💳 How to earn 9x points on travel

Estimated read time: 4 minutes and 35 seconds

☀️ Good morning from the misty streets of Hongcun – a small, quiet village in Anhui Province, China.

A LOT of stuff happened in the travel world over the weekend, so strap in. This week of content is going to be epic:

• 💳 How to earn 9x points on travel

• ✈️ United Mile Play is back, baby

• 👨‍🏫 Join us for Miles & Points 101 this week

• 🫧 Hydration… but make it fun

💳 How to earn 9x points on travel

There’s a no-annual-fee card that doesn’t get talked about enough…

… which is wild, because every few months it quietly becomes one of the best cards in your wallet.

Here’s the deal:

This card rotates quarterly bonus categories, where you’ll earn 5% back (or 5x) on up to $1,500 in spending each quarter.

That means every 3 months, a new set of categories drops — and if you activate them, you get elevated earnings for everyday stuff.

Simple. Easy. Kinda underrated.

But there’s another way to turn this card into a wallet superhero. If you also have a card that earns UR points, that “cash back” becomes fully transferable points.

Same earnings. Wayyyy more upside.

This quarter’s categories are beefy

The new categories just dropped, and there are a few standouts:

• Amazon (yay!)

• Travel booked through the bank’s travel portal

• Charitable donations to Feeding America

Amazon alone is already a win, since that’s easy, everyday spend for most people.

Even if you don’t normally shop through Amazon, you could do it just for this quarter to maximize your rewards on things you were already going to buy.

But the real juice is the travel portal

Normally, this card already earns 5% back on travel booked through the portal.

But with the quarterly bonus, you’re stacking an extra 4% on top… which means you’re actually earning 9% back total.

Or, if you’ve paired it with a points-earning card like this one, 9x UR points.

Yeah… that’s kind of ridiculous.

For example, let’s say you want to book a quick 3-day trip to Tulsa.

Why Tulsa, you ask?

I don’t know. I always forget it exists, so I figured it was worth shouting out today. 🤷🏼‍♂️

Anyway, you could book a 3-night stay at this lovely downtown hotel for $142 through the travel portal, or $426 for a 3-night stay.

You’d earn 3,834 UR points for that purchase.

You could transfer those to a program like World of Hyatt and book a free night at a Category 1 hotel like this one in Mexico City:

Not a bad return on your spend. If you book flights to/from Tulsa through the portal, you’ll also earn 9x on those.

The bottom line

This is a great chance to earn more cash back or points on some pretty useful categories.

If you don’t already have the no-annual-fee card I’m talking about, now is a great chance to sign up.

As always, make sure you activate these bonus categories before doing any spending.

✈️ United Mile Play is back, baby

Every so often, United rolls out this promo called Mile Play – a series of targeted offers to earn chunks of bonus miles on flights.

Here’s how it works:

You click a link, log in, and United will present you with an offer. Usually, it looks something like “spend x dollars on y number of flights and earn z bonus miles.”

That’s it. It’s very simple, which we love.

Personally, I got an offer to earn 4,400 bonus miles after booking one trip.

And honestly? That’s not too shabby. Not too shabby at all.

Here are the requirements for mine:

• Trip must be at least $175 (before taxes)

• I have to register first

• Travel must be completed by June 9, 2026

Your offer might look totally different. Sometimes it’s more spend, more trips, or fewer miles. It’s all over the place.

Anyway, let’s say you want to book that trip to stunning Tulsa as we talked about earlier.

You could fly from Chicago to this magnificent city for just $217 round trip on United, which is not bad.

This easily meets the offer requirements, meaning you’ll earn:

• Miles for flying

• Even more miles if you have a United credit card

• 4,400 bonus miles from this promo

That’s a solid haul of miles for a relatively cheap trip.

So go check your offers and register on this page. Who knows - you might end up with a phat stack of miles from a trip you were already planning to take! 😉

👨‍🏫 Join us for Miles & Points 101 this week

🧐 Does it ever feel like you’re reading a different language when you open the newsletter?

✅ New to the miles & points world?

🤨 Or not new… but still feel like you’re missing something when it comes to actually using your points?

We’ve got you. 👇

Miles & Points 101 is a free, live virtual class built specifically for beginners happening Tuesday (that’s tomorrow), April 7 at 3 pm eastern! 🗓️

Here’s what we’ll cover:

• How to earn points without ever stepping on a plane

• Which cards and programs are actually worth your time

• How to get way more value from the points you already have

• How to book your next trip with points

That’s it for this Monday, folks. Make sure you tune in EVERY DAY this week… or else. 😈

But seriously, I’ve got a lot of good stuff planned. So, actually open the newsletter every day.

Okay, ciao,

30°00′17″N, 117°59′02″E

With contributions by McKay Moffitt, April Wilson, and Alison Carrico