Helping you and your family save money on your vacations to Disney and beyond
The biggest game changer for me when I realized I wanted to get into the points game was finding out I could apply for multiple credit cards and receive multiple bonuses at once. In this post, I’ll quickly review why that doesn’t hurt your credit score as much as you might think, and a general strategy for a multi-card application. This is a fairly long post, so feel free to check out the summary at the end, or just read the section titles.
It’s pretty nerdy of me, but with so many credit cards I need to strategize which cards I’ll bring on any given trip. This is even more important for me when going overseas – certain cards provide advantages over others. Since I’m leaving for Ireland in a couple of days, I thought I’d share my thought process for what’s in my wallet.
Applying for credit cards and banking the miles or points sign up bonuses is the best way to build up and maintain mileage balances. If you get really into it (like I have), eventually, you need to come up with a balanced strategy to go about applying for cards in as efficient a way as possible. Over the next few posts I’ll be outlining some of the thinking that governs what cards I apply for and why. Before that, though, I thought I’d review some of the basics you need to consider before applying for credit cards.
Apologies for taking so long to finish this series, been busy with life and planning for our upcoming trip! The best way to get started in the points game is applying for credit cards with lucrative sign up bonuses. As I mentioned before, you should only be doing this if you can pay off your balance in full every month. If you can do that the question is: what credit cards are best to start with?
I’m taking a break from my Education of a Points Freak to talk about a real life award booking I just made for my in-laws. I find it’s easiest to learn how to book award space by just doing it. I’ve played around with a lot of dummy bookings, but it’s more fun to look for actual awards. Helping my in-laws book their upcoming trip to Asia helped spur me on to write this blog, so hopefully their itinerary will be helpful to anyone reading!