Are Credit Card Rewards Really Worth It in 2026?

23:34People approach this like it was a second job, and they were spending five, 10 hours a week managing, tracking everything in these very complicated spreadsheets. What recommendations do you have right now for balancing the desire for simplicity with the desire to optimize, because it seems as though those two are, you know, live in a constant tension. They feel to a certain extent, mutually exclusive. Yeah. I mean, I live in that constant tension. Like I would say half of the lessons and takeaways that I talk about regularly are that tension. And I would say, I mean, one, you've probably talked about satisficing and how satisficers are definitely happier than maximizers, but one, you don't even have to make the decision right away, right?

24:18You could earn points and then decide to use them at, you know, booking travel or redeeming them for statement credits and treat them as a cashback card effectively and not worry about playing the points game. So you don't have to decide upfront. So that's one. I would also say that you don't have to get it perfectly. I regularly meet people who are like, gosh, what do I do? I just want to take this trip. It's like, just take the trip. I always talk about my sister-in-law and brother-in-law who run a business and they put all of their spending on Southwest cards because they earn enough points to get companion passes and they have two kids.

24:51And so they have companion pass. The Southwest card is not the best travel rewards card in terms of what it earns on all of your spending, but they earn a bunch of Southwest points. They have two companion passes. So every time they buy a flight for two of them, they get to bring their kids for free. They don't think twice about it. They know that they're not perfectly optimized, but they're really happy with the outcome of what they have. I would encourage people to not worry about whether you did it perfectly. There's always time in the future to decide whether you wanna play it to the perfect, perfect level.

25:22But if you have enough points to take a trip that's exciting, just take the trip. Don't worry about whether it's the best possible use. I would say double check that it's not a horrible use. If you're thinking, should I transfer my points to United to book this flight? Well, just search in the Chase Travel Portal and say, would it be less points to just book it here? Like that quick comparison of like, Like if I bought the flight in cash with my points on the travel portal of my credit card or transferred them to an airline, you know, like that's worth doing. Just make sure you pick the one that's the best deal.

25:52But needing to get the best deal, it's sometimes a waste of time. The honest answer I have for myself is I just stop what I'm doing and I try to go outside and take a walk. And almost every time when I'm on the walk, I'm like, I think we've hit the 80-20. Like usually, like I'm trying better and better to stop at the 80, not at the 90 or the 95. I think we're 80 % of the way there. We found a trip that sounds really good. We can make it work. Let's just do that and move on. Most of these people that I've talked to and most of the people listening, like there is another thing they're doing maybe to generate income.

26:24I always ask myself, if I spend another five hours trying to save like$50 or I spend another five hours building my business or doing something else, I could probably make more than$50. And so you got to put some value on your time. And as simple and silly as this is, if I just got in my car and opened like the Lyft driver app or the Uber driver app and just started driving, I could probably make, I'm going to very approximate for the Bay Area, 20 bucks an hour. If we get to the point that I'm spending hours to save tens of dollars, a better use of my time would be to go drive around and, you know, give rides for Lyft or Uber.

27:01Not to say I want to do that. But like once I realize that, I'm willing to watch a movie instead of drive around. So like I got to think about what my time's worth. And if I'm spending it poorly, when I could be hanging out with my kids or sleeping or working, that's where I try to realize that the optimization doesn't matter. If I'm planning my anniversary, and it's like a big milestone trip, maybe I'll spend the time to try to like find the best deal. But I think you have to remove yourself from the situation for a moment and reflect on whether continuing to optimize is serving you. And it's sometimes easier if you could do something to break.

27:38Like if you're in that spreadsheet and it's two hours, maybe set one of those little kitchen timers every time you're like, I'm going to go research this thing. I'm going to set the timer for 20 minutes. And when it dings, I'm just going to walk away for a minute. And in that walk for one minute, I often realize like I don't need to keep going. But if I didn't walk away, I'd be there for three hours. Right, right. Yeah, you get into that zone of hyperfocus, just the alarm on your iPhone. Yeah. Set alarm for 25 minutes. Go. And then stop. You don't have to commit to going on a run. You could literally just walk away, say, I'm going to walk to the mailbox.

28:10You know, it could be like these very simple things. You know, it's one of the perks of having a pet that has to be walked. I know that I have to break my day up to walk the dog. And like when I'm walking the dog, I usually go, oh, why am I wasting my time this way? I didn't get to the three things that were important because I was focused on this other thing.

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32:57We started this conversation by talking about how the highest tier premium cards, Chase Sapphire Reserve, Amex Platinum have higher fees, but more offers. Does that reflect demand from the market? Do we have a market right now where the top tier of users want even more luxury products? And if so, is that counterweighted by demand at a more basic tier? In other words, is demand becoming increasingly K-shaped? I can definitely speak to the kind of luxury travel market in that hotels are seeing more demand. Like the demand for high-end properties is not dwindling away. And I would say, unfortunately, this kind of social projecting world we live in where everything we do is shared in photos with everyone has led people to have astronomical expectations for a vacation.

34:00We were reflecting over Thanksgiving about vacations as a kid. It was like we would get in a car and drive to my grandparents' house. Like that was the vacation. And now it seems like it's almost normal and expected to be like, well, we're gonna go, what foreign country are you gonna go to? What exotic beach are you gonna go to? Like we have these expectations for what vacation even means that I think sometimes we've never even taken a minute to reflect on. And unfortunately, there are a lot of people that haven't taken that minute to reflect, which means there's a lot of demand for nice things.

34:33And if you look at a lot of the perks that were added in this kind of couponization of credit cards, Delta Cards, they added a$200 hotel credit. The Chase Sapphire Reserve added a credit for their luxury collection, the Edit,$250 every six months. Amex is their fine hotels and resorts,$300 every six months. Like, they are luring people for these cards with expensive luxury hotel credits. And the question is, is it actually working? And I think the jury's still out. I know that when the Chase Sapphire Reserve relaunched, they had kind of a special high offer for points. And then I can't remember the exact sequence of events, but it went away.

35:18and then they brought back something that was even better. And they kind of limited to only doing it in branch at a Chase Bank. But the idea that they are still pushing these big offers has led kind of industry commentary to say that the launch didn't go as well as everyone expected. I heard that about it as well. But also the launch, what exactly happened? Because they launched, pulled back, relaunched. And there's a lot of speculation about what happened in the middle. I think they launched that they were doing it, but they didn't have the changes take place because there was a lot more talk about the negative changes that would happen to people who had this card than the changes that would be beneficial to new people.

36:01And I think that's the challenge when you relaunch something. You think, wow, this new version is so cool. But this, like you started out, the Chase Sapphire Reserve was like the card for our kind of generation of millennials. And so most people had it. And so we weren't interested in what it looked like as a new cardholder. We were interested in how it affected us. And the feeling we got was, wow, you're charging me more and you're getting rid of some of the things I used. Okay, yeah, you're adding some other stuff. But like the stuff I knew is now changing in a negative way. The handling of that story didn't go that well, at least for existing cardholders.

36:38I don't know where it netted out. I know that at the end of the day, it seems like a lot of people didn't actually, you know, they threatened, oh, I'm going to get rid of this. And like, did they actually? I'm not sure. Like, I guess I could go look at Chase's financial statements and maybe try to figure it out. But the size of the welcome offers associated with a lot of these cards leads me to believe that they're, you know, people aren't just grabbing them off the shelves without being motivated by lucrative offers. So we'll see what happens in the long run, right? The trade-off for the first year of a new cardholder on any of these cards is positive, right?

37:14If you're going to get 200 ,000 points for opening one of these cards that you could make worth at least$2 ,000, well, for year one, who cares about a$700 fee? Like if you really, if you're going to be given$2 ,000 plus all the credits, and I think it'll come out in December, if you open up a card in December, a lot of these credits are calendar year. So you get the credits for 2025. then you get them for 2026. And then your annual fee the next year, you kind of have 30 days to decide what to do and cancel. So if you opened this card in the end of December, you might be able to use the 2025, 2026, and then in January, 2027 perks.

37:52Now is this magical time where whether it's three years or two years, you might be able to get a lot more of the perks than you think in that first year. But then the question is what happens every the year after that. And so we don't know yet because these all launched in the last year. I would argue that for day-to-day spending, there are some cards that make a lot of sense that don't have huge annual fees. And if they have even high annual fees, what it takes to get value out of them is easier. And Capital One is just not playing the game, right? Capital One is like, our highest fee card is$3.95.

38:27And the value proposition is really simple. We give you a$300 travel credit. You can use it in the Capital One portal to book flights, hotels, rental cars. We're not going to throw all these different kinds of coupons on the card. And if you don't like that, we have a version of the card that earns the exact same way and the annual fee is$95. They're taking a different approach, which is pretty refreshing. It's like one card, there's a$95 and a$395 version. They both earn 2x points on everything. You choose whether you want the lounge access and some of these things for a higher annual fee that's offset by a travel credit of the same amount the annual fee increases or not.

39:07For a lot of people, that's just like an easier story. It's like, I don't have to pay almost$1 ,000. Everything's 2x. I don't have to think, gosh, well, should I get another card? You know, my optimizer mind says, get one card that optimizes everything, like the Capital One Venture or Venture X, and then get one card that really rewards categories if you spend a lot in them. So if you're like, I've got a dining travel card and a 2x everything card, that two card combo is like, that's the 80-20 for almost everyone. And if you spend way more money and you run a business, great, you go down the rabbit hole more.

39:43If you want more points, don't try to get another card to optimize some area of your spending, wait for a great offer and get that. Or this is something I learned in 2025, which is a little bit of a tangent but I think it's it's worth sharing we booked a trip to go to Costa Rica and we stayed at this new Waldorf Astoria it was beautiful hotel we had a great stay we used all of these Hilton free nights and points to book it and I thought gosh I was getting so much value out of this but when I went to book it you could book it with points because I did you could also buy Hilton points on the Hilton website for half a cent each and so this room that had you been playing the points game, you'd think I got this great deal because the room might be$2 ,000 and you got it for 120 ,000 points.

40:29Well, they were selling points for half a cent on their website. So you didn't need to have ever played the points game and you could have bought the points to make that room$600 a night. And they do a fifth night free. So like you could buy four nights of points and get the fifth night free. So like you could get this$2 ,000 a night room for less than$600 a night just by buying the points on the Hilton website. You didn't have to get the credit card. You didn't have to be earning them for years. You could have been playing cash back forever. Not every hotel chain or airline sells their points at a low enough price that these kind of deals happen.

41:03But it just made me realize that I never needed to play the points game at all to get this awesome deal. Anyone could just go to the Hilton website, buy the points, book the room, done. I think as airlines and hotels realize that their loyalty programs are the business, in In fact, for the major US airlines, if you look at the market cap of the company, meaning like what is the value of United Airlines, and you break down all the components of it, the value of United and Delta and Americans loyalty program is greater than the value of the airline. And there's this amazing YouTube video that you can put a link in the show notes I have no affiliation with, but they break this all down.

41:41It's like at the end of the day, Delta is a loyalty program that runs an unprofitable airline because the unprofitable airline is necessary for them to run a loyalty program. I'm going to make these numbers up, but it's like if the Delta Airlines is worth$10 billion, the loyalty program is worth like$13 billion and the airline is worth negative$3 billion. Now, that's a little bit of an oversimplification, but like directionally is correct. And so the business of buying and selling points and miles is Delta's business, is United's business. And like they just happen to fly airlines on the side because it's necessary to make the whole thing work.

42:17You know, when you think about it from that perspective, everything is being run so that if you don't play the game well, you're probably losing because these companies' goals are to make money. So if you don't like playing the game, go get a card that just gives you two or more percent cash back. Just walk away. I will not judge you at all. In fact, I'll probably have many days where I'm jealous of you. When you talk about airlines selling these points, the big buyer of these points are the co-branded credit cards that they work with. Exactly. Yeah. But sometimes there are some airlines, and I realize this is probably a little bit advanced, but Avianca is a member of Star Alliance, which is the same airline program that United's a member of.

43:00Avianca's, I think I ran the math this year, they've sold their points probably 14 or 15 times. And many United flights you can book with Avianca miles and they sell them for very, very cheap. So there are times where there's a great deal to go from San Francisco to Frankfurt and business class. And yes, if you had United miles, you could just book it and it'd be way easier because there's no penalty for cancellations and all that stuff. But you could also just, most of the time, Avianca miles are on sale. You could buy them on their website, book the flight, get a screaming deal. And there's actually companies that have been created to take advantage of that market that will basically sell you that United flight for like 30 or 40 % off.

43:38Because on the back end, they're buying and brokering all these points and getting these great deals and making it so you don't have to think about it. And so if there's a$5 ,000 flight to Europe that it's a great deal on points, yes, you could play the points game, or you could go a site like flyflat.com and you could buy the flight for like maybe$3 ,500. Now it'll come with a bunch of restrictions. Like you're not buying the flight that if you cancel, you're going to get United credit. It's probably non-refundable, but there are ways to kind of play the points game without actually playing it by buying points, booking flights through sites like flyflat and that kind of thing that mean that you're not giving up all the deals by not playing the game.

44:20You're giving up some of them and some of the flexibility, but not all of them. And that actually ties well with another question that I was going to ask, which is when you were talking about going to the Hilton website and buying the points, the thing that struck me was, yes, but you need to train your brain to remember to do that. And I think for people who are not used to thinking like this, there isn't necessarily that pause before booking a hotel room where you're like, wait a second, let me check to see if I can buy the points that would, you know, like that's a whole other like mental habit that many people have yet to form.

44:57And not only is it something that you have to train, like it still happens to me. Like just the other day, I bought our kids suitcases for a trip. Like so it was Christmas. They're getting two cool little suitcases. And the website I was on, like there was a coupon and a Black Friday promo. And I was like, I got a great deal. And then I checked out. And the next day I realized, oh, my gosh, I never went to look whether I could have gone through one of these shopping portals like Rakuten or Cassidy. Capital One Shopping. And I looked and I was like, oh, I could have gotten another 5 % off. So like even I, even I who lives and breathes this, who runs a podcast about this, I still haven't fully been able to make sure I check every single item off before I'm buying something.

45:43Usually if it's full price and there's no deal, that's the trigger for me. I'm like, this is expensive. I should see if I can get a deal. But I totally lost the game on Black Friday because I was like, oh, this is such a good deal. It didn't even cross my mind to see if there were ways to make it even better. And so yes, you totally have to retrain your mind. It's probably easier when you're planning a big vacation or making a large purchase to kind of pause and say, gosh, this is expensive. Is there a way to make it cheaper? And maybe the answer is no. But in the world of AI tools, anytime you're about to make a really big expense, go into whatever tool you like, Gemini, ChatGPT, and say, hey, I'm about to book a big trip.

46:23Are there ways that this big trip or this big purchase could cost less money, I imagine you might get some feedback. Well, do you have frequent flyer miles? You could just kind of go back and forth. And I know because a lot of the content I've made on this, I have heard is now showing up in some of these responses. So you can indirectly get my feedback by asking these questions. And I've had new listeners join our podcast say, oh, I found you because I was asking a question to chat GPT and it suggested and I listen to one of your episodes. And so as much as AI might replace a lot of content, for now it seems to be also sending us traffic.

47:00So that's cool. Chris GBT. Yeah.

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49:05Are there any favorite AI prompts that you have that you would recommend people use? I feel like that is a great question that I would love to ask lots of other people. I am a poor prompt writer. other than I've given the like persistent feedback to ChatGPT to not be so nice. I'm like, you know, I've gone in, there's a way in the settings you can say like, here's the thing I want you to always know. And I was like, I'm just so sick of the AI tools always trying to like validate my feelings. And I'm like, well, what do you think about this? And they're like, well, that's such a good idea. I'm like, well, what if it was a bad idea?

49:42Like, I don't want you to just make me feel good. Like I want you to be an expert here. And if I'm saying, would it be better to buy a round trip ticket through Greenland, I want you to say no, that's dumb. Instead of, well, that could be interesting if you want to go see, you know, that kind of stuff. So the prompt I like is just telling in the settings, look at this with a critical eye. Please tell me when I'm wrong. Don't always make me feel good. I care more about getting the right answer. Treat me like a scientist. Don't be a therapist. Like that level of prompting, but on an individual prompt basis, the only great hack I've heard here is first ask your AI tool to write you the prompt.

50:25Say, can you help me write a prompt for how I would do this thing? Then you take that prompt and open up another window with different contexts and then ask with the prompt. So that is what I would do if I were trying to get better at writing prompts, is I would literally use another session to ask a tool to help me write the prompt. Or you could ask one tool to help you write it and then paste that prompt into a different tool. Like ask Claude to help you write something that you then paste into Gemini or ChatGPT and vice versa. Yeah. I don't know to what extent different chats share all the context.

51:03You know, you could probably open up an incognito window or something, but I don't know the answer to whether if you ask it in one chat and then use it in another, will it know that you already had that conversation or not? With Claude specifically, because that's the one that I use the most, with Claude, they just started a thing where your various chat sessions now all can reference each other. Because I will start a chat session and it'll reference, I mean, little things, like it knows the name of my cat in a brand new chat session. And it'll bring, it'll be like, oh, and then with Tazzy, and I'm like, how did you know?

51:36We haven't talked about that. But it knows that from a different session that took place weeks ago. Yeah, I've noticed that with my kids. And I'll be like, oh, we're planning a trip. And they're like, oh, are you bringing your two kids along? I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa. What's going on here? But lately, I've been playing a lot with writing just software and using my cursor to build stuff. It's just wild how much progress you can make so fast that if you're thinking about anything in life, you're like, oh, it would be really cool if I could have a tool that did this. You would be surprised at how quickly you could build a tool that would do that thing.

52:13This whole world of on-demand tools to do things. For going back, I bet it would be very easy for you to use an AI tool to say, hey, help me make a browser extension that anytime I'm on a travel website, will you pop up an alert on any screen after I've searched for dates that says, hey, don't forget to do these five things. If you're trying to train your brain to remember to do things, why not rely on technology to help you train your brain to do it? Anytime I'm checking out on a store on any e-commerce site, I want a shopping extension that pops up and says, hey, did you check for coupon codes?

52:55Did you look at shopping portals? Whatever that is. Here's your checklist. Yeah. I would use these tools to try to support you building these habits in whatever aspect of your life that is. You know, we're talking about going into the new year. If you really struggle with remembering to work out, yeah, you could set a reminder on your phone, but you know, you could probably build a tool that says, hey, insert into my calendar these things. Use these tools to help you build better habits and live a more intentional life in the year to come. I think that's what we're getting towards. And they're just starting to be good enough that they can do a lot more than they could months ago.

53:31Like if you're listening to this three months from now, you could probably do more things that we, you know, we're even thinking of right now. We're coming up on the end of a year. You know, I'm not much for these prescriptive New Year's resolutions. That's not my style, but I'm kind of going in more mantra focused. It's like in 2026, I just want to be more intentional. And I think that's what I probably said in 2025. So, you know, maybe I need to work harder. But I just feel like that is my goal is to spend the time the way I want to take the trip I want to. A challenging question one of my guests asked me once was he's like, when you're planning a trip, are you choosing the trip or is the trip choosing you?

54:12And he was kind of alluding to the fact that when you have a lot of points and miles, maybe you go to these sites and these sites say, hey, the best deal for your points is to go cruise around Scotland. And now all of a sudden you're in Scotland and you're sitting down there with your partner and you're saying, gosh, isn't this awesome? We got such a deal. And then you're both like, but didn't we want to go to the beach? Like, you know, like, are you in control? And you can use points to be in control, but it can sometimes, you know, the deals can chase us. And now all of a sudden we're like, well, like I didn't get the aura ring or maybe you wanted some other fitness tracker.

54:45You wanted the whoop band. Yeah. And now you're wearing the Oura ring because your Amex Platinum card gave you a credit. And every time you look at it, you're like, I can't even buy the thing I want because I've let this credit card dictate it. Now, don't get me wrong. My wife and I both have an Amex Platinum. I even love my Oura ring. So that was not, you know, this is not a don't let the world control you kind of every, you know, be scared of things conversation. Just look at everything and say, do I really want this? Is this what I want? Is this serving the goal I have? And if not, that's fine.

55:16Get rid of it. But if it is, or if you're not sure if it is, keep it around and kind of check in and see how it feels. I do want to say referencing back to something you said way earlier, keeping your credit history. If you have a long credit history with one particular card, I just want to validate that point because I did this myself just a couple of months ago. I had a very, very long history with, it was actually an airline co-branded card. It was the American Airlines Advantage card, which I know everyone in the travel space is like, don't get a card that is specific to any particular airline.

55:51So I know I've broken the cardinal rule, but I've had this card for like 12 years. And I had the premium version of that card, which at the time that I got it was, I think 400 a year or 450 a year. And I just set a calendar reminder that right before the card member anniversary, I would call them and say, hi, can I speak to retention? And then they would always offer me some type of a deal. And usually it was, if you make a minimum spend of X per month, then we give you a$50 statement credit per month. And they would give a deal that was good enough that the actual renewal rate would end up being maybe a hundred bucks, 150 bucks.

56:30So I've kept this card for, I've had a very long history with it. And then two things happened. One was that they raised the rate. I don't remember off the top of my head, but I think it's somewhere in the neighborhood of 650 a year right now, 600 or 650 a year. So one was that they raised the rate pretty significantly. And the other was that retention now just doesn't offer the same type of deals that they used to. I didn't want to lose the credit history that I've built with them. So I did exactly what you talked about. I just downgraded to the$95 a year version of that card, but I still have my entire credit history with them.

57:09So it didn't affect my credit score. So I just wanted to say that as a personal example of applying several of the points that you raised, negotiating on your card member anniversary and also downgrading when needed, just as a personal example of, hey, this stuff works. Yeah, I mean, when you have a good credit score, it unlocks lower rates on loans, whether it's a home loan, auto loan, It makes it easier to get approved for new cards There's a ton of value to having a good credit score. It's pretty complicated There's multiple tiers of going into it. You probably have done an episode I know I did like this really probably like an hour-long deep dive on credit reports and scores a few months ago Um, it was episode 221 And I would just encourage anyone who's like I want to optimize that I put that together and it was a pretty deep dive into it We'll link to that in the show notes There are a bunch of things you can do to kind of tweak and manage your credit to kind of put you in a really good position to get approved for new cards that have big bonuses.

58:11I think my parting advice is if you want to earn a lot of points in 2026, I would challenge you to think less about a card that's going to earn you an extra point on some category that you spend some amount on and think more about whether there's a card that would give you 100 ,000 points for giving it a chance. Give it a chance for a year, even if you have no long-term goals with it. But the end result might be a lot better than you think. And that would be the way to accumulate a lot of points and travel for free and do all the things we talk about. Wonderful. Well, thank you for joining us.

58:50Where can people find you if they'd like to learn more? Yeah, I mean, I spend every week on my show called All the Hacks going down. Everything from travel points and miles to personal finance to life to health, It's kind of an exploration in my journey of kind of trying to optimize everything with the same lens we talked about of like trying to find that 80-20. So you're not, you know, maybe I'm going down the full rabbit hole so you don't have to would maybe be one way to describe it. And so wherever you listen to podcasts, you can search for that. And then every week I send a newsletter that is basically all the best kind of deals, news, finds and everything I'm finding each week that don't squarely fit into the podcast because we try to record it a few weeks in advance.

59:31and you can find that at allthehacks.com or just search for my name anywhere. And I think that's it. Awesome. Well, thank you again for spending this time with us. It's always good to talk to you, Chris. Yeah, I'm glad we got to catch up and happy new year, everyone.

59:49Thank you, Chris. What are three key takeaways that we got from this conversation? Key takeaway number one, credit cards didn't just get more generous, they got more complicated and they didn't just get more expensive, they got more nuanced because higher fees don't necessarily translate to higher value if you weren't going to use them anyway, or if the benefits change your behavior and now you're going out of your way to use stuff that you otherwise wouldn't have. Premium cards are now justifying fee hikes by stacking a bunch of credits. That's what he meant when he said it It got more coupony.

1:00:26But that only matters if it's something that you are going to use in the first place. If a benefit nudges you into spending that you otherwise would not have chosen, then it's not providing real value. There's a StubHub credit that every six months you get$150. If you're regularly buying tickets to go to sporting events and you buy them on StubHub, great deal. I haven't used mine. I have no plan to use it. I looked and I found myself like, oh, I guess I could buy tickets to the World Cup next year, but they're like$1 ,000. So now I'm going to buy a$1 ,000 ticket I wasn't sure I wanted just so I could save$150.

1:01:02That is the first key takeaway. Key takeaway number two, the real points leverage comes from welcome bonuses rather than category tweaks. Most people overestimate how much value they get from optimizing their everyday spending. Like, oh, I'm going to put groceries on this card and gas on this card and restaurants and dining on this card in order to maximize all of the value that I'm getting from all of these cards. I mean, that can do a little, but I mean, unless you're running a major business through that and you've got a whole lot of volume flowing through, probably the juice ain't worth the squeeze.

1:01:36But the big wins are gonna come from big signup bonuses rather than squeezing extra points out of small categories. If you're willing to do the things it takes to make your points go further, I still think the points game is awesome. And the way to win in credit card rewards is that banks give you these massive bonuses when you open new cards. You're never going to get all the points you need to take all these great vacations by getting a card that earns you like one extra point per dollar on, you know, streaming services, which you probably don't spend thousands of dollars on a year. Finally, key takeaway number three, If the whole points game feels stressful, cash back is actually surprisingly freeing.

1:02:22You don't need to necessarily ultra optimize. The simplicity of getting some cash back that you can put into an investment account, that can outweigh the theoretical upside of points. Experimenting with something like cash back as a points person doesn't mean you have to do it for the rest of your life. I experimented with it for a little bit and I was like, hmm, this feels pretty nice. I didn't commit and say, I'm never going to earn another point again for the rest of my life. I just said, what would it look like to start putting more transactions on cards that earn cash back? And how does that make me feel?

1:02:57Those are three key takeaways from this conversation with Chris Hutchins. Thank you so much for being an afforder. If you enjoyed today's episode, please do three things. First, share this with your friends. If you're traveling over the holidays, share it with the people on both sides of the flight, your departure city, your arrival city, friends, family, people at the holiday party, share it with your seatmate on the plane, share it with the Uber driver, share it with the people at the New Year's Eve party, because that is how you spread the message of F-I-I-R-E, the message of being smart with your money and practicing great financial habits.

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