Just like everyone else, 2020 turned out very different than my original expectations. At the start of the year, I had an anniversary trip to Hawaii fully booked on points and miles. The $10,000 trip only cost me $400 out of pocket and I was really excited for it. As COVID-19 started spreading, I had to cancel that trip, and other potential travel plans, like spending Thanksgiving in Arizona, also went by the wayside. For the first time since I can remember, I went the entire year without any travel.

Even though I couldn’t travel this year, I’m thankful that my family and I have remained healthy during such scary and uncertain times. Without any travel opportunities, I had no choice but to continue to accumulate points and miles. I also kept my eye out for easy and/or free ways to earn cash back. In addition, I paid close attention to the quickly changing credit card landscape and the various promotions offered by the banks, so I could take advantage of points-earning opportunities.

Let’s take a look back at what I accomplished in 2020.

The Changing Credit Card Landscape

As the world changed in 2020, banks had to react quickly in order to retain existing customers as well as attract new ones.

Unusable Travel Credits

One issue the credit card companies had to tackle was how to deal with unusable benefits like travel credits now that many people were no longer traveling. Customers pay hefty annual fees for cards with these benefits, so it was important for the banks to figure something out. As an example, I pay a $450 annual fee for the Hilton American Express Aspire® Card and with that I receive a $250 resort credit. With no way to use the credit this year, American Express allowed cardholders to use it on dining purchases, in addition to Hilton resorts. During a specific period of time over the summer, Amex reimbursed all dining purchases until customers hit the $250 credit.

Chase did something similar with the $300 travel credit on the Chase Sapphire Reserve® card. They’ve allowed purchases at grocery stores and gas stations to be applied against the travel credit, through June 2021.

Changes in Spending Habits

The pandemic quickly changed consumer spending habits as people started spending more on groceries and less on travel or dining out. This lead to increased usage of credit cards which provide bonus points in those categories. It also left many travel-centric cards virtually useless.

In response to these changing habits, many credit card issuers offered temporary bonus points in popular categories like groceries. We also saw the introduction of new credit cards, like the Chase Freedom Flex℠ MasterCard, which offers 5x points on grocery purchases during the first year of card ownership. In the competitive credit card landscape, if the banks wanted to keep up, they really had no choice but to offer these temporary promotions, or risk falling behind.

Retention Offers

The pandemic limited the benefits that many could use on various travel credit cards this year. For that reason, another focus of mine was on retention offers. I decided to call a few of my credit card issuers to see if they had any retention offers in exchange for me keeping those cards another year. I ended up calling both Citi and Chase and here were the results:

• In June, I called Citi because I was unable to use any of the travel benefits on my CitiBusiness® / AAdvantage® Platinum Select® card in 2020. The representative I spoke to was able to offer a $99 statement credit, essentially offsetting the annual fee, as long as I spent $1,000 over the next three months. I already had a big purchase lined up for this purpose, so I was happy to take the offer and save the $99.
• In November, I called Chase to ask if there were any retention offers available on any my cards. There was nothing offered on my United Explorer card, but Chase gave me a $250 statement credit on my Sapphire Reserve with absolutely no strings attached!

All told, a few minutes on the phone saved me $349 in credit card fees this year!

Credit Cards

• Credit cards opened: 3 (including 1 that my wife, Annie opened)
• Sign-up bonus points earned: 40,000 points
• Referral bonus points earned: 20,000 points
• Everyday spending: 163,051 points

Credit card sign-up bonuses earned were down substantially, from 185,000 points in 2019 to just 40,000 points in 2020. This was somewhat expected as I’m starting to reach a limit to the number of cards I realistically wants to own. After singing up for 6 cards in 2018 and 4 more in 2019, there were simply not as many new credit cards to apply for this year.

In 2020, I opened a US Bank Business Cash Rewards and Chase Freedom Unlimited® cards. Annie opened only one card this year, the brand new Chase Freedom Flex℠ MasterCard. With the two new Chase cards, we earned 40,000 points in sign-up bonuses and 20,000 points in referral bonuses.

Between the sign-up bonuses and everyday spending, I earned a total of 223,051 points this year!

Now let’s take a closer look at each of the new cards I opened in 2020.

U.S. Bank Business Cash Rewards Card

I applied for this card after being denied for the Chase Ink Cash card. I wanted the card for the 50,000 point sign-up bonus, which would’ve been extremely valuable when combined with my other Chase Ultimate Rewards points. The official reason for denial was that my business was too new, but it was also just bad timing. It was known that Chase was being stingier than normal on new business card applications due to the pandemic.

However, as a consolation prize, I applied for and was approved for the U.S. Bank Business Cash Rewards card. With the US Bank card, instead of bonus points, I earned $500 in cash back after meeting the minimum spending requirements. This card has no annual fee and earns 3% back at gas stations, office supply stores and cell phone/service providers. After receiving the $500 bonus, I now basically use the card only to pay my cell phone bill. I do that because besides earning 3% cash back, the card gives me wireless protection up to $800 per claim as long as I pay the my cell phone bill with the card.

Note: This card is no longer available to new applications. It has been replaced by the U.S. Bank Triple Cash Rewards Visa Business Card.

Chase Freedom Unlimited

By the middle of this year and under the Chase 5/24 rule, I wanted another new card. With travel out of the question, there wasn’t anything drawing me to specific airline or hotel credit cards. I also didn’t want to apply for a card with an annual fee. So the perfect decision was to apply for the Chase Freedom Unlimited® card. My wife, Annie, referred me, so while I earned 20,000 points for signing up, she earned another 10,000 points for the referral. I use this card to make purchases in categories where I don’t get bonus points with other cards. Later in the year, Chase announced several new benefits, making the card even sweeter.

Chase Freedom Flex

The brand new Chase Freedom Flex℠ MasterCard is Annie’s. Just like with the Chase Freedom Unlimited, I referred Annie to get the bonus points. When she hit the minimum spending requirement, she earned 20,000 bonus points and I earned 10,000 for the referral. This is a terrific card, especially during the first year of ownership.

It earns 5x points on rotating categories each quarter. Plus it also earns 5x points on travel booked through Chase and 3x on dining and drugstores. But what makes this card amazing is that you earn 5x points, on up to $12,000 worth of groceries in the first year. That is the best grocery return of any credit card we own. So we’re using it every time we shop for groceries and if we end up hitting the spending limit, we’ll earn an extra 48,000 Chase Ultimate Rewards points!

Trips: Flights and Hotel Stays

• Flights taken: 0
• Miles flown: 0
• Points/miles redeemed: 45,000
• Individual hotel stays: 0
• Total hotel nights: 0

Sadly I went from taking 5 big trips in 2019 to absolutely none in 2020. The only action in this category was points transfers. In total I transferred 44,000 Chase Ultimate Rewards points and 1,000 American Express Membership Rewards to a few different transfer partners.

Points Transferred

• 35,000 points went to Hyatt (as part of the Hawaii trip)
• 4,000 points went to United Airlines (also as part of the Hawaii trip)
• 1,000 points went to Air Canada as part of a promotion
• 5,000 points went to British Airways as part of a promotion

Hyatt and United Airlines

I transferred points to Hyatt and United as part of the Hawaii trip that never was. I needed the Hyatt points for our hotel stay on Oahu and the United points topped off my account to book the flights. While I can’t transfer these points and miles back to Chase, they’ll stay in my Hyatt and United accounts for future use.

Air Canada

I transferred points to Air Canada because they were running a special promotion. New Air Canada Aeroplan members who signed up and earned at least 1 mile by September 30 would earn 2,500 bonus miles. The easiest way to meet that criteria was to transfer 1,000 American Express Membership Rewards points. Since Air Canada is part of the Star Alliance, I have the added flexibility of using those miles on United Airlines too.

British Airways

The transfer to British Airways was done prospectively because Chase was running a promotion on transfers to British Airways, Aer Lingus or Iberia. Instead of the normal 1:1 transfer ratio, with the promotion I received 1.3 miles for every point transferred.

I already had some miles in the British Airways Avios program, so I decided to top off my balance for future use. Avios don’t expire unless there’s no activity for 36 months, so I’ll certainly be able to use them within the next 3 years. At this point I have enough miles for at least one free round-trip flight within the continental United States.

Points earned off airline flights and hotel stays:

• American Airlines: 0 miles
• United Airlines: 0 miles
• Hilton Hotels: 0 points
• Hyatt Hotels: 0 points
• Marriott: 0 points
• InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG): 0 points

That’s a lot of zeros. I literally took no flights nor stayed in any hotels in 2020. At least this can only go up in 2021!

Promotional Activity

Promotions come in many forms, but the most common is earning bonus points/miles or cash back on certain purchases. Even better, some promotions offer bonuses with no spending requirement at all. So without any travel this year, I was really on the lookout for ways to earn points and miles via promotions.

Points and miles earned via promotional activity in 2020:

• American Airlines: 50,865 miles
• Hilton Hotels: 14,029 points
• Hyatt Hotels: 500 points
• Chase Ultimate Rewards: 500 points
• American Express Membership Rewards: 26,705 points
• Citi ThankYou Rewards: 3,150 points

There were a lot of great promotions in 2020, but the two programs where I earned the most were American Airlines AAdvantage miles and American Express Membership Rewards points.

American Airlines AAdvantage Miles

Bask Bank

In January I opened a savings account with Bask Bank. They offered 5,000 AAdvantage miles for opening the account and another 1,000 miles just for giving them feedback on the experience. For the remainder of the year, I left some money in the account, which earns miles instead of interest. By year’s end, I earned 13,765 miles in 2020 without having to spend a penny.

Citibank Checking Account

Also towards the beginning of the year, Citi emailed me with an offer to earn AAdvantage miles simply by opening up a new checking account. After meeting the required activities, I earned 30,000 bonus miles — again with $0 spending!

American Express Membership Rewards

There were also a number of great promotions offered by American Express throughout the year. Most of the bonus points earned where from enrolling in Amex’s “Pay Over Time” feature and taking advantage of Amex Offers.

Pay Over Time

I never carry a balance on my credit cards and so I never saw the need to activate Amex’s Pay Over Time feature. However, when Amex emailed me about earning 10,000 points, I jumped at the opportunity. This was an easy way to earn a nice chunk of points for doing virtually nothing!

Amex Offers

Amex Offers is a free program that saves money or earns bonus points on shopping, dining and more. Even though some other banks have started similar programs, Amex’s is far and away the best.

There are great offers year round, but towards the end of the year, a couple beauties appeared. As shown above, Amex offered 8x Membership Rewards® points on purchases at Amazon, up to a maximum of 3,000 points. They also offered 9x points on purchases made via Uber Eats, up to a maximum of 1,800 points.

What made these even better, is that the offers existed not only on my card, but also for my authorized users. Both my wife and daughter are authorized users on my Gold card and they also received the Amazon offer. So between the three of us, we maxed out the offer for a total of 9,000 bonus points. All for doing holiday shopping that we were going to do anyways!

Besides the over 26,000 bonus points earned, Amex Offers also netted me $275 back in statement credits over the course of the year.

Surveys

All in all, I had much less time this year to spend taking surveys. That equated to earning about half as much as I did doing surveys in 2019. That being said, surveys are still a very easy, although somewhat boring, way to earn points and miles. Whether it’s clicking away while watching bad TV or while waiting in line somewhere, surveys are a simple way to earn some extra points and miles.

I earned points via 4 different survey websites. Points and miles earned via surveys in 2020:

• American Airlines: 11,371 miles
• United Airlines: 6,052 miles
• Alaska Airlines: 5,991 miles
• Hilton Hotels: 36,011 points

Shopping and Dining Portals

Shopping and dining portals are another easy way to earn extra points and miles.

When shopping online, instead of going directly to the merchant, start instead at a shopping portal. Since I use multiple shopping portals, I always check Cashback Monitor first, to see which portal is giving the most bonus points at a specific merchant.

With dining portals, any restaurant participating with the Rewards Network will earn bonus points or miles when I dine there. As long as my credit cards are enrolled before dining, I earn points or miles each time I eat a participating restaurant.

The main difference from last year to this year, was my increased use of Rakuten. With Rakuten, the “cash back” I earn on purchases become Amex Membership Rewards points instead of actual cash back. I chose this option because I value the points much more than the cash. With the points, I can book travel worth much more than the value of the cash would’ve been.

In just two steps, you can change your Rakuten account to earn Membership Rewards. First you’ll need to link a card that earns Membership Rewards to your Rakuten account. Then, you’ll need to update your Rakuten account settings to earn Membership Rewards points as your payout.

Points and miles earned via shopping and dining portals in 2020:

• American Airlines: 3,976 miles
• United Airlines: 2,486 miles
• Hilton: 5,826 points
• Chase Ultimate Rewards: 0 points
• American Express Membership Rewards (via Rakuten): 12,931 points

Bottom Line

I had intended to redeem a good chunk of points and miles for travel in 2020. However, the pandemic made this another year of points accumulation instead. Even with no travel, and only signing up for three new credit cards, I managed to accumulate 442,634 points across all my accounts!

At the time of this writing, I’m not sure when I’ll start traveling again. In the meantime, I’ll keep tabs on the credit card landscape to ensure I don’t miss any points-earning opportunities.

Along with everyone else on this Earth, I bid a not-so-fond farewell to 2020. We can only go up from here!