How to Supercharge the Points You Collect

Here's a couple of tips on how you can really supercharge the miles & points you collect from using credit cards so you can do more travelling:

'1. Shop at grocery stores that take American Express. This way you can use your American Express Canadian Cobalt, which offers 5x points on grocery purchases. We love shopping at Zehrs, however, they don't take American Express, so we now shop at Metro and Sobeys, which do.

However, when we do shop at Zehrs, we will buy a $500 VISA gift card at Sobeys, as its coded as a grocery purchase, meaning we get 5x the points on the purchase of the gift card, and we then use the gift card at Zehrs. Be careful about doing this too much, as this is frowned upon by Amex, and they could cancel your card.

Just by doing this, if you spent even just $2,000 a month on groceries, by the end of the year, you would accumulate 120,000 American Express Membership Reward (MR) points.

Now, if you really like Zehrs, like we do, and you didn't buy a VISA gift card to use, I'd recommend getting the RBC Ion+ VISA to use, as this card offers the highest points return out of all other VISA credit cards out there in Canada; 3x on groceries, and even 3x on dining out too!

Plus, the fee is very low, only $48 a year.

2. Welcome bonuses are a great way to supercharge your points. In just the last year, we've accumulated almost 800K welcome bonus points. Both American Express Platinum and Business Platinum offer amazing welcome bonuses. The American Express Gold also usually offers a huge welcome bonus (Ashley just got 75,000 points). However, make sure that you can meet the minimum spend in the required time frame before applying for these credit cards, or any credit card for that matter.

I've created a spreadsheet to track all my credit cards, and before applying, I figure out what I will be spending on that credit card to make sure I meet the minimum spend in time.

For instance, I recently just got The Marriott Bonvoy® Canadian Business American Express® Card, which requires you to spend $6,000 over 3 months to get the 75,000 welcome bonus. Along with other credit cards we've signed up for recently, such as Ashley also getting the American Express Aeroplan Card, which requires you to spend $3,000 over 3 months to get a 30,000 welcome bonus, we need to make sure we can meet all these minimum spends.

Spending a combined $9,000 over 3 months, which equals $3,000 a month, on these cards is a lot. On top of this spend, I don't like taking away spending on my high earning cards to meet these spends. Meaning, I don't want to use these cards for groceries instead of using our American Express Cobalt, as the Cobalt gets 5x the points, and these cards only provide 1x points on groceries.

So, in this instance, to hit the minimum spend of $6,000, I'm going to be paying my personal taxes using my newly acquired Marriott Bonvoy® Canadian Business American Express® Card, which will help me achieve the minimum spend needed to get the welcome bonus.

3. Which brings me to my next tip to supercharge your miles & points, using services such as PaySimply or Plastiq, which charge you a small fee, but you can then use your credit cards to pay for such items that don't take credit cards, such as your personal taxes or property taxes, or vendors/companies whom might not take credit cards or maybe don't take American Express.

For example, we've now set up all our real estate investment properties property taxes to be paid using PaySimply (and even our personal home property taxes too). This allows us to use our credit cards to pay these costs, since these companies don't directly let you pay with a credit card. This equals alone over $50K a year, that we can now charge to a credit card, which allows us to earn points on this spend.

I know what you're thinking, pay MORE just to use a credit card?

This is where you need to make sure it's worth the 2.5% percent fee PaySimply charges to use their service. I know it is as I know I'll get a much higher return by using these points I'll now get since paying with a credit card, when I go to redeem them for a flight, and most likely get upwards of a 10% return.

Plastiq is also another payment service I use, as they allow you to use your credit card to pay a company with a check. For example, when we recently installed a Generac at our home, the electrical company we hired to install didn't take credit cards. This was a huge purchase, and I was hoping to get points for it, so since the company took checks, I went to Plastiq and paid using a credit card, and they then, for a fee of 2.8%, delivered a check to the company!

4. Lastly, learn when to use which credit card. For instance, when grocery shopping, you need to know which vendors will be coded correctly to get you the most points. Here's a list of companies we shop from, both online and in person, all of them grocery stores, or where we buy grocery type items, but some are coded as grocery stores, giving us 5x the points when using our American Express Cobalt, and some aren't, giving us only 1x the points, as it will fall under 'everything else'.

Same when shopping on Amazon, you might be purchasing a grocery item, but Amazon isn't coded as a grocery store, so you won't get 5x the points if you used your Cobalt, you'll just get 1x the point, as its coded differently and falls under the everything else category on credit cards.

What we do then for purchases on Amazon, and for everything else not travel, or grocery, or restaurant/dining out related, we use our American Express Canadian Business Platinum, as this offers the highest points return for 'everything else'; 1.25 points for every $1 spent, vs. mostly every other credit card, which offers only 1 point for every $1 spent.

Trust me, that .25 can really add up!

What do you think about that!?