Travel Party of 5 | Points & Miles for Family Travel

2024 Recap: 15 Credit Cards & 1.4 Million Points (Without Wrecking Our Credit Score!)

• Raya & Duane

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Thanks for finding our podcast! We are a family of 5 who does most of our travel using credit card points and miles and we share how we leverage credit card offers to earn a ton of points/miles so we can afford travel as a larger family.

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Click here to apply for the Chase Sapphire Cards we refer to in this episode. And if you've already got one of the Chase Sapphire cards, you'll want to apply for these business cards, linked here. 


Speaker 1:

In today's episode, we're sharing our 2024 recap, along with some tips on how to make the most of your credit card benefits before the year ends, so make sure to listen in. Hi, I'm Raya.

Speaker 2:

And I'm Dwayne.

Speaker 1:

And we are your hosts of the Travel Party of Five podcast, where we share how we travel as a family of five around the world.

Speaker 2:

We will also share how we use points and miles to travel as affordably as possible and sometimes even completely free.

Speaker 1:

So if you're wanting to travel more with your family but you're not sure how, we'd love for you to listen in.

Speaker 2:

So welcome to our podcast, where we hope you learn a thing or two to get you closer to your next trip. Hello friends.

Speaker 1:

Welcome back.

Speaker 1:

Welcome back, hello friends, welcome back welcome back thank you for being here thanks for tuning in this is travel party five podcast, and we are very close to the end of the year, and so we thought we would do a recap of how many cards we've opened, points we've earned, trips we've taken really quickly. And then also I have some like tips and strategies to make sure that you are utilizing your credit card benefits, because a lot of them are either on a quarterly, a monthly or an annual basis, and so, with the year and the quarter ending, it's important to make sure that you're getting the most value that you can out of the cards to make the annual fees worth it.

Speaker 2:

So yeah, so hopefully this year has been good for you. It's been pretty good for us.

Speaker 1:

It's been a really good year, so okay. So between the two of us, how many credit cards have we opened this year?

Speaker 1:

lot 15 cards 15 cards yep, seven for duane and eight for me, and the most.

Speaker 1:

Let's really quickly talk about the most recent ones, because one of them I wasn't expecting to open um, and this is I just opened this like a week or two ago and that is the Barclays America.

Speaker 1:

No, yes, barclays, american Airlines MasterCard, and so, because you probably don't know this, but Barclays and city up until now we're both issuers of American Airlines credit cards, so you could get a Barclays card, which you already have, and earn AA miles, and then you could. There's a few city cards you can get, um that are also earn AA miles, and they've announced just in the last week or so that Barclays will no longer be a bank issuer of American Airlines credit cards, so they're moving just to city and so the Barclays card is going to go away sometime in the next year. So you already have that card, but I applied for that card for myself because it's a fantastic card and you only have to spend, make one purchase on the card and pay the annual fee and then you get the miles, and there was an elevated offer when I signed up. So we're gonna get 70 000 aa miles once I buy a pack of gum or something on the card yeah, it's the easiest way to get miles.

Speaker 2:

Do a lot of cards, no that way?

Speaker 1:

no right, no, that's pretty, pretty rare, and so the the downside is it does take up a 524 spot. So I am now currently at 524, which is a bummer, but I have another card that's going to drop off next month, so I'll be under shortly. So that's why I decided it was worth it, and if you didn't already have it, I probably would have applied for you too, but you already have it and we've already used those miles. Okay, so 15 cards opened this year. In my opinion, that is a lot of credit cards.

Speaker 2:

In a way I'm sorry and you can do that every year to get those miles.

Speaker 1:

Well, not anymore, because the card is going away. I think generally, yes, you want to keep the card open for a year. Then you could cancel it and I'm sure there's some kind of language around when you would be eligible again. I don't know what it is for that specific card anymore, but since it's going to be going away in a year probably not Well, I mean, maybe we'll try to see if I can cancel yours and then wait a month and reapply you before it goes away. I mean, I wouldn't be opposed to that, but we'll just have to see, because the card is probably going to go away well before the year is over, if I had to guess.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so 15 cards opened Again, that's a lot, I think. If you're not opening 15 cards a year, I wouldn't stress out about that. I wouldn't feel like you're behind. It's a marathon, not a sprint. We just went really hard this year because we have some big trips planned for next year, and so I think if you're only opening a few cards a year, like that's still totally fine. As a side note also, our credit scores are still the same pretty much as they were at the beginning of this year, so that's also great.

Speaker 2:

Yep.

Speaker 1:

Do you want to tell everyone how many points we've earned this year?

Speaker 2:

So far this year, we earned 1,370,000 points, which is a lot.

Speaker 1:

Yep, and there's a few of those cards that we've recently opened we haven't hit the minimum spend for. So we have actually two that we're working on right now, plus the American Airlines card, which I don't really count that because you just have to make one purchase and there's no minimum spend really. So two of those cards that we've opened we haven't earned the points for yet and we one we will for sure by the end of the year. The other one probably not duane just got approved for the amex gold personal card and so that means I'm rich do you want to tell the story about the card?

Speaker 2:

I just, you know, growing up, whenever I saw someone pull out the American Express gold card, I just for some reason just thought they were rich. And now that I got one, I know, I know, yeah, I feel rich, but not rich.

Speaker 1:

We have a rich life. It's not necessarily money rich always but yes.

Speaker 2:

I can agree with that.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so 1.3, almost 1.4 million points, with some more to come, and that is so. I want to add, that is only welcome offers, so that does not include referral uh bonuses or points from when we each refer each other to cards. That's really the only place we get referral points from Um and it also doesn't include um like Rakuten or any kind of stacking points options like that. So that is only welcome offers and I think that's pretty exciting.

Speaker 2:

I mean for sure.

Speaker 1:

As for trips taken, I mean we've done podcast episodes on every single trip we've taken. So I'll just quickly recap. Tell me if I'm missing one, because when I was making the list I felt like the list was kind of short. I don't know um we went. So, as a family, we did costa rica. We bent in march. That was in march um, we didn't go anywhere.

Speaker 2:

January, february, we didn't go anywhere.

Speaker 1:

January February.

Speaker 2:

No.

Speaker 1:

Oh, I did forget the Grand Cayman. Okay, yeah, so we did Costa Rica in March. We went to California twice, I think, we did Huntington Beach and we also did a week in San Diego Yep, and this is as a family and then we went to Kauai. Yep For fall break D duane and I went to the grand caymans yep just the two of us. We also took two short weekend getaways one to new mexico, albuquerque, yep, and the other two san diego, that was Yep.

Speaker 1:

And then I went to Europe on a girl's trip with my mom and my sister. So, plus a few other work trips for me, I went to Portland, I went to Orlando, I went to Chicago all for work. So busy year of travel. Next year is going to be the same. I yeah, I already have a couple of work trips.

Speaker 1:

I have to go to Montreal in January. Montreal, it's going to be freezing, it's going to be freezing. I'm going to, like I'm I mean, I'm cold when it's 70 degrees outside, so I don't know how I'm going to do have to bundle up. Yeah, like, how do people pack winter coats? Like? I need to figure that out. I need to see if there's like a thinner winter coat that I can get, because the one I have is very poofy. If you live in a cold climate and you or and or you travel off into a cold climate, please tell me like a good coat to buy that doesn't take up half my suitcase? Okay, please, and thank you.

Speaker 1:

Oh, and the other family trip we did is we did go to Flagstaff a couple weeks ago and we are going. That's going to be our next podcast episode. It won't be very long, but it'll be about that trip. Okay, so what? I don't know what is that. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 9 trips total, not all as a family, but 9 trips which is pretty good it's pretty good.

Speaker 1:

And then trips booked for this year. For next year we have three and a half trips booked and they're all pretty big trips. So we have two weeks in europe paris and spain. We have two weeks in japan, we have a week in yosemite slash lake tahoe, lake Tahoe, and then the half trip is we likely have another trip to Paris and somewhere else in Europe next year, but it's not fully booked yet because the airline availability is not open yet for our return flight got the flight there, yep there, yep.

Speaker 2:

Which we booked with points.

Speaker 1:

We booked with points, yep and waiting on the return flights to pop up and make sure that they are the point price that I want to pay In order to know if we can make the trip happen. And from there we'll book hotels, because there's two different airports we could potentially fly out of and they're kind of they're not super close to each other. So the airport that we fly out of will determine the hotels that we book, if that makes sense. So, anyways, okay. So yeah, that's our year 15 cards, one point I'm going to call it 1.4 million points, because we have some more coming and again, we're just two regular humans with full-time jobs that still manage this hobby and have gotten a lot of travel. Oh, I'm sorry, I totally forgot. I buried the lead here. I also calculated how much money we saved in travel this year by using points.

Speaker 2:

Which is pretty shocking.

Speaker 1:

It was a lot of money. So the way I did this is I basically just like when I book a trip, I look at what the cash price was and I put it in a little document and then I add up like what did we actually pay? Like you know, because when you do flights, you pay taxes and fees. Right, if you were to pay cash, you would pay those same taxes and fees. So I basically added up what we paid versus the what the cash price would have been, and then subtracted Okay, the total amount of travel that we got for free in 2024. And I'm like I'm'm when I say free, it's in quotation marks because we used points uh was 41,201 dollars and 68 cents 41,000 dollars it's a lot of money that we didn't pay.

Speaker 1:

Now that doesn't include, like food costs or activity costs or anything, because we don't use points for that. But this is like all flights, all lodging that we used points for and now the I will say the one thing that it doesn't include is credit card annual fees, and so I do want to be super transparent and I'm going to share what we paid in a credit card annual fees as well for the year. This is between the two of us and this is again. Remember that we opened 15 cards, because the number is pretty high, so we paid $4,254 for credit card annual fees.

Speaker 1:

However, I need to like if that number freaks you out, I need to like pause and take a minute, because that is what the annual fees cost, assuming you are not utilizing any of your credits on any of those cards, and we use almost all of the credits on our cards. So like, for example, the Chase Sapphire reserve card has a $550 annual fee, but $300 of that is an annual travel credit that we use every single year. So, yes, we're paying it, but we're also getting the money back, if that makes sense, when we book anything that codes us travel on that card. Same thing with the Capital One. It's a $395 annual fee for the Venture X, but it comes with a $300 travel credit and that's usually where we would book a rental car or something.

Speaker 2:

And those two cards come with club access at airports Lounge access yes like club access at airports, lounge access. Yeah, yes, which is, you know, every time you go there, you, you spend at least save, at least save, I mean at least 100 bucks especially if it's all five of us.

Speaker 1:

yeah, and even if, even if it's just duane and I I mean in whiskey alone, duwayne is getting our money's worth, don't you agree?

Speaker 2:

Oh yeah, I agree, but you know, got to use it up.

Speaker 1:

So don't. And a lot of those cards we will not pay the annual fee a second time. Some of them we will, but some of them we won't. And so if someone said, like, would you pay $4,000 to get $40,000 in free travel, like I would say yes, yeah, of course, who wouldn't? So if the $4,200 number freaks you out, like I wouldn't let it there's we're not actually paying that much money.

Speaker 1:

So, um, and on that note, I think let's talk about making sure you're getting the most of your credit card benefits before the end of the year, because a lot of your credits are going to expire. And like, do not do this on December 29th or December 30th, because the charge needs to post to your account. And then, like, the credit needs to be applied for most of these and that can sometimes take a week or two. So, like today, when this episode airs, it is Monday, december 16th. Like, do this today and expect that it's going to take you a little more time than you're probably thinking, if you've never really sat down and thought about your credits before, because when I sat down this morning to try to figure it out and come up with a plan, I was a little bit overwhelmed, which is probably not a surprise, because we opened 15 cards. A lot of them have credits that we can use, and they're all new to us. So I think, like probably we should talk about a couple of the more like the bigger ones that we're going to be focusing on and then also give a couple of tips on how you can find what your credits are.

Speaker 1:

Ok, so, for us, our big one is the American Express Business Platinum card, which I have in my name has a $200 airline credit that I need to use before the end of the year. It's an annual credit, and so the way that this credit works is you have to first enroll in the credit and you have to choose an airline. So one way to do this is to just choose an airline that you have an upcoming flight with, if you're planning to pay for bags, or you know if you need to pay for bags or whatever. Or what I'm going to do because we don't have anything that we can use it for right now is I'm going to buy $200 worth of United Travel Bank credits. So I'm going to first go and enroll in the credit and I'm going to choose United as my airline I've already done this actually, and then I'm probably gonna wait 24 hours and then I'm going to go into my United account.

Speaker 1:

I'm going to go under like my like log into your United account and there's a spot that says travel bank and I'm going to use that card to pay for $200 of United travel bank credit and then next summer, when I go to book our flights for our Yellowstone trip which I think is summer of 2026, we are likely going to fly United at least one way, and so I'm going to use those credits for that. That's my plan currently, anyways. That could change, but we also get from we have one of the IHG cards. We also get $25 United Travel Bank credit every twice a year, so every first half and second half of the year. Those do expire within six months, I think, so we can't use all those, but it'll be an extra little boost when I go to use it.

Speaker 2:

So um, okay, so how do the credits work for you know other cards?

Speaker 1:

So for the, I think the the super important thing to know is you have to first enroll in the credit. If that makes sense, so like, and that's goes for both chase or Amex. Um, those are really the only like cards we have at this point. So you need to go into your either Chase or Amex account and, like, you basically need to click like add to card or enroll in this benefit or whatever, before you're going to use the card, and then you just go and use the card for whatever it is that you're buying, and then you should get a statement credit of you know, for example, the Amex. It'll be $200 statement credit once the charge posts, and so it's super easy to use. But you have to make sure you enroll, because if you don't enroll, you're not, you're not going to get the statement credit, and so I think the easiest way to make sure you're getting all your credits is the card pointers app, and they also have, like, a Chrome extension, and the Chrome extension is free. They try to get you to sign up for an account. You actually don't have to that. You can do a free account, but you don't have to, but you can download the Chrome extension or whatever browser you use, I'm sure they have it and then you sign into your Amex accounts and it will automatically add all the available offers in like a few clicks. So it'll ask you like do you want to do this? And you can just select all and click Add to card, and so then you can like easily look through, like do you want to do this? And you can just select all and click add to card, and so then you can like easily look through, like okay, I need to, you know, buy from Nike. Like is there a Nike offer on this card or whatever it might be? Yeah, and so I think that's super, has been super helpful for me.

Speaker 1:

And then I also, in the app itself, the card pointers app, you add in the credit cards that you have and then it will tell you like you have your $5 DoorDash monthly credit available, and then you just have to manually like slide the bar to say like, yes, I've used this credit. Or, you know, obviously don't slide it if you haven't, and it's a good reminder. So, like we have a bunch of credits that we have to use and once I use them, I'm going to go through and swipe that we did it and it's probably worth noting that the credits available to us, based on the cards we have, is $4,113. And remember what we paid in annual fees? What did I say? $4,113 in potential credits. And so now can we use all of these credits? No, like, there's an Indeed credit on the MXBiz Platinum that I just have no use for and so we won't use it. But will we use most of them? Yes, 100%, um, but will?

Speaker 2:

we use most of them. Yes, A hundred percent. How would someone use money on indeed Well?

Speaker 1:

it's a business card. So it's like if you have to make a job posting or something like that for your business, but we don't, we don't have that for our business. So, um, yeah, and so I highly recommend the card pointers app. It is completely free to use. They do have like a premium thing. I don't pay for it, Although I could see there's value in it, Because I think if you pay for the premium, you can type in like let me use my Nike example. So I want to. I need to buy something from Nike and it will tell you like which cards have the Nike offer. Okay, without the premium premium, you have to go through each card and check. So it's. I can see that it where it would save you time if you have a lot of cards like like we do, like we do now sounds very helpful, but yeah, so when I have, when you have someone like you on on our team.

Speaker 1:

We don't need that no, no, I, I do need that. I use that. Yes, I use that because it's it's just a lot. It's a good way to make sure, like, okay, I'm, I'm making sure to use these credits. Like people joke that amex is, like they call it, a coupon booklet and it really is kind of like that and it's a little bit annoying, honestly, to have to jump through these hoops, but the alternative is to pay $4,200 in annual fees and not get anything back, which is not my jam.

Speaker 2:

Do you know the difference between jam and jelly?

Speaker 1:

Oh my gosh, we're not telling that. Yeah, we're not telling that. Joke on this podcast for a different show. Um, I feel like that's it. I feel like that's that's our recap, yep, um, so a couple things. If you've you've made it this far.

Speaker 1:

Uh, we have one more week left of our review contest, so next week we will be choosing a winner. The way that you can win this raffle to win a $50 gift card to the store of your choosing is to leave us a review on iTunes or Spotify or wherever you listen, and email us a screenshot of that review, and then you will be entered into a raffle to win a $50 gift card. We've had a few entries already a good amount actually and I, that being said, I still think there's a. If you do a review and send us a screenshot, you have a really solid chance of winning, and so the email that you would send that to is travelpartyof5atgmailcom, the number five not spelled out, so travelpartyof5atgmailcom. And again, leave us a review wherever you listen. We super appreciate it. It helps more people find our podcast.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, we would appreciate it and thanks for listening.

Speaker 1:

Yes, thank you very much. We hope everyone has had a great year. We have one more episode to go before the end of the year and then we are likely taking a one to two week break before we are back in 2025. And I already know our first 2025 episode is going to be like our strategy for the upcoming year, when we don't have any points left because we have used almost all of them. So, yep, yep, yep, yep. Okay, thank you all for listening. Don't forget to leave a review, send us a screenshot so we can get you entered into the raffle and we'll catch you on the next one.

Speaker 2:

Yes, thanks again. Have a good one.

Speaker 1:

Bye, thank you.