, that process is really easy. I know Qatar Air just made it very difficult to book flights for anyone else other than you, unless you've credited flights to Qatar or have their credit card. So that's one. I don't want to see more of that. But for the most part, we just share all of our passwords in one password. So that I can log into or my wife can log into our different freaking flyer mile accounts and manage things for each other. We've set up forwarding for two factor codes to make that easier. I'll put a link in the show notes to how we did that if you're interested. And that's how we manage that. So this last question is kind of fun because I got it from three different people in different formats. One had 5 million points in an Amex Business Platinum card account that they wanted to cancel the card and they weren't sure what to do. Someone else, Claire had both her and her husband opened up an AMEX gold card for 100,000 points each, but don't really want to keep paying the annual fees. And they were trying to figure out what to do with all of these points because if you close your last credit card with a points program, you usually forfeit all of those points. And one question came in from Mark, which I don't know the certain circumstances, but he said, you always talk about not transferring points to Delta. Why not? Because Claire and. And the first question was like, where should I put all these AMEX points? And so the easiest solution here is to just keep one card alive. And for a lot of programs, there is at least one card that will keep your balance alive that has no annual fee. So you kind of have an option. Now, in some of those cases, the card that might keep your balance alive might not let you do as much with those points. So in the case of Chase, you could downgrade to a Chase Freedom Flex or a Freedom Unlimited card and keep your ultimate rewards balance alive. But those cards don't enable points transfers. And so you might not have as many options. But if you didn't want to pay annual fees for a couple years, you at least have something. Or you go to the Chase Sapphire Preferred and you can pay a 95 annual fee instead of a higher annual fee. Now, I will say, just on the note of the Chase Sapphire preferred, I wouldn't downgrade to a card if that card has a high welcome offer or consistently does unless you've already had it. And you wouldn't be eligible for that welcome offer. So, for example, I wouldn't want to downgrade my Chase Sapphire reserve to a Chase Sapphire Preferred right now if I've never had the Sapphire preferred, because I'd be missing out on that 100,000 point welcome offer. So I'd rather go from the reserve down to a Freedom card and then open the Chase Sapphire Preferred and get the 100,000 points. So that's just something I would think about. So not every issuer makes that as easy as some. And so on the case of Amex, if you're not willing to or eligible for a business card, there is no no annual fee card to keep your membership rewards alive. If you're willing to get a business card. And I just recently wrote a blog post about how to get a business card because I think most people are more eligible than they think. You can find that post on the website. I'll link to it in the show notes. There is the blue Business plus card which is a no annual fee membership rewards card. So that's the easiest way to keep your amex account alive. You could downgrade to the green card which is only 150 annual fee. So it's lower than the gold or the platinum or you know, there is an option. That's a bit of a strange edge case, but I believe there is an Amex checking account that will keep your membership rewards balance alive, but it doesn't enable any transfer partners. So similar to downgrading to a no annual fee Chase card, you can keep the balance alive, but until you get another card, you can't do much with the balance other than cash it out. And if the goal is cash it out, then you might as well just cash it out. That said, if I did have to dump my balance, if for whatever reason you don't want any cards or you got to shut down your relationship, what do you do? That's a tricky one. You know, if you wanted to just cash it out, it's a little bit easier to know how to do that. Right. You could cash it out by. This is a little bit of the reverse direction, but if you did have or opened one of the brokerage partner cards, the Morgan Stanley or the Schwab card on Amex, you know, you could cash out at 1 to 1.1 cents. Or if you opened up, I believe it's a business checking account, you can cash points out either 1 or 0.8 cents on Amex. If you have travel to book, you know, you could just book travel and use the credit in the portal to book it. But let's say those aren't options. Let's say the goal is you want to transfer your points, you're not sure what to do and you've got to get the points out. I still don't love those options. I think I'd rather open up another card and keep it there because the flexibility is the value. But if I Look at where I've used my AMEX points in the past, and I look at what the most valuable places for them to go are. For me, I would probably split my points between Air Canada, Aeroplan and Air France KLM's Flying Blue, because they seem to be the places I've gotten the most value. Ideally, you could do it during a transfer bonus, and if there was a really good Hilton transfer bonus, maybe I could do that. But Hilton points go on sale so often that it's not that much better, right? If you could buy Hilton points for half a cent and you could cash out your amex points at $0.01, you'd be better off cashing them out and buying them when you need them than transferring them. But if it was a really lucrative transfer bonus, maybe, but I think I'd trans them to aeroplan and Flying Blue. Now, why not Delta? And the primary reason why not Delta is that Delta's new dynamic pricing for most of their flights has a medium point value of 1.1 cents. And if you use your points on those Delta flights, you're not going to earn points on that travel. And so I would rather cash those points out at $0.01 and just buy Delta flights when I need them, then transfer them to Delta and get, you know, 1.1 cents of value, but have them stuck in that Delta balance. Because when I buy those Delta flights with my credit card, I'm going to earn credit card points, I'm going to earn Delta miles, I'll earn status and all of that. So the value of Delta points, at least according to the last deep dive that frequent miler ran, was 1.1 cents. And that's just, like, not that exciting. Now, if you hold a Delta card, you get 15% off, and so that gets a little better, 1.213 cents. So it's not the worst option. But I would say when I'm using Air Canada or I'm using Air France, I'm consistently getting more than 1.2, 1.3, 1.4 cents. So that's why I would do that. I would say if you are someone who flies Delta a ton, knows how much value you're getting out of Delta, and you just want an easy out, that would probably be better than cashing out if you have that Delta card. Also, especially if I were in the situation of someone with 5 million points, I'd rather pay the annual fee, not be able to recoup all of it and cash out my points in other ways. If you do have an Amex Business Platinum. This is a rare situation. You get to select an airline each year for your airline credit, and any flights you book in the travel portal with that airline get a rebate of 35% of your points, which actually make your points worth 1.54 cents. And those are effectively cash booking. So you still earn points traveling on that airline. You earn status and whatnot. So I'd say if you travel enough on one airline, that is the supreme way of cashing out your Amex points at the highest value other than transfer partners. And you can do it up to, I think up to getting 1 million points back. So I think it's up to 2.6 million points booked a year. So that would definitely be my option. And there was one subtle nuance I didn't mention on the person who had the 5 million points that had a Business Platinum. And, and they needed to close that card for a specific reason. If that were me, I would just open up another Business Platinum, a separate one. If for some reason you had to close one specific card, you could always open up another one and then close that one. So, you know, if you think about these annual fees for the person with 5 million points, if they cash them all out at $0.01, they'd get $50,000. And I could see the allure there. If they kept a Business Platinum card open for two years and had enough travel to book to cash them out with a rebate at 1.54 cents, that's $77,000. So they're going to get $27,000 more value cashing them out, which more than makes up for the $895 annual fee on the Business Platinum. So for me, you know, I definitely would think about annual fees relative to the value of your points. Also, you know, if it's 100,000 points, that's very different than 5 million points. So I understand why different circumstances might require different answers, but downgrading the card, opening up a no annual fee card or something like that might be an option. But I agree on the Amex Gold being a tricky one because the credits just are tough to make up for the $325 annual fee. Right. Like Dunkin Donuts, $7 a month. Resi, you get $100 a year. That one actually is pretty easy for me to use. But the Uber credit, you know, $10 a month. The dining credit, $10 a month. Add all those up and I think the Gold card is not the easiest card to justify. Right. Yes. You get 4x on dining and groceries. But you know City strata Premier is 3x, so like Chase Sapphire preferreds 3x, like that extra point is pretty expensive relative to that annual fee. And so that's one card that I thought when they were gonna refresh it would hopefully get better for the fee, but I don't know. Amex loves having super high annual fees, so as long as the welcome bonus is worth it and the ongoing benefit's worth it. But that gold card I think is a little tricky, so hopefully that was helpful. There were a lot more questions on a lot more topics that I would love to get to, so I need to do these AMA episodes more frequently. So please send in more questions. It'll give me more reason to do them more frequently. Go to allthehacks.com ama for Ask Me anything. I'll try to do this as frequently as I can. I really appreciate you sending them in and if you want to support me or the show, go to allthehacks.com cards I hope it's helpful listening to these answers. And that is it for this week. So I will see you next week. Thank you for listening. Athletic Brewing Company crafts award winning non alcoholic beers for those who want to be part of every round. With over 185 flavor awards, they're exceptional NA beers that fit your lifestyle and any social occasion. Summer's full of good times and Athletic fits right in. Go to athleticbrewing.com to have brews delivered to your door or find them at a bar, restaurant or store near you. Nirbeer Athletic Brewing Co. Fit for all Times.