Hi, I’m so glad you’re carefully considering whether traveling with points is for you instead of blindly jumping in. I will never advise you to just jump in without first assessing whether this is right for you and your life.
The first place to start is the very basic question of do you have the credit score to be approved for credit cards. The right score is 720 or higher. If you answered no, don’t worry. Work on raising your score by reducing debt and making sure your payments are paid on time. When you have done this, you can begin your points journey. If you answered yes, then let’s go to the next section.
Next thing you need to assess is whether you are a responsible person. You will need to be responsible for a lot of things when it comes to traveling with points. The most important items being spending only what you know you can afford to pay back by the end of the month AND paying your credit card on time every single month so that you do not ruin your credit score. If you can do that then go to the next section.
The whole point of the points journey is NOT to spend more money. The goal is to use your normal monthly spending to reach your minimum spend. So grab a pencil and paper because we’re about to do some math. Make a list of expenses you pay every month that can be paid with a credit card and estimate how much you pay for each expense. Add everything together to get your total and then multiply it by 3. Most credit cards give you 3 months to meet the minimum spend on the card. Now look at your new total. When you do research on credit cards to open, try to stick to cards that have a minimum spend close to your number. Open higher minimum spend credit cards when you have a big expense coming up.
I will say that 90% of new people start their points journey with the Chase Sapphire Preferred card. It has a $95 annual fee and will require a $4,000 minimum spend in 3 months in order to receive 60,000 points. These points can be traded in for a cash value of $600, which I wouldn’t recommend doing. You can also book travel directly through their travel portal for a 25% boost, which I also wouldn’t recommend. The reason why so many people start with this card is because it has amazing transfer partners (like Hyatt and Southwest Airlines) that will allow you to turn your $600 worth of travel into over $1,000 worth of travel very easily!
If you plan on opening the Chase Sapphire Preferred card, please use my referral link located in my Linktree in the upper right hand corner of this page. This is a no cost to you way to support my work. Thank you!
If you have any questions, please reach out to me on my Instagram page. I’m more than happy to help.
