All Blog Posts 🗺️

🤙🏿 Welcome back to the Better Than Points Newsletter - the premier place for all things Credit Card Points News and Travel

My name’s Luis and I’m the one writing this (hit me up here!)

I've been holding out and keeping the good stuff to myself, but it's time for y'all to see the light.

If I make no sense, that's okay.

Just keep reading, and you'll understand.

I have some good news and some even better news, so let's get started.

Not a subscriber yet? Sign up here

Get your brands in front of 30,000+ travelers & entrepreneurs.

Black Friday and the holidays are coming up, and if you're planning to give gift cards this year, there's a simple way to make those purchases work a little harder.

Start by checking Giftcards.com for the brands you already plan to buy. Then, before checking out, see whether Rakuten is offering cash back.

Here's the stacking strategy:

💳 Pay with a rewards credit card that earns points on eligible purchases.
🎁 Buy the gift cards you already need through Giftcards.com.
💰 Activate an eligible Rakuten offer first to potentially earn cash back on top.

New to Rakuten? There's a $50 new-member bonus offer available through qualifying signup promotions, but it has spending and purchase requirements. Don't assume buying a gift card will trigger it.

The best part is that you're not buying things just to chase points. You're getting more value from holiday gifts you were already planning to purchase.

Important: Not all gift cards qualify for Rakuten cash back or credit card rewards. Check each offer's exclusions, bonus terms and any activation fees before paying.

Check Rakuten's Current Offers →

Each week, I’ll share something cool I’ve discovered or tackle a question from the community. It’s my little corner to explore ideas, offer fresh perspectives, and hopefully spark your own curiosity.

I want to talk about something credit card companies don't want me to talk about.

Some people are earning millions of credit card points every year doing it.

Credit card issuers used to be okay with it, but they're starting to sour on the practice.

Still, it's something you're able to do, and with Black Friday and the holidays coming up, I wanted to break it down.

I'm talking about buying and reselling gift cards.

Some people earn millions of points a year doing this, and the average person can make a couple hundred bucks a week.

It's nothing too crazy, but it does come with some risk.

I recently listened to a podcast about this strategy, and it's one of those unspoken secrets of the credit card and points space that I wanted to share.

Here's how it works:

1. Find a reputable gift card reseller.

There are a few companies out there that will buy gift cards from you and then resell them.

The most important thing is finding a company you can actually trust and know you'll get paid by.

One company they talked about in the podcast was Aligned Incentives, and they actually interviewed one of the founders.

What's interesting is that they help you find gift card deals and tell you how much they're willing to pay for those gift cards before you buy them.

That gives you a better idea of whether a deal makes sense before spending any money.

2. Find discounted gift cards that make the math work.

The next step is finding gift cards you can buy at a discount and then resell for enough to break even or potentially make a little money.

A simple example is Costco, where you can sometimes buy an $100 gift card for $80.

That 20% difference is where these gift card resellers can make their money.

The important thing is knowing how much the reseller is willing to pay before you purchase the gift card.

3. Purchase the gift card and submit it.

Once you've found a deal, you buy the gift card either online or in store.

From there, you submit the gift card information, including the PIN, to the reseller.

One thing to keep in mind is that some electronic gift cards aren't delivered immediately, so you'll want to pay attention to that.

Once you receive the gift card, you can submit the information to the company for payment.

4. Get paid and pay off your credit card.

The amount of time between submitting your gift card and actually receiving the money will vary depending on the company.

For Aligned Incentives, they say sellers typically get paid around 14 days after submitting their gift cards.

This is where keeping good records becomes really important.

You need to stay on top of what you've purchased, what you've submitted, and what you've actually been paid for.

Losing even one gift card or not receiving payment for one can quickly put you in the red.

Once you get paid, you use that money to pay off the credit card you originally used to buy the gift cards.

And that's essentially how people are able to earn so many credit card points through this strategy.

A few things to keep in mind.

I want to reiterate that this strategy does come with some risk.

Don't go wild with it because purchasing large amounts of gift cards could flag your credit card account.

Worst case scenario, the issuer could shut down your account, or they might claw back the points you've earned.

Credit card companies aren't big fans of people buying and reselling gift cards at large volumes, and some cards don't even award points for these purchases anymore.

So definitely pay attention to that.

With Black Friday coming up, there are going to be a lot of gift card promotions worth keeping an eye on.

If you want to dabble in this strategy, I'd start with a small gift card to see how the process works.

And if you want to go a little deeper down the credit card points rabbit hole, just remember that the goal isn't to buy as many gift cards as possible.

It's to find deals that make sense, where you can get your money back and potentially earn some points along the way, or help you hit a credit card welcome bonus.

If you want a deeper breakdown of how all of this works, I definitely suggest checking out the full podcast episode.

JetBlue partnered with Virgin Voyages to offer an adults only cruise package that includes round trip airfare for passengers 18 and older.

And it looks like there's definitely a market for something like this, given that the flight sold out.

As of right now, there aren't any other adults only flights out there, but given how well this went, I wouldn't be surprised if other airlines started exploring the idea.

We already see this with hotels and cruises, where some people simply want an adults only experience without kids around.

And I have kids, but I get it.

Some people don't want to be surrounded by kids when they're traveling, and that's totally fine. To each their own.

What I find interesting is that JetBlue and Virgin Voyages partnered on something like this, potentially to gauge whether there's enough demand for adults only flights.

And judging by the response, there definitely seems to be.

The flights from JFK to Fort Lauderdale, where passengers would board their cruise before flying back, reportedly sold out.

It'll be interesting to see if this is just a one-time offering or something other airlines start looking into.

Delta is currently running a flash sale on its Delta One seats, essentially its business class for international flights, with round trip flights starting around 230,000 SkyMiles.

Now, that's not the best pricing, but it's actually pretty decent for Delta SkyMiles, especially considering that a one way flight on some of these routes could cost well over 400,000 SkyMiles.

So this isn't a bad deal.

But what makes this even more interesting, and something to keep in mind if you're trying to book Delta flights, is that a lot of Delta award flights are actually cheaper when you start your trip outside the United States.

For example, if you book a round trip flight from Mexico City to Europe, you could end up using substantially fewer SkyMiles than if you booked that same trip starting somewhere in the U.S.

A lot of times, people will position themselves outside the U.S. to catch that long haul flight, then fly back to that same starting point before booking a separate flight home.

It's definitely something worth looking into if you have SkyMiles and want to save some points.

One quick note: I actually sent out a dedicated email earlier this week with some really good one way Delta flights for as low as 95,000 SkyMiles, which I hope you were able to take advantage of.

I added some of those currently still available to the Flight of the week.

If you didn't, definitely consider subscribing to Thrifty Traveler.

They have a free tier you can try out, and they still send you some of those deals.

They're a little delayed, but it's free and gives you a good idea of what some of these award bookings look like without having to spend a ton of time searching for them yourself.

Bilt just announced a couple of new changes coming in 2027 that they hope will simplify earning points, and I wanted to briefly cover some of them.

One of the first changes is daily rewards for people paying their rent or mortgage on time.

If you're a renter at a property that uses Bilt, this applies to you. You'll get daily rewards where you're shown two options and get to pick one.

These can range from a couple of Bilt points to some pretty massive prizes, including $1 million toward a home, 10 million Bilt points, or even free rent or mortgage payments.

The idea is to give people more incentive to pay on time while potentially getting something more valuable than the handful of Bilt points they might have received before.

Honestly, the best way I can describe it is like those McDonald's Monopoly pieces you used to peel off.

And surprisingly, one of the people who works at Bilt used that same comparison in a podcast episode when explaining the changes.

Another change is to Bilt Cash, which I think its uses are actually getting better.

Instead of expiring at the end of the calendar year, Bilt Cash will now expire on a rolling 12 month basis.

So if you earn Bilt Cash in October, it won't expire until October of the following year.

That gives you a little more time to use it, which I love to see.

Bilt is also adding elite status benefits with rental car companies, which is nice for members.

Most other major credit card issuers already offer some type of rental car membership benefit, so this brings Bilt more in line with them.

One thing to note, though, is that Bilt cards don't offer primary rental car coverage, which is unfortunate.

That's why I personally wouldn't use one for rental car spending when I have something like the Chase Sapphire Preferred, which offers primary rental car coverage.

But the biggest change, at least in my book, is what Bilt is doing with its earning options.

Previously, you could choose between earning 4% Bilt Cash on everyday spending or earning 1.25x points on your mortgage.

Starting in 2027, Bilt is getting rid of the ability to switch between those options, and the default will be 1.25x.

They're allowing existing cardholders to be grandfathered into the 4% Bilt Cash option.

And I honestly think that's the better deal.

Earning 4% Bilt Cash on everyday spending is pretty lucrative, especially as Bilt continues adding more partners and ways to use that cash, including through its travel portal.

It's definitely becoming more valuable, which I think is part of the reason they're getting rid of the option.

If you're interested in keeping that 4% earning structure, I'd pay close attention to the grandfathering rules going into 2027.

Out of all the changes Bilt announced, this is the one I'd personally pay the most attention to.

There are some other smaller changes and details I won't get into here, but overall, I think these updates are for the better.

Simplification is always good, especially for people who don't want to spend a ton of time figuring out how to maximize every benefit.

Most people probably aren't going to care too much about earning 4% Bilt Cash versus 1.25x points.

But for those of us who like optimizing our credit card rewards, I think there's a lot of value in that 4% option.

If you haven't gotten a Bilt card yet and want to take advantage of these benefits, I'd definitely look into it.

You can apply using my affiliate link here

Also, don't forget to sign up for a free account and link the cards you already use to earn free built points without opening a new one.

Check out these crazy award deals!

This section includes some of the best award flights of the week bookable with points and miles.

Chat with TravelBot - my AI clone. It’s trained on every newsletter I’ve published along with my 10+ years of points and credit card knowledge 🧠.

It’s also trained on my voice, so you can call it and have a full blown conversations. Give it a try and let me know what you think.

This section includes some of the best links videos and articles of the week around the points and travel community