Well, my wife and I are kind of the degenerate case of getting credit card rewards since we are “digital nomads” traveling across the US, staying in mid tier Hilton hotels, using Uber, and flying everywhere. This means that 100% of our personal spending[1] goes on credit cards unlike most people who have car notes and mortgages/rent that they can’t put on credit cards.
Just on credit cards we get:
- 7-10% back on flights (Amex Platinum and transferring points to airlines)
- 10%-14% back on hotels (Amex Hilton Aspire)
- 5% - 8% back on dining and groceries. (Amex Gold)
- 4 - 8% back on Uber (Amex Green)
- 2-4% back on everything else (any of the above cards).
This doesn’t count hotel and airline loyalty points.
Yes, I’m taking into account annual fees. But all of the cards above have enough perks that they more than make up for annual fees - Uber credits, Clear credits, credits for hotels and airfares etc.
I’ve estimated that’s about 6.5% back a year on our budget. That’s more than we were paying in state taxes before we changed our official residence to a tax free state.
I also work in consulting, while I only travel 5-6x per year for work, many of my coworkers spend 40 weeks a year traveling a rack up credit card rewards by putting expenses on their personal cards and getting reimbursed. But they keep the rewards.
There is also an entire culture of “churning” credit cards for their sign up bonuses.
But I agree, for most people it isn’t worth it.
[1] we do have investment property that we have to pay the mortgage and a few bills on.
> This doesn’t count hotel and airline loyalty points.
Can you show your calculation for this? Hilton pesos get devalued on a daily basis in my experience, and they even nerfed their free weekend night with the Aspire credit card so that it is only useful for “standard” reward nights and not “premium” reward nights. Of course, all the nice hotels like Waldorfs and Curio will require premium reward nights.
I have never seen Hilton points worth more than $0.005 per point.
You’re not going to get a great value by staying at a Tru one night paying with a combination of points and money in East MiddleOfNowhere Nebraska.
But I’ve literally been looking at points vs money in every major city in the US and a few in Canada as I’ve been creating our itinerary.
With Hilton, when you pay with all points, you don’t pay taxes and fees and if you stay five nights and use your points, you get the 5th night free.
We stay exclusively at Embassy Suites, Homewood Suites and as a last resort Home2Suites so we can have two separate rooms (Embassy and Homewood) or at least have more space and a full refrigerator (Home2Suites). I work remotely and need the separate room to work.
You can’t really stay at a Waldorf or Curio when you are staying at hotels 280 days a year. During the winter we stay at our 2nd home/investment property.
Next year, we will be staying at the following places with all points for 7 days and getting values between .7 cents and 1 cent each: Los Angeles, San Diego, Santa Fe, NYC, Chicago and San Juan. This is just staying in mid range Embassy Suites. San Juan is at the Caribe for 10 days.
We won’t make it to the following cities until 2024. But I’ve seen good values in New Orleans, DC and Hawaii.
I was just referencing credit card rewards above. But you get 10x per dollar at Hilton, 10x for being a Diamond member (automatic with the Aspire card) and 14x with the Aspire.
Just on credit cards we get:
- 7-10% back on flights (Amex Platinum and transferring points to airlines)
- 10%-14% back on hotels (Amex Hilton Aspire)
- 5% - 8% back on dining and groceries. (Amex Gold)
- 4 - 8% back on Uber (Amex Green)
- 2-4% back on everything else (any of the above cards).
This doesn’t count hotel and airline loyalty points.
Yes, I’m taking into account annual fees. But all of the cards above have enough perks that they more than make up for annual fees - Uber credits, Clear credits, credits for hotels and airfares etc.
I’ve estimated that’s about 6.5% back a year on our budget. That’s more than we were paying in state taxes before we changed our official residence to a tax free state.
I also work in consulting, while I only travel 5-6x per year for work, many of my coworkers spend 40 weeks a year traveling a rack up credit card rewards by putting expenses on their personal cards and getting reimbursed. But they keep the rewards.
There is also an entire culture of “churning” credit cards for their sign up bonuses.
But I agree, for most people it isn’t worth it.
[1] we do have investment property that we have to pay the mortgage and a few bills on.