1. Day 1 – What’s Travel Hacking all about?

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Before we jump into earning miles and points and applying for our first credit card, I want you to take some time to get organized before we begin.  Once you get going, you are going to have a LOT of accounts – credit card accounts, frequent flier airline accounts, hotel loyalty accounts, rental car company accounts, etc.  Trust me, you will be glad you got organized before beginning.

Here are the five tools that I use to stay organized with my credit cards – 4 are software and 1 is a case to hold all of my 50+ cards (credit cards, airline cards, car rental cards, hotel cards, etc)

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Personal Capital

PersonalCapital.com has nothing to do with miles and points or travel hacking – it is a website (and app) for your finances – you can add all of your accounts – including: checking, savings, paypal, loans (mortgage, auto, school, etc), credit cards, home value, 401K, IRAs, etc and it is free.

PersonalCapital.com also tracks bills, investments, all of your accounts and credit cards.  It also has a budgeting section, and it’s investment/retirement section is the best I’ve seen.  Here is what the main dashboard looks like:

So why am I telling you about a finance tracker?  Well an important aspect of travel hacking is signing up for multiple credit cards – PersonalCapital keeps tracks of all of your open credit cards once you link them.

Clicking on the ‘Credit’ sections on the left sidebar and it expands to show you all of your credit cards (and spouses) along with the balances, credit limit, etc.  It will also track the day an account was closed which will become very important later on.

I highly suggest PersonalCapital even if you aren’t into travel hacking. There are a few other competitors – most notably Mint.com.  I had been using mint for years, but kept running into sync issues and non-supported accounts which rarely happens with PersonalCapital.

If you are new to and interested in trying out PersonalCapital.com – signup with this special link you will receive a $20 Amazon gift card just for creating an account and linking a single investment account. Signing up will also help keep this course FREE!

You don’t have to use these programs to track your finances, there are others out there – YNAB (You Need A Budget), Quicken, etc or maybe you just use good old fashioned paper files and folders.  Use whatever works for you – but make sure you are organized.  You don’t want to miss payments on credit cards and accrue interest payments and late fees.

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AwardWallet

AwardWallet tracks all of your reward programs – airline miles, hotel points, credit card points, etc. It currently can track 678 loyalty programs. One very nice feature that I love is that I can add my wife and children’s accounts to mine all under one user-id (no multiple logins needed for each person). Currently I am tracking 78 different household accounts. Here’s a short little video about it:

AwardWallet sends me an email each week with any changes to my accounts and shows your balance month to month with a bar chart.

Awardwallet has both a free and a paid version (AwardWallet Plus). Below is a chart which shows you what is included in the Plus version.

I am a subscriber to the Plus version since it displays the expiration date of miles/points for an unlimited number of accounts instead of just 3. And it’s only $30/year. If you use this special link to sign up – you can get Awardwallet Plus free for 6 months.

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Password App

One other tool I use is a password manager, with the hundreds of different accounts I have to keep track of it would be impossible to try to remember all of the user names and passwords.  I have been using LastPass and have been very happy with it.  I even purchased the premium version which is only $1/month.  The premium version lets you use/sync LastPass over multiple devices (phones, tablets, & desktop computers) while the free version only lets you use one of the three categories.

The other major password applications are Dashlane and 1Password.  Here is a good review of the different options available:  http://thewirecutter.com/reviews/best-password-managers/

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Google Docs

To track all of the credit cards that I have signed up with – I created a simple Google Documents spreadsheet – which lists what the card is, when I applied, when I was approved, when the card was activated, what the sign up bonus is, how much I need to spend to get the signup bonus, etc. Click here to download a copy of my spreadsheet.

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Credit/Loyalty Card Holder Case

Some people just use a rubber band, but being an organizer, I had to find something better than a stack of credit cards held together by a rubber band.  I started using 3 hole punched plastics sheets in a binder that are meant for business cards. 

Quickly I learned credit cards are slightly larger than business cards so I had to force them into the plastic sheet pockets, they were hard to get out, and the plastic started to rip after a week. 

I found this Boshiho leather credit card holder on Amazon that has been working great. I purchased in December 2015 and have been happy with it since. Credit cards slid in easily and there is room for 90 cards. I highly recommend.

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Need to Knows

• Organization is a key to success with miles and points, specifically
  1. Financial – to track credit card account balances
  2. Award Programs – to track miles and point
  3. Passwords – to track multiple login and password at banks, credit cards, award programs, etc
  4. Credit Cards – to track dates open, annual fees, rewards, sign-up bonus tracking, etc
  5. Wallet – to hold the physical cards associated with credit cards and travel reward programs

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Homework

1. Make sure you have a method to keep track of your credit cards – accounts, balances, payment due dates, etc.
2. Signup for an account at AwardWallet – the free version is fine for now
3. Download my google spreadsheet to keep track of new credit card sign up bonuses (or create your own)