Frequent Miler on the Air - Travel Hacker's Toolkit | Ep190 | 2-18-23

Episode Date: February 18, 2023

There are a lot of great tools for collecting and spending points and miles. This week, we talk about the ones we use most often to maximize our mileage.  00:00 Intro 00:45 Giant Mailbag: Tips from the comments on a fixing a failed attempt at a Platinum triple dip https://frequentmiler.com/fixing-a-failed-platinum-triple-dip/ 05:50 What crazy thing....double header! 05:58 What crazy thing . . . did Capital One do this week? https://frequentmiler.com/capital-one-including-global-entry-reimbursement-on-1099s/ 12:03 What crazy thin . . . did Virgin Voyages do this week? https://frequentmiler.com/capital-one-including-global-entry-reimbursement-on-1099s/ 17:23 Mattress running the numbers: New Hilton credit cards https://frequentmiler.com/increased-hilton-card-offers/ 25:48 Main Event: Travel Hacker's Toolkit 26:10 Managing Points: Award Wallet 29:39 Earning miles and points 29:45 Best Offers Page https://frequentmiler.com/best-credit-card-sign-up-offers/ 32:56 Travel Freely https://frequentmiler.com/take-the-stress-out-of-credit-card-bonus-hunting-travel-freely/ 35:23 Tools for meeting minimum spending requirements 35:41 Kiva https://frequentmiler.com/why-i-love-kiva-for-earning-rewards-and-doing-good/ 36:51 Paying taxes https://frequentmiler.com/pay-taxes-via-credit-card/ https://frequentmiler.com/best-category-bonuses/ 40:34 Referral bonuses https://frequentmiler.com/maximizing-value-from-amex-multi-referrals/ 42:10 spending points 42:22 Flight tools (First up: Flight Connections) 44:49 Google Flights and airline websites https://frequentmiler.com/find-great-business-class-fares-google-flights/ 50:28 Point.me and Award Logic https://frequentmiler.com/point-me-vs-awardlogic/ 58:00 Seats.Aero https://frequentmiler.com/seats-aero/ 1:01:17 Expert Flyer 1:03:30 Award Nights 1:04:38 Award Mapper 1:06:16 Stay with points https://frequentmiler.com/staywithpoints-find-hard-to-get-hotel-awards/ 1:08:56 Car Rentals https://frequentmiler.com/shopping-for-car-rentals-comparison-results/ 1:15 Google Maps, Google Flights, Google Hotels, Blog Reviews 1:20:54 Question of the Week: On a partner award, do you always check in with the operating carrier? Music credit: Annie Yoder

Let's get into the giant mailbag. What crazy thing did City do this week? It's time for Mattress Running the Numbers. Ready for the main event? The main event. Frequent Miler on the Air starts now. Today's main event, the Travel Hackers Toolkit. We have all kinds of tools that we use for building up our points and miles war chest and for using the points and miles effectively. And so we're going to get into what are our favorites, which ones do we turn to time and again, because they really deliver the value that we need to make the most, actually earn the most points and miles and make the most of them once we have them. So that's what we're doing today for the main event but first of course we have the giant mailbag today's giant mail comes from a few people these are comments in response to my post called fixing a failed

platinum triple dip in that post i talked about how I had messed up. I had intended to cancel my Amex business platinum card in January before it was too late. And what too late is in Amex world is that once the annual fee posts, you have 30 days from the date that it shows up on your screen there when you log in, 30 days from then to cancel and you get the full money back for that annual fee. If you wait 31 days, they're going to charge you the full annual fee. And if you cancel then, you get nothing back. So in that post, I talked about how I had tried to get my airline fee credits, the $200 in airline fee credits in January and the $200 in Dell credits in January before canceling. And I just messed up. I started the whole process too late because I didn't even get to it until I got back from New Zealand.

And then I waited about four or five days, I think it was, until the credits posted. And by then it was past the 30 days. So that's what my post was about. And the way I handled it is I downgraded to a $95 business green card. And that does work. So they prorated a refund of my $6.95 annual fee of my business platinum and then charge me a prorated annual fee around 85 bucks, something like that for the business green card. But I learned some great things from commenters. So first of all, David said, I canceled a consumer platinum before my SACS credit posted

and months later I received a check for the credit. So he's pointing out maybe you don't have to wait until the credits actually post. So if you spend your airline fee credits, you spend your Dell credits, or with a personal card, you spend your SACS credit, for example, you don't have to wait. You could go ahead and cancel. And then AC said the same thing, but with their business platinum card. AC said, I had the same with my Dell credit on the business platinum. I got the credit after I canceled the card. So that's great to know. Had I known these things before, I could have just canceled after making the charges and been good. Then I learned one

other thing. So I thought I was stuck with my business green card that I don't have any use for. Um, but Rab MD says, once you downgrade an Amex card that restarts the 30 day annual fee refund clock as well. So, uh, so Rab MD's point is that I could now, as long as within 30 days of when I did the downgrade, I could cancel that, um, the, the, the business green card and I should get back the 85 ish dollars that I was charged as a prorated annual fee. So I don't, I don't know if I don't know yet that I'll do that because I might wait to

see if there's a good upgrade offer, um, right back to the, um, business platinum or to a business gold, But cool. I love this that I can post about something I did and then learn all kinds of things from the readers. Yeah, that's great. I mean, there's so many things out there to know. It's impossible to know everything. And those were some fantastic tips. You know, I'd be a little bit nervous about pulling that move too many times where you downgrade and then cancel. Like, I wouldn't want to do that again and again i feel like i don't obviously know because this is new to me that that's even possible to do uh but it seems like the kind of thing that would eventually draw the pop-up prison right like it gets you i don't know a month or a year it's certainly

possible and eventually i mean you do it once i'm sure probably no big deal but a bunch of times yeah by the pop-up prison of course nick's talking about where uh when amex decides they don't like you um they when you go to apply for a new credit card from them um they'll a pop-up will say that you're not qualified for the welcome bonus for this card and you could still apply but you know you're not going to get the bonus and so various things like um like just signing up for cards and canceling them after you get the bonus uh without spending a lot on amex cards are known to cause you to get into what we've called pop-up prison so um yeah i guess it's possible that that could lead to pop-up prison. So yeah, I guess it's possible that that could lead to pop-up prison too. I don't know. But anyway. All right. Interesting. Great info. Yeah. Very, very good info. So thank you for that. Actually, I was in the same boat. I had a very similar situation where I let it go just a little bit too long. And my plan was that I would downgrade for the prorated fees. So glad to

hear that that all worked out for you and to learn some good tips about the process. So thank you very much, everybody. Good stuff there. All right. So that brings us, I think, next to what crazy thing. And this week we have a what crazy thing double header. So let's start out with what crazy thing did Capital One do this week? Yeah. Tell me about this. Capital One has been sending out tax forms. What's going on there? Yeah, so they've been sending out 1099s, which if you refer people to cards, you're probably at least somewhat familiar with because most of the issuers, in fact, I think all of the major issuers these days, send a 1099 for points earned from referrals. Now, to be clear, you don't get a 1099 for points earned from purchases on your credit card or from the welcome bonus on your credit card. Those things are considered rebates, spending rebates rather

than income. So they do send 1099s though for referrals because that's different. And I guess, from their perspective, you're kind of working for them and sharing the product with other people and getting them to sign up for it. So they've determined that that ought to be 1099. So if you've had more than, say, $600 worth of referrals or even with some issuers, I think even less, you may get a 1099 form. So you'll have to file that with your taxes as income. The crazy thing, though, is that Capital One has sent out 1099s with really weird numbers, like really strange amounts. It took me forever because it was not an even dollar amount, which is the weirdest thing because referrals are always even numbers of points. And everybody else seems to value the points at a very simple,

like penny a point type of a valuation. And when I say everybody else, Amex and Chase, but with Capital One, it wasn't seeming like that because like, I don't know, the one we received had ended in 73 cents. I was like, where did they get 73 cents from? And then we started getting more and more reports from readers and our frequent miler insiders group of just weird amounts that didn't seem to jive with what they had, you know, they had actually referred or the points they'd earned. Now, I don't know that this tidbit is going to apply to everybody. But the crazy thing is that Dave Grossman at Miles Talk eventually got a full breakdown, and it's been really tough. People have been trying to get word from Capital One in terms of why they got a 1099 or how

the formula was made to decide how much income. And nobody at Capital One has been answering these questions. Somehow, Dave got a breakdown from Capital One, And he found that in addition to A, cash back referrals being valued at straight cash, the points earned from Venture Card referrals or VentureX or Spark Miles referrals are being valued at just over a penny a piece. And when I say just over, I mean, one point like zero, zero, zero, zero, two, three, or something really strange like that, where it's just over a penny a point. So it turns out unlike, you know, every couple hundred bucks, it's like 73 cents. So, so that's where my 73 cents came from on a, on a 25,000 point Capital One referral. So I got $250.73 worth of income. Yeah. So just hold on a minute.

So back when they canceled my venture card and I had something like 70,000 points at that time and they gave me $350. That was valuing it only at half a cent per point. And yet what they're doing is they're turning around and telling the IRS that the points are worth 1.000029 or three or six or something. Yeah, I know. It makes no sense at all. I have no idea why they determined or how they determined that points are worth more than a penny because you can only use those points to erase charges at one cent per point, right? Obviously, you can transfer to partners and get more value, but I've just never heard of anybody else valuing the points more than a penny each. But whatever, it turns out to be 73 cents on a 25,000 point referral. So I'm not going to lose too much sleep over whatever percentage of 73

cents I end up having to pay to the IRS. What's crazier and still like, you know, just kind of weird and wacky is that he found that they were also including the reimbursement for the global entry fee as income. So if you paid for global entry, you applied for global entry and you paid the hundred dollars because the Capital One Venture X card reimburses that. Well, they included that as income. What? So that is the most clear cut. It's just a rebate from spend that you can get, right?

You have to spend that money and it gets rebated. Right. There is no justification for that at all. I mean, first of all, there's no justification for them to to to value their miles at more than a half cent each unless they're going to go back in time and give me the right amount. But right. But, you know, this is much more egregious. I mean, how what how could they know? No, I know it doesn't make any sense at all. And it really devalues that benefit on the card, right? Because I mean, it depends on what your tax rate is. But if you're somewhere in the 20s, let's say, percentage wise, you're talking about, it's going to cost you more than 20 bucks to get global entry with Capital One, whereas it'll cost you zero with anybody else that reimburses that type

of thing. So I just think that that's pretty crazy. And if you're in a high tax bracket, my goodness, it just gets ridiculous in terms of the value of that. So yeah. And like you said, what world are they living in? That that's not a rebate. That doesn't make any sense. That's so wrong. That's so wrong. I hope we'll send out corrected forms or something, but then do people have to refile their taxes? I don't know what's going to happen at this point. It's probably not worth the headache. I mean, you can, theoretically, you can even challenge the value of the points. I've seen a few from the wing talk about that before where, you know, you could challenge their valuation of the 1.0029 or whatever, but is it worth the headache and

drawing attention because you're disputing what your 1099 says? I mean, probably not for most people. I almost wish that they had given me a 1099 because I'd have like proof that the points are only worth a half cent each. Oh, that would be great. That would be great. So if you want to make a case out there, if you earn a lot of referral points, you want to make a case. Greg's your guy. He'll be your expert witness saying the points are worth half a cent each. All right.

So that's half of what crazy thing. The other half of what crazy thing is what crazy thing did Virgin Voyages do this week? Virgin Voyages. So there's a deal out where you can you can get a big, expensive cruise for only like, what is it, 80 to 100,000 points, something like that. Right. So the cruises out of Miami are 80,000 points. I should take that back. The five night

cruises out of Miami are 80,000 points and the seven night cruises or eight night cruises, one seven and the other is eight out of Miami and Barcelona are 100,000 points. Now, this is only applicable on certain ships and only out of those two ports. So and only supposed to be applicable to the five-night Caribbean cruises or the seven-night Caribbean and eight-night Mediterranean or the other way around. So the maximum an eight-night cruise. But that's a great deal because this is for a sea terrace room, so a balcony-level room. And if you look up the balcony-level rooms, the cost of them, you'll find that that's a very good deal for Virgin Points.

And Virgin Voyages, by the way, uses the Virgin Red program, which is the sort of unifying program. If you've got Virgin Atlantic miles, then they're also Virgin Red points. It's the Virgin Points. It's one big currency that just kind of pulls from a single pot. So you can redeem for this in the app, in the Virgin Red app. You'll need to sign up for a Virgin Red account if you don't have a Virgin Red account. So if you've got a Virgin Atlantic Flying Club account, the airline, you'll also need a Virgin Red account

and you'll have to connect the two of them. You can find details for how to do that online. So this is a potentially very good redemption for those five, seven and eight night cruises. But the crazy thing is that we had a report from a reader. And so I guess I should explain how this works. If you want to redeem for this, you redeem for it in the Virgin Red app. Now, be careful if you've got virgin points, because I remember hearing somebody say that it was very easy to hit the redeem button and there wasn't like a confirm that you really want to redeem it. So make sure you keep your thumb away from the redeem button unless you are ready to redeem for this. But once you redeem for it, they email you an access code. So it's sort of like a coupon code.

And then you go on Virgin Voyages and you pick the cruise you want. You apply the coupon code and it makes it zero dollars. You don't pay anything in taxes, the entire thing. It's just zero for the cruise. So you get this access code. You plug it in for the cruise you want. Now, again, like I said, it's only supposed to go for certain lengths of cruises up to seven or eight nights.

However, we got a tip from a reader that that access code is working for the 15-night Transatlantic cruise from Barcelona. So I don't even know what the dates are on that. But if that piques your interest, 100,000 points for a 15-night Transatlantic cruise in a balcony-level room would be a fantastic deal with Virgin Voyages. I'm sure I haven't cruised with Virgin Voyages. I imagine it'll be plenty nice to make that feel totally worth it. Now, before you run out there and redeem and say, hey, Nick told me I could get the 15-night cruise, remember that I said it's supposed to work on the seven

and eight-night cruises out of Miami and Barcelona. It just so happens that the access code seems to be working on the 15-night cruise. So don't shoot the messenger if in some way that doesn't work out. But we did, again, have a reader who confirmed that not only did it turn it down to zero, but they booked it and then called Virgin to confirm that, yeah, their booking is valid. So I think it'll work. And so I would potentially check that out if that's interesting to you. Yeah.

Yeah. So just in case you're out there listening and say, well, I don't have any Virgin Atlantic points or Virgin Red points or whatever the heck you're talking about, Virgin points transfer from pretty much everyone. So if you have Chase Ultimate Rewards points, if you have Amex Membership Rewards points, you've got Citi Thank You points, you've got Built points, can transfer capital one yeah yeah um you could transfer them one-to-one to virgin and uh in a very soon if if not already uh city is is gonna do a um 30 transfer bonus for a little while um to virgin atlantic so yeah so great So you'd be able to transfer far fewer

than the 80 to 100,000 that are needed in order to get what you need. But as Nick said, I would say my advice would be, unless you're willing to accept the- Seven or eight night cruises. Lesser cruise, exactly. I wouldn't do this i would you know do this if like if the seven or eight night cruise sounds good to you but a 15 night sounds even better then sure you know swing for the fences hope you could get that 15 day and if it doesn't work out

you know you still get a cruise you still get great value for your points so absolutely uh it's it's tempting even to me to, you know, who, who is not interested in cruises, but it's like, well, this is a deal. I got to go for this. Yeah. I mean, especially with the 30% transfer bonus, it really does look pretty interesting, even just for the seven and eight night cruises. It looks pretty interesting. Now keep in mind though, it's only valid on cruises through June 30th, 2023. So you can't book out farther than the end of June of this year. So that's the limitation.

Now we've seen them allow this a couple of times now. They had it last fall and then it went away for a bit and now the redemptions came back again. So I wouldn't be surprised if those redemptions come back again or get extended. But at this point anyway, you can only book for cruises through June 30th. All right.

All right. That brings us, think to mattress running the numbers this week's mattress running the numbers greg talked to us about the new enhanced hilton credit card offers we got new offers out are they exciting are they interesting are they worth it yeah so so the new hilton offers uh all of the uh amex hilton cards, except for the expensive Aspire card, have increased offers. So the business card, 165,000 points after $5,000 spend. This is a $95 card. So those are big numbers.

You do have to keep in mind, though, that Hilton points don't tend to be worth as much as many other types of points. So just keep keep in mind, though, that Hilton points don't tend to be worth as much as many other types of points. So just keep that in mind. The other $95 Hilton card, the Surpass card, that's the consumer version of it. You only get 150,000 points with that one. So that's 15,000 fewer points. But you also have less spend required. $3,000 spend will get you the 150,000 points. And the no fee card is up to 100,000

points after 2K spend. So those are the offers. They are better than usual. The question is, are they good enough to be worth going for? And- What do you think, Greg? I mean, are they? And if they are, are they all worth going for? Or is there one or two that piques your interest more? Yeah. So, so here's the thing. Hilton points are worth on average around half a cent each for most awards that you book with them. Now you can do better. So you can book a five-night stay, get the fifth night free. So right away there, you're doing better than half a cent per point. You can find some hotels that are kind of underpriced, point priced for what they would

cost in cash. Typically you see that at the high end, like the Conrad Maldives that would go for 120,000 Hilton points versus, I don't know, $1,000 a night, something like that. So you can do much better, but it's not a slam dunk that you will. So unless you know what you're doing, I think you should think of these as like half, approximately half a cent to make the math easy. And so if you take 150,000 point signup offer, like the Surpass has, you could say, okay, that's, if they're all worth a penny each, that would be $1,500. But at a half penny, that's worth $750. Is that a good signup bonus? Yeah. I mean, $750, that's solid. It's not amazing, but it's solid. And then you have the business platinum a little bit better. And the nice thing with the business platinum is- Not business platinum, the business Hilton card. Business. Oh, thank you. The nice thing about the business Hilton card is that it's a business card and won't add to your credit report as a new account. And so, for example, Chase won't deny you because you've signed up for more cards in two years than Chase likes.

So that's an advantage of the business Hilton card. And of course, the no fee card, getting about $500 worth of value from a no fee card, that's actually on the high end of what you can expect from no fee cards and no fee personal cards. There are no fee business cards where you could do much better,

but for personal cards, that's pretty good. So I'd say these are good, solid offers. Yeah. I'd push even to say that they're a little bit better than good. I mean, I wouldn't call them excellent necessarily, but even a little bit better. And here's why. When you talked about how much the offers are worth and you say, well, they surpass about 750 $750, the business card a little over $800, and the no-fee card around $500, those are all particularly good compared to the amount of spend they require. So that's another piece that I would mention with it. The $750 on the Surpass card, for instance, only requires $3,000 spend. Now, if you can do $6,000 spend, you could do better with an Inc. business card, the Inc. Business Unlimited or Inc. Business Cash. But otherwise, on 3K spend, that's very solid. Now, there are

airline cards where perhaps if you're redeeming for premium cabin international travel, you can get even more value. So I don't want to overstate it. And that's why I say maybe a little bit better than good, because these are higher than average for the amount of spend they require, I would say. And the no fee card, I mean, 500 bucks worth of travel on a no fee card is pretty good. And the thing about the no fee card is that there are frequently offers for upgrading to the other cards, at least there have been in the past. So if you haven't had the no fee card before you're eligible for the welcome bonus, then, you know, it might be worth picking up at a time when the offer is elevated so that you can hopefully down

the road, upgrade it to a surpass or an aspire if that's what you want down the road, but you wouldn't want to upgrade to a card you haven't had before because you'd want to get the new card member bonus on that card first before you upgrade to it. So I'm jumping a few steps ahead, but I, you know, I think the business card is worth a look. I, until just until these offers went up, I had forgotten that that card also comes with a free night certificate after 15,000 spend in a calendar year. I knew that was true on the surpass, but I'd forgotten that that was true on the business card. Now, the surpass has the U.S. supermarket bonus category. So that might be a little bit more useful if you're in a manufactured spending for that free night certificate.

However, the business card, like Greg said, wouldn't add to a 524 count, still gives you a shot at that 15K spend for the free night start. And it comes with a few more points. So I think my pick right now would probably be the business card, but any of these could be an okay choice. And that's saying something because hotel cards usually aren't that great. I totally agree. I'm eyeing the business card myself. I might pick one up if I have any open. These are credit cards. And so Amex will let you have five or six credit cards open at any one time. You could have more of those charge cards, those pay over time, like the platinum and the gold and the green cards are charge cards or Amex likes to call them pay overtime cards. But for the credit cards, yeah, I'm thinking of the Hilton business

card. One thing I do want to mention, if you're eyeing very high end stays, the regular offer for the Aspire card is still probably your best bet. So 150,000 points and you get a free night certificate this year. And you will also get another one when you renew next year. But so that free night certificate, this is where I said, if you're eyeing high value hotels, because then you could use that free night certificate for one that would cost like 120,000 points. So that welcome bonus then is at least two nights at a place like that, which is pretty darn good.

And if you value the other benefits, I mean, we've frequently talked before and for anybody who's new, I guess it's worth mentioning that the Aspire card is one of the best deals on the market because it comes with $250 in annual airline fee credits and also $250 in annual resort credit at Hilton. So if you like to stay at Hilton's and you can use those airline fee credits, which we maintain a post on ways to trigger the airline fee credits, and there's plenty of reasonably good ways to do that.

So if you value those things, that card is sort of a no brainer. So I would only be looking at these cards, probably if you already have the Aspire or if you're not somebody who values those high end nights, like, you know, Greg said, if you more value the, or you place more value

on having a lot of points for many, many nights, then you may want the higher points and lower annual fee of these cards that we're talking about. Yep. All right. So that brings us, many nights, then you may want the higher points and lower annual fee of these cards that we're talking about. Yep. All right. So that brings us, I think we don't have an update for the challenge. That's not to say we haven't been working on it. We've been working feverishly on the challenge, but we don't have an update for that this week. Awards we booked this week, I think we're also going to skip over for today. I'll kind of talk a little bit about something I

when we talk about the tools, but we don't need to dedicate a segment to that. So I think that means it's time for the main event. Main event time, the Travel Hackers Toolkit. So we're going to get into what are the tools we actually use day to day. I mean, because there are tons of tools that we use occasionally. We're just going to talk about the ones that are front of mind, the ones we keep going back to. And I'm going to start with a category, which is, I don't even know it's a great category, but I'm going to call it managing points because I don't have a better name for it. And I'm starting with this whole like blah, blah, blah stuff, because I almost forgot about this tool altogether when I was putting down the list, even though it's the tool that I probably rely on more than any other. And that's AwardWallet.

So AwardWallet is where I keep track of almost all of my frequent flyer accounts, all my hotel accounts. And it not only tells me what my current point balances are, that's nice, but that's not actually all that essential. But more importantly, it tells me when points are about to expire. And it tells me when free night certificates are about to expire. And it's probably that second one that is really where this tool more than pays for itself. Um, which is, uh, just letting me know, you know, I have this like, hi, it's going to expire in a month or whatever. Um, so that I can make sure to use it. And, um, I don't know what I would do without a word wallet, especially to, I also manage the accounts of like my wife and son, you know, a lot of their

frequent flyer accounts. So trying to keep track of everyone's accounts without a tool like this, I don't know what I would do. Yeah. I mean, you'd have to have spreadsheets and you'd have to like keep updating them. It would be very time consuming. So it's a huge time saver. And that was something that stuck out at me as I thought about the tools we use a lot, because a lot of the tools that we use the most, when you talked at the beginning about how we're going to talk about tools for earning a lot because a lot of the tools that we use the most, when you talked at the beginning about how we're going to talk about tools for earning a lot of miles and for using them efficiently, I was thinking to myself, I didn't jump in to interrupt you, but I was thinking to myself that a lot of these tools I use because they saved me a heck of a lot of time and a word wallet totally fits in that realm. Because not only time, but stress too, because I'd be more stressed

about, am I forgetting something? Is something about to expire? Should I log into everything and check today? Cause I can't remember. It's almost the end of the month, blah, blah, blah. And I don't have to worry about that with things that are tracked in a word wallet. So exactly. Yeah. And my whole halting intro was because I originally was looking at this when I was cataloging the tools I use all the time is looking at which ones do I use for earning points? And then which, which ones do I use for like finding awards so that I can use my points and word wallet is neither of those, but it's still totally essential. So to me and to you, it sounds like, yeah, no, I would forget. There's too much to remember. I would forget. No, if I'm remembering right. I think a show probably a couple of years

ago, you said you, you didn't use a word wallet. So I think you've. Bianca Miles expire after 12 months of inactivity. It's like the shortest period of inactivity. It's so easy to keep them alive with a transfer, but you know, silly me, I let them expire forgetting about that. So yeah, I mean, the word wallet would have saved me the points in that case. And so that's why I think it's an invaluable tool. You know, if you're only going to manage one or two or three different programs, if you're like somebody who just wants to stick with your one or two known knowns or something, then you probably don't need a tool like this. But if you're going to manage a bunch of accounts, whether your own or a number of family members, I mean, this is just the most important one probably that we'll talk about today. Yeah. All right. Let's talk about the

top tools that help us to earn points and miles. And, you know, it feels like weird talking about our own website here, but it's completely true that when I'm looking at, I want to earn miles either for a new signup bonus, or I want to earn, you know, miles because I want to make sure I'm spending, I'm using the right credit card at the right store. I use our own website. So, you know, our best offers page has all of the best offers. And, you know, that's where I go when people ask me for recommendations for what cards should they get. I'm like, you know, I'm going to go look at our own site. You could too, but that's what I'll do if I'm doing it for them. So yeah, I think our own

website is indispensable. It is. And I think it's worth mentioning a little bit about why. So our best offers page lists the best credit card offers. And so on the one hand, what Greg already mentioned is that it shows you the best offers. So you're going to get the best offers. And when we say that, we mean the best publicly available offers on those cards, whether or not we earn an affiliate commission. So we've talked about this before, but it's worth it for anybody who joined us since the last time we mentioned it. There are situations where we have an affiliate link for a card, but we know that there's

a different link that gives you more points. We don't show our affiliate link. We show the link that gives you more points. If we know that there's one that exists that's publicly available so anybody can click through and find it, we make sure that that's there. So A, I know I can trust that the offers are going to be the best ones, right? That's part number one. But part number two that I use it for that I find very helpful is the way things are sorted. So A, if you look at any of the banks, if you go to like American Express or Citibank or Chase, the cards within those sections are sorted by first year value. And our first year

value is all done as objectively as possible with formulas, valuing the free night certificates at a certain amount and valuing the points that are reasonable redemption values and determining the relative cost of earning those signup bonuses based on the spend you have to put in. There's a lot of math that happens in a spreadsheet. So it's not like we order that based on, okay, well, these are the cards that pay us the most commission. So we're going to put those at the top of the page. That's just not the way that it works on our best offers page.

So it makes it very easy for me to compare offers from card to card. And then we have like the top 10 airline cards and the top 10 hotel cards. And so those are separate pages that are linked to from our best offers page that are super easy to find. And then the last thing that I use it for very frequently is every time a reader writes in to ask me a question about application rules, I always end up going to the best offers page because I don't have them all memorized. And if you click on the name of any bank, you click on Citi, for instance, it'll take

you to the top of the Citi section. And the very first thing is the you click on Citi, for instance, it'll take you to the top of the Citi section. And the very first thing is the application rules for Citi Bank. So it'll tell you how long you have to wait in between American Airlines cards to get the bonus again. It'll give you the phone number for reconsideration if you get declined and you want to call and plead your case to get the card anyway. So that best offers page has a number of different functions and uses that make it a tool that I use all the time.

And so I wanted to mention those things, too, because I think that that's an important component as to why that's in there for one of the tools for earning the most points. Yep. All right. The next tool along similar lines that I use all the time is travel freely. Now, I might not use it so much if I was just dealing with my own credit card signups but since i'm managing three people i find travel freely essential and what it does is it um it keeps track of all the cards we've signed up for um it lets lets me know at a glance um where are we with the chase 524 rule which if you don't know what it is right now, don't worry about it.

It's something that if you're signing up for lots of cards, you're going to learn about what that is. But it's not that easy to find out other ways. And here it just shows you. It reminds you to finish meeting minimum spend requirements or new cards that you signed up for. It reminds you that your annual fee is coming up. So it's time like my business platinum card to consider canceling it

and so on. So it's basically all it's designed to make it easier to manage the whole process of earning points and miles through credit card signups. And if you do a lot of them, that can be really helpful because like, for instance, this summer, I had my wife sign up for a US bank business card for a $500 cash back bonus, because why not? And I got pulled away with other things and focusing on other card bonuses that came out and opportunities that came our way

and totally forgot about that card until just before the deadline for meeting the spend. out and opportunities that came our way. I totally forgot about that card until, you know, just before the deadline for meeting the spend. And luckily it was a six month deadline on that card. So I had plenty of time, you know, overall, but, but, you know, if you, if you don't have a tool like travel freely, keeping track and you sign up for a lot of cards, something could fall by the wayside. Luckily I didn't miss that welcome bonus and I haven't, I don't think, missed one that I can recall in a while. So ever, I don't think, at least apart from one that was intentional, I guess. But that's another story for another day. So travel freely can help you if you sign up for a lot of cards. Again, hard to remember everything and that can be a good tool.

So, all right, travel freely. Yeah. Yeah. And I was just going to add one more thing, kind of like what we were talking about with award wallet, it just takes some of the stress away of like, am I forgetting to meet minimum spend? Am I forgetting to cancel a card? Which Greg experiences a lot because elderly guys go through that. It happens. It definitely does. Definitely does. All right. What's next for earning points? So when trying to meet minimum spend requirements, there's a couple of tools. I don't know if tools is the right word here, but techniques that I use to spend money basically on credit cards so that I can meet those minimum spend requirements.

One is it's a website called Kiva, and it's for making microloans. And the idea is that there are people around the world that need loans to keep their small business going or whatever. by donating money through this, it's not really donating, by loaning money through this, you are allowed to pay with a credit card. And when the loans pay back, you get your money back. You don't earn interest. It's not a money-making thing. You can lose some money. But the nice thing is I believe it's doing a lot of good, uh, and there's a lot of debate about that, but I wrote a whole post about this as well. Why I believe it's doing a lot of good. And so I like this as a way if you can float the money.

So it's, it's going to take six months to a year or maybe more to get all your money back from any given loan. Um, as long as you can float that money, then it's a way of doing good and earning welcome bonuses at the same time. Very good. Excellent. All right. So one that I use that I know you use also is paying taxes because paying taxes is something you can do via credit card. There are a number of different official payment processors for the IRS that charge a fee of, do you know what the current fee is? Just under 2%. Yeah, just under 2%. payment processors for the IRS that charge a fee of, do you know what the current fee is? 1.2. Just under 2%.

Yeah, just under 2. It always hovers around 1.87, 1.89. Sometimes it's been higher, but it's always been, you might as well just think of it as 2% because it's much easier. That makes sense. That makes sense. So 2%, so you're talking every $1,000 is going to cost you 20 bucks to pay your taxes. And so that might be useful if you need that for earning

a welcome bonus. Great example. My wife opened a business platinum card a couple of months ago. Minimum spending requirement on that card is 15,000. She just asked me last week, have we met the minimum spend requirement? And I said, no, we actually have a good bit to go yet on that. And she said, oh, well, how are we going to meet it? And I said, well, don't worry, because we can make a tax payment before the deadline for meeting the welcome bonus and wipe out the whole thing. So that's, I think, a tool that I often keep in my back pocket. I said, you know, let's just keep using the card so that we don't have to pay the fee

on very much, of course. But that could be a great way to be able to meet minimum spending requirements, particularly on Amex cards where you may have a harder time with other things. Now, I say particularly on Amex cards, we've had a couple of people that reported that for some reason they thought that their spending on Amex cards didn't count towards the minimum spending requirement. I've never experienced that myself. I've always had it count towards minimum spending. And a key point here that's worth mentioning is I don't think, correct me if I'm wrong, I don't think I've ever heard of anybody getting hit with

a cash advance fee for paying taxes. It codes as a purchase, I think, on every credit card, as far as I know, right? Yeah, there was a weird thing happening with PayPal at one point where I think there were cash advance fees going on, but that's been corrected. And that fact just shows you that it's not supposed to. Everyone acknowledges it's not supposed to. The IRS's website has a FAQ that says it should count as a regular purchase. You should not get any cash advance fees or anything like that. One thing to know is that if you're willing to give the government a loan, you can overpay your taxes and get the money back later. So that is not, I haven't heard of any, I haven't heard of that leading to any adverse actions against anyone who's done that. And I

think the government likes getting loans. They do, but it's worth mentioning that at least during the pandemic, some returns were slow and getting processed. So we did have a few readers report really long waits. So, you know, consider that and consider how much you can float. You can afford to float if you don't get your return as quickly as you would expect. Right, right. During normal times, it's not so long, but yeah, yeah. Some people wait at a crazy long time. Right. All right.

So those are tools for earning points. I think that those are the biggest ones. Now, neither one of us mentioned category bonuses. Greg briefly glanced on it, but I think it's worth mentioning that we do have the category bonus information for all the cards on our best offers page. And we have the best category bonuses page.

And I'll include a link to that in the show notes along with links for everything else that we've mentioned a website for during the course of this conversation. I always put those notes in the show notes or rather those links in the show notes so you can easily find them. But I use, obviously, category bonuses all the time. We're not talking about that here. We're talking about tools we use for earning these points. And obviously the majority of points that most people earn are going to be via welcome bonuses. The last thing though that I wanna mention here

that I think is worth a mention of its own is referral bonuses. Because Amex multi-referrals are a great tool for earning extra points if you're in a multiplayer household. This is something that maybe doesn't fit with the other tools in the sense that it's not like a website exactly.

But if you have an Amex card, keep in mind that if you have someone else playing the game in your household, a husband, a wife, a significant other, you know, a brother, a sister, a family member, that you can refer them and earn a nice bonus. And with Amex cards in particular, I mentioned that because let's say

you have an Amex Platinum card and it says that you'll get 25,000 points when you refer a friend. You can share your link with your friend and they can see other cards with a referral bonus. Maybe your friend wants to open the no fee Hilton card, the Hilton honors card that has no annual fee. Well, they can use the link that you give them from your platinum card and look at all the cards with a referral offer. And they can open a Hilton card of whatever sort it is, the Hilton no fee card if they want. And you'll get your 25,000 membership rewards points if they're approved. So this can be a great way to pick up extra points if your significant other is going to apply for a card. Also, if you're somebody who's in that pop-up prison, we talked about earlier where you're not

able to earn the welcome bonus on a card, you may still want the card for a variety of reasons. And if your significant other or somebody else, you know, refers you, they'll still get the referral bonus. So that can be a way of still earning some points, even in a situation where you're not eligible for the welcome bonus. So Amex multi-referrals in particular are a tool I certainly use. Yeah. Yeah. That's a great point. All right. So as we start talking about spending points, we're going to talk first about finding award flights, and then we'll talk about hotels and then miscellaneous other stuff. For award flights, funny thing is, as I thought about like, what do I actually turn to the most outside of things like airline websites? Like I'm on united.com to search for, you know, what awards are available to book through United or American,

aa.com or Delta, those things. But on those a lot, I'm on those a lot. But what other site do I use most? It's not, they're not tools that are actually built for finding warts. So like one of the ones I use the most, I probably open almost every day when I'm doing anything remotely like trip planning is flight connections. So it lets me easily visualize what are all the flights that go from any given airport to anywhere else and filter to within an alliance. So if I know I'm booking with a certain type of miles, so I can, I can book any star Alliance flight. I want to see what's available. And it shows me all the, all the different flights from that airport and where they go. And so I could look at connecting

airports and everything. Tell me the distance of the flights, if that matters, if I'm trying to do a distance-based awards, you can add them up and things like that. So it's not, you know, it has really very little to do with booking awards, but I find myself turning to it again and again. Well, because you can figure out who serves what airport. And so like, you know, if you put in, for instance, Doha, and you look at all the airlines that serve Doha, you will at a glance know that if there's a Doha to Frankfurt flight, that's either going to be operated by Qatar or Lufthansa or both. So it helps you narrow down visually, if you're familiar with the alliances and the carrier hubs, it helps you very quickly, visually narrow down what your flight options might be in between any two particular airports. So yeah, I find it very helpful also, because there are times where I'll

wonder, okay, well, where does Qatar serve in Asia? I don't remember which airports they serve. So let me search from Doha, and it's going to show me everywhere they fly from Doha, which is going to be it. Those are the places you can get to with them in Asia. So I use it all the time for searching where an airline flies to. Now, I also use the Wikipedia page for airlines or rather airports sometimes. I'll search an airport code or airport name and look at the Wikipedia page because there's a section for airlines and destinations. So I can see which airlines serve it and which destinations. But what I like about flight connections is that it's so visual. So it just takes a quick second. Yeah.

Right, right. Very similarly, Google Flights I use all the time. Whenever I'm looking at award bookings, I also look at paid flights and Google Flights is my go-to for that. Because if I'm looking, if I'm struggling to find, for example, business class awards to wherever, I want to know, well, wait a minute, are there cheap business class cash tickets?

And then I might think about doing things like using my business platinum to book the flight with points and I'd get a 30% rebate and it could work out 35%. That's right. Rebate that would work out to very good value for my points but I also just use it to you know even if my heart set is set on booking wards to figure out exactly you know how many flights are going of what time are they leaving is this going to work for my schedule you know oh, oh, look, I didn't realize that United flew that route. So I'm going to check for United Award flight

that I might not have thought to look for. Yep, absolutely. Certainly, I use Google Flights a lot. Also, when I'm kind of destination open, because, you know, you wrote a post years ago about how to find great business class deals with Google Flights, because it's really flexible. For instance, you could search from your home airport in the US to Europe or to Asia.

So that is helpful, I think, for sometimes finding, oh, wow, there's a deal here that I wouldn't have considered or didn't think of. Or maybe that actually flies through the city I really want to go to. And there's a hidden city ticket opportunity or lots of different things like that. So Google Flights certainly very useful for that. Now, you mentioned United.com and American and Delta, and you kind of glanced over the fact that you use those. But I think it's worth a quick mention anyway to say the reason why. And I'm going to add something else. So for instance, you said you use United. And I can read your mind on that one. I know that you use United.com

often because it's a great tool for searching for Star Alliance availability. They have a calendar, so it's pretty easy to sort and filter and say, okay, I want business class awards nonstop and see a calendar view that I think is relatively accurate these days. There were times in the past I know where the calendar wasn't perfectly accurate, but I think it's pretty accurate these days. So you can look at the calendar and see, oh, there are business class awards this week,

but not that week. So it's a very quick, easy, quick reference tool for Star Alliance availability that's pretty reliable. It's a little bit of a pain to sort the results. You gotta use the filter and sort them by price. And so it's a little bit hard, but you can, it's the easiest probably of the various Star Alliance tools.

Now that said, I use aircanada.com more often. Let me back up. I use air Canada more often when I have about the dates that I know I want to travel. So with United, it's particularly useful if you're like, I'm just looking for availability anytime this year. I don't really care when, but if you're like, oh, I'm probably going to travel this one particular week, I'll use aircanada.com. They don't have a good calendar tool. That's why I wouldn't be as excited about using them for Star Alliance availability with a lot of flexibility. But the reason I like to use Air Canada is because they have so many partners. So they've got all the Star Alliance partners, plus they've got a bunch more. So if I only search United, I'll miss out on a lot of things that could be booked with Air Canada Miles and Air Canada's transfer partners

with Amex and Chase, Capital One built, I believe. So quite a few different programs. So very easy to access Air Canada miles. And then also they show Etihad availability since they're partners with Etihad. And I'll know that those flights I could probably book with my American Airlines miles. So it's kind of a one-stop shop of sorts. Now, it's not the best one-stop shop out there. And we'll talk about a couple of those in a second.

But I do use Air Canada quite a bit. Yeah, no, that's not the best one-stop shop out there, and we'll talk about a couple of those in a second, but I do use Air Canada quite a bit. Yeah, no, that's a great one. And I really do need to start getting used to using it more often. And, you know, with the other ones, with the other big ones like American Airlines and Delta, I mean, I turn to those more for domestic flights. That makes sense. I turn to those more for domestic flights. Like, so, you know, you're, you're not going to find too many Delta flights available to partners. Um, but on delta.com, their own flights are sometimes very reasonably priced. So, uh, you can go that way and American, same thing that they often have much better

deals for their own flights, um flights than you can get by booking through partner miles. And so actually with American, that's true for international or domestic as well. So they're both worth using. American has some partners that are worth looking at, and they do have a calendar, but it's flaky. Whether or not it's going to show you the award space or show you more award space than it actually exists seems to vary from almost day to day. Yeah, that makes it really annoying and difficult to recommend.

I use it a lot because it's fast, like the results come up pretty quickly. But I kind of question why I do, because like you said, it's not really reliable and it's not like it's unreliable in the same way all the time. So you're going to miss awards that are available or you're going to think things are available that aren't. It's such a pain. Well, you know, I think the reason we turned to it is because you could see a month at a time results that you question as opposed to looking at them a few days at a time. Exactly. And every now and then you'll find something that really is available. So, I mean, it's not quite as bad as we're making it sound.

You know, there are certainly times when it's useful and I've used it a lot to great success, but it's annoying. It's not going to be your best option. It's like, if you really want to find something, you're going to have to go to a backup anyway to make sure that the availability is there. So I don't know why I waste the time

going to aa.com to begin with. When I could instead go to a backup anyway to make sure that the availability is there so i don't know why i waste the time going to a.com to begin with when i could instead go to a tool like point.me or award logic and those are two that i know we use a lot and you've written about them so you know what do you think pluses minuses each of those tools and and why do you use them so much yeah well coming off the heels of talking about american airlines giving false results, I mean, Point Me prides itself in making sure it doesn't show phantom space. And, you know, so it really is intended to show the real awards that are really out there. And it searches across a lot of different programs. And it's super easy to use. Like, so the idea is you could just say, I want to fly from Detroit to Paris. Um, I want to fly business class for two

people and these are the dates I want to go, um, tell me what's there and it'll, it'll do what you asked. Okay. Um, it takes a couple minutes for the results to fully populate. And it doesn't give you a range of dates. So you have to, if you want to check the day before and the day after and the day after that, you've got to do separate searches for each of those. So that's the thing I find the most tedious about PointMe, I think. Yeah, I mean, it certainly is a somewhat tedious point, but I'm, uh, but I use the tool a lot in part because we do have a relationship with point

me. So that's part of the reason that I use them. Um, but also because it has saved me miles on many occasions. And what I mean by that is there are lots of times when it finds a word booking options that I totally forgot about. I've talked, you know, at least once or twice before about how I totally forgot that you can book Copa flights. Copa is a Star Alliance airline that used to be mostly owned by United. Not anymore, but it's they still have the old Continental logo sort of anyway. And I had totally forgotten that you could book those with Air France miles until I was using this tool to search for awards. And, and I just recently, I found one where I was like, you could book Aeromexico with Avianca life miles, Aeromexico is a sky team airline. And they're like a competitor.

How is that a thing? But it is. And I found that because I saw the result through point me. So I like using a tool like that. Now award logic would probably find at least some of those things too. I mean, you found situations where AwardLogic was quite good also, right? I found they were both very good. There were things I preferred about each one separately. So what I love about AwardLogic is it lets you search three days at a time. So you can say this date plus up to two days following that date. So three total days at a time. And what I really appreciate is you can see in the results all three of those days in one display. So it'll sort, you know, if you ask it to sort by the fewest points, you know, that's what will show up on top regardless of which day the results came from.

And that's not something that most tools can do. So even a tool like Expert Flyer that'll let you do a week at a time, you have to change your tabs to find out which day has award availability. But this one, it's all on the same screen if you want it to be. But one thing that PointMe does much better, it seems like a small thing, but when you're looking for premium cabin awards, you tell PointMe, I want business or first class. With award logic, you say, I want business class, or you say, I want first class. And that can be problematic for a couple reasons. One, even when looking for international awards, sometimes you're going to strike out looking for business class, but maybe there is a first class award. That's not too much more expensive.

And you'd rather have that, uh, point me. We'll find that. Um, the other thing, and this has hit me a number of times domestically, and I can't remember which is which, but it's something like United first class or American first class only shows up if you, if in a word logic, if you pick first class, whereas Delta's first class only shows up if you pick business class. And I probably have it exactly reversed what the right way is, but it doesn't matter. The point is you have to, you have to do the search twice just for the hopes of finding what you're looking for. And, and so that kills a lot of the value of the three day search window. Right? Yeah, that's true. You know, and I think, I think that a key point worth making here

is that I mentioned before that one of the things I like about the tools that some of the tools that we're talking about is how much time they save me. And I tell you what, in the beginning, when point me first launched, and before that tools existed before that, I thought that the prices were such that it wouldn't make a lot of sense for most people. If you're like a blogger or a word booker or something, maybe it would, but I wasn't convinced that paying the monthly cost month after month or the annual costs would make sense for most people. However, I've gotten so used to using these tools now that like they've saved me so much time that it's hard for me to imagine life without them because I could run all of these searches individually. I know

how to search all the various airline websites and which ones to search for which availability, but a, I would miss some things like I've talked about just a second ago and B it just takes so much longer because some of them you have to log into, or, you know, you may have to do two factor authentication to log in and search may have to do two-factor authentication to log in and search this site or that site and make sure you search this way or call that person. So I find it very, very easy to deal with and saves me tons of time. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's great. And of course, what's even greater is now if you have a built membership in which you can sign up for built for free i'm not talking about

the built credit card that's not required but just you sign up for a bill you have it set up an account you can now use point me for free um and it's limited to searching the transfer partners that built has but they have such a good collection of transfer partners. I can't imagine you're missing hardly anything there. A little tiny bit, but yeah, not very much. There was something I can't remember. Well, you'd miss out on Avianca, for instance, because that's not one of their partners.

Avianca is one that I use quite a bit, so that's one that's missing. But like you said, for most people, for most use cases, it's great. And also, if you're familiar with alliances, well, they're searching United and Air Canada Aeroplan. So if you're familiar with alliances, you'll know, oh, if this shows up via United and Aeroplan, it would show up via LifeMiles too.

Maybe I had to check the price there and see if it's any less. So I think it meets tons and tons of needs. So if you aren't yet a Built Rewards member, and again, like Greg said, we're not talking about the credit card, the free rewards program, the rent rewards program that anybody can join. It's worth signing up for the app, taking advantage of their rent day promos where they give away some free points because, hey, why not? It's free points and eventually be able to transfer those to Hyatt or wherever it is you want to transfer them. So it's worth participating for those things. And then, yeah, being able to use basically a free version of PointMe, it's a fantastic deal.

So, all right. So we use those tools. Both of us use them quite a bit. I use PointMe like daily. That's probably the thing I use the most in terms of like actually going to it. But they're not the only, you know, things out there. Seeds.Aero, you wrote about recently. Talk to us about that.

Yeah. things out there seats.aero you wrote about recently talk to us about that yeah so so this is this like nerdy tool that that is built clearly by a travel hacker who you know wanted to be able to find the best like first class and business class award flights to wherever um and so he created this tool that basically just constantly scanning for the next couple months. So it's not, this is not for searching for awards for next year for even for later this year. This is for there's some like unicorn award that it's hardly ever available. And you, you want to just jump on it as soon as you see it. So your eye's been on, you know, I want to try the new, I don't know, Air France business class just came out. Or, you know, as soon as Lufthansa finally brings out their new first class, I want to try it right away.

Those kind of things. This will let you easily see, like, in seconds, are any of these flights that you're interested in available on any of the routes that this tool checks? And it checks a lot of routes and it certainly is going to check for those high demand ones that the travel hackers that built this care about would be ones like all the Lufthansa routes from North America. So they're all going to be in there, for example. And so it's one of those tools that it's actually free to use most of its functionality and it's lightning fast because all it's doing is showing you and letting you filter data. It's already collected.

It's creating, it's collecting more data all the time, but behind the scenes and, and you could just see, oh, uh, you know, see it in an instant. Oh, 10, 10 hours ago, this first class flight that is hoping to do it was available on April 10th or something. Um, so am I free April 10th? Yes. Okay. I'm going to book it. That's the type of, that's the type of thing and the type of person who would do that, that would love this tool. And another thing that I found already that's cool about the tool is even if you're not ready to travel yet, you might get ideas for routes that are likely to have award availability. So you'll see things like, you'll see patterns. Like if you're looking at what

first-class flights are available on, I don't know, ANA, let's say, and you see, oh, look, there's several that are departing from this particular city in the US, then you know, oh, okay, I'm gonna now do a search the time I really wanna go to see if it's available. And in fact, that's how I got, not the first class, that's how I got the business class flight from San Francisco to Tokyo. How I discovered that it was available was because I was playing around

with Seats.Aero and I saw that that route was often available. And so booked that. So anyway. Nice. So very good tool there. Now, ExpertFlyer is one that I used a little bit and I kind of gave up on. It's not the most user-friendly tool out there, but it's a very powerful tool for advanced users. Do you have anything you can share about ExpertFlyer and your experiences using it? Because like I said, I don't use it all that much. I use it a little, little bit here and there. It's a great tool if you are stuck on,

you want to fly a specific airline and a specific route. It'll let you search for award availability. It'll let you search for upgrade space. So if you have like elite status that gives you upgrade certificates or something, there's very few ways of doing that. Otherwise, with some programs, it'll let you set alerts. So you'll get emails or texts when award space opens up or upgrade space opens up. So it's a very powerful tool, but only for the airlines it supports. It's a lot of airlines, but it's only those. And it's not like point me or award logic. So point me and award logic, you say, I want to go from here to there, tell me what's available and it'll search like all the airlines.

This is with expert flyer. It's like, I want to go from here to there flying Lufthansa. Okay. Now tell me if there's any business or first class space available and I'll tell you that. So it's a bit slower of a slog if you were to use that. However, like Greg said, there are some additional bells and whistles and things you can search for. And you can see, for instance, how many different seats are still available for sale and different fare classes, which might give you an idea as to whether or not it's likely for awards to open up as you get closer to departure or upgrade space to open. Obviously, you can see the upgrade space. So if you have elite status with a particular airline, then it can be very useful.

I used ExpertFlyer a lot when planning our GUC trip a couple of years ago with Delta Global Upgrade Certificates. Though, of course, since Delta's changed those Global Upgrade Certificates, they may be less useful. This would still be a good tool potentially. But nowadays you can see online also on Delta's website

if you have those certificates, I think you can see the availability to apply. You can see it for Delta itself. Delta itself and not for its partners. Okay, so ExpertFly buyer is still useful for that. All right. So lots of different things for finding awards. Those were award flights.

How about award nights? When you want to find award nights, what do you use the most? Yeah. So to be honest, I usually just use the hotel chains websites. I go to Marriott.com if I'm looking for a Marriott stay. I go to Hyatt.com for Hyatt and so on. Well, you said that and I use the for a Marriott stay, I go to Hyatt.com for Hyatt and so on. The, the. Well, maybe you said that and I use the websites a lot.

I don't know. Maybe you just meant that in general, but I tend to use their apps more often. There's not a particular reason why I just find them to be faster. So I find it to be a lot faster to pull up the app. I don't know if everybody agrees with that, but that's my style. I have all the hotel apps in a single folder on the home screen of my phone, and I'm frequently just taking a look at places where I'm interested in going and seeing if there's available. Yeah. Yeah. So there is a new

tool coming out that will search across all of the chains for the city and dates you want. I haven't had a chance to try it out yet, and it is a paid service, I believe. So that's not something that makes my list yet. The other thing that I do is, so if I'm looking like I'm going to a city. I'm going to Auckland, New Zealand. I'm going to wherever, Sydney, Australia. I like to use a tool called Award Mapper. Now, Award Mapper, it was built like eons ago. And it was intended to let you see all the hotels that were bookable with points in a city, for example. But also like how many points they cost and it used it used what category hotel they were that was back when all the hotel chains had categories had award charts and um now you know most don't um but it still keeps a feed for some of these chains of what hotels exist, what IHG hotels exist, what Marriott hotels exist in these cities.

So I can at a glance say, okay, I know I want to be in the city. I know I want to be near this place. What chain hotels are there? So then I know, okay, I'm going to jump on IHG or Marriott's website, for example, to search for actual prices. I didn't even realize that there was still updated data there. So that's one I haven't used in years. I used to use it also, but I didn't realize they had any.

Unfortunately, they don't publish information about which ones are updated and how often. So it's a bit of a, you know, it's helpful to have an idea of what's out there, but it's definitely not everything that's out there. So you got to just be aware of that. Yep, that's a good point. Okay. And finally, there's that new hotel tool, Stay With Points, that honestly, I haven't used it a lot yet, but it seems like it'll be really good for the situations where you're trying to book a hotel that has limited award availability. So you're trying to book one of those hotels in the Maldives that hardly ever has base rooms available that can be booked with a great way of both seeing when are there rooms available and also setting alerts. So you'll be alerted when they are, when they open up. All I really want here is a point

me for, you know, point me a word logic for hotels. Like that's what I want. One tool where I can search and see all the various chain properties and how much they cost. So if you're listening out there and you're a developer, that would be terrific. And then if you really want to make me happy, toss in the fine hotels and resorts pricing also. So I don't have to go to Amex and look that up. That'd be wonderful. So if you're listening and you want to develop a tool, there's a space for that. I feel like that'd be super helpful. Yeah. You know what kills me is that tool used to exist. I used to use that tool. I don't remember what it was called, but it went out of business or it sold or something. I don't know what happened, but

it did exactly what you said. It not only showed the point prices and paid prices of the hotels in whatever city you're looking at, but it showed which ones belong to fine hotels resorts, which ones belong to all those other type of programs. Yeah. Virtuoso. And it told you what you would get, what kind of benefit you'd get with those things. And so I found it so fantastic. And then it disappeared. Disappeared. Yeah. That's too bad. That's because we were super helpful. There's so often that if I don't remember to check all of the various apps, I might miss a property in a place where I didn't expect to find one. So again, I have all the hotel apps in one single folder. And so I have to just go one at a time through each one of them. And

that takes me a while and I'm used to it, but I was used to searching all the airline websites and point me spoiled. They would make me used to just one visit to search for stuff. So I'd love that for hotels. Anyway, we don't have that. So we do a bunch of other stuff for our hotel stuff. And I search a lot. I often say this, but, you know, when I'm standing in line somewhere, I don't really like to scroll social media.

I do sometimes, but I try not to. For the most part, I am often if I'm standing in line at the grocery store to check out or something, I'm often pulling up the hotel apps and looking for award nights. That's my thing. That's what I do to kill time. I look for award nights. So that's my tip there, which isn't going to be helpful to anybody who doesn't do that. So car rentals, let's talk about car rentals quickly, because those are the bane of my existence lately. Cars have just gotten so expensive. And so this is kind of a pain. What do you do? Yeah. So, I mean, if you're lucky enough to, to, uh, work for a company or have a spouse that works for a company like I do that, that has good, um, deals for rental cars, then, then that's great. I've, uh, I've been doing really well with enterprise and national thanks

to my wife's job. Um, and anytime those don't. And anytime that doesn't result in great rates, which sometimes happens in some foreign countries, but it's almost a lock here in the US, then auto slash is my go-to every time. You know, it has been for me for a long time. And then I wrote a post this week and I spent a bunch of time gathering data because I booked a bunch of cars for like all my trips for the rest of the year. And I was actually surprised. Now, I've long loved auto slash and very often have found it to produce the best results and the best prices. But I was surprised, particularly overseas, at how often Kayak returned results that were a little bit better than what I found through Auto Slash. Now, I imagine that if I booked those and then tracked the rentals through Auto Slash, that I would probably still end up getting the best price using Auto Slash. But yes, interesting. I was very surprised at the rate with which kayak would beat them. And in some cases by a decent

margin. So I think kayak is a tool I should be using more often and didn't realize for car rentals. And I, you know, now that I mention it, like I totally forgot about that. And in fact, when I first started writing the post, I wasn't even looking at kayak. I was just looking at Expedia to get one example of online travel agencies thinking that that was good enough. And then I hit a city where Expedia came up with no cars. And I was like, what do you mean no cars? I found results through auto slash. There's car rental, major car rental companies there.

And so I ended up at Kayak. And I was like, oh, wow, yeah, when we did And, um, and I loved it. Um, and I haven't used it for pretty much anything except what I, what I have done with car rentals is I usually run my search really quickly just to see what the going rate is. And then I make sure that the, that when I use auto slash or, or a corporate code that it comes out significantly better than that. And my experience it has, but I haven't like, uh, I haven't pushed the boundaries, I guess. I haven't used it, you know, beyond the first blush like that.

I found it to make more sense generally on foreign rentals. It wasn't for the most part rentals within the United States where kayak was showing better deals. It was mostly in, in different places. I always say different places, foreign places where that was the case. And let me be clear, there were instances where auto slash produced the best results still, and it's still kind of my go-to for searching for prices. And then again, tracking rentals too, once I've already booked so that if the price goes down, they'll find that. But the corporate codes, like you said, are very hard to beat for rentals within

the United States. So don't only think about your company, but also think about organizations you may belong to, alumni associations. There's lots of different things out there that you might belong to that might qualify you for some sort of a better deal. So those types of codes can be worth checking on anyway to see where you can save money. Now, one thing on car rentals is, man, if you're a parent, gosh, the cost of renting a car seat is just ridiculous. And if you've got a good hack for that, let me know. And if your hack is to carry two car seats through the airport with you, I don't want to hear from you. I need to hear from somebody that's got a hack for not having to bring the car seats with me,

but also not spending like $150 on renting car seats or something each time we need to do it. So I think the AAA code is supposed to take off. I think you're supposed to get a free car rental or a free car seat with the AAA code, or at least I thought so, but I didn't find that to be the case in the searches I did. So anyway, that you just strap your kids into the car seats really well and then check them? You know, I may be in some places might have to. So yeah, there you go. There's that. And that's one problem I run into with auto slash is that there's no way to include that. So I don't know how much it's going to cost with all the different companies. So then I still have to go and look that up separately. And that's kind of annoying. But so auto slash, if you're listening at the ability to add car

seats to the reservation, that'd be fantastic. All right. So that's that shopping deals. And this kind of ties in a little bit because we were just talking about car rentals. And the whole reason I got into the car rental thing this week was because I've had this targeted Capital One shopping deal. And I know I'm kind of jumping out of order based on our notes before we started, but it goes in with the whole car rental thing. And that is I've had this targeted Capital One shopping offer for 30% back on Hertz. And so 30% back is pretty significant. And that made Hertz the best deal for a lot of my upcoming rentals. I was really searching for number two in most cases

to write the post in terms of what was the second best deal if I didn't have the 30% targeted offer. So we've talked a lot about Capital One Shopping. You don't need a Capital One credit card in order to use Capital One Shopping. So it is something that you're going to have to search individually, which is going to contrast with the tool we'll talk about next, where you'll have to go to the Capital One Shopping website, preferably in the browser where you have the extension installed. And you have to check not only up at the top in the search box, but you got to scroll down to the bottom to where the targeted offers are and select the stores from the list and the offers for you at the bottom. Because for instance, Hertz at the top of my Capital One Shopping page

right now shows 5% back. If you scroll down to my Capital One shopping page right now shows 5% back. If you scroll down to the bottom of the page, it shows 15% back. But if you look at the email they sent me recently, it says 30% back. And when you click through that, it gives you the little button from the extension to activate the 30% back. So Capital One shopping involves some manual work, some annual labor, but the payouts can be really worthwhile. Now, before they started getting

in all their craziness, though, the tool that both of us, I think, have used most often for finding shopping deals is probably Cashback Monitor, right? For sure. Yeah. Cashback Monitor does a fantastic job of looking across all the shopping portals, all the portals where you could get rewards for doing the same shopping you do anyway. And there's hundreds of these sites that do that. So knowing which one to go to is really tough, especially since they change their payouts almost daily. So Cashback Monitor monitors all of those portals. And even though it's called Cashback Monitor, it also monitors airline mile portals and hotel point portals and everything else. And years ago, I compared it to a number of other

tools that profess to do the same thing. And it was just so much better than the other tools that from then on, I've always been using Cashback Monitor. So that's the place to go to find out how you're going to get the best non-targeted portal deal. Capital One Shopping is right now the place to go to get targeted for ridiculous deals like 30% back at some places. So yeah. All right. Let's try to wrap this up quickly now. The last thing I'll say is there's a number of tools that are critical for me in trip planning in general. Google Maps, Google Flights, Google Hotels. So Google's got you, Craig. Google's got you.

Google's got me. And totally on the other side of things, I find blog reviews in the miles and points space really helpful because I often, when I'm booking a, um, a flight, uh, like a special type of flight or a, uh, a known like points type of hotel, I want to know, not just, is this good? I can tell that from, from the review sites, but I want to know, what am I going to get with the level of elite status that I have? And you're not going to find that exactly. You're not going to

find that on most sites, but on the blog reviews, that's where we care about that. So that's why we write about that type of thing. And finally, I use TripIt like crazy. So every single trip, you know, you get, you get email, uh, confirmations when you've booked a flight or when, uh, you've booked a hotel or whatever, an activity even. And I just forward all that to TripIt. It puts it all in a nice agenda form for me. Um, makes it easy to see when there's problems. So the, the trip that Nick, uh, booked for us, um, with, with my global upgrade certificates, the, uh, an early round of it had, had us, uh, I think departing Dubai before we got there or something like that. And that wasn't obvious until I saw it all on the, uh, trip it itinerary and it was like, there's not going to work. There's a little problem. Right. Yeah. Love it. Yeah. Very useful for that. Good. Yeah. I used to use it all the time and then I stopped using it and I really probably should get back in the habit. Although I do find that a word wallet is

useful for a lot of the same functionality in the sense that at least for the programs that it tracks, it'll automatically import your travel plans. So I find it to be useful for that. It did remind me just the other day about an upcoming flight I have that I still need to cancel right now. So now that it's top of mind, when we get done with this, I'm gonna make sure I cancel that flight. So yeah, those are all the tools we use. Not all the tools. Those are the tools we use the most often. There are additional tools that we use. Those are the ones we use most of the time for most of the stuff we do in travel hacking. Now we do lots and lots of stuff. So there are other things we use now and then those are the ones that should be in your

toolkit. I think if you're listening to this, because I think they're all tools that are, are very helpful. All right. Now I'm going to put you on the spot. So of all the tools now, not like websites like ours or blog posts or anything like that, but tools that that, you know, could legitimately called like an application or an app. If you could only have one of these, just one, you know, which one would you keep? I, I would like to think that, uh, this is a difficult question to answer. Uh, but for me, it's,

it's really not. Um, I think point me as the one I, you know, I know a word while it probably should be the one because that does reduce a lot of stress from my life. And I take it for granted because I don't actually look at it for something specific each day. But point me like just indulges my desire to constantly search for awards and find

without having to search 18 different sites. So I spend much less time like wasted on searching this site and that site and the other site, Whereas I'll constantly be thinking of awards and like, oh, I wonder if there's availability on this or that or both. And I can just do one click, let that run in the background while I'm doing something else. So it doesn't take away as much productivity. So I think point me would be my pick

if I had to pick one. What about you? I don't know. I'm okay putting you on the spot. But you don't have just one. It's hard to pick. I'm just very thankful that I can use them all. Right, right, right.

Who has to pick? Who has to pick? Well, you know, this week's question of the week is kind of related to the stuff we've been talking about. So if you're relatively new and your head is spinning a little bit, don't feel bad. You can go back and listen to all this again and there's gonna be links to all this stuff

in the show notes. But you may enjoy this question if you're relatively new. And I thought it fit in really well with the tools we use for booking awards. So Jack wrote an email in and said, I'm new to booking international flights via points. I did so for the first time, thanks to something you read with us, said transferred Amex points to Aeroplan. And Jack booked a flight on Tap Air Portugal via the Air Canada website. He wasn't able to select seats on Tap via the Air Canada website. He had to create a Tap Air Portugal account to pull up the reservation

on the Tap Air Portugal website with Tap Air Portugal record locator, etc. But he was able to do that. The question he has, he says, a question I have and probably other newbies like me is whether in these types of situations where you're using one carrier's points but flying on another's metal, do you always check in for the flight through the actual carrier you're flying or does it vary? So when it comes to actually traveling on this Air Canada ticket and you booked it through Air Canada, but you're flying on Tap Air Portugal, how do you check in? Yeah, I check in through the Tap Air Portugal. Yeah. Yeah. 100%.

You know, I was trying to think, the question was saying, is it always the case? And I was trying to think, I think there's some cases with tight partnerships where you might be able to check in, you know, through the one you book through, but usually it's the operating carrier. I can't think of a situation where I've ever checked in through a website other than the operating carrier. So that was my, I had a hesitation with that too. When I saw the question, I was like, always the word, always, he bolded the word always

and underlined the word always. So I felt like I was backed in the corner to make a commitment with it. But I can't think of a situation where I've ever checked in for a partner booked award with anything other than the operating carriers website. So, well, how, how about when you're flying, uh, multiple segments, uh, and, and the, the initial airline that you check in with, like, well, sometimes, uh, print you boarding passes for the whole way through.

So, so for example, if you have a Delta, Delta ticket that includes like a KLM segment at the end, I think when you go to check in, I think it'll give you boarding passes for the, for the whole thing. That's true. That's true. If I'm remembering. No, you're absolutely right. Sometimes that does happen. So, okay. I should specify then I always check in with the airline that is operating the first segment on the award.

That's so that you're right. That's a good point. Cause there are certainly times where you're going to have multiple partners on a single award. And I always check in through that first airline first. Now, if you're booking a complicated multi-segment itinerary, like the one I did for our three cards, three continents challenge, where I had these long 24 hour layovers, then I had to each time check in with the airline operating that next segment. So that, you know, it does get a little complicated, I guess. And that was same too for my round the world ticket.

You know, at each place I checked in with whatever the next operating carrier was. Sometimes we just waited till we got to the airport and just checked in at the kiosk and that was fine. That's a good question. Is there any advantage really, especially if you're on an international business or first class award,

is there any advantage to checking in online? I don't know. That's a good question. Because you've got to stop at the counter, the checking counter, no matter what, right? Whether or not you're checking bags, if you're on an international internet, are you going to have to show your passport at the checking counter? I don't think you know. I don't think you uh i don't know i'm trying to remember because i feel like i feel like at least at least hopping around europe i don't think you you have to be true maybe

that's true it might depend on what yeah that might be yeah what type what type of uh international flight it is okay that's a good point long haul international i i've like stopped checking in online i used to always check in online ahead of time and for some reason feel like i needed to do that. But then I get to the airport and now I'm in the case where I'm always checking bags. So that's part of the reason I know I'm going to have to go to the check-in counter anyway. But yeah, I was like, I'm going to go through the priority line anyway. I got to go see the person in the check-in counter no matter what. There really isn't, I don't think much advantage. If there is one that I'm not knowing about, let me know in the comments of the show, whether it's, you know, wherever you're listening to this or on the website.

Let me know what the advantage is to even bothering to check in ahead of time. Yeah. All right. One cool thing. When I was flying within New Zealand, so within New Zealand, you know, I'm so used to showing my ID whenever I go to an airport. And you don't. Like, all you do is you, you go, you do go through security. So they check, you know, and make sure that you don't have too many liquids or

whatever it is they're checking. But, um, but you know, it's just so weird to like, you know, I was all ready to take out my passport. Never had to. No, you know, I feel like maybe I'm wrong, but I feel like at the Nelson airport, I don't even remember airport security. I remember just like walking in and being like, Oh, wow. the gates are just there. And it's so weird. So yeah, I don't know, a different experience, certainly in some different places, but hopefully that helps Jack and any newbies out there. It's, it's very easy. Really? It's much easier than it sounds. It seems intimidating when you're like, Oh, booking a partner award for the first time. In reality, it's very easy once you do it once. So best of luck to you, Jack. I'm sure it'll seem super simple after you've done it.

All right. That brings us to the end of a long show today. So if you're the person that likes to mow the lawn, hopefully you had sunny weather to be able to do that. If you live where I live, there's no lawn mowing. So I don't know what you've been doing for the last hour and a half, but I'm glad you've been here with us. And if you'd like to get more of our information in your inbox each day or each week, you want to go to frequent miler dot com slash subscribe to join our email list. Follow us on all the various social media wherever you're listening to the show. Please give us a like a thumbs up. Leave us some feedback.

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