A huge part that helped me break free of the corporate grind was having a large stash (>500,000) airline miles saved. Knowing that I could get around the world for free as opposed to paying for $1,000 flights made the jump a lot less scary.
Here are five things you probably do in your day to day life that could easily help you stash some miles.
1. Eating Out
You eat out, right? How do you usually pay for it?
If your answer is cash, you’re doing it wrong. (There are exceptions to this: on a date with a girl. Don’t let the time it takes to use a credit card ruin the vibe.) Plenty of airline cards allow you 2 or 3x points for every dollar spent.
Spending $100 at a restaurant would equate to 300 points. Most of my one way tickets from California to Eastern Europe cost me about 20,000. As you can see, that would add up fast if you spend $100 a week eating out. And that $100 is probably not far off what your average person DOES spend in a week.
2. Buying Clothes
No matter if you buy from Amazon or a fancy retailer, many cards offer bonuses. Sometimes they do online promotions through their portals.
Can you imagine earning points with a 10x multiplier when buying shoes—things you need anyway?
The point is, if you’re looking for a new watch or new kicks—you can probably maximize it to ways you couldn’t imagine.
3. Paying Rent
Many apartment landlords now have credit card payment processors online. That’s a very easy way to hit the lucrative bonuses that credit cards offer (it’s usually spend $2-3k in 3 months and get 30-50k points)
If your apartment costs $1,000 a month, you could get 50,000 points just by using a credit card. That’s a round trip plus a bit more to almost everywhere in the world from the continental US. If your landlord doesn’t, consider using a service that does. You’ll pay a 2-3% fee, but in our example that’s only $30. For three months it would cost you $90. You might ask if it’s worth it.
Is a round trip ticket from Spain worth more than $90? There’s your answer.
PS: If you live mostly out of AirBNBs as a nomad, you get 2 or 3x the cost of the apartment by using a travel credit card.
4. Paid Dating Sites (*Sometimes*)
Certain dating sites have huge promotions that they sometimes run with airlines. Recently, Match.com did a 150x points promotion with British Airways. That means if you signed up for a month of that dating site at $70, you’d have earned over 10,000 miles. The jury is still out whether or not British Airways and Match.com actually honor this over the long-term. There’s been doubts about it.
While a 150x promotion is definitely not the norm, there are typically offers that are quite good. Some of these premium, paid dating sites are worth looking at once in a while. The usual problem with them is that they don’t have enough members to justify the cost. But, there are enough members that signing up every three months is worth it.
And even more so if you can get a free flight or two out of it.
5. Office And Household Supplies
This is especially true to you guys who run businesses, especially true if it’s of the brick and mortar type.
Because most small businesses spend a small fortune in office supplies. Pens, paper, and other organization materials. Quite a few of the very good credit cards offer 5x on these purchases. A business that spent a measly $1k a month on office supplies (nothing in the scheme of things) could easily net 5k points.
Home improvement type stores often run great specials on points, too—2 or 3x. If you’ve got a home project that’s going to cost a few grand, those points add up quick.
Do that for a year and again—you’re flying round-trip just about anywhere in the world. Always wanted to see Japan? Great, now you can just from buying printer ink. Crazy.
Final Thoughts
There are a lot of other ways to go about this, but you’ll notice I’ve left all the bells and whistles off this list; i.e. some of the really absurd and crazy ways to rack up miles. That’s for a reason.
I’m of the belief that you should use these kind of “life hacks” as a way to help yourself get ahead, but not let it define you. There’s little point in spending countless hours a week researching every in and out of the miles and points came so that you can get a few extra cents worth of miles.
It’s the same as the crazy nuts who show up to the cash register with 100 coupons in their hand.
You’re better off developing a mindset of a winner. Make more money, and don’t pinch pennies. Don’t be the dude who goes to Thailand so he can live off of $1,200. Be the guy who goes to Thailand and makes $1,200 a day.
With that being said, some of these are incredibly easy to implement in your life. In fact, I would wager that for most of you, doing these things would add no more than a couple of hours a month to your schedule (probably not even that). And the results are tangible, real, and allow you to see the world. Combine a huge stash of miles with a modest online income can be a lethal combination.
The possibilities? Well, they’re endless.
If you’re looking to start a business that lets you travel, here is the solution. For more great content about traveling in Europe, make sure to check out my niche site Eastern European Travel.
Read More: 5 Truths About Using Credit Card Points For Your Benefit
Most airline tickets only cost $100, forget buying dinner for $100 (I can get 3 flights for that), get the plane ticket and they give you a free meal while you fly.
Free flights and airmiles are usually a scam.
Flight to Japan …. $45 … never been, Manila is much more fun.
Just booked for next month
AirAsia Chiang Mai to Kuala Lumpur $36, Kuala Lumpar to Manila $69, and back same again.
“Don’t be the dude who goes to Thailand so he can live off of $1,200. Be the guy who goes to Thailand and makes $1,200 a day.”
Against the law for a foreigner to work in Thailand (except on expat packages), you’re asking to be arrested and deported. I’ve know a few foreigners working illegally here, normally they are breaking even at best. All complete losers. There is no VISA that allows a ‘Digital Nomad’ to work legally in Thailand, and the Thai police pay informants. If you aren’t fully funded, Thailand is OK for a holiday, but live somewhere else.
You can’t afford to be pals with a Digital Nomad in Thailand, these guys will scrounge off you (left my wallet at home), steal from you (need a loan for a week), and get you arrested (drug deals, police informants), or in all sorts of trouble (guilt by association). Known to locals and hated as Kee Nok Farang (bird shit whites).
Plenty of people live and work as nomads in Thailand. I’ve never once heard of anyone having the trouble you speak of.
Sources?
What VISA are these plenty of people here on? The last 2 years I have trouble staying here and I have a Thai family.
Tales you have heard from before the coup….. No longer applicable.
What VISA are you here on?
I don’t live in Thailand.
Nobody goes to Thailand to work *in Thailand*.
You’re saying people are getting arrested for just using their tourist visa (whether it be the 30 day or the extended) and working on the internet?
Come on.
So you were just bullshitting about earning $1,200 a day in Thailand then?
It’s an example, good God.
Sure, you can’t live permanently in Thailand if you can’t afford to prepay a $15K Thai Elite 5 year visa, if all other options fail. But plenty of other places near by are no problem to live permanently with no questions asked or visa restrictions, like the Philippines, Malaysia etc. And if you have a decent Western job and some assets, $3K/year isn’t a fortune if it means you don’t need to go on those visa runs people had to go to 4 times a year in the good old days (not the best old days, though) anymore.
The meaning behind a working visa is that you can’t compete with locals for jobs. It’s not that you can’t watch your job, or do a job that has no local customers. And the reason why noone cares is it’s a goldmine to have people bring lots of hard foreign currency into your country (the only disadvantage being all the hard, foreign cocks it brings along). Most high-effort jobs require work or control even when you’re away, and if Thailand imposed some brain-dead ban on off-site work with no visa and actually threatened to impose it, they’d spiral into their worst depression ever, because so many high rollers would leave for nearby countries. Then there would be another coup, and the first thing they would do is undo it.
Almost all the long term residents I knew in Thailand have already left.
Usually to the Philippines or Cambodia …. 1 to Ecuador. As for ‘high rollers’, there aren’t any in Thailand, it was always a retirement destination for middle class pensioners and low level white criminals. If you were wealthy, you wouldn’t be coming here, I wouldn’t be here either. Anyway there won’t be another coup, next event will be civil war and/or ethnic cleansing. White foreigners are no longer welcome in Thailand (for more than a 2 week holiday).
But my point was the writer was talking BS. No 25 year old travel bum is earning $1,200 a day in Thailand.
Fuck off you wanker.
I’m retired, I don’t want to work, I earned more money that you could ever imagine when I was working. Working is shit, it’s for losers who can’t make it.
I know one guy that dates and lives with an older broad, he’s 30 she’s 40ish, for free travel, food and rent etc…..
She literally pays for everything.
We’ve advised him against it, especially living with her, but he seems to like “free” stuff over caution.
Living/cohabitating with an older woman is like crawling back into your mother’s snatch. It would be beyond emasculating. This is how irreversible forms of matriarchy get started as with the eternally mommy-whipped aboriginal animals of Pacifica. Take Mary Kay Letourneau for example. Here she is on the Babawawa show being interviewed along with their two teen daughters and her now man boy Vili Fualaau.
http://i0.wp.com/radaronline.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/mary-kay-letourneau-vili-fualaau-interview-barbara-walters.jpg?resize=500%2C400
Note the everpresent grimace on Vili’s face, like he’s a boy daddy still who has to wait for the booty call. He never learned to smack and game the bitch or any other bitch. She claimed him. In their younger photo, he looks like “huh, this is the sexual order? Getting my pee pee juiced and then she drives me around like a mommy?” I bet he confuses the smell of Mary’s purse with the smell of her snatch. They probably smell the same. But look at her. I bet she thinks she owns the room. Man I would pound her from behind like a dog until she repents. I can’t imagine their foreplay or sex. It’s probably some sedate feng shuei feely slow shit, like two women caressing, just the way she always wanted it. But look at the next pic. Does any figure look dominant besides Barbara Walters? Mary and Vili look like two mommies posing for acceptance.
http://i1.wp.com/radaronline.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/mary-kay-letourneau-vili-fualaau-interview-new-details.jpg?resize=980%2C551
And look at the sheer size of their girls. They don’t look submissive the least bit. They’re bigger than both their parents, most likely due to Mary’s taller Euro lineage. And the result is two mastadon chicks that look like they would rule some new matriarchal tyrannical order where the girls are bigger and more powerful than the boys. That’s how real physiological matriarchy starts that isn’t just political but is ingrained in the DNA. The brains and prowess don’t carry over though. Not from male brain to female brain. They just become more like a primitive society of animals. Cannibalism, squalor, abscence of math over feeliness that ranges from lovey dovey to homicidal – – and not zero to infinity. But my what mastadon chicks.
https://www.biography.com/.image/t_share/MTMwMjY2MjcyMTg4Mzk1NDkw/letourneau-faulaau-daughters-picjpg.jpg
Yeah it would take a big BIIIG man to pound patriarchy back into those girls. I don’t know if we’ve evolved a big enough man or tribe of men that are up for that. Most men would just end up getting pee pee twizzled by either girl, like their mom done Vili.
Sexual dimorphism is a subject I find increasingly interesting. I’ve never heard a perspective on sexual and social dynamics quite like this though. Very unique take, bro.
I totally understand young guy’s wish to travel and adventure.
Heck, I was like that.
But now, close to 40, I really do not wish to leave my city and my country. Except that one backpack trip to Goa I promised myself ten years ago.
I live and die here on my Fatherland, and I want to fuck and put back to their place the local women not the foreigners.
Am I getting old?
Not really. Being in a man’s prime, you realized that constant travel gets old, and in many ways isn’t all it is cracked up to be. Plenty of guys living the good life avoid the push to live as nomads and instead establish their domain in one location. Constantly looking for an internet connection, counting your money down to the dime, and making friendships that you know will only last as long as you remain in that area will wear on a man very fast. There is a lot to be said about building your own place that goes unmentioned.
That being said, I think every man should visit at least 2 new countries a year. Your vacation shouldn’t always be spent at the same place you work!
Thing is, I love my country and nation. I feel I have a connection with the people around me, which is simply not there abroad. In a foreign place, I often ask myself: what am I doing here?
There is one daydream I still have, that is travel with a backpack to Goa, and once there, to go to a psytrance party on the beach, and dance with half-naked young and hot hippie girls high on extasy till the sun comes up over the palm trees in the sand on the edge of the ocean…
Or skiing in Estonia and flirting with girls through a smartphone translator… just having these experiences puts you ahead in the sexual marketplace with most men in the West. Or you could trade stories about your work week for 30 minutes. That’s fun too.
Oh, I am not against young guys travelling to exotic places for adventure and women, hell, no! Go and travel, see the world for yourself, young Western males, go, go, go!
Are you still here? Why? Simon says, go and travel!
I was talking about how I feel about travelling at being nearly 40. That does not mean it applies to the young ones, no.
A funny thing, though. There is a saying in my country (that is Hungary), which roughly translates into:
“I stayed at home, for the sake of adventure”.
This saying originates from 1956, when our anti-Communist revolution was brutally beaten down, and thousands tried to escape the country to the West. Those who stayed, and faced the uncertain future of the country, used to say that.
At 40 you would be considered young in the Philippines.
I am torn between partaking of the bountiful variety out there, but hate the idea of travel itself: groped at airports, thieves, and having to adapt to my environment instead of creating my own paradise at home.
Maybe I could be a part-time nomad….yeah…..with a motorcycle…….yeah….just cruise around…….visiting all the small towns….
I hate hotels.
Yes and no.
Goa is more for pedophiles.
Goa is for psytrance lover hippies. I am not a hippie, but I love psytrance.
Hence the destination.
Paedophilia I know nothing about.
Koh Phangan in Thailand is the place for full moon parties.
But at 40, you’d be out of place …… left it too late.
Oh, luckily, not too late. That is my personal experience.
The only reason I still go to psytrance parties (I was a big fan of the music in my youth, mind) is because it is the best place to pick up young chicks.
Partly because of the general idea that somehow exists in the psytrance community, that for some unfathomable reason for me, it is frowned on if you approach a girl with the intention of fucking her. That pick-up at a psytrance event is a big no-no. That it is a Gender-neutral safe-space so to speak, or what the fuck. 🙂
So most guys go with the flow and do not do it. Most of them are sort of hippie type guys, not warrior types, if you get what I mean. Good looking and nice lads, but in a soft sorta way.
So enter I and approach with clear sexual designs on these young and fun hippie chicks, and they love it. My greying temples are somehow even helping me in competition with the young hippie guys, which is nothing sort of miracle in my eyes, but I am not the person who looks God’s gift horse in the mouth. 🙂
No, you’re getting more sensible. I’m in my mid thirties myself. Dreams of little substance seem to die the older I get. It’s about focus I suppose. What do we really want the older we get.
Can’t call you old at 40, but at 60 I’ve just booked a trip to Manila next month.
Gotta say, I was old at 40 too, but I got better.
Any recommendations for credit cards with fly miles programm? Preferable for europeans?
Just make sure the extra fee you pay for using the credit card for say, rent, is less than what you earn in rewards.
For example, if your card only gives you back 1% (this is typical) and your landlord charges 2% or more for the privilege of using the same, skip using the credit card, pay the rent with cash, check or an electronic debit, and bank the difference directly.
The same principle can apply to some utility companies depending on how you pay your bill. For example, some electric utilities can charge $5.95 or more for the privilege of paying the bill on their website using the credit card. Unless you use a few hundred dollars of power every month (you really shouldn’t be doing that) the measly 1% reward is not worth it.
As for eating out, no matter what kind of credit card rewards you have, you will never get ahead financially if you eat out all the time. Cook your own food and save money that way.
Good post,
Not sure about the eating out bit, over here $1 gets you a decent meal, $10 a quality meal with more than you can force down.
Gotcha. Over here in the USA eating at a fast food place could easily set you back $8 or more. A sit-down place with table service will be well over $10.
Even if health was not a factor this adds up fast.
Do you work for a credit card company?
All tips are essentially “!CREDIT CARD POINTZ!”. This guy should be paying as an advertiser at this point. These are consistently the most vapid and uninteresting contributions and it just seems like another facet of his online hustle.
I don’t offer a single credit card signup link in this article, or any article on my site.
Air miles, food, ebooks, business, digital nomad …. this isn’t exciting.
If you really do travel the world, I’m sure you have far more interesting subjects to write about. I could write this stuff from my mom’s basement.
But,
At least you didn’t write the ‘How to dress as a gay guy’ one.
Read any of my other 1,000 articles.
Well done !
The only way to rack up substantial amounts of credit card points is to use your card for job-related expenses for which you are reimbursed quickly.
I use my credit card for my regular expenses, with points being one of the reasons, and I usually net about $20 worth of points in a typical month.
It is OK but it won’t be paying for travel any time soon.
If you are able to set it up to pay your mortgage, car payments, or student loans, such as what you could do with bluebird cards, it would be very easy to do.
I can do all of that, but the problem is for my mortgage, car payment, (former) student loans and utility bills, the fees charged by these vendors in exchange for the privilege of paying with a credit card far exceed the value of any points recouped by using my credit card.
One such example would be my electric bill. A typical bill is $150 a month, but I’d have to pay $6 extra to use my credit card to pay it. The biggest credit card rebate I’d get from that is $1.56. Even with a “generous” points card that might give me 3% back, I’d get back $4.68. I’d still be out extra money if I did it that way.
I try instead to focus on putting as much money as I can into a savings account before I pay any bills or buy anything.
You used to be able to buy gift cards with your credit card, and use those giftcards in up to $1,000 increments to charge a “bluebird” card that essentially was like a checking account. You could then use your bluebird card to make payments for anything.
The following link details what you used to be able to do. You wouldnt incure any additional fees from this, but this method is no longer available.
http://fifighter.com/travel/travel-hacking/2014/05/how-to-load-debit-gift-cards-at-walmart-visa-simon-mall-etc/
Ugh… I find his whole eat pray love for bros thing fucking irritating and womanly. You’re absolutely correct however.
Shit advice. Points are currency. It takes your time to find the promos, earn them, track them and use them. But it’s ever changing. Instead, focus on making a shit ton more money and spend the accepted currency of your location like the baller you should be — the baller most hope to be.
Exactly…. Which is pretty much what he’s doing here. I don’t come here to be jostled, help someone else’s hustle, fine but this guy is greasy.
#1 work for an airline, you and your family travel your heart out on the company dime. Just don’t let your daughter try to wear leggings whilst checking in.
I have traveled the world for over 30 years — firstly on backpacking tours (cattle class)- finally with wealthy baby-mamma – (first class)
Is good to be conscience of the Credit Card points, but I don’t travel so much anymore and use my “Thank you(Amazon)” points credit card versus my “AmericanAirlines” cc…
some airlines zero out the miles after certain period <12-24? months.
fuck them — had several first class round the world fares….
then lost the points.
although one time was able to transfer to relative who used them for a hotel…
My delivery.com points never expired — had many free Chinese meals in NYC this past winter!!! on points from years prior.
Some tips:
For long Haul flights – USA East Coast to Asia/Australasia:
Round-the-World fares are about 1/2 price of round trip.
Multiple-Continent fares are about 2/3 price of round trip…
Using airline alliance such as One World.
best way — be rich, don’t be poor. Or marry a rich broad.
Or, just going out on a limb here, don’t use a credit card, don’t get caught in the monthly compound interest trap and use the money you save to invest such that you become rich in time and don’t have to worry about the cost of airline tickets and restaurants?
Bingo, you win the prize!
Few are able to ‘pay off’ their cards each month, and when that emergency hits, its too easy to finance it.
I’ve never had a credit card for the last quarter century, never will for the next one, either.
The entire article is based on the assumption that the card user has the discipline to pay it off every month.
If you pay it off, you pay $0 in interest and you get around 1% back in rewards. Why wouldn’t somebody do it?
My business and personal spending is about $30,000-$40,000 per month and I will never pay for a flight / hotel again. Check to see if card rewards are a taxable benefit in your locale though.
Paying off a credit card every month requires the same amount of responsibility as it does to not spend more in a month than what one makes in a month. And in both instances, people should always be putting money aside first.
For me, the biggest reason I use a credit card in this manner is the fraud protection. If my check card number gets stolen I am temporarily out of that cash and I will run into problems paying bills. If my credit card number gets stolen, then I have to go a few days without buying anything, which of course isn’t a big deal.
Not one of the better RoK articles. The first suggestion is especially bad: the dinner date. One of the worst ways to get a woman into bed. Some men opt for drinks or coffee but instead, I favor the activity date. You build up their appetite then buy them a cheap lunch (cheap food tastes good after burning calories.)
After you’ve had a big meal, are you in the mood for sex or to lie down and sleep?
You should probably read the post. Never advocated that.
Kyle, I didn’t mean to rag on you specifically but just bashing the idea of the dinner date in general.
There are even some American women who frown upon men using coupons on a date (I guess the idea is to show how he is so rich he can flush money down the toilet to impress her) which really sets the wrong precedent.
My European wife seemed to have learned some manners. When the check came for our first date, she excused herself to go to the bathroom. No pretense of “offering to pay” (when she really didn’t intend to) or looking at my wallet to see how I paid.
As someone whose used points for years, a few observations: I generally just take the cash because it’s less of a hassle. With points cards directly, I didn’t see any discounts I got buying via points that I couldn’t get from just cashing out and going to the airline website directly (others, PLEASE correct me if I’m wrong. I’d love to learn a better way!!!)
Converting the card points to FF miles is usually best but one must be careful. The points expire with many airlines regardless of what you do (unless you have their credit card which carries a fee attached to your mileage account). The airlines are devaluing their miles all the time meaning if you get 50K miles, the next year the same flight might require 60K points. All that being said… one feature of FF miles is that you can fly in the summer on flights that are usually twice the price in cash. Also, with airlines that work in zones, you can use miles to get multiple stops that might cost extra for a points or cash ticket. Upgrading to better class (business or economy plus) using miles is also pretty great too because if they downgrade you, you get the miles back (if you buy a business class ticket and they downgrade you to economy, they usually don’t give you the full difference in fares that you’d expect.)
“My European wife seemed to have learned some manners. When the check came for our first date, she excused herself to go to the bathroom. No pretense of “offering to pay” (when she really didn’t intend to) or looking at my wallet to see how I paid.”
My British girlfriend has better manners. She pays her fair share. Always.
Good for you. Truly. I had a few women pay their way, but they threw it in my face a year later: “you only dated me because I you’re too cheap to pay my way!” I decided that what I saved up front, I paid for later and plus I could hold it against them later (my wife has washed a hundred dishes for every free meal she’s ever gotten.)
Perhaps the newer generation is more “egalitarian” in this regard, but do they treat men any better? Please do tell.
I hate to fly but I like international travel. I usually get the cheapest flight to one spot close to where I want to explore, then fan out overland from there. Ground travel is usually easily worked out when you get there.
Lisbon to Hong Kong overland is fun, though certainly not for wimps. (Took me several months but I wasn’t in a hurry. Did it the hard way through the Caucasus and the ‘stans.)
I recommend the following book called Free Money Now by Ben Prusinski. You can buy it for dirt cheap on Amazon and it saved me tons of money.
Spending money on things you might not normally buy just to get points that have all kinds of limitations does not make financial sense. Also, most airline cards have yearly fees as well as the interest that most people end up paying if you don’t pay your bill in full each month. That is what the card companies are counting on. This article explains it better:
http://maximizefreedom.com/2017/02/18/why-reward-card-churning-is-not-worth-it/
Your’re five days late on the April Fool’s joke, bro
Never been to Pattaya, passed through once with a Thai gf on the way to Koh Samet. My gf pointed out that lots of the girls were sitting on bar stools and were wearing no knickers. I was taller than her so can’t confirm.
No shade, but I thought this article was going to be about more than just how to spend your cc reward points. It would be great to curate creative and frontier ways to gain free travel. Like sneaking on a oil rig and waking up in Thailand.
There is no such thing as a free lunch, when you hand use a credit card to make these purchases, you are handing the credit card companies a data set on uour life. What food you eat, where you go, what clothes you wear, what you oay for rent, where you like to live, even when you eat and how much.
All of this information is shared with government of course, but also EVERYONE else who is willing to pay for it, or works with the credit card company. If you are OK with that so you can get a couple of free trips, good for you. The truth is, all that info is probably accessible anyway.
It comes down to this. You are getting fucked in the ass one way or another, some people are willing to take a few trinkets in exchange, and some of is prefer to spit in the face of our rapists.
That seems unnecessarily dark. I’ve been doing it for years, and guess what… no ass fucking! Just many thousands of dollars in free flights and hotels.
It’s not a free lunch, MasterCard / Visa take 2-4% of the sale and give 1% back to the card holder. It’s genius and the only people getting fucked are merchants.
And the people who don’t pay in full every month. Those “free points” have to come from somebody. 🙂
Merchants don’t default like a consumer. Net of defaults and fraud, Visa makes most of its money from merchant fees.
Cool story.
How about NO. No credit cards. Don’t spend money you don’t have like women do. Also if you have money use cash for paying. Cash means freedom, that way no one can track what you’re doing and what you’re buying.
The main drawbacks:
– Some people don’t pay off the bill every month
– Some people go “points-crazy” and fill an entire room with pudding just because it was giving 20x points
– DON’T PAY RENT WITH IT!! The upcharge is not worth the points.
– Every now and then a points provider will just decide that the points will now expire (see the Air Miles grand debacle)
– Some gov’t authorities tax reward points
You guys bashing this are missing the point. He’s giving this advice assuming that paying the card off at the end of the month is a GIVEN. Geez, shouldn’t even have to spell that out. The point he’s making is, if you’re going to spend that money anyway, use credit cards that build travel points to reduce cost of or get free travel. Obviously avoid things that do up charge, any kind of interest (paying off at end of month usually takes care of that ) AND pay off entirely at end of each month.