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The Basics + Getting Organized

What's Travel Hacking All About?

‘How do you afford to take all of these trips?’

The first question I’m always asked when people learn of all the trips I take is ‘How do you afford to take all of these trips?” The reality is I use miles and points to cover the largest portion of trips – air travel and hotel stays. Typically my out of pocket costs are just for activities and food. And food costs usually aren’t that high because I am able to leverage my hotel statuses for free breakfasts and lounge appetizers, drinks, and snacks.

The quickest and easiest way to earn points and miles is through credit card sign up bonuses. For instance, when the Chase Sapphire Reserve card debuted in 2016, it offered a 100,000 bonus points after spending $4,000 within the first three months of account opening. The American Express Platinum card also frequently has 100,000 point sign up bonuses.

With just one of these 100,000 point sign up bonuses – you can easily take a week long trip to just about anywhere in the world while having your airfare and hotel stay covered.

And don’t worry about the minimum spend requirement mentioned above. This course will show you how to meet these amounts even if your typical household budget is not that high.

‘But doesn’t that hurt your credit score?’

The second question I’m always asked is ‘Doesn’t that hurt your credit score?’ The simple answer is not only does it not hurt your credit score, but over the long run it will actually improve your credit score. And I’m going to prove it to you.

Credit Score

It’s important to understand how your credit score is determined. Most people have no idea how their credit scores are calculated. Different companies, most notably FICO, look at a range of information provided by one of the three major credit reporting agencies – Equifax, Experian, or Transunion – and use that information to create a score that help lenders (mortgage, credit cards, auto loans, etc) predict how likely someone is to pay back the loan on time and how much the loan or credit line should be.

FICO stands for the Fair Isaac Corporation which is the largest and best known companies that calculates a person’s credit score. Though FICO scores are the most widely used among lenders, there are other scores lenders can choose from such as the VantageScore which is becoming more widely used.

There are actually numerous different credit scores, but they generally range from 300-850. The higher the number the better which represents less risk to the lender. Generally a very good / excellent credit score is considered 750 and higher which should get you the best rates when you borrow money.

Factors in a Credit Score

While the exact formula to calculate your credit score is private to each company and unknown to the public, we do know that there are five main factors that go into a credit score. Each has a different effect on your score. Here is the breakdown:

35% Payment History – do you have any late payments or do you always pay your bills on time?
30% Debt/Amounts Owed – sometimes called ‘credit utilization’. This is basically the ratio of how much you owe divided by your available credit.
15% Age of Credit History – the average age of your credit accounts. If you have currently have two credit cards and one of them was opened eight years ago and the second one was opened two years ago – then your average age is five years (8 years + 2 years / 2 credit cards)
10% New Credit/Inquiries – how many recent credit inquiries do you have? Companies typically count the number of inquiries in the past two years.
10% Mix of Accounts/Types of Credit – typically higher credit scores have a mix of different account types – mortgages, credit cards, auto loans, etc.

You would think that your employment and salary would be important factors in your credit score and your ability to repay loans, but they actually have NO factor in your credit score.

Now that we know all about credit scores, let’s get back to the question ‘Doesn’t that hurt your credit score?’. It’s common to see a very small drop in your credit score immediately after applying for a credit card, but your score will quickly recover and usually surpasses your original score. I’ll show you an example below.

Let me show you why – back to our example above. Let’s pretend we currently have two credit cards:

Credit card #1 was opened 8 years ago with a credit limit of $8,000. We typically use $500/month on this card and pay it off every month.
Credit card #2 was opened 2 years ago with a credit limit of $10,000. We typically use $1000/month on this card and pay it off every month also.

Now let’s assume we were to open a third credit card today and got approved with a $10,000 credit limit. Let’s see how the credit score factors are effected by opening this new credit card:

35% Payment History – no effect since no payments were made yet
30% Debt/Amounts Owed – our ‘credit utilization’ is actually decreasing which is good. Instead of spending $1500 per month with an $18,000 credit limit which is 8.3%, our credit utilization is decreasing to 5.3% (still spending $1500 per month but now our credit limit is $28,000 between the three credit cards)
15% Age of Credit History – the new credit card hurts our average age of credit. Instead of a 5.0 year average (8 years + 2 years / 2 credit cards); we now have a 3.3 year average (8 years + 2 years + 0 years / 3 credit cards)
10% New Credit/Inquiries – this new credit card inquiry will show up on as new credit since and hurt our score a little – this is why you have a small drop in score immediately after applying for the new credit card.
10% Mix of Accounts/Types of Credit – no effect since we are opening another credit card – same type of account we currently have

The two items where the new credit card is hurting our credit score account for 25% of our score, but the new credit card also improves our credit utilization which accounts for 30% of our score.

That sounds right, but prove it

While all the above sounds good, I’ve always been a type of person who wants to see proof. So the below information is my personal credit score when I first got into travel hacking:

Between March 2015 and March 2017, I had opened 18 credit cards and closed 9 of them. Heck, I even refinanced my mortgage during that period too. Here is my credit score in that 2 year period according to Transunion along with a Google document list of when credit cards were opened and closed:

Transunion

Do you remember above when I mentioned your score may drop a slightly when you apply for a new credit card but recovers quickly? Take a look at the chart above.

In January 2017, my credit score was 799. I applied for the Chase Fairmont credit card and was approved. My score dropped a little in February to 787, but then shot back up all the way up to 817.

Hopefully showing you my actual credit scores have set your mind at ease that your credit score won’t be wrecked by applying for multiple credits to earn hundreds of thousands of miles and points.

Check Your Own Credit Score

The government requires the credit bureaus to provide you a free credit report once every 12 months from AnnualCreditReport.com. If you have never requested a copy, feel free to request it now – either from one of three credit bureaus or all three. It’s not the easiest process and the information is not presented in the most easy to understand format.

Did you end up getting a copy? It’s not really user friendly, right? The services listed below also provide you a free credit score updated throughout the year either daily, weekly, or monthly. Most offer additional data taken directly from your credit reports that is easy to understand.

Credit Sesame – provides you with a credit score each month based upon Transunion. Credit Sesame also provides free daily credit monitoring with alerts by email, text or their app. They also provide identity theft insurance and help to restore your identity in case of theft.

Discover – Discover offer a free FICO credit score even if you aren’t a customer. They graph your score over the past year. Other credit card companies provide free credit scores to certain card holders – if you already have a credit card – check to see if your issuer provides one.

CreditKarma – this is the site I use the most. It offers you both Transunion and Equifax scores on one screen. It also has a user friendly interface. It also lists all of the accounts that you have opened and closed.

Need to Knows

There are many factors (payment history, age & type of credit, etc) that affect a person’t credit score
Opening new credit cards may lower your credit score by a few points in the very short term, but will ultimately increase your credit score
The quickest and easiest way to earn large amounts of miles and points to use for almost free travel is through credit card sign-up bonuses

Disclaimer

Is your score 700 or above?

If so – great job – generally you should have no problem getting approved for credit cards with a credit score of 700 or higher.
If not, you can still continue with this course but you may not get approved for each and every credit card.

Do you to pay off credit card balances in full every month?

If so – great job again. Don’t ever pay interest to the credit card companies! Miles and points aren’t worth it if you are paying interest. The average interest rate for credit cards is over 16%.

Do you struggle with credit card debt?

If yes – did you know that in 2016, the average household had $16,748 in credit card debt with an average interest rate of 16.5%. That’s over $2700 in interest payments alone each year!
If you are struggling with credit card debt – stop this course now! Look up Dave Ramsey and check out his book The Total Money Makeover or listen to his radio show/podcast) and get out of debt. You can always come back to this course when you have your debt cleaned up.

Getting Organized

Before we jump into earning miles and points and applying for our first credit card, I want you to take some time to get organized before we begin. Once you get going, you are going to have a LOT of accounts – credit card accounts, frequent flier airline accounts, hotel loyalty accounts, rental car company accounts, etc. Trust me, you will be glad you got organized before beginning.

Here are the five tools that I use to stay organized with my credit cards – 4 are software and 1 is a case to hold all of my 50+ cards (credit cards, airline cards, car rental cards, hotel cards, etc)

Personal Capital

PersonalCapital.com has nothing to do with miles and points or travel hacking – it is a website (and app) to track your finances. You can add all of your accounts – including: checking, savings, paypal, loans (mortgage, auto, school, etc), credit cards, home value, 401K, IRAs, etc and it is free.

PersonalCapital.com also tracks bills, investments, all of your accounts and credit cards. It also has a budgeting section, and it’s investment/retirement section is the best I’ve seen. Here is what the main dashboard looks like:

So why am I telling you about a finance tracker? An important aspect of travel hacking is signing up for multiple credit cards and PersonalCapital keeps tracks of all of your open credit cards once you link them.

Clicking on the ‘Credit’ sections on the left sidebar and it expands to show you all of your credit cards (and spouses) along with the balances, credit limit, etc. It will also track the day an account was closed which will become very important later on.

I highly suggest PersonalCapital even if you aren’t into travel hacking. There are a few other competitors – most notably Mint.com. I had been using mint for years, but kept running into sync issues and non-supported accounts which rarely happens with PersonalCapital.

If you are new to and interested in trying out PersonalCapital.com – signup with this special link you will receive a $20 Amazon gift card just for creating an account and linking a single investment account. Signing up will also help keep this course FREE!

You don’t have to use these programs to track your finances, there are others out there – YNAB (You Need A Budget), Quicken, etc or maybe you just use good old fashioned paper files and folders. Use whatever works for you – but make sure you are organized. You don’t want to miss payments on credit cards and accrue interest payments and late fees.

AwardWallet

AwardWallet tracks all of your reward programs – airline miles, hotel points, credit card points, etc. It currently can track 678 loyalty programs. One very nice feature that I love is that I can add my wife and children’s accounts to mine all under one user-id (no multiple logins needed for each person). Currently I am tracking 78 different household accounts. Here’s a short little video about it:

AwardWallet sends me an email each week with any changes to my accounts and shows your balance month to month with a bar chart.

Awardwallet has both a free and a paid version (AwardWallet Plus). Below is a chart which shows you what is included in the Plus version.

I am a subscriber to the Plus version since it displays the expiration date of miles/points for an unlimited number of accounts instead of just 3. And it’s only $30/year. If you use this special link to sign up – you can get Awardwallet Plus free for 6 months.

Password App

One other tool I use is a password manager, with the hundreds of different accounts I have to keep track of it would be impossible to try to remember all of the user names and passwords. I used to use LastPass but switched over to bitwarden after LastPass limited the free part to either a mobile device or a browser extension (not both). I’ve been very happy with bitwarden so far.

The other major password applications are Dashlane and 1Password. Here is a good review of the different options available: http://thewirecutter.com/reviews/best-password-managers/

Google Docs

To track all of the credit cards that I have signed up with – I created a simple Google Documents spreadsheet – which lists what the card is, when I applied, when I was approved, when the card was activated, what the sign up bonus is, how much I need to spend to get the signup bonus, etc. Click here to download a copy of my spreadsheet.

Credit/Loyalty Card Holder Case

Some people just use a rubber band, but being an organizer, I had to find something better than a stack of credit cards held together by a rubber band.

I started using 3 hole punched plastics sheets in a binder that are meant for business cards. Quickly I learned credit cards are slightly larger than business cards so I had to force them into the plastic sheet pockets, they were hard to get out, and the plastic started to rip after a week.

I found this Boshiho leather credit card holder on Amazon that has been working great. I purchased in December 2015 and have been happy with it since. Credit cards slid in easily and there is room for 90 cards. I highly recommend.

Need to Knows

Organization is a key to success with miles and points, specifically:

Financial – to track credit card account balances
Award Programs – to track miles and point
Passwords – to track multiple login and password at banks, credit cards, award programs, etc
Credit Cards – to track dates open, annual fees, rewards, sign-up bonus tracking, etc
Wallet – to hold the physical cards associated with credit cards and travel reward programs

Homework

Make sure you have a method to keep track of your credit cards – accounts, balances, payment due dates, etc. I use PersonalCapital.com, by signing up with this special link you will receive a $20 Amazon gift card after linking a single investment account.
Signup for an account at AwardWallet – the free version is fine for now.
Download my google spreadsheet to keep track of new credit card sign up bonuses (or create your own)
Get yourself a credit card holder – I use this one

Types of Miles and Points

I know you are anxious to start earning miles and points, but first we need to discuss all of the different types of miles and points. All are not created equal and some are much better than others.

This was a mistake I first made – just applying for random credit cards that had a lousy $100 sign up bonus – it was a big mistake. You should get at least $500 in value from a credit card sign up bonus. I’ve regularly get $2000+ in value from just one credit card sign up bonus.

Let’s go over all of the different types available now.

Airline Miles

Airline miles are probably the most common type of reward that most people have at least heard of. They are also sometimes called frequent flier miles and are part of a loyalty program offered by airlines. Just about every single airline has a loyalty program. The loyalty programs are free to join.

Once you earn enough miles, you can redeem those miles for a free flight. There are numerous ways to earn airline miles, most of which don’t actually involve flying on the airline itself. So in addition to earning miles by actually flying, the best ways to earn airline miles is through co-branded airline credit cards.

A few examples of co-branded airline cards:

Chase Southwest credit cards
Barclay’s JetBlue Card
Citi’s American Airlines AAdvantage Platinum Select
Chase United MileagePlus Explorer Card

DO NOT APPLY FOR ANY OF THESE CREDIT CARDS YET – trust me, you need a strategy as card issuers have changed requirements in the past year making it harder for travel hackers to benefit.

When you apply for these credit cards there is typically a ‘new cardmember offer’ – something like 50,000 bonus miles after you spend $3,000 on purchases in the first 3 months from account opening. These new cardmember offers are by far the quickest and easiest way to earn a large amount of miles in a short period of time.

Co-branded credit cards also offer additional perks such as double miles on tickets purchased from that airline, priority boarding, free first checked bag, etc. There is also typically an annual fee for most if not all of these co-branded credit cards but it is usually waived the first year.

Hotel Points

Hotel points are just the same as airline miles but instead of earning miles, you earn hotel points. Hotels also have loyalty programs that are free to join to accumulate these points.

Once you earn enough hotel points you can redeem those points for a free night at the hotel chain. Earning hotel points happens just like airline miles but instead of flying, you earn points for staying at the hotel chain. Hotels also have co-branded credit cards also, here are a few:

Just like airline co-branded credit cards that offer additional perks so do hotel co-branded credit cards – typically a free night certificate on your credit card anniversary, late checkout benefit, etc.

Cash

Cash back credit cards are pretty easy to understand also – typically you will receive 1%, 1.5%, or 2% cash back on purchases made. There are a few credit cards that claim to provide miles for purchases, but when you dig into the programs, you redeem miles for cash or credits on travel purchases you make.

Here are a few examples:

Citi Double Cash (1% cash back on purchases + 1% when you make a payment = 2% total)
Fidelity Rewards Visa (2% cash back into a Fidelity account, I use their ‘Fidelity Cash Management Account’ as my main checking account)
Discover It Miles Card (even though you earn 1.5X miles on purchases, 100 miles are worth $1.00 cash or travel credit)

Flexible Reward Programs

Now for my favorite type – flexible reward programs. These five programs offer multiple ways to use points.

Chase Ultimate Rewards

Points are not tied to any specific airline or hotel. Points can be used to book travel through Chase Travel Center at a fixed redemption. You can also redeem points for cash back, gift cards, and merchandise but these are a bad idea since the redemption rate is so much lower.

The best part of flexible currencies is the ability to transfer points to airline and hotel partners. This is where you get outstanding value.

Chase’s airline and hotel transfer parters include:

Aer Lingus AerClub
Air France/KLM Flying Blue
British Airways Avios
Iberia Plus
JetBlue TrueBlue
Singapore Airlines Krisflyer
Southwest Airlines Rapid Rewards
United Airlines MileagePlus
Virgin Atlantic Flying Club
IHG Rewards Club
Marriott Rewards
Ritz-Carlton Rewards
World of Hyatt

When first looking at this list, you may be thinking that you’ll never be in Singapore to use their miles. Not true – Singapore Airlines is part of the Star Alliance along with United. So you can use Singapore Airline miles for United flights. Each reward program has it’s sweet spots – for example it only costs 35,000 Singapore miles to for a roundtrip flight to Hawaii (on United airplanes) while United charges 45,000 miles. You could save 10,000 chase ultimate reward points by transferring to Singapore instead of United and be on the same exact airplane!

I have personally redeemed Chase Ultimate Reward points to British Airways (for use on American Airline flights), Korean Air (for use on Delta flights), Singapore (for use on United flights), United, and Southwest. Although, my favorite transfer partner is actually for Hyatt hotels.

The key to Chase Ultimate Rewards is that they are easy to earn – there are multiple Chase credit cards which offer Ultimate Reward points. The second key point is that they are very flexible with multiple transfer partners. My largest points balance is with Chase Ultimate Rewards.

American Express Membership Rewards

As the same with Chase Ultimate Rewards, points are not tied to any specific airline or hotel. Points can be used to book travel through American Express’s Travel Center at a fixed redemption. You can also redeem points for cash back, gift cards, and merchandise but again these are a bad idea since the redemption rate is so much lower.

American Express has a few more transfer partners than Chase. Amex’s hotel and airline transfer partners include:

AeroMexico
Air Canada Aeroplan)
Air France / KLM Flying Blue
Alitalia (Italy) Millemiglia
ANA (Japan)
Cathay Pacific (Hong Kong) Asia Miles
British Airways Avios
Delta Skymiles
El Al Israel Airlines
Emirates
Etihad Airways
Hawaiian Airlines
Iberia Plus (Spain)
JetBlue Airways
Singapore Airlines
Virgin Atlantic
Hilton
Choice

American Express’s Membership Rewards are my second favorite flexible point program. There are a ton of airline transfer partners to choose from. I’ve personally transferred points to ANA & Air Canada for business class travel to Europe.

Here is a post I wrote about how I spent my 100,000 Membership Rewards bonus from the American Express Platinum credit card. The post also goes shows you how airline alliances work.

There are also multiple credit cards that offer Membership Reward points so they are fairly easy to earn also.

Marriott Rewards

Points are tied directly to Marriott Hotels. You can also redeem points for gift cards or merchandise (bad idea).

When Marriott merged with Starwood Preferred Guest they kept the ability to transfer points to over 40 Airline transfer partners – and most transfer at a 3:1 ratio. There is also a 5,000 point bonus for transferring 60,000 (so 60,000 Marriott Reward Points = 25,000 airline miles).

Marriott airline transfer partners include:

Aegean Airlines 3:1
Aeroflot Bonus 3:1
AeroMexico ClubPremier 3:1
Air Canada Aeroplan 3:1
Air China Phoenix Miles 3:1
Air France/KLM Flying Blue 3:1
Air New Zealand Airpoints 200:1
Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan 3:1
Alitalia MilleMiglia 3:1
ANA Mileage Club 3:1
American Airlines 3:1
Asiana Airlines Asiana Club 3:1
Avianca LifeMiles 3:1
British Airways Executive Club 3:1
Asia Miles 3:1
China Eastern Airlines Eastern Miles 3:1
China Southern Airlines 3:1
Copa Airlines ConnectMiles 3:1
Delta SkyMiles 3:1
Emirates Skywards 3:1
Etihad Guest 3:1
Frontier Airlines EarlyReturns 3:1
Hainan Airlines 3:1
Hawaiian Airlines HawaiianMiles 3:1
Iberia Plus 3:1
Japan Airlines JAL Mileage Bank 3:1
Jet Airways JetPrivilege 3:1
JetBlue TrueBlue 6:1
Korean Air SKYPASS 3:1
LATAM Airlines LATAMPASS 3:1
Lufthansa Miles & More 3:1
Multiplus 3:1
Qantas Frequent Flyer 3:1
Qatar Privilege Club 3:1
Saudia Airlines 3:1
Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer 3:1
South African Airways Voyager 3:1
Southwest Airlines Rapid Rewards 3:1
TAP Air Portugal 3:1
THAI Airways 3:1
Turkish Airlines Miles&Smiles 3:1
United MileagePlus 3:1.1
Virgin Atlantic® Flying Club 3:1
Virgin Australia Velocity Frequent Flyer 3:1

You can also use points for valuable redemptions at Marriott & Starwood properties (Four Points, Westin, W, St. Regis, Sheraton, etc). Marriott also gives you the 5th night free when redeeming points at a category 3-7 hotel (use points for four nights, get the fifth free!).

I’ve also had some great redemptions at Marriott/SPG properties – specifically the Westin in Snowmass, CO for a ski trip the Westin in Whistler Canada for another ski trip. I took advantage of the 5th night free option when booking 4 nights with points.

Citi Thank You Points

Just like Chase and American Express, Citi Thank You Points are not tied to any specific airline or hotel. TYP (Thank You Points) can be used to book travel through the Citi Travel Center at a fixed value redemption.

And of course can be used for statement credits, merchandise, shop with points, etc – BUT DON’T EVER USE FOR THIS PURPOSE!

Citi also has airline (and Hilton hotel) transfer partners which include:

EVA Air (Taiwan)
Garuda Indonesia
Qantas (Australia)
Thai Airways
Cathay Pacific (Hong Kong)
Singapore Airlines
Air France
Etihad
Malaysia Airlines
Qatar
Jet Blue
Virgin Atlantic
Hilton Hotel

Citi Thank You points only used to be able to be redeemed for statement credits or gift cards but that changed a couple years ago. I think Citi realized that they had to offer transfer partners to match American Express and Chase.

There are a few good redemption options including Air France, Singapore, & Cathay Pacific. Citi also has multiple different credit cards that earn Thank You points – so it’s fairly easy to acquire a bunch really quickly.

I used 50,000 Cathay Pacific Asia Miles for a one way business class seat to Venice, Italy which I thought provided a good redemption value.

Capital One Miles

Previously Capital One miles were a ‘cash’ point. Remember the Jennifer Garner commercials where you could redeem Capital One miles for any flight at any time with no blackout dates? That’s because Capital One miles were worth 1 cent per mile value – a $1000 flight would cost 100,000 miles.

But that has all changed now (as of December 2018). You can still redeem Capital One miles for 1 cent per mile value through the Capital One travel portal or redeem for gift cards or travel purchase credits, but now they offer airline transfer partners.

Airline transfer partners have a 4:3 transfer ratio (except Emirates & Singapore which have a 2:1 ratio) and include:

Aeromexico Club Premier
Air Canada Aeroplan
Air France KLM Flying Blue
Alitalia MilleMiglia Program
Avianca LifeMiles
Cathay Pacific Asia Miles
Emirates Skywards
Etihad Airways Etihad Guest
EVA Air Infinity MileageLands
Finnair Plus
Hainan Airlines Fortune Wings Club
Qantas Frequent Flyer
Qatar Airways Privilege Club
Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer

Now you may be thinking a 4:3 transfer ratio is not as good as Chase’s 1:1 ratio but one thing you have to remember is the Capital One credit cards earn 2X miles for all purchases.

So a $1000 purchase on the Capital One Venture credit card will earn 2000 Capital One miles. You can then transfer these 2000 Capital One miles to 1500 Air Canada Aeroplan miles.

The Well Traveled Miled website has an awesome interactive chart that shows all of the different airline transfer partners from each flexible rewards program – I highly recommend you book mark it.

Need to Knows

There are four main types of miles and points:

Airline Miles
Hotel Points
Cashback
Flexible Reward Programs

Flexible Reward Programs are typically the most valuable and fall into 5 main types:

Chase Ultimate Rewards
American Express Membership Rewards
Citi Thank You Points
Marriott Rewards
Capital One Miles

Earning Miles & Points from Credit Cards

Credit Card Company Rules

Now that you are familiar with all of the different types of miles and points, it’s time to put together a strategy for applying for new credit cards based upon each credit card company’s rules. My favorite strategy is to focus on acquiring large balances of the most flexible and valuable points (Ultimate Rewards, Membership Rewards, Marriott Points, Thank You Points, and Capital One Miles).

One of my mistakes when first starting out was blindly signing up for all sorts of different credit cards in many different programs and not having a plan in place. At the end of the day, I had a small amount of Hawaiian Airline miles, a few American Airline miles, some Hilton points, etc. I couldn’t really do much of anything with the small amounts of points scattered across numerous programs.

The Always Changing Rules

The big three (Chase, American Express, & Citi) and other banks have also gotten more strict in the past few years to limit us (Travel Hackers) from earning large amounts of points quickly. It seems like every few months a new bank has a new policy that we have to follow which makes understanding the rules more important. Here are the current rules with each:

Applying

The 5/24 Rule:

Chase does not have a formal policy that limits the number or timing of credit card applications. There are a few reports of people received multiple personal credit cards in a single month and even less reports of people being approved for two Chase credit cards on the same day. But generally you can apply for one personal and one business card within a 3 month period.

In late 2015, Chase implemented a ‘5/24’ rule. For their best premium credit cards and then expanded it to ALL of their credit cards in November 2018. Chase won’t approve you for the credit card no matter what your credit score is if you have opened 5 or more credit cards in the past 24 months – from any bank, not just Chase. I wouldn’t even waste your time applying if you are over the limit.

One thing to note is while typically BUSINESS credit cards don’t show up on your personal credit score, business credit cards from Capital One, Discover, & TD Bank will show up on your personal credit report and hence count towards your 5/24 status.

Not sure how many credit cards that you have opened in the past 24 months – here’s an easy way to check your 5/24 status. Beginners will definitely want to apply for and obtain Chase cards first – but don’t run off any apply for any cards just yet!

The Sapphire Card Rule:

In late August 2017, Chase starting limiting individuals to only receive one ‘Sapphire’ card. Currently there are two ‘Sapphire’ cards – the Sapphire Preferred and the Sapphire Reserve. Also, you simply can’t close one Sapphire card and open another unless you wait 48 months from earning a cardmember bonus.

Doctor of Credit has a copy of the memo Chase distributed to its employees about this new rule.

Quantity of Cards

Chase doesn’t seem to limit you to quantity of cards you can hold with them. I currently have five personal cards and three business cards. But Chase will restrict you on how much credit they extend to you. Let’s say you have three Chase credit cards with $20,000 credit limits and Chase is only willing to extend you $60,000 in credit – if you apply for a fourth Chase card, you most likely will not be approved instantly. You may have to reduce credit down on one of your existing cards before they will approve you for the fourth card.

Sign-Up Bonus

Chase typically allows you to earn a signup bonus more than once – usually you can earn the bonus a second time ‘if you have not received the bonus within the past 24 months or 48 months’. This will all be spelled out in the fine print of the credit card terms – I will show you how to evaluate the offer in the next lesson.

Applying

American Express does not have a formal policy on applying for their cards. The general consensus is that you can apply for two cards in one day but one will usually go ‘application pending’ for fraud prevention. I would recommend waiting at least a week if you would like to apply for multiple American Express cards.

Generally American Express will allow two new cards in a 3 month period. There have been reports of some people being approved for three new cards in a 3 month period but usually one of the cards is a charge card which American Express seems to treat a little different since you must pay the balance in full each month.

Quantity of Cards

American Express typically limits individuals to five credit cards and four charge cards (although there are reports of people holding more)

A credit card is most common – it has a spending limit. With a credit card you are able to only make a minimum payment leaving a balance that you pay off over time.

On the other hand, a charge card doesn’t have a pre-set spending limit but you have to pay off the balance each month – you can’t only pay the minimum and carry a balance over to the next month.

Sign-Up Bonus

American Express credit cards are usually pretty easy to get approved for but they limit you to a sign bonus ‘once per lifetime’. So you definitely want to wait for the highest ever signup bonus for each credit card before applying since you can only get it once.

The ‘once per lifetime’ is per product. So if you apply for the American Express Platinum credit card that has a 100,000 sign up bonus, you can still get the American Express Business Platinum credit card with its own sign up bonus. They are considered different products.

In 2018, American Express made it a little bit easier to determine if you are eligible for a sign up bonus by having a pop-up box tell you after you submit your application but before it gets processed. It looks like this:

Applying

Citi has rules for applying for new credit cards. First you can only apply for one personal credit card every eight days and no more than two in a 65 day period. Second, you can only apply for one business credit card every 95 days.

Quantity of Cards

Citi does not have a limit on the number of credit cards you can obtain, but uses the same approach as Chase. Citi will limit the amount of overall credit they will extend to you – so they don’t care if you have ten credit cards with $5000 credit limits each or two credit cards with $25,000 credit limits each.

Bonuses

In April 2016, Citi began restricting their credit card sign-up bonuses. They added language to credit card applications stating you can only earn the sign-up bonus if you haven’t opened or closed that specific credit card in the past 24 months.

Then in August of 2016, Citi added additional language with another restriction to bonuses – ‘one sign-up bonus per ‘type’ of card every 24 months’.

You used to be able to get multiple Thank You points in just a few months. Not any more, in the screenshot above if I was to apply for the Citi Prestige card – I could only receive the 40,000 bonus points if I have not had it, ThankYou Preferred, or ThankYou Premier card in the past 2 years.

This is almost as restrictive as American Express – with AmericanExpress you are only getting the bonus once, but you are able to get multiple Membership Reward earning cards within a few months.

With Citi, if you were to get the sign-up bonus for the Citi Prestige now and use the card for 6 months then close it. You would have to wait 2 years to apply for the Citi ThankYou Preferred, use it for 6 months and close it. Then wait another 2 years to apply for the ThankYou Premier. Use it for 6 months and close it. Wait 2 years, then you could start the cycle by applying for the Citi Prestige again 7.5 years later (if it still exists).

With this information, I would again, like with American Express, recommend waiting for the highest ever signup bonus on Citi credit cards before applying. It is also very important to keep a record/spreadsheet of when you applied for and closed each type of Citi credit card.

Applying

In 2017, Bank of America began implementing what is referred to as the ‘2/3/4 rule‘. Bank of America will only approve you for at most 2 cards per rolling 2 months, 3 cards per rolling 12 months, and 4 cards per rolling 24 months.

Then in early 2019, Bank of America started to add additional language to their credit card applications which generally further limit you to getting the credit card if you have had in the the past 24 months. For example their Alaska Airlines Visa credit card application includes the following language:

Some preselected offers and the Alaska Airlines Business Visa don’t appear to contain this 24 month language – so it is very important that you check the terms before you apply.

Quantity of Cards

Bank of American does not limit the amount of credit cards you can have with them. There are reports of some people having more than 10 Bank of America credit cards.

Bonuses

Bank of America also does not restrict the amount of bonuses you can receive as long as you follow their rules for applying.

The Others

While Chase, AmericanExpress, and Citi are considered the ‘Big 3’ credit card issuers that have a family of cards that offer flexible points, there are many other banks that have some great credit cards. Most notably, I have had cards by the following issuers:

US Bank
Barclays
TD Bank
Wells Fargo
BBVA Compass

A Beginner’s Strategy

Before you apply for any credit cards, please be sure to go through the next few lessons first as your strategy will change if you have a business or fly Southwest a lot.

My recommendation for beginners is keep it simple when starting out. Just apply for a single credit card to start with and have your spouse/partner (if you have one) also apply for a single credit card only if you are comfortable meeting the minimum spending requirements to receive the sign-up bonus. Due to the Chase 5/24 rule, you will want to start with those cards first unless there is currently a huge (100,000+) signup bonus on an AmericanExpress or Citi card available.

You will then put all of your spending (gas, groceries, cell phone bill, eating out, parking meters, EVERYTHING) on this card for the next few months while continuing to research the highest ever signup bonuses for each credit card. Typically the requirement for sign-up bonuses are to complete a certain amount of spending in 3 months. You will then apply for another credit card every 3 months for a total of 4 cards per year.

Don’t forget your spouse/partner is also doing this, so together you both will have received 8 credit card sign-up bonuses in a year. Which frankly may sound like a lot, but it’s not.

So what are these 8 credit card sign up bonuses worth?

As of May 2017, the following offers are available:

Chase Ink Preferred (80K after $5K in 3 months) = 85,000 Chase Ultimate Reward Points
Chase Sapphire Preferred (55K after $4K in 3 months) = 58,000 Chase Ultimate Reward Points
Amex Business Gold Rewards (50K after $5K in 3 months) = 55,000 Amex Membership Reward Points
Chase Hyatt (2 free nights + 5K after $2K in 3 months) = 2 free nights at any Hyatt + 7,000 Hyatt points

If we assume you (and your spouse/partner) signup for these 4 cards each (8 total) this year, together you will have earned:

286,000 Chase Ultimate Reward Points
110,000 Amex Membership Reward Points
Four nights at any Hyatt in the world
14,000 Hyatt points

It’s safe to assume you can get two cents of value from each point. That’s over $8200 worth of travel + 4 nights in any Hyatt in the world which can be worth $2000 or more.

Let me show you a few examples on what points can buy:

44,000 Chase UR points transferred to Air France – roundtrip economy flight to Paris
115,000 Chase UR points transferred to United – roundtrip business class flight to Europe in a lie-flat seat
25,000 Chase UR points transferred to Hyatt – a night in a villa in the Maldives
15,000 Hyatt points – a night at Hyatt Place in Dewey Beach, DE which typically goes for over $400/night in the summer
15,000 Hyatt/Chase UR points – a night at Andaz Peninsula Papagayo Resort

Sound amazing? And yes it really is that easy.

Need to Knows

As a beginner to travel hacking, a credit card opening strategy is critical to maximizing results due to credit card companies trying to limit travel hackers
Chase credit cards subject to the 5/24 should be first on your list to obtain – specifically here are the first 5 credit cards you should apply for
Since American Express limits sign-up bonuses to ‘once per lifetime’ – it is best to wait for a high offer
Start slow – one new credit card per quarter to start

Southwest Companion Pass

Before you start applying for any credit cards, I wanted to share with you an amazing perk that some call the best deal in travel hacking – the Southwest Companion Pass. This may change your application strategy.

What is it?

The Southwest Companion pass allows anyone you designate as your companion to fly for free (taxes are extra) on any Southwest flights that you travel on. To obtain it, you need to earn 125,000 Southwest Rapid Reward miles in a calendar year.

Once you hit 125,000 miles, you will earn the Companion Pass for the rest of the current year along with the entire following year. For example, let’s say you earn your 125,000 SW Rapid Reward point on March 26, 2020. Your companion pass will be good for the rest of 2020 (March 27th to December 31st) and all of 2021 up to the last day of the year.

Earning Rapid Reward Points

You can earn Rapid Reward points many different ways. The most obvious is through flying. Earn a certain amount of points per dollar spent depending on the ticket type you buy:

You can also earn points with Southwest partners – including a shopping portal, car rentals, and the easiest – credit cards.

PRO TIP : Points transferred to Southwest from Chase Ultimate Rewards or hotel partners do NOT qualify towards the Southwest Companion Pass

Easy Way to Companion Pass

As you might have guessed, the easiest way to earn the Southwest Companion pass is to open two Chase Southwest credit cards. Chase frequently offers 50,000 (and even 60,000) bonus points as a sign-up bonus on their credit cards. The sign-up bonus points along with any spending you do on the card all count towards the Companion Pass.

But, with the never ending rule changes, in April 2018, Chase tightened up the rules on getting both personal cards at the same time. Specifically you won’t be allowed to get one of the personal cards if you already have the other one or if you have earned the sign-up bonus on either card within the last 24 months.

But it is still possible to get one of the personal cards and one of the business cards at the same time in order to earn the companion pass.

There are five different versions of the credit card:

Priority ($149 annual fee)
Premier ($99 annual fee)
Plus ($69 annual fee)
Premier Business ($99 annual fee)
Performance Business ($199 annual fee)

Click here for list of current sign up bonuses for all Southwest Credit cards.

Timing

I wanted to let you know about this amazing travel pass before you apply for your first credit card. If you frequently travel with someone and live near a Southwest hub – this is a great deal. Some travel bloggers call this the greatest perk of any airline. And since you need 125,000 points and if you don’t travel a lot on Southwest already or have really high monthly spending you will most likely want to sign-up for the Southwest Business card first followed by one of the personal cards.

And ideally you will want to earn the pass as early in the year as possible so you can maximize it’s value since it will be good for the rest of the current year that you accumulate the 125,000 miles and the entire following year. But you also need to balance this with Chase’s 5/24 limit we learned about in an earlier lesson.

Need to Knows

If you live near a hub or frequently travel on Southwest and usually travel with someone (spouse, friend, etc) – the Companion Pass is one of the best deals for air travel
The Companion Pass allows someone to travel with you on any flight you take for just the cost of taxes
You need to earn 125,000 Southwest Rapid Rewards points in one calendar year to obtain the Companion Pass
Signing up for one of the personal Southwest cards (Premier or Plus) along with one of the business versions is the easiest way to earn the 125,000 miles – review current offers here.
The earlier in the year you obtain the Companion Pass the better – as it will be good for the rest of the current year along with the following year

Before you dismiss the idea of trying to get the Southwest Companion Pass because you don’t have a business to apply for a business credit card, please read through the next lesson.

Business Credit Cards

In previous lessons, I mentioned a few different business credit cards (Chase Southwest Premier Business, Chase Ink Business, American Express Business Platinum, etc). You may be thinking to yourself that you are NOT a business owner and can’t apply for these.

It’s true, you must have a business to apply for business credit cards. But most people have businesses without realizing it. Having a business and being able to open up business credit cards can really accelerate your miles and points earnings.

As you saw in the ‘Credit Card Rules’ lecture, most business cards do NOT show up on your personal credit report and hence do not count towards your 5/24 status when applying for Chase credit cards. And as you saw in the last lecture, the easy way to obtain the Southwest Companion Pass is by applying for one Chase Southwest Business credit card and one of Chase’s Southwest Personal credit cards.

Sole Proprietorship

Do you sell items on Ebay or Etsy? If so, you have a business. How about having a rental property? Do you do consulting work or are a tutor? Do you babysit? How about mowing lawns or shoveling snow for extra money? All of these are considered businesses.

You don’t have to have a formal business setup with paperwork, LLC, corporation, etc. All of the above examples are considering being a Sole Proprietor. Sole Proprietorship is the simplest and most common structure chosen to start a business. It’s run by one individual and there is no distinction between the business and the owner.

How to Apply

As a sole proprietor, by default, the legal name of your business is your own name. So when applying for a business credit card just use your own name as the business name. And since there is no distinction between the business and you – you will just use your own social security number as the business Tax ID.

The credit card companies will pull your personal credit report. You will be approved or decline based upon your personal credit worthiness, not business credit history which may not exist yet if you are just starting up. So don’t worry that you will be declined because your business does not have a history. Credit card companies know small business usually have a lot of startup expenses and they want your business to use their card for these expenses.

Credit Reports

Another feature of some business credit cards is that they are NOT reported to personal credit bureaus. So while the credit card companies will pull your credit in order to approve or decline you, some companies will NOT report to the personal credit bureaus that a card was opened, payments were made, etc.

What does that mean for you? The business cards not reported will not show up on your credit report and not count against Chase’s 5/24 rule.

From Doctor of Credit

Types of business cards NOT reported:

American Express
Bank of America
Chase
Citi
FNBO
US Bank
Wells Fargo

Types of business cards ARE reported:

Barclaycard
Capital One
Discover

If you don’t already have a business, I would highly recommend creating one. The perks and bonuses you will earn from the credit cards are well worth it.

Need to Knows

You must have a business to open a business credit card but you may have a business without knowing it (handyman services, rental house, babysitting, selling on ebay, etc)
Sole Proprietorship is the simplest and most common business structure when starting out
Some types of business credit cards are NOT reported on personal credit reports

Free Hotel Nights

In the ‘Types of Miles and Points’ lesson, we learned that certain credit card (Chase IHG, Chase World of Hyatt, etc) earn points at hotel chains. While some of these credit cards come with a certain amount of points as a sign-up bonus, other come with free nights at the hotel. Free nights can be an AMAZING value – sometimes worth more than points.

Sign-Up Bonus Free Nights

From time to time, Chase switches the sign up bonus on the World of Hyatt credit card from points to free night certificates. Here is an offer I’ve taken advantage of twice:

After spending $2000 in 3 months and paying the annual fee, you will receive 2 free nights at ANY Hyatt hotel in the world. You might as well use them at amazing properties. Here are a few examples of how I used my free nights:

Park Hyatt Maldives (January 2017)

Just under $1500/night x 2 nights = $3000 value. **See more photos here**

Park Hyatt New York (December 2016)

$1267/night x 2 nights = $2534

Free night certificates are NOT limited to just Hyatt. American Express regularly offers free night certificates with Hilton too.

Annual Certificates

There are two hotel credit cards that I keep and pay the annual fee year after year because they offer a free annual certificate – Chase World of Hyatt and Chase IHG Premier.

Chase IHG Rewards Premier Credit Card

While Chase’s old IHG Rewards Club card was by far my favorite credit card since it offered a free night certificate good at ANY property every single year you paid the $49 annual fee, all great things must come to an end.

In April 2018, Chase introduced a new version of the IHG credit card (IHG Rewards Premier) and capped the free anniversary night to hotels that cost 40,000 points or less. They also increased the fee to $89/year. While not as great as an uncapped anniversary night with a lower annual fee, I still think this is a good deal. The new Premier card also gives you automatic Platinum Elite status and gives you a fourth night free benefit when using points (use points for a three night stay and the fourth is FREE).

Pro Tip:

If you have a partner or spouse, it’s best to apply for cards at the same time so you will both get your free annual night certificate at the same time each year so you can use them on back to back nights for a weekend getaway.

Chase World of Hyatt

The Chase World of Hyatt credit card is another card I keep year after year and happily pay the annual fee since it also offers an annual free night certificate. The Hyatt free night certificate is also limited to category 1-4 Hyatts. The annual fee is $95/year.

Here is a list of credit cards that offer annual night certificates:

Need to Knows

Don’t hesitate to sign-up for credit cards that offer free hotel nights as a sign-up bonus – you can can get tremendous value (over $3000!)
Typically the free nights sign-up bonus expires in a year so have a plan to use them
A credit card’s annual night certificate can more than make up for the credit card’s annual fee

How to Apply & Track

I made a mistake when I first got into this hobby. I had applied for a certain credit card and met a $5000 spending requirement but the bonus points didn’t post to my account. Confused, I called up and was told that I wasn’t eligible for the sign-up bonus because I had received the sign up bonus for the same card 18 months prior.

I had forgotten all about this and hadn’t kept track of the credit cards I was getting and bonuses I received. After this mishap, I began tracking every single credit card on a spreadsheet and taking screenshots of every credit card application.

In this lesson, I’ll show you a few techniques that I use when applying for a new credit card and keeping track of the card details.

Applying

Let’s go back our example in the previous lesson – the Chase Hyatt Visa (no longer offered). Here is the information page at the Chase website. There are few items to take note of:

Sign-up Bonus – 2 free nights at ANY Hyatt hotel worldwide after making $2000 in purchases in the first 3 months. Notice the highlighted ‘*’ section – you won’t receive the sign-up bonus if you have or had this card and received the bonus in the past 24 months.
Annual Fee – $75. Some credit cards will waive the annual fee the first year. This particular one does NOT so you will be charged the $75 annual fee in your first billing cycle.
Authorized User Bonus – this credit card is also giving you 5000 bonus points after you add an authorized user to your account and they make a purchase during the first 3 months. This is an extra easy 5000 points – simply during the application process add your spouse, child, friend, etc as an authorized user. You will then receive two cards in the mail instead of one. You don’t even have to give them the credit card, just make a single purchase (a coffee, an itunes app, etc) with that second card and put it in your credit card holder case.
Bonus Point Categories – typically credit cards offer additional points in certain categories. In the example above you will earn 3 points per $1 spend at all Hyatt hotels and 2 points per $1 spent at restaurants, airline tickets and car rental agencies.
Cardmember Anniversary Bonus – some credit cards offer you a bonus each year you stay a member and pay the annual fee. Chase Hyatt provides a free night at a category 1-4 hotel each year. Another example would be the Chase Southwest card providing you will 6000 Southwest points each year.
Foreign Transaction Fee – if you do International traveling, this is a nice benefit to have no foreign transaction fees. ALWAYS pay in the local currency and Visa/Mastercard will convert it to USD with no additional fees and give you a great conversion rate.
APR – I never look at this because I never pay interest. Make sure you always pay your full credit card bill each month so you don’t incur interest charges. All of these bonus will be for not if you are paying 16%-24% interest payments.

I always take a screenshot of the offer details before I start the application process just in case a sign-up bonus doesn’t post for some reason so I have proof of what I applied for. Luckily I’ve never had a problem with a sign-up bonus not posting, other than the mistake I made that I shared at the beginning of this lesson.

If you forgot to take a screenshot of the offer or wanted to confirm your sign-up offer, there are a few things you can do:

When you call to activate your card, although most activation lines are automated, you can transfer to a live agent who can look up what your sign-up offer was.
You can chat from within your credit card account. A lot of the major credit card companies have an online chat function after you login to your account. Simply chat with the agent saying you recall there was a new cardmember bonus when you applied but can’t remember the details. They will quickly pull up your offer details for you. This saves your from making a call, navigating an automated phone system, and waiting for a live agent.
You can also send a secure message from within your credit card account. Simply send a message saying you recall there was a new cardmember bonus when you applied but can’t remember the details. I’ve always received a prompt response that outlined the offer details I prefer this method best as I now have written proof of the offer details.

The Fine Print

Did you notice the ‘Offer Details’ and ‘Pricing & Terms’ links under the ‘Apply Now’ button? If you looking for some light reading before bed, this is for you 😉 Some people are adamant about ready every single line of the fine print. I read through a few of these when I first started out but quickly got bored of them. I think the main application page does a decent job of showing you the important this.

A lot of beginner’s questions can be answered if the fine print. Let’s see if you can find the answers to these questions in the offer details and terms pages:

Does the $75 annual fee that is charged during the first month count towards the $2000 in 3 month spending requirement?
It’s been exactly one year since my account was opened, but I didn’t get my free night certificate?
I got my two free night awards but the 5000 bonus points didn’t post to my account even though I added an authorized user and a purchase was made with the authorized user’s card.

Answers

Does the $75 annual fee that is charged during the first month count towards the $2000 in 3 month spending requirement? No, the annual fee does NOT count towards the $2000 in purchases. Neither does balance transfers or cash advances.
It’s been exactly one year since my account was opened, but I didn’t get my free night certificate? Please allow up to the end of your Anniversary month each year for the free night award to be issued to you.
I got my two free night awards but the 5000 bonus points didn’t post to my account even though I added an authorized user and a purchase was made with the authorized user’s card. Please allow 6-8 weeks for your bonus points to post to your World of Hyatt account after qualifying.

Hotel/Airline Loyalty Account #

A common problem with beginners when applying for new hotel and airline credit cards is they forget to fill in their frequent flier number or hotel loyalty membership number on the credit card application.

If you already have a World of Hyatt account number, be sure to fill it in on the Chase Hyatt credit card application. If you don’t you will be assigned a new World of Hyatt account number and end up with two loyalty accounts at Hyatt. It’s an extra step and sometimes a pain to get two accounts combined.

Time Requirement

Just about all of the sign-up bonuses have a time requirement in addition to the spending requirement – for example spend $5000 in 3 months. But how exactly is the 3 month period calculated? Is it 3 months from:

the day I applied for the card?
the day I am approved for the card?
the day I receive the card in the mail?
the day I activate the new credit card?
the day of my first statement closing date?
the day my annual fee posts to my account?

Typically the time period starts from the day you are approved for the card. You may know this if you are immediately approved during online application process.

If not automatically approved, you will usually get a message saying ‘thank you for your application, we need to review your application further and will provide a response by mail within 7-10 days’. And your new card arrives in the mail a week later. So your approval date is sometime in between the day you applied for the card and day you receive it in the mail.

You can always call up and ask or send a secure message to find out the exact date you need to meet the spending requirement. To keep things simple, I just use the earliest possible date (the day I apply for a card) as the start of the time period.

I also like to complete my spending requirements as quick as possible and not wait until the very end. I’ve heard of stories of people thinking they met the spending requirement on the very last day only to find out that sometimes charges take a couple days to actually post to your account and they missed out on the bonus – DON’T BE THAT PERSON!

Keeping Track

So how do you keep track of all of these dates, spending requirements, etc?

I created a simple Google Documents spreadsheet – which lists what the card is, when I applied, when I was approved, activated the card, what the sign up bonus is, how much I need to spend to get the signup bonus, etc.

Click here to download a copy of my spreadsheet.

Here’s an example of what I use:

Row 1 – the bank and credit card type. I used to put my name or my wife’s name in ( )s but the list of credit cards quickly got too long so I separated her cards on one tab and mine on another tab in the spreadsheet
Row 2 – last 4 digits of the credit card
Row 3 – date I applied for the card
Row 4 – date I was approved for (if I know)
Row 5 – date I activated the credit card
Row 6 – which day of month the statement closes on
Row 7 – what the main sign-up bonus is
Row 8 – if there is a secondary sign-up bonus (like the 5000 points for adding an authorized user in the above Chase Hyatt example)
Row 9 – any special perks of the card (bonus points for certain categories, free checked bag on an airline, free hotel status, etc)
Row 10 – the annual fee and if it is waived the first year
Row 11 – cancel by date, typically one year from application date. This is not as important since almost every credit card issuer has a grace period where they will refund the annual fee that posts to your account if you cancel within 30 days of the annual fee posting to your account.
Row 12 – what the spending requirement is
Rows 13-24 – how much spending I put on the card during each month’s statement closing
Row 25 – automatically will subtract the total of rows 13-24 from row 12 so you know how much spending you still need to put on a card to earn the sign-up bonus. When row #25 is negative, you’ve met the requirement!
Row 27 & 28 – the date the sign-up bonus is received. Remember in the Chase Hyatt example above you are not eligible for a bonus if you received it within the past 24 months.
Row 30 – the date I closed the account or I will simple write ‘USING’ in this box if it is a card a keep every year.

Need to Knows

It’s a good practice to take a screenshot of the credit card you are applying for in case of issue with bonus
Get familiar with the fine print and offer details – you can typically answer all of your own questions about an offer
Don’t forget to use a spreadsheet to track details about the credit card (date opened, closed, annual fee, etc)
Remember to include your award program account number if you already have one on a credit card application to avoid getting duplicate accounts

It’s finally time to apply for your first credit card! Let’s develop a strategy and start applying.

Your Application Strategy

Wow – that was a lot to take in! From the different types of credit card points to all of the different and ever changing rules by credit card companies to free hotel nights and business credit cards – where do you start?

Beginner’s Strategy

My recommendation for beginners is to keep it simple when starting out. Plan to apply for just a single credit card to start with. Or if you have a spouse/partner, you can enter ‘two-player mode’ and have them also apply for a single credit card in their own name.

If you are in two-player mode, only apply for if you are comfortable meeting the minimum spending requirements on both cards in order to receive the sign-up bonus.

After getting approved, you will put ALL of your spending, no matter how small, on this card for the next few months until you hit the sign-up bonus spending requirement. Typically the requirements for sign-up bonuses are to complete a certain amount of spending ($2000, $3000, etc) in a certain time frame (usually 3 months). Your plan is to then apply for another credit card every 3 months for a total of 4 cards per year (or 8 total cards if you are in two-player mode).

There are a couple of questions you have to ask yourself before picking your first card to apply for.

Southwest Companion Pass?

First – Can you apply for business credit cards?

Remember from the business cards lesson – you might already have a business and not know it. I highly recommend a ‘side hustle’ business so you can earn lots more miles and points with business credit cards.

If you answered no, move down to the ‘Personal Cards’ section below.

Next – Do you want to earn the Southwest Companion Pass? Do you live near an airport with lots of Southwest non stop flights? And do you have a companion you would like to travel with you for FREE?

If you answered no, move down to the ‘Have a Business’ section below.

If the answer to both of these questions is YES and it’s early in the year, I recommend applying for one of the Southwest Business cards first followed by one of the three Southwest Personal cards. Obtaining and meeting the sign-up bonus requirements for both of these cards will likely get you the 125,000 miles required (or get your really close) for the Southwest Companion Pass.

If it’s late in the year (July-December), I would recommend waiting on both of these cards until January of the following year so you can maximize it’s value. Remember the companion pass is good for the rest of the year that you obtain the 125,000 miles as well as the entire following year. The earlier in the year you get it, the longer you can take advantage of it.

Just make sure you don’t go above 5/24 (opened 5 new credit cards within 24 months) or you won’t be able to get the Chase Southwest cards.

Apply for Chase Southwest Credit Cards

Click here for list of current Southwest Credit Card offers.

Have a Business?

If you are not really interested in the Southwest Companion Pass but have a business. Your first card should be a Chase Business card. If you don’t have a business, move down to the ‘Personal Cards’ section below.

Since Chase implemented their 5/24 rule, you will want to apply for business cards that do not show up on your personal credit report first so they are NOT counted by Chase.

Remember only Barclay, Capital One, and Discover report business card to your personal credit report so DO NOT apply for any of those. All other issuers are fair game (American Express, Chase, Citi, Bank of America, etc)

Chase currently has six different business credit cards – three earn Chase’s flexible currency Ultimate Rewards and the other three are co-branded cards (United, Marriott, & Southwest).

When my status fell below 5/24, I applied for the Ink Business Preferred which offered 80,000 Chase Ultimate Reward Points as the sign up bonus.

Then two months later, I was instantly approved for the Ink Business Unlimited which had a 50,000 Chase Ultimate Reward Points sign up bonus to go along with 1.5% points on all purchases. These 50,000 Ultimate Reward Points can be transferred to United.

My next Chase Business card with probably be the United Explorer card since it is offering a 75,000 United miles sign up bonus.

In case the offer decreases by the time I apply, I might end up applying for the third Chase Ultimate Rewards card – the Ink Business Cash which offers 50,000 points to go along with 5% points in rotating quarterly categories.

Apply for Chase Business Credit Cards:

Ink Business Preferred (apply here)
Ink Business Unlimited
Ink Business Cash
United Explorer Business
Southwest Rapid Rewards Premier Business
Marriott Rewards Premier Plus Business

Word of Caution – if you are meeting the sign up bonuses quickly and applying for cards quicker than every three months, I would sprinkle in other business credit cards between the Chase applications. I personally have three Chase Business credit cards. I’ll try for my fourth soon but that may be pushing my luck with Chase.

Next, continue to work through all business credits that don’t report to your personal credit report. Remember American Express allows only one bonus per lifetime per each card.

Other banks also have rules that restrict how often you can get a sign-up bonus so make sure these bonus cards are the highest (or near the highest) ever offerred. Doctor of Credit periodically updates this spreadsheet that lists the highest offers ever on credit cards so you can compare the current offer to.

Personal Cards

If you don’t have a business (and don’t want to open one), your application strategy will revolve around personal credit cards. And due to the banks rules, you will definitely want to apply for Chase credit cards first since Chase implemented the 5/24 rule (Chase won’t approve you for their credit cards if you have opened five or more credit cards in the past 24 months so check your status at Experian).

Depending if you tried to obtain the Southwest Companion Pass in step 1, your 5/24 status should be 0/24 or 1/24 (one Chase personal Southwest credit card). This means you can get four or five more Chase personal credit cards before they will not approve you for any more.

Chase offers a BOATLOAD of personal credit cards. Since you are only going to be able to get five, you want to make sure you get the best. I recommend the Chase cards that offer flexible Ultimate Rewards so you can transfer them to airline and hotel partners.

Here are the first 5 credit cards you should apply for along with the current offers.

Two-Player Mode

I know there are a lot of choices, but don’t forget if you are in two-player mode (applying for cards with a spouse/partner) you can split up card choices. Maybe you get the Sapphire Reserve and your spouse gets the Sapphire Preferred. You get the Freedom Flex card, and they get the Freedom Unlimited card.

You get the United Explorer card and your spouse gets the Southwest Rapid Rewards Priority card. Most likely you will be traveling together anyway, so there is no need for both of you to get the United Explorer card since it allows your companion to also get a free checked bag too.

5 Chase Cards, Now What?

After your fifth Chase credit card, you will now be over their dreaded 5/24 rule and no longer be able to be approved for any more Chase cards. This should have taken you anywhere from 9 to 18 months to get to. Now it’s time to move on to other banks – and there are a BUNCH more.

Go back to the credit card rules lesson to refresh your memory. Here are the basics:

Flexible currencies other than Chase Ultimate Rewards should be at the top of your list (American Express Membership Rewards, Citi Thank You Points, Capital One Miles).
American Express cards are generally pretty easy to get approved for but make sure you apply for them when they have historically high welcome bonus offers since you can generally only obtain one American Express welcome bonus once per LIFETIME. (Doctor of Credit periodically updates this spreadsheet that lists the highest offers ever on credit cards so you can compare the current offer to.)
Citibank has implemented restrictions on their best credit cards – you can only earn the sign-up bonus if you haven’t opened or closed that specific credit card family type in the past 24 months.
Bank of America has the 2/3/4 rule. They will only approve you at most 2 cards per rolling 2 months, 3 cards per rolling 12 months, and 4 cards per rolling 24 months.

American Express cards are my second favorite cards behind Chase. With Citibank coming in third. Capital One has been making many improvements over the past few years to come in as my fourth favorite.

Finally US Bank and Barclays tie for my fifth favorite. I’ve also had cards with BBVA Compass, Wells Fargo, Discover & TD Bank in the past.

There are just so many different credit cards you can get and new cards are always being introduced. It’s an endless supply of miles, points, and cash back.

So get through the Chase family of credit cards per the recommendations above in the next few months.

Not Instantly Approved?

Were you approved instantly for your first credit card? If so congratulations!

If not, you probably got one of two other responses – Declined or Application Pending.

Application Pending

If you got an ‘Application Pending . . .’ response after you submitted the online application – don’t worry. Most of the time you don’t need to do anything further. Your new credit card will just show up in the mail. The bank may just be verifying additional information.

If you can’t resist the urge to wait it out and want to find out why you were not instantly approved, you can call the bank’s reconsideration line (numbers below).

I usually just wait it out a response by mail – either the card shows up in the mail or a rejection letter is sent. But I have called on occasion to inquire. My call goes something like this:

“Hi, I just submitted an online application for Chase XXXX card and wanted to see if there was any other information you needed in order to process my application?”

The agent will then look up your application and give you some information. On one occasion, the agent just verified my address and said I was approved for the card.

On another occasion, I apparently had the maximum amount of credit from other credit card the bank was willing to extend to me. The agent said they could approve me for the card if they were allowed to reduce my credit limit on another card (basically transferring my credit line from one card to a new card). Of course I said yes and they were able to finish processing the application and approved me.

Declined

If you were declined, there is no downside to calling the bank and asking them to reconsider their decision. But you should be prepared, here are a few tips when making the call:

From an earlier lesson, you should have an account at CreditKarma.com – have the site up and be logged in before you call so you can quickly reference how many accounts you currently have open, your approximate credit score, and any recent inquiries.
Be polite and friendly.
Make sure you have a reason why you want the credit card and don’t say “because of the sign-up bonus”. Banks are looking for customers for a long relationship – they lose money when someone only signs up for the bonus then quickly closes the card – it’s the reason why Chase implemented the 5/24 rule and American Express has a ‘once per lifetime’ bonus. A few reasons you can use:

I moved to a new city and airline XXX flies there most (if applying for an airline credit card)

I have a vacation coming up and we are staying at Hyatt and thought it would be good to get a Hyatt credit card to earn points

My friend has this credit card and told me all about the perks of the card, (s)he really likes the card and thought I would get good use out of it too

I have an overseas trip coming up soon and want a credit card with no foreign transaction fees

Remind the bank that you are already a savings/checking/mortgage customer if you already have one of those accounts with the bank.
Offer to lower your existing credit limit on a card in order to be approved for this new card. Or offer to close an existing credit card in order to be approved for the new card.
If all of the above fail, your last option is to ask if there is a more senior level person who has the authority to review and reconsider the application.

If you still are declined, always ask what the reason why you were denied so you can reapply at a later date.

Reconsideration Lines

Banks don’t necessarily publish their reconsideration lines to the public, so they aren’t easy to find. Below is a list from various websites including Flyertalk. You can try these first – please let me know if any of them don’t work so I can update this list.

American Express

877-399-3083 – personal and business for new accounts
866-314-0237 – personal and business for existing account holders

Bank Of America

888-503-6092 or 888-231-6262 – for personal credit cards
800-601-3923 or 866-224-7803 or 800-354-0401 or 866-50507481 – for personal credit cards
866-458-8805 or 800-601-3923 – connects directly to a credit analyst for business credit cards
877-721-9405 – application status press #3

Barclay

866-408-4064

Capital One

800-625-7866

Chase

888-609-7805 – reconsideration
888-871-4649 – reconsideration
888-270-2127 – reconsideration personal
800-453-9719 – reconsideration business
888-245-0625 – reconsideration
800-432-3117 – application status

Citibank

800-763-9795 or 800-695-5171 – credit department
866-606-2787 – account analyst
If you don’t have luck with the phone numbers, you can also try mailing a letter to: CitiBank Executive Review Dept; PO Box 6000, Sioux Falls, SD 57117

Discover

888-676-3695

US Bank

800-947-1444
800-685-7680

Wells Fargo

866-412-5956
800-967-9521

US Bank

800-947-1444 – reconsideration
800-685-7680 – reconsideration

Need to Knows

If not instantly approved and your application is ‘pending’ – just wait it out – usually you will get approved without doing anything
If you are declined – there is no harm in calling the bank’s reconsideration line to try and turn the denial into an approval
Be prepared when calling a bank’s reconsideration line

Cancel or Keep?

So now you have been following along and signing up for a new credit card every three months or so. Awardwallet is tracking all of your miles and points and your balances continue to grow. But you notice that your very first credit card since starting this course now has a balance. You are confused since you haven’t used that card since you completed the spending requirement about 9 months ago. Did your account get hacked?

Probably not – most likely the charge is your annual fee for the credit card. You probably didn’t check your spreadsheet close enough or set a one year reminder that the credit card’s annual fee was due. Don’t worry, you still have time to decide if you are going to keep the card or cancel it. Most credit card issuers have a 30 day grace period after the annual fee hits your account where it will be refunded if you decide to cancel the card.

Cancel?

I almost never worry about the impact to my credit score from closing an account. If you remember back in the first lesson, I had opened 18 new credit cards and closed 9 credit cards in a two year period and my credit score, according to Discover, was still over 800.

There are many reasons why you would want to cancel a card after the first year – sometimes the annual fee is not worth the benefits that the card provides, sometimes a better earning card comes along. I suggest evaluating the benefits and see if it is right for you.

There are many credit cards that I keep that have annual fees:

Chase Premier IHG – $89 annual fee for one free night at an IHG property
Chase World of Hyatt – $95 annual fee for one free night at any category 1-4 Hyatt property
Citi AT&T Access More -$95 annual fee for 3X points online
Chase Ink Business Plus (no longer available) – $95 annual fee for 5X points on cable/internet, phone service, & office supply stores
American Express Platinum Card – $550 annual fee for $200 in yearly airline credits, $200 in Uber credits, Centurion Lounge access, 5X points for air travel, Amex Fine Hotels & Resorts booking, and Hilton & Starwood Gold status

Retention Line

If you are on the fence about whether a card is worth keeping and paying the annual fee, be sure to call up the bank’s retention department before making your decision. It’s been tough on credit card companies keeping customers lately since each bank keeps offering new products to gain more customers.

Before calling the bank, do a google search for “flyertalk (the bank) retention offers”. Flyertalk is a very large online forum for travel. There are many threads and specifically threads where data is collected for each credit card and what kind of offer people receive so you can know what to expect. There are also special tips and tricks for each bank.

For example, here is the thread for Chase credit cards. As you can see, the thread tells you when you call that you MUST ask if there are any offers on your account. And to not just ask for an annual fee waiver, just ask if they can credit your account the $95 (or whatever your annual fee is) to your account.

The thread also lists data points from other readers including when they called, what they were offered, how much they usually spend on the card and how long they’ve had the card.

Here is a similar thread for Citibank and one for American Express.

Example – my American Express Platinum annual fee appeared on my account. I called in and was offered 15,000 points if I spend $2000 on the card in the next 3 months. I had intended to keep the card even if there was no offer, so this was great news. I took the offer and gained an extra 15,000 points.

My coworker who got the card the same time as I did (during a 100,000 point sign up bonus) also called and was offered 30,000 points with no spend requirement! The lesson is to always call and see what is offered to you before making a final decision.

Downgrade

If you don’t like the retention offers and still want to cancel the credit card, the representative may ask if you would like to downgrade the card to a version that has no annual fee. This can sometimes be beneficial to keep the transferrable type of points (Chase Ultimate Rewards, American Express Membership Rewards, Citi Thank You Points) from expiring. *There is an upcoming lesson on keeping miles and points from expiring.*

I typically don’t downgrade to a no annual fee version. Why? As was discussed in lesson 4 – most banks limit sign-up bonuses to once per lifetime or ever 24 months. If I was to downgrade to the no annual fee version of the credit card, then I may not be eligible for it’s sign-up bonus.

Transfer Credit

If you aren’t happy with the retention offer and don’t want to downgrade the card, you will probably want to cancel the credit card. I mostly close accounts by secure message on the bank’s website. If you call in to cancel, the representative may offer to move the available credit from the card you are closing to another open credit card with the bank. I usually decline because most likely I’ll be applying for more cards from the bank in the future. If I had transferred the credit, it may be more difficult for them to approve me instantly for another card because of the amount of credit I already have with them. If they had approved me for the card I am cancelling, it’s more likely that they will approve me again for the same amount of credit pending my financial situation hasn’t greatly changed.

Need to Knows

Decide if you want to keep or cancel a credit card – the benefits of some card are worth much more than the card’s annual fee
Call the bank’s retention department to check to see if they make any offers to keep you as a customer
You can typically downgrade a credit card to one with no annual fee or transfer the available credit to another credit card

Other Ways to Earn Miles & Points

Shopping Portals

While sign-up bonuses are quickest way to earn large amount of miles and points, there are many other ways to earn miles without actually flying. One of my favorites is with shopping portals.

Shopping portals are easy way to earn miles and points (or cashback) for online purchases. There are many sites including airline and hotels that will give you miles and points for shopping at online stores through a link they provide. They receive a referral payment from the store and kick some of it back to you.

The hard part is that there are dozens of different shopping portals and the amount of miles, points, or cash back they provide at a certain store is always changing. The good news is there are a handful of websites that track the amount each shopping portal is offering so you can make an easy decision on which shopping portal to use.

The three main comparison sites are:

Here is what each looks like:

I used to always use evreward.com but I switched and have been using cashbackmonitor.com the most. I found cashbackmonitor.com to track more shopping portals than evreward.com and I like the search results better than cashbackholic.com. Feel free to use whichever one you like best.

Here’s an example on how lucrative it can be to use a shopping portal. Let’s say your wife wants a Tory Burch purse for her birthday that she saw at Neiman Marcus. It’s $495. You can buy it in store and use your favorite credit card and earn miles or points on $495 + tax. Or you can search for Neiman Marcus on one of the above shopping portal comparison sites and see that BritishAirway’s shopping portal is currently giving you 18 miles per dollar spent when you buy something through their Neiman Marcus link.

By simply clicking on the link at cashbackmonitor.com, it will bring you directly to British Airways Mall shopping portal that looks like this:

Be sure to login to your British Airways account and after clicking on the ‘Shop Now’ button to be brought directly to NeimanMarcus.com after seeing this pop-up box:

Now just search for the Tory Burch purse and buy it with any credit card you want. You will receive the credit card points that you would have if you had purchased in store but you will also now receive 8910 British Airways Avios miles. ($495 x 18 = 8910) – shopping portals typically don’t give you points on tax and shipping costs.

Did you know that 7,500 British Airways Avios miles will get you a free US domestic non-stop flight under 1,150 miles on American Airlines or Alaska Airlines. A free airline ticket just for buying a purse that you were going to buy anyway.

Typically the shopping portal will email you within a few days that you successfully earned miles. Here is an email from American Airlines shopping portal that I used to buy my daughter contact lenses:

Shopping portal are a great way to earn double miles and points (through the shopping portal and with the payment credit card) for online shopping purchased. While usually not a large amount of miles with a single transaction, if you make it a habit to constantly use a portal the miles and points will add up quickly.

We haven’t reviewed how to keep miles and points from expiring yet – don’t worry there is an upcoming unit on it. While the miles earned in some frequent flier programs never expire, most programs have rules where your miles will expire after a certain amount of time if there is no activity on the account. Using a shopping portal to earn a few miles is an easy way to earn a few miles which count as ‘activity’ on your account and keep your hard earned miles from expiring.

Need to Knows

Always, Always, Always use a shopping portal to earn extra miles, points, or cashback when shopping online
Earning miles through shopping portals are an easy way to keep your miles and points from expiring

Bask Bank

Bask Bank (Dallas, Texas) pays you with American Airline miles as interest instead of cash. I have a savings account with them and earn American Airline miles every single month,

Never heard of them? Don’t worry, Bask Bank is a division of Texas Capital Bank which is FDIC insured. Bask Bank has had a 20 year relationship with American Airlines.

Earning Miles

Like I mentioned above, instead of earning cash interest on your savings, you will be earning American Airline miles.

You will earn one mile for each dollar you save annually. For example if you put $50,000 in the Bask Savings account, after a year you will have earned 50,000 American Airline miles.

Miles are accrued daily and awarded on your average monthly balance. So if you keep $50,000 in for a month (30 days), you will get 4109 miles for that month (50,000 / 365 days per year x 30 days).

Better than Cash?

As an example, let’s say you have $70,000 (I know, that’s a large amount, but just go with it). Putting that $70,000 an Ally.com savings account will net you $560 in interest at the end of the year ($70,000 x 0.8%).

Putting that same $70,000 in Bask will net you 70,000 American Airline miles. ThePointsGuy himself values American Airline points at 1.4¢ each, meaning the 70,000 AA points should be worth at least $980.

Outsized Value

I am currently booking flights to Bali (for the amazing Travelzoo deals I booked). Checking Google Flights, one-way economy tickets are running ~$658.

So with the $560 in cash I would have earned with the Ally.com savings account. I’d still need another $98 to buy an economy ticket to Bali.

But since Bali is so far away and it’s a looooooooong airplane ride, let’s check the cost of a business class seat with a lie-flat seat. The cheapest one-way business class flight to Bali I could find is currently $2796.

Here’s where having 70,000 American Airline values can get you outsized value. I can use 70,000 American Airline miles for a business class seat to Bali too!

There is actually a lot of availability too.

A $2,796 business class flight – $62 for taxes = $2,734. This yields an amazing 3.9¢ per mile value! ($2734 / 70,000 miles). Much higher than ThePointsGuy’s valuation.

And it’s also 5X the value of the cash you would have earned at Ally.com.

So would you rather fly 30 hours in a tight cramped economy seat where you have to sleep upright?

Or 30 hours in business class with lounge access, lie-flat seats with blankets & pillows, amazing dining, amenity kits, and sometimes even PJs?

Getting Started

Head on over to Bask Bank to get started.

United MileagePlus X

In the last lesson we learned about double dipping miles and points for online purchases with shopping portals. But what if you can’t really wait to go home and make a purchase online or the item you want to buy isn’t available online? There’s an app for that – United’s MileagePlus X app. Let me show you how it works.

United MileagePlus X

Head over to the app store and download MileagePlus X app. It will look like this:

This app links to your United Mileage frequent flier account. So you will have to set one up if you don’t already have one. Your login/password will be the same. Also your credit cards saved to your United account will be used in this app also. Once logged in, your screen will look like this:

The app automatically lists the nearby stores that participate so you don’t have to do a lot of searching. Say you are at Red Robin for lunch and the bill arrives, simply click on the ‘Pay now’ button under Red Robin to earn 5 United miles per dollar spent at Red Robin like this:

The nice thing is that you can put the exact value of your meal down to the cent. After clicking on the ‘Pay now’ button the app will ask you for your United Mileage password to confirm your identity and then it will process the transaction and provide you with an electronic gift card that you will use to pay for your meal.

I was on a recent weekend shopping trip with my wife and I test it out at two merchants. First we were at Lowe’s buying plants and flowers. Our cart started to fill up and I knew that we had more than $20 worth of items, so I went into the app and bought a $20 gift card to see how long it would take process and provide an electronic gift card. I did this while my wife was still looking, I didn’t want to get to the front of the line and wait for our full total amount and have the app take a couple minutes to process while there was a long line of people.

Thankfully the app only took a few seconds to process the transaction. We got in line and our total ended up being a little over $40. I showed my phone screen to the cashier and he scanned the barcode of the electronic gift card and my total was brought down by $20. I payed the rest with a credit card.

Our next stop on the shopping trip was to Marshalls. Confident that the transaction would processes quickly, I waited until we checked out and had our full amount of $61.03 before making the MileagePlus X purchase. Again, after hitting the ‘Pay now’ button and typing in my password, the electronic gift card with a scannable bar code showed up in a few seconds. The cashier simply scanned my phone screen and the payment was completed. The receipt printed out and showed the balance of my gift card was $0.

The only downside that I have come across is that you are buying a gift card to be used at the store/restaurant. Therefore if you return and item that you don’t want, you won’t get cash back or a credit on your credit card – you will get back a gift card. If you shop at the store a lot than this is probably not a big deal for you.

If you think you may return an item, you can always purchase a gift card in a smaller amount than the total like I did in the Lowe’s example above, then if you return an item since you partially paid in cash/credit you will be able to get it back in cash/credit card.

Also, there are some online merchants listed in the app also. You can always check to see if MileagePlus X has a higher payout than a shopping portal. As you can see above, I rarely find Amazon.com on shopping portals so I end up using MileagePlus X app for Amazon gift cards.

So just like shopping portals, MileagePlus X app usually won’t earn you a huge amount of miles, but you can build up your United Mileage account balance pretty quickly if you remember to use this app when you are out shopping. I really need to move this app to my front page so I remember to use it more.

Need to Knows

Use the United MileagePlus X app to earn additional United miles when out dining and shopping
Since you are buying a gift card to be used at the business through the United MileagePlus X app, if you need to return an item you will receive your refund on a gift card

Hotel Stays & Rental Cars

Just like with shopping portal, you can also earn airline miles and points by booking hotel stays and rental cars at an airline’s websites or directly at a car rental agency’s website. Almost all airlines have options to book hotel rooms and car rentals directly at their website to earn additional miles. Here’s an example of Southwest’s:

I also use this website to check to see if there are any bonus offers going on directly at car rental agencies:

Third Party Websites

Pointshound.com and Rocketmiles.com are two websites that offer frequent flier miles when you book hotel rooms through their website. You can book over 150,000+ hotels worldwide at these sites. Points can add up quickly. Here’s is what a Pointshound.com search of Las Vegas area hotels looks like:

Need to Knows

Earn extra airline miles when renting a car or for a hotel stay by booking through your preferred airline
Use a third party websites (Pointshound.com and Rocketmiles.com) to find and maximize miles with various airlines for hotel stays

Dining Rewards

Yet another way to earn airline miles in through dining at restaurants. Rewardsnetwork.com runs a dining rewards program for some airlines and hotels. Basically you sign up for whichever program you want to earn miles for and register your credit card at the website.

If you dine at one of over 11,000 restaurants that participate, you will earn miles or points with that program. It couldn’t be easier, there is no portal to click on, no gift cards to buy, just register your credit card once and use it to pay at the restaurant. You may be surprised to find you earn points for dining at a restaurant that was part of the network.

The included airlines and hotels are:

Alaska Mileage Plan
American Airlines AAdvantage
Delta Skymiles
jetBlue True Blue
Southwest Rapid Rewards
Spirit free
United MileagePlus
Hilton Honor
IHG Rewards Club

It’s very easy to sign up, here’s what the website looks like:

You can join multiple programs but you will only be allowed to register a credit card one program. So you will NOT be able to register your Chase Freedom Flex Visa card at all seven programs and earn points in each – you can only register the Chase Freedom Visa number at one program. You can register a different credit card with a different program if you would like.

The hardest thing for me is to remember to keep registering new credits cards at the website.

Need to Knows

Registering your credit card through one of the RewardsNetwork.com’s dining plans is an easy ‘set it and forget it’ way to earn miles at restaurants
You can join multiple programs but a single credit card can on be registered with one program
Don’t forget to register all new credit cards when you receive them

Airline Awards

Award Charts

There are three main types of award charts that airlines use. This lesson will give you a better understanding on which types of miles to use in different situations. Each award chart has pros and cons. Let’s dig into them.

1. Fixed Value Miles

Examples: Southwest, JetBlue

Fixed value miles are the easiest to understand and easiest to redeem. Each mile in an airline’s program is worth a specific monetary value. The amount of miles it costs to redeem a flight will vary based upon the flight you select. Let me give you an example with Southwest:

Let’s say we want to fly nonstop from Washington DC to Orlando, Fl for a trip to Disney World on September 16th. A search at Southwest.com brings up the following options:

As you can see there are 8 nonstop flights which range from $64 to $120 for the ‘Wanna Get Away’ fares depending on the departure time. To see how many Southwest Rapid Reward points the flight would cost, simply click on the ‘Points’ tab at the top right:

As you can see all of the flights were changed from the dollar value to their corresponding point value. The $64 – 9:50pm flight costs 3,335 points which equates to a 1.75 cents/point value ($64-$5.60 taxes*= $58.40/3,335). *The $64 fare includes $5.60 of taxes that would have to be paid separately if you redeemed 3,335 points for the flight.

The number of Southwest points needed for flight redemptions officially vary based upon destination, time, day of travel, demand, and fare class. But typically you will get 1.6-1.7 cents/point value.

2. Distance Based Award Charts

Examples: British Airways Avios, Japan Airlines

The price in miles for the award ticket is directly related to the distance you travel. Distance based award charts are less common but still do exist and can have some great values, especially for short haul flights. British Airways is probably the most well known. Let me show you how it works.

Here is British Airways Avios award chart for economy flights.

To get an idea of the distance between two airports, I always check out gcmap.com to calculate distances. It’s very easy to use, just type in the two (or more) airports that you are trying to find the distance between.

In our Disney World trip example above, we were flying from Washington DC to Orlando, let’s check the distance and see how many British Avios this trip should cost.

The distance between DCA and MCO on gcmap.com is shown to be 759 miles. Checking the award table above, it should cost 7,500 Avios. Let’s double check and go to British Airway’s website and try to book this award. After logging in and performing an award search, we are able to confirm there are four award tickets left on the 5:45pm non-stop American Airlines flight from DCA to MCO. Each award ticket would cost 7,500 Avios + $5.60 taxes.

3. Region Based Award Charts

Examples: Singapore, Korean Air

Region based award charts is where airlines will break up the entire world into different regions (South America, Africa, Australia, etc). The cost of the award ticket will depend on which region you are departing from and which region is your final destination.

Each airline has their own rules on for how many segments you can use to get to your destination, what regions you can and can’t travel through (you won’t be able to travel from North America to South America by traveling through Europe), if you are allowed to backtrack, etc

Let’s look at an example of one of United’s old award charts:

You can see the different regions are along the top and left hand side. To find the cost of an award, find the region you are departing from in the left column and then find your destination region in the top row – where those two meet will be the cost of the award.

Let’s try to find the cost of an award ticket if we were leaving Washington DC and arriving in Cancun? What do you think it would cost for an economy ticket?

If you said 17,500 miles – you are correct!

Let’s go back to our September 16th Disney World trip and try to find the cost of a United Saver award ticket – what do you think it is?

From the ‘Mainland US’ region to the ‘Mainland US’ region, the award chart reads either 10,000* or 12,500 miles. If you read the fine print for the ‘*’, it says the 10,000 miles is valid for trips 700 miles or less. Since we already checked the mileage for the distance based award chart, we know that Washington DC to Orlando is 759 miles, so we just missed the 10,000 mile award so it should cost 12,500 miles at United.com. Let’s try to book the award and see if we were correct.

Performing an award search at United.com produces these results:

So there are in fact two different 12,500 mile saver awards options. One is non-stop but doesn’t leave until 10:00pm and the second option is a one stop flight that leaves at 8:15am and doesn’t arrive in Orlando until 6:49pm (with a 6+ hour connection in Newark). There are a few other nonstop options but there are no more saver awards left, only 25,000 mile standard awards.

So let’s recap the different non-stop options we have from the three different award charts above:

Southwest 9:50pm for 3,335 miles
Southwest 6:30am, 2:50pm, 5:45pm, 6:50pm, or 7:40pm for 5,344 miles
Southwest 9:20am or 10:55am for 7,085 miles
American (through British Airways) 5:45pm for 7,500 miles
United 10:00pm for 12,500 miles
United 8:50am, 12:30pm, or 5:10pm for 25,000 miles

Which would you choose?

Dynamic Pricing

As a word of caution, the legacy airlines (United, American) have been moving their award charts from region based to dynamic pricing (similar to the fixed value rewards like Southwest & JetBlue but not exactly). This makes it difficult to save up miles for a specific trip since you never know how many miles it will cost, but it has the benefit of being able to book a flight with miles ANY day (even if its more miles than normal).

Here is the American Airlines award search for November 2020 – as you can see there are some days where a one way economy ticket from Philadelphia to Orlando is only 10,000 miles, most days are 15,000 miles, and the most expensive day is Thanksgiving at 20,000 miles.

Need to Knows

There are three main types of airline award charts – each has it’s own benefits:
Fixed Value – award ticket mile cost will vary by cash cost of ticket with no ‘blackout’ dates
Distance Based – award ticket mile cost based upon actual distance between airports – great for short flights but requires limited ‘saver’ award space to be available
Region – award ticket mile cost based upon region to region travel – great for flying into small airports that would require a connection (increasing the cost of a distance based award) or be expensive for a fixed value reward. But ‘saver’ award space is limited and not a great deal when cash prices are very low

Flexibility

Flexibility is the key to stretching your miles. In the last course unit, we saw the cost of a nonstop award ticket from Washington DC to Orlando, FL varied from a low of 3,335 miles all the way up to 25,000 miles or more on a single day. If you had the flexibility to depart late at night and take the 9:50 pm Southwest flight, you would be spending a lot less miles.

One important thing I would also like to point out in the last unit’s example – do you remember in ‘Types of Miles & Points’ lesson when we learned about the different types of miles and points? Do you remember Chase Ultimate Rewards as one of the flexible currencies? It turns out that Southwest, United, and British Airways are all transfer partners of Chase Ultimate Rewards. Having the flexible Chase Ultimate Rewards points gives you more options.

Did you also notice in the last unit’s example, under United’s award chart there were both two different economy award prices – 12,500 Saver award and a 25,000 standard award? Let me explain the difference.

Saver vs Standard Awards

Airline award charts typically have ‘Saver‘ award space and standard (anytime) awards. The saver awards are many less miles but also have less availability. Here’s an example of United’s old award pricing for a ticket from Washington DC to Paris:

Economy Saver Award tickets are 30,000 miles per person each way while the Standard Economy Award ticket is 65,000 miles per person each way
Business Class Saver Award tickets are either 57,500 miles (if on United Flights) or 70,000 miles (if using Partner Flights) while the Standard Business Award is 150,000 miles
First Class Saver Award tickets are either 80,000 miles (if on United Flights) or 110,000 miles (if using Partner Flights) while the Standard Business Award is 170,000 miles

As you can see by the numbers above, the Standard anytime awards are more than double the miles of Saver awards.

Saver Availability

Now let’s look at the availability of Saver awards. Here is United’s award chart for two people traveling to Paris from Washington DC in June. As you can see there is some saver award availability (both business class and economy). If these dates work for you, that’s great, if you wanted to fly on June 22nd, 23rd, or 24th – you are out of luck unless you want to spend a lot more miles. But if you are flexible with your travel dates and can make June 21st work, you would be able to snag the saver awards.

Now here’s the same search for two people traveling to Paris from Washington DC eleven months from now. Typically airlines open their schedules eleven months in advance. As you can see there is business class saver award availability every single day in April 2018. Booking far out in advance typically gives you more options. This is especially important to do during holidays and other peak travel times.

Alternate Destinations

But if you aren’t able to book that far in advance and you really wanted to leave the US on June 22nd, 2017, if you are flexible, you could fly to another city that is close to Paris. For example there is economy award space on June 22nd, June 23rd, & June 24th from Washington DC to Frankfurt. You can take one of these flights and visit Frankfurt for a day or two, then hop on a train or buy a cheap low-cost European carrier airline ticket to Paris.

Another example of an alternate destination, say you want to plan a beach vacation to Grand Cayman in the summer. It may be difficult to find saver level award availability for Grand Cayman, but if you were just looking for a beach vacation, it’s safe to assume that there will be saver level award availability to another Caribbean beach like the Dominican Republic or Aruba.

A few other ways to be flexible:

Multiple-Destination Trips – if you want to visit a few destinations on a trip and are having trouble finding saver level award space, try reversing the order of the trip.
Positioning Flights – If you live in Washington DC and can’t find any award availability to Paris, you can always check availability of different airports like New York or Philadelphia. Sometimes it’s worth it to pay for a cheap train ticket or domestic positioning flight to get you to another city if that city has award availability.
Flexible points – in the last set of lessons, we learned about the flexible miles (i.e. Chase Ultimate Rewards) – if United doesn’t have award availability, we can always check Delta flights and transfer Chase Ultimate Rewards to Korean Air that can be used on Delta flights)

Need to Knows

Being flexible is a key factor in stretching out the miles you have accumulated
Flexibility includes time and date of travel, how far in advance you book, departure airport, destination, and airline alliances
‘Standard’ awards are more than double the cost of ‘Saver awards

Flexibility

Saver vs Standard Awards

Economy Saver Award tickets are 30,000 miles per person each way while the Standard Economy Award ticket is 65,000 miles per person each way
Business Class Saver Award tickets are either 57,500 miles (if on United Flights) or 70,000 miles (if using Partner Flights) while the Standard Business Award is 150,000 miles
First Class Saver Award tickets are either 80,000 miles (if on United Flights) or 110,000 miles (if using Partner Flights) while the Standard Business Award is 170,000 miles

As you can see by the numbers above, the Standard anytime awards are more than double the miles of Saver awards.

Saver Availability

Alternate Destinations

A few other ways to be flexible:

Multiple-Destination Trips – if you want to visit a few destinations on a trip and are having trouble finding saver level award space, try reversing the order of the trip.
Positioning Flights – If you live in Washington DC and can’t find any award availability to Paris, you can always check availability of different airports like New York or Philadelphia. Sometimes it’s worth it to pay for a cheap train ticket or domestic positioning flight to get you to another city if that city has award availability.
Flexible points – in the last set of lessons, we learned about the flexible miles (i.e. Chase Ultimate Rewards) – if United doesn’t have award availability, we can always check Delta flights and transfer Chase Ultimate Rewards to Korean Air that can be used on Delta flights)

Need to Knows

Being flexible is a key factor in stretching out the miles you have accumulated
Flexibility includes time and date of travel, how far in advance you book, departure airport, destination, and airline alliances
‘Standard’ awards are more than double the cost of ‘Saver awards

Air Alliance & Partners

Did you notice on the Award Charts lesson, I mentioned using British Airways Avios to book an American Airlines flight? Let’s now dig into airline alliances.

What are airline alliances?

Let’s say you want to visit Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. There are no US airlines that fly to Ho Chi Minh City airport and you live in Knoxville, TN where there are only a few airlines including United, American, and Delta. United can fly you from Knoxville to Chicago (major United hub). United can then fly you across the pacific ocean to a major city such Singapore. You made it to Singapore but still need to get to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. This is why airline alliances were created – to get to you almost any destination in the world.

United is a member of the Star Alliance along with 27 other airlines. Singapore Airlines is also a Star Alliance member and has direct flights from Singapore to Ho Chi Minh City. Instead of you having to purchase a separate ticket on Singapore, United is able to book you directly on the Singapore Airlines flight as part of your United ticket. Also if someone from Singapore wanted to visit Knoxville, Singapore Airlines is able to fly that person to the US and include United flights to get that person to their final destination.

In addition to one-stop tickets and reservations, airline alliances allow for a one-stop check-in, seat assignments, boarding passes, and baggage handling to final destination. You are also able to earn miles on different partner members (i.e. you purchased a Air New Zealand flight, you can credit the miles earned from that ticket to United if you wanted to).

How many alliances are there?

There are three main airline alliances: Star Alliance, Oneworld, and Skyteam.

Star Alliance

Star Alliance is the largest with 28 airlines (27 members + 1 connecting partner, Juneyao Airlines) that serve over 1,300 airports. While Star Alliance has good coverage all over the world, it is very strong for Europe and Asia travel. United is the United States member of the Star Alliance.

Skyteam

Star Alliance is the second largest with 20 airlines that serve over 1,000 airports. Delta is the United States member of Skyteam.

Oneworld

Finally, Oneworld is the smallest of the three with 14 airlines that serve ~1,000 airports. Oneworld has very good coverage in South America. Alaska Airlines became a member in March 2021.

Putting it all together

Welltraveledmile.com put together an amazing interactive flow chart of the different airline alliances along with which flexible currencies (Citi Thank You Points, Chase Ultimate Rewards, Amex Membership Rewards, Capital One points, & Marriott Bonvoy Points) transfer to which airlines.

Non Alliances

In addition to the three major alliances, many other airlines while not members of an alliance have partnerships with different airlines. It can get really confusing quickly.

As an example, Etihad Airlines has partnered with 20+ different airlines so you can travel to over 3000 destinations around the world. So you can use Etihad miles on American Airline flights as well as Air Canada flights.

As you can see it can get very confusing to try to learn each and every airline’s award chart. As a beginner, it’s best to focus on the airline award charts that are transferable from easy to obtain flexible currencies. I’ll show you some helpful tools for finding the best use of miles.

Need to Knows

Airlines created ‘Alliances’ to simplify worldwide travel for consumers
There are three main alliances – Skyteam, OneWorld, and Star Alliance
While not all airlines are a part of an alliance, some have partnerships with other airlines

Best Airline Redemptions

In the past few lessons we learned about airline award charts, the different types of awards, and flexibility the key to stretching out the miles you have earned. So what’s next? If you already have a stash of flexible miles built up or if you are just starting out and want to know the best miles to obtain for a certain destination, head over to AwardHacker.

The idea behind this websites is that you enter where you want to fly and it will tell you how many miles you should expect to pay with all of the different airline award chart options.

I think the best way to show you how it works is by example. Let’s try to find a business class ticket from Washington DC to Rome, Italy.

Simply plug in WAS (Washington DC) to FCO (Rome), Roundtrip, Business Class produces the following results:

As you can see you can pay as little at 80,000 miles for a roundtrip business class flight using Korean Air miles or 270,000 miles with American.

I love how AwardHacker also shows you which flexible currencies transfer to each program:

MR is American Express Membership Rewards
UR is Chase Ultimate Rewards
TYP is Citi Thank You Points
MB is Marriott Bonvouy
C1 is Capital One points

Drilling into an award gives you information on how to search and book the award (phone or website), point transfer ratio, and more:

It also shows you all of the available routes (which airlines you would be flying on):

UA – is United Airlines; TK is Turkish, etc

Now that we know the least expensive mileage options to book this flight, let’s search for award space and verify the miles required to book.

Need to Knows

An award redemption website can be very useful in determining how many miles different airline programs charge for certain destinations
AwardAce.com also provides information on which flexible currency programs transfer to each airline program along with estimated fuel surcharges – hopefully it works out the issues it has been having lately – AwardHacker.com is also very good.

Searching for Award Space

In yesterday’s lesson, we used AwardHacker.com to find the cheapest award redemption from Washington DC to Rome, Italy. Asiana Air and Korean Air were the cheapest at 80,000 miles for a roundtrip Business class seat. But Marriott Bonvoy was the only flexible transfer partner of Asiana and Korean and currently I don’t have that many Marriott points.

The next cheapest was JAL (Japan Airlines) at 85,000 miles and finally ANA Mileage Club which is a member of the Star Alliance (along with United) cost 88,000 miles for the award trip.

Before I show you how to book each of these award tickets, finding and booking award space is most challenging aspect of travel hacking. Airline alliance members have different rules with one another and certain caveats, here are a few:

Some block award space from others (i.e. even though Singapore Airlines is a Star Alliance member, they block First class award space from other partners, so you can’t book a First Class Singapore Airlines award flight with United miles, only with Singapore miles)
Some alliance partners won’t show award space from all partners
Lufthansa First Class is not available until it is within 14 days of travel

So it won’t be as easy as just typing in where you are leaving from and where you want go to get a list of available flights. There are a few paid services that making searching for award space easy – my favorite is JuicyMiles.com. It’s not cheap, but a pretty amazing service. But since this is a beginner’s course, I’ll show you the best available free options for each airline alliance.

Star Alliance

United and Air Canada Aeroplan and the two best websites to search for Star Alliance award space. United is the easiest to use and searches nearly all Star Alliance partners (the most notable partner missing is Singapore Airlines). United also provides a two month calendar of award availability that is usually accurate. You also don’t need a United account to use their award search.

Air Canada Aeroplan is the other recommended site to search for Star Alliance awards. It has a slightly better reputation for searching awards with connections than United. You will need to have an Aeroplan account and be logged in to use the award search. Unlike United, Singapore’s award space is shown on Air Canada Aeroplan.

OneWorld Alliance

British Airways, American Airlines, and Qantas and the three best websites to search for OneWorld Alliance award space.

British Airways has the most comprehensive search engine but it’s not the easiest to use. You will need a British Airways account to use. British Airways is also the only search engine that will show both Japan Airlines and Malaysia Airlines award space in addition to all other OneWorld members. The negatives of British Airways are: 1.) it is not very good at finding itineraries with connecting flights so you will be better off searching segment-by-segment (i.e. British Airways may not show award space from Washington DC to Male, but if you searched Washington to Doha and then searched Doha to Male, there would be award space on both flights). This will make searching much more difficult since there are many different options and 2.) you can only search a day at a time.

American Airlines is in my option the easiest to use but it won’t display award space on a few partners (Japan Airlines, China Southern, Jet Airways, WestJet). American Airlines does a decent job of showing connections you can make an an award itinerary. You can also filter out results on American’s website (uncheck the British Airways box so you won’t see award flight on British Airways that have high fuel surcharges). It also has a monthly calendar view and you don’t need an account to use.

Qantas is a good mixture of American Airline’s ease of use and British Airways’s comprehensiveness. Qantas also has a full month award calendar view and searches all partners except Malaysia and Japan Airlines. You will need an account with Qantas to use their search engine.

Skyteam Alliance

Air France and Korean are the best options for booking Skyteam Alliance award space in my opinion. Delta used to be good when they had an award chart but they’ve abolished their award chart and have flexible award pricing depending on day, flight, etc. So it can be difficult to know which Delta award space (usually the low level saver award space) alliance partners have access to.

Take some time to perform a few award searches at each of the above mentioned websites to get a feel for how everything works. Next I’m going to share with you my favorite way to search for award space.

Award.Flights

If you don’t want to pay for an award searching service such as JuicyMiles.com, there is a free alternative – Award.Flights – I wish I would have come across this award search tool sooner – it’s pretty good and so much easier than searching the airline’s website individually. Let me show you how it works.

Head over to http://award.flights/ and install and launch the Google Chrome app to get started.

Before we can perform any searches, you will have to set it up the first time you do it. Click on any of the ‘Set Up’ links.

This will bring you to a login page. Here is where you will enter your accounts information for websites you want to search. Don’t worry, all of the login information is stored locally on the Chrom app.

The following programs are supported:

BA – British Airways – OneWorld Alliance
NH – All Nippon Airways (ANA) – Star Alliance
SQ – Singapore Airlines – Star Alliance
JL – Japan Airlines – OneWorld Alliance
AC – Air Canada Aeroplan – Star Alliance
QF – Qantas – OneWorld Alliance
KL/AF – KLM Royal Dutch Airlines / Air France – Skyteam Alliance

After saving your login information, you can begin to search. Just enter the information you want to search for in the boxes. You can search a 30 day period. Also check the boxes for the carriers you would like to search. After clicking ‘Search’ let it work it’s magic. You may have to solve a CAPTCHA problem on one or more of the sites, so don’t walk away just yet.

Let’s get back to our example and try to book the roundtrip business class award ticket from Washington DC to Rome, Italy on Star Alliance member ANA. We will definitely want to check the NH (ANA Airlines) and AC (Air Canada) boxes in the search tool since they both search Star Alliance award space. Simply enter WAS in the ‘From’ field, FCO (Rome) in the ‘To’ field, date of travel, how many days you want to search, number of passengers traveling, and class of service.

After hitting ‘Search’ and depending on how many days and carriers you are searching, it could take just a minute or two or take 15-20 minutes before a list of results start to show.

In our example, there is a Scandinavian Airlines flight that fits my schedule leaving 4/11/2018 at 5:15PM.

Next, let’s search for a return flight, here are the results:

Perfect – there is a non-stop flight available on United on either 4/18 or 4/19. Let’s now head over to ANA’s website to book this award. Let’s fill in Roundtrip information for the dates we found above – Washington to Rome on 4/11/2018 and returning on 4/19/2018 in Business Class:

After hitting the ‘Search’ button, we get the results below. But there’s a problem, while the 4/19 nonstop return flight on United is showing up, the Scandinavian Airlines flight is not showing up, only United and Lufthansa which have the long leg of travel in Economy class.

Don’t worry, I’ll show you how to find the Scandinavian Airlines flights that are in Business Class. Start the search over again, but this time instead of selecting ‘Roundtrip’, let’s use the ‘Multiple cities/Mixed classes’ section. This time, we will enter each flight segment-by-segment that the Award.Flights chrome app found. So let’s type in Washington to Copenhagen on 4/11, Copenhagen to Rome on 4/12, and Rome to Washington on 4/19, then hit the ‘Search’ button.

ANA’s website will search the first segment and give you a list of flights to select. Here is leg 1 – as you can see the Scandinavian Airlines business class seat now shows up. Let’s select it and search for the second leg.

Leg 2 of our trip also shows the Scandinavian Airlines flight from Copenhagen to Rome. Let’s select it and search our third and final leg of the trip.

For leg 3, the 4/19 nonstop return flight on United again shows up so we can select it.

ANA now provides a summary of the award flight for 88,000 ANA miles and $247.89 in taxes/fees. It’s time to transfer miles to ANA from American Express and book the award ticket.

Need to Knows

Searching for airline award space is one of the most challenging aspects of using airline miles
There are paid websites (JuicyMiles.com and Expert Flyer) available that make searching for award flights easy
Also in addition to using airline’s website to search for award flights, Award.Flights chrome app is a very powerful and free tool to use

Open Jaws & Stopovers

Let me explain how you can maximize travel with open jaws and stopovers.

What is an Open Jaw?

An open jaw is arriving in one city but departing another city on the return flight. This is very useful if you would like to visit multiple destinations on a trip – it saves you from having to backtrack to the original city you arrived in.

Let me give you an example – let’s say you want to take a trip to Europe and visit Germany, France, and Spain. You can start you trip by flying from Washington DC to Frankfurt, Germany. You spend time visiting Germany for a few days then you rent a car and drive through France visiting a few cities and finally end your trip in Barcelona, Spain. With an open jaw, you don’t have to go all the way back to Frankfurt, Germany to return back to Washington, you can leave directly from Barcelona, Spain.

But please remember that you are responsible for the cost of travel between Frankfurt and Barcelona – in the example above, a car was rented but you could also take the train or a short flight. Here’s what your travel map with an open jaw would look like:

Washington (IAD) – Frankfurt (FRA) – Open Jaw – Barcelona (BCN) – Washington (IAD)

What is a Stopover?

Before I explain a stopover, I want to explain what a layover is. A layover is an up to a four hour connection in an airport on a domestic flight or up to a 24 hour connection on an international flight.

A stopover is basically anything longer than 24 hours. Here’s an example – you leave Washington DC and fly to Paris, France. You visit Paris for a week before flying to Rome, Italy. You visit Rome for a week before flying back to Washington DC. Paris is considered a ‘Stopover’ since you are staying there for a week which is more than 24 hours.

Here’s what your travel map with a Paris stopover would look like:

Washington (IAD) – Paris (CDG) – Stopover – Rome (FCO) – Washington (IAD)

Next, in one real world example let’s combine both a stopover and an open jaw example, search for award space, and try to book the award with ANA miles transferred from American Express Membership Rewards.

Let’s go back to the first example above – we live in Washington DC and want to visit Germany, France, and Spain in April. We will use an openjaw by flying into Frankfurt and leaving from Barcelona. Since we plan on renting a car in Germany to visit France before ending our trip in Barcelona, we won’t need to a flight from Frankfurt to Barcelona – but let me show you how to still take advantage of a stopover.

Let’s say we also have a wedding to attend in June in Columbia, SC. We can make Washington DC the ‘Stopover’ on our return flight and Columbia, SC our final destination. Since we will be staying in Washington DC from April until June, it will be considered a ‘Stopover’ since it is more than 24 hours long.

First, let’s search for award space from Washington to Frankfurt. This time instead of using Award.Flights chrome app like we did in the last course unit, let’s try United Airlines website to perform an award search so you can see the differences.

Washington to Frankfurt

Head over to United.com and enter your flight information. Be sure to check the ‘Search for award travel’ box.

Here are the results we get. All dates with the ‘….’ shown have premium class award space available. We will need to reference the Business Saver column since that is the award space that ANA and other Star Alliance partners are able to book. Don’t worry that the miles shown is 57,500 – that’s what United charges, we are just searching for award space on United, then booking at ANA with ANA miles that get transferred from American Express Membership Rewards.

Let’s select the 5:15pm nonstop flight on April 14th as our departure flight.

Barcelona to Washington

Next, let’s search for flights from Barcelona to Washington DC, here are the results for April 25th:

There are multiple one stop options and unfortunately no direct flights saver awards from Barcelona to Washington. So let’s select the 9:10am since it has a short connection in Munich (only 70 minutes).

Washington to Columbia, SC

Let’s search for one way award travel in June from DC to Columbia, here are the results:

Let’s select June 1st. Since domestic air travel usually only includes economy and first class, you are able to book first class saver award space with an international business class award ticket.

So now we have our full itinerary, it looks like this:

April 14th – Washington (IAD) – Frankfurt (FRA) – Open Jaw
April 25th – Barcelona (BCN) – Munich (MUC) – Washington (IAD) – Stopover until
June 5th – Washington (IAD) – Columbia (CAE) which is our final destination

Before we transfer our American Express Membership Reward points over to ANA miles, let’s make sure we can book all of the award flights we found on United.com at ANA’s website.

Booking at ANA

After creating a frequent flier account with ANA, let’s do an award search for the dates and destinations above. Here is the step by step process. First click on ‘Award Booking’.

Next enter be sure you are on ‘Award Reservation’ and ‘Multiple cities/Mixed classes’ tab since we are using open jaws and stopovers. Enter all of the previous dates and airports we found award space on at United.com. Be sure to even include the layover in Munich. Here’s what the search should look like all filled out. Next hit the ‘Search’ button.

The available flights for the first leg of the trip show up and there is the same exact nonstop United flight that left at 5:15pm. Let’s select it and hit ‘Next’.

The results for the second leg of trip show up next. Note there are multiple options and specifically three nonstop options. Make sure you select the 9:10am flight which matched our search on United.com.

Next we have the results of the third leg of our trip. Remember when I mentioned above that United’s website is more user friendly for award searches? Here’s why – if we had selected the 11:55am non stop flight in the step above, we would have arrived in Munich at 1:55pm and we would have missed the only flight from Munich to Washington DC that had Business Class award space which leaves at 12:20pm.

And finally, let’s select the fourth and final leg of our trip which includes our stopover in Washington DC for more than a month before ending in Columbia, SC.

After hitting ‘Next’ one final time, we are brought to the summary page:

This shows we need 88,000 ANA miles and $205.21 CAD (I’m not entirely sure why it is showing the taxes in CAD instead of USD, when I booked my trip, it was in USD).

Now that we have verified the award booking at ANA’s website, we would transfer the American Express Membership Reward points and finalize the award booking.

Here is a list of major airlines that allow stopovers and open jaws. Each airline has different rules and restrictions for each – be sure to throughly research before trying to book stopovers and open jaws.

Need to Knows

An ‘Open Jaw’ allows you to arrive in one city and depart another city
A ‘Stopover’ allows you to stop in a city en route to a final destination
Depending on the airline’s rules – adding an open jaw, stopover, or both can enhance your trip and provide a free ‘one-way’ ticket for a second trip

Fuel Surcharges

Airlines began imposing fuel surcharges in 2004/2005 when oil prices skyrocketed (over $4/gallon in the US) whether you booked a flight with cash or used miles. It was a way for them to recoup the seemingly ever rising fuel cost. UPS and FedEx even imposed fuel surcharges for a period of time when oil prices were high. The amount varied greatly from one carrier to the next and today still does.

But when oil prices went back to pre-2004 levels, some airlines decided to keep the fuel surcharges and simply renamed them “carrier-imposed surcharges” or something similar. Luckily not all airline impose surcharges, some due to laws in certain countries – i.e. in Brazil, airlines are not allowed to add fuel surcharges for flights leaving the country. Japan regulates fuel surcharges and makes sure they are tied to the cost of fuel.

British Airways is one of the worst when it comes to surcharges, let me show you an example.

Flying from Washington to London on a British Airways, a business class award ticket would cost 50,000 British Avios + $506.10:

$506.10 is a lot of cash for an award ticket. Let’s see how much British Airways is charging in surcharges – ITA Matrix is a searching tool that shows you a lot of detailed cost information including base fare, taxes, and surcharges. Let’s search it for the flight above to see what portion of the $506.10 is taxes and what part is surcharges.

WOW – $478 of the $506.10 is a surcharge!

Now I’ll show you how this compare to OneWorld Alliance partner American Airlines. I found a business class saver award flight from Washington to London (that stops in New York) for 57,500 American Airline miles – guess what surcharges American Airlines imposes for this flight?

$0 carrier imposed fees! We don’t even have to check ITA Matrix since American Airline’s website breaks out the cost of surcharges and taxes.

If you were to book the American Airlines flight by using British Airways Avios (you can since they are OneWorld Alliance partners), British Airways would still impose the $506.10 surcharge/fees. So it doesn’t matter which airline you actually fly, it matters which airline program you book with.

So you could spend 50,000 British Airways Avios + $506.10 or 57,500 American Airline Miles + $5.60 to get to London – I know which one I would choose.

Trying to avoid or limit surcharges is another piece of the puzzle flight award booking puzzle. Generally most non-US frequent flyer programs add surcharges to award tickets and some US frequent flyer programs add surcharges to some redemptions. Here are a few rules of thumb:

US domestic flights and South American flights generally won’t have any surcharges
United does not add surcharges to any awards
American Airlines adds surcharges to British Airways and Iberia awards, but not any others
Alaska Airlines add surcharges to British Airways
Delta adds surcharges on some partner flights and all flights leaving Europe – no surcharges for Delta flights leaving US or Asia
Air Canada is mixed – they add surcharges on some partners and none on others

Need to Knows

Fuel surcharges were originally added to airline tickets in the 2004/2005 world fuel crisis but have been renamed as ‘carrier imposed surcharges’ when oil prices stabilized.
Airline surcharges can be very expensive
Not all airline impose surcharges

Hotel & Resorts

Hotel & Resort Awards

In the last chapter we reviewed using miles and points for flights, but once we get to our destination we will need a place to stay. Don’t worry, hotel points can help with that.

My favorite hotel program to earn or transfer points is Hyatt.

Hyatt

A very large portion of the Chase Ultimate Rewards I earn get transferred to Hyatt. Hyatt has a very reasonably priced award chart. Hotels range from Category 1 through 8. Hyatt also allows use use of a combination of cash and points for award bookings if you don’t have enough points. Here is Hyatt’s award chart (as of March 2020):

Most negative feedback on Hyatt is their small footprint, they only have 600-700 properties worldwide. But has been approving over the past few years by adding partnerships with M life properties in Las Vegas, Alila, and Small & Luxury Hotels of the World (SLH) which adds over 300 additional properties where you can redeem Hyatt points. As a comparison Marriott, Hilton, and IHG (InterContinental Hotels Group) each have over 5000 properties each worldwide.

There are a couple tools I use for finding hotels where I can use points at destinations:

Awardmapper.com

Awardmapper.com is simple to use. Simply enter a destination in the search box, select the hotel programs you want view and the point range.

Let’s try it out and search for hotels that we can use points for in Maui, Hawaii:

As you can see by the results, there are many 13 choices on the island to use points for a hotel stay. Awardmapper makes it easy to filter also – merely un-click the hotel chains to filter out hotels (useful if you don’t have points with that hotel chain). You can also slide the points range bar if you only have a set amount of points and don’t want to see results that you can’t afford.

Here are the results for only Hyatt or Starwood properties that range from 5000 to 25000 points.

HotelHustle.com

Another tool popular in the miles and point community is HotelHustle.com. HotelHustle is very similar to AwardMapper but has some additional features. The biggest difference on the home screen is that select a check-in and check-out date along with a location.

HotelHustle also has filtering capabilities but also actually checks to see if what the cash rate is for the specific date you entered. It’s nice to have the cash cost, the point cost, and the cash & points cost available for each hotel. The best aspect of this site is that you can create an alert if a hotel does not have rooms available to book with points. You will get an email if a room becomes available to book with points.

The downside of HotelHustle is it’s not as polished as Awardmapper and is sometimes buggy. Here’s the same search results for Maui:

Need to Knows

Awardmapper.com is a great resource for finding hotels that accept points at specific destinations.
HotelHustle.com can alert you when rooms previously unavailable to be booked with points becomes available.
Try out both and use whichever you like best.

Rental Cars

Saving on Rental Cars

While you can pay for rental cars using miles and points from a flexible currency (Chase Ultimate Rewards, Citi Thank You Points), I usually pay cash as I like to use my miles and points for redemptions worth more than 1 cent or 1.25 cents.

I only use one website for car rentals – Autoslash.com. The basic premise behind Autoslash is that you enter the rental details (price, date of pickup & confirmation #) for a car rental you currently have. It continuously checks all different rental companies and emails you when it finds a lower price.

Autoslash makes it easy to book the new lower priced rental right from the email they send you. And then they continue to look for lower prices up until the day of your rental. Let me show you step by step how it works.

Example

Here is an example of a car rental I need for a trip in June 2017. Here’s what I did in February 2017:

Step 1 -Make a rental at any website of your choice (Hertz, Budget, Avis, etc). I reserved a full size for July 1st thru July 4th at Avis.

Step 2 – next head over to Autoslash.com and click on the ‘track rental’ tab. Enter the info it requests.

Step 3 – you will get an email confirmation that your rental is being tracked

Step 4 – wait. You will probably get an email within the first 24 hours showing you options for lower prices with other car rental companies because we didn’t do any comparison shopping in Step 1. I got the below email a few hours after I started tracking the rental.

Step 5 – review the options Autoslash gives you. They will also provide options for cars in different classes is there are savings. i.e. – the rental you are tracking is for a mid-size car – Autoslash may email you if they find a lower price on a full-size car. I immediately booked the full size car at Budget for a $52.32 savings from my original Avis rental. I clicked on the link in the email and made the reservation.

Step 6 – Cancel your original rental from Step 1 and continue to wait and re-book if a lower rate is found again.

Rebooking #1

A few days later Autoslash found an even lower price. To rebook all I had to do was reply to their email below with ‘YES’ and my Alamo number.

Autoslash warns you that rates change quickly, by the time I replied almost 12 hours later, rates creeped up a bit and they were able to book me at $198.37 instead of $194.87. Still a $12 savings over the baseline price and all I had to do was hit reply and type 3 letters – YES.

Rebooking #2

Another month later and I got another email with yet another lower rate. Without lifting a finger, Autoslash rebooked me a the lower rate since it was the same rental company. Here’s is the latest rate:

Final Results

July 2018 Rental (Florida, Full Size, 3 days, FLL-MCO)

2/25 – Initial AVIS rental with no comparison shopping- $262.67
2/25 – Autoslash found – Budget at $210.35 (baseline)
2/26 – Autoslash found – Alamo at $194.87
2/27 – Autoslash confirmed – Alamo at $198.37 ($11.98 savings; 5.6% from baseline)
4/8 – Autoslash found and rebooked – Alamo at $191.08 ($19.27 savings; 9.2% from baseline)

Check out this post on how Autoslash saved me 48% on a full size SUV rental

Need to Knows

You can rent cars using miles and points through flexible currencies travel centers (Chase Ultimate Rewards, Citi ThankYou Points, etc)
There are no change or cancellation fees for rental cars – use Autoslash.com to track your rental price and rebook when it finds a lower quote.