Points & Miles for Beginners: The Whole Thing in Five Minutes

People make this complicated. It isn't. You get a credit card that earns flexible points, you hit its welcome bonus, and you turn those points into a flight that would otherwise have cost thousands.

That's it. Everything else — the categories, the multipliers, the spreadsheets — is optimisation around the edges. A single welcome bonus of 60,000 points is typically worth more than a full year of carefully choosing the right card at the right store.

The one rule: if you ever carry a balance, stop reading. Card interest runs ~20%+ and will erase every point you earn several times over. This only works if you pay in full, every month, without exception.

A point has no fixed value. It's worth whatever you redeem it for — and the spread is enormous:

• • Cash back / statement credit — about 1¢. The floor.
• • Your card's travel portal — 1–1.5¢. Easy, unexciting.
• • Transferred to an airline — often 4–8¢. This is where the trips are.

Same 60,000 points: $600 back, or a one-way business class seat to Europe. Nothing about the points changed — only the door you took them through. That's why transfers matter more than earning tricks.

Three things, in order:

1. 1. Flexible points, not airline miles. A currency like Chase Ultimate Rewards or Amex Membership Rewards transfers to many airlines. Miles tied to one airline lock you in.
2. 2. A bonus you can actually hit. Never spend money you wouldn't have spent just to reach a minimum. If the requirement is a stretch, it's the wrong card.
3. 3. A fee you'd pay again in year two. If the card's credits and perks don't cover its fee once the bonus is gone, you're renting a welcome offer.

One rule worth knowing before you apply: Chase 5/24. If you've opened five or more cards from any issuer in 24 months, Chase will decline you. So if you want a Chase card, get it early.

CardGuru ranks cards against your actual spending and flags whether 5/24 blocks you — rather than you guessing.

• Carrying a balance. Everything else on this page is irrelevant if you do this.
• Letting credits expire. Premium cards hand back hundreds a year in statement credits most people never use — that's the fee, unclaimed. The Card Tracker exists because this is the most common loss we see.
• Transferring points speculatively. One-way and permanent. Confirm the seat first, always.
• Hoarding. Programs devalue without warning. Points are worth the most the day you use them.
• Chasing every bonus category. Rotating 5% categories earn pennies. The welcome bonus is the prize.

1. 1. Add the cards you already hold — free, no account needed. You may already have credits going to waste.
2. 2. Run CardGuru to see which card is worth getting next, and whether 5/24 blocks it.
3. 3. Add your balances so we can tell you which awards you can already book.
4. 4. Read Point Transfers 101 before you move a single point.

That's the whole platform, in order: know what you hold, know what to get next, know what your points can book. Everything we build is one of those three.