Beginner’s Guide to Reward Travel

Want to learn how we maximize our points and travel for nearly free? Here are all the details for how to get started earning tons of points and learning how to use them strategically in order to get the most value out of them!

So you have some points and you want to know how to use them

  • Having the right cards is the key to traveling on points. Your Costco or Sam’s card may be earning you some rewards, but that is nothing compared to what you can do on some of these cards.
  • For years, we used our Capital One Venture card, which is an awesome travel card to have. But we didn’t really have a strategy on how to get more points other than our normal spending. Often times, I would just use our points to erase travel purchases like our flights. Little did I know the value these points could have been.
  • Some credit cards are BRANDED cards (United, AAdvantage, Hyatt, Costco…) and some cards are BANK cards that offer FLEXIBLE points able to be transferred out to several transfer partners. This is important to understand when considering a card.

Important Disclaimers and Tips Before you start

  • You have to be willing to put your regular spending on a credit card and not on a debit card. If you are using a debit card, you are not earning any points.
  • If you put your regular spending on a credit card, you have to pay on it in full either weekly or monthly. The reason for this is two-fold. 1. You don’t want to carry a balance and get charged extra interest fees. That’s not saving you money. 2. Money will be coming out of your checking account regularly just like it does when you use your debit card.
  • You have to be ORGANIZED. I cannot stress this enough. I started keeping track of our cards with a simple spreadsheet that I made. On there, I put how many points we currently have next to each card, as well as what the annual fee is and when. If you are not willing to be ORGANIZED, then please don’t try this.
  • You only work on one sign on bonus at a time. Once it is earned, I put that card up. You have to keep it open at least one year. Never close an old card that you’ve had for years. This is a part of your credit history.
  • Never spend more than you actually would with your debit card.
  • It’s ideal if you have a credit score of 750 or higher to get started. You will find that your credit score goes up as you open more cards and continue to pay them off each month. IT IS A MYTH THAT OPENING CARDS WILL LOWER YOUR CREDIT SCORE. So many of us who use multiple credit card points to travel are proof that it actually helps your credit if you stay organized and do this responsibly.

Here’s the link to our first Card: The Chase Sapphire

once you earn the points, How do you transfer them?

How exactly do you book a Hotel using your credit card points?

Once you transfer your Chase points to your Hyatt loyalty account, you then log into Hyatt and your points will be there. This can sometimes take a day or two depending on how many points you are transferring. You can see below that the Hotel du Louvre in Paris is 25,000 points a night. If you want to stay for 3 nights, you only need 75,000 points!! That’s so easy to get! (The price for our stay was 35,000 points per night during the summer). Once I realized that basically one card sign on bonus would pay for my hotel stay in London, I was ready to get started! This process works the same with other hotels like Hilton, Marriott, IHG, etc. However, Hyatt hotels require WAY LESS POINTS than other hotel chains.

How do you use your points to book flights?

  • You do the exact same thing above by transferring points to the airline loyalty account.
  • Please note that American Airlines is NOT a transfer option for any cards. If you want American Airlines miles, you have to get an American Airlines branded card. More on that later. (There is an option to book AA flights with another airline in the One World alliance such as British Airways – and you can transfer points to British Airways).
  • Once you have transferred your points to the airline account, they will take a day or two to be available. You log in to the airline website and make sure you select “miles” or “points” when you search. Otherwise, you will see the cash rate.
  • Several airlines have alliances. For example, you can book a United flight for less points on Air Canada. As mentioned above, you can book American Airlines flights with British Airways.
  • I often do some research to find low point flights using sites like Roame Travel and Seats.Aero.

What about other Cards?

Here’s a link to the Capital One Venture and The Venture X.

  • The Venture X does have a $395 annual fee but if you do get a $300 travel credit when you book through their travel portal. You could use this to book train tickets or a car rental! We used ours last year to book a cheer competition hotel.
  • I love to use the erase feature too for our Airbnb purchases, rental cars, and train tickets.

So far, we’ve only opened Citi Strata cards. We have also opened other Citi branded cards.

Favorite Branded Cards

I love American Airlines miles since we often fly through Dallas. I made it a point to get some branded AAdvantage cards. Here are some of the branded cards we’ve gotten:

A few more Important points

  • Wait 90 days before applying for a new card. Having a spouse to alternate with really helps too.
  • Wait 90 days between business cards. Alternating these with personal cards helps.
  • Wait until a card has been open at least a year before closing it.

This is our exact strategy we used when we started

Sometimes it helps just see exactly what someone else did to get started. We earned over half a million points within the first year!!! This helped us go to London in 2024 and Paris and South of France in 2025. CLICK HERE FOR EXACTLY WHAT WE DID!

Be sure to follow along on my Instagram page OUR POINT DESTINATIONS where I share all our point journey successes and tips!

And I’ll leave you this Example of the Power of Transferring Points!!

Want to learn more about the trips we’ve taken? I’ve broken down several itineraries HERE!

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