My 2026 Credit Card Strategy for MAXIMUM Rewards

In this video, I'm going to share with you my credit card plan for 2026. What cards I'm keeping, which ones I'm cancelling, and which new cards do I want to open. And this will all be according to my strategy of maximizing points and cash back and minimizing annual fees. And we're going to break this down in a very realistic way, looking at value that the average person can access. Okay? We're not talking about a person who has the freedom to travel everywhere on their own with flexible dates so they can find award availability on Emirates first class and stay in overwater villas in the Maldes. No, no. We're looking at the average person, possibly someone with a family, what value they can get. Hey credit warriors, welcome to the show. My name is Ben Hedges aka the credit shu. And on this channel, I cover US credit cards and credit card rewards such as cash back and free travel as well as a few personal finance-based topics. If you like the sound of that, do subscribe. But let's get into the video. Oh, and this episode is brought to you by Max Rewards, but more on that later. So, first of all, what cards have I done well with in 2025 and intend to keep into 2026? Well, first up, we have a card that I probably will never cancel. It is just so useful, and that is the American Express Gold card. Now, this little gold card here, in fact, this is the limited edition white gold version. It earns four points per dollar on restaurants worldwide, and four points per dollar at US supermarkets. It also has 3x on flights, 2x on hotels, but I don't use it for those categories. But anyway, let's take a look at the number of points that I've earned on this card just in the supermarkets and dining categories. So, you can see that I've earned just over 20,000 points at supermarkets and 10,000 points at restaurants. And then also, we have 10,000 points on other purchases, which is things that just earn one point per dollar. So, that's about 40,000 points in total. And that's worth around $800 if you value MX points at 2 cents per point, which many people do. But this year, I personally actually redeemed a lot of MX points as cash back using a certain other credit card that allows you to redeem AMX points at 1.1 cents per point. So for me this year, that was $440 in value from those points, which gives me $115 in profit above the $325 annual fee. But this card also has a few credits. So in 2025, I used $50 of the resi credit, $7448 of the dunking credit, and only $10 of the dining credit. I need to start using that one more. It works with GrubHub, by the way, which is really useful cuz basically every restaurant that exists is on GrubHub. I mean, you might as well be, right, if you're a restaurant. And you can even order pickup so you don't have to pay delivery fees. So, uh, yeah, I kind of forgot about that, but I installed GrubHub on my phone and I've been using it now. And then lastly, I used all the Uber cash, which is $120. So added together, that's going to be $2548. And if we then add in the $115 in value from the points after I subtracted the annual fee, we get $36948 in value. So, it's definitely a card worth having, and I may use up that remaining $50 of the dining credit before the year ends. It's not as profitable as previous years where I spent more in the 4X categories and redeemed the points for business class flights, but it's still worth having. All right, let's move on to another MX card, the Charles Schwab MX Platinum. So, this is a bit of a controversial card in 2025 going into 2026, right? Not just the Charles Schwab version, but the vanilla platinum, too. the regular platinum as well since the Platinum card just increased its annual fee to $895 making it my most expensive card and my only premium travel card. And right now I have not been doing as much traveling as I previously did. All right, my kids are at an age where they're really focusing on their studies. I've got them in private school. I'm paying a lot for that. They go to all these after school clubs and activities and dance training and stuff and I can't do like a six week trip to Asia like I've done in the past. All right. We generally are limited to one trip a year to the UK for Christmas and then a few ski trips in the winter which would be like road trips to Vermont. So this card is really borderline whether it is useful to me or not. But let's actually run the numbers and see if it makes sense. Here are all the points I earned. 21,000 points in the airfare category. That was me spending about $4,000 or so on economycl class tickets for the family go to the UK this Christmas. I wanted to use points and fly business, but I left it too late and there was just no award availability. Then we have about 5,500 points from spending in the 1x categories. So that's a total of 26,500 points and that would be worth $530 at 2 cents per point, but I redeemed it for cash back this year at 1.1 cents per point since that is a benefit of the Charles Schwab MX Platinum card. You can redeem up to 1 million points per year into your Schwab brokerage account at 1.1 cents per point. So that got me $291 in value for the points that I had earned. Now let's look at the credits and then we will deduct the annual fee at the end. So on the MX Platinum, I've used all of the Uber cash so far this year and I use that through Uber Eats. So that's $200. That is really useful to me. I use it on nights where I would order takeout anyway. Okay, there's at least going to be one night a month where I just too busy, got to order takeout. And it's actually got even more cost effective now that they've added in the free Uber 1 membership. Now, let's look at the credits that show in your account. I used $255 worth of the digital entertainment credit. I use that for the Wall Street Journal, which I've been subscribed for for years anyway, even before this credit existed. I've used all of the Clear and Warm Plus credits, but I am not going to count those because I don't think I'd buy those things anyway, okay? They don't really present that much value to me. I've used $36 of the Sax credit, $138 of the Lululemon credit. I find that one really useful. I really like Lululemon underwear and a lot of my clothing is getting kind of old and I haven't really been the sort of person to buy new clothes. So, actually having this Lululemon credit is forcing me to buy new clothes and it's really good quality stuff. And you can look in their we made too much sections for some really good deals. Now, that totals $629. And I probably am being a bit strict with this cuz I'm probably going to use $100 of the resi credit before the end of the year. And I may well book a hotel stay for next year and thus use $300 of the hotel credit and probably use up another $50 of the tax credit. And perhaps I will load $200 into the United Travel Bank and get refunded through the airline credit. But for now, let's keep it like this. I always like to be on the cautious side. So $629 plus $29150 from the points I earned, that is going to be $920.50. However, this is the card that gives me 1.1 cents per point in value when I redeem for cash back. And well, I've been earning a lot of AMX points through referring people to Rakutin. Okay, that's why you can see that I've earned 887,000 points in 2025. And I've redeemed 959,000. Some were from last year and most of that is through Charles Schwab except for two amounts, one of 7,000, one of 6,000 transferred to British Airways. All of my points went to my Schwab account. So, I'm actually close to maxing it out cuz you can only redeem a million points in a year. So, let's just do the math and show you how much extra money this card got me for that extra 10% that you get. So, 959 points minus 7,000 - 6,000 for the British Airways redemptions, that equals 946,000. If we value that at 1.1 cents per point, that's a total of 10,46. And that's going to be $946 more than if I didn't have this card and I just redeemed as cash back through Racketin. So, the points I earned and the extra 10% I got from the Schwab card and the credits together got me 1,86650. Then, minus the $8.95 annual fee, that equals 97150. So, it is worth it for me, but without the huge value from Racketin, this card would be seriously borderline and I'd probably think about canceling. All right, let's move on to some quickfire ones. But first, if you're into credit cards, especially premium credit cards like the MX Platinum, it is essential that you get as much value back from them as possible to offset those high annual fees, which are only getting higher. And that's why I've partnered with Max Rewards. It is the credit card management app that the pros use. Not only does it give you all of your transactions, your balances, your points and rewards balances, upcoming bills, etc., all in one place, even when your cards are from different issuers, but it also tracks credits so that you don't miss out on value. This is essential on those high-end cards like the MX Gold or Platinum or Sapphire Reserve from Chase. In addition, MX card holders will find the premium version of Max Rewards, Max Rewards Gold, especially useful because it activates all of your MX offers for you, so you never miss a deal. I've come home on several occasions to an email saying, "I used an offer without even knowing it and save money." When you activate all of your MX offers, new MX offers you never knew existed appear in your account, and Max Rewards activates them, too. You can get a 7-day free trial and then a 3-month discount after the trial ends if you want to continue with my code, hedges 25. You can also just download the app and check out the free features. Link is below. Okay, so let's check out some of the other cards. The Hilton Honors Surpass card. This is a card that I've had for a long time. I've had many great experiences staying at Hilton's with points that I've earned from this card. Like one of my very early points redemptions at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills about 8 years ago. I stayed at the Hilton in Tel Aviv and also at the Conrad in DC and in Las Vegas, both of which I really love. But I may actually end up canceling this card. I get Hilton Honors Gold status from the MX Platinum card anyway, and the annual fee has increased on this card to $150 per year. There is a $200 Hilton credit, $50 per quarter, but I haven't used that even once yet. I did think of buying gift cards, but it seems right now gift cards for Hilton are not available. So, this may be a card that gets cut in 2026. Next, we have the Marriott Bonvoy Modern Art Card. I don't think it's actually called the modern art card. It just has modern art on the card. But, I've had this card since it was the SPG card. And actually, one of my first videos I made on this channel before I even showed my face was about this card. >> Today, we are going to be reviewing the American Express Starwood Preferred Guest or SPG credit card. >> The only plus of this card is that it gets me a free night at Marriott hotels. That normally gets me about 50 to 100% more value than the annual fee, which is $95. But this one is still very borderline. I don't really use it anymore for purchases, and I get Marriott Gold sellers anyway through the MX Platinum. So, it's another one that potentially could be on the chopping block. All right, then we have two more cards. The Chase Freedom cards. Now, I have two of these cards. All right, the Chase Freedoms. You actually have, I believe, as many as you want. I'm not sure. I may cancel one of them and go down to just one. In fact, I used to have three of these, but I never maxed out the quarterly categories. So, I went down to two, and now I still don't max out those categories. So, I'm considering going down to one, which means I'll have to cancel one of them. I'll probably keep the Freedom Flex and cancel the regular Freedom because the Freedom Flex has a few extra benefits, better points earning, etc. All right, what about the Gemini credit card? Okay, so this one, the Gemini credit card, I actually got it cuz they wanted us to do a video on their card. So, I did a video review, but I've kept the card because I really liked it. I definitely will be keeping this. And I use this card to get 4% back in the form of Bitcoin on my gas spending. All right, there is a $300 per month limit and I normally come in just under that limit. Okay, so I basically max out that 4% category. So that's about that's going to be $16 per month in the form of Bitcoin. And it's especially good now that Bitcoin is down in the sort of $85,000 range because if I earn it now and it goes back up, then my 4% turns into like 5 6 7% or whatever. So this is definitely one that I'm keeping. There's no annual fee. And I also just like it. All right. I really like how there's actually no card numbers on the card. It's like this sleek elite just totally black card. So black it could be a Spinal Tap album. >> How much more black could this be? And the answer is none. None black. >> And this is a good one to travel with, too. I'm going to take it as my main card that I'm going to use while I'm on my trip to the UK at Christmas since it is a master card and uh not an MX card and a lot of places over there don't take MX. Anyway, it's a great card. There's a welcome bonus of I think $200 worth of Bitcoin. I put the link for it down below if you want to sign up. So, that's most of my personal cards. I won't talk about any business ones cuz I'm probably going to keep those unchanged. But let's now talk about a card that I do want to get in 2026, and that is going to be one of the new built cards. So, if you don't know, the current built card allows you to pay your rent with the card with no transaction fee and earn built points, which can be used to book travel at 1.25 cents per point or transferred to some great transfer partners like British Airways or Hyatt Hotels. But the current Built credit card is closed to new applicants. However, Built has confirmed that it will be releasing a trifecta of credit cards next year on February 7th, and we will find out the details about these three new cards in January 2026. But we already know some possible details from surveys that were sent out before. There will most probably be a no annual fee card, a mid-tier card, and a higher level card with airport lounge access. From the survey, we can see that they are hoping to have the no annual fee card earn one point per dollar on rent and mortgage payments. So, this is probably the one that I would be interested in getting. All right. I've already got a load of cards that get me lounge access that get me other benefits that have annual fees. So, it's going to be a no annual fee card. And I have two houses, each with a mortgage. One is for $1,800 a month. The other is for $1,500 a month. I know those are super low payments, right? I'm locked in at like 4.5%. Now, the card's terms and conditions will probably say that you can only make one payment per month, but I do have a wife, and wives are useful for things like this. All right, this is why I married her. If she gets a card as well, we can probably pay two mortgages and thus add $3,300 worth of point earning spending each month. There are other benefits to being married to her, apart from two-player mode with credit cards. But anyway, that's $39,600 built points that me and my wife could collectively earn per year. It's totally worth it, especially if the cards have no annual fee. If you're interested in Built, you can sign up and start earning points through their dining program while you wait for the new cards to come out, which you might want to sign up for next year because Built has both a built program and the Built credit card, which you can actually sign up for independently. Just sign up, link any card, like the MX Gold, for example, is a great one for dining, and you'll earn an additional three Built points per dollar on top of your four AMX points that you earn on your dining spend at restaurants in their program, which are many. Okay, link for that is down below. And that is the video for today, guys. Thank you so much for watching. Let me know in the comments your plans for next year. Which cards are you going to cancel? Which cards are you going to keep? What are you going to do about the MX Platinum now that they've raised the fee? And don't forget to get a free trial of Max Rewards Gold and three months for free if you choose to continue with my link down below and code hedges 25. Please subscribe to the channel if you're new. I'll see you next time. Bye-bye.