If you are brand new to travel hacking, you should start with this post.
Travel hacking can be confusing and overwhelming when first getting started. There a lot of credit cards to choose from and some not so obvious mistakes you can make when choosing your first cards. This post is meant to be a simple, basic guide that will start you down the right path.
You are going to earn the majority of your points and miles through large credit card sign up bonuses. Once you meet the requirements to earn the bonus on one card, move on to the next while remembering not to overspend trying to meet the spend requirements.
You are going to earn the majority of your points and miles through large credit card sign up bonuses.
These cards are my recommendations based on my experience in the game. Feel free to deviate from my suggestions, but I am recommending them because I believe they are the best path for someone first getting started.
Also in this post, I will present some examples of redemptions you will be able to make after just a year of basic point and mile earning.
Most of these cards have annual fees, but don’t let that scare you. The sign up bonuses alone are almost always well worth paying the annual fee for the first year, and many cards offer a ton of value making the fee a bargain. I go over credit card annual fees in detail here.
Before applying for any card, do a search for what credit score is needed in order to be approved. There’s no point in having a hard credit pull on your credit report if you can know ahead of time that your credit score isn’t high enough to be approved.
You want your first five cards to be with Chase. Chase has a well known restriction on how many cards you can open with them commonly know as the Chase 5/24 rule. The basics of it are that they will not approve a credit card application if you have opened five or more credit cards within the past 24 months. Credit cards opened from banks other than Chase count towards your 5/24 total.
You want your first five cards to be with Chase.
Chase offers some great reward earning credit cards, and you want to have as many as you can before you hit 5/24. If you have already opened one or more credit cards from other banks within the past 24 months but are still under 5/24, apply for the recommended cards until you hit 5/24 and then continue with this guide. If you are over 5/24, you can either wait until your oldest accounts fall outside of 5/24 or you can continue with the post 5/24 part of this guide. If you get serious into this game like I have, you will eventually start running out cards with appealing sign up bonuses. When that happens, you will eventually fall below 5/24 and be eligible for the Chase cards.
Your first card should either be the Chase Sapphire Preferred or the Chase Sapphire Reserve. Both currently have a welcome bonus of 60,000 points after spending $4,000 within 3 months of opening the account. These Chase Ultimate Reward (UR) points are transferrable to 11 airlines and 3 hotels chains making them very flexible when it comes time to redeem and the reason either of these should be your first choice.
The choice of which one to start with will depend on you. The Preferred has a $95 fee while the premium Reserved has a $550 fee and offers far more perks. I do a comparison of the two here.
Note that if your are a small business owner and can clear the $15,000 spend requirement, you will want to get the Ink Business Preferred credit first since it offers a large welcome bonus in the form of UR points. Most readers won’t be be small business owners, so I am leaving it out of this beginner’s guide. However, you might be surprised at what counts as a small business (hint: a travel blog counts 
) so this card may be worth looking into.
If you do get the Ink Business Preferred first, get one of the Sapphire cards next. Note that you cannot get the bonus on both the Sapphire Reserve and Sapphire Preferred cards at once. If you get the sign up bonus on one Sapphire card, you have to wait 48 months to get the bonus on the other.
For your next two cards, I recommend the Chase Freedom Flex and Chase Freedom Unlimited. Both are no annual fee cards currently offering $200 cash back after spending $500 within 3 months of opening the accounts. The $200 cash back is actually given as 20,000 UR points. If you hold the Sapphire Preferred or Sapphire Reserved, these points can be transferred to Chase’s airline and hotel partners. Without holding either Sapphire card, Ultimate Reward points cannot be transferred to airlines and hotels and lose a lot of their value. That’s why either of the Sapphire cards should be your first choice.
Without holding either Sapphire card, Ultimate Reward points cannot be transferred to airlines and hotels and lose a lot of their value.
With the Flex and Unlimited cards and assuming you hold either Sapphire card, you will earn 40,000 transferrable UR points with only $1,000 spend. These cards are also great for earning UR points through normal, everyday spend. The Freedom Flex offers 5% cash back in the form of UR points on up to $1,500 of purchases made at quarterly rotating categories. These are common spend categories such as groceries, gas, Amazon, Paypal, Walmart, etc. It also offer 3% back for dining including food delivery. If you can max out the earning each quarter, you’ll earn an additional 30,000 UR points a year.
The Freedom Unlimited offers a solid 1.5% back on all purchases in the form of UR points. This will be your go-to card for any non bonus category spend early in your travel hacking career.
Your last two Chase cards will depend on your travel preferences. Chase offers several airline co-branded cards with nice sign up bonuses. I currently have the British Airways Signature Visa and have had the United Explorer card in the past. Chase is also a partner with Marriott, Hyatt, and IHG. With your final two Chase cards before hitting 5/24, take a look at all the cards Chase offers. Go with whichever ones offer the best sign up bonuses and have perks with airlines or hotels that fit within your travel plans.
Before continuing with the rest of my recommendations, I want to show you some examples of the free travel you will have earned at this point.
Let’s say your first cards were the Sapphire Preferred, Freedom Flex, Freedom Unlimited, United Explorer, and Marriott Bonvoy Boundless card. Let’s also say that you took the full three months to earn each bonus, except for the Freedom cards which we’ll lump into a single three month period. If you can clear a $4k in three month spend requirement, you can clear $1k in three months. With the current offers, you will have needed to spend $11,000 total (though normal, everyday spend) within a year to meet the spend requirements. This will earn you a minimum of:
You could transfer a little more than 90,000 of your UR points to United and book a round trip lie flat business class seat to Munich. With your Marriott free night certificates, you would have multiple properties to choose from for a free three night stay. This same trip would cost nearly $12,000 out of pocket. But after a year of casual point and mile earning, you could book it for about $150 in fees plus points and free night certificates. Even if you include the annual fees of the cards, it would still only be about $450 out of pocket. And don’t forget, you don’t have to keep the cards after the first year. You can always cancel them or downgrade to a no annual fee card if you don’t feel like your are getting enough value to pay the fee.
You could transfer 105,000 UR points to United and fly a direct route to and from Tokyo in lie flat business class seats. With your Marriott certificates, you would again have a choice of multiple properties to redeem them at. This four day trip would cost almost $9,000 out of pocket. With a year of casual reward earning, it would only cost you about $50 (or $350 if you count the annual fees of the cards).
Flying in luxury not important to you and you’d rather bring a non-point earning companion? You can book the same trip to Tokyo on a different date for two in economy by transferring 90,000 UR points to United and paying $100 in taxes and fees. Out of pocket, the trip for two would cost you more than $5,000 with the hotel. Counting the card annual fees, you would only pay about $400 plus miles and free night certificates.
These were just a few random trips that I found that could be redeemed after a year of casual reward earning, and they are not even the greatest valued redemptions that you can find. There are destinations all over the world that you can find similar or better redemptions for. Keep in mind that you aren’t limited to choosing United Airlines here. Chase UR points are transferrable to nearly a dozen airlines which are why they are so valuable. Pair those points with a different co-branded Chase credit card so you can travel to your destination of choice.
After you hit Chase’s 5/24 limit, your options open wide up, and you can go multiple routes depending on your desired travel destinations. You get the most flexibility from transferrable points so I would recommend sticking to cards that earn them at first. However, if you have a specific redemption in mind, feel free to apply for a card that will help you earn that.
The next few sections highlight some cards that I think deserve your consideration. There’s no need to target any of the following issuers or cards in any particular order, but I would personally recommend Capital One as your next choice.
Capital One’s Venture and Venture X each offer 75,000 miles after $4,000 spend within the first 3 months of account opening. The miles are transferrable to Capital One’s 15 airline and 3 hotel partners. I recommend getting both, but you will need to wait 6 months in between since Capital One is known to only approve your application for a new card once every 6 months.
In my view, the Venture X is the best credit card on the market right now.
In my view, the Venture X is the best credit card on the market right now. It is a card that will never leave your wallet and is well worth the annual fee each year. If its $395 annual fee scares you, read this post to learn why it shouldn’t.
You will likely want to downgrade or product change the $95 annual fee Venture card to a no annual fee card after the the first year. The perks don’t justify the $95 fee after the first year, in my view.
If you got the signup bonuses from both cards, you’ve just added a minimum 166,000 transferrable miles to your balance and potentially another vacation similar to the ones mentioned above.
Citi’s offers transferrable points in the form of ThankYou (TY) points, and they offer several great cards that help you earn them. Citi currently has 14 airline transfer partners and 2 hotel transfer partners. The first two Citi cards I recommend are the Premier and the Double Cash.
The Citi Premier has an annual fee of $95 and is currently offering 60,000 TY points after spending $4,000 within the first three months of account opening. The card also offers 3 TY points earned for every dollar spent on restaurants, supermarkets, gas stations, air travel, and hotels.
The Double Cash pairs great with the Premier. It is a no annual fee card that is currently offering a $200 sign up bonus in the form of TY points (20,000 TY points) after $1,500 spend within the first 6 months of account opening. However, similar to UR points and the Sapphire cards, these TY points are only transferrable to airlines and hotels if you hold other specific Citi cards such as the Premier.
The Double Cash also earns 2x TY points for every dollar spent on ALL purchases. This is the best no annual fee card for earning transferrable points on general purchase categories. Once you have this card, it will replace the Freedom Unlimited in your wallet if you don’t have the Capital One Venture or Venture X.
Citi also offers several American Airlines cards with varying annual fees and sign up bonuses. American Airlines is not a transfer partner of any of the credit card issuers. As a result, their miles can be difficult to earn. Citi’s AA cards can be a great way to boost your miles balance.
UPDATE: the $200 welcome offer for the Double Cash card has expired since I wrote this article so I would ignore it and move on. The 2x TY points are nice, but you can get that from the Venture or Venture X.
AMEX has many great credit and charge cards to choose from. While not nearly restrictive as Chase, they still have some restrictions to how many cards you can have with them at one time so make sure to research this before applying for one of their cards. In general, you should be able to have up to 5 credit cards with them regardless of how many cards you have with other banks. They don’t restrict the number of charge cards you can hold at once nor do they count towards the number of credit cards you can have with them. Charge cards operate in similar ways to credit cards, but usually require you to pay off the balance in full every month which you should be doing anyway.
AMEX has their own transferrable points currency in the form of Membership Rewards points. MR points can be transferred to 17 different airlines and 3 hotel chains. AMEX offers 3 charge cards with nice MR sign up bonuses: The Green Card, The Gold Card, and The Platinum Card. They have AFs of $150, $250, and $695 respectively. To me, The Green Card offers very little value outside of the sign up bonus so I wouldn’t recommend it outside of the sign up bonus. The Gold and Platinum both offer good value and are worth your consideration. I make a case for why you might want to consider The Platinum Card and its high annual fee here.
There are 2 credit cards from AMEX offering MR points: the EveryDay and the EveryDay Preferred with AFs of $0 and $95 respectively. Both are currently offering relatively small sign up bonuses so I would recommend going after cards with larger bonuses first. With that said, I was recently offered 40,000 MR points to upgrade the EveryDay to the EveryDay Preferred. This was compared to the 15,000 sign up bonus currently being offered, and it was offered to me less than 6 months after downgrading from the EveryDay Preferred! It required the same $2,000 spend within 6 months. For this reason, it wouldn’t hurt to get the no annual fee EveryDay card and its 10,000 point sign up bonus along with the possibility of an upgrade down the road.
AMEX also offers a selection of Hilton, Marriott, and Delta co-branded cards with differing annual fees. The Hilton cards are great, and I highly recommend them if you are looking for free hotel stays with some excellent perks.
The Delta cards are worth a look if you are loyal to flying Delta, but Delta has pretty awful reward redemption rates so I’ve mostly stayed away from them.
I would steer clear of AMEX Marriott cards. They used to be pretty solid options but recently went through changes that make it hard to justify the annual fees. This is a rare instance where I would say the sign up bonuses are not worth the trouble. If you want a Marriott co-branded card, Chase is currently offering much better options.
It doesn’t take long to build up a large point and mile balance. Start with Chase until you hit 5/24 and then begin targeting cards that will help you meet your travel goals. Cards that offer transferrable points to multiple airlines will give you the most flexibility. Be open minded to some of the high annual fee premium cards. They often offer tremendous value.
And remember not to overspend chasing sign up bonuses. It’s easy to overlook this in the beginning as you start seeing what is possible with this game, but you absolutely do not want to be paying interest on credit card balances.
If you found the information here helpful and decide to apply for any of the cards mentioned, please consider signing up through my referral links (if available) on the home page.
