If you love traveling or want to plan future trips, I can’t stress enough that you should care deeply about earning points and miles. It’s a less expensive way to travel because you can redeem rewards earned on flights and hotel stays.
At TPG, we use points and miles to reach your dream destinations, make last-minute travel plans and make visiting friends and family easier.
The holidays are a great time to take the first step towards earning points and miles. Many people spend a large portion of their annual budget on holiday travel, gifts, food, and decorations. These fees are a great way to start earning big rewards quickly.
If all of this sounds appealing to you, let’s take a look at how your vacation dollars can help you unlock great travel opportunities.
Earn welcome bonus
Rewards credit cards almost always offer welcome offers to new cardholders. These welcome offers are the best and easiest way to earn lots of points or miles. Most cards require you to meet a certain spending threshold to receive the welcome bonus.
Your vacation spending can meet most of the card’s spending requirements and even get you to the finish line. With your year-end purchase, you may be able to score some great welcome deals, including:
*Although marketed as cash back, rewards are earned in the form of Chase Ultimate Rewards points.
How much are these welcome bonuses actually worth?
One of my favorite things about points and miles is that their value fluctuates based on what you redeem them for. If you’re looking for an extremely high-value exchange that you can’t afford with cash alone, you can. Or if you’d rather use your rewards for simple redemptions that get you where you want or need to be, that works too.
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To maximize the value of your points and miles, we recommend transferring them to your card’s airline and hotel transfer partners. Each month, TPG releases a valuation of each issuer’s reward currency. If you’re curious about the value of the rewards you receive with the welcome bonus mentioned above, check out our valuation page.
All but two of the Freedom cards mentioned will net you at least $1,000 in equity based on our November 2025 valuations.
The right reward categories can earn you big rewards
When you head to the grocery store for Christmas dinner or open your wallet to buy holiday gifts, you want to have the right card in hand to pay for it. Rewards cards often come with bonus categories that allow you to earn multiple points or miles per dollar spent.
If you have a credit card with a rewards category that covers an aspect of your holiday shopping, be sure to use it. Cards with bonus categories for groceries, online purchases, or specific merchants are your best bet.
For example, through December 31, you can earn 5 points for every $1 you spend at Old Navy and department stores Chasing freedom and flexibility. Starting in December, you’ll also earn 5 points for every $1 spent when you use this card to pay with PayPal (up to $1,500 per quarter; activation required).
If you strategically plan your holiday shopping to maximize your spend on $1,500, you’ll earn 7,500 Chase Ultimate Rewards points, which is worth about $154 based on our November 2025 valuation. The Freedom Flex is one of my favorite cards because its quarterly categories are so strong.
If you’re shopping at a merchant that doesn’t fall into any of the credit card rewards categories, use a card that earns more than 1 point or mile per $1 spent on typical purchases.
A few good examples include Chasing unlimited freedom and Capital One Venture Capital Awards. Freedom Unlimited earns 1.5 points per $1 on all non-reward purchases, while Venture Rewards earns 2 miles per $1 on all purchases.
Shopping portal and publisher offers let you earn more
Major card issuers such as American Express, Chase and Capital One are offering deals to existing cardholders. These offers often give cardholders the opportunity to earn bonus cash back, points or miles by spending at specific merchants.
During the holidays, it’s important to check your card frequently for these opportunities. Offers may vary from card to card, and some card issuers may offer specific offers to cardholders, so you should always monitor this yourself.
These offers can be combined with offers from shopping portals such as Rakuten. Rakuten is my favorite because I can earn American Express Membership Rewards points with it even if I don’t pay with my American Express card. Of course, you can’t earn Membership Rewards points with Rakuten without a Membership Rewards card, but it’s a huge perk for eligible American Express card members.
I purchased a new LG TV through Rakuten during Black Friday last year. As a result of this decision, I received an additional 30,000 Membership Rewards points. Those points are enough to cover the cost of many round-trip economy flights within the U.S.
If you don’t have an eligible American Express card, you can now earn Bilt Rewards points through Rakuten.
In addition to Rakuten, individual card issuers and airlines offer online shopping portals that can help you earn preferred rewards. Overall, if you have any holiday shopping needs, you’ll probably be skipping publisher offers and shopping portals, leaving you with a big bonus.
bottom line
If you haven’t started earning points and miles yet, now is the time. By charging your vacation to a rewards card or purchasing gifts through an online shopping portal, you can earn enough points and miles to redeem for your 2026 vacation.
Using points and miles, many TPG employees are able to take dream trips to locations around the world, from underrated Slovenian wineries to Hawaiian beaches.
With a little work, you can do this type of trip without spending a lot of money.
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