How to Travel Hack (Lazily) in 2025

Last week, we talked about why you might want to have a handful (or two) of credit cards in your wallet. If those benefits sounded good to you and you want to start travel hacking in 2025, today we’re going to talk about how to get started turning your spending into maximum travel rewards—without devoting too much time or energy to the habit.

Coming up: how to start building your arsenal of cards, how to earn more points on your purchases with minimal effort, and how to turn your points into amazing trips without spending hours scrounging for deals.

Build out your card collection

Start with one or two core cards. Chose a card or two that maximize your rewards on your core expenses. Renter? Get a Bilt card. Spend a lot eating out? You have lots of options. Lots of miscellaneous expenses? Try the Venture X.

In general, the best combination to start with is the Bilt and Venture X cards. They are the best two cards on the market to begin with, but they are particularly suited to being the foundation of a good card collection. First, they are free to hold on net (the Bilt card having no fee and the $395-fee Venture X coming with $400 in travel credits annually). Second, the welcome offers on these cards almost never changes, so you don’t have to worry about optimizing the timing of your application in that respect. Third, they pair very well, with Bilt having excellent rewards on rent and dining while the Venture X adds value on base spending and travel booked through the Captial One portal, outstanding purchase protections, and luxury touches like rental car elite status and airport lounge access. Finally, Capital One sometimes denies applicants based on recent credit history, so it may make sense to pick up the card early on before your credit report is filled with applications for other cards.

Consider your particular travel needs and wants. If you fly one airline regularly and pay to check bags, it might make sense to add that airline’s co-branded credit card—the savings might make it worthwhile even if you settle for a lesser bonus. If you stay in hotels regularly, you might want to get a hotel card to maximize your discount rate on stays. Or if you’re willing to pay more for luxurious travel experiences, you might want to invest in a premium card like the Amex Platinum or Hilton Aspire.

Beware application rules and restrictions. Once you’ve got your core cards in place, you can start adding new cards. To do this, you’ll want to be aware of the issuers’ restrictions on card applications. These include Chase’s 5/24 rule (they won’t issue you a card if you’ve opened 5 new cards in the last 24 months), Bank of America’s 3/12 rule (potential important with Alaska’s looming premium card), and Amex’s upgrade-only bonus structure.

Add more cards when their bonuses peak. Each week on the blog we highlight some cards that have outstanding bonuses that you might want to take advantage of. At any given time, there are usually a few solid cards with bonuses that are at or near their all-time peaks, so for cards that are not part of your core rotation, you’ll want to focus on timing the bonuses for maximum value (while keeping the application rules above in mind).

This year, you’ll want to think cards like the Hawaiian Airlines Mastercard and the AA Aviator. The former might not be around for long due to Hawaiian’s merger with Alaska, and it offers a great chance to quickly acquire a ton of super-valuable Alaska miles. The latter is going extinct thank's to Citi’s newly-exclusive arrangement with American Airlines, so you might want to get it while you can for one last chance to double dip on AA cards.

Beyond those, I recommend focusing on high-value cards like the Amex Gold, Chase Sapphire Preferred, Citi Strata Premier, and airline and hotel cards. These cards tend to have net fees of $100 or less, provide large sign up bonuses, and offer either great reward earning rates, useful travel perks, or both.

Earn more points and miles

There are quite a few ways to get more points, miles, and other rewards just by setting up a rewards program—even if you never think about it again after setup:

• Get extra cash back for dining and other purchases by registering with dining programs.

• Link your credit cards with Shell Fuel Rewards for discounts or AA miles when filling up.

• Even if you don’t have a Bilt card, join Bilt Rewards and link your credit cards for points at Walgreens. (And restaurants, if you opt into Bilt’s dining program.)

• Link your Delta and Starbucks accounts to earn Skymiles on $25+ Starbucks reloads. Connect your Starbucks account to Marriott for some occasional extra stars or points.

• Join ThanksAgain and link your cards to earn rewards at partner merchants, including Lyft and hundreds of airport shops and restaurants.

• Add a partner account (Bilt, Alaska, Delta, or Hilton) to your Lyft account to earn extra points or miles on your rides.

• Connect your Marriott and Uber accounts for bonus Bonvoy points on certain qualifying activities, and free Marriott Silver elite status if you have an Uber One membership.

If you’re willing to add a single step to your purchases, you can add extra value by using a shopping portal when shopping and booking travel online, taking advantage of credit card merchant offers, and booking your Airbnb’s via Delta.

Redeem your points for travel

If you don’t want to spend a lot of time or money booking award travel, there are a few fairly easy ways to redeem them for decent value.

With Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan (transfer from Bilt and Amex, indirectly). Although best for flights from the West Coast to East Asia, Alaska often offers great deals on international flights with good availability and minimal fees.

With Delta Skymiles. I like to use Thrifty Traveler and a Delta Amex card to get the best deals with Delta. But you can often simply go to the Skymiles Award Deals page of Delta’s website to find good offers. I can also usually find a good deal on a flight with a few minutes of searching routes between my home airport popular destinations in Europe and Asia.

With a travel portal bonus. With a Bilt or Chase Sapphire card, you can simply book travel via those banks’ dedicated travel portals and get excellent value: 1.25¢ per point (1.50¢ with the Chase Sapphire Reserve) and the flexibility to book whatever flight suits you. Use Google Flights to find a good deal, then book it via Bilt or Chase, like this flight from San Francisco to Paris for under 40k Bilt points:

Take the easy route. Each major credit card offers a way to book flights for at least 1¢ per point. While this isn’t great value, it’s perfectly fine, and makes redemptions easy—just find the flight you want and book it. Since you can always get to Europe for $500, you should be able to find a transatlantic flight for about 50k points or less, regardless of which set of credit card points you have.

Book a Hyatt stay. If you have a Bilt or Chase card, take advantage of the ability to convert your points to ultra-valuable Hyatt points (usually valued at over 2¢ each). This isn’t my favorite option because it’s usually much easier to find a nice, cheap hotel (or Airbnb) than a nice, cheap flight, but it’s a solid way to get reliably good value.

Conclusion

If you feel like crossing an ocean using points, it’s not too hard to do. A single sign-up bonus may do the trick, and a few good credit cards paired to your normal spending habits—combined with a few easy bonus points through things like shopping portals—could be enough as well. Although there are many ways to redeem points, the simple options still provide great value while taking the headache out of turning points into travel.