Hi @Jeremy, curious to see if you like to use a credit card, if not multiple. Are you a fan of credit card churning, or do you prefer to keep things simple and only use one or two cards.
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MY GENERAL PERSPECTIVE is that credit card companies are MASSIVELY PROFITABLE and among the most valuable companies on the planet. They didn’t get there by setting up rules to these games that the customer wins. So I’m EXTREMELY skeptical of the idea that chasing points, bonuses, churning, etc is going to leave you better off. i.e. if you skip credit cards all together and just use a debit card, you’ll probably spend SO MUCH LESS money (without being susceptible to the subconscious pull of the points) that you would be way better off than any prizes the credit card companies send your way.
That said the way I personally do it is I have exactly two cards. One is the oldest card I have that I keep for credit score purposes. I have a few recurring charges on it and don’t keep it in my wallet. The other is my daily use card (Fidelity Visa) that has a straight 2% cash back that gets direct deposited to my Fidelity account monthly and I never think about it.
Spending less is always going to leave you better off than getting more points.
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I have lots of credit cards. I own 2 small businesses, and between that and personal expenses, its just easier to autopay on credit cards and earn points just for paying your bills, which I’m going to do anyways. I only use about 6 cards, and only 4 of those get the bulk of my expenses.
1 goes for personal expenses and another goes for my wife’s personal expenses, 1 goes for one business and the other one goes for the other business. One card is only used for tax deductible medical expenses, so that info is automatically documented and added up for me every year. The last card is carried just because.
The gotcha is that you have to pay every card off every single month, so you never pay interest. If you can’t do that, you can get yourself in trouble. With 6 cards and a bookkeeper that’s not hard to do.
I use cards that get 2 points for every $ spent, and one brand name card that gets 5 points for everything I buy from Amazon and affiliated companies. Travel is getting to be pretty cheap as a result, and the cash back at 2 cents or 5 cents on the dollar is pretty nice too.