How to turn your Christmas shopping into 55,000 frequent flyer points

November 7, 2026 — 5:10am

You have reached your maximum number of saved items.

Remove items from your saved list to add more.

No gift articles left

You've used all of your gift articles. 3 more will become available on the 1st of every month.

It’s just under six weeks to Christmas, a fact that might be as distressing as last week’s interest rate rise was for mortgage holders. But this year – just in time for Christmas – I’ve honed my points hacking, and I’m ready to start stacking them from the silly season.

It’s a simple strategy: buy gift cards that come with a bonus points offer and use them, instead of cash, to buy things. Indeed, you can start in the Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales, when Aussie shoppers are expected to spend an average of $346, an increase of $22 from last year’s event, according to Shopify.

Let me add the crucial upfront caveat, as I often do, that this is for money that you were going to spend anyway. As if any of us has any to spare! But with necessary, planned spend, why not deploy my proven tactics this year to max the points hacks?

Visa/Mastercard gift cards – 10,000 pointsNow, this is not my favourite strategy but let’s start here and work up to the best; the reason is that these gift cards charge a $5.75 to $7.95 activation fee per card. Any fee comprehensively erodes the value of the points you earn.

The advantage of these cards, though, is that they can be redeemed just about........

© The Age