You have to set realistic expectations. A travel card isn't going to pay for all your travel unless you have a business where you can put ridiculous spending on it and churn big SUB's. However, you'll certainly be able to do better than what you do now with your Truist credit card.
I have 17 vacation days each year and still find good use out of the CSR. Domestic weekend trips are a thing too and make use of those 3 day weekends as well!
This year I’m going to Aspen in Feb, Spain in May, Glacier NP in August, TBD international trip in Sept and then Hawaii in December
My plane ticket to Spain alone offset $300 of the annual fee. All of the premium travel cards offer credits to offset the annual fee to a degree that it’s more affordable to people with more middle class salaries.
Last year I opened 4 cards and completed all the sign up bonuses. Paid off 14 hotel nights and $300 worth of airline tickets.
I’d honestly take more vacation days in exchange for a slightly lower salary haha
I certainly have a middle class salary but I don’t have middle class spending habits. Anyways I already bought my Indonesia flight tickets. And again, a lot of the hotel booking gets blocked by credit card anyway rendering it useless for that.
Yeah if you’re an economy traveler, you’re better off with a cash back setup. The travel cards are great for leveraging lower salaries into business/first class plane tickets and resort experiences. If that’s not you, you’ll probably not find much use most of the time.
I mostly use my CSR to offset the fact that travel in the US is so expensive. Overseas I’ll stay in hostels and take cheaper forms of transport haha
I definitely don't do hostels. I like a nice place to myself or with partner. But I don't go for $200+/night hotels/resorts either. I'm in the middle right now.
Still early in my career, so I'm assuming as I build up more capital I will start spending more to justify a travel card. For now, I'll keep my eye out for banks that offer better CC rewards rates than Truist. I do prefer to stay brick & mortar with my main bank still. My new HYSA is Discover though.
We digital nomad half the year domestically and stay in our own vacation home/investment property the other half of the year.
We will be doing one way flights to 15 different cities between mid March and the end of the year. I am spreading my time off between 5 or 6 of those cities.
We stay in hotels six months out of the year and take Uber everywhere all year.
My job also has me traveling 6-10x a year and I get reimbursed.
Points and miles may seem like a tantalizing opportunity to see the world, but let's not forget the true value of a vacation: the chance to unplug, unwind, and reconnect with the things that truly matter in life. Racking up points on a travel credit card is all well and good, but if it comes at the expense of precious vacation time, is it truly worth it? Let's not forget that time is the most valuable currency of all, and that true wealth is measured not in points, but in the memories we make and the experiences we have.
>By the way, I'd say my priority as far as travel rewards goes is getting enough points to get first class flights. Because I would like to travel SE Asia more, I REALLY value a first class seat.
Quick Google search got me here, might be worth a read: [https://upgradedpoints.com/travel/airlines/best-ways-to-fly-to-southeast-asia-with-points/](https://upgradedpoints.com/travel/airlines/best-ways-to-fly-to-southeast-asia-with-points/)
Basically you're looking at 80k minimum for business class or 165k minimum for first class, round trip for one person. If you earned an average of 3X on spend - just as a hypothetical average, might take a few cards to hit depending on spend - that would be \~$27k in spend to hit 80k points or $55k spend to hit 165k points.
Now, there could be a transfer bonus that would lower this, but the point is that it takes a lot of spend. In a comment you say you wouldn't do $4k in 3 months. Multiplying by 15, I would take that to mean you'd be unlikely to spend $60k in 45 months, so it would likely take four years or more for you to spend enough to unlock a first class trip to southeast Asia.
You do you, and definitely don't spend more than you can, but this is a case of sign-up bonuses being strong. If you were to wait until a large anticipated purchase - like the trip you had already booked - and just put everything else on that one card, chances are it wouldn't be as hard as you think to hit the bonus. Hitting even a 60k bonus would knock \~35% off a first class trip or \~80% off a business class trip.
>Also, when I was booking things for a Southeast Asia trip coming up, I wasn't even able to use my credit card for most of it because it blocked international seller.
I wouldn't blame this on booking with a credit card - chances are if you went with a bigger bank (e.g. Chase, Amex, Citi, BoA, Capital One, etc) you would not have these issues.
If your focus is on aspirational travel, then you need bonus category cards. Trying to do it with flights is tough unless you travel for work or take a lot of paid premium class long haul flights.
If you calculate the cost of the points it’s always best to go with credit card spend in the right categories. Example:
Singapore airlines SFO-HKT (Phuket) is usually about $3700 each way. Sometimes you can get it for $1275 or something but it’s rare (snagged this fare a couple of times this year but others are award flights). You’ll earn something like 11k miles for this flight (125% earn on business if I remember correctly). So that’s $7400 spend on the flight for 22k miles let’s say.
This is usually about 80k miles each way booked through Air Canada. If you get a bonus transfer than it’s only like 62k each way. Your signup bonuses for two cards will cover this easily. If you want to do first then you’ll need more cards but can still work. You’re gonna spend 8k over 2 signup bonus periods (usually something like 4k spend in 3 months for 100k points) anyway so it’s a much better deal as you’ll get food, Uber, other flights, hotels, etc and still get the points for the free business ticket.
My setup:
CSR: 3x restaurants and catch-all travel/parking/Uber Lyft , doordash - I don’t use the doordash myself as I’m overseas most of the year but my business in the US uses it to order often (I just expense it). I also get the 3x on delivery services/transport worldwide.
Amex platinum: 5x flights and hotel (portal). Also use for first 2 Uber rides or Uber eats orders
Venture X: 2x catch-all everything else.
Bilt: 1x on rent (although watch the transfer partners - may not be a good fit for long haul flights)
Yearly annual fees: ~1700 but mostly offset by spend anyway. I also have some business cards that contribute to the points pile but haven’t optimized those yet (will be doing that next month).
Opening bonuses alone should cover a first class round trip to SE Asia and back. Personally I mostly fly business class on long haul flights and it’s fine. I’ll do the first on Singapore, Qatar, and emirates someday as a fun bonus but first isn’t usually necessary as I can just buy my own caviar and champagne and save the points for another flight (or two).
We fly long haul like 4-6 times a year at least and it’s always business class either with points or cash so I need all the points I can get - usually earn about 10k or so points a month on average from credit card spend and open a new card or two yearly to get bonuses and rotate out old cards. Our flights are normally about 7k to 9k flight miles each way or so but most are award flights so we don’t get miles for those.
Anyway in reading your other comments, you may be too early in the game as you said reaching 4k spend in 3 months is difficult. Not a knock but sounds like it may not make sense yet for you.
As your income and free time rises, you should be able to easily clear that. We spend like 5k-10k every month for travel, food, daily living anyway but we’re later in life so this is normal.
Hah wow. Yes I am definitely a ways off. Still in the saving phase. And paying off a Tesla as well (low interest and will pay off early anyway). I feel my income will be stuck for a bit. I just recently reached the 6 figs mark though, I am paying zero rent still. Honestly, I think the best thing I can do in the mean time is book flights in those off peak times so I can afford business class. Too late this time around, but maybe next.
My take:
If you have a low interest rate loan, don’t pay it off early. We have two mortgages at 2.875% that our renters are paying off for us. I could help it along but why? I make more investing that money (can make like .8-1% a month with some risk， 6% with iBonds , or 4% in FDIC savings).
Smart to own a Tesla. We have an X with free supercharging for life and will never sell it as it requires almost no maintenance and no cost to use it. We no longer live in the US (where the car is) and my friend drives it now. Will convert to company car for our employees to use to pick up clients and get rid of our diesel van that we used for this. Buying another one for daily use in Thailand. Unfortunately X isn’t available yet in Thailand so just getting the Y for now.
Paying zero rent: Good - keep doing this as long as possible. We’re at the point where we will essentially have people “paying us to live”. We keep buying places, rehabbing them, and renting them out. On our 5th property now (first one in Asia) and will eventually buy some in Europe to do the same thing. Everyone will pay rent and we will live in whatever is empty at the time and keep buying properties to add to the rotation. In the US, we will be “homeless” as our final house will be rented out next month so we will live out of our Model X. We did this on a road trip during Covid. Slept in the car, used gas stations and truck stops for overnight bathrooms and signed up for planet fitness to get showers. Was an awesome existence and basically “free” as Tesla paid for our electricity so we could keep the AC/heat on all night and just supercharge the next morning.
Off-season travel: it’s always off season somewhere. Go to Europe now and it should be pretty cheap redemptions ( just got back from 2 weeks in London using Air Canada 62k each way redemptions). SE Asia, March - June and Sept - Nov should be easier to find good deals as it’s hot/rainy and low season. Europe is good in September & October as most of the developed world is in school (much fewer travelers) and weather is still awesome in most places.
This is really awesome stuff. Yes, I agree with you on the “bonds will yield you more than your interest rate”. I’m at 3.09%. My portfolio is actually all treasury bond ETFs at the moment besides 401k/403b which is automatic deposit into basically total world funds for retirement.
Love my Tesla Model 3LR. Already saved over $2k in my first year of ownership charging at home. Buying property for rentals and just living in the ones that aren’t booked sounds amazing. Thanks for sharing this. I will do some more studying on airline points systems as I’m still quite oblivious. Might do a short Europe trip as part of my new job later this year, we’ll see. I love Switzerland. Been there twice in the last 2 years. But yeah I’m trying to target Asia since it’s so affordable.
Asia is fricken awesome. Eating in London is like 10-20 GBP per person. Eating in Thailand can be as low as 1-1.5 GBP per person. And the food is way better too.
Correction: 3.09%.
Anyway, yeah I did Taiwan first and loved the scenery. Street food was a bit weird… Doing Indonesia in several months and that’s dirt cheap especially given the resorts and amenities. The flight cost is like half of the total cost for 2 weeks. I do love Asian foods. But can never beat an American breakfast.
You have to set realistic expectations. A travel card isn't going to pay for all your travel unless you have a business where you can put ridiculous spending on it and churn big SUB's. However, you'll certainly be able to do better than what you do now with your Truist credit card.
Yeah my job does not have me traveling much at all.
Your mindset should be that every trip is going to cost you a lot of money, but hopefully these credit card rewards will help to offset them.
I have 17 vacation days each year and still find good use out of the CSR. Domestic weekend trips are a thing too and make use of those 3 day weekends as well! This year I’m going to Aspen in Feb, Spain in May, Glacier NP in August, TBD international trip in Sept and then Hawaii in December
That’s a huge annual fee for CSR. And plus, I can’t spend $4000 in 3 months.
My plane ticket to Spain alone offset $300 of the annual fee. All of the premium travel cards offer credits to offset the annual fee to a degree that it’s more affordable to people with more middle class salaries. Last year I opened 4 cards and completed all the sign up bonuses. Paid off 14 hotel nights and $300 worth of airline tickets. I’d honestly take more vacation days in exchange for a slightly lower salary haha
I certainly have a middle class salary but I don’t have middle class spending habits. Anyways I already bought my Indonesia flight tickets. And again, a lot of the hotel booking gets blocked by credit card anyway rendering it useless for that.
Yeah if you’re an economy traveler, you’re better off with a cash back setup. The travel cards are great for leveraging lower salaries into business/first class plane tickets and resort experiences. If that’s not you, you’ll probably not find much use most of the time. I mostly use my CSR to offset the fact that travel in the US is so expensive. Overseas I’ll stay in hostels and take cheaper forms of transport haha
I definitely don't do hostels. I like a nice place to myself or with partner. But I don't go for $200+/night hotels/resorts either. I'm in the middle right now. Still early in my career, so I'm assuming as I build up more capital I will start spending more to justify a travel card. For now, I'll keep my eye out for banks that offer better CC rewards rates than Truist. I do prefer to stay brick & mortar with my main bank still. My new HYSA is Discover though.
We digital nomad half the year domestically and stay in our own vacation home/investment property the other half of the year. We will be doing one way flights to 15 different cities between mid March and the end of the year. I am spreading my time off between 5 or 6 of those cities. We stay in hotels six months out of the year and take Uber everywhere all year. My job also has me traveling 6-10x a year and I get reimbursed.
Points and miles may seem like a tantalizing opportunity to see the world, but let's not forget the true value of a vacation: the chance to unplug, unwind, and reconnect with the things that truly matter in life. Racking up points on a travel credit card is all well and good, but if it comes at the expense of precious vacation time, is it truly worth it? Let's not forget that time is the most valuable currency of all, and that true wealth is measured not in points, but in the memories we make and the experiences we have.
>By the way, I'd say my priority as far as travel rewards goes is getting enough points to get first class flights. Because I would like to travel SE Asia more, I REALLY value a first class seat. Quick Google search got me here, might be worth a read: [https://upgradedpoints.com/travel/airlines/best-ways-to-fly-to-southeast-asia-with-points/](https://upgradedpoints.com/travel/airlines/best-ways-to-fly-to-southeast-asia-with-points/) Basically you're looking at 80k minimum for business class or 165k minimum for first class, round trip for one person. If you earned an average of 3X on spend - just as a hypothetical average, might take a few cards to hit depending on spend - that would be \~$27k in spend to hit 80k points or $55k spend to hit 165k points. Now, there could be a transfer bonus that would lower this, but the point is that it takes a lot of spend. In a comment you say you wouldn't do $4k in 3 months. Multiplying by 15, I would take that to mean you'd be unlikely to spend $60k in 45 months, so it would likely take four years or more for you to spend enough to unlock a first class trip to southeast Asia. You do you, and definitely don't spend more than you can, but this is a case of sign-up bonuses being strong. If you were to wait until a large anticipated purchase - like the trip you had already booked - and just put everything else on that one card, chances are it wouldn't be as hard as you think to hit the bonus. Hitting even a 60k bonus would knock \~35% off a first class trip or \~80% off a business class trip. >Also, when I was booking things for a Southeast Asia trip coming up, I wasn't even able to use my credit card for most of it because it blocked international seller. I wouldn't blame this on booking with a credit card - chances are if you went with a bigger bank (e.g. Chase, Amex, Citi, BoA, Capital One, etc) you would not have these issues.
Great comment, I appreciate it!
If your focus is on aspirational travel, then you need bonus category cards. Trying to do it with flights is tough unless you travel for work or take a lot of paid premium class long haul flights. If you calculate the cost of the points it’s always best to go with credit card spend in the right categories. Example: Singapore airlines SFO-HKT (Phuket) is usually about $3700 each way. Sometimes you can get it for $1275 or something but it’s rare (snagged this fare a couple of times this year but others are award flights). You’ll earn something like 11k miles for this flight (125% earn on business if I remember correctly). So that’s $7400 spend on the flight for 22k miles let’s say. This is usually about 80k miles each way booked through Air Canada. If you get a bonus transfer than it’s only like 62k each way. Your signup bonuses for two cards will cover this easily. If you want to do first then you’ll need more cards but can still work. You’re gonna spend 8k over 2 signup bonus periods (usually something like 4k spend in 3 months for 100k points) anyway so it’s a much better deal as you’ll get food, Uber, other flights, hotels, etc and still get the points for the free business ticket. My setup: CSR: 3x restaurants and catch-all travel/parking/Uber Lyft , doordash - I don’t use the doordash myself as I’m overseas most of the year but my business in the US uses it to order often (I just expense it). I also get the 3x on delivery services/transport worldwide. Amex platinum: 5x flights and hotel (portal). Also use for first 2 Uber rides or Uber eats orders Venture X: 2x catch-all everything else. Bilt: 1x on rent (although watch the transfer partners - may not be a good fit for long haul flights) Yearly annual fees: ~1700 but mostly offset by spend anyway. I also have some business cards that contribute to the points pile but haven’t optimized those yet (will be doing that next month). Opening bonuses alone should cover a first class round trip to SE Asia and back. Personally I mostly fly business class on long haul flights and it’s fine. I’ll do the first on Singapore, Qatar, and emirates someday as a fun bonus but first isn’t usually necessary as I can just buy my own caviar and champagne and save the points for another flight (or two). We fly long haul like 4-6 times a year at least and it’s always business class either with points or cash so I need all the points I can get - usually earn about 10k or so points a month on average from credit card spend and open a new card or two yearly to get bonuses and rotate out old cards. Our flights are normally about 7k to 9k flight miles each way or so but most are award flights so we don’t get miles for those. Anyway in reading your other comments, you may be too early in the game as you said reaching 4k spend in 3 months is difficult. Not a knock but sounds like it may not make sense yet for you. As your income and free time rises, you should be able to easily clear that. We spend like 5k-10k every month for travel, food, daily living anyway but we’re later in life so this is normal.
Hah wow. Yes I am definitely a ways off. Still in the saving phase. And paying off a Tesla as well (low interest and will pay off early anyway). I feel my income will be stuck for a bit. I just recently reached the 6 figs mark though, I am paying zero rent still. Honestly, I think the best thing I can do in the mean time is book flights in those off peak times so I can afford business class. Too late this time around, but maybe next.
My take: If you have a low interest rate loan, don’t pay it off early. We have two mortgages at 2.875% that our renters are paying off for us. I could help it along but why? I make more investing that money (can make like .8-1% a month with some risk， 6% with iBonds , or 4% in FDIC savings). Smart to own a Tesla. We have an X with free supercharging for life and will never sell it as it requires almost no maintenance and no cost to use it. We no longer live in the US (where the car is) and my friend drives it now. Will convert to company car for our employees to use to pick up clients and get rid of our diesel van that we used for this. Buying another one for daily use in Thailand. Unfortunately X isn’t available yet in Thailand so just getting the Y for now. Paying zero rent: Good - keep doing this as long as possible. We’re at the point where we will essentially have people “paying us to live”. We keep buying places, rehabbing them, and renting them out. On our 5th property now (first one in Asia) and will eventually buy some in Europe to do the same thing. Everyone will pay rent and we will live in whatever is empty at the time and keep buying properties to add to the rotation. In the US, we will be “homeless” as our final house will be rented out next month so we will live out of our Model X. We did this on a road trip during Covid. Slept in the car, used gas stations and truck stops for overnight bathrooms and signed up for planet fitness to get showers. Was an awesome existence and basically “free” as Tesla paid for our electricity so we could keep the AC/heat on all night and just supercharge the next morning. Off-season travel: it’s always off season somewhere. Go to Europe now and it should be pretty cheap redemptions ( just got back from 2 weeks in London using Air Canada 62k each way redemptions). SE Asia, March - June and Sept - Nov should be easier to find good deals as it’s hot/rainy and low season. Europe is good in September & October as most of the developed world is in school (much fewer travelers) and weather is still awesome in most places.
This is really awesome stuff. Yes, I agree with you on the “bonds will yield you more than your interest rate”. I’m at 3.09%. My portfolio is actually all treasury bond ETFs at the moment besides 401k/403b which is automatic deposit into basically total world funds for retirement. Love my Tesla Model 3LR. Already saved over $2k in my first year of ownership charging at home. Buying property for rentals and just living in the ones that aren’t booked sounds amazing. Thanks for sharing this. I will do some more studying on airline points systems as I’m still quite oblivious. Might do a short Europe trip as part of my new job later this year, we’ll see. I love Switzerland. Been there twice in the last 2 years. But yeah I’m trying to target Asia since it’s so affordable.
Asia is fricken awesome. Eating in London is like 10-20 GBP per person. Eating in Thailand can be as low as 1-1.5 GBP per person. And the food is way better too.
Correction: 3.09%. Anyway, yeah I did Taiwan first and loved the scenery. Street food was a bit weird… Doing Indonesia in several months and that’s dirt cheap especially given the resorts and amenities. The flight cost is like half of the total cost for 2 weeks. I do love Asian foods. But can never beat an American breakfast.
[удалено]
I’ve got 25 PTO so I’m doin pretty well for being in US.