Affluent but Frugal

Rewards credit cards can be a great way to hustle extra money for travel or just life in general. Today's credit card companies are offering bigger and bigger incentives for opening and keeping accounts and I personally am very happy to cash in. If you are carrying credit card debt or have trouble controlling your spending, I do not recommend you credit card hack. For this approach to be beneficial for you, you need to pay off your balance every month. None of these cards have paid to be in this article. These are strictly my own views about what cards are helpful. Level 1: Maximizing your every day cash back For me this isn't even really hacking, just a little optimization of what you are already doing. You already buy groceries and gas so you might as well get rewards. You want to pay for everything you buy with a credit card including gas, groceries, utilities. If it can be paid for with a credit card use one. Can you pay your mortgage with a credit card? Probably not...

Over the 1 year planning period for our wedding we spent almost double what we normally would during that period. Our savings took a big hit. Ouch. We had money saved to pay for the wedding but we still put everything we could on a credit card in order to get our points. If we're going to spend a ton we might as well get some points from it that we could use for a honeymoon or gift cards or something. This would be level 1 - just making sure to use your normal cards. We went a step further and chased sign up bonuses to maximize our value and in doing so gave ourselves about a $4,000 wedding gift! Let me add,  I do not recommend going into debt to pay for a wedding. Have the wedding you can afford - this strategy is intended only to maximize the rewards from what you would spend anyway. We were originally planning to use the points from the wedding spending to pay for our honeymoon to Thailand but unfortunately some personal events have forced us to delay taking that...

My wallet is full! We like eating out, going to movies, traveling, and having a nice house. All of the things that cost so much money! A few years ago, I started “credit card hacking” to earn some side money for the things we’d otherwise using our money for, this is my approach! If you have trouble controlling your spending or you are in credit card debit, these suggestions are not for you. I have a two prong approach for using credit card points to generate extra cash: Taking advantage of signup bonuses Maximizing every day cash back First, I chase the occasional sign up bonus. Do you know that credit cards will give you 100s of dollars for signing up to a new account? How crazy is that? When you sign up for a new account, they will offer you a sign up bonus which can be worth $500 or more after having your account for at least 3 months and meeting a minimum spend, usually at least $3,000 during those 3 months. A few times a year, I will sign up for a new cre...

Last year we spent a fantastic week in Barcelona and traveling a little by car through France and we only spent about $1500 total for flights, hotels, food and shopping. The sad thing is, we could have spent less if we hadn't rented a car which sucked up a lot of our funds (tip: don't rent a car in France). Here's what we did and how it all worked so you can do it too! Plan in Advance The key to traveling on the cheap is advanced planning. No, I'm not talking about booking early because we all know we should do that when we can but when I know I'm taking a trip, I will try to rack up as many miles and credit card points as a I can up to a year before booking a thing. If you have a history or problem with credit card debt, this tip is not for you. This only works if you can control your spending and not pay any interest charges! You want to look online for the best credit card point offers and maximize what you can get for free. For this trip, I relied...