Credit Cards: What's in My Wallet for 2025
01:19:58 Share

I've spent hundreds of hours figuring out the right credit cards to maximize the value I get from every dollar I spend, whether it's travel, groceries, dining, or really anything. So today I'm sharing exactly what's in my wallet in 2025, reviewing each card as I go, and breaking down the frameworks I use to evaluate new cards and decide which ones to keep or cut. I'll also run through every major spending category to identify the best cards for each and

and see if there are any gaps in my own setup. Whether you're optimizing for points, cashback, perks, or just simplicity, this episode will help you build a wallet that actually works for you. I'm Chris Hutchins. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend or leave a comment or review. And if you want to keep upgrading your life, money, and travel, click follow or subscribe. Now let's get into it right after this.

Since I recorded this episode, there were some big changes announced to the Chase Sapphire Reserve Card. So don't worry, I will address all those changes at the end of this episode. This episode is brought to you by Trust & Will. It is so easy to overcomplicate simple tasks, especially for me. I love doing all the research.

But some things don't always need to be so overcomplicated that they end up getting put off forever, like creating a will or trust. So check out Trust and Will because they make estate planning so straightforward and simple, you can do it from your couch. Their platform is attorney designed, specific to each state, and most important, customized by you at every step.

I can tell you firsthand how great Trust and Will is because we used it to set up our estate plan years ago, long before they were a sponsor, because it was quick, easy, and way less intimidating than it seems. In a few guided steps, we had a solid plan in place to protect our family, and we were able to customize it to match all our nuanced preferences,

about what happens to our savings, who's gonna be the guardian for our kids and dog, and so much more. I can't tell you how much peace of mind we have knowing we got all of this taken care of, and it was so easy to update online after we had our second child. So let Trust & Will uncomplicate the process for you. Protect what matters most in minutes at allthehacks.com/trustandwill.

and get 20% off plus free shipping. That's 20% off and free shipping at allthehacks.com slash trust and will.

All right. So I am excited to talk about what's in my wallet this year. We're in 2025, recording this on June 4th. The irony here is I don't actually carry a wallet, right? Well, technically I do. I carry this moffed wallet that attaches to an iPhone. It really only holds two cards and a driver's license. I do have this giant book that has tons and tons of cards in it. Like...

back to back to back to back. So this is where I keep all of my credit cards. I will put a link in the show notes if you have a bunch of cards and need something. It was the best one I've tried of a few things. So what is actually in my wallet is usually the Amex Gold card and the Bank of America Travel Rewards card, just a everything card and...

and a 4X on dining and groceries, mostly because dining seems to be the one category where I need a physical card and then a everything catch-all card. If I'm traveling, I grab a bunch of things, but most of the time I can use Apple Pay. So just because I only have two cards on me doesn't mean I don't have every single card I have that I can in my Apple Pay account. So as I go through this episode, I want to flag that I'm going to mention a lot of cards and

And what I'm going to actually do instead of overwhelm the show notes is I'm going to put a link to a blog post version of this episode in the show notes, which will also have all the details of every card category, etc. And you can also find all the details on the website, allthehacks.com, if you want to go find anything, links to cards, links to posts we've written, episodes, etc. So what I'll do today is I'm going to start by running through all of the cards I have, what we have, what

whether we should get rid of any, then I'll run through the major categories and talk about my favorites and ruminate a bit on what cards are missing that I might be opening up before the end of the year. And as I go through all of this, when I think of a credit card, I think there's really three reasons that I might want to have a credit card. And one of them is probably the obvious one most people think of. And that's because it earns a lot of points or cash back on categories I spend in.

If you spend a lot of money on dining, having a card that rewards you for that dining. If you spend a lot of money on groceries, same thing. Or if you just spend a lot of money that doesn't fall into a specific category, having a card that rewards your everyday spending, whatever category that is. There are a lot of categories where there aren't cards for bonuses, so that could be another one. That's one reason to have a card.

Next reason to have a card is that it has perks that you really value. So for example, there are cards that give you access to lounges. There are cards that help you accrue elite status with airlines or hotel groups. There are cards that have free night certificates. There are some cards that just have so many benefits and perks that relative to the annual fee, you actually think that the card is a profitable card every single year. I know there are a handful of hotel cards that are maybe...

$95 a year, but give you a free night certificate, maybe some bonus points on anniversary every year. And so you're like, well, having this card is actually profitable to keep. I do think that one of the things that holds a lot of people back is that annual fee. One of the challenges for people new to the credit card and points and miles space is this idea of a really high annual fee and how to approach it.

Because I know a lot of people that hear about the Amex Platinum or the Chase Sapphire Reserve and think, wow, that annual fee is more than $500. How could I ever even consider that card? That's crazy.

And I will just flag that for almost every card with a really high annual fee, there are perks, benefits, discounts, credits that when you add them all up, pays way more than the annual fee. I think last time I looked, I probably have three or $4,000 a year of annual fees across all my cards. But for any card that's in the second year of that card, and I'll get to that in the next point, I can simply go in and say, how much are these cards worth to me?

And if I'm getting an Indeed credit that I never use, it doesn't matter if that's a $400 credit. To me, its value is zero. But if I'm getting a $10 a month Uber credit and I spend more than $10 on Uber every month, no matter what, then that really could be valued at $10. Now you could make an argument that maybe because normally I'd get three or four X points that you could value it at $95.

So instead of $10, it's worth $9.50, but it's pretty close to face value. So that's something I think about. So if I look at a card that has a $550 annual fee, but you get a $300 rebate on any purchases and travel, I view that $300 rebate as direct cash. So if it was a $550 annual fee, I'd view it as $250 just from that one credit. And as you go through different credits, you can figure that out.

I'd encourage you to take a look at the premium card worksheet that the Frequent Miler produces. I'll put a link in the show notes. They go through for a lot of the major high fee cards, all the different perks, and you can go in and put your value of those perks and decide whether that card is worth it for you. So get a card because the bonuses you get match your spending. Get a card because the perks are things you really value and maybe couldn't get other

get otherwise. Or the third one is get a card because the welcome bonus or the welcome offer you get from opening up a card really makes that card worth it for you, at least in that year. Now, I love welcome bonuses. I think that anything over about 75,000 points is probably something interesting. There are so many offers worth that much or more. So I

I tend to be picky and I get really excited when I see the 100,000, 120,000 point offer or five free hotel night certificates offer. Anything like that's exciting. Sometimes there's business cards with two 300,000 point welcome offers and those are really exciting. And so that's something I think about all the time when I'm looking at why would I have a card? It's either going to

improve my value proposition every year. It's going to give me perks I didn't have access to, or the welcome bonus is going to be really, really rewarding. And when it comes to those welcome bonuses, you don't get them in the second year of the card. And sometimes those cards have high annual fees. So every time I'm looking at a card after the first year, I go through this review process of, well, am I still valuing the perks enough to keep it? Am I still getting enough value from the spending to keep it? And if it really was, that welcome bonus was amazing, but there

but there's no real ongoing value for the card, I'll go through a mental checklist because usually that card will have an annual fee. And so I'll say, okay, if it's not valuable to me, can I downgrade it to another card? And a lot of issuers will let you product change your card from one with a high annual fee to one with a really low annual fee or no annual fee or a card that's more valuable to you. I know within the Citi ecosystem, the custom cash card is one that people often would downgrade other cards they didn't want to

because it gave 5x points on up to $500 a month in categories that you chose. So that could be a really interesting card. So that's one option. Let's say that's not an option. Let's say there is no downgrade path for the card you have. Then you could ask...

is there any retention offer? If you reach out to the issuer and say, hey, I have this card. I don't think the ongoing value is going to be worth keeping it given the annual fee. Is there anything you guys could do? Sometimes they'll say, oh, well, why don't we waive it this year? Or why don't we give you 30,000 points if you can spend $1,000 on the card, like a little mini welcome bonus. So that's an option. And then if neither of those things are possible, if downgrading the card doesn't make sense, if getting a retention offer doesn't make sense, then it's not

a terrible idea to cancel the card. But what I would say before you cancel the card is if the credit limit on that card is valuable to you, you could shift it to other cards from that issuer. There's a process sometimes online, sometimes on the phone where you can say, hey, I've got these two cards. Each has a $10,000 limit. Could we make one of them $18,000 and then leave the other at $2,000? And they say, great, we did that. Great. Now can I close the one with the $2,000 limit? So that is something you can do before you cancel the card.

I would just wait till after one full year to cancel the card because there are some issuers that look down upon opening up a card, getting the welcome bonus and canceling it before the end of the year. Now, once that annual fee does post, you can still cancel the card, usually within 30 days of the statement closing with the annual fee on it and get that annual fee refunded. So that's how I think about canceling it. Let me talk a little bit about my goals for cards this year. So I am always looking to maximize the earnings I get

from all my everyday spending, all the category spending I have. But I'm not just going to get a card because it earns more points on something I could spend on. Let's say I spend $500 a year on entertainment. And right now I would be putting it on a 2x points card. And now there's a card that offers 3x points on entertainment. I'm just going to get an extra 500 points a year from that deal because I could have otherwise gotten the 2x. So getting 500 points, which might be valued nonstop,

no more than five to $10 is not worth me opening up a new card. So I really want to see that the value I'm going to get from a new card is probably going to exceed at least $200 a year is probably the floor before I'm interested in opening it. And that floor is likely higher because the average welcome bonus is probably worth $100.

somewhere around $750 to $1,000 or more. So if a card's only gonna give me $200 of value, I would be better off opening up a new card, which by the way, would give me $1,000 of value. So it's almost worth five years of that card. And that's how I think about it. The earnings on a new card have to outweigh the opportunity cost of getting a new card with a welcome bonus. Now it could be a mix. That card could have a smaller welcome bonus plus a value every year, maybe plus a few extra perks, and then it's totally worth it.

So that's one. Another goal for the year is I really love transferable points. This is not going to be an episode where we go deep on transferable points. We've done episodes in the past on redeeming your points for maximum value. In a couple of weeks, I'm going to talk about some of the tricks you can use to book award travel. And then we're going to do an episode breaking down all the best transfer partners. But at the end of the day, I find the transferring points from your credit card to

to airlines and hotel groups is definitely the way I get the most value out of points. And so one of my goals this year, when I look at all my cards is I want to keep a pool of points in all of the transferable currencies I have, which includes Capital One, Amex, Built, Chase, and now Citi, which is new for me this year. So that's a goal. Next goal is I want some more welcome bonuses this year. I'm at $324,000, my wife's at $224,000.

which is a measurement in the industry for those not familiar. Chase tends to not approve anyone for new cards if they've had five cards opened in the last 24 months, at least five cards that show up on your credit report. So a business card might not count. And so we're below that threshold, which means we could open new Chase cards. We could open new cards from almost any issuer. And so that's something I'm thinking about. I also want to keep maintaining lounge access. We travel with kids all the time now and yeah,

Kids are always hungry. We get to the airport earlier, so it's nice to have a quieter place to go to get some food and just have a place to relax. And a couple of these lounges actually have little kids play areas, which makes them even better. So definitely want to maintain that. Another goal this year that's a little new from last year is that when cashback is more efficient than points, I'm willing to do that.

It would have been crazy when I recorded the 2024 version of this episode almost 18 months ago to think about getting cash back. For some reason, I was just so wired to focus on points. But I think my mindset is that if I'm getting points instead of cash back, then I'm effectively just buying those points at whatever the rate is based on what cash back I would have gotten. So for example, if I'm spending money on just something that gets no bonus on any card, I've

Obviously, I could be using my VentureX card, get two X points on everything. But I also have a Bank of America card with Platinum Honors, which is their program that elevates all of their rewards based on how many dollars you have on deposit at Bank of America, which brings up their unlimited cash and their travel rewards and their premium rewards cards all the way up to 2.625% cashback. And if you want to go deeper on that, I'll link to an episode in the show notes on the best cashback cards. But

Comparing 2.625% to 2x points means that I'm effectively buying points at around 1.3 cents each. Now, on top of that,

within the Bank of America program, if you have the Premium Rewards Elite card, those points or the cashback you earn can actually be used to book flights for 25% more value. So if you're using them in that way, it's effectively about a 3.28% cashback card, which means that using the VentureX card over the Bank of America card is effectively buying points at a little more than 1.6 cents each. Now, I have definitely been able to use

Capital One, Amex, Chase Points to get way more than 1.6 cents of value plenty of times. However, I'm sitting on a stash of a million Capital One points right now. So I'm not sure that this point in time, I would be a buyer of more points at that value. If I knew that I was low on points, if I wanted to build up that stash, if I had a really big trip in mind and I didn't have enough points, absolutely. I think 1.6 cents is even a fair price to pay because

sometimes we get two three four five cents a point however right now in my current situation looking at capital one points i'm not sure that trade-off makes sense not to mention i also still have the us bank altitude reserve card which gets four and a half percent on apple pay which isn't necessarily capable of being used for every purchase but a lot of those purchases for an everything else card

home improvement store, a lot of places online. I can use Apple Pay and get four and a half cents. And at four and a half cents versus 2x points, it's as if I'm buying points for 2.25 cents, which I just don't think makes sense. Sure, I could get more value. Sure, if I needed to close the gap to get to a threshold of points that I could use for a trip I wanted, it would make sense. But

But because I already have enough points, I'm not sure it does. And so that's something that I think about when I'm trying to decide which new cards to get. It's not just which one gives me the most points, it's which one gives me the most return. And when I think of return, I'm thinking of the value of points somewhere around one and a half cents in my mind.

Certain points I'd say are slightly more valuable. With Chase, I found that I've been able to get so much value out of Hyatt recently that I put those points a little more valuable than other ones. With Citibank, I find that we only have about 100,000 points right now. So I'm actually more willing to get Citi points than I would other programs because there's

There are a couple of interesting uses with leading hotels and preferred hotels and Eva Air that I just couldn't do unless I have more points. So I'm actually willing to pay a little more premium for city points right now just because I have so few of them. Okay, so those are my goals this year. Let's review the cards I have. And before I review them, one of the things that I would encourage everyone to do if you go through this process yourself is first, go find some way to categorize

where you spend money. Now, if you only have a couple credit cards, most issuers have like an annual summary. So you could go pull up the end of year 2024 summary, and it usually breaks down your spending by category. For us, we have so many cards across so many issuers that compiling all that data together would take a lot of work. And I know for some of them, it's a PDF. Obviously, I could probably just throw all those into ChatGPT and ask a question, which now that I'm thinking about it,

that process might have been easier but we also use a app called copilot to do all of our budgeting i'm a huge fan of it and that makes it really easy for us to go and say where do we spend all our money because we categorize all our transactions so i can go in and say how much did we spend on dining how much did we spend on these various categories so whatever tool you use to track your spending or the end of your summaries from your bank i think both of those are valid options but

But realistically, even if it's just an estimate, even if you just think, okay, how much do we generally spend in the major categories you can earn bonuses on? Dining, groceries, travel, maybe specifically broken out to hotels and flights, entertainment, cell phone bills, or other bills like that. For me, those are things that I'm thinking about. And even if you just ballpark it, it might be fine. Then I'm going to go through all the cards and see how much value I get from that card. And so...

There's a tool I built to help me with this. It's a spreadsheet that kind of goes through and looks at all the different earnings possibilities for every single card, lets you put in how you spend your money, and then check different cards to see if adding that card to the mix will increase your average return, both in a relative sense, meaning you go from 2.6% to 2.5% back on everything or 2%.

2.5 to 2.8 X points. So it does that, but it also will tell you your total dollar return based on how you value points and a lot of other stuff. So if you want to check that out, it's at allthehacks.com slash card tool. I actually took a bunch of time to go update it with new cards that have come out recently, some of the changes in old cards. So hopefully that's really valuable to you. If there's a card missing, you're welcome to add it yourself. The instructions show you how to do that as well.

This episode is brought to you by Viore. Now, there are only a few brands I use almost every single day, and Viore is definitely one of them. They make performance apparel that's incredibly versatile, yet so comfortable. Everything is designed to work out in, but doesn't look or feel like it at all.

My personal favorites are the Sunday Performance Joggers and the Stratotech tees and polos, but you also have to check out their Dream Knit collection. It's so amazing, super soft, lightweight, and moisture-wicking. You can wear Viore for just about any activity, whether it's running, training, yoga, but it's also great for lounging, running around town, and seriously, I wear their MetaPants and Stratotech polos out for a nice dinner all the time.

But Viore isn't just for men. My wife is as obsessed with them as I am. And we both would agree that Viore is definitely an investment in your happiness. And for our listeners, they're offering 20% off your first purchase, plus free shipping on U.S. orders over $75 and free returns.

So get yourself some of the most comfortable and versatile clothing on the planet at allthehacks.com slash Viore. That's V-U-O-R-I. Again, that's allthehacks.com slash Viore, V-U-O-R-I, to discover the versatility of Viore clothing. Exclusions apply. Visit the website for full terms and conditions.

This episode is brought to you by Gelt. When it comes to building wealth, taxes are such a big part of the strategy. And as tax time gets closer, getting prepared is so important. And now that I'm working with Gelt, I finally feel like I have a partner I can trust to handle everything for my personal and business taxes.

Think of Gelt as the ultimate modern CPA. Of course, they have an in-house team of expert CPAs to work with who help you determine the most effective tax strategies to minimize your risk and grow your wealth. But they also have an amazing tech platform that gives you personalized guidance to maximize deductions, tax credits, and savings.

There's also an amazing document vault where you can upload all your files, tag them with relevant years, and even see when your tax team has reviewed each file. Beyond that, the tax library you get access to has dozens of in-depth guides on things like choosing retirement plans, taxes for new parents, qualified business income or QBI, and so much more.

So if you're ready for a more premium, proactive tax strategy to optimize and file your taxes, you have to check out Gelt. And as an AllTheHacks listener, you can skip the waitlist. Just head to AllTheHacks.com slash Gelt, G-E-L-T. Again, that's AllTheHacks.com slash G-E-L-T to stop overpaying on taxes.

So here's how I think about a value of a card. It's really just like I described earlier, the amount of spending allocated to it compared to the opportunity cost. So if you spend $500 a month on dining and you have a 3X dining card from Chase and you want to think about going to the Amex Gold card, you're going to get one extra point per dollar, which is on $500 a month or $6,000 a year, 6,000 more points. Let's say you value points at one and a half cents. If you don't, you shouldn't be getting any of these points cards. That's

that's only an extra $90. And the card has a $325 annual fee. Even if you subtract whatever those perks and credits are for you, I imagine that break even is not going to be very compelling. But if you spent $3,000 a month on dining or $5,000 a month on dining, now we're talking about 30 to 60,000 points a year, which could be hundreds and hundreds of dollars. And I

I think now that becomes really interesting. We also didn't talk about the fact that it gets 4x groceries and all that kind of stuff. So that's the framework I use. I wouldn't just think of it as well, what are 4x points worth a year on this category if you already have a card earning three of them? So let's run through. First, I'm going to start with Chase. And I'm going to try to keep this process pretty quick because I want to get to the meat of this episode, which is me running through the major categories of spending, thinking about what the best cards are in those categories. So

You got a Chase Sapphire Reserve. I definitely want to keep that because it makes my chase points more valuable because it unlocks so many transfer partners. It unlocks one and a half points in the portal. And you get 3x on travel and dining. And we have a huge limit on it. So that's a great card. The lounge access we use. I've had it for a really long time. And I'm always curious what perks might be added to it. And it's kind of the marquee card of that brand. Chase Amazon Prime card.

We used to use it for 5% off, but recently we've been buying a lot of gift cards at around 5% off, if not more. So the primary use case for it is anytime we're buying something where we want purchase protection and still want 5% off, because if you use your gift cards, you wouldn't get that. It has no annual fee, so we'll probably just hold on to it in case the gift card market changes wildly. But if we lost it tomorrow for some reason, it wouldn't be a huge pain point.

Hyatt business card. Love this card. We've been traveling and staying at Hyatt's a ton, have really valued being a globalist. And this card is probably the only way I would have closed the gap to get there. They've got a bunch of cool perks that come with the card, like points rebates and credits for staying at Hyatt. Definitely a keeper. Next is the Southwest business card. This year, we actually got a lot closer to Companion Pass than I thought, thanks to some Chase referrals posting. And so having this card was an

Excellent way for us to close the gap to get to Companion Pass. If anyone's not familiar, I'll link to a post about Companion Pass, but it's a level of status that Southwest gives you a person you can nominate to fly free and you just pay taxes and fees for the year you earn it and the following year. And so great card because the welcome bonus on these cards, all Southwest cards count towards that status. Next is a Chase Freedom Flex. You get 5X on these rotating categories every quarter. And

I'd say two or three quarters a year, a category pops up that we actually spend enough on that we can hit that 5X. So love keeping this card. On the flip side, we have a Freedom Unlimited card, which earns one and a half X on everything. And we almost never use it if ever. Maybe we use it at drugstores where I think it gets 3X points or 3% back. So that card probably should be product change to another Freedom Flex so we can get 5X on another $1,500 in those quarters that matter.

My wife has a United card. It's her oldest card. We don't use it for anything, has no annual fee, but it's helping her average length of history on her credit report. So we'll probably hang on to that.

And then on the business side, we've got a Chase Inc. Preferred, which is good for travel if you want to segregate personal and business expenses. But also it gets 3x on some bill payment platforms that we use for the business. We also have the Chase Inc. Cash Card, which gets 5x on phone and office supply, which we don't nearly spend enough on to make it worth holding onto this card. But it's no annual fee. It doesn't really affect us. We wouldn't get a lot of benefit from canceling it or keeping it.

So as long as we're getting some elevated points on phone and office of a lie, why not keep it? Even if we don't spend a lot in those categories. All right, Amex, gold card, 4X on dining and grocery. We spent a ton in those categories. Absolutely keeping the card. We can make pretty good use out of the credits such that it's definitely a positive ROI.

We do have two platinum cards. I think we probably opened the second one for a large welcome bonus, but kept it because they removed guest access for the Centurion Lounge. And we wanted to have the ability to be able to go as a family, or at least Amy and I go and get in. Now that our children are old enough, they either need their own card, which they're not old enough for, or you have to spend $75,000 on an Amex platinum card in order to get guest access. We actually did that this year on one of the business cards.

And so it's not necessary to keep both of these. TBD on whether we cancel one or not. We've been pretty good at getting value out of the perks. So we'll see what that looks like, maybe what a retention offer looks like and make a call. Next is the Bonvoy Brilliant card. I am two years away, or I guess one year after this one from Lifetime Platinum on Marriott. So it made sense to upgrade to this card. It has a higher annual fee, but...

It gets me platinum for the year, which counts towards the last two years I need to hit lifetime platinum. So definitely keeping this card at least through next year. On the Hilton side, we have two Hilton Aspire cards that we will keep as long as they keep delivering an annual free night certificate, because we've been able to get tremendous value from these free night certificates, especially when you layer on the fact that the card comes with free diamond status on Hilton, which is their top tier of status. And we've been able to get

Free nights at the Capro Cot in Mallorca, which was running at about $3,000 a night. We just used some free nights at the Waldorf Astoria that just opened in Costa Rica, which is running over $1,000 a night. So we get a ton of value from these free night certificates. Next is the Delta Business Platinum card. This is one that had a huge, I think it was 100 or 110,000 point signup bonus this year.

opened it not just for the signup bonus, but because we get free check bags on Delta, which we usually fly about once or twice a year. You get a free companion certificate and you get 15% off anytime you're using your miles to book flights. So it pays dividends instantly.

this year and years to come anytime you're trying to use your Delta Miles. So if you figure we have a few hundred thousand Delta points, or at least I do in my account, because the benefit only applies to the account of the primary cardholder, that makes all of my Delta Miles more valuable. Also on the business side, we've got a couple of business platinums and a couple of business golds. And we probably don't need all of these, though we've gotten a few mailers offering some really great welcome bonuses, which led me and Amy to sign up for each of them. So

Not sure what we'll do with the business platinums. They do have some changes to the perks, and I expect that as the Dell perks have gotten devalued, maybe in the second half of the year, we'll see something new, which will help us decide whether they actually make sense to hang on to. On the business gold side, the Forex points in...

in a bunch of different categories, you get it in the top two categories you spend in, we've actually been able to get some decent value from that. So as long as we're able to get enough value to cover the annual fee, we'll probably keep them. If not, we'll drop them. Last two, we don't actually use that much. One is the Bonvoy business card. Got it a long time ago because I was pretty excited about Marriott. We were trying to stay there more and more. And this helped give us

15 extra elite knights towards status each year but this year we're not staying nearly enough that we're even going to get to any number of elite knights to give us status and we're actually relying on the bonvoy brilliant card to just get that status as one of the benefits so i think you could view this card as we pay an annual fee to get a free knight certificate but i think it's capped at 35 000 points and we haven't had a ton of great use for those one-off low value certificates

If we are able to use it, then we probably get more than the annual fee of value. So it's probably a wash, but it's not a card that I'm that excited to be using that often. And then last, I have an Amex Blue card that I've held for 20 plus years. I think it's my oldest card that I still have open. So I'll probably keep putting a couple charges on that card every year just to make sure it stays open. Capital One, we opened two VentureX cards when they had a 100,000 point welcome offer when they launched it.

I've been using them a ton for 2x points. I talked earlier about why we've moved some of that to cash back. Definitely will keep one of these around, but probably don't need two of them, especially because Capital One makes it really easy to move their miles from one card member to the other, even if you don't live in the same household. Also have a Spark Cash Plus card that I opened on the business side, had a really big welcome offer. And we actually put a ton of spend on it, even beyond the welcome offer, just to get 2% back on everything. But

As things have changed, I feel like there's more lucrative ways to earn points, miles, and cash back than just 2%. So this is one where I haven't really been using it much at all and probably just time for us to part ways. New addition this year is Bank of America. We've actually have four new cards and three of them are all tied to their cash back platinum honors status.

And so for those not familiar, if you're able to deposit $100,000 in a Bank of America account or a Merrill Lynch account, it can be a self-directed brokerage account. So you just move over some stocks. You can move over an old Roth IRA or anything like that. They multiply the earnings of the card by 1.75. They have tiers below that as well, that if you can only put $25,000 or $50,000, you'll still get rewarded, but not as much if you can meet the $100,000 requirement.

And so the premium rewards elite card is the consumer version that we have. And because of that platinum honor status, and because we use the points that we earn from that card for a 25% boost to book travel, that card is effectively a 3.28% card on every

everything we spend, and then a 4.4% card on travel and dining. Now it's marketed as a 1.5x on everything, 2x on travel and dining. But when you multiply each of those by 1.75 for the platinum honor status, and then you multiply them by 1.25, because we can use the points we earn to book flights for a boosted value, that's where I get to those numbers. So that's a nice cashback everyday driver for a

On the business side, we've got the travel rewards card, which is the same thing on the everything spend, but doesn't have any boost for travel and dining. But you can transfer those business travel rewards points over to the premium rewards elite and use them for booking travel as well. And then we've got the customized cash business card, which is, I think it's 3x base earning on up to $50,000 a year in the category of your choice, of which there's a couple categories we spend that much or more on.

And then when you multiply it by Platinum Honors, you get up to 5.25% back for a no annual fee card. Definitely pays for itself every year. And then we opened an Alaska business card this year, primarily because we've been flying Alaska a lot more and I was going to go for Alaska status. And so this card helps that. Also, you get an annual companion certificate, free check bags, and they had a 75,000 point welcome offer, which was interesting. But I'll

I'll talk a little bit in a few minutes with Citi about why maybe I'm not going for Alaska status, even though we're flying Alaska. We also opened two U.S. Bank Altitude reserves when there was a rumor that the card was getting shut down. Since you can't have this card anymore, I won't talk about it too much. They might in the future let you product change other cards to it. But effectively, it is a 3X card or a 3% cashback card on mobile pay like Apple Pay and travel.

because they have this real-time rewards program where if you make a travel purchase, you can pay that travel purchase off with your rewards at a rate of 1 point to 1.5 cents. It's actually effectively a 4.5% cashback card on mobile wallet and travel, which is pretty compelling. Doesn't even require you to book flights in their portal or anything like that. It's really a great card for us for mobile wallet spend. And for us, that's a lot of Costco and anywhere else that's kind of an alternative to 2x points.

Over at Citi, I think there were 75,000 point and mile welcome bonuses on both of these cards, which led me to open them up on the same day. The Citi Premier on the consumer side, which not only had a nice welcome bonus, but I've been excited to get into the Citi ecosystem, as I mentioned last month in the Citi episode. Not to mention it's a card that earns 3x on flights, hotels, gas, groceries, and dining. So it's

good all around spend card, especially if someone's just looking for one single card for a lot of bonus categories. But I'm using it off and on just to get to a point of Citi points that I have enough to use on a redemption so that I could get a taste of what it's like to be able to use a few of the transfer partners that are unique to Citi. On the American side, we open the Advantage business card, and I'm using it for a lot of other spending. And granted, the

those categories could otherwise earn 2x points or 2.625% cash back. And instead, I'm just getting one American mile. However, I'm also getting one loyalty point, which is how they track status. And the nature of this card and a promotion they have this year, we're getting one loyalty point on the employee card, which Amy works at the company and she has an employee card. So she's getting a loyalty point.

and me as the primary cardholder are. So it's helping not only earn points that you can redeem, but earn status for both of us. And so there is a value to that. In fact, I think for us, earning status on American is even more valuable for flying on Alaska than earning status on Alaska because we can actually earn a higher tier of status here than we could using just the Alaska card. So exciting to be in the Citi ecosystem this year.

This episode is brought to you by Thrive Market. You know that feeling when you're standing in the grocery store, staring at labels, trying to figure out what's actually healthy, but the ingredient list is so confusing? With two young kids, we are constantly trying to make sure the whole family eats clean, healthy food, but it can be a lot of work to make that happen.

happen. That's why I love Thrive Market. They're my go-to online grocery store for getting healthy essentials delivered straight to our door. And unfortunately, there are over 10,000 food additives allowed in the US and it's hard to know what's actually safe. So I love that Thrive Market bans over a thousand harmful ingredients. Their team does all the hard work and makes sure every product meets high quality clean standards.

For example, one brand we love from Thrive is Simple Mills. We feel so good giving it to our kids. Their sea salt almond flour crackers are fantastic. And lately, I just can't stop eating their sweet thins. Plus, Thrive Market has tons of filters so you can easily shop by your needs, whether it's looking for gluten-free snacks, whatever's on sale right now, or high-protein meals. That last one I particularly love because I find the more protein I eat, the less likely I am to binge on those Simple Mills sweet thins.

So if you're ready to make the switch, head to allthehacks.com slash thrivemarket to get 30% off your first order plus a free $60 gift. Again, that's allthehacks.com slash thrivemarket. This episode is brought to you by Element. Summer is here and that means more time outside, more sweat, and definitely more need to stay hydrated. But if you're like me, you want to do that without all the sugar and junk that's packed into most electrolyte sports drinks.

That's why I drink Element, a zero sugar electrolyte drink mix that's become part of my daily routine. Whether I'm traveling, working out, having a few drinks, or just trying to stay sharp and energized, Element delivers the right ratio of sodium, potassium, and magnesium, backed by science and trusted by everyone from elite athletes to Stanford neuroscientists to people like me and you.

And right now you've got to check out the new lemonade salt flavor. It's salty, tart and super refreshing like summer in a glass. I've been mixing it into a big water bottle before hikes, but you can also add it to iced tea for a salty Arnold Palmer and even use it to level up mocktails. But heads up, it's a limited time flavor, so grab it before it's gone. I really think you'll love Element just like I do, but they're actually so confident you'll love it that they offer no questions asked refunds so you can try it totally risk free.

And for All the Hacks listeners, you get a free eight-count sample pack of Element's most popular drink mix flavors with any purchase at allthehacks.com slash element L-M-N-T. Find your favorite Element flavor or share it with a friend. That's allthehacks.com slash element L-M-N-T.

Next is the built card. And that's really the last credit card that I have in my wallet. I know it's a lot. But despite that we do not rent, the interesting thing about the built card is that it's not just a credit card.

is that they have been constantly doing promotions on their rent day, which is the first of the month, that allow you, with built status, to transfer to their transfer partners, which, by the way, I think they have the best lineup of transfer partners. If you could convert all my other points to built points, I would be stoked. And on rent day, they've had 100% transfer bonuses to Air France, Air Canada, Avianca LifeMiles,

British Airways, Avios. And those are all programs we've booked flights from in the last year. So if every built point I've earned, I've been able to redeem one to two, meaning twice as many points, then the fact that the built card is only earning 3x on dining and 2x on travel, which is not too different from other cards, though keep in mind, no annual fee card, which is awesome. And if you rent up to 100,000 points paying your rent with no fee, amazing. But

Earning 3x on dining, if your points are always transferring at 1 to 2, it's like earning 6x on dining, 4x on travel. And at that rate, it's a card that I'm pretty compelled to spend on, at least to get to the point that I maintain that platinum status. So those points continue to be worth that much. Only other card we have is the target red card. Technically, it's a debit card, so it probably shouldn't be in here. It does earn 5% back, which is pretty good for a debit card, at least on target purchases. But...

We've been able to at least recently get Target gift cards for slightly less than 5% off. We've been spending a lot of money at Target just using Target gift cards instead of the debit card. But it's a debit card. It doesn't impact your credit. It has no annual fee. So there's no real downside to keeping it. So now that I ran through all the cards I have, I talked a little about what I want to do with them. Let's talk about the major categories. Now,

This episode is not meant to be the definitive guide to the best card in every single category. It doesn't include a lot of cards that have five to six X points in those categories if it's capped at $500 a month or $1,500 a quarter, because in a lot of cases, the ROI of opening up a card for an extra 6,000 points a year just doesn't make sense. Obviously, if you downgraded that card and you've already had it open and it has no annual fee, why not?

But those are cards that I'm usually not going to consider opening up for new, especially because they usually have lower welcome bonuses. So that's why they're not here. So what I'm going to do is run through the categories, talk about how I landed on the card I have and what some good alternatives are, just to showcase my process here. So I'll start with dining. It's probably one of our biggest categories that we spend money on. And we use primarily the Amex Gold at 4x points. But we have probably more than...

any other category, a lot of backups. The Chase Reserve, the Freedom Flags, the Freedom Unlimited, the Built Card, all those cards are earning 3x points. If we didn't have those, you could also earn the same 3x points with the Chase Preferred, with the Wells Fargo Autograph and Autograph Journey cards, the Amex Green, the Capital One Saver. So there are a lot of options there.

And then if we wanted the cash back, depends on the mood, I guess. I'm still trying to grapple with this experiment where I told myself I'd spend money on cards with cash back this year to see how it feels. So stay tuned towards the end of the year when I can debrief on my feelings after doing that for a year. But on the cash back side, you've got the Bank of America Premium Rewards Elite card, which because I used those points spent on dining for flights, ends up being about a 4.4% back card on dining. Now, would I rather have four Amex points or 4.4 cents? Probably

probably the MX points, but not a bad card for dining. Next is groceries. And similarly, I'm still using the 4X gold card, but good alternatives in my wallet are the city premier at 3X points. And I don't have this card, but the saver card at 3X points as well. And then

And then also, I forgot to mention this in dining, but if you're a Verizon customer and you want cash back, the Verizon card, I think, earns 4% on gas, groceries, and dining uncapped. So that's an interesting one if you're a Verizon customer, though I would argue if you're a Verizon customer, you're probably spending way more on your phone bill than an alternative carrier that probably doesn't make up for the extra cash back from that card. When it comes to travel, there's a bunch of categories within travel and not every card hits them all. So I'll start with the broad all-in-one.

all slash other non-flight hotel travel. And in that category, I think the Chase Sapphire Reserve at 3X and the U.S. Bank Altitude Reserve at 4.5% are pretty interesting. And they're probably my primary go-tos. But if I had a lot of spend in this category, and for whatever reason, I didn't want those cards, getting 3X at Wells Fargo with the Autograph Journey cards is interesting, though there are limited uses for their points because they have a smaller number of transfer partners.

And then also, as I'm saying this, I'm wondering if given the value I've gotten from transferring built points, yes, it's a 2x travel. But if those 2x are worth 4x, then it would accelerate it to be the primary travel card I should use. So I'm actually questioning my strategy, and I might shift it after this moment. The Amex green card also does 3x on travel. So that's interesting if you want to stay in the Amex ecosystem. And then on the cashback card, there's

the premium rewards elite card is still again, three and a half percent back on travel if you have platinum honors. And then if you use it for flights can be all the way up to 4.4%. On flights, I think that there's a hands down winner. That's the platinum card where book a flight directly with airlines, you get five x points, I have been asked to think about whether it's worth not getting the travel protections I would get if I were on another card. And

when you're booking travel is how important are those travel protections in case you have flight delays, canceled flights, lost bags. So that's something that I will give more credence to in a future episode. On the hotel side, I'm typically using the co-brand cards I have for those hotel chains. But outside of that, it's either the City Premier card, which earns 3x on hotels. If I were spending a ton on hotels, I would consider the Autograph Journey card, which is 5x on hotels.

And then outside of those, it's just whatever kind of all travel card. On rental cars, I'm always using the Chase Sapphire Reserve. It has excellent rental car coverage. It's primary coverage. It earns three X points. And I didn't mention that before when I went through that card, but I don't rent enough cards that I'd necessarily say like, that's the card that I should definitely have. And it's worth the annual fee just for the rental car coverage. But it is a nice add-on that I have one. My wife has one. If we're renting cars, we're always using that card.

Now, notice I didn't mention anything about the Travel Portal earnings. Depending on your card, you might get 10x on hotels booking with the VentureX or the Chase Reserve Card in your Chase Travel Portal, or 5x on flights, or in city, you can get 10x on hotels, and built, you get plus 1x points, and the Platinum is 5x on hotels. There's all these bonuses in the Travel Portals. Now, what I want to say about Travel Portals, I typically don't love booking in the Travel Portal because

On the hotel side, the hotels are usually booked through like Expedia or some other backend engine that does not give you credit for the elite nights, doesn't give your status any perks, and really puts you at the very bottom rung of the ladder in the eyes of the hotel. And so the last thing I want to do is go to a hotel and get no perks, no benefits, no treatment. And if they're going to have to walk someone, it's going to be whoever booked in that travel portal. So it's

If I'm booking at a boutique hotel where there's absolutely no way to get elite nights or perks or benefits or anything like that,

maybe it's fine. Maybe I'd go for the 10x points over something else. And I think it's probably worth the trade-off in that point. On the flight side, the challenge, and this is also true on the hotel side, is you often can't manage any of the bookings you've made in a portal directly with the hotel. You can't reach out to the hotel or the airline for that matter and say, hey, can we manage this booking? They usually defer and say, hey, actually go back to where you booked it. And that

And that can be a pain when you're trying to deal with last minute changes and you have to wait on hold for Amex travel to answer, which I've been in a circumstance where me and another person booked the same flight and we were trying to cancel it. And I booked directly with the airline and it took me seconds because we were already at the airport and

and I just went to the desk and said, can we cancel it? And they were on hold trying to figure out how to get this done because they'd already checked in. However, there's this thing called NDC, new distribution capability, and it's a technology within travel booking that is allowing you to book things

through travel portals in a way that shows up as if you're booking directly from the airline. And so you actually are able to manage your flight with the airline. You're able to cancel through the airline. You get all the same benefits as if you booked through the airline. And not every airline supports it, though I think the primary airlines in the US except Delta do, but also most travel portals don't. However, the built travel portal does. And so as that comes online more and more,

I would have no qualms booking every single flight through the built travel portal, get an extra built point for a United flight. Now, I wouldn't do it for a Delta flight where it might be difficult to manage because they don't have NDC. And my understanding is built in the process of trying to make it easier for you to know which ones of those bookings are getting booked through NDC so you have that treatment versus not. And I hope all these portals adopt it. If they do, you will see me booking all my flights in the portals for elevated earnings.

but earning a few extra points on a flight isn't worth the hassle of not being able to manage that flight directly with the airline. So as I know which portals can do this, I'm down to do it. But until then, I'm holding off until I know exactly how it will work.

Next spend category is Costco. We're probably using our U.S. Bank Altitude Reserve card, but since that card's not open, another card that's interesting is the Venmo card because I think in their grocery category, it also includes wholesale clubs and it's 3% cash back on everything. So obviously you can't get the U.S. Bank Altitude Reserve card anymore, but 3% back at wholesale clubs and groceries is pretty compelling, especially if you want to start a budding Costco gold enterprise.

Obviously, you could use the Bank of America cards and earn cash back there as well. On the points and miles side, I think your best option here is 2x points from the Capital One Venture card. On phone spending, the in cash is 5x. On the consumer side, I wouldn't actually focus on the card that earns you the most points with your phone. And instead, I'd focus on which card had the best

cell phone coverage in terms of cracked screen, lost phone, damaged stuff. And that is probably going to be better than getting a couple of extra points per dollar on your phone bill. And so that's something to look in. A couple other categories. We don't have a gas car, so we don't use that category. But if I was spending a ton on gas, I'd probably look at the Wyndham business earner card, which is 8x points on gas. And it's definitely interesting because of the way you can use Wyndham points, especially with Vacasa vacation rentals.

But I don't have that card. And so a card I'd probably use instead is the Citi Premier card, which is 3x points on gas. So those are the major categories we spend on. Obviously, in the other category, I'm always jumping between the VentureX, the U.S. Bank Altitude Reserve. I might think about picking up a Citi Double Cash card to start earning 2x Citi points or just keep using the Bank of America card, which because we redeem those points for flights, it's like a 3.28% cashback card.

There aren't a lot of other categories we spend money on right now. The ones that I know do have cards with elevated earnings potential are streaming and entertainment. Obviously, if you have rent, I would strongly encourage you to look at the built card. Allthehacks.com slash built is my link. But beyond that, there aren't any categories that I'm necessarily shopping for an elevated earnings card. That said, I will talk about some of the new cards I'm looking at this year. And one of them does hit on a category I didn't mention.

When it comes to credit cards, I haven't really been distinguishing too clearly between business and personal cards. A year ago, when I recorded the episode for What's in My Wallet 2024, I talked a lot about the distinction because we were using QuickBooks, and QuickBooks sucks for this. And so we really tried when we were using QuickBooks to completely separate all of our spending so that we only linked certain cards, and it was a mess. And then I

I started using a product called Kik for our bookkeeping. And it was so amazing that after using it for maybe two weeks, I asked if I could invest in the company, which I did. Then I asked if they wanted to sponsor the podcast. And so they did. So totally biased user here as an investor and a partner. But it is amazing at doing bookkeeping for your business and

And being able to use business and personal cards and then just move transactions between them as they don't fall into one or the other and makes the bookkeeping behind it really simple. You can go to allthehacks.com slash kick to get a deal there. I think it's 50% off your first year of bookkeeping, but that has really made it so that I don't need as much delineation. So when we have two cards that earn the same amount, like 3x travel on

on Chase Reserve and the Chase Inc. Preferred, then fine, we'll separate them out and make it easy. We do the same thing for cash back on Bank of America cards. But when we don't, I'll make a purchase on my personal card. And I think from a bookkeeping standpoint, I'm kind of expensing that to the business and then making that expense a contribution. And if for some reason I put a personal expense on the business card, then it's effectively a distribution from the business. Now, I

Now, obviously all this happens in the background with Kik. It's not like I have to do all this filing with each transaction, but that's how it happens. If you don't like that approach, one option is to get two versions of a personal card. So for example, if you wanted to get 5X points on all flights, whether they're business or personal, and you have a partner, then your partner could open up an Amex Platinum. You could open up an Amex Platinum and you use one of the cards all for personal flights and one of the cards all for business flights. Okay, so that's business cards.

What do I want to do next year? Like, what are the cards I'm excited about? Well, if you look at last year, in this episode, about 18 months ago, I was excited about the Bilt card, the Delta Platinum, the Bonvoy Brilliant, City cards, the Capital One Saver, the US Bank Altitude Reserve, and the Wells Fargo Autograph or Autograph Journey. I ended up getting almost all those cards. I never got the Capital One Saver, and I never got the Wells Fargo cards.

I didn't really see any elevated earnings potential, new kinds of points I'd be able to earn more of. So I passed on them. But I would say the cards I was excited about last year, I ended up following through on. So I'm excited to see if that happens again this year. So this year, the cards I'm excited about that I don't already have, and that is obviously aside from any card with an exciting welcome bonus, which is probably something I'm going to focus a lot on this year. But the specific cards I'm interested in are the Venmo card I mentioned,

because I'm spending a lot lately at Costco on gold. And that card is a great opportunity to get 3%, which gold is expensive. And I might max out on some of the other cards. I have a companion pass right now, but Amy, my wife does not. And we do have two children. And so if I have companion pass and we're going to do a little bit more Southwest traveling, maybe it makes sense for her to get a Southwest card.

That signup bonus will get her quite a bit of the ways towards companion pass. She could get two cards or she could get one and do a little spending or flying, but it might be nice if we ended up having two companion passes that it really is 50% off for the family minus the taxes and fees on the kids because we'd be able to both have companion pass.

Now, the only downside there is if we wanted to travel together as a couple, we wouldn't actually be able to benefit from the companion pass because we would have named our children as our companions. But I think that is a champagne problem. I mentioned earlier, I'm excited about getting city points. So as a way to boost them, you might see me add the city double cash, which is a 2% card on everything. But those 2% can convert to 2x points. So that might be a way. Before they go away, I've been eyeing the Hawaiian cards.

which have a 75,000 point welcome bonus, or at least have in the recent past, but also allow you to transfer points between people. And so if we wanted to aggregate all of our Alaska points into one account, that would allow us to do that. And who knows what will happen to that card after the

the merger is final, which is actually in 26 days at the end of June. The VentureX Business, this is a card I'm not eligible for because I have the Spark Cash Plus card, but my wife is. And for the next five days, they still have a huge 350,000 point signup bonus. And so that's one that's on a very tight fuse of, do we go for this? It has a massive amount of minimum spend to hit that welcome bonus, but

But when you factor that welcome bonus in, it's a pretty elevated offer for a card that I think is interesting. And so we're thinking about it. It hasn't been enough to pull the trigger yet, but now we're kind of forced to make that decision. Also, now that Amy's working full-time on the business, she doesn't actually have a lot of business cards. And so opening up the world of business cards to her portfolio is something we haven't done a ton of to date. And so that's something we're eyeing for this year. Business cards often have really great welcome bonuses. So excited for that.

And then the last one is a new card. And I missed out on the opportunity to get a signup bonus for this card because it only lasted for a couple of days, but that is the Mesa card.

It is a card for homeowners. So if built is for renters, Mesa is for homeowners. It's a no annual fee card, no foreign transaction fee. And the primary benefit is that it earns 1x points on mortgage payments up to 100,000 points a year. I'm going to do a full breakdown of this card in next week's episode. So those are the cards that I'm interested in right now.

right now, you might be asking, okay, you just ran through and I don't even know the number now easily over 20 cards that we have. And now here's five or six more I'm thinking of how do I keep track of this? And so the way I'll close out this episode is just share a little bit about how I keep track of all my cards. And so there are a handful of apps that make this a lot easier. There's card pointers, card right, travel freely, think you might be able to do this with a ward wallet or the points guy app. And of course, you can create your own spreadsheet to do this as well.

Personally, I really like the Card Pointers app and I've used it for a long time. I think it's easy to use. I think it does a lot more than what you need it to do when you think, how do I manage this? And I'm not saying you can't use the other ones, but I'll tell you why I like the app and why I decided to partner with Card Pointers to get a discount for all of you, because I think it has a ton of value. So first, you could just put all your cards in and you could do it without having to link your bank. So you could just say, I have an Amex Platinum.

And then it's added to your app and they keep track of all the perks and the benefits of that card because the app knows what the perks and benefits are of an Amex Platinum. Now, if you go in and tell it, here's the date I signed up for that card, and then they'll know here's when your annual fees due and all that kind of stuff. So there's a view in the app where I could say, show me the calendar of all my upcoming annual fees so I can keep track on maybe I want to cancel a card before that happens. Maybe I want to call up and see if there's a retention offer, anything like that.

It's also great because if you set it up with a partner, you can manage your and your partner's cards and you can actually give them a view, which is just, here's the best card to use for different kinds of spending. So instead of maybe printing something out or putting labels on cards, you could say, hey, look at the Card Pointers app and it'll tell you groceries, this card, gas, this card. So I like that. But the two things that I love the most is one, it is the place that I can manage all of the offers. And actually,

This is two things, but it's one thing. It's all the standard offers and all the personal offers. And the difference being the standard offers are all the things that come with your cards, your $10 a month dining credit, $50 resi credit, Hilton Resort credits, all that kind of stuff. It's a lot to keep track of.

And so they have them all there. I can go in and I favorite all the offers that I like. And then I can say, filter this view for standard offers that I favorited, sort them by soonest to expire. And I could just scroll through a list of here's all the things I want to make sure I take advantage of before the end of the month, quarter or year. And it's how I make sure I don't lose track of the value I'm getting from all the cards I have. There's also personal offers. And

And those are the card-linked offers you get. So with the browser extension from CardPointers, anytime you log into your bank, it's going to, one, check all of those offers and add them to the list so you make sure you know about them, but it's also going to add them to your card. But the really cool thing it's going to do is

If you were to go add an Amex offer to one card, they'd usually take it away from another card so you couldn't add it to both. But if you hit their server at the exact same time for all your cards, you can add that card to multiple cards all at once. And so that's something the Card Pointers extension also does. And so it does all this without downloading your balance data and storing your login as well, which is really cool. And so that extension not only knows about all those offers, but

but then it alerts you. So the other day we were on the site Chewy to order some things for our dog and it popped up and said, hey, just so you know, you should use one of these two Chase cards, which has a 15 off $49 purchase, which can be up to 30% cash back. I promise you that if I had not seen that notification from the card pointers extension, I would have used a different card and I definitely would have gotten 30% off my purchase. And so that extension has probably saved me at

at least $1,000. And now I'm also using the app to basically favorite offers that I notice like Chewy as an example. Oh, we're going to use that. Oh, here's a store that we regularly shop from. Let's not forget that there's an offer that expires in two months for $30 off $100 or something like that. So I'm able to make sure that I'm not only getting all the benefits from the perks that are recurring regular perks of the card, but all the card linked offers. And I went and looked at the different card

cards I have. And there are cards where I've gotten five, six, $700 of card link to offer value from that card. And I'm certain I would have gotten that before. So I worked with Emmanuel, the founder, who's a member of all the hacks. He's a listener of the pod. You can all have 30% off if you go to allthehacks.com slash card pointers, or if you're already a member of all the hacks, which you can do at allthehacks.com slash join, you get 50% off. So definitely check out card pointers. It's an app I open up multiple times a week. I've got the extension running all the time and I love it.

And if anyone listening is wondering why I don't include max rewards on this list of potential tools for this purpose, the last time I checked, they had an account linking implementation that required you link the app to your bank. And the way they implemented it was a way that, at least from a security standpoint, I just wasn't comfortable with. I've shared this with them. I checked again six or seven months later. They hadn't changed anything. If they ever do, I'm happy to try the app again. But until then, like,

I just can't review that product because I do not trust the way that they've implemented the linking with my bank. I've emailed with the team. I don't believe they're doing anything nefarious. I think they are probably just implementing it in a way that was easiest for their engineering team to do, but I'm just not comfortable with it. And so I can't review it. I have heard other people use it and really enjoy it, but myself, I can't.

Okay, after recording, the Chase Sapphire Reserve came out with a completely new refresh. They launched a business version of the card. And so I thought I would include an overview of those changes right here and also share my thoughts on what's happened. So first off, on the Chase Sapphire Reserve personal card, the biggest news is that the annual fee is going up from $550 to $795. It's a $245 increase.

increase, which makes it a more expensive card than the Amex Platinum, which is at $695. Though Amex has already announced that they are also going to be revamping the card lineup. It seems like they want to maintain pole position of the most expensive, fanciest personal card, you know, outside of the tier of black cards and things like that. So the big thing is that the annual fee has gone up, but there's been some changes to the earnings.

And with that annual fee comes a lot of different credits you're going to get. And personally, I actually think this is an upgrade for the card, but I totally understand why others might disagree. And then finally, the last thing is that the way you redeem the points, at least in the travel portal, is going to change as well. So I'm going to run through all that, share my thoughts, and then we'll get back to the rest of this episode. So the big change to earning is that the card will no longer earn 3x on travel. It'll earn 4x, but

only on flights and hotels. So if you spend a lot of money on Airbnbs or booking with travel agencies or cruises, the card got a big downgrade. But if the majority of your spending on travel is actually just flights and hotels, this is a pretty big upgrade.

And if you book in the Chase travel portal, you're now actually going to get 8x points on flights instead of 5x, which is another upgrade, but you're only going to get 8x on hotels and I think rental cars instead of 10x, which is a little bit of a downgrade. So all said, I think depending on how you spend money, the average person is probably getting an upgrade here, but

There is definitely people who will feel like this is a downgrade. And if you value simplicity, it's definitely a downgrade because you have to think about, oh, this isn't now my travel everything card. Now the card still gets 5X on Lyft. So while Rideshare was a 3X travel category and now is a 1X category, Lyft will remain at a 5X category at least I think until sometime in 2027, I think the end of September. Still has 3X dining, so nothing changes there and 1X on everything else.

So that's the main change to how it earns. I should also mention that it now carries a $195 fee for authorized users. They do still continue to get lounge access. None of the benefits of the card have really changed much. So as far as primary rental car coverage, it's still a Visa Infinite, all the travel and purchase protections, those things aren't really changing. That said, the

Credits is where things are changing. So the mainstay credit of the Chase Sapphire Reserve was a $300 travel credit. It's among the easiest travel credits to use because unlike some where you have to book it for airline incidentals, this one is straightforward. Book things that are in travel, your first $300 every year is credited. To me, this credit is incredibly easy to use. And in my mind, the annual fee should be viewed as $300 less.

less than whatever it is because it's just that easy to use. If you're not spending at least $300 on travel, I don't know why you'd have this card in the first place. So if it's now a $795 fee, I think you should assume it's a $495 fee because for sure you'll put at least $300 in the travel category. The other big changes.

So you're now going to get IHG Platinum status, so Intercontinental Hotel Groups, through 2027. Unfortunately, that level of status is one tier down from their top level, so you're not going to get free breakfast, but you are going to get bonus points, upgrades, and

and I believe early check-in and late checkout. So if you're staying at intercontinental hotels, which I don't do often, that's a bump and it's nice. But if you're not, then you could probably value that at nothing. You're still getting your Lyft credit at $10 a month. So that's great. The DoorDash credit, I can't remember exactly what it is today, but you're gonna continue getting what they're calling $25 a month. But it's going to be $5 a month towards DoorDash food delivery and then two $10 a month coupons

or kind of credits for grocery, beauty, and electronics. Honestly, I've never used DoorDash for in the first place. So to me, this is probably worth, let's call it $5 a month, maybe six months a year. So it's like 30 bucks for DoorDash because I don't use DoorDash every single month. So that's not really a major selling point on the annual fee.

The new things that I think are helpful. So you get a free Apple TV Plus membership and subscription and a free Apple Music subscription. So if you're already paying for those, you can cancel those memberships. If you are paying for Apple One, which I believe is their bundle that includes a lot of different things,

this isn't a reimbursement. It's actually like a free subscription. So you're not going to be able to get any credit. But if you're like me, I pay for Apple TV Plus. I don't pay for Apple Music, but now I can just stop paying for Apple TV Plus. So I already pay $10 a month or $9.95. This is an easy $120 credit for me. You also get $10 a month credit towards Peloton. We pay more than that a month for our Peloton subscription. So that's another easy credit. I'm going to get the full $120 value out of 12%.

12, $10 credits there. Then a couple other things. So they have this thing called Sapphire Reserve Exclusive Tables. And through some restaurant partnerships, they've managed to partner with a handful of restaurants in a bunch of cities, not every major city, but most of the major cities. But in San Francisco, there's I think 38 or 39 restaurants

of which three or four of them are regulars that I've been to multiple times. And so getting the value from this credit will be easy. And the way the credit works is as long as you use your Chase Reserve card at one of those restaurants, you don't need to even have booked the table through their program. You will get $150 credit every six months, meaning January to June and then July to December. So

So for me, I already think that without trying, I probably go to one of these restaurants every, you know, half year. So this is another credit where it's going to be really easy for me to recapture that benefit because I'm probably already doing it. Maybe over the course of a few years, I probably might skip one six month period, but it's also not that hard to say, Hey, if we're going to go out to dinner, this place is $150 off and it's fantastic. Let's go. There's $150 every six months, StubHub credit. I know.

I never use StubHub. We don't buy a lot of events. So for me, that credit's not really worth anything. And then you get access to the Chase Sapphire Reserve travel designers, which I guess is like a fancy travel agent.

With everything you can get from ChatGPT and the internet and the ability to book most things on your own, I'm not sure what value this will offer anyone. So take it for what you will. I'm probably never going to use it. If someone does use it and has an experience that really surprises them, let me know. But I'm not putting a lot of faith into that. However, Chase does have a portfolio of hotels called The Edit. It's kind of like Amex Fine Hotel Resorts and the All the Hacks Upgrade program where you can basically go and book hotels all

all mostly luxury five-star hotels, and you get access to a select number of perks. Usually it's free breakfast, a property credit, early check-in, late checkout on availability, and upgrades on availability, though we've actually had a lot of luck recently locking in confirmations

confirmed upgrades for some stays for people using our All the Hacks upgrade program. You can find it on our website in the products dropdown. So if you book something in the edit, you will be able to get on a two-night minimum stay $250 back every six months, meaning January to June and July to December. So if you're frequenting five-star hotels, you can use Chase's portal to book them. You'll get a lot of the same perks you'd get in other luxury travel portals, but you'll get $250 off.

However, I haven't found all the nuanced fine print, but what I read recently was that those stays won't earn points. So if this is a stay that was otherwise going to be, let's call it $750 a night, two nights, $1,500. Let's say you book it in a travel portal like the Chase Travel Portal where you'd get 8x points on booking hotels. Then that $1,500 stay is going to earn you 12,000 points. Now I'll get to some of the changes on how Chase Points works.

will be valued when you redeem them for different things in the travel portal. But for the edit, they will now be worth two cents. So those 12,000 points you'd get from a $1,500 stay are going to be worth two cents. So $240. So I don't actually know how valuable this credit is if you don't actually earn points on the stay, unless you're finding really inexpensive properties. Because if it's a $750 a night property, all of a sudden you're going to...

trade off $240 of points value for $250 credit. So it's kind of a wash. That said, if you can earn points, at least on the money that you're not spending on the credit, or if you can find stays that are in that $100 to $200 a night range, where two nights is going to be $250 to $400 and the credit will cover almost all of it, then it seems like a much better deal. However, I

I haven't had that much success doing that in the Amex program, taking advantage of their $200 fine hotels and resorts credit each year. In fact, that $200 credit, I have not ever

ever used, even though it's there. And then last, there's this new thing where if you spend $75,000 in a year, you unlock a bunch of other perks. So for example, your IHG Platinum status now becomes IHG Diamond status, which does include free breakfast at all your stays and will include Hertz President Circle, which is one of the highest tiers of Hertz status. So that's cool. You also get Southwest A-list status, which if you fly Southwest a lot, especially now that they're starting to add a lot of fees,

for bags and seats, you know, could become very valuable. You get a $500 Southwest credit. And then last, Chase has this ShopSat Chase platform.

program, which I just explored today, where you can buy things online from brands like Dyson and Callaway and Breitling and Bang & Olufsen. Everything I found was pretty overpriced. So the Dyson vacuum that we recently got that we absolutely love, you can get it on Amazon for $350. You can get it on the Chops at Chase for $470. Or right now everything's 15% off, so it's $399. So you're paying 15% to 34% more for

but you're going to get a $250 credit. So if there happens to be something you want, and it's, you know, not that much higher than 250, then yeah, maybe this credit's great, but I'm not jumping up and down for saving money on an overpriced portal that if I bought something elsewhere, it would have been a lot cheaper. So that's the changes to the personal chase reserve card on the perks and the benefits. The other big change is that they're changing the value of your chase points when you redeem them in the portal. So

I have not actually ever redeemed my chase points in the portal. However, for people getting into this game and kind of overwhelmed with the idea of transferring points and miles to airlines and hotels, it can be a great middle ground where you earn all these points. They have a lot of flexibility in the way you can use them. But if you don't want to go down the game of transferring points, you can just book whatever you want anytime and get one and a half cents in the portal with a chase reserve card. Going forward, you're not going to be able to do that. Now I'll explain how

how that transition takes place because for points earned up until October 25th this year, you'll still be able to get that elevated value until October 26th, 2027. So the big impact here is going to be for points earned after October for existing cardholders. Those specific batch of points won't have the elevated value.

Or if you get this card as a new card, a new Chase Sapphire Reserve under the new program, then you won't have that value. But if you're holding onto a stash of Chase Points and you like using them in the portal, you'll be able to get that value for the next two and a half years almost. So it's not a huge impact today except for future points. However, what they're going to replace it with is this thing called Point Boost. And we haven't seen it yet. So I can't speak to exactly what it will contain. But instead of getting one and a half cents on everything, you're

You're going to get one cent on everything. And then some things will be boosted. And they've said that of those things will be some airlines. So they gave a list of Southwest, United, Air Canada, Emirates, Singapore, and Qantas. And so you will be able to get some boost using your points on those airlines. They said it will be for both economy and premium cabin, but it implied that you will get more value of the boosts when you're doing premium cabin flights.

And then when you use your points to book properties at the edit, they'll go up to two cents always. So again, I don't use my points like this in the portal. I don't know whether what happens with these point boosts is going to actually be like a once in a rare opportunity to get anything more than one cent or it's going to be pretty easy. So T

TBD, jury's out. We won't know until a little later. Hopefully in a couple weeks when I do another episode that's a little more solo like this, I'll have gotten a chance to dig in. But at the end of the day, you're going to get a lot more value transferring your points to airlines or to Hyatt and booking through hotels. So it's not a huge deal, but it will also impact the points you earn on the Chase Sapphire Preferred or the Chase Inc. Preferred. And so even those cards will have that impact because...

because they're going to lose their elevated 1.25 cent value and undergo a similar structure here. So one thing you can do today, or at least before 1025, is if you want, if you have points in lots of Chase cards, there's a combined points feature, and you can combine all your points from a Freedom, a Freedom Flex, from a Chase Sapphire Preferred, and you can move them all into a Chase Sapphire Reserve. And as long as you do that before October 25th,

then you will continue to get one and a half cents of value from all of those points up until October, I think 25th or 26th in 2027. So that's something you'll want to do if this is how you use your point. You might want to do it anyways. It just seems like there's not really a lot of downside there. So that's a change to redeeming points. I think for someone who doesn't want to transfer points, that's a huge knock, but this points boost feature may save the day, may not. We don't know yet. And then last,

Chase also launched a Chase Sapphire Reserve business card. It is very, very similar to the Chase Sapphire Reserve personal. Both the personal and the business will be launching on the 23rd next week. And so you'll be able to apply for them on that day. I believe that if you already have a Chase Sapphire Reserve, the way it will work is after, I believe, October 26th, you will start getting access to some of these new credits and bonuses online.

but the annual fee that you have on the first renewal after October 26th will be at the higher price. So if you're not interested in this card, then I would say it doesn't make sense to keep it past that date. If you do product change to it in the next few days before the 23rd, then again,

again, you will be grandfathered into the old version. However, you will not be eligible for the signup bonus. And just to be clear, the new Chase Sapphire Reserve signup bonus and the Chase Sapphire Reserve business signup bonus are rumored, and no one actually has a rumored number, but are rumored to be large bonuses. And it's also rumored

also rumored or maybe actually confirmed that you'll be eligible to get the bonus and open a new Chase Sapphire reserve card, even if you already have the Chase Sapphire preferred. Historically, you couldn't have had both cards and gotten the bonus. So this might be a great opportunity for another bonus starting next week. If you go to allthehacks.com slash cards, we'll put it right there at the top as soon as we have that. Again,

Again, if you're looking to get either of these cards and you want to support us, really appreciate it. I don't know the bonus yet, but as soon as we do, we'll update that page. And using those links is a great way to support the show. So as for what the business card is, it's very, very similar to the personal card. Same annual fee, same earning structure, except instead of 3x on dining, it will get 3x on ad spend. And that ad spend is uncapped. So if you are a business that spends a lot of money on ads,

This is going to be an incredible card. As for the credits, there's some big changes there. They're not exactly the same as the personal ones. And on the authorized users, authorized users will be free on this card, unlike the personal card, but they won't get lounge access. So the credits are where things are a bit different. You're getting the travel credit for $300. You're still getting $250 every six months for the edit.

which I'm not sure if that's actually valuable. You get the DoorDash credits, you get the $10 a month Lyft credit, but you're not getting the StubHub credit, the Apple TV or Apple Music credit. You're not getting the credit for Peloton and the Chase Sapphire Reserve exclusive tables. What you are getting is $200 every six months for ZipRecruiter, $200 a year for Google Workspace, and $50 every six months for giftcards.com. I don't think the ZipRecruiter credit is one I would use, so that's not really useful.

I think we do technically spend more than $200 a year on Google Workspace. So we'd get that credit without working on it. I make a bunch of giftcards.com purchases from now and then. So I think I could probably make that work and get some credit out of that. But overall, I would prefer the credits on the personal card to the business card. Similarly, you're getting IHG Platinum status. You're getting all...

all the same perks if you hit that spending threshold, except instead of $75,000, it's $120,000. But you are going to get A-List on Southwest. You're going to get Diamond on IHG. You're going to get the Southwest credit. And then instead of a $250 Shops at Chase credit, you get a $500 Shops at Chase credit. So what's my general consensus? If you live in a city where you regularly go to restaurants that are on the list for Chase, you're going to get $300 a year of credit. If you use Apple TV Plus or Apple Music,

that's another 120 to $240 of credit. And then if you have a Peloton, that's another $120. So for us, that's 240. We're not using Apple Music, so I won't count it. Plus 300 on the dining. That's an extra $540 of value from the card.

And so that's 540 positive. The annual fee went up to 45. So already I feel like I'm pretty ahead. The only thing I'm missing out on is getting an extra two X points on all travel that isn't flights and hotels, which.

is really just losing one point because I can just put those transactions on a VentureX card where I get two X points. So I'm missing one point on non-flight and hotel travel. And instead, I'm getting an extra point on flights and hotels for booking on the Chase Reserve. So if I think about what's in my wallet, this is a pretty strong contender to go head-to-head with the Amex Platinum on flights because I really like the purchase protections on Chase and they just close the gap by one extra point per dollar. And then on hotels, I think...

I think if I'm staying at a hotel that isn't using a hotel card like a Hyatt card or a Bonvoy card or a Hilton card, then for sure this is my new hotel card. So overall, the changes are, in my opinion, great. Yes, it makes it a bit more like a coupon book. Yes, it's kind of a pain in the ass to make sure you use it for all those things. But if you use it right, I think you're actually going to come out a few hundred dollars ahead than you would have historically. Now, obviously, if you're using a lot of Airbnbs, maybe that's not the case.

As for the signup bonus, I don't know what it is. I'm expecting it to be pretty big, somewhere in the 120,000 plus point range. I already have the card, so I can't apply for it. I guess I could downgrade it and reapply for it, but that just seems like a lot of hassle. On the business side, if there's a massive signup bonus in the 150 plus thousand point range, I'm

I think I'll probably go for it. I think making good use out of all of these credits and perks is pretty easy. And on the business side, it's probably a little trickier. I'm looking at the credits, $300 travel credit, $200 on Google Workspace, $200 on Google

$10 a month lift, $50 every six months for giftcards.com. It'll probably come pretty close to break even on that card for me since I'll already have the personal card. But if there's a massive signup bonus in year one, I think it could make sense to do it. Who knows what that'll be? Stay tuned. I will definitely send it in my newsletter. I'll definitely bring it up in a future episode. And hopefully it was helpful to run through the difference of everything that's changing on that card and the new card that's coming. All right, so...

So I hope it was helpful to hear me walk through all of this. If you want to get in touch, if you have feedback, thoughts, questions, podcasts at All The Hacks, I read every email that comes in. That's it for this week. I will see you next week.