How to Earn Credit Card Points Without Spending Money

For those of us on a journey to accumulate credit card rewards, it always starts by getting one or multiple credit cards and start using them for our normal spending.

Later on, there are many tips to earn more credit card rewards that include:

• using point/miles redemption portals
• earning from referrals
• collecting signup bonuses on new cards (aka churning)
• tracking and activating shopping deals
• etc…

While these are great ways to earn rewards, they either require other people to be involved or require you to manage many accounts. This can quickly become overwhelming.

However, there is one easy way to earn credit card points and cashback, without spending more money and without signing up to new cards.

Spending Optimization is finding the strategy that tells which of your cards to use whenever you make a purchase, in order to maximize your overall rewards

Spending Optimization to earn points without spending more

Let’s take a simple example of a real credit card user, Bob.

Bob’s top spending categories are groceries, dining and gas (no way, you too!)

Bob owns 3 cards, the AMEX Blue Cash Preferred which he knows is really good for cash back on groceries, the US Bank Cash+ and the Citi Custom Cash which he picked for the absence of annual fee and the ability to choose a bonus category for both.

Bob read about the best credit card optimization tool out there and decided to use it to find his optimal spending.

Here are the results:

And here are the category-card pairings for each spending strategy:

Random Use

Using his cards randomly, Bob would earn around $553/year in credit card rewards. Not financially bad but very far from the options below.

Simple Use

The better strategy is to take advantage of bonus categories. Each of the cards he owns pays a high cash back rate or points in specific categories. The easiest strategy to remember is simply to dedicate one card per category, the one that pays the highest cash back.

With 6% cash back, the Blue Cash Preferred is naturally the best for groceries. The app determined that Bob should activate the Dining category with the Custom Cash to earn 5%, and the Groceries category for the Cash+ (both his other cards beat this one on the possible bonus categories of the Cash+).

Notice how Bob’s earnings now increased to $701/year!!

Optimal Use

But wait, there is even better!

The tool detected that the AMEX Blue Cash Preferred has a spending limit of $6000/year after which Bob only earns 1% on groceries… That’s a hit to his biggest spending category.

To avoid that, the recommended strategy is to:

• Use the Citi Custom Cash to earn 5% on the groceries spending above the limit
• Choose Dining as the 2% bonus category for the US Bank Cash.

2% on Dining is less than the 5% Bob would earn with the Simple strategy… Sound like a downgrade, no? Well, the math doesn’t lie, higher rewards on groceries is worth more than higher rewards on dining for Bob’s specific spending.

This is a great example to show how powerful optimization models can find a strategy that seems counterintuitive, but earned Bob $827 instead of $553.

Run your own numbers and enjoy free money!

An important lesson from this example is that the results really depend on YOUR spending habit. If Bob’s spending were slightly different, the optimal strategy would be different as well.

Running the numbers is the most accurate way to find the Optimal Spending for you, and to maximize the amount of credit card points or cash back you earn without spending more money and with the same cards. We built all the tools to do just that!