How to earn points and miles without opening a new credit card

It’s no secret that the fastest way to earn points and miles is through opening a new credit card and hitting the minimum spending requirement for the sign-up bonus. Depending on the new credit card, this can earn someone tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of points for future travel. But not everyone wants to or can open a new credit card at the frequency they’d like to support their travel goals. So how can you earn points and miles without opening a new credit card?

Keep reading to find out our tried and true tactics when we’re not working on a sign-up bonus.

Maximize spending categories

Nearly every credit card has at least one category that earns elevated points. For many cards, that’s dining/restaurants. Others it’s gas, groceries, travel, office supply stores, or any number of areas. Using the right card to receive the maximum amount of points does add up. Here’s how we do it with the cards we keep in our wallets.

Chase Freedom Unlimited

This is our every day credit card because it earns 1.5x Ultimate Rewards points on all purchases, better than any of our other cards that have 1x point or mile minimum. So if it’s not an elevated category, all our spend goes on the Freedom Unlimited. The Chase Freedom Unlimited also earns 3x on drugstore purchases, so anything we need from CVS or Walgreen’s goes here. Dining is also a 3x category, but we have that elevated category on a number of cards so we have flexibility there.

Chase Sapphire Preferred

Our number one travel hacking card earns 3x on dining and 2x on travel. Every time we rent a car, we put the charge on the Sapphire for the rental car coverage and 2x the points on the charge. We also have our streaming services (like Netflix) on the Sapphire for 3x Ultimate Rewards points.

Chase Freedom or Freedom Flex

These cards offer 1x points on all spend. But their real power is the 5x quarterly categories. For Q1 2024, it was groceries, gym memberships, and self-care and spa services. Q2 is Amazon, restaurants, or hotels. The 5x on these categories is more than our other cards, so we always maximize our usage. These cards cap spending on these categories at $1,500 per card, which earns 7,500 Chase Ultimate Rewards points. We each have a Freedom and a Freedom Flex, so there are 4 cards in our households that get the bonus categories, which means up to 30,000 Ultimate Rewards points a quarter for our travel fund.

We never recommend spending money you don’t need to. However, if it’s something you will need in the future, you can use these categories to get the maximum points. Our regular spend on the Q1 categories did not total $1,500. So to get the maximum amount of Ultimate Rewards points, we bought Instacart gift cards (which code as groceries) as we know they will get used in the future.

American Express Gold

The American Express Gold card earns 4x on restaurants and groceries. When groceries are not a 5x Freedom category, we use the AmEx Gold at grocery stores. While everyone has grocery expenses, you can also use this card to earn 4x on gift cards sold at your local grocery store. Amazon, DoorDash, and REI are just some of the options.

Targeted Offers

Select credit card providers will sometimes offer users elevated categories through targeted offers. For example, one of us received a 5x offer on up to $1,000 of spend in the gas, dining, and grocery categories on our United card in Q1. Our United card also gives promotional offers like additional miles or PQPs for a certain amount of spend in a defined timeline. We’ve received a 5x points offer on American Express for Amazon as well. Always check your card and enroll in these offers, even if you don’t think you’ll hit the maximum.

Referral Bonuses

As experienced travel hackers, our friends and family often ask about the credit cards in our wallets. And we’re always happy to share our knowledge and sometime they even decide they’re ready to jump into the game. By having someone use one of our referral links when they open a new credit card, we earn anywhere from 10,000 to 40,000 points and miles.

Note that some credit card companies limit the number of referrals an individual can make in a single year, so keep an eye on that if you have a lot of people using your links.

Retention Offers

Companies may offer retention bonuses to cardholders to keep the card open and continue to pay the annual fee. When we were thinking of closing our American Express Gold card earlier this year, we decided to reach out to American Express to see if they would give us a retention offer. We were willing to close the card if we hadn’t gotten a retention offer, but luckily for us, they offered us 15,000 Membership Rewards points after $2,000 of spend in three months. Based on the expenses we knew we had, we took the offer and kept the card open. We do want to note that we haven’t heard of anyone getting a retention offer on a Chase card, but there are several cases where people have received a retention bonus from American Express.

United MileagePlus X App

We love this app – and we’ve written about it in detail here. It’s a super simple way to earn miles at a variety of common retailers by purchasing gift cards. Mile earnings range from 0.5 mile per dollar all the way up to 10 miles per dollar in some cases. That’s on top of the credit card points you earn from making the purchase.

Even if you’re not a United loyalist, these miles can be used with Star Alliance members, and every little bit adds up.

Shopping Portals

Any time you shop online, you should be looking to see if you can earn points and miles from your purchase. While there will be websites (like Amazon) that don’t partner with any shopping portals, the vast majority do. If you’re an American Express devotee, you can use Rakuten to earn Membership Rewards points. Rakuten partners with a variety of retailers and cash back ranges from 1% to 20% (or more), especially during elevated times of year.

If you don’t have an American Express card or prefer airline miles, make sure you install your favorite airline’s shopping portal. American, Delta, Southwest, and United all have shopping portals. You can only use one shopping portal at a time, so decide which is most valuable to you.

We recommend installing Rakuten and an airline portal so you can compare the cash back versus miles and so you can cover more stores as not all retailers are on both platforms.

Linking Programs

There are a variety of airline and hotel providers with partners that can earn you points and miles for purchases elsewhere. Here are a few links you can make to earn more points and miles:

• Starbucks x Delta Airlines
• Uber x Marriott
• Lyft x Hilton
• Lyft x Delta Airlines
• Lyft x Alaska Airlines
• Shell x American Airlines
• Avis x United Airlines
• Hertz x Marriott

Many airlines and hotels also have a dining program, where if you link your credit card, you can earn airline miles or hotel points when you use the credit card to pay at a participating restaurant. Cards can only be linked to one dining account, so pick your favorite airline or hotel and watch the points add up.

Linking accounts typically requires just a one-time set-up and then your points will accrue. You may even forget you’ve linked your accounts until you see extra points or miles in your account after you’ve eaten at a restaurant.

Summary

It’s not impossible to earn points and miles without opening a new credit card. It may take a little longer than hitting a sign-up bonus, but we’ve already earned over 300,000 points and miles year-to-date with the strategies outlined above. Using the cards you already have in a smart way can still help you earn that dream vacation!