Points and Miles Beginner’s Guide

Now that you have a few credit cards in hand and received some nice sign-up bonuses, here are some strategies to maximize how you earn points.

Category Bonuses

The best way to keep your points balance growing is to always use the card which earns the highest number of points when making purchases.

Pro Tip: Not all points have the same value, so it may be more beneficial to earn less points if those points are worth more.

Most cards give 1x points on all purchases and then bonus points in specific categories, like travel, dining, groceries or others. The Chase Sapphire Preferred card, for example, earns 2x points on travel and restaurants. While the American Express Gold Card earns 4x points on restaurants and grocery stores. To see your points balance start to explode, carry enough cards in your wallet to cover all of the popular spending categories.

There are other cards which have rotating bonus categories where you can earn 5x points or 5% cash back in certain categories each quarter. These cards can be wonderful compliments to your “main” cards. Here are two examples:

2024	Chase Freedom Flex℠	Discover it®
April - June	Amazon.com; Restaurants; Hotel stays booked through Chase Travel	Gas stations; EV Charging; Home improvement stores; Public transit
January - March	Grocery stores; Fitness club and gym memberships; Spa services	Restaurants; Drug Stores
2023	Chase Freedom Flex℠	Discover it®
October - December	PayPal; Wholesale clubs; Select charities	Amazon.com; Target
July - September	Gas Stations; EV Charging; Select live entertainment	Gas stations; Digital Wallets
April - June	Amazon.com; Lowe's	Restaurants; Wholesale clubs
January - March	Grocery stores; Target; Fitness club and gym memberships	Grocery stores; Drug Stores; Select streaming services
2022	Chase Freedom Flex℠	Discover it®
October - December	Walmart; PayPal	Amazon.com; Digital Wallets
July - September	Gas stations; Car rentals; Movie theaters; Select live entertainment	Restaurants; PayPal
April - June	Amazon.com; Select streaming services	Gas stations; Target
January - March	Grocery stores; eBay	Grocery stores; Fitness club and gym memberships
2021	Chase Freedom Flex℠	Discover it®
October - December	Walmart; PayPal	Amazon.com; Walmart.com; Target.com
July - September	Grocery stores; Select streaming services	Restaurants; PayPal

Referrals

Credit card companies want more business and they’re willing to pay you (in points) to help them. Referral bonuses are available to existing owners of credit cards at the various banks. Just be careful and be respectful if you decide to refer your friends and family.

Warning: Don’t spam your friends and family! Chase, for example, lets you enter up to 25 emails and then they will email your friends and family to apply for a card. You don’t want anyone to feel like you’ve “sold” their emails. If you want to use email, send the referral link yourself so that it’s more personal.

American Express

To see if your card is eligible for a referral bonus, log on to your account summary and scroll down past the initial page with the account summary. If your card offers a referral bonus, you’ll see something like the below with an offer.

Chase

Chase works in the same manner. You will see a referral bonus offer once you’ve logged onto your account online. Right under your account information, you’ll find the offer.

Shopping Portals

You already shop online, so why not earn some extra points while you’re making those purchases. Airlines and hotels will give you bonus points for clicking through to merchants from their shopping portals.

If you use multiple shopping portals, always check Cashback Monitor first to see which portal will give you the most bonus points for the merchant you want to shop. It’s easy! You just enter the merchant name in the search bar and it’ll tell you the bonuses for every portal.

Dining Rewards Network

The Rewards Network lets you earn bonus points for eating at any of their 10,000+ participating restaurants.

To get started, go to the Rewards Network’s website and choose the loyalty program you want to earn with. You’ll be redirected to that partner’s branded rewards network website where you can enroll. Then you link your credit cards to the account and every time you dine at participating restaurants using those cards, you earn bonuses.

You can enroll in as many different loyalty reward network programs as you’d like, but you can only link a credit card to one program at a time. So if you enroll in American Airlines and Hilton Hotels, you could link one card to AA and another to Hilton. However, you can’t earn points in both programs at the same time with the same card.

The easiest strategy would be to enroll in one program and link all of your credit cards to that program. Or you could enroll in several programs and tie one card to each, but the more you’re in the harder it is to keep track.

With American Airlines, you can earn 3 miles per $1 spent (provided you opt-in for emails) and 5 miles per $1 spent (after 12 dines in a calendar year).

There are great partners to choose from like American Airlines, Delta Airlines, United Airlines, Southwest, Hilton Hotels and IHG.

Surveys

This is the most time intensive way to earn extra points and miles and many people completely disregard it as an option. However, I find that spending some free time doing surveys can really be rewarding!

I’m a member of E-rewards, Miles For Opinions and Opinion Miles Club. Between the three I’ve been earning an average of around 5,000 miles per month. Over the course of a year that would be 60,000 miles, which is certainly enough to fly roundtrip almost anywhere in the world.

E-rewards

Once you’ve signed for an account, you’ll be alerted of surveys via email. You can also just log on to E-rewards and often find surveys available. You earn rewards dollars for every survey taken and can redeem those “dollars” for points or miles with their partners. Each partner has limits to how often you can redeem, so E-rewards is good if you are redeeming “dollars” at multiple partners.

Miles for Opinions and Opinion Miles Club

Each of these survey sites are tied to a specific loyalty program. Miles for Opinions directly deposits miles earned to my American AAdvantage® account while Opinion Miles Club transfers miles earned to my United MileagePlus® account. Transfers happen about once a week.