There are 4 tools that I use to stay organized with my credit cards – 3 are software and 1 is a case to hold all of my 50+ cards (credit cards, airline cards, car rental cards, hotel cards, etc)
Mint.com
Mint.com has nothing to do with miles and points or travel hacking – Mint 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, car value, 401K, IRAs, etc. It’s by Intuit (makers of TurboTax, Quicken) and it is free.
Mint also tracks bills, provides you with a free credit score, has a budgeting section, and more. Since it’s free, they have some advertising on – ways to save and advice where they recommend certain credit cards or opening of an IRA. The advertising is very well integrated and not obtrusive at all – I don’t mind it at all for having this free product.
An important aspect of travel hacking is signing up for multiple credit cards – mint allows you to track your credit score and keeps tracks of all of your open credit cards once you link them.
I highly suggest mint even if you aren’t into travel hacking. There are a few other competitors to mint – most notably PersonalCapital.com – I have used both but prefer Mint for their interface.
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.
AwardWallet sends me an email each week with any changes to my accounts and shows your 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 $10/year. If you use this special link to sign up – you can get Awardwallet Plus free for 6 months.
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, activated the card, 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.
Credit Card Holder Case
I searched for a while to try to find a good cheap case that would hold all of my credit cards and loyalty cards. Most people just use the clear sheets that hold business cards – I used these for a while but quickly learned that credit cards are slightly larger than business cards so I would be forcing them into the plastic sheets, they were hard to get out, and the plastic started to rip. 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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