How do you compare miles, points, cash? Learn How to Compare

Credit card companies use points and miles because they want to obfuscate and confuse you. They want you to think that if you’re just using miles and points, then those are free, and you don’t care. It must be a great value. Don’t be confused by credit card companies; they want to confuse you. Don’t let them take the time to do the math.

I spent over $1 million on credit cards in just one year. Let my experience help you get out of debt and use credit cards to your advantage. Let’s get into this video so I’m going to show you how to compare credit cards when you first want to determine if you’re going to sign up and use that particular card or not. Some give you in terms of rewards miles points and cash, why do they do that? Why do they differ? They do it on purpose because they want to confuse you. They want you to look at it and say, “Oh look, I can get 10 points if I sign up for this card. Oh, but that one will give me 100 points. Hold on, that one will give me 10,000 points. No, wait, that one will give me 100,000 points.” And that might be how some people are deciding whether or not to sign up for a card, but they have no idea what 100,000 points will get them on that card or 10,000 or 100,000.

So if you’re getting miles or you’re getting points or you’re getting cash, how do you know which of those cards you should choose? Well, somehow we have to be able to equate them all on a level playing field. I do it myself; this is what I do. I call it the 1% or the 1 cent hack rule. So this might seem confusing, but I’m going to give you a couple of specific examples so that you can apply them yourselves and then you can determine which card you want to use. Once you have a card, whether or not you’re actually getting real value out of it. In other words, if you’re getting points and you’re buying a particular piece of merchandise and you might be buying it with points and if you’re getting one cent per point, let’s say you’re spending $200 on an item through the points and then you look online and you realize, wait a second, I could have bought it for $100 cash, then you’re not really getting a lot of value.

One cent is what I would like to have as a baseline for my points, miles, you name it, and I try to equate points or miles to a penny. So if I’m getting one penny for every point or one penny for every mile, then I’m essentially getting 1% back. So at two cents, it would be 2% back. Thanks for watching; take a moment to hit that subscribe button so you don’t miss future videos and hit that like button as well; it really helps the channel out and helps the video spread to more people. Thanks for watching.

Now there are cards that will give you, say, 2% cash back or two and a half percent back, and I’ve got some links in the description on the various cards that we cover that give two and a half or three percent. But those are through hacks, meaning you might have to sign up for a checking account; you might have to deposit some of your payroll; you might have to do certain things. So yes, there are ways to get more than that 2%; it’s usually store-specific; there’s usually caveats and kind of hoops you need to jump through worth doing. But let’s just say that the baseline best you’re going to get is 2% cash back. So we’re going to use some examples here in a moment, and we’re going to look at the 1% equals a penny or 2% equals two cents.

If you’re looking at the cards and you say, “I can get a card cashback that’s going to give me 2%, or I can use one giving me miles or points,” well, if you get a 2% cash back card, then you really want to get two cents or more for your miles, 2 cents or more for your merchandise so that you can make sure if you’re renting cars or getting flights or buying something through the mall that if you’re not getting more than two cents or two cents or more, then you’re not getting or you’re not bettering the 2%. So let’s look at the 2 cent rule.

We’re going to aim to get two cents for every mile or point. Now in some cases, you may not know this before you get the card. That’s one reason I make videos on all the various cards, and I show you, for example, I’ve got a United card which I happen to love for various reasons, and I show, and we’ll give an example of using the points that I get or the miles that I get for an airline flight, and I always make sure I get at least two cents a point or more. In some cases, I’ll get three, three and a half, and then there are other cards or actually the United card and some other cards where you can use it for merchandise, same thing, trying to get that two cents.

And let me explain how that works. In the two cents, we’re trying to get 2%, so ideally, you’re either going to use a cash card, which is just cash; you can’t beat cash. So what do we want out of miles and points? We want two plus cents, meaning we want greater than two cents for every mile or point. So let me get into some examples; it’s easier than you think once you get it; you’ll know it forever.

Okay, so I’m going to give you two examples. I happened to go into United, and I looked at a flight going from Dulles to Las Vegas, doesn’t really matter where but these are actual numbers, and I’ll give you both examples.

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