Michelle: Welcome to the Savvy Travel Moms podcast. If you are a mom who wants to travel more with your family without spending a fortune, you're in the right place. I'm Michelle, the bougie one.

Joy Smith: I'm Joy, the practical one. are two moms with different travel styles, but the same savvy mindset. In our show, we will break down family-friendly travel tips, points and miles, and realistic strategies that fit into a busy mom life. From hotel robes and room service to free breakfast and budget wins, we will help you turn everyday life into unforgettable family memories.

Michelle: Real moms, real travel, real strategies. I one of the biggest myths in the points world that you need a wallet bursting with credit cards to travel for nearly free, and that's just not true. You don't need more cards, you need a better strategy. Today we're talking about how to maximize the spend you're already doing and use the right card at the right time. Okay, so let's talk about what this actually looks like in real life, because I think this is where people either feel overwhelmed or they feel like they're not doing enough. They think, well, I only have two cards, so I must not be earning that much. But honestly, some of the highest earners I know aren't the ones with the most cards. They're the ones who are the most strategic with the cards they already have. So let's start here. When someone looks at their wallet, how should they even begin thinking about which card to use when? Joy, do you have any tips for that?

Joy Smith: Ooh, that is one of my favorite questions because I hear so often from my mom, friends, or clients that they just feel overwhelmed and feel like in order to start in points and miles, you have to always have a million cards. That is not how either one of us started. We all started with one card and then we grew from there. You know, that's what I tell people. Pick one card and start with it, grow from there. The best place to start is with what you already have in your wallet.

Michelle: One card. Yep.

Joy Smith: because learning to understand the power of what you're spending is where it all begins. So for example, a lot of people carry around an American Express Gold or the Chase Sapphire Preferred or even like a Chase Freedom Unlimited or a Freedom Flex and have no idea how to leverage the points they're earning on those cards. So the key is to get really strategic and get to know the cards you already have. go through the benefits on every card in your wallet and make a spreadsheet or you can use a Google Doc, ⁓ ⁓ old pen and paper, it does not have to be fancy. Write out the card you have, look it up online or in ⁓ your credit card portal. Look at the earning categories. Is it a card that you can earn three times back at the grocery store or five times back at Walgreens? Or is it a card that you can earn two times on everything that you're spending and get more strategic about when to use which card. So if you learn that you have a card in your wallet that you earn two times back on internet and streaming services, that should be a no brainer to switch over your auto pay on your internet and streaming services to that card. So it's just really getting strategic is the key to all of it.

Michelle: No, I totally agree. And I think too, a lot of people are still debit card users. So that transition from debit card to credit card is really scary for some people. And they already have a credit card. They just don't use it, right? It's like for emergencies only kind of thing. So I think even for a debit card user, this is a really great way, like you said. to find a category like the groceries, the gas, the streaming services and pick one and slowly start to get used to using it for those items. And you're going to realize that your credit card isn't this big scary thing. And then from there, every month you're gonna start to see those rewards, just keep adding up, adding up. And hopefully that will encourage people to start to use them more frequently. and see how many trips and opportunities they have when they start to use their credit cards the right way.

Joy Smith: Yes, starting with our strategic spending is where it all begins. Now today's episode is going to be packed with tips and tricks on how Michelle and I earn extra points without chasing a new credit card offer all the time. So we're going to go through high level quite a few different ways. Many of these you can discover from a quick Google search or our email addresses are going to be listed in the show notes and you can reach out to us with any questions you have. are here and happy to answer.

Michelle: Yes. 100%. So the first way is airline dining programs. So what you're going to do is you are going to pick your favorite airline. American Airlines is a great one as an example, and they actually have a dining program where if you sign up for that, you can actually earn more American Airlines miles by dining through specific restaurants.

Joy Smith: Yes, and I love this one because we used to, our favorite pizza restaurant is no longer in the dining program, but there was a pizza place right by our house. And I used to do Friday night pizza every week just for that purpose because I knew that what you do is you sign up for the American Airlines dining program and every airline has this Southwest, Delta, JetBlue, United, all of the major ones in the US have a dining program and you can just Google.

Michelle: Yes. really? Yep. Yep.

Joy Smith: the airline name and dining program, it'll take you straight to the website. And then what you do is you attach a credit card. So now that we know which credit card is gonna earn us the most points on dining out, we attach that credit card in our profile on the dining program, and you don't even have to think twice. You just know that that specific credit card is your dining out program, or your dining out credit card. And every time you eat out and you pay with that credit card, you're gonna earn the

Michelle: You

Joy Smith: points you're earning on your credit card, plus you're going to earn three airline miles per dollar that you spend on autopilot. And this is one of my favorite tricks because you don't even have to think twice about spending or trying to earn or logging in somewhere else to make sure you get those points. It just automatically adds up for you because your credit card is linked.

Michelle: It's surprise miles. It's like you wake up one day and you're like, I have 200 more miles. Today's a good day.

Joy Smith: You You know what's funny is so my I've talked about how my mom is the og of points and miles and I used to get so annoyed at her because we would be on a trip somewhere and she'd be like, okay guys We're gonna go to this restaurant and this is where I'm taking you to eat because it's in a dining program And I'd be like mom. Can we just go somewhere else? This is stupid I want to go I don't know somewhere not as nice, but it's really a great easy way ⁓

Michelle: Yes. Yes.

Joy Smith: to earn miles and while you travel you can find new restaurants to go through the dining program and you might even be surprised with what's around you. We have several restaurants near me that are in the program that we try to go to at least once a month.

Michelle: Yep. And don't quote me on this because I haven't looked in a very long time, but I think it was either 2023 or 2024 when you signed up for the first time and you used it once, I think you got 500 AA miles. So if you do that with your spouse, you each do this. Essentially you've got a thousand miles right there. And Joy and I have touched on this before. There are a lot of sweet spots with AA. You can take flights as low as 4,000 miles per person. So right there, you have 1,000 miles. You're really close to being able to get a flight. So it sounds like this is a small way to do it, but you get that big chunk when you first sign up that that really helps you get going to be able to get your first free flight.

Joy Smith: Yeah, they do challenges, so it's not always on there, but they'll send email notices to you, especially with your AA loyalty account, and it'll say like, sign up for the dining program and earn 500 miles or earn a thousand miles of your first three after you dine three times. ⁓ I've even seen it be like for your first month, you get five times the miles per dollar spent. So their promotions will always vary.

Michelle: Yes. Yep. Yes. Yep. I love that. I feel like if you're checking your email, there's going to be times throughout the year that you're easily gonna be able to use this and you weren't even planning on it. So that's a great way, like you said, you've already got the card linked, get that email, run out quick, get a fun little meal and you've got more miles.

Joy Smith: I mean, and it's not always when you first start, I'm doing a challenge right now with AA to where they launched it in December and you had to do three things within AA to earn a thousand or 2,500 miles. And one of those three is to eat at a restaurant in the dining program. And I have to do that by the end of the month. So I will be doing that next week and I'm going to go meet a friend for lunch and I'm going to get her lunch so I can get my points.

Michelle: Yeah! Yes, I love that. That's awesome. So the next way that we're going to talk about is actually my favorite way, and it might be Joyce too, that is shopping portals. So we are talking about places like Rakuten, Capital One, the AA shopping portal. There are so many different ways that you can earn tons of miles by using the shopping portals.

Joy Smith: ⁓ my gosh, you guys, love a good shopping portal. Michelle, you were speaking my language. So last year in 2025, I earned American Airlines gold status through a shopping portal, a shopping portal spend alone. Now this is not anything to write home about to have gold status, but what it has given my family is main cabin extra upgrades.

Michelle: Hahaha! That's amazing.

Joy Smith: So we're able to get in those front rows right behind like business and premium economy. So we get off the plane faster. So that is one thing like with the shopping portal for an airline, you can really work towards status. I love me a good AA shopping portal. But on the flip side of that, Capital One offers, if you are a holder of a venture, a Capital One venture or a Capital One venture X, do not sleep on offers.

Michelle: awesome. Yes.

Joy Smith: They have been on fire. in December, we were going on a trip to Puerto Rico and with my whole family. And I saw that ⁓ the Viator ⁓ was like earned 40 times per dollar spent. ⁓ earned 40,000 miles just from one purchase for my whole family because I bought our excursion and made everybody Venmo me.

Michelle: Yes. That's insane.

Joy Smith: So don't sleep on this. Also, the other day, we're going to Universal for spring break and I needed to buy our Universal tickets and I got ⁓ a targeted offer from Undercover Tours and earned 15,000 miles ⁓ extra that purchase. Capital One offers are on fire. ⁓ Do not on those.

Michelle: Do you find, Joy, that it works better when you use your actual Capital One card? Do we need to for that, right? Do we need to use our Capital One card? Because we don't need to, but if we don't, it's harder for Capital One to track it and we get our miles, right?

Joy Smith: So yes, this is the great mystery that I will let you know if it worked or not for me because it's always super easy to get the miles if I pay with my venture. But right now I'm working on a welcome offer on a new card. So I purchased our universal tickets on a different card and

Michelle: Yes. Yes. Bye! Yes, yes!

Joy Smith: We got the email that said it's tracking it that you've redeemed an offer and the email came through, but the points have not posted yet. So we will see if they post, but the tracking email was sent.

Michelle: ⁓ you'll be good. ⁓ good. Well, I think honestly that's a really good sign because I did one not that long ago. It was Janie and Jack, which is like a kid's clothing store online. And I did not get the email for it. I used a different card. I don't remember what card I used, but I did not use my, I was using whatever welcome offer I was working on on the time. And it was like a hundred points. So it wasn't even worth me to check into it. but I didn't get that email and usually I do. So that 100 % I feel is a really good sign that things are going in your favor because you got that email. Because if you spend it and you don't get the email, you're not getting your points. And then from there, you just have to decide if it's one of those bigger offers, 100 % you're going to wanna fight it. But when it's those little ones, it's just two X, know, and you're buying a few things, you just wanna get a little extra points. You do kinda go, meh. I don't know that I really wanna waste my time or whatever, but 100%, if I would have used my venture, I think it would have been fine. But it's just annoying because most of us are working on a welcome offer. ⁓ And on a big purchase like universal tickets, you don't wanna throw away a thousand dollars. You know, it's not throwing it away, but you ⁓ you that thousand dollars to go towards your big spend, ⁓ not card that you're not currently using. So that is a little frustrating thing that I hope that... they will work the kinks out at some point.

Joy Smith: Rumor has it you do not have to pay with a Capital One Venture or Venturex card for it to work, I am, see, the jury's still out on if it will actually work. I'll report back if and when those points post.

Michelle: Yup. Yes. Yes, I know, I can't wait to hear because that's 15,000 points, right? Yeah, that's a lot of points.

Joy Smith: Yes, yes. And I took a gamble on it because I knew I needed to meet the spend and it was like, I can go through, actually, undercover tourist isn't in any other shopping portal. So I couldn't even pull it from another shopping portal. So it was kind of like, well, here goes nothing. So we'll see.

Michelle: Yup. Yes. Yep. Yeah, and I do think you do need to be on a few different shopping portals. I would say my biggest tip, know, check Facebook, check Instagram, because people are always posting about these things because you're right, those really good undercover tourist ones are only on Capital One. Rakuten, nowhere else has them. Just the same, know, Rakuten has their big shopping days, and some of their multipliers are ⁓ big. big ones that Capital One never has. So you definitely, if you wanna start, definitely pick one, but over time, you're going to want to join all of them ⁓ just kind of be checking really quick before you do a big purchase just to see which one is going to be the best deal.

Joy Smith: If you were a beginner, pick one airline and I would pick American Airlines and everything we're about to tell you today, I would make American Airlines your go-to. The American Airlines dining program, the American Airlines shopping portal, and it's the same. If you have another airline you wanna pick, make it your main one and stick with it because you're gonna earn more points that way.

Michelle: Yeah.

Joy Smith: If you are a little bit more advanced and you are playing the game of earning as many points as possible, there are tools out there like cashbackmonitor.com or getsavewise.com is a one I'm really liking that will tell you and compare the different shopping portals to give you who has the highest offer for that day. Yeah, the one thing to think about though is Capital One Offers does targeted offers, so it might not always pull in Get Savewise.

Michelle: I love that.

Joy Smith: So just kind of know that too in the back of your head. And the last shopping portal, I do want to make sure that we mentioned, because I think we would be ⁓ doing everybody a disservice if we didn't talk about the power of Rakuten. And I think this is a future episode that we need to do a deep dive on shopping portals, because today we don't have time for it. But Rakuten has an offer right now where if you are not currently using Rakuten, if you sign up and spend $50 through one of our links, which we will also post in show notes, then you will earn $50 in cash back and then of course we will earn $50 too for whoever's link you use. But Rakuten is a really great way you can earn cash back but if you link in American Express you can turn those points into American Express membership rewards which are amazing for travel.

Michelle: Yep, I know, I love that. I have mine linked for American Express and it's such an easy way to earn them because we're all shopping online. Unfortunately, it doesn't work for Amazon, which drives me crazy because that's where I do 99 % of my online shopping. But occasionally I will wait for those really big offers to come along and I'll intentionally shop then. Like PetSmart as an example, you know, I'll usually get my I'll usually get all my cat food in the store But if it's 20x, okay this month I'll get it there to get more points at Christmas time I did Ulta because Emsley really wanted different things from Ulta and I don't remember what the multiplier was but Ulta was they had these days It was either November or December. I don't remember what they called them but

Joy Smith: Mm-hmm.

Michelle: Essentially, it was kind of like the 12 days of Rakuten. So like every day it was a different store and it was a really high multiplier. And one of the days was Alta and they let you see them in advance. So I knew I'm going to buy my items from Alta on this day. So I think for most of us, Christmas time is a really good time to do it. And Rakuten is going to warn you ahead of time what's coming. So it's a great way to plan ahead for Christmas shopping. especially if you're already going to do it online or even if you are planning to do it in store and you can do pickup and you order it online, this is a really great way to earn extra miles for things you are already going to buy anyway.

Joy Smith: You know what I do though, is if it is a brand, and this is a newer thing to me, if I'm going to purchase something on Amazon, right? Like my son needed new baseball cleats for the season. And I just naturally went to Amazon and started searching baseball cleats. And then I'm like, wait, what am I doing? Adidas, Under Armour, Nike, they're all on a shopping portal. So then I just picked his favorite brand that he likes. And I found.

Michelle: Yes.

Joy Smith: you know, shoes that fit him or under armor. So I went to the shopping portals and found under armor and just bought cleats directly through a shopping portal, which price wise, I haven't noticed a huge difference either from ordering on Amazon to going through the store direct, which I think is always a concern we have too is ⁓ to be cheaper on Amazon than the store direct. So ⁓ I do that. I've started doing that a lot with any products that I'm going to purchase.

Michelle: Yes, right.

Joy Smith: And even boutique products that, you know, I switched at the end of last year. ⁓ I was influenced to buy the wild deodorant, which is a natural deodorant that you can refill your cartridges on. I found them on the shopping portal. So now I reorder through a shopping portal, but yeah, I mean, anything you're doing, you can do a super quick search on cashback monitor or get save wise and say, Hey, is this product on a shopping portal?

Michelle: ⁓ I love that.

Joy Smith: and just switch the way you're gonna buy it.

Michelle: I that. I actually think that's a great idea that I'm going to do because you're 100 % right. I think we've all gotten so used to Amazon one day shipping. I, the other day there was one and it was do you want it between four and 8 a.m. tomorrow? And it was like 10 o'clock at night. I'm like, how does it even get here that quick? I don't know. But we've gotten so conditioned to that, that we literally, you're right, we look for everything there, ⁓ though we actually could get it somewhere else. and it would be the exact same price. It's maybe just gonna take a few more days to get here, but it is the same price. So if we want to get those extra points, we just need to rethink where we're going to buy the product. That's a good, I don't ever do that. So that's a really good idea.

Joy Smith: It's an intentional shift and that's where it's being strategic with what you have and being intentional in the way that you're shifting your purchases. ⁓

Michelle: It is. 100%.

Joy Smith: And that's how you're going to earn more points without chasing new credit cards.

Michelle: I love that. That's a good one. So.

Joy Smith: Yeah, it's my new thing. just started it in November and December and I'm sitting here when I saw wild pop up and it was wild deodorant that got me cause I saw it. I just ordered off an Instagram influencer because I need a new natural deodorant. That's a whole nother rabbit hole we could go down because I have a love hate relationship with natural deodorants and I was influenced and I purchased it directly off this influencer. And then the next day, guess what pops up in a shopping portal.

Michelle: That's amazing. That's crazy. Yeah. Yes. I know they know they're watching us. It's scary. It's really scary. So the next ⁓ one ⁓ another big one that ⁓ literally every is doing whether you have kids or you don't have kids and that's eating which is groceries groceries. So this ⁓ is if you might not necessarily have some of these cards, but if you are a person that doesn't want a lot of credit cards, there are a few really good cards for groceries. And if you pick one of these cards to get, and you always put your groceries on these cards, you are going to earn so many points.

Joy Smith: Yes, the American Express Gold is my favorite go-to card for groceries. It's four times back per dollar spent. So it's going to give you the highest earning out of any other credit card out there for groceries. is such, it is a little bit of a higher annual fee. So that is something that you would have to think about. It's, I think it's $3.25 a year. I'd have to go back and double check those numbers.

Michelle: I think it might be 375 now.

Joy Smith: Or did it go up a little bit? Maybe it went up. Yeah, it might have increased this year because I know they increased all of the annual fees when they did the platinum refresh last year. ⁓ So it is a little bit more expensive, but overall it has it is 325. OK.

Michelle: What is 325? It is 325. You're right. Maybe it used to be 295. And then that's what it went up to was 325. I think I was thinking of the Amex business gold because I had that and I think that's... 375. Doesn't matter. But it's, it's, but the, but the personal gold, yes, is 325. But you do get lots of credits. I don't know if you were going to say that. We, we don't want to overwhelm you with all of that. But yes, they, they give you credits every month. So it does kind of outweigh the annual fee if you are using it every month.

Joy Smith: Yes, but it is a great solid card to have in your wallet for groceries and dining out. It would just be a really good all around mom card to carry at all times with you.

Michelle: Yes. And dining, yup. Yep, 100%, yep. And the Sapphire Preferred is another really good one. This has three X on online groceries. So for our family personally, we pretty much do all of our shopping in person. But for those of you that do a lot of online grocery shopping, that would be a really great card, especially if you want to earn chase points, which is... All of us love Hyatt, right? You're not gonna be able to earn points for that using American Express. So the Sapphire Preferred Online Grocery would be a great way to do it.

Joy Smith: do a ton of DoorDash shopping. I'm loving that DoorDash membership that comes with the Sapphire Preferred and we have it on my husband's Sapphire Reserve so I actually do not use my Amex Gold as much on groceries. I use that if I go into the store that's my go-to but online groceries because we get that DoorDash credit every month. I do ⁓ Preferred for ⁓

Michelle: That's awesome. That's amazing. ⁓

Joy Smith: and our reserve for groceries online. Yeah.

Michelle: I love that. That's awesome. I know I need, I usually use my $10 DoorDash credit, but I just got my own Sapphire and I have not linked mine yet. So I do need to get going on getting my other $10 a month. It just kind of annoys me because I hate that you can't put them together. You have to do the two separate orders, which you know, you gotta be in the mood for it to go out and we... ⁓

Joy Smith: separate account.

Michelle: for where we live, we're in a small town. We only have Speedway, which I don't know if everywhere has Speedway, but it's a little gas station. I go and I buy two granola bars for $10 and I have to get, you know, pick them up. And I think the ladies inside the gas station think I'm insane because they're like, why is she so lazy that she can't walk into this store and buy these two granola bars? and come up to the cash register. She's got to walk in here anyway to get her door dash order. So sometimes I feel kind of silly, but yes, I could get four granola bars a month. And you know, it's a great way. I know some people, isn't it seven? We don't have 7-Eleven, but I think that's a really good one people like. So I think people that live in bigger cities have more options for how they can use their door dash credits.

Joy Smith: Yeah, my mom can only use hers at Casey's, which is a good old Midwestern gas station because she's in a small town. But I use mine on my groceries. So I take my credit on my grocery order.

Michelle: Yep. Ugh. ⁓ Lucky duck. I love it. That's awesome. And then another way that I wanted to share with you guys that I like to use my card. So I love Costco and I'm pretty obsessed. We just got a Costco a few months ago where I live. So we didn't have one before that. You had to drive an hour to get to Costco. ⁓ I had never had a membership before, but now it's about 10, 11 minutes from my house. So I am there ⁓ more than I should be. and Costco only takes Visa. So this can be really frustrating at times for people, especially people that love American Express. So this won't help you get more American Express miles, but let's say you're working on an American Express welcome offer, but you still want to be able to be earning some extra points. I have a card that is called the Chase Inc. Cash. So this is a business credit card. and you get 5X at office supply stores. So what I do is I go into Staples, I buy a Visa gift card. There are times that there are $200 fee free gift cards. You'll have to look online to see if there's a promotion at the time. But usually I will buy a larger amount of a gift card so that way that 695 fee goes a lot further. And then I take that Visa gift card and I go to Costco and I buy all of my Costco groceries with that gift card. And then I'm earning, I earned five X on that purchase that I made at Staples. So essentially, you know, a $500 Staples gift card is 2,500 Chase Ultimate Rewards points. When you're looking at Hyatt hotels, you're halfway to one night of one night of a stay covered right there, just from that one gift card purchase. So that's definitely, and you don't have to just use it for groceries. That's another great hack in general, going to Staples, using your Chase Inc cash and buying gift cards. I use them for birthdays, for Christmas, for all different things. I make sure that I go to Staples to do that. And I just always keep that card in my Apple wallet. So that way I don't have to physically remember to have the card with me.

Joy Smith: Okay.

Michelle: I can be out and about and I'm like, ⁓ no, I forgot to buy my mom's gift card for her birthday. So I can just drive over to Staples. I don't even need to have the card with me. So it's just a quick, easy way to be able to earn more miles and points.

Joy Smith: You know, and if you don't have the Chase Ink cash, you can do this with this card you're using at the grocery store too. So don't count that out. a lot of times I will, if I'm at the grocery store, I won't hesitate to grab like an Amazon gift card at the grocery store because I'm gonna earn more points on that and then load it into my Amazon account. ⁓

Michelle: Yes.

Joy Smith: Same thing with Starbucks. I will sometimes buy Starbucks gift cards, load them into my Starbucks account, especially before I'm traveling because I don't drink it very often, but when I'm traveling, I do like a good Starbucks occasionally. little things like that you can grab from the grocery store, because you're most likely going to have a card in your wallet that you're going to earn more points at a grocery store anyway. And then just get your gift cards there.

Michelle: Yes, that's a great idea. Yep.

Joy Smith: or a drugstore. Walgreens is another really great place. There's a lot of cards that have higher multipliers on drugstores, which is ⁓ another really solid option.

Michelle: Yeah, so really we're saying there's really no excuse why you can't earn more than one X on every single purchase. You should be earning more than one X. So hopefully, hopefully after today you feel inspired to start maximizing all of your everyday spend. the next category that we are going to talk about is gas. So Joy, do you want to explain that a little bit more?

Joy Smith: Hahaha! Yes! Yes, because I use this one too more so when we travel. I'm not going to lie, I am a Sam's gas girl. There's a Sam's right down the road and it's so much cheaper. So when I'm home, I do get my gas at Sam's. But when we travel, I try to always find a ⁓ Shell station. ⁓ there's this app called Fuel Rewards ⁓ it is a partner with Shell. And when you download it, you can link your American Airlines loyalty account to fuel rewards and earn three miles per gallon on your gas. Now it's not a huge, way to earn a ton of miles, it's one again, it's that thought that every little bit helps. And so if you're choosing American Airlines for your dining program, If you're choosing American Airlines for your shopping portal and now you're adding in American Airlines for gas, those are three ways that you are earning American Airlines miles in your everyday spend and you're not even having to put that much thought into it.

Michelle: love that. That's such a good way to earn extra miles, especially for American. I love that. I love American airline miles. So I'm always down to find more ways to be able to earn those.

Joy Smith: I mean, with American, you can get to the Caribbean for 7,500 miles each way. We just booked our flights to the Bahamas for this summer, and they were 7,500 miles. And it's like, it's a no-brainer.

Michelle: I Yep. Yep. It is 100%. So the last way that we are going to talk about today is you can link your Uber and Lyft to different hotel programs and you can earn more miles that way. all it is is going into your Uber app as an example ⁓ you are going to link it. It's either, is it Delta and Marriott, Joy?

Joy Smith: So you have to pick one. Lyft, can choose to partner with United, Hilton, or Atmos, which is the new Alaska-Hawaiian merger. Or they have, yeah, or they have Bilt Rewards, which is a whole nother platform we didn't talk about today, but Bilt is where I have my Lyft linked. But you can link it to one of those, so then every time you order a Lyft, you're also earning

Michelle: One. Ooh, that's a good one.

Joy Smith: You're double dipping, you're also earning your hotel or your airline miles on Lyft. Uber and Starbucks will double dip with Delta or Marriott. So you would pick one and then you would link your Marriott loyalty account or your Delta loyalty account.

Michelle: I love that. I need to go look. I'm actually looking right now because I'm curious. I forgot that Lyft had Atmos on there because I prefer Lyft because I think usually Lyft is cheaper than Uber. So I wonder, I'm gonna have to look if I have mine linked. Because like you said, it's one of those like what we talked about earlier, you link it.

Joy Smith: Yeah.

Michelle: Like what was it, the AA dining program, right? You link that card once and you're done. It's the same with this. Autopilot, you literally are gonna go into your Lyft app, you're going to pick one and literally forget about it. So every single time you take a Lyft, you're going to be earning those rewards. And it's not like you have to be doing something every single time, which I think for those of us that are moms, we're busy and our minds already have a million things to think about. The last thing that we wanna be thinking about is this

Joy Smith: autopilot.

Michelle: other little extra step. We're literally just gonna go, ⁓ I don't wanna deal with it. It's 30 points. It's not that big of a deal. But you add that up, you know, once a month over a year, you're getting a lot of points. So it's important to just go ahead and link it because you're gonna be so glad later when you see those miles there and you're like, where did I even get those? Because you forgot that you even had it linked.

Joy Smith: Yeah, it's autopilot. I'm telling you, we get Shell Fuel Rewards gas station ⁓ ⁓ most of our trips were flying, we're not driving, but it's not something we do all the time, but it just, every little bit adds up. And that's the key, to earn the most points possible, put as many things as you can on autopilot. And the lists we gave today had a lot of autopilot you link once you're done, and you're just earning those points.

Michelle: that. I'm excited. feel like ⁓ I, even I'm helping to host this podcast, learned a ton today about different ways that we can earn more miles. I'm excited. I'm excited to maximize everything more.

Joy Smith: I know Michelle, such a, tend to chase offers a lot more and I'm a strategizer. And that's one thing, cause I have, ⁓ I have lot of moms that just are, ⁓ they just want to get overloaded with credit cards or another bank portal to have to remember to pay. So I've spent a lot of time, especially the past six months digging into strategic spending to really just help them say, look, let's start with what's in your wallet.

Michelle: You are dead.

Joy Smith: Let's maximize what you have. Let's put some easy things on autopilot and just get you more points ⁓ even thinking about it.

Michelle: I it. So if this episode felt a little overwhelming, just remember, you don't have to do everything at once. Start with one category, one card, one small adjustment. And if you're not sure which card you should be prioritizing right now, send either myself or Joy a DM on Instagram, or send us an email. We love helping you build a strategy that fits your real life, and we'll see you next week.