My Stupid Credit Card Mistakes On Our Vacation

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One of the things on my pre-trip checklist is to make sure I have the correct cards in our wallets. I call this the travel wallet shuffle. Our spending patterns are different on vacation so the cards I’ll need are different than the ones we use every day. 

Here are some of the questions I ask when choosing cards for a trip:

• Did I use a card to book something during the trip and need it for confirmation?
• Are we flying on an airline where using the card for onboard purchases will give me a discount?
• Do I need a specific card to get into an airline lounge?
• Will we be buying groceries during the trip or will we be eating out all the time?
• Will we be renting a car? If so, I’ll need to bring a card that has primary LDW coverage as well as one that earns a good return on gas purchases.

Over the years I’ve gotten good at this shuffle and it only takes me a few minutes to sort out the cards I’ll need. However, on our most recent trip, I made a series of blunders that cost us a bunch of miles.

This trip was different from most for us because we were flying to Atlanta and then driving to Tennessee. So this was a hybrid flight/road trip, which is not our usual travel style. We were also staying in a cabin that was prepaid, so I didn’t need a card to pay for a hotel. Here are the cards I brought with me.

• American Express Platinum – I brought this card for lounge access with Delta. I’m also getting 5X points at grocery stores so I used it when buying things for the cabin.
• Citi Custom Cash – Since we were visiting Dollywood and other tourist sites in Pigeon Forge, I used this card to earn 5X points for live entertainment expenses.
• Southwest Priority – I used this card to pay for Upgraded Boarding on our flight home, as this card reimburses up to 4 upgrades per year. This was also my go-to card for restaurant expenses since I have a targeted offer for 5X points until the end of June.
• Wyndham Earner Business – For the road trip part of the vacation, this was my card for gas expenses as this card earns 8X points.
• Bank ATM Card – which charges no ATM Fees and refunds me any additional charges from an ATM.

I also added these cards to my wallet:

• • Fast Park membership card
  • Priority Pass membership card (from Citi Prestige)

These were the cards in Sharon’s wallet, as I didn’t shuffle her cards before the trip. My reasoning was that we’d be spending almost all of the trip together so there was no reason to coordinate wallets.

• Hilton Surpass AMEX – spend to reach $15K for a free night
• American Express Platinum – Supermarkets
• Chase Sapphire Preferred – for places that do not take AMEX
• AMEX Green Card – cause it never leaves Sharon’s wallet (Note from Sharon: True story! I know the number by heart. Don’t mess with my AMEX green card!)

You can probably see my first mistake. I didn’t bring a card to maximize non-bonused spending in my wallet. If I wasn’t with Sharon or if we came across somewhere that didn’t take AMEX, we were screwed.

Both of those things happened during the trip and I ended up using my Citi Custom Cash for those purchases and earned 1 Thank You point per dollar. That was mistake number one.

My next mistake was more of an oversight. I used the Southwest Priority card for all of our restaurant expenses. When I got home, I noticed that I stopped earning 5X points about 1/2 way through the trip. I figured it might take a few days to see the bonus points but they never showed up. Then I remembered that the Chase offer was only good on the first $1,500. I had maxed out the offer and earned 1 Southwest point per dollar for the rest of the trip. Had I realized that I maxed the bonus, we could have used the Surpass AMEX, Green AMEX or Sapphire Preferred for dining and earned bonus points. Heck, I could have used Apple Pay with my Citi Preferred or Bilt Rewards card and earned more than 1 Southwest point. That was mistake number two.

Compared to those mistakes, the third error was one I should have known about. When I bought a soda or water at Dollywood from a store it was coded as a souvenir. If I bought the same beverage from a restaurant location, I would code it as dining. This is a little thing but if you’re looking to maximize every purchase, it’s an unforced error.

Lesson Learned

From now, the first thing I’m going to do for my pre-trip wallet shuffle is to put in a card that earns points for non-bonused spending. I have plenty to choose from as the Venture X, Blue Business Plus AMEX and Fidelity Rewards cards earn 2X and the Freedom Unlimited earns 1.5X points on all expenses. After that, I can add in the other cards I need for the trip.

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This post first appeared on Your Mileage May Vary