Find all the credit card referral links we mention in our posts, right here!

Friends! If you’ve been reading our posts, you know we’re big fans of travel credit cards. Yes, they charge annual fees. But as with most things, you get a fair amount in return for that fee. The return is more than enough to offset the fee multiple times if you use all the benefits that come with those cards.

We tend to stick to a few main cards, which we’ve listed below:

The Platinum Card from American Express

Chase Sapphire Preferred

United Club Infinite

Hilton Honors Aspire

Thanks for using our links! We can’t wait for you to rack up your own points so we can see you out there!

The post Exclusive Credit Card Referral Links first appeared on The DeBode Way.

Lately, we’ve been talking about different travel-related credit cards we use and the reasons we use them. In these posts, we’ve explained how some cards have an Annual Fee (AF) while others don’t. And, as you might guess, in general, the cards with AFs come with more benefits than those that don’t. It’s also fair to assume that cards with higher AFs have more benefits than cards with lower AFs. Perhaps, Platinum-level benefits. Let’s see…

Card Classifications

Broadly speaking, cards that don’t charge you an AF and, as a result, have few, if any perks, are grouped together and called ‘lower-tier cards.’ Cards with AFs ranging from, let’s say $95 – $300 per year are commonly grouped together and are referred to as ‘mid-tier cards.’ Finally, cards with AFs of more than $300 per year are often called ‘top-tier cards’ both because of their steep AF and the multitude of benefits they offer.

To give a few examples, the Chase Sapphire Preferred card we’ve talked about so much is arguably among the most popular mid-tier cards available today. If you’re looking to get started with a travel-focused card, we’d strongly encourage you to check this one out. Our Hilton Honors American Express Surpass card is also a mid-tier card, but very brand specific and we don’t recommend it unless you’re attached to Hilton (we scored top-tier status, during the pandemic- yay work – so we’re attached). By contrast, our United Club Infinite Card and our Platinum Card from American Express are both top-tier cards. In a prior post we’ve given just one example of how the benefits that come with our United card nearly offset the entire AF in just one trip home, but we haven’t really delved into our most premium travel card: the Platinum Card from American Express, so let’s fix that.

Platinum Ain’t Free, Folks

Okay, let’s get this out of the way: in case you were wondering, the AF for our Platinum card is $695. If you’re anything like us, the first time we saw this amount we were taken aback. Goodness me! How can a card possibly be worth that much money each year?! Take a breath and count to 10 (unless that’ll cause you to pass out, then scale it back). It’ll be okay.

First yes, $695 is a lot of money. However, as with all things, we don’t just give AMEX our money and wish them well (that’s a special benefit reserved for insurance companies, but even then there are choice words involved). Instead, we expect something in return. And probably like you, for that kind of money, we expect a lot in return. Fortunately, AMEX is happy to oblige us. If you check out the AMEX portal, they list no fewer than 51 benefits that come with the Platinum card. And that’s just as of today; there are always new/different things coming available.

Some of these are standard benefits that come with almost all mid-tier and top-tier travel cards, things like trip delay, cancellation, and interruption insurance policies (if you don’t know, these are different; that’s a discussion for a different post), baggage insurance, and so on. Some of the benefits are, admittedly, a little extra (like the Premium Private Jet Program. Honestly…), but others are potentially more useful (like the buying services and extended warranty benefits). Still, there are a few key benefits that we value the most, so let’s talk about those briefly and then explain how they help offset the AF for this card.

Key Benefits

The main benefits we get from our Platinum card can be put into a few general categories; we’ll talk about each.

Entertainment

Each year we receive up to $240 in digital entertainment credits when we use our AMEX card to pay for those bills. This includes Audible, Sirius XM, Hulu, Disney+, ESPN+, Peacock, and the New York Times. We don’t use all of these, but we do use Audible (Tasha), Sirius XM (Jason), Hulu, and Disney+. Importantly, these are services we use as a part of our normal spending, and so by shifting some of those bills to our AMEX card, they’re essentially free.

Travel Planning

As this AMEX card is a premium travel card, it shouldn’t be surprising that most of the benefits we get from it are travel-focused. Let’s talk about the big ones.

Each year we can receive a $200 hotel credit when we book the hotel through the AMEX travel portal. This is reserved for a few of their hotel collections, but within those collections are many, many options at a variety of price points (some are familiar, others, not so much). Similarly, each year we get a $200 airline fee credit. This one is a little trickier because you can’t use it for purchasing the flight itself but instead needs to be used for incidental expenses like seat upgrades, baggage fees, or onboard purchases.

We also immediately earn status with both Hilton (Gold status) and Marriott Bonvoy (Gold Elite status) by having these cards. Those status upgrades can bring room upgrades (when available), among other perks. Along those lines, we are also eligible for privileges with different rental car companies around the world. Those benefits include premium status (which can snag us free upgrades, when available), rental car protection, and rental car loss and damage insurance, meaning that as long as we pay for the rental on our AMEX, we can decline the provider’s insurance policies which can easily run you an additional $100 per day of use.

In addition, we can also receive a $189 annual CLEAR Credit (only available at certain airports, though the list is growing) and a credit for the fees associated with Global Entry ($100) or TSA PreCheck ($78).

Lounge Access

While the above benefits are all great – and we use them frequently – what we really like about the card is the airport lounge access that comes with it. As of the writing of this post, we can use lounges in Priority Pass Select, the AMEX Global Lounge Collection, and the AMEX Centurion Lounge Collection. You can’t pay for any of these directly (there are other levels you can purchase for Priority Pass, just not Select), they’re reserved for AMEX members (does that sound extra? #sorrynotsorry). More specifically, because guests are complimentary, we can both get in as a result of having this card. However, the policy is changing for the Centurion Lounges in February 2023 so that, unless you meet certain spending criteria, guests will be charged $50 per visit. Or, another option we’re looking at is getting Tasha her own authorized user Platinum card after February for an additional $175 a year for her own lounge access. This only makes sense if we plan to continue with a heavy travel schedule through specific airports and will want lounge access for multiple layovers on each trip. We’re still debating.

We love the oasis that is the Centurion Lounge. Good food, free drinks (unless you want premium spirits), free Wi-Fi, clean bathrooms, comfortable seating, and it’s quiet…at least usually. Assuming we have a long enough layover, this is the first place we head after getting off the plane. Okay, maybe not the first place, there might be meetings with men about horses…

Shopping

There are others, but the main shopping benefits we use are the $200 Uber cash (this does work for Uber Eats, though we’re only able to use this benefit while traveling as no one delivers to our house ), and the $100 from Saks Fifth Avenue (yes, there are things for under $100 you can get here, trust us, we’ve found them). Many of the shopping benefits change from month to month so we make sure to check them before we order something online.

Tallying It All Up

That’s a lot of benefits, and it isn’t even all of them. But these are the ones that drew us to the card more than the others and so are the ones we tend to focus on the most. As a recap:

• Entertainment: $240
• Travel Planning: $689 (hotel, airline, CLEAR, and Global Entry)
• Lounge Access: $50 per visit (for Tasha, starting in February 2023)
• Shopping: $300

I’m not great at math, but my calculator says this adds up to nearly $1300 in benefits each year from just the benefits we’re currently interested in. Remember the AF for this card is $695, which means these benefits alone offset the AF nearly twice each year. Not so bad if you can fork over the $695 each year, amiright? How do you like them apples?!

Caveats

As with all things, a few reminders:

• You’ll note that most of the benefits we’ve highlighted above are travel-focused. As we noted at the start of this post, that’s what we’re most passionate about and so we pick cards that have travel-focused benefits. That means this card works for us, but if you aren’t interested in travel this card might not be the right choice for you.
• We’ve said this multiple times before, but it’s important enough to repeat again: we make this card fit into our regular spending habits. In other words, we already had subscriptions to Audible, Sirius XM, Hulu, and Disney+ before we got the card; the benefit of getting a statement credit to cover some of that expense was one of the reasons we got the card. Said differently, we didn’t get the card, discover the benefit, and then look for a way to use it, adding to our monthly expenses. Similarly, we use the airline and hotel credits when we’re planning a trip somewhere, as this makes the trip less costly for us. With an AF as high as this one, it’s easy to get lulled into the trap of spending in every benefit category to get the biggest return on your investment, and that’s all fine until you get the bill. No benefit is worth ruining your credit score and/or checking account. There are many benefits that come with this card that we don’t use (remember the Private Jet program?) because they don’t fit into our regular spending habits.
• When we spend with our AMEX card, in addition to the above benefits we’re also racking up Membership Points. However, these can’t be combined with the Ultimate Rewards points we earn with our Chase cards. So, if you’re already doing great things with your Chase cards and want to keep all of your points with the same bank, AMEX might not make sense for your next card.

What are your favorite cards and what benefits do you like about it/them? Let us know!

Happy travels!

The post Platinum Looks Good On You (and Us) first appeared on The DeBode Way.

Case in point: at the time the Pirates movies are to have taken place (the mid-18^th century, by some accounts), a piece of eight was an actual thing – it was another name for a Spanish dollar, a legal currency at the time. As you might guess, there were nine pirate lords, each of whom needed something to indicate their membership as a pirate lord. Initially the token was supposed to be actual money (i.e., a piece of eight), but as ATMs weren’t at every port, sometimes the pirate lords found themselves without any cash (me too, pirates, me too). Further complicating things, cell service wasn’t always great while on the open seas during the Golden Age of Piracy, and so apps like Venmo were unreliable. Instead, they ended up using a personally-selected item. Now you know.

Enough Trivia – What is this 5/24 Rule?

Alright fine, though helpful for small talk at parties, pirate history isn’t what we’re here to discuss. But we are here to discuss a different set of numbers that also might not make immediate sense: Chase’s 5/24 rule. And no, this isn’t a reference to May 24^th. If you’re an avid reader of The DeBode Way (you are, right? Of course you are!) you’ll know that in our last post we talked about ways to maximize your travel points by earning Sign Up Bonuses (SUBs) from different travel-focused credit cards, though doing so responsibly. That’s a great way to rack up a considerable number of points, but it pays to be careful when taking this approach, as having multiple cards can make things complicated and expensive, especially if they have annual fees tied to them. Beyond this, some banks pay close attention to how many cards you open and when; as you increase the number of cards you open, the harder it gets to be approved for new cards. Perhaps the most well known of these rules is the 5/24 rule from JP Morgan Chase (Chase).

Still…what is it?

Here’s the deal: Chase has lots of travel-focused credit cards that are held in a high regard, like our Chase Sapphire Preferred card that we use for most of our regular expenses. Many of those have valuable benefits tied to them, as we’ve discussed before (our United Club Infinite Card is also issued by Chase, for example). Because of this, folks consider having multiple Chase cards, especially if they all earn Ultimate Rewards points which you can combine into a single account to redeem for travel. We do this, and it works well for us. However, the Chase 5/24 rule means that Chase won’t approve you for a new card if you’ve opened 5 or more credit cards in the last 24 months.

There are a few things to keep in mind about the 5/24 rule. First, this rule applies to credit cards issued from any bank, not just Chase. For example, let’s say in the span of 24 months you open two Chase cards, two American Express cards, and one card from Citibank. This adds up to 5 cards in the last 24 months, so if you then find another card from Chase that looks attractive, you’re likely to be denied because you’ve violated the 5/24 rule even though most of those cards didn’t come from Chase. Make sense?

Second, this rule doesn’t apply to most business credit cards. Exceptions to this are business cards from Discover and small business cards from Capital One (thanks to our friends at 10xTravel for the head’s up about this), as those will count toward your 5/24 count. However, most other business cards, lines of credit, loans, and the like shouldn’t count against this rule.

But Chase is only one bank, what about all the others?

It’s also important to note that this rule is for Chase’s cards (though Chase itself hasn’t really confirmed this). Other banks probably have similar rules, but they might be a little different for each of the major banks. Also, as far as we’re aware, having an excellent credit score won’t get you around this rule, though that’ll certainly factor in when they (or any bank) evaluate your application.

In the end, having multiple cards – and using them responsibly – can be a great way to accelerate the number of points you can earn and convert into vacations (or whatever else you want to spend your points on). We do this and so do lots of other folks. At the same time, make sure you’re paying attention to how many cards you’ve opened in the last 2 years, especially if you tend to gravitate more to Chase’s cards. Because of this rule, it’s also a good idea to make sure the cards you’re opening first are the ones most valuable for your spending and travel habits. It would be a shame to miss out on a great offer because you have too many lower-tier cards with relatively fewer benefits.

A Friendly Reminder:

As always, we advocate for the responsible use of these cards in conjunction with your regular spending habits. Never open cards you don’t need, won’t use, or can’t afford as that tends not to end well. Also, as attractive as those SUBs can be, it’s critically important we make those fit into our regular and/or planned spending habits. For example, it’s relatively easy for us to shift our regular spending from one card to another to quickly earn a SUB. Or, if we know of a large expense coming up, we’ll start looking for a potential new card with an attractive SUB. But again, all of that is planned and accounted for in our budget ahead of time.

Whatever your approach, be smart with your money as even the best of SUBs isn’t worth overextending yourself.

What’s your favorite credit card? What do you like about it? Let us know!

Happy traveling!

The post The 5/24 Rule: Breaking Down Some Important Travel Numbers first appeared on The DeBode Way.

In prior posts, we’ve talked about different things we do to try to keep some of those costs down, like traveling with carry-on luggage only as often as possible. One of the other ways we’ve managed to keep our costs down is through the responsible use of travel-focused credit cards; we’ve also talked about these in a handful of other blog posts. And while there are plenty of travel-related benefits that come with those cards (e.g., airport lounge access, waived baggage fees, point multipliers, hotel & airline credits, etc.), the most lucrative is one we have yet to discuss, so let’s remedy that now.

As we’ve mentioned before, the main reason we use travel credit cards is because they accrue points (e.g., our Chase Sapphire Preferred card) or miles (e.g., United Club Infinite Card), both of which can later be exchanged for actual travel benefits.

Free Stays with Hilton

For example, our Hilton Honors American Express Surpass card rapidly accrues Hilton Honors points every time it’s swiped or tapped (12X the points of any other card at Hilton hotels) and we use those points for free hotel stays, which is exactly what we’re doing to head to an all-inclusive resort in Mexico next month. To build upon this, we are ALSO part of the Hilton Honors loyalty program (you should be, too; it’s free) which keeps track of the number of nights you stay with Hilton and rewards you for your loyalty (right now we’ve managed to maintain our Diamond status for the past 3 years and yes, it’s as fancy as it sounds). Status can net you some pretty snazzy perks, like free room upgrades, free breakfasts & drinks, and access to more private parts of the hotel. Our Hilton Surpass card automatically awards you Gold status with the loyalty program without having to accrue all those nights on your own, giving you a helpful boost toward earning that top Diamond status. However, we originally earned Diamond the hard way by accruing nights in the loyalty program, during a pandemic that still had us on the road for work. Don’t be us. Get the card and use the perks.

Free Flights with United

Similarly, our United Club Infinite Card earns, as you might guess, United Airlines frequent flier miles. As with our Hilton card, the miles we earn with the United card earn us both status (which can get complimentary upgrades for you and others in your party, among other perks) and free flights. Every time we use that card to book a United flight, we earn 4X the miles with United than we would with another card. Miles = free flights. We like free flights. This obviously requires loyalty to a certain airline to work in your favor. Lucky for us, United is usually a great lower-priced option from Springfield with a quick layover in Chicago on our way to Europe, Denver on our way West, or Houston/Dallas on our way to Mexico.

So, the benefits that come with these cards are pretty great, even if there are annual fees you have to cough up to have them, most of which range from $95 – $700 each year (but it’s really not that bad; see a prior post about how we offset the annual fee for our United card). But how do we actually accrue those points? Well, there are two main ways.

Gas = Free Hotel Stays

First, we pay attention to how we can maximize our point accruals with our regular spending. Let’s say we’re on the road a lot and so spend more than our fair share on gas (story of our life). If that’s the case, then we’d look at the point multipliers for our different credit cards, see which has the highest multiplier for gas stations, and use that card for gas. Currently, for us, that’s our Hilton card at 6X the points at gas stations, aka Hilton points. Gas = free hotel stays. Often those multipliers on various cards can be 3-10x your purchase. So, if you spend $50 on gas, you can sometimes earn 150 – 500 points (but check your specific card’s terms to be sure). If you buy $50 worth of gas each week, every week of the year, that adds up to 7,800 – 26,000 points, and that’s just for your gas and probably just for one car (friendly heads up, if you get gas at a station affiliated with another kind of store (e.g., Wal-Mart), the gas charge isn’t always categorized as gas, but might instead show up as coming from that store, in which case you don’t get the multiplier – do your research before you choose where to fill).

We take a similar approach with most of our usual monthly bills so we can maximize the points we earn on each of our different cards. Importantly, this is our regular spending; we’re not buying new TVs every other day just to get the points, as that would be reckless, and are we reckless? Definitely not.

Still, through careful diligence and planning, earning points the normal way can take a good bit of time to accrue enough for a free vacation. Fortunately, there’s a way to supercharge your point accruals: the sign-up bonus. Let’s explain.

The Sign-Up Bonus

Most of the cards that carry an annual fee have what’s known in the business as a sign-up bonus (SUB). Each card has its own requirements for this, but the general process is that you need to spend a certain amount of money on that card (usually $3,000 – $5,000) in a certain amount of time (usually the first 3-6 months you have the card) to be rewarded with a huge chunk of points. You’d be surprised, as most of these are completely doable. For example, let’s take our first and favorite card: the Chase Sapphire Preferred. This card has an annual fee of $95 and is commonly considered among the best travel-focused credit card for most people. It has tons of great benefits, many of which we use all the time. Right now, this card has a SUB of 60,000 Chase points, which is great because Chase (like AMEX) points are super flexible because they can be transferred to Chase’s partners (like airlines, in which case they become frequent flier miles) or you can use them in Chase’s travel portal (which gives you a discount when paying with your points). To earn that SUB, you need to spend $4,000 in the first 3 months of having the card. That calculates to just over $1,300 for each of the first three months you have the card. If you’re currently spending more than this each month on another card, you can shift that spending to this card, if only temporarily, to earn the SUB and then change back. And remember: this is your usual spending, not anything new.

Similarly, the current SUB on our Hilton Honors American Express Surpass card ($95 annual fee) is 130,000 Hilton Honors points. To earn this, you need to spend $2,000 on the card in the first 3 months you have it; that’s less than $1,000 per month. And, just for another example, the current SUB on our United Club Infinite card ($525 annual fee) is 100,000 United Club miles after you spend $5,000 on the card in the first 3 months you have it. These are all enough points for multiple flights or hotel stays when planned carefully.

Have a Strategy

Just to tie this all together, let’s suppose you applied for and were approved for all three of the above cards in the space of a year (there are reasons why you’d want to space this out; we’ll talk about this in a different post). As a reminder, here are the details for the SUBs:

• Chase Sapphire Preferred: 60,000 Chase points after $4,000 in 3 months.
• Hilton Honors American Express Surpass: 130,000 Hilton Honors points after $2,000 in 3 months
• United Club Infinite: 100,000 United miles after $5,000 in 3 months

In total, you’d need to spend $11,000 on the three cards to earn the above SUBs. Okay, first yes, that’s a big chunk of change. But again, if this is over a year, that’s less than $1,000 per month. This is how we’re able to fit these cards into our regular spending, as we spend well over $1,000 each month on our cards.

But the points are in three different places, how is that helpful? You might ask. Well, that’s only kinda correct. The nice thing about Chase, or one of the nice things, is they have a ton of transfer partners. One of those transfer partners is United Airlines (sadly, not Hilton hotels). So, you can move those 60,000 Chase points to your United account and now you have 160,000 miles to cash in on your next trip (note that these transfers are one-way; you can’t transfer United miles to Chase and convert them into points). You also have 130,000 Hilton Honors points, which means you’re likely flying United to get where you want to go and will stay at one of the many Hilton properties across the world. Oh, and as an added bonus you can book a regular room with Hilton and because this card also gives you Gold status, you get complimentary room upgrades, space permitting.

Reminders

So, by using certain cards with your regular spending, you’ve earned a free or heavily discounted vacation. Not too shabby, right? Right. Now for a few reminders:

• The above cards do have annual fees. If you got all three of these cards, you’d spend $715 in annual fees alone. That’s not nothing, but again, if you can divert your regular spending to these cards and it results in a free vacation, you can consider that vacation as having cost you $715. That’s still not too bad. Oh, and that’s assuming you don’t use any of the other benefits from those cards, which would be silly. Those benefits pay for the cards. Again, it’s important to have a strategy here.
• As we’ve said repeatedly in this post, and this is important so worth saying again: we advocate for the responsible use of these cards. As we said above, we’re not reckless. Spending beyond your means is a great way to get both yourself and your credit score (which you’ll need to get these cards) in trouble, and that’s a loss regardless of how nice the vacation is. We’ve found ways to leverage these cards and their benefits in our regular spending, so they don’t cause problems for us. They are paid off every month and we never pay interest. We’d encourage you to do the same, even if it takes a little longer to get that vacation.
• As with many things, when you move from one to multiple cards, things can get complicated (hello, spreadsheets!). There are behind-the-scenes rules that can make getting more cards more challenging, and sometimes impossible (we’ll talk about these in a different post soon). So, if that’s your plan, make sure you start with the card with the highest benefit for you.

Not sure where to start? Fortunately, our friends over at 10x Travel have done most of the hard work for you and have been a tremendous help to us over the years, so make sure you check out their website. We’re always happy to answer questions, too.

Happy traveling!

The post Using Points and Miles to Get You that Free Trip first appeared on The DeBode Way.

In Part 1 of this post series, we talked about things to do if you find yourself a victim of theft while traveling abroad. In Parts 2 and 3 we want to give a few specific examples of things we do to prep before heading out to minimize headaches when things go wrong.

As we’ve discussed in prior posts, we’re big fans of (the responsible use of) travel credit cards. They come with perks and help us earn points/miles that help us get back out into the world faster and in more comfort than we otherwise might. That usually means that we typically have several of those cards with us on our travels. Sound familiar?

On one of our domestic trips, we found ourselves in a situation where Tasha’s purse went off in search of better company during loadout at a boutique show (long story, don’t ask). As it turned out, all her credit cards, debit cards, cash, and the like went along for the ride (plus her truck and house keys – which we were way more worried about, stranger danger!). As we started going through each bank’s app to lock each of the missing cards, we quickly came to realize that, because we were both traveling with the same credit cards, in locking Tasha’s cards, we were also locking Jason’s cards. That was a problem, as we were about to get on the road to head home (luckily I had my keys too)…in a truck that needed gas…on a Sunday night. Neat, right?

Since that…we’ll call it a learning experience, we never travel with the same credit cards. For example, Jason has a Chase Sapphire Preferred card which is our primary card. Tasha is an authorized user on that account and has a card that accesses that same account. But, Tasha also has her own Chase Sapphire Preferred card and Jason is an authorized user on that account. This sounds more confusing than it is but suffice it to say that prior to this experience, we both usually carried two different Chase Sapphire Preferred cards on us (Jason had his and his authorized user card for Tasha’s account and vice versa). The trouble with this is if Jason is carrying both cards and loses his wallet, we must put a freeze on both of those Sapphire cards and accounts. That means Tasha’s cards are now equally useless.

So, continuing the above example, Jason leaves his authorized user card for Tasha’s account at home and only takes his Sapphire Preferred card. Tasha does the same with hers. This means if Jason loses his wallet and must freeze his card, Tasha can still use her card because it’s an entirely different account. We do this with all our cards so there are zero overlaps between the cards we take as we are authorized users on each others cards. This gives us a little peace of mind that, even if something goes wrong and we lose some of our cards, once we freeze those cards we can continue our adventure as originally planned, and hopefully those lost cards will have new ones waiting for us when we get home.

In case you’re wondering, this particular story has a happy ending. Someone picked up her purse and put it in the mail the next day. Second lesson, always carry your business cards with your phone number so if your things are found you can be easily contacted. Biggest sigh of relief ever!

No one wants to be a victim of theft (or mishandling), either at home or abroad. It’s even worse to be abroad when that happens and not be able to do anything because you no longer have access to your money. Moral of the story: don’t always expect the worst to happen on your travels (because usually it won’t) but do plan for it just in case. You’ll be glad you did.

The post An Ounce of Prep = A Pound of Prevention – Part 2 first appeared on The DeBode Way.

In other posts we’ve talked generally about the different kinds of fee-based credit cards we use that allow us to gather points and miles to travel the way we like. All that’s still true, but let’s use a specific example and break down the fee, what we get for it, and why we see enough value to fork over the money.

The Annual Fee

One of our newer credit cards is the United Club Mileage Plus Infinite credit card, issued by Chase. Okay, let’s get this out of the way from the start: it has an annual fee of $525. Ouch, right? Well, maybe. Let’s talk about this and how we utilized it on our last trip.

Perk #1: No Baggage Fees

Okay, yes, we’ll admit $525 is a lot of money for a credit card, especially when there are plenty of other cards that don’t cost you anything. However, keep in mind that, as with everything else, we aren’t giving Chase $525 each year for nothing. Instead, we expect something in return. This card has plenty of perks, but there are just a few we really focus on (for this card…other cards have other benefits that we like…different conversation). First are the checked baggage fees: we get up to two bags checked for our United flights, for free (Note: we know it’s not actually free, consider it pre-paid if you like). As far as we know (we rarely check bags), checked baggage fees can easily run you $50 per bag, so for two people flying that’s $100 each way. Keeping that in mind, our card’s annual fee just dropped from $525 to $425 (we didn’t check bags on the way to our last destination, just the way home – we care less about them being lost by that point).

Perk #2: Lounge Access

One of the other perks we really like about this card is that it gets us into the United Lounges at the airports (note, we’re not talking about their fancier Polaris lounges; those are only for people travelling in either Polaris Business Class or First-Class cabins – goals). Entrance to the United Lounge will set you back $59 per person per entry. Oh, that’s unless you have a card that’ll get you in gratis, like this one. That means what would ordinarily cost us $118 to visit the lounge is…already paid for. That annual fee now drops from $425 to $307 (remember: Annual Fee ($525) – Baggage Fees ($100) – Lounge Access ($118)). However, if you have a flight with multiple legs and you schedule them correctly, this can increase quickly.

Example: A Recent Trip Home from London

Take one of our recent trips to Europe as an example. On the way from Springfield to London, we had a layover in Denver. Fortunately, Denver has a Centurion Lounge (our preferred lounge experience), so we were able to head in to relax, grab some food and a drink, and connect to the Wi-Fi while we waited for our flight to board. Unfortunately, our Chase card doesn’t do us any good for the Centurion Lounges (but one of our AMEX cards does…different conversation), so we’ll skip to the return trip. When we came home, we went from London to Newark to Chicago to Springfield. Fortunately for us, London, Newark, and Chicago all have United Lounges, which as we said above, is one of the perks we get with our United credit card. Without the card, we’d have paid $118 per lounge (remember, $59 per person) for each of the three lounges we visited, or a total of $354 in lounge fees. Of course, we could have opted to stay out in the crowded terminal eating gross, overpriced airport food, and dealing with the general chaos while trying to relax and get some work done during our layover. And if that’s your jam, you do you. We prefer the quiet of the lounges, especially on our really long travel days. Oh, and don’t forget the bar. And the food. And the Wi-Fi. And way nicer bathrooms. And even…a shower if you want. Included. So, we were able to enjoy three meals (breakfast in London, lunch in Newark, and dinner in Chicago) and drinks all without paying (another) dime.

The Verdict

Okay, so if we add this up, we got into 3 different United Lounges (total value: $354) and had our baggage fees waived (total value: $100), for a total dollar value of $454. Keeping in mind that our annual fee for the card is $525, that dropped our effective annual fee to $71. And that was just on this one trip, only on the return. Had we been to a United Lounge on the way to London (rather than the Centurion Lounge), the card would have paid for itself with just this one trip. Imagine going on multiple adventures each year and you can see how a card like this can easily pay for itself a few times assuming you structure your travels correctly. We’ve used this card on two trips now since we got it in May and it’s more than paid for itself twice over. Plus, these are just TWO of the perks we get from this card – we’ll talk about more in the next post.

Caveats

A few things we should point out here. First, different people have different perspectives when it comes to travel preferences. For example, some folks want their travels to happen as quickly as possible with tiny layovers and jogs through the airport to catch your next plane. This probably means you want to minimize your time in airports and wouldn’t really have enough time to properly enjoy lounge access. If that’s a good description for you, then paying for a credit card that gives you access to its lounges might not make sense for you. Similarly, having this card and the perks it grants assumes you want to travel; if you don’t, then it doesn’t make sense to have a card like this. We are grateful that the lounges not only offer food options for our sometimes-tricky diet but also a (usually) quiet workspace between legs to catch up on emails, edit photos, schedule social, and write blog posts (like this one…written in the United Lounge in Newark) so we don’t lose entire workdays at a time while traveling.

Beyond that, not all airports have the same types of lounges. For example, like we said above, Denver has a Centurion Lounge (so does London), but Chicago and Newark don’t – yet. Chicago and Newark both have United Lounges (so do London and Denver). Of course, other airlines have lounges at different airports around the world, too. All that’s to say, if you’re going to spend the money on a card that gives you lounge access, that might mean you need to pay a little more attention to how you schedule your flights and what airports you have access to. For example, if we didn’t have the United card and its accompanying United Lounge access, we’d *only* have access to the Centurion Lounges via our AMEX card (Does that sound extra? We’re okay with it). In that scenario, we’d try to fly through Denver, Houston, Dallas, or Charlotte as much as possible, as they all have Centurion Lounges. It also means we’d look for layovers between two and three hours long, to give us enough time to get to the lounge and enjoy it, with enough buffer room in case our flight is delayed and to get to our next flight before they close the gate.

We should also point out that there are plenty of other perks that come with this credit card (like getting discounted prices on in-flight purchases and statement credits), we just don’t use them as much because they either don’t apply to how to live/travel or we get the same benefits from other cards. But there are others that apply like status with Hertz that give us discounts and upgrades on car rentals, primary car rental insurance so we can wave the insurance provided by the rental agency, enrollment credit for TSA pre-check and Global Entry (huge musts in our book), and no foreign transaction fees. We’ll break these all down for you in another post in a couple weeks.

Caveat Emptor

As before, we’re not suggesting fee-based cards are right for everyone. We pick cards that fit into our lifestyle and normal spending habits and give us perks that make travelling more enjoyable. Regardless of what kind of credit card you decide to use, we always encourage you to use them responsibly and to not overextend yourself.

What’s your favorite credit card perk? Leave us a comment to let us know!

Happy traveling!

The post Fee-based Credit Cards: Are They Worth It? Part One first appeared on The DeBode Way.

First, most of what we’ve learned has come from the amazing team at 10X Travel. Seriously, if you’re interested, check out their website. They also have a Facebook group, within which regular folks – just like you and us – post the awesome trips they book (using points) and how they did it so everyone else can learn and, hopefully, do the same. We also follow ThePointsGuy and ThePointsGuyUK on Instagram and loads of different travel inspiration accounts to give us ideas on where to go and what to do with those points.

One of the big things they talk about in the 10X world is travel credit cards and the benefits that come along with them. To be sure, it’s super important to be careful with your spending, know your limits, and make sure you stay within them. This is the golden rule to make this work. With that said, if you’re open to the responsible use of credit cards and want to travel more – where we’re at – this might be helpful information for you. When it comes to travel credit cards there are two things to keep in mind: the specific credit cards you use and how you use them. Let’s talk about both.

You don’t need us to tell you there are tons of credit card options out there. Even if you’re used to looking around at the different deals, it’s still a daunting task to pick the *right* one. Fortunately, the folks at 10X Travel are happy to help with this, though keep in mind they assume you’re interested in travelling, so that’s what most of their recommendations are geared toward.

As you might suspect, each card is different. What’s different? There are four main things to keep in mind. First, some cards have annual fees (AF…different from other, more common uses of af), while others don’t. One thing to keep in mind: if you’re paying an AF, you’re probably getting something in return. It’s also logical to expect the higher the AF, the better the benefits. For example, we carry two different cards: the Platinum Card from American Express and the Chase Sapphire Preferred, each of which have an AF attached to them (pleeeeeease use our links if you’re ready to sign up for a card – this helps us continue to provide information and content). AMEX Platinum is steep, at $695 per year (hold on, don’t die yet), while our Chase card has a more reasonable $95 AF (note that Chase also has a Sapphire Reserve, which competes more directly with the Platinum card, and has a higher $550 AF). What do we get for all that money? Well, our AMEX card pays for our Sirius XM monthly fees (up to a certain amount), and we get annual credits for airline (things like seat upgrades, baggage fees, and so on) and hotel (things like the actual booking) expenses. We also get access to AMEX’s Centurion Lounge collection, which comes in handy for longer layovers (free drinks, food, Wi-Fi, and even showers sometimes). There’s also travel insurance and a whole host of other benefits. The AMEX Platinum card will also cover part of the fees for Pre-Check and/or Global Entry, both of which we’ve discussed in other posts. As you might expect, our Chase card also has benefits (access to different lounges, travel insurance, and so on), but they aren’t as premium as AMEX, which makes sense given the lower AF. Also note that some cards don’t have an AF, but their benefits are slimmer, if they have any at all. In the end, for us, the credits and benefits we get from the two cards more than offset the AF. If that’s the case for you, too, you might consider looking into one of these cards. However, make sure you pick the card that has benefits to match your preferences, lifestyle, and goals AND you use them responsibly.

Second, these cards accrue points – the thing we’re really interested in – differently. For example, for our Chase card, we earn 3x points at restaurants and 2x points on travel-related expenses (more if you book through their travel portal). Our AMEX card, by comparison, earns 5x points for flights if you book directly with the airline. So, we’d maximize our point accruals if we use the AMEX to book our flights and our Chase when we eat out. AMEX also gives you a point bonus if you shop at small, local places for the first six months you have the card. Knowing when to use each card can help increase your point accruals pretty quickly.

One other fun fact related to our second point. Some cards will give you a point multiplier for hotel bookings. What we’ve learned is that usually applies to your entire cost at the hotel. So, if you’re going to eat at the restaurant in the hotel you’re staying at you can either charge the bill to your room or pay for it right away. If you pay right away, your card company treats it like a restaurant. If you charge it to your room, your card company is likely to count the entire expense (your actual hotel cost + everything you charge to your room) as a hotel charge and give you the travel multiplier instead of the restaurant multiplier. So, we’ve learned to mostly charge stuff to our room and then pay the entire bill as one, larger hotel expense for the extra benefit. Again, being responsible with your charges is key, but if you’re going to pay for something anyway, why not get more points?

Third, most of the cards that have an AF also have a sign-up bonus (SUB). This is where things really add up quickly. For example, when we were approved for the AMEX card, it came along with a 150,000-point SUB. Our most recent Chase card, by comparison, earned us 100,000 points. Avoid trying to compare these, as it isn’t an apples-to-apples comparison. In other words, AMEX and Chase points aren’t worth the same necessarily; usually they have different values. The key is within-card comparisons. For example, from what we’ve seen, a normal Chase SUB is somewhere around 50,000-60,000 points, so the 100,000 SUB offer caught our attention. The catch is you have a minimum spend to earn the SUB. For example, you might need to spend $4,000 in the first 3 months you have the card to earn those points. Again, each card is different in the SUB, the minimum spend to earn it, and how long they give you to hit their threshold, so make sure you take a close look before submitting your application and have a plan on how to meet the SUB to get your points. Also note that some banks will limit you to a single offer over your entire lifetime, whereas others don’t. For example, because Jason got the snazzy deal with AMEX, he’ll never be eligible for another AMEX sign-up offer for the rest of his life. On the other hand, we got a good deal with Chase and will be eligible for another after a certain number of years. All that’s to say, do your homework to make sure you’re getting the best deal you can find, as it could be the only one you get.

Fourth, each bank that issues cards (like AMEX and Chase) have different transfer partners. Here’s the deal: it’s great to earn points on the things you’re already buying, but what do you do with all those points? Well, you can either use them within the card(s) you have, or you can transfer your points to other companies with which your bank has arrangements. Let’s take an example. Let’s say you want to take a trip, so you book using one of your travel-friendly credit cards (which you’ve been using responsibly). One option is to convert your points into cash and pay off those items on your card statement, at least some card companies will let you do this. Alternatively, you can transfer your points to a hotel, for example, and then book your hotel stay directly with the hotel using the hotel points. Usually you get a 1:1 transfer rate, so if you transfer 100,000 points from AMEX to Hilton Hotels, for example, you’d convert your 100,000 AMEX points to 100,000 Hilton points. However, sometimes there are specials that include a transfer multiplier. For example, you might get a 3x multiplier, so your 100,000 AMEX points transfer to 300,000 Hilton points. Usually, the bank that issues your card will tell you its transfer partners in their portal, but the 10X group also has pretty good tabs on this.

Fifth, another layer to this game is status matching across hotel brands. An example: we hold Diamond status with Hilton. At one point this Diamond status could be status matched to Wyndham brand hotels which could then, in turn, match to Caesar branded hotels. They typically don’t tier match directly from brand to brand, but you should at least land somewhere mid-tier with a few perks. This takes patience and research to figure out which brands play nicely together. We had planned to status match on a recent trip to Vegas to stay at The Paris Hotel, which is a Caesar’s brand, but it didn’t work out because Wyndham wasn’t currently accepting new applications for the process and as far as I know, they don’t plan to. Bummer. But, we now have a Wyndham account and we’ll be keeping an eye on it for future Vegas trips (although we have taken a liking to the new Hilton Resorts World). It would be nice to have the perks of a “high-roller” without having to gain that status for each individual brand. Focus on one brand that plays nicely with others that makes sense for your style of travel. Having status with a hotel brand is another way to gain points in the travel world. We recently booked a stay at a Hilton in Edinburgh for free thanks to our point accrual and loyalty. We typically only stay at global chains when we’re abroad the night before we catch a flight home. This allows us to stay close to the airport so we can turn the car in a day early and hop on the shuttle or a cab to make the day a little easier, and shorter.

We know credit cards can be scary things to have, and we can’t emphasize enough how important it is to use them responsibly. It’s never a good idea to dig yourself into a hole you can’t escape, even if it is for a super cool travel destination. That said, we’ve found using the right combination of cards on the rights kinds of transactions while following a budget has allowed us to build up large point totals, which we can then use to travel more often. And if they’re expenses you already have, why not?

N.B. Just so we’re all clear, we are not financial experts nor are we qualified to give you finance-related advise. That’s not what we’re doing here. Instead, we’re telling you what works for us in the hopes it might shed some light on a process we didn’t know much about until we dug deeper. More than anything, it’s super important to be responsible with your finances, so make sure that’s your primary focus, everything else comes after. And if you really aren’t sure, talk to your finance professional or CPA who is qualified to give you finance-related advice.

The post Clever Ways to Amplify Your Rewards: The Exciting World of Point-Generating Cards first appeared on The DeBode Way.