The Wandering Koi

One of my favorite podcasts is Point Me to First Class. It is podcast focused on using points and miles to travel more and better. One of the host’s tag lines is that your expenses are your greatest untapped asset. The idea is that we all spend money regularly on things we need for our everyday lives. From groceries to gas to mortgages or rent, even taxes, there are mandatory expenses for all of us. Since you have to spend that money anyway, why not earn a little bonus to go with it? That’s the idea behind strategically paying for these expenses with specific cards or using specific shopping portals.

Do you spend $300 on groceries a month? That could be 1200 American Express Membership rewards (MR) points if you pay your bill with the American Express Gold Card.

Do you spend $500 on eating out a month? That could be 1500 Ultimate Rewards Points on the Chase Sapphire Preferred card or 2000 Membership rewards points with the AMEX gold card.

BILT will let you earn points for paying your rent.

Mesa will let you earn points for paying your mortgage or daycare expenses.

Shopping portals like Rakuten (if you have an American Express card which earns member ship rewards points you can get MR points through Rakuten without even paying with your AMEX card) or Rove Miles give you extra points for online shopping as long as you go through their site first. I once got 40,000 points for buying Southwest Gift cards from Sam’s Club through Rakuten for a trip I was already going to book regardless. That was enough points to pay for two nights at a hotel in Maui.

I will warn you that this is a DEEP rabbit hole. If you like puzzles, you may never escape this particular rabbit hole. Even if you don’t like puzzles and just take the easy pickings (like getting a Capital One Venture Card for the 2% points on all spend regardless of the category), something back is better than nothing. You’re going to spend that money any way.

So far it looks like I am coming close to doubling my budget every month by supplementing with points and miles. I suppose when you add in activities and food that will go down, but then that will create points-earning opportunities all over again.

I’m sure I will go into much more detail about how I collected and spent my points as we actually set out on our journey next year. Only 284 days to go!