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Author: Matthew November 8, 2023
Chase Ultimate Reward Points are one of the most powerful credit card points out there for free travel. You can see how we've redeemed them for free hotel stays (link to come) and flights (link to come) throughout the year. Read below how we gained over a million points to help with our future travel. Stay tuned on blog updates and exclusive alerts by subscribing to our free newsletter!
New Card Bonuses
New Card Bonuses
Applying for new cards is probably the best way to earn a huge chunk of points as most card issuers offer lucrative bonuses. For the most part, we were always working on a new card and its bonus to earn the points. (In the meanwhile I was also spending a lot on my World of Hyatt Business Card). Simply by spending on the card, we earned points as well. Below are the new Chase cards we got with the bonuses and minimum amount of points we received through spending. The Chase Ink Card earn 5x at office supply stores and we took advantage of that a lot, but are counting 1x to be the base for this estimation.
FEBRUARY: Matthew referred Sarah to the Chase Ink Business Unlimited
90,000 (sign-up bonus) + 9,000 (points spend) + 20,000 (referral) = 119,000
APRIL: Sarah referred Matthew to the Chase Ink Business Unlimited
90,000 (sign-up bonus) + 9,000 (points spend) + 40,000 (referral) = 139,000 -> 258,000 total
JUNE: Matthew referred Sarah to the Chase Ink Business Unlimited
90,000 (sign-up bonus) + 9,000 (points spend) + 40,000 (referral) = 139,000 -> 397,000 total
AUGUST: Matthew applied for the Chase Sapphire Reserve
60,000 (sign-up bonus) + 4,000 (points spend) = 64,000 -> 461,000 total
SEPTEMBER: Matthew referred Sarah to the Chase Ink Business Cash
90,000 (sign-up bonus) + 6,000 (points spend) + 40,000 (referral) = 136,000 -> 597,000 total
OCTOBER: Sarah referred Matthew to the Chase Ink Business Cash
90,000 (sign-up bonus) + 6,000 (points spend) + 40,000 (referral) = 136,000 -> 733,000 total
Referrals
Referrals
As you could see above, by simply referring each other business cards, we were able to reap 40,000 points per referral when Chase upped that count in March. Just this year we earned 180,000 points referring to each other back and forth. We were also able to refer our cards (both personal and business) to our friends, family, and clients like you for a total of 220,000 points. This brings our points total to 953,000.
Points Spend
Points Spend
Now it's going to be hard to track all of the spend we did and all the points associated with that, but here's the conservative breakout of some key point earners in our Chase system.
Chase Ink Business Cash: Earns 5x points at office supply stores. So a common hack is to go into Staples or Office Depot when they run fee-free promotions on their Mastercard and Visa gift cards and buying those with the Ink Cash. You can then use those gift cards to pay utilities, your groceries, and anywhere else that generally accepts cards, giving you 5x back on those purchases. A conservative estimate of how much we purchased this year comes to around 30,000 points, giving us our over one million, 983,000 points!
Chase Freedom: Earns 7,5000 points each quarter through the 5x bonus on the quarterly bonus (see image below). Also in Q3, there was an additional 4x gas bonus through chase.com/mybonus giving me 9x back on gas that quarter. Totaling the points just from Q1-Q3, since I don't think I'll be maxing out Q4, that's 28,500. Adding to our total, we now have over a million points! 1,011,500 at the very minimum from this count.
Miscellaneous
Miscellaneous
Now obviously it's still November so we may have one or two more card bonuses left in our schedule to earn us even more points. We are also in the American Express and Capital One point ecosystems, so those are not counted in this article. I wanted to simply show here how new cards are really the bread and butter of the points game. So as you become more comfortable with opening new cards, the faster your point bank will grow.
FAQs
FAQs
Doesn't applying for a lot of credit cards hurt your credit score?
Yes and no. Having numerous credit inquiries, does indeed hurt your credit score, so every time I apply for a new card, my score dips a little bit (ranging from 2-20 points). However, credit inquires are only an estimated 5% of your credit score, so it doesn't really impact people that much. On time payments, credit limit, and credit utilization are heavier factors on your credit score. So in fact, by getting more personal cards you could raise your credit score as you have more on-time payments, a higher credit limit, and hopefully lower utilization as you spend the same amount.
But how can I do this if I don't have a business?
You don't need an LLC or anything officially with the registered with the government to have a business. I got my first business card because I sold items on facebook that I didn't need or that I refurbished. If you make money in any sort of side hustle, that counts as a business as you're creating value and making expenses. Notice how I didn't mention profit as Uber didn't even make profit as a company until 14 years later. In fact, if you're even thinking about creating a business, that can qualify as you'll need a credit card for your anticipated purchases. Now this process can be confusing and fraught with questions, so please contact us if you would like to know more.
Do you keep the one million points just sitting there?
No, points get devalued over time and we had a lot of trips this year and going into 2024. With our intake of points, we match with spending them on hotels and flights, giving us around ~300,000 Chase points at the time of writing.
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