Save Money Eating Out: Paze $10 Off, Amex Resy Credits, Chase DoorDash/Instacart & More
Justin Vacula of the Hurdy Gurdy Travel Podcast welcomes returning guest Beth to share practical ways to save money eating out by using credit card benefits, restaurant loyalty programs, digital wallet promos, dining credits, and travel rewards strategies.
Recorded August 10, 2026, this episode focuses on ways to reduce restaurant costs without completely avoiding dining out. Justin and Beth discuss the time-sensitive Paze digital wallet promo offering $10 off purchases of $10 or more, up to 10 times per card, through early September 2026.
They explain how they have used the promo at places like Dunkin’ and Wendy’s for low-cost or nearly free food. They also cover Amex Resy statement credits across multiple American Express cards and ways to make the credits easier to use.
The conversation also includes Amex Gold monthly dining credits, Hilton quarterly credits that can be used for hotel dining, and Chase Sapphire Reserve Exclusive Tables credits.
Justin and Beth also discuss Vegas dining deals, including birthday offers, MyVegas redemptions, MGM and Caesars dining options using credit card rewards. The episode also covers the Chase Aeroplan grocery multiplier and Pay Yourself Back for travel, Panera Sip Club, tracking recurring credits, upcoming trips, cruises with included food, and how to think strategically about dining credits without letting them control your spending.
Timestamps
00:00 Podcast Intro Theme
01:18 Meet Beth
03:04 Pickup Orders to Save Money
03:33 Paze Promo Savings
06:10 Amex Resy Credits
09:18 Amex Gold Monthly Dining
11:05 Hilton Credits For Dining
12:56 Chase Exclusive Tables
14:41 Support The Show
16:52 Cheap Dining in Las Vegas
20:08 Listener Question: DoorDash And Instacart
24:55 Annual Fees And Card Math
30:15 Aeroplan Grocery Payback
33:03 Cruises And All-Inclusive Food
33:58 Panera Sip Club
34:34 Upcoming Travel
37:30 Outro And Where To Follow
38:00 Closing Theme
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Rough Transcript:
Travel at low cost with points and miles. Credit card rewards bring the smiles. Many adventures, tales to be told. Make and save money, the world will unfold
Fight the war on happiness, pick up the gold. Hurdy Gurdy Travel Podcast breaks the mold
You’re listening to the Hurdy Gurdy Travel Podcast. I’m your host, Justin Vacula, here to help you make money, save money, and travel the world at low cost. A burrito costs $20, so eat ramen and have four roommates? Dining out is too expensive? Dave Ramsey says you should never see the inside of a restaurant if you have any debt.
What are we to do considering all the lamentations from political and financial personalities? Should we just sit at [00:01:00] home eating rice and beans? Returning podcast Beth and I have solutions rather than complaints to help you save money at restaurants using credit card benefits and loyalty programs.
We’re winning, not whining. On with today’s episode, recorded August 10th, 2026. Welcome back to the show, Beth. I think your third appearance. It’s my third time, and thank you for having me. I thought this would be great as we’re often talking on the phone about the dining benefits that we use.
“Oh, I have this coming up. I have to use these benefits by the end of the month.” There are so many that we’re, I think, in a great position to save money dining. Yeah, absolu- absolutely And you have a multiplayer setup, many accounts that you help manage with your family. I believe five or six different players.
So you have all these dining credits times a lot. Times a lot. It’s a lot of credits. And it’s a lot to manage, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. Excellent. [00:02:00] America does love math, as the benefits are multiplicative or additive, your choice. Lots of Uber Eats, DoorDash, and much more with credits.
You were in Grand Rapids, Michigan, visiting family, and you saved your Resy credits in order to save lots of money. We have our quarterly Hilton credits we’ve been using. It’s a world of possibilities and actual savings. You’ve called it the endless parade of free food. We’ll get into deeper discussion about these individual items and how to use it, but for sure we found that eating out is not expensive when you use benefits and target deals.
You’re right. It’s a great way to save money to use all of these different coupons, as we’ll call them. It can still be expensive even when you have a lot of benefits, when you have a big family. So you do have to think twice, right? About making sure you spread out the credits, making sure that you maximize the credits, right?
And otherwise take, important steps to make sure that, all [00:03:00] six of us are eating w- with a good cost-benefit analysis in mind. Definitely less expensive, and I know there have been many times where you’ve walked out of restaurants paying next to nothing or, oh I have multiple Uber Eats credits so multiple people can make orders.
I pick them all up at the same time, take them home. I pick them up and take them home. You can really stretch out your Uber Eats credits, your Grubhub credits all of these by picking it up yourself and not paying the extra for delivery or having to tip somebody.
Let’s get into the specifics. This one is time sensitive. We’re recording August 10th, 2026, and this is good for a few more weeks. This is the PAZE Craze. The digital wallet PAZE, P-A-Z-E They launched a fantastic promotion giving $10 off a purchase of $10 or more, and not just one time, but up to and including 10 times per credit card and even debit cards that you have in their [00:04:00] digital wallet.
Many of my cards were automatically added, but it keeps getting better because I’ve manually added some from US Bank and now Discover It. I have two Discover It cards that are now Capital One cards or managed by Capital One, so that’s 20 more credits, 200 more dollars thanks to the Discover It cards, many Chase cards, other Capital One cards, easily over $1,000 in Paze, P-A-Z-E, credits because, of course, the answer to everything is more credit cards.
I’ve been using them aggressively, mostly at Dunkin’ Donuts for orders slightly above $10. It’s very easy. You just have to select Paze, P-A-Z-E, at checkout in the app instead of Google Pay, Dunkin’ gift cards, or other options. Others have been using Wendy’s, Little Caesars. They’ve been finding restaurants on the Clover platform.
You can find tools on the website NextCard.com. I’ve had them on the show before. They have restaurant maps [00:05:00] in your area that you can use to find these eligible locations. In my experience, it’s very easy. Charge more than $10 using Paze, and a statement credit comes maybe a week later. Initially, it took a little bit longer, but now I think it’s pretty quick, and this is going on through early September of 2026, so I’m trying to use the credits now before a lot of travel that I have this month
when you use these credits, this, the Paze credits at places like Dunkin’ Donuts and Wendy’s, you can actually find relatively healthy options.
Wendy’s has a salad, which I think is fantastic. It’s got apples and cranberries in it. It’s a great use of those points. I know that when you go to Dunkin’, you often get the avocado toast, another great choice I think at Dunkin’. I also have been getting bags of coffee at Dunkin’, and if it doesn’t come quite to $10, you can of course try to add something small to get it over the $10 hurdle, or you can just go ahead and tip a little bit right in the app [00:06:00] itself so that you are definitely getting your, $10 Paze credits back.
I often don’t find myself inside of a Dunkin’ Donuts, but this has definitely brought me there. And other restaurants as well.
We have the Amex Resy credits mentioned earlier. They’ve been very generous and easy to use in my experience.
I go to resy.com, look for restaurants in the area that I’m traveling to or my local area. I often make a reservation in advance, although it’s not necessary. You pay with an eligible American Express card at the restaurant. In some cases, you can also get gift cards online, and this charge is offset by a statement credit a few days later.
I like that even the tip counts towards the total credit. So with a $50 credit, for example, I try to make the total around $40, then there’ll be some tax charge usually, and then leaving a tip to make it exactly $50. At the time of recording, August 2026, the Amex Personal [00:07:00] Platinum Card has $100 Resy credits once per quarter for $400 a year.
The Amex Personal Gold has a twice per year $50 credit. The Amex Delta Reserve Business card has $20 a month, and some other cards also offer these benefits. I agree, Justin. This is one of the best. These Resy credits are so easy to use. There are so many restaurants and good restaurants that are on the Resy site.
If you live in a small town like I do you’ll still probably find Resy at restaurants. And it’s a great use of those credits, and it’s kinda fun ’cause, I get to go to restaurants that I normally wouldn’t go to because I don’t wanna pay out of pocket. So definitely I use this one.
You can buy gift cards to some of these restaurants as long as the checkout takes place through Toast. You can check the URL when you’re on the restaurant’s website, and if it says Toast tab in it or something along those lines, then you know you’ll get the reimbursement.
Just recently I bought a $100 gift card to a [00:08:00] restaurant when we were going to be visiting our kids in Michigan. We took the other Platinum that I didn’t use to purchase the $100 gift card, and we put the rest of the charge on that one, and the bill was, just over $200, maybe $220.
So I used the gift card to pay back 100 and then put 126 on the other card, and just like that, eight of us ate really well, right? One meal. It’s a hero’s feast. You can also often split tender at the restaurant, or multiple checks, so you could use multiple credits in the same visit.
And some of these restaurants have also seen merchandise like T-shirts, hats, and more. You can cash out that if you’re not a huge eater, or maybe the restaurant doesn’t have as much for you, but lots of options for the Resy credits.
When you’re traveling on the road, this is a good use of those credits. But if like me, all of a sudden you find yourself coming to the end of a quarter and haven’t used your $100 credits yet use it instead of cooking a meal at home.
Yeah, the Resy credits have been tremendous for eating good food delicious food on somebody else’s [00:09:00] dime And the gift card is also a thing if you’re getting towards the end of the quarter. Although, as always, I don’t recommend doing everything on the last day. I always hear stories of I got it on July 31st, but then the transaction didn’t process until August 2nd,” and then you lose the benefit.
So definitely do these things in advance.
Continuing with American Express, we also have the personal gold card, a smaller benefit here, $10 dining credits at the time of recording, Five Guys, Cheesecake Factory, and GrubHub. Historically, some merchants have come and gone. I imagine it will change again.
I usually use this for GrubHub pickup while traveling. Again, not paying for delivery fees, not tipping a driver. Locally, it’s good for a $10 Cheesecake Factory gift card in store. I can accumulate these over time and make a bigger purchase in the future, or I can go to Cheesecake Factory locations when traveling.
I’ve found many near cruise ports. There’s one in Las Vegas and [00:10:00] some Cheesecake Factories in my local area. $10 maybe won’t get you too far, or you can use the gift card strategy or a small order from GrubHub, Five Guys.
Not as useful as the Resy credits perhaps but they come every month and use it or lose it.
And so I will oftentimes put in, let’s say, three or four different GrubHub orders to the same restaurant and pick them all up at the same time, and then you have a, four meals for, however many people you have at home.
From all your different phones and you have meals for the family. The phone army, for sure, and I imagine you’ve had those discussions at home, “Hey, everybody log into their accounts.
Let’s place an order.” Oh, yeah. If you want to eat tonight, you better place your order and set the pickup time to 5:00 ’cause that’s when- … it’s gonna be picked up. And then send me the, they just send me the screenshot of the order details just in case. U- usually you walk into these restaurants and they don’t ask you, just say, “I have, five different orders.
Give your last name.” And they just hand them to you. Sometimes they’ll make a comment or two. A [00:11:00] little inquisitive about the number of different orders. But yeah, it’s a easy way to have a good meal.
We also have more American Express credits. These are coming from the American Express Business Platinum and the American Express Hilton Surpass. That’s a personal card, the Surpass, for $50 quarterly credits at Hilton properties.
These can be used for hotel stays booked with cash rates, but I imagine that many in the audience will use Hilton points or will use points to stay at other hotels instead of paying the cash rates. So these can be good for dining as well. You’ve used these locally many times without a hotel stay. I’ve used them, definitely Waldorf Astoria Las Vegas.
I’ve used them around cruise trips, and it’s mostly been easy as long as the restaurant inside the hotel codes as a Hilton purchase, which in my experience it does. There can be some outliers of third-party restaurants, definitely the fake Starbucks. We’ve seen many of those. “We’re not a real Starbucks, we’re just a franchise [00:12:00] location,” and that wouldn’t count for a Hilton purchase.
But many of the restaurants inside of Hilton properties, in my experience, have counted.
The majority of them do count. Maybe best thing to do is if you’re not sure and you can’t, Google it and see if anybody on Reddit has answered figured it out for you, and if not, then go and just make a test purchase and see once if yeah, if the Hilton credits k- kick in for you and you can get free food that way.
You’re in the northeastern Pennsylvania area, and I know you’ve tried that. There’s a Hilton in downtown Scranton where you went one time, bought something very inexpensive like a drink, waited a few days to see if it coded, and you had success. Absolutely. PJ’s 1910 inside, yeah, Hilton Scranton, and I, every once in a while I’ll go up there and put in an order and take it home. Excellent food paid for by Hilton, by my Hilton Surpass or my, one of my Amex Biz Platinum cards.
Lots of ways to save money on dining for sure with American Express, [00:13:00] and we also have Chase, the Chase Exclusive Tables benefit. $150 twice a year on the Chase Sapphire Reserve credit card, not the Preferred. In my experience, this is more limited compared to Resy, at least in the places that I’ve traveled, but it’s easy to use.
No reservation required, just pay at the restaurant, although a reservation probably helps. I’ve used this in Vegas and the Dallas, Texas area. I went to a conference with Frequent Traveler University. I was speaking, and after the sessions went to a Mexican restaurant, Jose, I believe was the name.
Super easy, paid with a credit card and the statement credit came very shortly after Yeah I find this to be a little bit more frustrating than you, and I think that’s because I live in a small town where there’s absolutely no Chase exclusive tables. So it’s only for when I travel, and even many of the places I travel to don’t have these restaurants.
I will be going tomorrow to New York City, so yay, I can use one of my card’s [00:14:00] credits on the way in, and then maybe on the way out the next day we’ll use another. Because there are fewer and they’re only in big cities, you often do need that reservation, ’cause they tend to be higher end, nicer places that do seem to book up pretty quickly.
In some cases you can get gift cards for these restaurants if you are gonna travel, let’s say, during another timeframe than when the credit can be used. And so you can stack up gift cards.
Even if you’re in a smaller town, you can definitely plan around flights, around other travel. Maybe you’re taking a day trip and Philadelphia, can end it with a dinner. I think lots of ways to get around it, and you have six months to figure it out compared to some others that are just monthly or quarterly credits.
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Simply cancel existing flights and rebook when AutoPilot emails you about lower fares. Find my link in the show notes. Returning to the show with returning podcast guest Beth. We’re talking about saving money [00:17:00] eating out rather than a $20 burrito
we all have to eat, and we all want to eat well, and so this is a great way to save money and to save time.
And what’s one of the best places to save money? Las Vegas. I contend it’s one of the cheapest places to eat with great value. We still hear lots of lamentations about Vegas being expensive, but that’s not true if you’re prepared and you select the right spots.
I’ve been going to Vegas numerous times per year for many years now, and I pay next to nothing on food, probably paying more for tips than I do on the actual food itself. Vegas is even better during your birthday month, and that’s coming up for me in September. The Mexican restaurant Rosa Mexicano offers $25 off signing up and on your birthday month, no minimum purchase.
Really generous. Sign up for their free loyalty program in advance and get that $50. Landry’s Select Club, that’s another winner. You have to pay 25 to sign up, but you [00:18:00] get $25 in dining credits and another $25 every birthday month. Many restaurants in Vegas, in downtown area, Rainforest Cafe on the Las Vegas Strip, and more.
In addition to birthday wins, the MyVegas games continue to offer many benefits, like 25 off of 50, 20 off of 40, buy one get ones, and much more. Play, in air quotes, free-to-play games through an auto-spin feature built into the game, or simply log in, earning points while you’re in the lobby to get real-life rewards.
Very easy with the phone army or even running the games in browser. You could search YouTube Hurdy Gurdy Travel MyVegas to find examples of me playing. I have about 13 rewards ready to go for my upcoming trip. Even better, rewards earned from MGM credit cards can also be used to pay for the remainder of the Vegas dining tab, and you avoid tax.
You can also use comps with Caesars in Las Vegas, transferring points from [00:19:00] Wyndham Rewards at 1:1, no gambling required. Waldorf Astoria Las Vegas participates in the Hilton credits. Many restaurants there, including a very high-floor restaurant where you get great views of the Strip at day or night.
There’s also Zen Kitchen for lunch and maybe breakfast if those hours are back. You can also go to Zatinya, a Mediterranean restaurant at Caesars Palace Forum Shops if you’re a Bilt cardholder using $25 in Bilt Cash for $25 off. It’s really wild to hear people say Vegas is expensive when it’s really not.
Worse yet, it’s Las Vegas content creators or locals who complain and focus on expensive choices rather than acknowledging lots of value out there.
Yeah, Justin, I’m not a Vegas person. I have not been there. It’s just not a place that’s really on my radar right now. But hearing you over the years talk about how much food…
Talk about an endless parade of free food, right? That’s Vegas. Every time you’re in Vegas that [00:20:00] feels like what you’re walking into. I upload lots of pictures and healthy choices as well. Sometimes I’m even taking food back to the room because it’s so much.
We’ve heard lots about savings, and we have a listener question. This one comes from Mario, who subscribes on my subscribestar.com page. If you subscribe at certain levels, you get benefits like asking podcast guests your questions, and this one is for you, not me. We’ve discussed this in the past, but we’ll discuss it more now as an update.
Mario asks, “Would you mind breaking down the hidden credits such as Chase with DoorDash and Instacart? I know that some of the credits are there, but they’re a little confusing to navigate through.”
I will say that things have changed with the DoorDash credits, and since we last spoke, really in the last few months the DoorDash credits which are credits that when you link your Chase card to the DoorDash app, you get twice a month [00:21:00] a $10 credit, and you have to toggle it on.
It can be confusing because as you’re scrolling through the DoorDash page it will be toggled off when you thought it was on, or you have to scroll down to find it, or it will oftentimes be a little bit confusing. So just make sure that before you hit the final submit button, that you see that the total reflects the $10 off.
I was using this regularly at a gas station by us. It’s a gas station called Wawa. And it was allowing me to do pickups which again saves, money on the cost of delivery. Unfortunately three out of my four DoorDash accounts now require, when I use the Chase card, to have a minimum order of $20 for pickups.
Now, the other one doesn’t. Twice a month I go to Wawa now and just with the one account, and I get two cartons of eggs just, plain eggs and take them home.
And so we get still every month four dozen eggs for free. Pretty much free. I think I [00:22:00] end up paying about a dollar ’cause things there are overpriced.
Wawa does have its own little kitchen area, so they make, sub sandwiches and pizzas and stuff. So I suppose getting 10 off of 20 if I wanna get lunch might be useful for some people. I might… I tend not to go to these places very often, so we’ll see.
But I still have my one account that gives me my four dozen eggs free every month, so I’m not complaining. The Instacart- Yes … probably no pickup fee at some locations. Maybe there are some order minimums, but I imagine that most listeners are gonna be spending money on groceries anyway.
So even if it’s a little bit more, there’s a small fee per pickup, then Instacart can still make sense. Yes. That one has been, for me, a game changer, the Instacart credits. They come through Chase Ink cards and Chase co-branded cards. In my experience, I’ve found that a particular Instacart account will accept both a Chase Ink card, or two Chase Ink cards, as long as they’re different ones.
[00:23:00] You get not 10, but 20 for each card every month. And then the co-branded cards give you $10 a month, and I’ve only been able to add one co-branded card to an account. So maybe other people have had more success than I have.
But that means $50 a month for each of my Instacart accounts. And I have with my big family, I have four . Not every grocery store allows pickup by me. Wegmans does, and they have no minimum, so it’s great.
So I do a lot of Wegmans. There’s a bit of an upcharge for the food, but it’s free for me, so I don’t mind that. And then I also use it sometimes at Aldi, which has a minimum pickup of 35. So I’m getting $35 worth of groceries minus the 20 that I get back from Chase, so around $15 or so I’m paying. But Aldi’s a cheaper grocery store, and it doesn’t upcharge for Instacart.
The Instacart prices aren’t as inflated as they are at Wegmans. So I’ll do that, too sometimes. If you do pick up, again, you just drive up, go into your app, tell them you’re here, and they bring you your food, and you can be on your way. This [00:24:00] is a great one to use.
When we added the Chase Ink or the co-branded cards to our Instacart accounts, it immediately gave us, I believe, three months of free Instacart service.
But at some point those three months ran out. And so then you have to decide, is it worth paying the annual fee, which is $99, $20 off if you have a Sam’s Club membership, or should I pay the monthly fee of $9.99? I’ve split the difference. On two of the accounts, I paid the annual fee, so I’m paying, on one of them, I got the Sam’s Club discount, $79, we’ll just say $80.
The other one I paid roughly $100 for. But I’m getting over the course of a year 50 a month times 12, $600 for each of those accounts. So it’s worth it. And then the other one, just in case these credits are, pulled back I stuck with the monthly plan.
An America Loves Math moment for sure, but I imagine that it can make sense for some listeners, especially with multiple credit cards and multiple players. Now, some people might be thinking, “Oh, this sounds really great, but what about the [00:25:00] annual fees?” Some of these cards, like the Amex Business Platinum we mentioned, the Amex Gold, they have some higher annual fees I think it’s okay to just have a card for a year, evaluate the card.
You’re getting the big welcome bonus in year one. You’re getting many of the benefits. Then once the annual fee comes up, you’re not obliged to continue paying the annual fee. You can downgrade the card, cancel the card, make a decision based on how much value you got out of the benefits. And even if you don’t keep the card for more than a year, if you think the annual fee is too high versus the benefits, then you still had a massive win in year one.
And some of the others, like the Hilton Surpass, I believe that’s around 175, $150 annual fee at the time of recording. You’re getting $200 in Hilton credits you can spend on the card to get a free night certificate. I’m going to Hermitage Bay in Antigua this week, and that would cost $2,000 a night to stay at that hotel, which I’m never paying.
Hilton Surpass can be a good entry into [00:26:00] this with a lower annual fee and lots of value. You’re right, Justin. You have to always evaluate every annual fee that these credit cards charge. Most of the co-branded ones are keepers ’cause usually they offer something that is to me of greater value than the annual fee.
The Chase Aeroplan card, but that’s a good example where the, the benefits outweigh for me the fee. Some of the lower fee ones you might wanna keep, but yeah, you’re right. The Amex Plat, I love the $100 quarterly Resy credit, but that plus the Lululemon plus a few other things doesn’t quite, to me suggest I should keep it into year two.
So I will cancel and then hope that an Amex Gold gets an upgrade offer that justifies that by giving me enough Amex points to go back to the higher annual fee. Or in some cases you’re able to sign up for the card again. Not as much or not as often lately with the Amex personal cards I think.
Although, yeah, there have been exceptions,
and it’s always okay to downgrade that Platinum into a Gold with a lesser annual fee, and you’re [00:27:00] still getting many benefits, probably a keeper card for many listeners. And you could strategically time these. If there’s a quarterly benefit or a yearly benefit, you could use those benefits and then downgrade at a strategic time, getting a prorated annual fee, and then you’re into the new product on a lesser annual fee and more benefits.
Absolutely. The timing of upgrade/downgrade is fun game to play. That could be a whole episode. We talked about that a little bit with Matthew Dong in a previous episode, so you could check out there about the Hilton upgrading and downgrading and even the Amex Green Card.
Now, here’s another lamentation, the word for today. People call it couponification of cards, and even fellow content creators are here with the negativity. It’s too much brain space. It’s too much mental bandwidth to keep track of the benefits. Personally, I don’t find it difficult at all. I use a simple spreadsheet and Google Calendar to keep track of these benefits, and for the cards [00:28:00] where the annual fees make sense, I continue to pay them.
And if it doesn’t, I simply downgrade or cancel. I keep track of the benefits. I use them. I find value. Is it really that bad that some people are making it out to be? I don’t mind the coupons myself to a point either, Justin. You’re right, a simple spreadsheet usually makes it relatively easy.
I’ll add as well that not having to cook because I can go pick up Grubhub orders or we can go to a Resy restaurant, it saves me time, right? In many cases with my Instacart credit, sometimes I’ll splurge and buy a, an already cooked meal from Wegmans, right? So I don’t have to cook that night.
These coupons save me a little bit of time, even if I do have to have a little bit more of attention and organization to them. I’ve said it before though, too, Justin, I’ll say it again, we’re probably not the typical American, right? We enjoy this kind of game.
If you’re like Justin and me these kinds of offers are they’re just so much fun.
Yes, and I do also like the puzzle, the optimization, the trying to get the value out, and having the different experiences, as you mentioned, rather [00:29:00] than the same meal again and again cooked at home.
If we can eat out at low cost, then that’s a really good way to go, or in some cases, no cost with some of these benefits or loyalty programs. So I think a lot of moaning and groaning, but we’re here to win, not whine. Yeah, absolutely. I like the win, not whining line, Justin. That’s a good one. There are some of these coupons that I just find absolutely useless.
There’s coupons for, like fitness apps and things like that. You’re not gonna collect on all of them, right? Not every card’s benefits will be of use to you. I don’t use a lot of the BizPlats credits for business tools. I just don’t need them in my job.
Use the ones that make sense to you but don’t stress about the ones that don’t make sense to you and don’t not sign up for a card because you don’t think you can maximize all of its benefits. If you can maximize enough to make sense of the annual fee, then you should actually go for it.
Especially year one with that big welcome offer. Yeah, I got [00:30:00] my 300,000 membership rewards points well overtaking that annual fee that’s close to $900. I didn’t use the Adobe benefit, but I’m still doing a great job and coming out way ahead on that first year annual fee. Absolutely.
You mentioned it earlier in the podcast, let’s get into it now with the Aeroplan credit card.
You’ve done a lot of interesting things with grocery spending on this card and using the pay yourself back feature to offset some travel expenses that can’t otherwise be offset on other cards that you have. Can you tell us a little bit about this and if there are any tie-ins for dining?
The Chase Aeroplan card it’s a bit of a mystery card, right? People don’t really know much about it. I have really found great value from this card. So it’s a Chase card.
It does have an annual fee. I believe it’s a $95 annual fee. There’s a pretty good sign-up bonus going on right now.
The interesting thing about this card from a food perspective, since [00:31:00] that’s the topic here is that you get 3X for groceries. And i- in my case at least Walmart Supercenter counts as groceries for my Chase Aeroplan card. There’s plenty of spend that you can do in places like Walmart and grocery stores, other grocery stores.
You could buy gift cards there that you might use yourself just organically, or you might buy gift cards and resell them. But if you do manage to do a substantial amount of spend at grocery stores or supercenters like Walmart with your Chase Aeroplan card then you can use those credits then to pay yourself back for travel.
You’re getting travel at 1.25 cents per point. The travel that is included for this pay yourself back is really expansive. Includes my E-ZPass charges for the tolls. It includes parking at airports. It includes Airbnb purchases. It includes Viator or Expedia or any of these other [00:32:00] travel platform purchases for tickets for events.
So for me, the spend on the food side, grocery stores, supercenters has meant that I’ve been able to pay myself back for, thousands of dollars of purchases that are travel purchases and have allowed us to do some neat things.
You could even go to a Subway inside of a Walmart or other restaurants that might happen to be there.
There are dining ways, to get points from it too.
And you don’t even have to fly Air Canada. How about that?
You don’t have to fly Air Canada at all. In fact, I’m not sure, since I’ve gotten the card, if I have. In the last few years, me, P1, and P2 have all gotten this card and I don’t think we have flown Air Canada.
I had a flight from Newark to Canada, and then Canada to Poland with Air Canada. That was my experience. An interesting alliance or partnership there. Absolutely. And by the way, Aeroplan points do allow you to book on a kind of a wide variety. They’re an alliance with a lot of other airlines.
If you don’t wanna pay yourself back with your Aeroplan points you can treat them as [00:33:00] miles, right? And use them to fly, on lots of different airlines.
An honorable mention for food is cruising. I’ve talked a lot in past episodes about that. You can YouTube Hurdy Gurdy travel cruising.
You could see my room tours, cruising in 2026 was one episode. With most cruises, the buffet, the dining room, and even some other food is included. You could take comp cruises, pay taxes and fees and have lots and lots of food as you’re at sea. Also, honorable mention you’re going to Antigua in a few days, and you’re staying at an all-inclusive.
So if you want to use your free night certs from Hilton or wherever else, go to an all-inclusive and you don’t have to worry about food charges. And a great deal with the free night certificates here is many of the higher end Hilton properties, Hyatt properties, have gone up in points, so it’s really nice to have the dining experience at low cost or no cost with the free night certificates.
100%. [00:34:00] And finally, we have the Panera SIP Club. It will no longer be the unlimited SIP Club. There’s going to be, I think, 30 uses per month, but if you wanna go out to eat for social reasons or go to a restaurant, you can enroll in the SIP Club. There’s usually introductory offers, $5 a month for three months, sometimes even cheaper.
I’m on the annual plan. I’m paying about $10 a month and getting great value. I’d pay a dollar for a drink at Panera, so going 10 times a month, I’m easily coming up ahead on that, and I’m often going way more than that.
Any trips upcoming for you as we get to the end of the episode?
As I said earlier, going to New York for a few days leaving tomorrow. We’ll be seeing the Harry Potter musical using StubHub credits from our Chase Sapphire Reserve cards. So that’s exciting. One of the kids has been wanting to see it for a long time, and we’ll use our Chase exclusive tables credits at a restaurant.
We have reservations already at [00:35:00] Momofuku. With our other card, we might get lunch the following day. We’re gonna hit up a few museums a few places, and probably just walk around a bit. And then I will be going this fall for work purposes to North Macedonia.
But next spring I’m planning a trip right now, just bought the plane tickets will be going to London to visit friends for a few days, and then while we’re there, We’re gonna head up to Liverpool and we’re gonna watch the football club ’cause it’s been one of my husband’s great dreams in life is to watch Liverpool play live.
We’ll go from there to the Netherlands which is where our parents are from, and we’ll spend some time there doing some language work.
You’ve also used your hotel credits, the Edit, Fine Hotels and Resorts with American Express.
Really good options for stays and dining as these usually come with some high benefits. $100 dining credits or more, complimentary breakfast for two. Another good way to dine and travel. Yeah, we used ours in Portland, The Dunaway, that costs well under the [00:36:00] $300 a night that the FHR returns, gives back to you. And that, plus the $100 credit, so we ate a lot and we ate we ate well, and we stayed for free.
We both went to the Kimpton Taconic in Vermont. I have various videos on my Hurdy Gurdy Travel YouTube channel. You can find those. Add Vermont to the search, and we had lots of food there as well.
Anything else as we come to a close? Nope. Just thank you for the opportunity to come and talk a little bit about something that I’ve enjoyed for the last number of years which is to find ways to eat well and eat cheap.
A little bit of effort and organization, but it’s worth it. As you were saying earlier, nothing really comes for free, whether you’re gonna trade your time for money at a traditional job and then pay for dining, or this is a way to save money through credit card benefits and loyalty programs
It’s a great way to do it, and I’m surprised there aren’t more of us out there, Justin, doing this.
[00:37:00] Unfortunately, I don’t have the money trees or the $20 burrito trees in my backyard, so we have another way to win.
Yep. Absolutely. If any one of your subscribers has further questions about some of these things, they’re more than welcome to reach out to me or just ask Justin for my information, and I’d be happy to connect. Leave the comments on YouTube, and I’ll let Beth know about that.
You’re more incognito online, but I’ll definitely let you know of listener comments. Sounds great. Thanks so much, Justin.
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