Nick’s wallet: Completely revamped in 6 months

Churning bonuses is obviously always going to be the most cost-efficient and fastest way to earn a lot in rewards. On the other hand, I definitely churn bonuses less now than I used to for several reasons:

A) Issuers have tightened up. First it was 5/24, then the Sapphire 48-month rule, BOA’s 2/3/4, etc. It’s not as easy as it once was.

B) In normal times, you are correct that I MS a fair amount. That adds up to more points than I would earn via welcome bonuses alone. In some cases, I am a bit more conservative in applying for new cards because the bonus may not be worth the unnecessary attention. That said, we hop on an offer now and then when it makes sense.

C) I do pick up a fair number of points from referrals since we sometimes use them on our best offers page, so that definitely provides some of the points that would otherwise be earned by a few welcome bonuses. I’m lucky there.

D) We’ve just been trying to simplify some in my household, especially with regard to the amount of time it takes to manage things. Juggling twentysomething cards at a time was easier during a different time in our lives.

That said, we’ve slowly gotten back on the horse with the Freedom and BOA Premium Rewards very recently.

As to the Aspire, I did have a line somewhere in the post saying that I’ve used that up already. We had a farm stand where we did some shopping that also has a cafe and it ended up coding as a restaurant for a chunk of it and then I’ve slowly gotten back to take-out, so we used that up or that would probably be in a wallet right now.

Hey Kits,

Thanks for the feedback. A lot to unpack there, so let me try to break it up:

1) Regarding your point about this appearing to be an “FM Sales” post: If this were an FM Sales post, I’d be an awful salesman. We keep things keyed so you can easily tell which cards are affiliate offers on our Best Offers page. At the time of writing this, we have affiliate links for precisely zero of the credit cards in my wallet and one of the cards in my wife’s wallet (note: there are refer-a-friend offers listed for a couple, but those are obviously limited in scope). Affiliate commissions have never determined the content on this site. If they did, I assure you the content would look a lot different. I explicitly said at the beginning of the post that the purpose of this post isn’t to tell you that you should have the same cards/wallet or even that this is the best wallet to have — I’m not trying to sell you on anything. I’m disappointed it came off that way to you.

2) Your question: What is the purpose of a post like this?

Answer: As other readers said, it is multi-faceted:

A) The original impetus for the posts we made back in February was that one of the most frequent questions we get from readers is what cards we carry. At that time specifically, we had received a number of comments and questions asking if we would share what cards we actually carry regularly. My purpose in this update post now was that I legitimately found myself surprised that six months later, everything had changed. Obviously given the context of 2020, the fact that “everything changed” isn’t a shock in itself — but I doubt there has been another time when all of the credit cards in my wallet turned over in such a short period of time.

B) We’ve received tons of comments/questions on the blog, in the Facebook group, on the podcast, and during our FM Live series about all of the various limited-time bonuses and whether we would choose A or B and why. We’ve also seen that people are consistently finding it difficult to remember which card is best for which benefit right now (again, given the plethora of cards offering short-term bonus categories). This post shows my simplified / focused approach.

3) Question: “Are the extra points you are earning really worth the hassle of spending the time to decide which cards to carry and which card to use for each transaction? Do you even have that much ORGANIC spend these days (or even pre-Covid) to move the needle much?”

My answer: Great point. Becky notes above that she finds herself spending so little that it probably won’t make a difference for her. You may find yourself in that spot, in which case it certainly makes sense not to waste too much effort at maximizing (and particularly so if you’re a manufactured spender where your organic spend makes up a very small percentage of your overall points).

But this post isn’t at all aimed at what I think is the best strategy for a fictional average person but rather about what I am personally carrying. In my personal circumstances, it definitely does make sense for me to consider which card to use where for the following reasons:

A) We have a son on the way in a few weeks and fully intend to fund a 529 for him this year both to start his college savings and to take advantage of the tax benefit this year for our state’s plan. We’re going to fund that with several thousand dollars, so the number of points I can earn at a gas station (given that I am fortunate to live in a state and area of the state where there is a gas station chain that sells Gift of College Gift Cards) will certainly move the needle for me and mean at least a couple and very possibly several free nights (or one really fancy one maybe). Perhaps to you that isn’t organic spend. I don’t really consider it MS because it’s a planned expense — we’re going to pay for college and we’ve saved to be able to invest in it now, so we may as well get the best bang for our buck in doing so.

B) I also have higher organic grocery spend now than I ever have in my life. First, our first son is growing and eating like a full-sized human these days, so our grocery bill would naturally have grown by a proportional amount no matter what. The fact that our restaurant spend is at an all-time low and that we haven’t travelled this year (and don’t plan to) means that we are spending more on groceries/eating at home than we ever have before — so getting a good return at the grocery store is important to me in the current environment. With another son coming and all of the diapers / wipes / associated stuff that we’ll need, I don’t see the grocery bill doing anything but increasing for the foreseeable future. The ability to get 5x Ultimate Rewards on that spend on a no fee card is awesome. It wasn’t entirely impossible to do that before if you bought Visa Gift Cards at an office supply store during a fee-free promo and then made sure to carry them to the grocery store and hope that they auto-drain at your chosen chain, but I’m pumped to just be able to carry the Freedom card at the moment.

C) When it comes to unbonused purchases, I’m glad to be able to get the 2.625% cash back over 2%. I am especially glad that the hunt to maximize that in turn helped me fix my retirement portfolio, which was much more important but had been ignored until I focused in on that credit card (more detail in the linked post). How much of a difference will 2.625% make over a 2% card? I don’t know, but using it to pay my health insurance premium alone for the rest of this year will make a not-insignificant-to-me difference over a 2% card, so I’m glad to have it.

D) I do also hunt for other means of “organic” spend: a family member recently bought new furniture and they don’t care about credit card rewards, so we charged it on our card and they paid us. We pay a monthly car payment for another family member who sends us a check. If we go to a group dinner where everyone is going to Venmo the money to whomever pays (less common right now of course), I’m always happy to be the one who picks up the points (and in our family / social circle, nobody else cares much about points). I’ve cut way back on resale, but I still keep an eye out for opportunities when I can buy and resell something. Having the card in my wallet that earns the best possible return does matter for me on that.

E) I’m just a maximizer. That’s what drew me to this hobby and career. So of course I want to get the most bang for my buck when I can. It’s just who I am.

All that said, does it make sense for the average person to have nearly as many credit cards as I do? Absolutely not. I don’t think most people will be shuffling between multiple cards with $400+ annual fees and clearly most people will not be shopping at Simon Malls for the same things I am (in non-COVID times).

On the flip side, we have a wide range of readers — some do juggle multiple ultra-premium cards (and in fact you may have seen our recent Card Talk series where we’ve helped a couple of people trim thousands of dollars in annual fees by deciding which cards to eliminate in our first couple of episodes). I’m sure that we have many readers who, as you say, spend less than $1K per month. I’m also sure that we have some who spend a great deal more every month. One of the fun things about being in this hobby (and one of the things I’ve really enjoyed about conferences pre-COVID) is that you get such a diverse set of approaches. At conferences, I’ve met the backpackery type that realized they can get further and travel more often with credit cards and I’ve also had people approach me asking which credit cards are their best option for six-figure quarterly tax bills. I don’t think that this hobby of maximization generally attracts the “average” person (whatever “average” is), but rather people who want to maximize things. The level on which we maximize varies according to each of our needs / desires / circumstances. All that is to say that I can definitely imagine a situation in which a single 2% back card paired with a card working on a welcome bonus all the time makes sense. Heck — I have family members who I wish would at least adopt that strategy. There’s nothing wrong with that strategy at all. That just isn’t what this post was about. We do have posts about which card is best if you’re only going to carry one card, which 2- and 3-card combinations are best, etc. This post wasn’t those either but rather me sharing what I carry. I completely understand that you may not be interested in that. Again, that’s totally fine. If Greg writes about Delta elite status tomorrow, that’s not going to draw me in but maybe you live in a Delta hub and it’s huge for you. Every topic might appeal to a different subset. That’s part of the fun, too. I enjoy writing about what’s on my mind and appreciate working at a blog where I’ve always been given that freedom.

Of course we write about credit cards at this blog — they remain the most efficient way to quickly earn a lot of miles without flying (“earn miles without flying” is the tag line of the blog). Contrary to what you may assume, that isn’t because “we’re trying to run a business”. It’s because we enjoy writing about ways to earn outsized rewards and we find people are interested in them — if we didn’t enjoy that, we wouldn’t have left other careers to get involved in this. We like the thrill of the hunt for the points. Sure, we have affiliate links for some credit cards and those are obviously a big source of income in normal times. But I know because of previous conversations that I can speak for both of us when I say that we never even look to see if we have an affiliate link for a particular card before writing about it (I had to individually check the cards in this post to be able to tell you above how many we have affiliate links for). We write about stuff that interests us and/or that we think readers will find interesting and I think you are right that this is something that differentiates us from some others in this space.

All that is likely a longer response than you expected/wanted, but you gave pertinent feedback and so I thought it warranted an actual response. I hope that helps give some perspective. Thanks again for your points — again, I thought they were generally good points.

Whether it’s worth the fees is at least in part a function of your disposable income situation. Asiana has some nice sweet spots in their award chart. I’d probably be OK with spending $0.01 per mile to buy Asiana miles so long as the $200 was discretionary money that I could afford to lose if I’m wrong and don’t find a good use or if Asiana significantly changes its program before I do. I’d probably only have that card if I were going to do some grocery or gas MS though (or had a decent amount of expenses in those categories). I wouldn’t probably keep paying the fee if I think I might use the miles 5 years from now. Too much can change. If I think there’s a reasonable chance I’ll use them next year or the year after, maybe.

I am surprised though that you’ll keep four Radisson cards thinking that maybe the points will come in handy one day and you’re questioning the Asiana cards. In a normal world, I book a lot more Star Alliance award flights than Radisson nights. It sounds like that statement may hold true for you as well. I say that as someone keeping a Radisson card and occasionally adding to a Radisson balance that I’m not readily using either (though I did completely deplete it last year before building it back). I’d have kept the Aspire over any of the Radisson cards myself.

But that just illustrates how individual this game is. There are many situations and rarely is there a single way to play.

Definitely a valid concern.