Dear Reader,

Before I get into today’s newsletter about me leaving money on the table…

If you missed my Escaping Financial Repression event last Sunday (about what could be the biggest threat to your wealth in decades)…

You can catch the replay right here.

Because on this free call I covered:

• Why a 71-page paper released by the IMF PROVES Washington is set to revive an 80 year old playbook to legally rob millions of American retirement and savings accounts to pay its $40 trillion debt (and how this goes far beyond simply "inflating the debt" away)
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• Why buying traditional inflation hedges like gold, hard assets, real-estate, and even Bitcoin may prove useless as Washington rolls out a plan to lock you into the U.S. dollar system (and why once this plan is in place there may no longer be a way out. In fact, it's already happening in the UK, France, China and Japan)
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• What I’m doing personally to get ready (including details on creating a "Financial Escape Hatch". One that has not only helped protect people's wealth from financial repression in the past but also allowed them to build a small fortune in the process)

Remember, based on what I show you during the call...

After November 3rd, America’s financial fate is going to be sealed.

Which means, it might already be too late to make some of these moves, so make sure you watch this ASAP.

Now, back to today’s newsletter.

I recently found out I could be leaving as much as $10,000 a year on the table…

Just because I haven’t been optimizing my credit card rewards.

For years, I’ve mostly used one card: the Apple Card.

It’s simple, easy to track, and the cashback automatically piles up in a savings account.

Over the last couple of years, that’s added up to around $11,000.

Recently, though, I ran the numbers on what I could have earned using the “right” card for every purchase.

Depending on how aggressively I optimized things, I’m probably leaving somewhere between $3,000 and $10,000 a year on the table.

That’s not a trivial amount of money.

And yet, after digging into what it would actually take to squeeze every last dollar out of points, miles, bonuses, and travel portals…

I Believe Credit Card Optimization Isn’t Worth It for Most People

You’ve probably seen the travel-hacking posts.

Someone gets a first-class flight that normally costs thousands of dollars for a few hundred bucks.

Another person stays in a ridiculously expensive hotel using points.

And when you see enough of those examples, you start feeling like an idiot for not doing the same thing.

The problem is that maximizing those rewards can become a time-consuming activity all by itself.

You’re tracking signup bonuses, transfer bonuses, and spending categories.

You have to remember which card earns more at what.

Then you still need to compare it with the cash price.

Very quickly, you’ve created an entire financial system that requires constant maintenance.

And the more complex the system, the more opportunities there are to screw up.

You could end up spending more (even subconsciously) because you’re trying to hit a bonus.

Or you might end up forgetting a payment and end up paying 20+% interest – far more than the paltry 3% cashback.

And this isn’t hypothetical. Because as the research shows…

There’s a Very Clear Winner in the Points Game

A study published in the Journal of Banking & Finance this year looked at customers who were offered a seemingly tiny 1% cashback reward.

After joining the program, their credit card spending increased by 32%.

Their credit card debt increased by 8%.

And the change didn’t disappear when the initial promotion ended – it persisted over the long run.

Put it this way…

The bank offered people one penny back for every dollar they spent…

And their spending jumped by almost a third.

If earning an extra 1% causes you to spend 32% more, you didn’t beat the rewards program. The rewards program beat you.

Why do you think credit card companies keep offering this stuff?

It’s simply good business – for them.

Of course, this isn’t to say that these reward programs confer no benefit whatsoever.

They do – especially if you’re smart with it.

According to statistics from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau…

Cardholders who carried balances from month to month generated 94% of all credit card interest and fees…

Yet they received only 27% of the rewards.

Meanwhile, customers who paid their balances in full earned 73% of all rewards while accounting for only 6% of the interest and fees.

In other words, the majority of the rewards accrued to those who were the most disciplined with credit card spending.

If you’re reading this newsletter, you’re likely one of those disciplined credit card users.

But even then, there’s a question you should be asking yourself:

Have I Already Handled My Biggest Financial Levers?

You’ve probably heard of the 80/20 principle…

The idea that a relatively small number of inputs often drive a disproportionate share of the result.

Personal finance works a lot like that.

A handful of decisions will have far more influence over your financial life than hundreds of tiny optimizations ever will.

Those key inputs are:

• Increasing your income
• Consistently saving and investing
• Getting rid of any high-interest debt
• Being smart about big-ticket expenditures like housing

That means spending ten hours learning something that eventually raises your income by $20,000 a year is far more worth it than spending the same hours trying to extract another $300 from your credit cards.

The same goes for investing.

If you aren’t consistently investing your money, figuring out whether your airline points are worth 1.4 or 1.7 cents each should be pretty far down the priority list.

Then there are the giant recurring expenses.

Housing is the clearest example.

Reduce your housing costs by $500 a month and you just saved $6,000 every year without monitoring a single bonus category.

And if you’re carrying high-interest debt, getting rid of that probably beats almost any reward optimization you could come up with.

The irony is that the small stuff often attracts more attention because it feels easier to control.

There’s an app…a “hack” – things that give you an immediate little win, and a nice spike of dopamine.

Meanwhile, increasing your earning power or restructuring a major expense takes real work.

So people become incredibly sophisticated at saving $600…

While ignoring the decisions that could move $60,000.

They end up majoring in the minors – at the cost of ignoring the majors.

But What Happens Once You’ve Handled the Big Financial Levers?

This brings me back to my own situation.

The big pieces of my finances are already handled.

I make a good income. I invest consistently. I don’t carry credit card balances.

But because my card spending is unusually high, optimization could actually mean several thousand additional dollars a year.

So recently, I’ve put a bit more – but still limited – amount of attention into doing so.

I’m treating it as a bit of a tiny experiment – one that I already know won’t change my financial trajectory.

Right now, the new card I’m experimenting with is the Robinhood Gold Card.

Despite the many criticisms I have of Robinhood, I have to admit, this is a compelling product.

Under the current terms, it earns 3 points per dollar on eligible purchases.

You can also move the cashback directly into the brokerage account and invest it.

That means money I was already going to spend can produce a small stream of capital that starts working for me afterward.

I’ll probably put it into something simple, like a dividend ETF, so I don’t make it more complex than it needs to be.

I still don’t know if I’ll stick with the card.

My purchases will now be split across two places instead of one. The tracking won’t be as clean.

I’m adding more complexity into my life.

But like I said, this is just an experiment.

If I feel like the extra few thousand dollars a year justify the hassle, great.

If I eventually decide they don’t, I’ll go back to something simpler.

If you’re interested in checking out the Robinhood Gold Card for yourself (or you already have) – I’d love to hear your thoughts.

But the main lesson of this piece is:

Get Your Financial Priorities In Order

I’m not telling you to ignore credit card rewards.

If your finances are already in good shape and you enjoy playing the points game, go for it.

There’s real money available.

But get the big things working first.