Where Our Points Journey Begins

Its been exactly one year since I applied for my first credit card to begin my journey of collecting miles and points for travelling and what a journey it has been.

To start, I wish I learnt about this many many years ago. The points I would have had by now, just from my everyday spending would've allowed me to travel for free so much earlier.

It's just like when I started investing in real estate, I wish I would've started sooner.

But you got to start somewhere, and thanks to @princeoftravel, whom I heard on the @rockstarinnercircle podcast one year ago, January 2023, I quickly got started.

Of course I didn't just jump on the first credit card that I could find, I did a lot of homework, reading many of Prince of Travel's blogs and watching many of their YouTube videos. They are a trusted source so I always go back to them to confirm a lot of the information I read.

After learning as much as I could for about a month, I went and applied on February 28th, 2023 for the best card you should start with when beginning your miles and points journey; the Canadian American Express Cobalt card.

The main reason I started with this card, you get 5x the points on groceries at most grocery stores. Just from the spending alone on groceries a month, I figured I would generate about 180K points a year ($3,000/month in groceries, over 12 months, at 5x points). And this doesn't even include the 2,500 extra points you get each month upon meeting the minimum spending of $500. This means by the end of just one year, with one credit card, I would have 210K points.

The one negative I always hear however when I mention an American Express credit card, is that it's only for rich people.

Well, the American Express Cobalt Credit Card costs only $12.99 a month, which works out to just $155.88 a year. For a credit card that does so much, this is easily the best value you can get, which is why I strongly recommend you get this card when beginning your credit card points journey.

Like I said, I can't believe I went all these years just getting cash back on my credit cards, or earning 1 cent per dollar spent on my RBC credit cards, in which all I would do is pay down the balance of my credit card with my reward points I earned. Depressing when I think about it.

I then went and upgraded my TD credit card I had, which was the TD Canada Trust Classic Travel VISA Card, and applied for a TD® Aeroplan® Visa Infinite Privilege card on March 9th, 2023, since this card offered a huge sign up bonus, and allowed me to earn Aeroplan points vs TD Reward points, since you can redeem Aeroplan points for flights to more than 1,300 destinations on more than 50 airline partners worldwide.

Now, along with the other credit cards I already had, which consisted of the:

1.      RBC VISA Avion Platinum card,

2.      RBC Platinum VISA Avion Business card,

3.      RBC Cash Back Mastercard,

4.      RBC Royal Bank US VISA Gold card

5.      CIBC Costco Mastercard and

6.      RBC Bank US VISA Signature Black Card,

I now had 8 credit cards.

But I realized that these 6 credit cards I always had and used, weren't the best cards for collecting miles and points, and that I could generate way more points from my day to day spending with different cards, as well as get the welcome bonus points when applying for new, different cards.

So I got to work on upgrading and switching most of them.

Stay tuned for my next blog on what credit cards I upgraded to and switched.