← All the Hacks: Money, Points & Life
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Credit card issuers love to say their perks are worth thousands of dollars, but the real question is, what would you actually pay for them? That one shift completely changed how I evaluate every card in my wallet, and this year it actually led me to cancel half a dozen of them. Today, I'm using it to break down my entire 2026 credit card lineup. I'll share the framework I use to figure out what any card costs, run through the best card across every major spending category, and reveal what happened when I built an algorithm to test every card combination against real spending data. Whether you carry two cards or 20, this episode will give you a framework to make sure your wallet is working as hard as you are. I'm Chris Hutchins. If you enjoy this episode, leave a comment or share it with a friend. And if you want to keep upgrading your money points in life, click follow or subscribe. All right, I'm excited to do this episode again. The funniest thing about the name what's in My Wallet is that I don't actually carry a wallet unless I'm traveling, and usually it's just in my bag. I carry this kind of magic magnetic wallet that attaches to my iPhone. It holds one or two credit cards and a driver's license. So thank you, Apple pay for making my wallet pretty much fully digital and 1Password for making it really easy to access everything on the Internet. All right, so I'm going to mention a lot of cards today and there's going to be a lot of info in the show notes. I'll also link to a blog post version of this episode so you can find those details. We'll put it on the website allthehacks.com and if you go to allthehacks.com cards you can find our cards page. And on the cards page you'll see all the cards, the bonuses. If you want to support us, you can use those links. Some of them are just links straight to the issuer website. Some of them are referral links from our members. Some of them are affiliate links where we earn a small commission. We try to put the best links on there whether we're going to earn anything or not. So that's the way I've decided to run that site. So hopefully it's a place you can find the best bonuses and sometimes they might support us, but sometimes they won't because I want you to get the most points possible. So here's how I'm going to structure this episode. There are timestamps in the show notes There should be chapters on YouTube. I'm going to start by sharing some high level thoughts on how I think about cards, what's in my wallet, and my goals for cards. Right now I'll review all the cards I have in my wallet and then I'll decide real time with you guys what I think I'm going to keep and cancel. Then I'm going to run through some of the major spending categories, talk about the best cards in each. Then I'll talk about what I learned running this optimization algorithm on my portfolio and across all cards out there to identify the best card combos. And then finally, I'll take all that and consider if there are any new cards I think are worth adding to my lineup and what the future of cards for me in 2026 and maybe early 2027 looks like. And then finally I'll talk about some of the tools I use to make all of this stuff easier. So when I think about this, there's really three reasons to kind of have or get a credit card. One is that it helps you earn a lot, which means that you spend in whatever category that card earns in. Now, if you only have a debit card, this is going to be a huge impact by getting any card. But once you have a few credit cards, I wouldn't think about adding a card in this reason unless you spend a lot in a category and that card earns a lot in that category above what you would get otherwise. So one reason to get a card is that you spend a lot somewhere and there are cards that are more rewarding for that spend. Second reason to get a card is that it just offers perks or benefits that you can't easily get otherwise. That could be lounge access that could be helping you get elite status. That could be some free nights that you aren't able to get otherwise. When I think about those perks, I think it's important to consider not just what the face value is of any of those perks, but what you would actually pay for them. So I'm sure that credit card issuers might tell you that lounge access could be worth $1,000. But is that what you would pay to access that lounge? Probably not. So keep in mind, as we run through these things, what are these perks actually worth? Because many of the cards with them have high annual fees. And we're going to run through that exercise for a lot of the cards thinking about whether the annual fee actually justifies the perks. And then the third reason I would get a card is for the welcome bonus. I really enjoy the fact that when you get a credit card, there are often very large welcome bonuses that are anywhere from 20 to even sometimes 100% back, effective back, because you might have a welcome bonus that is 200,000 points after spending $30,000 or 100,000 points after spending $8,000. So that last example was the chasing business preferred. Well, that's a 20.3% return. There is no credit card out there that offers anywhere close to that on regular spending. And so the highest ROI you can get on your spending is through welcome bonuses. However, I totally get that many people, myself included, are not going to open up so many credit cards that we're always able to spend on a card hitting a bonus. I do think that you could probably push that farther than you think. I have plenty of friends that are opening up 10, 20 cards a year. You'd be surprised at how little it impacts your credit, if not improves it. But for many of us, we're not going to open up enough cards that we're always getting welcome bonus. And so for all that other spend, what's the best way to get the most out of it? So that's just something I think about. There are three reasons to get cards. It's either going to improve the earnings on a certain category of spending, you're going to get perks you really care about and value, or. Or you're gonna earn a really high welcome bonus, which can be pretty rewarding. So when I think about my goals for cards this year, it's a little bit different than most years. My goals this year are I'd like to cancel some cards. I have a lot of annual fees and I'd like to cancel some cards because I'm not sure I'm actually getting the value I thought I was. My next goal is actually to stop trying to maximize earnings. When I ran through this exercise to prep for this episode, I realized I actually think that there is not a card I could get for a category of spend where the increased earnings I'm going to get are worth any of the hassle. So no more trying to maximize earnings with new cards. That said, the one thing that I do want to do when I go through these cards is I would love to keep a card open with each transferable points program for two reasons. One, I have transferable points in all these programs and I don't want them to go away. And for almost all of them, if you cancel your last card that earns that rewards program, you won't be able to keep those points and you forfeit them. And then the second is because I do this podcast because I like to share with you. It's cool to be able to have a card earning all the different program currencies so that I can go play with them. This year when my built card got converted to a Wells Fargo autograph card, it's now the first time I have a card that is in the Wells Fargo rewards program, so I get to play around with that a little. Another couple things that I want to make sure as I'm going through these cards. I don't want to cancel cards that have the best travel protections or rental car coverage. So that's something that's important. It's nice for me to just have one card that I know if I'm going to buy something that I think there might be an issue or if I'm renting a car are this is a card to use for this year. I'll probably hit a few welcome bonuses. You know, that's kind of every year. Last year I think it was probably somewhere in the order of eight to 10 new cards for welcome bonuses this year we'll see. It kind of depends on the landscape of what happens, which we don't really know right now, and it changes all the time. I do want to maintain some amount of lounge access. You know, I certainly don't need a dozen Priority Pass memberships, but I'd say the Amex Centurion Lounge is one that we go to regularly. And anytime we've been in an airport with the Capital One Lounge, we've really enjoyed it. And I'm overdue to check out a Chase Lounge. It just hasn't happened. The stars have not aligned. And finally, I want to try to stop buying points when it's not a really good deal. And what I mean by that is stop using points cards when the cash back card alternative is pretty compelling. So if I could be earning 3% cash back or 2x points, I'm effectively buying those 2x points at 1 1/2 cents. And if I look at how many points I have right now, I probably don't need to be buying more points at 1 1/2 cents. Now if the alternative is to get 4x points or 1% cash back, well then yes, I would love to buy points at 0.25 cents because I feel like it's really, really easy to get that value. So anything under one cent for sure. Anything over one and a half cents, definitely not. I think I'm going to Find that the sweet spot is probably around 1.2 cents. If it's less than 1.2 cents, I'll buy the points. If it's more than 1.2 cents, I might lean towards cash back. Now, if I didn't have a lot of points, that wouldn't be the case. But I've been accumulating a lot. We haven't traveled as much. And I need to both start using those points and not accumulating them at a cost that probably doesn't make sense, given how many I have. All right, so let's review the cards I have right now, and let's talk first about how I value a card. So first I'm going to look at what I call the net annual fee. And so that's step one is to look at a card and be like, how much am I paying for this card? Because if it's a card that cost me nothing or that I actually like, maybe make money on because the perks I value higher than the fee, then there's not really a strong reason to cancel that card. But if the inverse is true, if it has a $895 annual fee and I value the perks at $200, that's not great. And so my framing for this is not what are perks worth in the sense of what is 75 at Lululemon worth? 75? No, it's what would I pay for that perk to Greg the Frequent Miler for this framing, which I really like, what would I pay for a $75 Lululemon gift card? Well, I definitely wouldn't pay $75. Right. I could probably get it for less online, so you could think about that being down. And so for me, what are these perks worth? It's really what would I pay for the perks? And some of them are such a pain to use that I probably wouldn't pay anything. And so, yes, there is upside in that. I might get some value from them because I have them, but I'm not going to try to value them at that because there's overhead there. And I'll keep that as potential upside, but it's not the core value I'm getting from the card. So if you want to go through this process of looking at your cards and all this, a lot of the premium cards are on a spreadsheet. I'll link in the show notes that Frequent Miler put together called a premium card spreadsheet. And so I have built a little tool in card tool that I'll kind of narrate as I evaluate a few cards. So first I look at that net annual fee and see what that is. Now just because a card has a negative net annual fee doesn't mean it's not worth having. There's also what is the marginal value from the spend on the card? Right? If you spend $500 a month on dining and you have a 3x dining card, getting the AMEX Gold card would bump you to 4x and so 6,000 more points a year. Let's say you value those points at one and a half cents. That would be $90 of value. So if you look at this card and say, oh well, that AMEX Gold card, the net annual fee to me actually cost me 50 bucks. But because of the extra points I'm getting, they're worth 90 bucks. So it's actually a break even or positive ROI card for me. So you've got to keep that in mind. The two components to me are is the amount I'm going to spend on this card going to earn me more than the alternative card? And what am I paying in annual fees relative to the value I'm getting from the benefits? This episode is brought to you by Masterclass. Now, I genuinely love Masterclass because when I want to learn something meaningful, I'd rather learn it from someone who's actually done it at the highest level. For me, it's about a great mix of getting exposure to how world class people think about their craft and getting really actionable frameworks and checklists you can use later. I've taken classes on Masterclass, on negotiation, storytelling, and even parenting. And I love walking away with new mental models and tools I can use to be better at things I care about, even if I'm not actively trying to overhaul my life. With Masterclass, you get unlimited access to over 200 classes across 13 categories. Business, Leadership, writing, cooking, parenting, and more. And if you're short on time, there are thousands of quick, bite sized lessons that fit into even the busiest schedule. It's just a really fun way to keep learning. Plans start at just $10 a month build annually and there's a 30 day money back guarantee. Right now our listeners get an additional 15% off any annual membership@AllTheHacks.com Masterclass that's 15% off@AllTheHacks.com masterclass AllTheHacks.com masterclass this episode is brought to you by Whisper Flow. I love saving time, especially when I'm at my desk, so I can get stuff done faster, which is why I'm such a big fan of Whisper Flow and you've got to check it out. It turns your voice into clean final draft writing inside whatever apps you're already using. Email, Slack docs on Mac, Windows, iPhone. Here's why I love it. Your income comes from high leverage work, negotiating, closing, building. But your time disappears into replies and admin work. With Flow, I hit a hotkey speak, and the text appears fast and accurate so I can clear my inbox, craft thoughtful replies and get back to the real work. Also, it learns how you write names, acronyms, tone, and even works when you whisper so you don't have to bother people around you. On my iPhone, it appears as a keyboard. You just open any app, tap start flow, and it's done. It's so fast. And best of all, you can try it free at whisper flow. AI/AllTheHacks. That's whisperflow AI/AllTheHacks. Link is in the description. So first I'm gonna run through amex and look at all the cards. Now I'm doing this with Card Tool, the app I built. I'll talk about that at the end of this episode, but it's just gonna help me organize this and look at all the cards. So right Now I've got 15Amex cards. I'm gonna start with the Business Platinum, which I currently have three amex Business Platinums. And let's look at the annual fee. Right, the annual fee is $895. What is that actually worth to me? And so when I pull this up, I'm going to read through a lot of these credits just to give you a sense of how my brain works. I'm not going to go through this for every single card, but indeed, credit worth zero to me. I wouldn't pay for it. The wireless credit, yes. I get $10 per month off my wireless bill if I put it on this card, but I have three of them. There's a lot of overhead of going to the credit card issuer website, making the 10 payment. And by the way, most cell phone companies now are giving you a discount if you don't pay by credit card, so there's that. So for me, getting $10 a month off my wireless bill, it's probably worth like, I don't know, 60 bucks. I do have a backup $10 a month kind of data plan on another carrier, so that covers that. I'm not sure I'd pay the full amount to get this credit. Right. Like, there's a lot of hassle in using it, but Adobe credit worth zero to me. The Dell credit. I get $150 at Dell, but usually I'm not buying something that I would have otherwise bought, but I get some value. So let's call it $50. Then I run through all these other credits. The thousand dollar Dell credit after spending 5,000 0. Clear credit. I have so many of these. 0. The fine hotels and Resorts credit. I honestly, I have enough of these that I'm probably not going to use them all. Zero. You know, global entry credit, zero. Airline incidental credit. I think there are a lot of ways if you search online to get value out of your airline incidental credit. And so would I pay $200 to have to use it in the ways that it uses? No, but I'd probably pay $150, right? 75% of the value. And then the Hilton credit. Every now and then we stay at a Hilton and we get some value out of this credit. It's supposed to be 200 because it's 50 a quarter. To me, it's probably worth $50. And so there are a bunch of other benefits that come with the Amex Platinum. Because I have so many of them, it's hard to value any of them at anything except for this card because last year we hit the spending threshold on it to get Centurion Guest access. I would say that feature is probably worth $50 to me because otherwise we would pay for our kids to go in the lounge and maybe we wouldn't do that. But because we have this card, that's valuable to me. So $50, that still brings the total card value of this card to $360 for an $895 annual fee, which gives it a net fee of $535. I need to cancel these Business Platinum cards, right? Why do I even have three in the first place? Well, Amex keeps sending me these letters in the mail with gigantic offers on the Business Platinum card even. And those letters often don't have language that prevents you from getting the bonus multiple times. And so was it worth getting this card that had a net annual fee of $500 in a year where I also got 200,000AmEx points? Absolutely right. To me, that's worth well over $2,000. But in its second year, no. So for me, these Amex Business Platinums, the ones that are already in their second year, even though the Centurion Guest access was earned, it just doesn't make sense to keep them. So plan is cancel the Amex Business Platinums. Amex Business Golds are similar. I have three of them. And when I say I do, it's between me and my wife. We have them across both. These Amex business golds are similarly interesting. Lower annual fee at $375, but much less valuable perks. Lower fee at $375. But the perks on the card don't really hit that value to me. Right. It has a $20 a month flexible business credit. You know, you can spend it at office supply stores. There are ways to get a lot of value out of that. Maybe for me, it's worth $180. The Squarespace credit of $150 a year was worth it to me last year because I have a bunch of domains on Squarespace, but I have three Amex business gold. So last year I had $450 of credit on Squarespace, and renewing a domain for a year was something on the order of $15. So I could renew all my domains for a collective 30 years, which I did. But that means that the value of this credit this year is very, very low. And I think it's worth pointing out one thing when it comes to kind of canceling or downgrading cards and their credits is that on a lot of these cards, you can use the credit and then cancel the card. And so if I were to cancel one of these business Golds next week, for sure this week, I might as well renew domains for even longer before I cancel that card. That said, with a lot of cards, if you do cancel them, some issuers might prorate your annual fee, many don't. So I always kind of encourage people to keep track of when their card is going to renew. And if you're going to make a decision to cancel it, wait for the card to renew. Because a lot of times it's in your first year. And I don't like to cancel the card in the first year. But then after the statement posts with that annual fee, you usually have 30 days to cancel it. And so I would cancel it in those 30 days. Now, if you are outside of those 30 days, like I am on one of these business platinums, and you realize it doesn't make sense to have it, one thing you can often do, depending on the issuer, is you can downgrade it to a less expensive card. And when that happens, they usually prorate the annual fee for both of them. And so if you're able to do that to a less expensive card or even a free card, you might end up in a situation where you've gotten most of that fee refunded by proration. And then you could cancel the card you downgraded to, or if it's a free card, you could leave it open. And so these business Golds also probably need to go. We do a little bit of advertising spend for the business and some software spend. And so it might make sense to keep one of them for the 4x points on those categories. But the other two, I don't think they make a lot of sense either. So those are gone. So that's five cards gone. Right now we've got 41 cards. So that's a pretty big dent. 10% of the cards are gone from those. On the personal side with Amex, we have two Personal Platinum cards. That is a different calculus when I look at the value of those cards. And I think that Personal Platinum has a really compelling lineup of credits that can justify the annual fee. So, yes, another $895 annual fee, but you get $100 a quarter at Resi restaurants. So $400. There are Resi restaurants all over the Bay Area, and we eat at them regularly without having to think about it. And so that one is pretty easy. You can also sometimes buy those restaurant gift cards if the right platform works, or even going into the restaurant so that you can kind of aggregate them and not have to go out to eat four times. You could buy a couple of gift cards and go out once or twice a year. So that credit to me is worth probably $300. I think this is probably the card I will keep open the longest. So the clear credit here is worth something because we do pay for clear, so it's probably worth about $200. The Uber credit this card comes with. Yes, it's about $200. We don't use Uber all the time, and when we do, we often use it for Uber Eats. And I'm not sure I would pay full price for those Uber Eats meals. So I've said it's worth $75. Lululemon. Yes. You can get $300 of value from Lululemon if you shop there. You could buy gift cards and try to resell them. You know, it's up to you. I probably value that at 200. The Oura ring credit. I did use it last year to get a backup ring. I probably valued that credit at 50 bucks, but not a full 225amonth for Disney plus or ESPN or those things. To me, that's probably worth 15 bucks. And then I will probably get some value out of the fine hotels and resorts, $300 every six month credit. So $600 of credit towards hotels, but not the full value. So I called that 200. And then last, that airline incidental credit, same one as the Business Platinum. I value that at about 150, even though the face value is 200. And the one card that I will keep open, you know, this base Platinum. If I canceled all the Business Platinums, the Centurion Lounge access is worth something on this card. So I'll call it a hundred dollars. That's 1290. When I sum that up, that to me is a lot. That's a lot of value. And that's not the value that the face value would say. Right? That's probably twenty five hundred dollars or something. But that's actual value I get. So keeping that platinum open is not really a cost to me. Like the cost is negative 395. Is there hassle? Yes. But also, is it the kind of marquee card from an issuer that I've had for, you know, probably 20 years also? Yes. So that one, we're going to keep those open. I know that we use the Centurion Lounge a lot and a lot of those perks. The Gold card on the Amex is the most interesting one of probably this whole episode because it is both my oldest card from Amex from 2003, so it's been 23 years. And when I've run the optimization algorithm on the two cards, that would be the highest ROI for most people spending. It's almost always a 2x everything card and the AMEX Gold card. However, I have other cards for dining and I have other cards for groceries. And we don't even spend that much on groceries because we do a lot of it on Amazon Fresh. And so this card actually has a pretty high net annual fee because I don't value the perks that high. The Uber Credit, the Resi credit, the Dunkin Donuts credit, all combined I value them at about $125. And the card now has a $325 annual fee. So I think it's time for me to figure out what to do about this 23 year old AmEx card. And the honest answer is it's probably time to let it go. Now. Will I message amex and see if they want to give me a retention offer? Yeah, that's possible. Might I instead downgrade it to the green card? Maybe. I think the green card has a 3x travel category, which kind of went away with the Chase Sapphire Reserve, but it also has an annual fee that I'm not sure I'll get a lot of value back. So it's going to similarly cost me each year. Or the crazy option is upgrade it to a second for me. Third, for our family platinum card, which has a bunch more credits, those credits still have diminishing returns. So even though that Platinum card might have a positive value each year, If I had 50 of them, the hassle of all those resi credits, all those Lululemon credits probably goes up and the value goes down. So I'm not sure what I'm gonna do with this card yet. It's really a struggle for me because I've had it for so long and it's been the default card, it's been one of the two cards I keep in my wallet. But there's just so many other options for dining and groceries that I'm not sure what to do with it. So I'm really hoping that I can message amex, get a retention offer, and hopefully that retention offer will last until they make some improvements to the card. So that's that. I'm gonna try to run through the rest of these pretty quick on the AMEX side. Bonvoy, Brilliant. The annual fee here is similarly high.650. The only reason I had this card was because it included Platinum status and I was one or two years away from hitting lifetime platinum on Marriott. And I did that. And so now I have hit that. I have Platinum for life. I don't need a credit card to get it. The only real value I'd get from this card is the $25 a month restaurant credit, which is really easy to use, but you have to remember to use it, which I am not consistent about. And the Marriott free night, which is an 85,000 point free night certificate, which I think at face value, Marriott points being worth about.07 cents makes that worth $595. So at its face, a $25 a month restaurant credit and a 85,000 point free night certificate should be worth more than the $650 annual fee. However, I have not used my 85k free night certificate yet, primarily because we don't go to a lot of places for one night. And when I do, it's usually an airport hotel. And I don't need an 85,000 point free night certificate and we don't have a ton of them, so I don't stack them. So my goal here is see if I use this free night certificate before the next card renewal date and if not, and you Know, I. I'll probably end up finding a use, but if I don't get kind of a $600 or more value use of this thing, I got to cancel this card because it doesn't make sense to keep it, even though some people might get value out of it. I also have a Bonvoy business card. I opened it a long, long time ago when I was trying to get Marriott status because the elite nights each year stack from the personal and business cards. And while a business card doesn't show up on your credit, it only has a pretty low annual fee. It's just not worth it, right? That card has $125 annual fee and the only thing I get is a 35,000 point free night certificate, which I just don't use that often. I have used it in some years often for a hotel that would have been 100 to 150. And keep in mind, if I paid the $150, I would have earned 10, 12, 15x points on Marriott. So it's worth even less than that. But the overhead of having a card that only gives me one free night that I don't get a ton of value out of is not worth it. Bonvoy business card, you're gone. Next, we've got two Hilton cards, an Aspire and a Surpass card. Those cards are a different story because they are some of my favorite credit cards. Right. If you look at the Hilton Aspire, it's got a 550 annual fee, but you get a free night certificate, you get a Hilton resort credit, you get a flight credit. When I add up all the credits I get from that card, it's worth almost $800. And I'm lowballing the value of the free night. I'm putting the free night credit at probably 350. We've used it for rooms that cost well over $1,000. And you get free diamond status, which is great because when we're using these free night certificates, we have status. So love the Aspire card. The Surpass card is not as lucrative, but it's also not as expensive. But it does come with a Hilton credit and it comes with the Hilton free night certificate after you spend $15,000. And so I like both of these cards. If you look for a Frequent Miler article, there's a whole article about the upgrade and downgrade pass for these cards where you could hit the free night on one card, upgrade back to the Aspire and kind of play some, let's call them games to try to really optimize getting two or three free night certificates a year. And so that's another game that I enjoy. And so go read up on that if you want that. And that only makes the value of these cards higher because you kind of get to benefit from having both of them on the same card each year. And I think that well exceeds the annual fee on those cards. So keeping those and then the last two. I've got a Delta Business Platinum card. I struggle with this one because the math says I should cancel it, but I also don't want to. A $10 a month resi credit is a pain to use. I hate it. A $10 a month rideshare credit probably gets used three or four months of the year, but otherwise it either gets forgotten to use or not. A lot of the other credits on this card aren't great. It has a companion certificate that it's unclear whether I'm going to be successful at using. I haven't had this card long enough to get that certificate yet because it comes after the first year. The thing I love about this card and why I will probably keep it open and try my best to get use out of the perks to offset the annual fee is that you get 15% off your award bookings. And I've got a bunch of Delta miles that I'm hoping to use. And that is valuable, right? I think we're taking a trip this year where I probably spent 200,000 delta miles, which means I saved 30,000 delta miles on this. So in this year more than paid for the annual fee. If we don't take a trip on Delta for a year, it probably doesn't. But I know that we have those miles to use and we're using them every few years. And so if I average it out, I think that card is worth keeping for me. And then last, I've got an Amex Blue card. It's similarly almost 20 something years old. It has no annual fee. You know, it's probably only helping my credit and it costs nothing. So I'll probably just keep that one open. I've had it forever. I just have to remember to put a transaction or so every year on it just so that you know, it doesn't get canceled by the issuer. So that's Amex. That's 15 of my 41. So that's a lot. This episode is brought to you by Mercury. Radically different banking now available for personal accounts. I've been using Mercury Personal for a couple years now and I love it. It's fast, elegant, and designed to help you do everything you want with your money in one place. You can send wires with no fees, set up sub accounts for your goals and projects, put your money to work with high yield savings and set automations to move money between accounts so everything is funded without you having to think about it. You can also spin up cards with custom limits for an assistant or a nanny, grant, read only access to your accountant and manage shared finances with joint accounts built for clarity and control. All of this for one all inclusive subscription of $240 a year. Visit mercury.compersonal to learn more. Again, that's mercury.compersonal Mercury is a fintech company, not an FDIC insured bank. Banking services provided through Choice Financial Group and Column NA Members FDIC this episode is brought to you by Gelt when it comes to building wealth, taxes are such a big part of the strategy and as tax time gets closer, getting prepared now is so important. Now that I'm working with G, I feel like I finally have a partner I can trust to handle everything for my personal and business taxes. Think of G as the ultimate modern cpa. Of course they have a team of in House expert CPAs to work with who can help you determine the most effective tax strategies to minimize risk and grow your wealth. But they also have an amazing tech platform that gives you personalized guidance to maximize deductions, tax credits and savings. It also has a document vault where you can upload all your files, tag them with the relevant years, and even see when your tax team has reviewed each one. So if you are ready for a more premium proactive tax strategy to help optimize and file your taxes, you have to check out Gilt and as an all the hacks listener, you can skip the waitlist. Just head to allthehacks.com GELT G E L T Again, that's allthehacks.com G E L T To stop overpaying on taxes, let's jump into chase, which is 11 of 41 and then the rest are pretty quick. So here there's a few duplicates, the biggest one being Chase Sapphire. Reserve that card. We both have them. We've had them for a really long time. When I look at the perks, it's close, right? It's a $795 annual fee card for my card. I'd say it exceeds the value of those perks because we did have an Apple TV plus subscription that's now free. We do have a peloton and we put it on this card so those two Things are great. However, we can't put our peloton subscription on two cards and split the payment and we don't need two Apple TV plus memberships. So for one of these cards, it's really valuable to have. StubHub credit is probably something we might get some use out of. And the dining credit, we've got a ton of use out of because it's pretty easy to find restaurants, at least where we live, to use that dining credit on the Chase Sapphire Reserve cards, we're getting a ton of value there. Doordash, Lyft, a little bit of value. And then the travel credit, so easy to use. Would I pay $300 for the $300 travel credit on the Chase Sapphire Reserve? Probably not, but would I pay 250? Probably, because there's no kind of gotchas. It's not like go book in a portal and use this special link and only these fares. It's just put a travel purchase on this card. And because the card earns 4x on flights and hotels, it's not a bad card to put a travel purchase on anyways. And so that travel credit, I end up getting it without even having to think about it. It's one of the few credits that I don't have to ever think about and I earn. And this is not the episode where I'll run through it, but when it comes to tracking credits, that's something I tried to build into this card tool app to try to help make it easier and take less time. So that first Chase Sapphire reserve is definitely has a positive roi. The second Chase Sapphire Reserve doesn't. But it is the only ultimate rewards earning card that my wife has. And so for the sake of keeping her ultimate rewards points alive and the fact that the annual fee gets close, I think we'll probably keep it open. But I, I could make a case for closing it. On the flip side, we have a Chase Sapphire Reserve business card and that card is done. The value of the perks on that card for Us are about $500. The cost is 7.95. We find the edit credits that Chase kind of touts as being super valuable, impossible to use, we haven't used yet. And so for this card, I'm getting a little bit of value from the Google and gift card credits and then the travel credits easy to use, but everything else is pretty tough and nowhere near comes the 795. Was it worth opening for 200,000 point welcome bonus? Absolutely. Will I keep it open? Absolutely not. The rest of the cards I actually probably will. So we've got the Amazon card. Earns 5%. We spent a bunch on Amazon. Amazon gift card deals dried up. No brainer. Keep it open. The World of Hyatt card. We get a ton of value from the World of Hyatt card because not only does it help us earn globalist status, which we use all the time, but you get a 10% rebate on Hyatt Stays. You've got your Hyatt statement credits. There's an Instacart credit that we use a few months a year. So that card. No brainer. The net annual fee for us is positive and we use it a lot and we get a lot of value out of it. I do have a Southwest business card, and that one I'm struggling with what to do with because the annual fees on all these cards went up. So it's now $150. The perks on it don't come that close. I think I looked at them. The only perk on here that is of any value to me right now is getting 6,000 points a year. So not a super valuable card. But that's primarily because this year we got a list status, because I spent enough on the Chase Sapphire reserve card last year. And so I have a list status. If I don't maintain that, a list status, which I don't expect to next year, then all of a sudden the preferred seating, the free checked bags, priority boarding and all that kind of stuff, that starts to add value. So I think for this year, I'm probably going to keep this card open. I don't think it renews for a while anyways. And consider what happens with Southwest, how much we fly and what it looks like next year when I probably don't have status on Southwest. We also have a United card. It's my wife's oldest card. It doesn't have any annual fee. There's no cost. It's boosting your credit. That's great. Okay. Right after recording, United made some huge changes, the way they earned cards. But I just wanted to splice this in right before it gets published because the changes to the United card program are enough that they probably affect what I'm going to be doing in our wallet. And the main changes is that if you fly United and do not have a United credit card or debit card, and I'll get to that in a second, you are going to earn less points per dollar on your flights. So a regular member used to earn 5 miles per dollar on flights. If you don't have a credit card, that's going down to three. And if you do have a United card, it's going up to six. And so you're going to earn two points per dollar less at every status tier on United without a card and one point more if you do have a card. So a three point delta. So holding a United card will earn you three extra miles per dollar on your flights. And that doesn't matter whether you spend the flights on the credit card or not. Though I have a hypothesis that in the future they will make that change. So if you fly United a lot, you will earn a reasonably large number of points more by just holding a United card. And when it comes to redeeming, you will also get a way better deal because cardholders will now get 10% off bookings. And if you're a cardholder and an elite member with United states, you'll get 15% off award bookings. There also be some expanded access to Polaris business class saver availability. So if you try to book business class kind of long haul awards, you're going to get a better deal with a card. Now, I don't fly United that much, but we do have a lot of United miles. We do transfer Chase points to United to use them because they're really flexible with cancellation. We're based in the Bay Area where there's a United hub. And so this is enough of a change that I will probably get a United card, not necessarily for the earnings, because if you only fly United a couple times a year, let's say you spend $500 on United, the difference between earning an extra three points per dollar on that is not going to be hugely meaningful. It might be a thousand points or something. So that to me is not enough of a reason to open up a credit card. However, because we do enough bookings on United earning 15% off. Because right now I do have United status on award bookings is pretty meaningful. So if you were going to book an 80,000 point flight, we're talking about saving 12,000 miles. If you have status on that flight, do that across four people. That's pretty meaningful. So I will probably be making sure I qualify for this. Now you can qualify for it with any of the United credit cards. And there are actually some good welcome bonuses right now. Go to all the hacks.com/cards, type in United and you can see them all. But I'll caveat. Two things. One, if you do have the Gateway card, which my wife does have, that card will not count unless you spend $10,000 on it. And it's not the most rewarding card. So I think for her circumstances, because she does have some United miles we use, we might upgrade that card to another card, maybe the Explorer card, but we don't need to do that until we make a booking because we don't fly United enough to worry about the earnings. But if we're going to use her points to redeem, it might be worth doing. We've also considered whether we start using points pooling and only one of us needs the United card and we can pull our points to that person. So that's another option. If you're in a family, they did announce one cool thing, which is that because kids can't have credit cards, all these benefits apply to your children. If you name them, if you have a card, unfortunately they don't apply to your spouse. So I don't actually know whether authorized cardholders will matter. And that's something that could make this a lot easier. If we could just have one of these cards make the other one an authorized cardholder, that would solve our problem. The other option, if you don't want to open up another Chase card or you know, add another 524 slot, you can use the United debit card to qualify. But similar to the Gateway, you need to spend $10,000 per year on the card. Now there are some expenses that you might have, let's call it property tax or you know, some other bill payment where the fees to pay it by credit card don't make sense. But there might not be any fees for a debit card. And so if that's the case, maybe getting the United debit card as an alternative to qualify for a lot of these deals, assuming you can put $10,000 on it, could make a lot of sense. I don't know whether tax payments, for example, will qualify as spend for that. That's something I need to dig into, but just some options to think about as ways to qualify for the increased earnings and the discounts. And then the last thing is, historically I've always said it never makes sense to use a co branded card like United, even for United tickets because you used to earn, you know, 2 or 3 points per dollar. And even the Chase Sapphire Reserve would earn 4 points per dollar on United purchases because you'd earn Forex Chase points that can convert to United. Well, they are also as part of this process, increasing the number of points per dollar the United cards earn. Booking United flights to three for the Explorer, four for the Quest and five for the club. And so now the earnings on those cards will get close to being competitive with a lot of other cards on the market. But if you factor in the other perks you get on those United cards from Spend, I actually think they might make more sense. So I might take back some of that advice, at least specific to United on spending money on your United co brand cards as opposed to using other cards. Because if you take the Explorer card, for example, if you spend $10,000, you get a hundred dollars United credit, which is like another 1%. If you spend $20,000, you get a 10,000 mile discount on an award. It's like an award coupon, you know, maybe that's half a percent. And then if you care about Elite status, as you spend on your United cards, for every 15 to $20 you spend, you earn one Premier qualifying point. Each card has a different threshold for how many you can earn, but that's probably another, I don't know, 0.3%. So all in, you're kind of at, let's say, 1.8, depending on how you value this stuff, maybe 2% extra beyond the points you earn for booking the flight on United. So a United flight might earn 3 to 5x points plus 1.8 to 2% in terms of the value you get from some of these spending benefits. Now, after you've spent, you know, $20,000 or maxed out all the premier qualifying points you want, those go away. But I just thought I'd flag that because that's another change happening to these cards. And then finally, it wouldn't surprise me if United ends up at some point saying you actually have to spend the money for your flight on your card to earn some of these elevated rates. Right now, just having the card gets you the elevated earnings on your flights. But it wouldn't surprise me if that changes. Okay, back to the rest of the episode. We've got a couple Freedom cards. We've got a Freedom Flex and a Freedom Unlimited, both no annual fee. The Freedom Unlimited really has no value to us. It's like 1 1/2x on everything, which is lower than plenty of other cards. The Freedom Flex does have these rotating 5x categories each month, and sometimes they're really interesting. So I think we'll probably just change the Freedom Unlimited to a second Freedom Flex. And in months where the 5x categories are interesting, we'll have double the capacity. On the ink side, there's a Chasing Cash and a Chasing Preferred. Not sure what to do with these. The Chasing Cash is not Very useful. We get 5x on phone and office supplies, which, you know, for a no annual fee card, might as well keep it open. It doesn't impact our credit, doesn't report to our credit, has really no impact. So we put our phone bill on it and that's kind of it. It competes with the Amex card, getting that $10 wireless credit. So it's kind of annoying, but I think it makes sense to just put it all there. Forget about the wireless credits. Cancel a lot of those cards. And then the Chasing Preferred, it does earn 3x on a handful of business bill payment platforms, which is super valuable to me. So I will keep that. And then now that the Chase have our reserve card doesn't do 3x on all travel. The Chasing Preferred is actually a good travel card because it is 3x on all travel. So if you have cruises or travel agencies or things that don't work on other cards, that's pretty good. So looking at this, it's actually only probably one cancellation on Chase. So down from 11 to 10. The rest of these are easy because there are way fewer cards in each of these programs. Capital One, funny enough, we have two Venture X's and two Venture X businesses only because the lucrative bonuses. I think it was 100 for each of the Venture X's. We did a 150 or a 200 on a Venture X biz and then the 400,001 last year on the other Venture X biz, which was awesome. And so all of these were worth opening. Are they worth keeping? The Venture X business that we hit the huge welcome bonus on has unlocked guest lounge access for this year and next year because we did some of that spend in 2026. So that one is probably worth keeping open. The other one's probably not. And then we definitely don't need two Venture X cards. So we might keep a Venture X business open in one of our names, a personal one in the other person's name. So we both have access to Capital One lounges, but yeah, we don't need both of them. That said, the cost of these cards as a net annual fee is not that high because they're giving you 10,000 miles a year and they're giving you a $300 travel credit and the annual fee is 395. I wouldn't pay $300 for a $300 travel credit, but I find it not too terribly difficult to get close to the annual fees of value out of this card. And if you only had one of them, then it would probably close the gap. If you use the Capital One lounge, I have two of them, so the relative value or the marginal value of a fourth lounge access to Capital One lounges is worth nothing. Just like all the Priority Pass memberships which all of these premium cards have are worth nothing to me. So they're not the most expensive cards. Net fees for me on all but the primary one is probably in the $30 to $80 range, but I don't know. I don't want to throw away $30 to $80 if I have the choice. This episode is brought to you by Element. You know, I'm always searching for ways to feel better, think clear and optimize my life, and Element is genuinely one of the simplest, most impactful upgrades I've made. I drink Element almost every day and I bring it with me every time I travel. Here's why staying hydrated isn't just about drinking water. Electrolyte imbalances can lead to headache, fatigue, brain fog, poor sleep, and most electrolyte drinks out there are packed with sugar and dodgy ingredients. 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You can find all the links, promo codes and discounts from our partners@AllTheHacks.com deals. These are brands I love and use, so please consider supporting those who support us. Looking at bank of America Premium Rewards Elite Card is our daily driver on cash back and it's been pretty rewarding to us. Now you do need to put a hundred thousand dollars in a Bank of America or Merrill lynch account, but if it's in a Merrill lynch account it can earn whatever you want because you could just buy whatever stocks or securities or Treasury ETFs you want. And so this card, at face value, when you do that, ends up being a 2.625% cashback card and 3.5% on travel and dining. But with the elite version of the premium rewards card, you get a 20% boost to the value of your points when you redeem them for travel, which makes the everything category go from 26. 25 to 3.28, and the travel and dining category go from 3.5 to 4.4%. And so when you factor those things in, this is a really compelling cashback card. And we've got a lot of points. And so for a lot of things, we're just putting everything on this card. Travel at 4.4% is pretty rewarding. I also have the travel rewards biz card and the business customized cash card. They are no annual fee cards. They similarly earn 2.625% on the travel rewards and 5.25% on the customized cash. You can go back and listen to the bank of America episode for more details. I really like those cards for business spend. They are just cashback kings for the same reasons. And that customized cash, unlike a lot of the personal cards that have what is marketed as higher return on selected categories up to a cap, but usually that cap's like 6 to $8,000 or $5,000 a year. On the customized cash business card, it's $50,000. And so we get 5.25% on whatever category that is because of the preferred reward status. So that card's great. Okay. Jumping in again because bank of America also made some really big changes that I felt I need to come out, even though I recorded this just a few days ago. The big change is that this preferred rewards program, that is why these cards become so rewarding. If you hold a balance at bank of America, that 100,000tier threshold where you got the highest rewards, which is a 75% boost on everything, which means a 1 1/2% back card turns into a 2.625% back card. That tier is getting pushed up in terms of the dollars you need to hit it. So you used to need a hundred thousand to get a 75% boost. Now you need a million to get a 75% boost, which means almost all of us listening are not qualified because we don't have a million dollars at bank of America or Merrill Lynch. And that if you meet that a hundred thousand threshold, you're only getting a 50% boost. So all those 1.5% cards are going to now be 2.25% cards instead of 2.625% cards. That said, if you are a Bank of America customer, depending on your anniversary date, and I'll put a link in the show notes to a post that goes into a lot of detail, you might not have this new rate kick in until as far as January 2028. So sometime I think for everyone between January 2027 and January 2028, existing card members are going to have this change. So there is a long time before it kicks in. The business program doesn't seem to have these changes yet, so there's a little bit of a workaround there. But I will say that opening a business brokerage account at Merrill lynch to qualify for the Platinum honor status is a huge pain. I think it took seven or eight back and forth emails with new applications to kind of get everything they wanted perfect. And I have to assume that this change is coming to the business program as well. So I'm not sure it's worth it. The changes effectively kick in for new members in May. So if you've been eyeing this card, you might be able to get it and you know, keep these old rates for a year if you apply soon. I still think it's compelling, right? If you have the Premium Rewards Elite card, it's not going to be as compelling as before. But that a hundred thousand point balance will still earn you 2.25 on all spending and it will earn you 3% back on travel and dining. And if you use those points to book flights through the bank of America portal, they are worth 25% more. I think I misstated 20% more earlier. It's actually a 20% discount, which is kind of the effectively same thing as a 25% boost, which takes a 2.25% card and makes it effectively worth 2.8%. And it takes that travel and dining spend, which is now 3% back into a 3.75% back. So that premium rewards card is still pretty compelling, right? 2.8% everything. 3.75% on travel and dining. Right. If you're looking for a cashback card and you have the hundred thousand dollars to put in a Merrill lynch brokerage account. And I say that because the bank of America banking accounts just aren't that compelling in terms of rewards and interest. But the brokerage account is a brokerage account. You can invest in whatever you want. You could put a Roth ira, all that kind of stuff. The only Other small thing that I think is a slight saving grace is they've announced there's some perk that's like a statement credit for subscriptions. For the debit card of the bank of America account, if you meet the 100,000 point threshold, I think it's $8 a month. Unclear what that's going to be used for. But if you figure you're now going to get an extra $8 a month times 12 months, about $100, you know, that's equivalent to your lost cash back or kind of bank of America rewards earning for the first $25,000 a year. So it's not perfect. It's definitely not as good as earning more because it's a little bit more work. But if you had a subscription that qualified and you threw it on that debit card, you know, you'd earn an extra $100 a year, which is, you know, not as good as a higher rate, but better than not earning that in the first place. So that's the changes of bank of America. As for us, it doesn't make a huge difference, especially on the business cards because those aren't changing. And on the personal cards, you know, it might make a difference in the future. But for our one personal bank of America card, the Premium Rewards Elite, we're fortunate that I don't think our change is going to kick in until January 2028. So not going to affect what we do this year, not going to affect what we do next year, but something we're going have to think about in the future because we don't have $1 million sitting in bank of America or Merrill lynch. So we're not going to qualify for that 75% level. So we'll see how these things evolve over the next couple of years. But wanted to share that quick update on the bank of America branded card. So let's now talk about the Alaska cards. We've got two Alaska cards and have really been doubling down on Alaska, which is unfortunate because Alaska has not been doubling down on the Bay Area and canceled a lot of their routes. But for the time being, we've got the Alaska business card and the Alaska Summit card or the Atmos Summit card. The Atmos Summit card's fantastic. If you look at the annual fee, yes, it's 395, but when I look at what we get out of that card, it is more than 395 because we're getting status points, we're getting no same day change fees. They waive the partner award booking fees. Which is really, really valuable for someone like me who books a lot of Alaska flights speculatively and cancels them. They let me share points with my wife or anyone else with no cost. And as you spend on them, you earn both Elite points, like I mentioned, but also if you spend $60,000 a year, in a calendar year, you get a hundred thousand point Companion Award, which is pretty valuable to me. I kind of think about those things as spending on the earnings. So I don't really value the Companion Award at anything on the net annual fee side, which doesn't matter because for me the net annual fee on this card is positive, $250. But it matters when it comes to spending on this card. And it's the reason between the Companion Award and the Elite status that even though it might only be a 3x dining card, to me it's probably more like a 4 and a half or 5x dining card because of all those other things. Unclear how to think about the Alaska Business card. I got it before the Summit card even existed because I wanted to earn status on Alaska. Now that the Summit cards there, there's not a lot to love about this card. There is an annual Companion fair, but if you look around online and look at how much people actually value a lot of these Companion fairs for, I find that they're really hard to use. And I think I let mine go unused last year. And now that I have Alaska status and another card, there's just not a lot of value to this business card. So I hate to say it, but like it probably won't have room in the wallet now that the Summit card exists. And I might see if I could product change it to maybe another business customized cash card if that's allowed because that card is a lot more value. So that's bank of America. Let's run through the last couple cards. My least favorite card issuer right now is US Bank. I have some expletives written in my notes that I won't say. We each got the U.S. bank altitude reserve Card before they shut it down. And at the time it was effectively a 4 1/2% cash back card on anything Apple pay. And then now it is effectively a 3% cash back card on Apple pay up to I think $5,000 a month. And it was also marketed as a 3X travel card, but as I learned the hard way, it is 3x travel, but excluding a lot of categories that they don't make explicit. So the travel agency purchase I made when we were planning our trip to Iceland did not count. And so I'm pretty annoyed at US bank for those reasons. I'm also annoyed at US bank because I spent money on the annual travel credit before the card got nerfed and switched to a worse travel credit, and they refused to honor the spend, even though I have screenshots of a chat where the agent said, this counts. And I was waiting for them to reimburse that before I cancel the card. And now I'm outside of the window for getting the annual fee refunded. So I am just wildly annoyed at US bank right now. They also announced they were going to add transfer partners, and they have not done that. And so at this point, I don't think I'd get the annual fee back. And so I'm going to just kind of hold out and hope that their transfer partners are so amazing that I feel not as angry as I do right now. The net fee on this Card's probably about 200 bucks because they still have a $325 travel credit, but it's the kind where you have to book in their portal, which is just annoying. I don't think it has a ton of restrictions, so it's not the worst, but I would never pay $325 for that. So, US bank, you are not on my nice list. And hopefully I can find a way to cash out all these points, transfer them somewhere, and cease holding these cards for eternity, because I'm not a fan. On the flip side, Citibank is one where I've kind of gotten more excited because they have a few transfer partners that I wanted, like EVA Air and a couple hotel programs. And the Citi Premier card is actually really interesting because it has a ton of categories that it earns 3x points on. Gas, groceries, flights, hotels, dining. So, yes, I have multiple cards for some of these categories. But I also really like City Points, and so there's not a lot of marginal cost to using it over other cards. The only thing I don't like is it has a $95 annual fee, and it's not clear how likely I am to use that hotel credit that's supposed to cover that fee. It's $100 hotel credit. I'm gonna assume that this is just my cost to keep my city points alive is $95. So that's how I view this card. I also have an American Business Card. I was really trying to focus on getting American status because there was no easy way to spend your way to Alaska status. And then the Atmos Summit card came out. And I thought, well, I don't need American status anymore. I never fly American. And so I don't think we need this card. It's not on my credit port and the annual fee is $99, but the Companion certificate and the ability to earn loyalty points probably are close to being worth $99. So I might keep it alive at least until the next referral or see if I can get a retention offer. But I don't think it has a ton of value. So it wouldn't be surprised me if the next time I do this episode, I have canceled or possibly product change. But I'm not sure where I could even product change it. I don't think Citi has a lot of business cards that are worth switching to. And then on the other card side, because there's only two others, we talked about Wells Fargo briefly. I've got the Wells Fargo autograph card. I've had it for a few days. It has no annual fee, no cost to keep it open. It's been on my credit for a while. The only thing I'm excited about for this card is that Wells Fargo lets you transfer points in one point increments. So if you have points in a program that are expiring and you need to transfer some points, you could transfer one point from Wells Fargo and keep those points alive. And so I'll probably put a few transactions on this card just to earn Wells Fargo points so that I can test that out. It's a kind of decent card if you're okay having Wells Fargo be your primary rewards currency because it earns 3x on gas, travel, transit, dining, phone and streaming. But I wouldn't encourage anyone to accumulate lots of Wells Fargo points at the expense of other points because I don't think think that those points are as valuable as other options. And finally, the last is the Bill Palladium card. My card optimization algorithm puts a Bill Palladium card as the single best card for almost any person. It's a 2x points card with what I think are the most valuable points out there. That only becomes more valuable than that if you have a mortgage or a rent, which I think is most people listening as much as I think they bungled. The launch in many ways is probably the most valuable, rewarding single credit card you can have. Unless maybe you don't travel at all and you don't have mortgage or rent. I think that would be the qualification for this card to be not in your wallet. I think it may be if you're wildly allergic to annual fees, it would be a problem. Also, maybe I do think it has a net cost because it's a $500 annual fee or 495. And there is a hotel credit that I don't think is going to be worth as much as it's marketed. And the $200 of built cash I probably value at $75. So my math here puts a net fee at about $320. If that hotel credit ends up being pretty easy for me to use, I could see that getting a lot lower. But right now, between the welcome bonus and the fact that it out earns every other card of my wallet on everyday spending, it doesn't matter that the annual fee is a little high. I know I'm going to make up for it in spending and all the points earned on rent or mortgage and housing payments. So that one's staying in the wallet and then it's not a credit card. But the Target debit card earns 5% of target. So we use that at Target. So that is my lineup. That's how I'm thinking about it. I think if I kind of run through it in my brain, there's probably five, probably seven cards that I'll be canceling this year. At least US bank, maybe that number gets to 10 if they could figure their stuff out. That's how I ran through everything. I hope it's helpful to hear that. What I want to do next briefly is look at some of the major spending categories. And this is not the definitive guide to the best card in every category. Right. There's two things that I'm going to skip over. One is the dozens of 5-6x cards that have single or multiple categories that you can earn those points at that are usually capped at 500 to $700 a month or maybe 6 or $7,000 a year. I don't think they're bad cards. The reason I'm not including them is twofold. One, there are so many of them. If you include credit union cards, there's probably hundreds of them. The other reason is that at best you're going to earn an extra two or three points per dollar on, let's call it $6,000 a year, which is not nothing, but it's probably a couple hundred bucks of value for the average use case. And so I'm not going to open a card for those reasons. If you have one of these cards, by all means, use it. That's kind of how I think about the Chase Freedom Flex for me. But I wouldn't open one for that benefit now, you could product change to one, right? If you have an old City card you don't need, maybe you want to switch to the custom cache. Those use cases make sense, but I'm not going to cover them when I run through a couple categories here. And then the second thing I'm not going to do is every single category I have this compare page on the Card tool app and there's 37 categories. I'm not going to go through utilities and cruises and all that kind of stuff. I'm just going to focus on the main ones and kind of run through what that looks like. So let's look at dining. So the winner here is definitely the Forex Amex cards, the Gold or the Business Gold if you spend the most in that category. So that's the highest returning card here. But there are so many close runner ups. Right? You've got the Built Obsidian, the Alaska Summit, the Chase Sapphire Reserve, the Chase Sapphire Preferred, the Freedom Unlimited, the City Strata Premier, the City Strata Elite, the Wells Fargo Autographer Autograph Journey, the Amex Green Card, the Capital One Saver Card. All of those are 3x dining cards. So if you don't have a 3x dining card in your wallet, I would be surprised just given that you've made it this far in this episode. And so yes, those amex cards are 4x and if you spend a tremendous amount on dining then I could see that making a lot of sense. If you spend a tremendous amount of dining just in the evenings, the City Strata Elite card might make sense cuz it's 6x. But I'm going to assume that most people don't spend so much money eating out at very specific hours that that card is going to be, you know, a huge winner for them. On the cashback side, the Premium Rewards Elite card earning three and a half percent cash back or if you redeem the cash back for travel, effectively kind of closer to 4.4% is pretty compelling as well. So that's how I think about dining. I think it's easy to have a 3x card because there's basically unlimited numbers of them. There are a couple 4X and the premium Rewards Elite is kind of the king of cash back on this category. Assuming you have Platinum Honor status with bank of Americ. On grocery similar, the Amex Gold card is at 4x. It is capped to $25,000 to spend. If you spend a ton on groceries, that could make sense, but again I'm not sure it does because you can only spend $25,000. So if you spend 100 grand on groceries, maybe if you had four gold cards, it'd be worth it. But I don't know. I wonder whether the incremental 1 point per dollar on $25,000 is the way to optimize in your life. Then there's a ton of other 3x cards. The saver, even the city strata card, the Aeroplan card and the Built Obsidian card, though it is also capped at $25,000. And then, you know, the surprise winner on cash back here is probably the Verizon card, which is 4% cash back. Now there's probably plenty of 2 and 3% cashback cards, but I'm just trying to highlight some of the best. On the travel category. It's interesting. The Chase Sapphire Reserve was always the 3x all travel card. It was awesome. That's gone. And so first I'll just cover all travel cards because we'll jump really briefly into flights, hotels. But on all travel, the cards that kind of stand out now are the Amex Green Card, the Wells Fargo Autograph and Autograph journey, maybe the US Bank Altitude Reserve, but it's capped at 5,000amonth. Or the Chase Inc. Business preferred, which is 3X. So you got a few options for 3X cards out there. And then on cash back, the US bank Altitude Connect is 4% back on all travel. And then again the bank of America Premium Rewards Elite is 3 1/2 percent. Could go up to 4.4 if you redeem for travel. So that's the all travel category. When you focus on flights or hotels, you can elevate those earnings on flights. The Amex Platinum card is still kind of the winner here at 5x points, but right behind it at 4x is the chase Sapphire Reserve and the Sapphire Reserve Business, which I think has better travel protections. And then the Wells Fargo autograph journey, also 4x on flights. So this is the first time where I think the travel protections are probably worth the 1x point loss to use the Chase Sapphire Reserve. So that's probably going to be my flight card, which makes me wonder if I'll put a dollar on my Amex Platinum card next year that isn't in service of earning credits, which then goes back to why am I holding that card? But I think it's the marquee card from a marquee issuer and this is my job, so that makes sense. On the hotel side, I pretty much always optimize for the co brand cards. If you're staying at a Property. So if it's a Hyatt, you know, you might want to use a Hyatt card at the Hyatt Hotel, though, you know, earning 4x chase points with the Chase Sapphire Reserve, you know, might actually make more sense in many cases, though, earning Forex Chase points, which you can convert to Hyatt, is interesting. The Wells Fargo Autograph journey is a 5x hotels card. And keep in mind, for these cards that earn elevated earnings on flights and hotels, almost all of them require you to book directly with the airline or the hotel group. If you were going to run a travel agency and spend a tremendous amount on hotels, bumping up to the Wells Fargo autograph journey for 5x might make sense. But otherwise, 4x on the Chase Sapphire Reserve, 3x on the City Strata Premier for hotels is another alternative. But again, by the time you're at 3x, you're kind of probably even better off just focusing on an all travel card and not worried about it. Now note, I didn't talk about the fact that different cards earn up to 10x points on hotels or 5x points on flights booking in the travel portal with their cards. So venture X booking the travel portal, get 10x hotels. You know, I've talked about travel portals before and some of the issues there. You know, if it's a crazy deal, I'm totally fine to take the kind of risk. I'll put some links in the show notes to what those risks are, but it is getting better. And so Bilt has this thing where when you're booking in their portal for some United flights, it pops up and says, like direct booking, this thing called NDC which allows these portals to book as if they flights were booked direct with the airline. And then in a lot of cases, if you're booking through some of these luxury programs, you can still put your loyalty number and you could still earn points and elite nights for hotels. And so as portals have more offerings like that, I get more comfortable booking in those portals. And so if someone's gonna offer me 10x points on hotels and I'm still gonna get my points and my elite nights from the brand, that's interesting. Maybe if it's a boutique hotel, that's interesting. But for flights or hotels where I'm not really getting any value and I've got the added risk of not having a direct booking, I'm probably not using those travel portal bookings, which is why I'm not covering them. When I talk about earning on travel, the other few categories I'll hit on very quick Amazon, 5% on the Prime Visa. That's just the card to use. Costco is interesting. I've got a lot of people always email. What's the best card for Costco is the Costco card. Turns out it's not the Costco card. But there's also not a great Costco card. The only card that I know that earns elevated earnings on wholesale stores like Costco are cards that earn that either in a very small amount or I think synchrony cards count Costco as groceries. So if you had a card like the Venmo card, you'd get 3% back on grocery. But my advice is when you're looking for Costco, spend whatever the card for everything else. Your everything else card is probably your Costco card. And so that's the last category here, which is what's the best everything else card. On the point side, it's built Venture X Double Cash from Citi, Active Cash from Wells Fargo are kind of all two X cards. So which one's better kind of depends on how you value the points in each of those programs. I would argue that I would take built points over Capital One points, Capital One over City, and City over Wells Fargo. So that's how I would stack rank them. There is the blue business plus card on Amex which gives you 2x points on up to 50 grand of spend a year. So Amex does have a 2x points card, but it's a business card and it has a cap. And so I think if you want a card that just rewards on everything, and it's pretty straightforward, Bilt and Capital One have that. The Citi Double Cash and the Wells Fargo cards, they are 2% cash back cards that only earn points. If you also pair them with a card that earns those rewards. Then on the cashback side, Robinhood has the 3% card and bank of America have a bunch of cards that with preferred rewards status at the Platinum honors level earn 2.625%. Or if you have the premium rewards elite and you get that bonus 3.28. So those are kind of my go tos for cash back. I think if you spend less than $10,000 a month and you happen to have $250,000 of crypto at Coinbase and you don't mind that all of your cash back is coming in the form of Bitcoin, that every time you sell, you're probably creating a tax headache of what were the capital gains on that. You know, that's a 4% cashback card. But for multiple reasons, that's not one I'm using. So what's my takeaway here? I don't think I have an uncapped 3x travel card with points that are more valuable than Wells Fargo. But I also don't think that that matters. I don't think I spend enough that I'm going to hit the cap from Chase and if so, it's not going to be by so much. There's also no opportunities to really out earn on anything. This kind of reinforces that there just isn't any new cards I need to earn more. Sure, there are cards where if I added a card to earn on streaming or entertainment, I'd make a little bit higher return, but I just don't spend enough on those categories, so it doesn't really matter. So that's kind of takeaway on the categories. Briefly, I want to talk about card combos because I just built this tool to basically run through every possible combination of cards, looking at your spending and tell you what the best cards are. You could say, I want 1, 2, 3, 4. I think you can go all the way to 10 and say, what are the best 10 card combos? I've never run the 10 card combo. Right now I, I'm realizing it's might take a while, but I think I'm going to just run the two card combo here because the one card combo answer is just what is the best single card and it's an everything card. And it's the same list I just gave when I ran through the everything category where the palladium kind of comes out at the top and you know, kind of runs through the rest. If you want two card combos, the answer is always an everything card plus a bonus card that meets your spending the often for the typical spender, best one in this tool says the Amex Gold, followed by the City Strata Premier, followed by the Chase Sapphire Reserve and the Capital One Saver. So that's kind of the best second card. And if you're someone who's like, I want this to be simple, I don't want to earn points in two places. Give me just one bank. What can I do? Surprising the winner is Citi with pairing the Double Cash with the City Strata Premiere. Second to that would be Capital One and Wells Fargo because you can pair a 2x card with a card that has 3x on a bunch of categories. And then after that it's the Robinhood card, interestingly enough, to get 3% on everything. And then funny enough, the worst probably 30% worse than the best options are Chase and Amex because they just don't have 2x everything cards. Now if you include the blue business plus card from Amex, it kind of holds a ranking at the top, but that ranking assumes that you don't spend enough to max out the $50,000 cap on that card. So short answer is if you want a simple, simple situation. Surprisingly, City Strata, Premier and Citi Double Cash is the highest roi. However, that's all not factoring in the fact that the Build Palladium card if you pay rent or mortgage is far and above better. In fact, the Built Palladium card as a single card with rent and mortgage depending on how much your rent is and whatnot, beats every other two card combo except pairing the Built Palladium card with another card. So if you want a single solution, the Bill Palladium seems to be the number one winner, assuming you have mortgage and rent to pay, because you need that to be able to get the outsized earnings. If not, then it just becomes a very good 2x card. And honestly, it might be lower on the ranking because of the annual fee and the credits probably a little higher because the points are worth more. But you know, my takeaway from all this is like the Built Palladium card's really good as an earner and Built is still really bad at marketing it. So you'll notice I didn't talk a lot about business cards because I think a lot of people don't think they're eligible. But I will encourage everyone listening to reconsider that because there is probably something in your life that qualifies as a business. Now I know some issuers are getting more and more strict with this. I hope that's not a trend that continues. But if you have any income from consulting, from a social media thing, from selling things online, from running a side hustle, from driving for Lyft or Uber, like those are all business revenues that I think would make you more than capable of being able to get a business card. So something to consider, especially because they often have really lucrative welcome bonuses. They don't show up on your credit reports, they don't have as big of an impact, they don't impact your chase 524 status and all that. So something to consider might need to do a whole episode on business cards or a section of an episode in the future. And then finally the last thing. How do you keep track of this? Because this is a lot. There are a bunch of options out there. The card pointers, app cardrite Travel Freely. I think they all have a free version, some have a paid version. They each have their pros and cons. I built a spreadsheet tool to kind of track the optimization of it, but it's definitely not a tool to track your wallet, which is why I built Card Tool to do just that. And you know, I hate talking about it because it's not something that everyone can use right now, but I also feel like it would be weird to not talk about it because it's what I'm using to kind of drive a lot of this data. And so as I've thought about that, I think, and I don't hold me to this, but I think we're going to make it available to more people. And so if you go to Card Tool, Apple slash wait list, you can put an email in and that will be the first set of people I'm going to invite to try it out. If I decide to do that. I think I will, but I don't, don't hold me to it. And just for full context, some of the features I've talked about in the past that cost me money to operate won't be able to be free features. And so I, I don't know the future of it. Stay tuned. But if you want something that works today and you want something that's been tested, I think the Card Pointers app is fantastic. I've been talking about it for years because I've used it for years. In fact, even though I still have Card Tool, I still use Card pointers all the time. And there's one feature that they offer that is why I will probably continue to use it over and over again, and that is that when you log into all your different credit cards and banks on their websites, they will auto add all of your card linked offers. Things like spend $359 at Whoop and get $359 off, which is a current promotion running on the Chase Sapphire Reserve Card. They will add all those offers to your cards. They will track them all and then when you're on any store websites, the browser extension will pop up and say, hey, don't forget you have this offer. You can search the offers from your phone and when they activate them, if you have offers on multiple cards, they often get activated on multiple cards so you can use them multiple times. That feature alone has earned me well over a thousand dollars over the years and more than paid for my Card Pointers Pro subscription. So I think if you want something simple with great mobile apps, which I'm not building, haven't built and don't have. That would be where I send you. And if you want Card Pointers Pro, you can get 30% off with all the hacks.com card pointers. But there's also a trial so give it a try first. I think it's a great app. That said, if you go to Cardtool app slash waitlist you can add your email and when and if I'm ready, which I really want to be, don't get me wrong, like my goal is to do this, I just want to do it right and I don't want to turn it into a new job where I'm managing support questions nonstop. But I'm figuring it out and you can put yourself on the waitlist there and hopefully something comes to that in the near future. It's also something that I've made available to all our members. So if you go to allthehacks.com join and you join the membership, I did put a link for members to join there, so that is another option. And if you're wondering why I didn't include the Max Rewards app, it's kind of an interesting back and forth. But I used it years ago and there were some real big security issues. In my personal opinion, I don't think they were doing anything nefarious, but they were doing things in a way that made it possible for them to do things they shouldn't do. And I talked to the team, I gave them this feedback. They weren't that quick to take the feedback, but they did eventually take that feedback. So I have looked at the app since and it does not do the things that I was worried about earlier. But any app that does things in that kind of a way, even though it might have been a mistake, but also didn't jump quickly to fix them. I don't know, it's just not something I feel comfortable recommending. It's probably fine if you use it. I don't think you need to run for the hills, but that's just is like personal my style when it comes to security. It's just not how I like to operate. So hopefully this was helpful. Please, please. If you have questions or follow ups, I'm going to start doing a lot more AMA Q&A episodes. Please send them to podcastthehacks.com or go to allthehacks.com AMA submit questions and hopefully I can answer them in the next episode where I do that. That is it for this week. I will see you next week.