so I’ll be using this card for groceries and I have credits that just reset on this card and then I have this one hey credit Warriors welcome to the show and on this channel I talk about us credit cards and how to earn cash back or points and Miles so that you can travel for free if you like the sound of that do subscribe and in this video we will be looking at my credit card strategy for 2025 to earn the maximum rewards and this video is brought to you my Meo but more on that later so I am a Chase and AMX guy I do have one other card from Barclay’s which I’ll talk about later and I used to have Capital One cards but I’ve closed them all now so every other card I have apart from that Barclays one is either a Chase or an AMX card we’re going to go through some of the common spending categories and I’m going to show you which cards I’m going to use for which and then we’re going to talk about how I’m maximizing credits on my MX cards as well so for grocery which is a big category for me cuz I have a family of four and we all need to eat I will be switching all of my grocery spending in quarter one of 2025 to the Chase Freedom and Chase Freedom Flex cards which have grocery stores as one of their 5x quarterly categories for the first quarter of 2025 now how this works is you get 5% cash back which is also redeemable for 5x points per dollar uh back at grocery stores excluding Target and Walmart those ones code as super centers although some Walmart neighborhood markets will code AS grocery and that is on up to $1,500 in spending for the quarter per card but I actually have two of these cards okay that’s right Chase doesn’t limit the number of Freedom cards you can have okay there are limitations on the bonus like you can’t get the bonus on a freedom if you already have another Freedom open or if you closed it but you got a bonus on it within the last 24 months but with the number of cards that you can have there seems to be no set limit okay so since I have two I have $3,000 in grocery spending that I can earn five points per dollar on I might not be able to Max that out but if I don’t there’s actually another bonus category just for March okay and this is to celebrate the Chase Freedom’s 15th year anniversary of the 5% categories if that makes sense okay not the anniversary of the card but the categories apparently I don’t know it’s a little before my time okay it seems it didn’t used to have those categories anyway this extra category that we’re going to have only in March for 5% is insurance and tax preparation so my taxes cost a little over ,000 all right that’s what I pay the CPA to prepare them for my business and personal and I also have an insurance premium of about $400 for an umbrella insurance policy if you don’t know what that is that’s like a insurance policy that covers on top like an umbrella over all your other insurance policies like car home uh rental properties so just in case anything happens in any of them that that insurance doesn’t pay for it gives you an extra million in coverage okay my premium of that is $400 that comes due at the beginning of April maybe I can can prepay it in March so that’s another way between those two things they can probably help me Max it out and that will generate $150 in cash back or 15,000 chase points if I transfer those points to the chase Inc preferred which I also have they take on 1.25 C in value on the Travel portal so that’s a value of $187.50 or if I transfer them out to Airlines it could be worth even more Chase has a load of good Transfer Partners like British Airways we just went to the UK for Christmas in their Club Suite business class it costs about 50,000 British Airways miles each way I have a video on that if you want to check it out it looks like this and I will put it on the end card of this video all right let’s now talk about the dining category and this is another really big spending category for me we eat out probably at least once a week so it’s going to be several 100 maybe occasionally even up to $1,000 a month I try to limit it to under 500 and for this category uh unless there’s any other like rotating quarterly category with dining on any other card I have I’m normally always going to use the MX gold okay in this case this is the new white gold I don’t know if you like the look of that but whatever it’s kind of cool but yeah it’s 4X on dining at restaurants worldwide okay so not just in the US and it’s also four points per dollar at supermarkets in the US I’d normally use this card for that too but since we have the category on The Chase Freedom cards I’m going to use those instead cuz those are five points per dollar whereas the AMX gold is just four but if a restaurant doesn’t accept MX my backup would be one of these two Freedom cards that I just showed you cuz they actually offer three points per dollar on dining and that’s all the time okay in addition to the five points per dollar rotating quarterly categories and if a restaurant is overseas since these have overseas uh foreign transaction fees I have another card that I would use if the restaurant is overseas and doesn’t take MX I’ll talk about that a little bit later in the video but going back to the AMX gold and restaurants there’s also a $50 resi credit every 6 months now resi is a website that anex bought that’s basically a booking system for really nice restaurants okay it’s curated there’s only really good restaurants on there and that just reset since we’re at the beginning of the year okay it’s $50 per half year so January to June end of June and then July until the end of the year I actually used it last night at Dinosaur Barbecue in Troy New York on the way back from a ski trip in Vermont the check was $100 or so and with the credit I got it half price obviously I’m kind of paying for it in the annual Fe of the card but you know what I mean just make sure that the restaurant you are going to is in the resi program which Dinosaur Barbecue is otherwise you won’t get the credit the reservation though doesn’t have to be made through resi I actually booked the table by calling the restaurant directly but when I gave them my cell phone number they put that into their system and I guess they’re using the resi system now for all their reservations and I suddenly got an email from resi confirming my booking so I’ve used my resi credit now for the first 6 months of the year and we’ll talk more about other credits on this and other cards later in the video but now what about gas which is another big expense but first I run a small small business and a service that I really find useful is Meo it is a busino business payment platform offering multiple ways to pay vendors and get paid such as same day a and the ability to pay International vendors in US dollars or foreign currencies one thing I really like is milio provides the ability to use a credit card to pay vendors that wouldn’t normally accept cards for a small 2.9% fee why is this useful well let’s say I was trying to get the 75,000 points welcome bonus on the British Airways Visa card to get a free business class flight well that requires $5,000 in spend maybe I don’t have that much so I pay a vendor who doesn’t normally accept cards through meio and they either send a check or make a bank transfer on my behalf then I get 75,000 British Airways miles which can also be used on American Airlines too that’s at least $1,500 in value for those points for a 2.9% fee which comes out at $145 on that $5,000 purchase another useful feature is dealing with cash flow issues if I owe money to a vendor who doesn’t accept cards but I haven’t been paid yet I can first pay with the credit card through meio and then I have potentially up to 45 days or so depending on where I am with my billing cycle to pay off my card with no interest you can also get paid faster through Meo by sending customizable payment links with flexible payment options and your vendors don’t have to sign up to meio to pay you or be paid Meo is easy to set up has both desktop and mobile app versions and is design designed with a high level of security start using Milio’s powerful tools to boost efficiency gain more financial control and peace of mind when it comes to your finances go to goo.com b2025 or click the link below okay so gas I will be using the Windom rewards earner business card from Barclays or at least trying to use it CU I’ve recently discovered that trying to use it through the Walmart Plus app and I like to use that cuz I get 10 cents off per gallon at mobile but it doesn’t work with that card for some reason okay I don’t know why I’m going to have to call them and figure it out so this is the card I use at gas stations where I physically pay at the pump with the card okay so not Mobile or Exxon places I can’t use the warmart Plus app and at mobile I’ll be using whatever card I have in my Walmart Plus app I don’t think I have any other cards that give a bonus on gas that Winden one by the way it’s eight points per dollar a gas station so that’s why I really try to use it any chance I get all right now I also have a card for foreign transactions and that is this British Airway Visa signature card from Chase now this may not be the best card to choose due to the way it earns points okay there’s no bonus on anything that’s really useful it’s a bonus on British Airways I think three points per dollar and then two points per dollar on hotels one point per dollar on everything else but I realized when I went to the UK for Christmas that a lot of places in Europe don’t take American Express and in order to avoid awkwardness if I see the Visa and MasterCard logo but no MX logo at a store I can just kind of take it that they don’t take MX okay they pretty much 99% sure they don’t take it so I won’t even ask I’ll just whip out this personal Visa card and the reason I do that is because this is actually the only personal Visa card that I have right now that doesn’t have foreign transaction fees okay all my other ones do all right so the Visa and Master Card Chase Freedom and Chase Freedom Flex they have foreign transaction fees I have some other business cards that don’t have them but those are business cards okay and then all my other personal cards are AMX so it’s hard to find this is actually the only one I have that is a Visa and doesn’t have foreign transaction fees and is a personal card but since this year I might be going overseas a little bit more I’m going to be keeping this card in my wallet all right now let’s give a few quick fire ones and then we’ll get into talking about the credits that I’m using for various things so I have the MX Platinum Charles Schwab version this one is for flights booked directly with Airlines it’s five points per dollar back on flights and actually I did that at Christmas my booking cost $9,000 for business class for the NightLight on the way out and economy on the way back for four people okay that’s actually pretty decent value I wasn’t able to use points this time because I booked two last minute okay there was no award availability and actually my points balances were kind of depleted anyway but I did earn 45,000 AMX points on that booking which when cashed out at 1.1 cents per Point through the Charles Schwab AMX Platinum that’s $495 almost $500 and that I used to pay off the card and thus get $500 off my airfare you might think that that is bad value compared to using them as points and booking business class directly with Airlines but you know I have a lot of points coming in from other sources for example I have 300,000 AMX points in my racken account right now those pending points should be confirmed by February when I get the next payout so it’s more useful for me to just get a discount on that flight right now and wait for other points to come in in the future also if you haven’t heard of reton it’s an online shopping portal where they Market some of your favorite stores to you and just by clicking through from their site first then you do online shopping through those major retailers you can earn extra cash back or AMX points on top of what you would earn on your credit card that you make payments with so like at Walmart it’s an extra 4% right now saxs is an extra 2% booking.com is an extra 8% right now if you sign up with my link for reton you can get an extra $30 cashback in your account after you make your first purchase and the cool thing is all of the cash back that you earn can be redeemed as MX points at 1 cent in cashback equals one AMX point so that can give you even more value and I’ll put a link to that below moving back to the quickfire round of credit cards and okay that MX Platinum wasn’t quickfire at all but the next one will be I promise you we have the MX green which I’m actually an authorized user on this this is a card from my wife’s account and this is what I use for any Transit that I do which means ground transportation Like Trains Ubers taxis Subways Etc so if I go down to New York City for example and get in a taxi or on the subway I will be using this particular card then I have a few Hotel cards so for Marriott Hotels I’ll be using my Marriott card which is the modern art version of the card looks like this I don’t have it in my wallet at the moment I’m grandfathered into it you can’t actually get that card anymore and for Hilton I will be using the Hilton Honors surpass card which looks like this and in 2024 I did actually get the Hilton free night on that card okay you have to spend $115,000 to get it I thought I wasn’t quite going to have the spending for it but at the end of the year I bought a new boiler I spent like $2,000 on a new boiler for the heating in the house so I actually ended up spending that $115,000 I’ve got the Hilton free night in my account now I will be using that in 2025 and maybe using the Hilton on a a pass card to pay taxes to try and get another Hilton free night uh for later in the year or next year or whatever then I do have a couple of other business cards from Chase and AMX that I will be using for business expenses but this video is not focusing on business okay we’re talking about personal cards so I’m not going to go into Super detail about these cards but if you want to know which ones I have they are the Chase Ink preferred which I’ve already mentioned and also the chase Inc unlimited which is 1.5 points per dollar on everything then I also have the AMX blue business Cash Card which I just got it actually for the welcome bonus I don’t know if I’ll keep it that long all right now let’s move on to talking about credits okay on different cards I’ve already mentioned the resi credit on the AMX gold which I used last night then we have a $7 per month dunking credit to use every month and I’ve already used just over half of it for January if you’re wondering why the resi credit hasn’t showed up yet is because I only used it last night it takes a week or two to sh up as a credit in your account then we have the AMX gold dining credit where they just switched out Shake Shack for Five Guys so that’s kind of a bummer I do like Shake Shack but there is a Five Guys near where my office is so I might be able to do Five Guys once a month for lunch to use that credit GrubHub is also usable the MX gold then also has a $10 per month Uber credit which I always use for Uber Eats just remember remember as of a few months ago your payment method has to be set as an AMX card for that Uber cash to count towards your bill so using all those credits effectively I should be able to claw back more than the annual fee in value then I have two more coupon book style AMX cards with credits and that would be the Platinum which has so many credits it’s unreal and actually in 2024 I missed out on using the Airline credit and the fine hotels and resorts credit that’s $400 in value left on the table so this year I definitely will be looking at doing maybe a Vegas trip and using the hotel credit maybe I’ll fly there on Delta and I’ll use the Airline credit for bag fees or the Delta Sky Club guest passes or whatever as for the other credits on the card I usually use all of those no problem then on my Hilton Honor’s surpass card it’s $50 per quarter in Hilton credits which can be used towards stays at Hilton in the last quarter of 2024 I actually forgot about this and I let it expire I was originally going to buy a Hilton gift card and save it for use in 2025 and you can buy them at buy Hilton giftcards.com which sounds like a scam but no that is their actual website okay it’s like a third party company that does their gift cards currently they are experiencing a shortage of physical gift cards probably because everyone with the surpass card bought a gift card at the end of 2024 to use up their credit but anyway I’ll be looking to use the Hilton surpass credit uh every quarter probably for a ski trip this first quarter the Killington Mountain Lodge is part of Hilton’s tapestry collection so I might book that and I’m sure I’ll do some weekends away in the summer and fall if not I’ll get a Hilton gift card at buy Hilton giftcards.com once they’re up and running again and combine that with cash to book something in the following quarter or sometime in the future all right guys the moral of this story is keep track of your credits credits are a great way to offset or earn extra value above your annual fee in the new coupon Bookstar reality that we live in now with AMX cards I’m really going to push to use all my credits in 2025 and I’ll have more videos on on how I did that on the channel so stay tuned for those and I think that’s a great point to end on don’t forget guys to check out Meo and see how their powerful tools can help your business by going to goo.com sb225 or click the first link in the description section below please subscribe if you’re new we’ll see you next time bye-bye
