It was late evening at Hanoi airport. Five of us were moving through the terminal — my parents, my twin brother Jerry, my young niece, and me. We had just been through check-in and security. We were tired. We had a domestic flight to catch down to Da Nang — a coastal city in central Vietnam often called the Miami of Vietnam — where we were going to spend a few days together as a family.
If you have ever traveled with family in a busy Asian airport, you already know how the next part usually goes. Crowded waiting areas. Long lines for overpriced food at the gate. A toddler getting fussy because she is tired and hungry and confused about what is happening. The parents trying to keep everyone calm. The adults trying not to lose their patience.
But instead of heading toward the gate, I turned to my parents and told them to follow me. I had a small surprise.
I led the five of us to a different door, tucked off the main terminal corridor. At the entrance, the staff member checked my card. She looked at the others behind me, then at me again. She told me, gently, that she had never seen five people come in together on a single membership. It was the first time, she said. Then she smiled and waved us all in.
We spent the next two hours inside an airport lounge.
Comfortable chairs that did not have armrests digging into your sides. Quiet. A hot buffet that nobody had to count or apologize for. Drinks in real glasses. A small play space my niece could wander in without bothering anyone. Wi-Fi that actually worked.
My parents kept saying they could not believe it was free. They kept asking me if I was sure. They kept looking around the room like they had been let into a place they were not supposed to be allowed in.
And I had not paid a single dollar extra to give them that experience. The lounge access was simply included with a card I was already using to pay for groceries and my phone bill.
This piece is about that card, and the other one that took me to Seoul a few weeks earlier, and what I learned along the way about a tool I had spent years being afraid of.
The misunderstanding I had for years
When I first arrived in Canada at fifteen, credit cards felt scary to me.
My parents had always warned me about debt. My friends talked about credit card debt the way people talk about a trap you fall into. The story I absorbed, without really questioning it, was that credit cards were dangerous things designed by banks to take advantage of regular people. The smartest move, I assumed, was to avoid them completely and just use my debit card for everything.
That was a mistake.
Let me be careful here, because the warning is partly true. Credit cards used badly will ruin your life. The interest rates are brutal. If you spend more than you can afford and carry a balance from one month to the next, the system eats you alive. My parents and friends were right to warn me about that side of it.
But credit cards used carefully are something different. They are one of the most powerful tools a working person has to get more value from money they are already spending.
The key word is carefully.
The rules I live by are simple, and I want to put them right at the top of this piece before I tell you anything else.
I only spend what I would have spent anyway. I pay the full balance every single month. I never carry debt from one statement to the next. If you cannot trust yourself to do those three things, you should not read the rest of this post as a recommendation. It is not.
For those who can, here is what changed for me.
The Marriott Bonvoy Amex
The first card I signed up for is the Marriott Bonvoy American Express Card.
I signed up because I love travel, and I knew that one day I wanted to take my family on nicer trips than my paycheck could normally cover. The card earns points you can redeem for free hotel nights at Marriott properties around the world. Like most travel cards, the biggest single burst of points comes from the welcome bonus — a large amount given to you when you sign up, as long as you spend a certain minimum in the first few months.
In my case, the welcome bonus was 65,000 points. That alone was enough to cover several free nights at a decent hotel.
But there is a second benefit I did not fully appreciate at first. Every year on my card anniversary, Marriott gives me a free night certificate. One voucher, good for one free night at many of their hotels around the world, simply for keeping the card active.
On its own, an anniversary night is not life-changing. It is one night a year. But year after year, those certificates add up. A free night in a city I had been wanting to visit. A free night to spoil my parents or my brother when they come to visit me.
The rest of the points I earned slowly, simply by using the card for expenses I was already making. Groceries. Phone bill. Gas. The small purchases at the convenience store that add up quietly over time. Nothing I would not have bought anyway. The only difference was that instead of swiping my debit card and watching the money disappear into the void, I was paying with a card that was collecting points in the background.
Then I paid the balance in full at the end of every month. No interest, ever.
A year or so later, I had enough points for a real trip.
Five free nights in Seoul
I had been dreaming of visiting Seoul, South Korea for a long time. I had been learning Korean on my own. I wanted to see the country in person, hear the language spoken around me, eat the food at the source, experience the culture I had only seen through a screen.
When I started looking at hotels for the trip, the prices made me pause.
A decent hotel room in Seoul was running around two hundred and fifty dollars a night. Five nights would have meant well over a thousand dollars on accommodation alone, before I had even paid for flights, food, transit, or anything else. For a supervisor working steady but not luxurious shifts at a downtown hotel, that was not a small amount of money. It was the kind of number that would have made me think twice about going at all.
But I did not pay it.
I remember sitting at my kitchen table one evening, my laptop open to the Marriott rewards page, staring at my points balance and the booking calendar side by side. I had to do the math twice. The points I had been quietly accumulating — mostly from the welcome bonus, topped up by months of normal daily spending — were enough to cover all five nights at a Marriott in the middle of Seoul.
I could not believe five nights in Seoul would be completely free. I sat there for a while just looking at the screen.
The only real cost was the annual fee on the card. Once you compare that fee to the value of five free hotel nights in a major international city, the math is obvious. The card more than paid for itself on a single trip.
And I had not changed my life to make it happen. I was not spending more than usual. I was not skipping meals or cutting corners. I was paying for the same expenses I would have paid for anyway, but with a card that gave me something back for it.
The money was leaving my bank account either way. The only question was whether anything came back.
If after reading this you decide the Marriott Bonvoy American Express Card might be useful for your life, I have a personal referral link that gives you a larger welcome bonus than the standard public offer — at the time of writing, that is 100,000 points after meeting the spending requirements, compared to 75,000 from the public offer. Credit card offers change over time, so please verify the current terms on the American Express website before signing up. If you are approved through my link, I receive 15,000 points as a referral bonus.
You can find my referral link here.
If using a referral link from a stranger on the internet feels strange, the public offer is easy to find on the American Express website. The card is the same either way.
The Scotiabank Passport Visa Infinite
The second card gave me one of the most meaningful experiences of the last few years.
It is the Scotiabank Passport Visa Infinite. It earns travel rewards, like most travel cards. But it comes with something I did not fully appreciate until I used it for the first time.
Complimentary airport lounge access.
If you have never been inside one, let me describe it. A lounge is a separate area inside the airport where you can wait for your flight in a much nicer environment than the crowded gate. Comfortable seating with space around you. Quiet, or at least quieter than the terminal. A buffet with hot food, drinks, desserts, snacks. Clean bathrooms. Wi-Fi that actually works.
Normally, to get inside, you either need to be flying business class — which costs thousands of dollars more than economy — or pay a day rate at the lounge itself, often fifty to one hundred dollars per person.
With this card, I get free access to hundreds of lounges around the world. And I can bring guests with me for free.
I did not understand how powerful this was until that night in Hanoi.
After my trip to Seoul, I had flown back to Vietnam to spend time with my family. We had planned a short trip down to Da Nang together. All five of us. And we were now at Hanoi airport, waiting for our flight, with all the tiredness and noise that comes with traveling as a family at the end of a long day.
When I led them to the lounge that evening, what was happening inside me was something more than satisfaction. My parents had spent most of their lives working long hours. Fourteen-hour days. The kind of work that does not leave room for luxuries. They had sacrificed a lot to send me and Jerry to Canada when we were fifteen, with the hope that we would build a different kind of life there.
And now, more than a decade later, in their own country, in a busy airport, I was the one leading them into a quiet room where everything was already paid for.
That experience is worth more to me than any dollar figure I could put on it.
Being honest about the costs
I want to be honest about the other side of all of this, because any real advice has to include the full picture.
Both of these cards have annual fees, and the fees are not small. They are in the range you would expect from premium travel cards. If you never travel, never stay in hotels, and never fly, these cards are probably not for you. The annual fee would cost you more than you would ever get back.
But for someone who uses them intentionally, the math is overwhelmingly positive. The five free nights in Seoul paid for the Marriott Amex many times over. The airport lounge experience with my family was worth more than the Scotiabank fee for years to come. And in the meantime, both cards continue to earn points from my everyday spending, which means the next free trip is already being built in the background.
Let me put the three rules again, more firmly this time.
Never spend money you would not have spent anyway just to earn points.
Never carry a balance month to month.
Never sign up for a card if you cannot trust yourself to pay it off in full.
The moment you start paying interest, the entire system breaks. All the points in the world cannot outweigh what high interest rates will do to someone carrying a balance.
Used wrong, credit cards will ruin your life.
Used right, they will quietly add experiences to your life that you could not otherwise afford.
The difference is entirely in how you use them.
The bigger lesson
Credit cards are just one specific example of a much bigger idea.
There are countless ways to use the same money more intelligently. Most people never look for them because they are busy, tired, and focused on getting through the week. Most people assume money only flows in one direction — out of their hands, gone forever, with nothing left over.
But once you start asking the simple question — is there a smarter way to spend the money I am already spending? — you will start finding answers in places you were not looking. Reward programs. Cashback offers. Loyalty bonuses. Membership discounts. Off-season pricing. Free experiences you are already eligible for but did not know about.
Almost no one teaches you any of this. You have to go looking.
Every time I paid for something with my debit card, I was handing over money and getting nothing back. Every time I paid the same thing with a rewards card and then paid it off in full at the end of the month, I was getting something back for the exact same purchase.
The money left my bank account either way. The only difference was what came back.
This essay is adapted from my book, Alive After Hours. If it spoke to you, the book goes deeper.