My 2025 Credit Card Strategy 💳

Hey Friends,

Now that 2025 is officially here, I wanted to share my partner and I’s credit card strategy for the year.

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1. Redeeming Points for More Than Just Flights ✈️

We're starting the year by expanding how we redeem our points. Whilst we’ve done plenty of international travel in the past year (four trips last year alone!), we’re now focusing on making the most of our stash of frequent flyer points. Between us, we have 300K Qantas points, 150K Velocity points, and over 800K American Express points.

This year, we’ll aim to use some of our points for hotel stays, transferring them to Marriott Bonvoy and Hilton Honors through AMEX.

Even though hotel redemptions aren't as valuable as business class flights, hopefully, we can get around 1.5 cents per point—better than letting them sit and lose value!

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2. Balancing Cashback vs. Reward Points 💰

One shift we're making in 2025 is to balance earning cashback alongside frequent flyer points. We have a good amount of points already, so there's less incentive to focus on collecting more.

Instead, we’re eyeing cashback credit cards to offset everyday expenses like groceries and fuel. While we’ll still sign up for credit cards that offer frequent flyer points (if the deal is right), cashback is a guaranteed return that helps us save money where it matters most.

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3. Earning Points in Other Ways (No Sign-Up Bonuses) 💳

We’ll also be exploring other ways to earn points beyond signing up for new credit cards. Some of my favorite methods? Changing health insurance to earn Qantas points, and buying gift cards at Coles and Woolworths during promos.

These points can then be transferred to Velocity or Qantas, and we can double dip by paying with our credit cards that earn bonus points (like my AMEX Platinum Edge!).

I talked about buying gift cards to earn frequent flyer points extensively in one of my previous posts here - The second best way to earn frequent flyer points

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4. Reducing New Credit Card Applications 📉

We’re also going to slow down on applying for new cards. With our current stash of points and our financial goals of buying a house in the next year or two, we want to avoid impacting our credit score.

Plus, having too many credit cards can impact our borrowing capacity, so we’ll focus on optimizing our current cards and avoiding any new hard inquiries for a while.

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5. Optimizing Our Core Credit Card Setup 🛠️

Last but not least, we’ll focus on making the most of the credit cards we already have.

For instance, we’ll use my AMEX Platinum Edge for groceries and fuel to earn 3x points, and my partner’s AMEX Explorer for general purchases to rack up 2.25 points per dollar.

For international transactions, we’ve been using the ANZ Rewards Travel Adventures Card, which offers 1.5 points per dollar and has no international transaction fees (a rare find!).

We'll continue optimizing based on what makes the most sense for us as we do less travel this year.

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That’s a quick rundown of how we’re planning to approach our credit card strategy in 2025. We’re excited to focus on maximizing our existing points and rewards while also saving some extra cash along the way. I’ll keep you updated on how it goes—stay tuned for more tips and insights in the coming months!

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💳 Credit Card Deal Of The Week

NAB Rewards Platinum Credit: 80,000 bonus points when you spend $1,000 in the first 60 days, plus 20,000 bonus points when you keep your card open for over 12 months. (Although I wouldn’t keep this card longer than 12 months!)

Plus get $150 off your first year annual fee ($195 reduced to $45).

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🎬 My Recent Video

My Credit Card Strategy for 2025 - If you’d rather see a video of me talking about it, you can also check out my latest video!