So in this video I'm going to talk about the simple system I use to accumulate
credit card points in order to travel as inexpensively as possible. Greetings from
New York City YouTube, my name is Kevin I make these weekly videos documenting my
journey towards full time travel. In March I leave on a twelve month around
the world trip. If that type of content interest you please subscribe below. So
if you're anything like me when, you started researching how to accumulate
travel points you came across all these really complex videos about getting like
50 different cards and like rotating them and rotating all the points and all
that kind of stuff. It's a little bit overwhelming and to be honest I
personally didn't want to invest that much time in it so I did a lot of
research and found a system that works for me you've probably heard about it
before it's called the chase trifecta so today I'm gonna talk about what the
chase trifecta is and how I've used it to make most of my travel expenses
disappear so let me preface this by saying I hate debt I did not have a
credit card because of that however as I began transitioning to full time travel
I realized I was missing out on a lot of benefits but let me be clear I do not
accumulate any kind of credit card balance if I spend something on my
credit card I go in that night and transfer money from my bank account into
the card I never have a balance on any of my credit cards okay so what is the
chase trifecta as the name implies the chase trifecta consists of three cards a
base card and two other cards that earn points on specific things the base card
is where you want to accumulate all your points and I'll talk about why that is
in a minute the secondary cards allow you to
transfer points from them into your base card where you can maximize your points
so first what are the base cards you have to chase fi Reserve and you have
the Chase Sapphire Preferred so chases to base cards have three primary
differences the first is the annual fee the second is the amount of points you
get for traveling restaurants and the third difference is when using the chase
travel system how the points you emulate in the base cards convert so
first let's talk about the annual fee the Chase Sapphire reserve has a four
hundred and fifty dollar annual fee and the Chase Sapphire Preferred has a
ninety five dollar annual fee I know the four hundred fifty dollar annual fees
sounds like a lot but the first three hundred dollars you spend on travel is
free so that brings the annual fee down to about one hundred fifty dollars you
also get a travel credit for getting global entry and TSA preferred which is
about a hundred dollars so really in the first year the card cost you an annual
fee of $50 after that with a three hundred dollar annual travel credit you
get it costs about $150 so the next difference is how many points you get
when you use the card so for the Chase Sapphire reserve you get three points
anytime you use it for any travel related expense or any time you eat in a
restaurant travel related expenses or anything from air bee bees tubers hotels
to flights things like that with the Chase Sapphire Preferred you get two
points for those categories so you're going to accumulate 1/3 more points by
using the Chase Sapphire reserve the last difference in these cards is the
exchange rate you get when you use the chase travel system so if you book your
flight your hotel or rental car on the chase travel system and use your chase
points you get to exchange those points in the higher ring with the Chase
Sapphire reserve you get to exchange them at a 1.5 rate and with the Chase
Sapphire Preferred you get to exchange them at a 1.25 rate so there's a 25%
difference there in the point value as well with both base cards the chase fi
Reserve and the Chase Sapphire Preferred you can transfer your points to chase
partners at a one-for-one exchange rate so for example if you go in the chase
travel system and a Southwest flight from New York to st. Louis cost 15,000
points but then you go over to the Southwest website and realize Southwest
is having to deal and they only charge you 10,000 points through their travel
system you can transfer 10,000 points from your Chase Sapphire Reserve or
Chase Sapphire Preferred over to Southwest at a one-for-one exchange rate
so then you save yourself 5,000 points so that's one of the biggest reasons we
just go ahead and transfer all the points from all the cards into the base
cards okay so now let's talk the secondary cards and why even have
them to begin with if the other two cards are so great unfortunately the two
base cards only get you points in the travel and restaurant category if you
buy anything else in any other category with those cards you only get one point
so that's where the other two cards come in with the Chase Freedom Card you get
five points on certain categories that change every quarter sometimes it's gas
that get you five points sometimes it's grocery stores this month it's
drugstores so if I go to Walgreens or CVS and I buy some chapstick I'll get
five points for that purchase vice the one point I would have gotten if I used
one of the base cards this is probably my least used card because a lot of the
categories don't apply to me but there's no annual fee so there's no cost for me
to have the card and occasionally I do spend money on something that falls
under the quarterly categories so I'll pull that card out if that is the case
and the last card I have is to chase freedom unlimited it also has no annual
fee so that's great and it gives you one point five points
on anything you purchase so anything not covered by the Chase Sapphire Reserve or
the Chase Sapphire Preferred your base card or the Chase Freedom Card I use the
chase freedom unlimited card to purchase that item and then I get one point five
points at the end of the month any points I've earned from the chase
freedom unlimited or the chase freedom I transfer into my base card all four of
the cards also have a bonus for signing up and spending a certain amount over a
certain time I think it's 50,000 now for the base cards and 10,000 for each of
the secondary cards so if you get one base car and the two secondary cards and
spin the required spend you'll automatically have around 70,000 points
which is worth on a one-for-one exchange about seven hundred dollars but worth
more if you use the chase travel system so I've been using this system for about
a year now and I've been accumulating points from spending on things that I
would have bought anyway and for the last year I haven't paid for one flight
or one hotel so that's been great in a couple weeks
I hop on a plane to Lima Peru I've already bought that plane ticket it just
cost me points I didn't have to spend a penny on it for me this system has been
a great passive way to build up points and it's very sad
you don't have to do a whole lot to earn the points you just got to remember
which car to use and you don't have to do a lot to spin the points you can
either go in the chase travel system and then do a little bit of research with
the different airlines you want to use or hotels you want to stay to see if it
makes more sense to transfer your points into their system but once you get the
hang of it it doesn't really take a lot of time it's actually pretty easy and
it's why I really like this system and why I made this video so if you learned
something and you enjoyed this video please like down below and if you want
to follow my 12-month travel journey please subscribe below and hit that
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