From what I understand, the credit card industry has a name for people like me: a deadbeat. I use credit cards for convenience and pay my bill in full each month. They don't make any money off me.
For most of my adult life, I had a very simple credit card setup of always more than one card and never more than three. Prior to the fall of 2022, my lineup was: Amazon, Target, and Costco. $0 fees, 5% back at Amazon and
Target, and lesser percentages for all other spending. The reason that the fall of 2022 is significant is because this is when I started traveling, and a lot of credit card rewards are specifically for travel.
I kept hearing about Credit Card Hacking, and claims like "I got a $40,000 trip for free" and "my family gets $15,000 in free credit card travel every year!" Was I missing out? How exactly would I go about getting my mitts on the goods?
This is the story of what happened when I decided to find out.