Travel credit cards can be a fantastic way to stretch your travel budget and be able to
add additional trips to your yearly plans with little or no additional costs. We know that sometimes it can be difficult to hit the minimum spending requirements when opening a credit card (or more than one card at once) or trying to earn a lot of points on a specific card to top off what you need for airfare or hotel purchases which is why we have come up with the below to help!
We have found a couple of ways over the years to try and take advantage of the expenses we already have in order to hit as many credit card spend requirements for welcome offers and earn as many points as possible. Keep in mind that we are not advocating adding additional spend to your budget just for the sake of earning credit card points or taking on debt. Our hope is to help you utilize your current spending to gain as much benefit as possible.
#1. Replace debit cards with credit cards. We find that pretty much anywhere we go or shop takes any major credit card with no additional fees, whether buying groceries, going out to eat, paying for car repairs, or ordering things online. Credit cards also offer better protections than debit cards if you end up with a fraudulent charge from a transaction stealing your card information and allows you to dispute the charge and get a new card number. Unfortunately, debit cards do not offer these protections and if someone steals your card information and makes an unauthorized purchase, it is very unlikely that you will be able to recover the money from the charges on your bank account. Not only are you maximizing your spending for points but also protecting your hard earned money and checking account information from possible theft. It can take a little getting used to switching to paying with credit instead of checks or debit cards but learning to put all purchases on cards and then pay them off with the money from your checking account provides great additional opportunity.
#2. Reoccurring bills and charges are the next great way to add additional spending to your accounts. Things like trash service, all insurances (auto, pet insurance, even some health care policies), utility bills, phone bills, etc. can be paid on credit cards. This can amount to quite a bit of money you are already spending each month (possibly $1,000 or more) that can be applied to your earnings. Most of these offer card payment for no additional fees especially when setting them up for autopay/paperless billing. You may find that multiple services such as cell phones or internet providers may actually offer you an additional monthly discount on your bill to set this up. What a great win, win.
Another option is to explore pay in full options with the service provider. This is generally seen for things like insurance, both auto, business and sometimes health insurance. Many major providers will offer a discount on your annual premium or waiving of an additional fee to pay in installments if you pay your premium all at once.
This can be great to have a month each year when you will be paying your car insurance premium in full (which for a couple or family with multiple cars may be thousands of dollars each year) where you can sign up for a new card each year and hit the minimum spend in a single transaction for a bill you will pay each year. Again, it can take a bit of practice to get used to paying in one large chunk and then saving the monthly cost back each month to pay for next year but once adjusted, it adds large benefit for hitting higher spends in only 3 or 4 months for sign-ups.
#3. The last way we have found to earn large bonuses or chunks of points all at once is to sign-up for cards when you have a large trip, wedding/birthday/party, auto repairs, moving, new furniture or other large item purchase or home repair or remodel projects (check first that your contractor will take cards but majority will even if only for parts or materials). These can all be very big purchases and add up fast to hit new card offers or just bolster your point earning on your current cards. They tend to be infrequent expenses which can make them a wonderful way to hit big spend requirements on new cards that would feel hard to reach with just your normal monthly spending.
Occasionally, rent or mortgages or even federal taxes or tuition costs can be put on credit cards, but they tend to have a transaction fee. In general, we would recommend staying away from paying these extra fees, however, in order to earn large bonuses they can, at times, makes sense.
For example, if opening a new card requires an $8,000 spend for 125,000 points…if you value those points at one penny each they have a value of $1,250. Most of the time, if using points to book hotels and airfare, you will get a larger redemption rate than just one penny per point.
So, if you were to pay $8,000 of your tax bill at the end of the year at an additional credit card processing fee of 2.85% equaling $228, but would receive $1,250 or more is a great deal and worthwhile. Again, with this method we still recommend paying off the card right away to avoid interest on these charges.
Hopefully, some of these methods can be helpful to increase your spending on your credit cards and earn more points and miles. Think about where you are already spending each month and where you may be able to add additional benefit by being strategic with your budget planning.
Keep earning and enjoying the experience your points can earn!
MC Exploring 