How to Earn Credit Card Points: Your First 100,000

If you’re ready to learn how to earn credit card points so you can start flying for (almost) free but feel totally overwhelmed by all the advice out there then you’re in the right place.

In this post, I’m breaking down the fastest, easiest ways to earn your first 100,000+ points without going into debt, stressing out, or opening a dozen credit cards.

I earn over 500,000 points a year using the exact strategies I’m about to teach you. These points let me fly business class for next to nothing and I haven’t paid for a flight in years.

Whether you’re aiming for economy or business class, I’ll show you how to earn credit card points through welcome bonuses, category bonuses, shopping portals, and referral bonuses most people overlook.

Do You Need to Churn Cards to Earn Points? (Spoiler: No)

Let’s address this right up front because I know a lot of points blogs recommend opening and closing cards (also known as credit card churning).

In fact, I don’t recommend that strategy at all, especially for beginners. It is completely doable to earn enough points and miles for a few flights a year with just 1-2 credit cards and I will show you how I personally do it.

The Fastest Way to Earn Points: Credit Card Welcome Bonuses

This is also called a sign up bonus and sometimes you’ll see it referred to as a SUB on points and miles Reddit threads or facebook groups. 

A welcome bonus is a number of points or miles that a bank is giving you in exchange for meeting a minimum spending requirement in a certain timeframe.

It’s like taking candy from a baby. If the baby was a massive financial institution and was, you know, willingly giving you the candy. Okay, so not the greatest analogy but still, you get the idea. It’s such an easy way to get points that it almost feels too easy.

This is the best way to earn a lot of points in a short amount of time and it’s why people open and close credit cards all the time (reminder: if you’re just starting out I do not recommend you do that).

Example Welcome Bonus

So how many points can you really get with a welcome bonus? 

Great question (even if I forced you to ask it).

The Capital One Venture X Rewards Credit Card and the Capital One Venture Rewards Credit Card, for example, both have an intro offer of 75,000 miles once you spend $4,000 on purchases within the first 3 months of account opening.

Also, because both cards offer you 2x miles per every dollar spent you would also get an additional 8,000 miles just by hitting that minimum spend on whichever of the two cards you open.

So in this example, at the end of the 3 months you would have 75,000 + 8,000 miles for a total of 83,000.

You can find one way business class flights to Europe for 60,000 points meaning you’d still have 23,000 points leftover. 

How to Spot an “Elevated” Welcome Bonus (and When to Wait)

In the example above, the intro offer for that credit card is usually 75,000 miles. However, occasionally banks will offer elevated welcome offers where the sign up bonus is higher for a limited amount of time.

Before applying for any new card, look at its previous welcome offers so that you can ensure that the current offer is a good one or to also see how often the welcome offer fluctuates. 

Don’t get too hung up on this. Just do a couple of minutes of research so that you don’t end up disappointed later.

How to Hit the Minimum Spend (Without Stressing Out)

If there’s one thing you take away from this post it’s this: Please do not open up a credit card if you can not hit the minimum spend requirement. 

I’m saying this from personal experience. One time I was so excited about how high a sign up bonus was that I was like “yeah, I can figure out how to hit that minimum spend. No problem”. 

Spoiler alert: it was a problem.

I had to beg my family members to put their expenses on my card and I almost didn’t get the bonus at all.

Huge lesson learned. I was stressed and was spending more money than I typically do. 

The last thing you want is to open up a credit card for the sign up bonus and then not be able to hit the minimum spend and miss out on all of the bonus points. It’s a huge waste of opening the card.

The goal here is not to spend more than you already do. So if you spend $2K on credit cards every month, do not open up a credit card that requires you to spend $5K/month in order to get the sign up bonus.

My 4-Step Checklist to Make Sure You Get the Bonus

1. Evaluate if the offer is within your normal spend 
2. Put all expenses that you can on this one credit card until you hit the minimum spend. If you hit the spend early, great! You’ll get your points earlier
3. Track your spending so that you know if you are close to hitting the requirement or not. Some credit card portals have a tracker but some do not so be sure you are keeping track of this. If you aren’t sure, call the credit card company and ask them how long you have left to hit the minimum spend and how much more you need to spend
4. Once you hit the spend you do not need to do anything else to get your points. They will show up automatically in your account. Some post within a few days and some can take up to 8 weeks

Earn More Without Spending More: Category Bonuses Explained

This is the easiest and best way to earn more points on what you are already spending.

A lot of travel rewards credit cards will offer category bonuses meaning they will give you bonus points for spending in a certain category.

The category bonuses vary by credit card and the key here is to use the right credit card for the right purchase, which we will cover in just a moment.

How I Earn 52,000 Extra Points a Year Just Buying Groceries and Eating Out

The American Express® Gold Card gives you 4x points at restaurants worldwide (up to $50,000 in purchases and then 1x points for the rest of the year) and U.S. supermarkets (up to $25,000 in purchases per calendar year then 1x points for the rest of the year)

So what does this mean?

My husband and I typically spend about $600 a month on groceries and about $850 on eating out (don’t judge our spending habits. We love food).

Before I learned about category bonuses, I used to just put this spend on a credit card that earned me 1x point per dollar. Meaning every month we would earn about 1,450 points.

Now we use the American Express® Gold Card so we get 4x points for every dollar we spend meaning we get 5,800 points for the month.

Let’s see how big of a difference this is on an annual basis.

By using a credit card that doesn’t have a category bonus, at the end of the year, with the combined monthly spend of $1,450, we would have 17,400 points.

By using the American Express® Gold Card instead we get 69,600 points just from our normal grocery and eating out spend.

That’s a difference of 52,200 points and we didn’t have to spend a dollar more than we already do. 

That’s how powerful category bonuses are and how we can get smarter about making our existing spend work for us.

Start Simple: How to Pick the Right Bonus Categories for You

Do a quick audit of your spending habits. What are you spending the most on? Is it groceries? Restaurants? Online shopping?

Then you’re going to want to look for a credit card that has a category bonus for where you spend the most money.

No, You Don’t Need to Optimize Every Dollar (Here’s Why)

You don’t need to optimize every dollar you spend. That can get a bit overwhelming. I know my poor husband is always like “wait, which credit card should I use for this purchase?”

To avoid that happening, just start with two different categories.

For example, while I have multiple credit cards, a bulk of my spending is put on just two.

I use the American Express® Gold Card because a lot of my monthly spend is on restaurants and groceries so I get 4x on all of this spend.

And then I use the Capital One Venture X Rewards Credit Card (you can also use the Capital One Venture Rewards Credit Card) because it gives me 2x on every dollar so I use that for any online shopping, home purchases, etc.

Once you feel comfortable managing your spend on two credit cards then you can decide if you want to optimize another category with a third card or not.

How to Combine Welcome Bonuses + Category Bonuses Like a Pro

The one exception to optimizing spend is when you have a brand new credit card. When you are working towards a sign up bonus, you need to put all your spend on that card. 

So let’s walk through an example to understand this. Using the two cards I mentioned earlier, let’s say I already had the American Express® Gold Card and then I wanted to open the Capital One Venture X Rewards Credit Card to get the welcome bonus. 

I have to spend $4,000 in 3 months to get that bonus. During those 3 months, until I hit the $4,000, I wouldn’t put any purchases on my American Express® Gold Card because my priority is making sure I hit the minimum spend on the Capital One Venture X so I can get my welcome bonus.

After I do that, then I would optimize my spend and put dining and groceries on the American Express® Gold Card and everything else on the Capital One Venture X Rewards Credit Card.

How to Earn Points on Rent (Yes, Really)

If you rent, this is a no brainer way to earn points quickly.

There is currently one credit card on the market that lets you earn 1 point per every dollar spent without charging you any types of fees for putting your rent on a credit card.

It’s the Bilt Mastercard and it has a $0 annual fee so it is a must have for any renter.

When we lived in Boston we were spending $4,000/mo on rent which was an extra 48,000 points a year. 

Seriously, do not miss out on these free points. The credit card also doesn’t have an annual fee so it is an easy card to add in.

How Shopping Portals Help You Double Dip on Points

Shopping portals are a great way to earn even more points on the money you already spend.

A shopping portal is a website that offers bonus rewards for shopping through its affiliate links. 

Let’s take, Rakuten, which is one of the most popular ones as an example.

By using Rakuten you can either get cash back for your purchases or change it to get American Express Membership Rewards Points (you will need to have an American Express credit card that allows you to earn points to do this).

If you wanted to book a tour through Viator. You would navigate to Rakuten or use their chrome extension to enable the cash back. Right now Viator is 10x points so if you bought a tour for $200 you would get 2,000 points.

Here’s where it can get a little confusing. You can earn even more points than the 2,000. Just because you are earning American Express Membership Rewards points as the cashback doesn’t mean that you have to use an AmEx card for the purchase. 

So let’s say you have a credit card that gets you 3x on travel you would use that card to complete the purchase and also get an additional 600 points for a grand total of 2,600 points just from a single purchase.

The Easiest Way to Earn 10,000+ Points? Refer a Friend

This is one of my favorite ways to earn even more points.

If someone is watching you use your points to fly for free and goes “Hey, I want to do that too” then you can send them your link to your favorite credit card and get points for doing so.

The referral bonuses vary by credit card but it can be anywhere from 10,000-40,000 points per person you refer.

Let’s say you refer five people a year, that’s an extra 50,000 – 200,000 points. 

Pretty awesome right?

How Many Points Can You Really Earn in a Year? Let’s Do the Math

So now that you know all the different ways to earn points, let me walk you through how many points I earn a year.  

Just to give you some details, I live with my husband and we have a dog. We don’t have any kids. 

Here is a breakdown of our joint monthly expenses from last year:

Rent: $4,000

Restaurants: $850 (including bars and coffee shops)

Groceries: $600

All other expenses (shopping, gas, subscriptions, utilities, etc): $7,000 

Points from Welcome Bonus

I usually open about 1-2 cards a year so let’s take the cards we have been discussing in this post which I use the most and 100% recommend. 

• Capital One Venture Rewards Credit card (or Capital One Venture X Rewards Credit Card): 75,000 miles
• American Express® Gold Card: intro offer varies but can be as high as 100,000. I got the 100,000 points when I applied for this card.

Total points from welcome bonuses: 175,000

Points from Category Bonuses

I put groceries and restaurants on the American Express® Gold Card which gives me 4x points for every dollar and then I put all other non-rent expenses on the Capital One Venture X or Capital One Venture Rewards. 

• Groceries: $600/mo *12 * 4 points = 28,800 points 
• Restaurants = $850 * 12 * 4 points = 40,800 points
• All other non rent spend = $7,000 * 12 *2 = 168,000 points

Total points on category bonuses: 236,800 points

Points from Rent

We use the Bilt Mastercard and put all of our rent here. 

• Rent: $4000/mo *12 * 1 point = 48,000 points 

Referral Bonuses

Last year I got 100,000 points in referral bonuses from the American Express Gold Card, the Capital One Venture X, and the Platinum Card. 

Shopping Portals

I only started using Rakuten at the end of last year so I imagine this number will only go up but last year I earned 23,000 points.

So just totaling up the points from last year that is 582,800.

My husband and I only fly business class and that is enough points for about 5 round trip business class flights to Europe. 

Are you seeing how powerful points are yet?

What’s the Best Credit Card for Earning Points Fast?

Hopefully by now you know how to earn credit card points fast. You don’t need to use every strategy, just a few of these can get you to your first 100,000 points in no time.

Ready to turn your everyday spending into your next business class flight?

👉 Check out the best travel credit cards for beginners and see which one fits your lifestyle.