Award travel can feel overwhelming and complicated … but not with the right tools and organization. This week on our special Starter Kit series, Kyle and Gunnar walk through all the websites, apps, and tools they use to organize their credit cards, points, miles, and travels. From a credit card benefit tracker to ways to use your pesky monthly dining credit to the best services to maximize your points and miles, it’s all here.
Award travel can feel overwhelming and complicated … but not with the right tools and organization. This week on our special Starter Kit series, Kyle and Gunnar walk through all the websites, apps, and tools they use to organize their credit cards, points, miles, and travels. From a credit card benefit tracker to ways to use your pesky monthly dining credit to the best services to maximize your points and miles, it’s all here.
Starter Kit is sponsored by Thrifty Traveler Premium, the world’s best flight deal service. Get $20 off your first year of Thrifty Traveler Premium flight deal alerts - use promo code “START” at thriftytraveler.com/premium.
00:00 - When did Kyle realize it’s time to get organized?
02:40 - Using our Credit Card Benefit Tracker
06:35 - How to organize your credit cards
12:00 - Understanding & maximizing your credit card perks
17:00 - Tools you need to book award travel
33:00 - Your Vol. 4 Flight Plan
Volume 4 Flight Plan:
Related Episodes:
Ep. 30 - Tools of the Trade: How We Earn, Organize & Redeem Points Smarter
Ep. 50 - Inside Thrifty Traveler with Founder Jared Kamrowski
Ep. 17 - Have Banks Lost the Plot With Premium Credit Cards?
Ep. 46 - What’s in Our Wallets & Our Points Planners
Produced and edited by Sylvia Thomas
Video editing by Kyle Thomas
Show music: “All That” by Benjamin Tissot
Yo, welcome to the show. I'm Gunnar Olsen, a reporter for Thrifty Traveler and a flight deal analyst for Thrifty Traveler Premium. And joining me for this special series and every episode of the Thrifty Traveler podcast is Thrifty Traveler executive editor and our points and miles muse, it's Kyle Potter. Kyle, welcome back to Starter Kit. We've gone from sherpa to coach to professor and now muse. Am I getting hotter or colder here on your epithet? What, what are you like? I'm just hung up on your use of the word epithet there. I, I don't love muse because the first thing I hear is, "Paint me like one of your French girls." So let's move on from that one, I think. Okay, not muse. In this edition of Starter Kit, we are getting organized. Everything in travel rewards is getting bigger and more unruly. Credit card annual fees are higher than ever, but there are more ways to recoup your annual fees than ever, too. There are more ways to earn points and miles to fuel your travel, but often that means tracking and paying more cards that come with more monthly, quarterly, semi-annual, annual credits sometimes. And then when it comes to actually booking award travel, finding availability isn't always a slam dunk either. That's why getting your house in order first is absolutely essential, especially if you're just getting started. So Kyle, did you have a light bulb moment when you decided it was time to get organized? And what did you do first? Y- yeah. You know, I think it has, this has gotten significantly worse just within the last year, and I think the tipping point for me was when Chase and then Amex both revamped their Chase Sapphire Reserve card and then the Amex Platinum card and added quite literally hundreds of different individual benefits that you have to use with different timelines for when they might expire and reset. And that really was the trigger when we started talking here about, how can we help people with this? Because primarily it's like, how can I help myself with this stuff? So that started what was initially a spreadsheet for the Amex Platinum card and then adding others. And then eventually, fortunately, someone far smarter than me, Nick, on our team, uh, decided to turn this into a web app, our credit card tracker that's online now at thriftytraveler.com/tracker. Uh, free to use, amazing tool. It takes everything that I tracked in individual places, be it spreadsheets or, you know, shared notes with my wife about our points balances, and puts it all into one place. But that is, is, has been the game changer for me. Yeah, absolutely. Okay, today on episode four of Starter Kit, we're talking about how to organize your credit cards and rewards, about how to use all of those weird but valuable credit card perks, and we'll show you all the tools we use to book travel using points and miles. All that and more. Welcome back to Starter Kit from the Thrifty Traveler podcast. Okay, we're back and we're going to talk about a bunch of tools here today. None of these are actually sponsoring this episode. Uh, these are all just tools that we use all the time to fuel our own travels, to get organized on the back end to make sure that we're doing this hobby both responsibly and just making sure that we have everything above board and we know exactly what's going on with our finances, our points and miles, our credit card perks and everything. And we can't have this conversation without patting ourselves on the back. I, I guess patting Nick, uh, our co-founder at Thrifty Traveler, on the back because Nick went out and built the exact tool that award travelers like us have been pining for forever. Um, forgive us if this sounds a little self-promotey, but this thing really works and it is tailor-made for points and miles people and especially for sickos like us. Uh, it's called the Card Benefit Tracker, which you can find at thriftytraveler.com/tracker. It's totally free. You don't have to put a card number in, no bank logins, no financial data. There's just no strings attached. We just built the tool that we always wanted to use. So here's what you can do. You can choose from more than 100 travel credit cards, each of which gets its own tab in your, uh, section of the card tracker. You check off the credits as you use them, which then automatically tallies up the value that you're getting out of each card. So you can see how much of an annual fee you've recouped and how much you're paying in annual fees in total, which is a little bit of a wake-up call for me when I first put all my information into the card tracker. The, the, the first time you share with a spouse how much you're paying in annual fees and maybe more importantly how much they're, um, paying in annual fees with their own Social Security number is a rude awakening. Thrifty tip: don't share it with your spouse. Uh, there are color-coded reminders in the tracker about what benefits are about to expire so you don't miss deadlines. This comes up at the end of every month. I'm on my card tracker making sure that I don't miss these. Uh, you can track up to four people's cards with no limit on the number of cards you get, and that includes when you've signed up for cards, where you're at on the 5/24 rule, and when you're in the clear to sign up for more cards. Uh, and then finally there's also a handy points wallet so you can track your points balances, too. Uh, I think you and I both used to use other websites, like several other websites to kinda take all this information and put it together. Um, you could do some of this stuff using tools like AwardWallet or, uh, to track your points balances or Travel Freely to track your credit card statuses. Instead, we just rolled it all into one system that's totally free, no connecting your bank information. It's, uh, of course I'm biased, I think the card benefit tracker is best in class, but again, it's also, like, custom-built for me. So, uh, your thoughts. You had a, you had, you played a role in building this tool too. Yeah, like I said, we started with a spreadsheet, and then it just became clear that there was such an appetite for this that, uh, you know, Nick on our team decided to build it online. And this is a- as much of a one-stop shop as I have found. Um, and, you know, not to toot our own horns, but beep beep, we did it. Uh, this is, this is the single tool that I use now to stay organized with both points and tracking balances in my accounts and my wife's accounts, as well as our credit cards. And, you know, whether I remembered to use that $10 Uber credit or that $7 Dunkin' Donuts credit, spoiler alert, I didn't. I forget it every single month, but that's fine because I'm recouping my annual fees, and I'm making sure that I'm, the credit cards that I have open and continue to renew are actually paying for themselves. And if I can't do that, then that's a sign that I gotta cancel them, call for a, um, a retention offer to try to get some extra bonus points out of the airline. All of the things that as you add any more than basically one travel credit card to your wallet, you need some kind of structure. And the time to do this is right when you get started. It's when you're listening to Starter Kit to get organized with this stuff and, you know, I do really think that this is the best free tool on the internet to do that. Yeah, awesome. If you are interested in it, sign up for free at thriftytraveler.com/tracker. Okay, um, some more tools that I recommend. As you're creating sometimes dozens of airline, hotel, and rental car loyalty accounts like we told you to do in episode three of Starter Kit, plus you're getting all this new banking information and credit card information and TSA PreCheck numbers and passport numbers, a good password manager becomes more or less essential in all of this, at least I've found. I'll admit I was a little late to the game on signing up for my own password manager. Uh, I've only had one for about two years now, but it's truly essential now for me to manage the approximately 50 logins my wife and I use just for travel rewards. Um, I use 1Password. I pay $72 a year for my family, so for my wife and I. Uh, it's $48 a year for individuals. It works with most web browsers too, so when I Log into Flying Blue, or when I go to Flying Blue to search for award flights, it automatically asks me if I wanna log in. It has a passkey right there, no 2FA, no nothing. 1Password handles all of it for me there. Uh, when I'm putting in our information into a flight booking, I have everybody in my family's passports, frequent flyer numbers, and TSA numbers at the ready. My, my password manager has become invaluable for award travel for me. Do you use one of these? I just use Google's, uh, you know, through my own Gmail account, uh, which fortunately does work with iPhone now, uh, which is so handy. I cannot tell you the number of times when I've opened an app or gone to a website to log into a frequent flyer account and been like, "Do I have one of these? Do I have this account yet?" And then my iPhone just prompts me, or my laptop just prompts me Fill out your password. Here's your account. Mm. Uh, here's your account email, all of those things. It really does automate it. I would have no idea how to track these things, uh, if not for a good password manager. I do think this is a must- Yeah is a must as you get into this stuff. " Honey, what's your Singapore KrisFlyer password?" is a question that I only had to ask once before I signed up for one of these accounts. That is, that is a good one. It makes it very simple. Yeah. Sign up for a password manager. We, we highly recommend it. The one I like is 1Password, and Kyle uses Google's Password Manager. Do you have any of your f- either frequent flyer or TSA PreCheck or passport numbers memorized? No, I don't. I have none of them memorized. Uh, I, I have a pretty short memory. I'm a write e- write everything down guy. If it doesn't make it into my calendar, it doesn't get done. I have my Delta Sky Miles number and my old passport number still memorized, which is because Avianca LifeMiles, when I set up that account, it took my passport number and turned it into my account number for that- which is the worst OPSEC of all time. That's really funny. I like that. It's the most LifeMiles thing of all time, too. It really is. Okay, let's talk about US Credit Card Guide. I wanted to mention US Credit Card Guide here because this is a really valuable tool for one thing, and that is credit card sign-up bonuses. So the site has been tracking card sign-up bonus offers for about 10 years now, which is helpful to showcase, one, what is a good elevated bonus offer, and two, when typically each year the banks launch these elevated offers. So say you wanna sign up for a Capital One Venture card. You can go to US Credit Card Guide, see what the best offer is and when those offers on the calendar year typically happen. So you can deduce that maybe it's best to wait a month if you wanna apply for a new bonus offer because it might come next month based on historical trends. You can also see what is actually their best ever offer, what's a good offer, and what's kind of a lackluster, half-assed credit card offer. But, uh, I think this website is also really valuable. Before you sign up for a credit card, just go check it out. See what's over there. Yeah, all you need to do is Google the name of the card with US Credit Card Guide, and it will sh- bring up, and you kinda scroll down to the bottom of each card's dedicated page, and it has a really handy chart that shows you the, the last decade or more of history of bonuses on that card. Invaluable resource. I use it basically every week to see how the latest new credit card offer on a Chase card or a Delta card compares to the historical bests, and if it is truly the best of the best, the best ever, or, you know, something that's more ho-hum. Yeah Bookmark uscreditcardguide.com. It's a really good one. Okay, last one in this section. So like with the password manager, having your finances in order is crucial to this whole thing. If you let things get away from you, it could snowball really fast. Credit cards are serious business. We say it all the time. Using a money managing tool is treating your finances seriously. Uh, I'm not like you, Kyle, a freak in the sheets. I'm terrible at Excel. I can't do any of this stuff on my own, so I pay $99 a year for a family plan to Monarch Money. It tracks all my spending and all my accounts and all my credit cards for me. Uh, a disclaimer, Monarch is an occasional sponsor of the show. I've been using Monarch long before they ever came to us to sponsor us. Um, I joined Monarch on a promo back when Intuit shut down Mint several years ago. Mint was how I tracked my finances forever. Um, Monarch Money is, is really amazing. I've been singing their praises long before they sponsored this, uh, podcast. But, um, I think just getting organized on that front is just non-negotiable. If you are really good at spreadsheets and you can do this by yourself, that's probably even better. But for me, I like to use a tool like Monarch. I-- Like you, I used Mint, uh, before Intuit shut it down. It's, it's high time for me to migrate over and test out Monarch Okay, let's move on and talk about some tools that we use to better use our credit card perks. So in episode two of Starter Kit, we talked about all the best ways to stack up points and miles. I highly recommend it. It's a great deep dive into maximizing your earnings. In that episode, we mentioned two tools that I'm gonna re-mention here. One is Cashback Monitor, and the other is Rakuten. So Cashback Monitor is a tool to bookmark that just helps you always earn the most points on your everyday purchases. I just did this the other day. I needed medicated dog shampoo for my primadonna miniature Aussie Doodle who has itchy skin. Are you, are you using that? Your hair's looking a little... It's looking fresh today. Oh, thank you. Thank you very much. No, I- If you, if you're watching on YouTube, you'll see what I mean I have adult man shampoo, thank you very much. Uh, but I had to buy it through Chewy, so I went to Cashback Monitor, and it told me that the best offer was just to earn 2X points on the purchase through Rakuten. Boom. I got 2X points on his stupidly expensive dog shampoo. Uh, my second shout-out here is Rakuten itself. Just an easy tool. Install it in your web browser as a browser extension. It immediately lets you know once you're on a website if you can earn extra points, either Amex or bill points in this case, on the purchases that you're already making. Those are two easy tools to install to earn the most points. I assume you use both of these. Oh, almost every day. A- any day that I'm buying something online, I wind up using one if not both of these, in the exact same order that you do. Cashback Monitor is the first thing that I check any time before I make an online purchase, and then many times that points me towards Rakuten or something like it, but Cashback Monitor is the single best place to start before any time you swipe your credit card online. Yep. Okay, that's Cashback Monitor and Rakuten. Um, let's talk about using your credit card perks, Kyle, and we'll start with one of the card perks that infuriates people all the time, the Amex Platinum card's Fine Hotels and Resorts credits. It's a biannual $300 credit that you can only use at certain, usually very expensive, hotels. So to get a good deal using what they call FHR, Fine Hotels and Resorts, you need to find a fancy hotel for cheap. Uh, Max FHR does exactly that. It showcases some of the cheapest Fine Hotels and Resorts and The Hotel Collection hotels. Um, I used it right before my credit expired at the halfway mark in the year. I'm certain I'll be back there again using it right around Christmas before that credit expires again. Uh, tell me how you use it. Exactly like that. So, you know, this credit, $300 twice-a-year credit resets, uh, July 1st and then again January 1st each year. And so as June was coming to a close, I was like, "I've still got this $300 credit. What trips do I have coming up?" So you go to maxfhr.com. I searched all of the potential travel that I was gonna take over, you know, the next 12 months. And so I searched for Chicago, and I searched for London, and I searched for Boston, which led me to a pretty surprisingly good deal over the time that I was planning a trip to Boston. I booked one night on June 30th. I booked the second night on July 1st that I needed in order to really stretch that credit, but using a tool like Ma- MaxFHR just ma- is so easy to just quickly search and find the best deals possible. Yeah, that is MaxFHR if you are interested. Okay, another one here, it's called useyourcredits.com, and it does exactly what you think it would. Um, it's the best way I've found to figure out ways to use those dining credits you get on so many credit cards right now that are sometimes very confusing. It, it could be a monthly credit of as low as, like, $10. It could be a quarterly credit. It could be a, you know, biannual credit. I mean, these credits are, are getting a little out of control, getting a little unruly, but useyourcredits.com will help you figure out which restaurants in your area or in an area that you're traveling to are part of, like, Resy if you have an Amex card or Chase Dining if you have the Chase Sapphire Reserve card. It'll also filter for places that accept e-gift cards if you can't go in person to redeem your credit. So this is, uh, you're on the last day of the month and you need to get your $10 Resy credit, and it'll tell you exactly which restaurants ha- will allow you to buy an e-gift card. That credit posts, you can just get a $10 gift card or whatever dollar gift card, and, uh, it's really helpful to do that, too. Um, I always start at the end of the month at useyourcredits.com. It also has a nice filter for the Edit credits, which is Chase's hotel program, similar to Amex's Fine Hotels & Resorts. So if you're looking to use up those credits that you're having trouble burning, um, useyourcredits.com. Have you done this? I haven't. Um, I'm probably going to start. I would really call out how important this option to scope out the Edit hotels, uh, through Chase's, um, you know, hotel program because it's even more annoying than Amex's. Yeah. Uh, particularly because there's a two-night stay minimum in order to trigger that credit on the Chase Sapphire Reserve card. So if you have that card and you're struggling to figure out how to use this, this is the best resource that we know of today in order to scope out those hotels. It's a no-brainer. Yeah, absolutely. That is useyourcredits.com if you're interested. Okay, um, I wanna go over some tools that we use to book travel using points and miles, and I wanna start with one that we're gonna go deeper on next week. But if you wanna get your travels organized, it has to start with TripIt Uh, TripIt is something that you and I have both been disciples for for a long time. Totally free tool to put all of your travel booking information in one place. You can link TripIt to your inbox, so when you get your, uh, confirmation email from the airline or the hotel, you just forward your itinerary to plans@tripit.com, and TripIt will automatically file everything into specific trips for you. It'll even put it in your calendar if you wanna link your calendar as well. Um, what it's best for, I think, is figuring out the gaps in your itineraries. So, like, do you have a hotel night booked for every single night of your trip? Uh, did you schedule your flights for the right date? Uh, did you forget to cancel that one other provisional flight that you had previously booked? You know, if you're flying to Asia, do I land tomorrow? Do I land two days from now? Do I have a hotel night set up for that night that I get there? TripIt is just... Like, it puts it all into a very easy-to-use, simple timeline that you can see either on its app or on your browser. Uh, I can't say enough about TripIt. Uh, this is the first thing that I do after booking any single piece of travel, be it a flight, a hotel, a rental car, whatever, is I get that email, that confirmation, and I forward it to plans@tripit.com. This is, I mean, even just having the ease of scoping out every single aspect of your trip, not just to identify gaps, but to remind yourself, "Oh yeah, that's right, you know, on that day I'm flying to London, and then after that I'm taking the train to Paris," whatever. Having that all laid out in one clear, single timeline is one of the most important things of getting organized in travel. I love this app. They do offer a paid version I'll be honest, I don't think you need it. I think the free version does what 99.9% of people want a tool like this for, which is to get everything in a clear itinerary. It is invaluable for that. Yeah. We will talk more about TripIt next week. That's tripit.com or the TripIt app in the app stores. Okay, um, I wanna talk about some tools we use to start our searches for award flights, and I think there are three that jump out at us. So to figure out how to use your points and miles, you need to know what airline flies where and when, and you can do a few things to figure this out. Uh, one, you can use a little thing called Google Flights. Ever heard of it? Uh, to look for the cash rates on your flights. You can just see the schedules, you know, where airlines are flying and when. Um, it'll often give you, like, a really solid indication of what's possible using your points and miles, even though Google Flights isn't searching for points and miles rates. Um, this is, you know, you take what you see on Google Flights, say I wanna fly from the West Coast to Singapore. You can see, okay, here's who's flying that s- r- that route. Here's who is offering me a connecting itinerary. So now you have a list of three or four airline programs you can search to go book your flight. Um, you can also pull up the Wikipedia page for each airport to see all of their nonstop routes. That'll give you a sense of your options to get to a certain place as well. This is what I do all the time, um, when I'm looking for specifically a nonstop flight to somewhere, or if I'm flying to maybe a smaller airport, I'm not sure what kinda service they have. It'll give me an idea of what airlines are flying there. Is that what you do? This is, this is number one the most frequent tool that I use, and it's pretty crude. There's probably, there are in fact better solutions, but this is just what I'm comfortable with for exactly that scenario, where I know I need to get to this airport and I'm not sure the best way to get there. I'm not sure which airlines actually operate nonstop service. So you Goog- Google the name of the airport with Wikipedia next to it And then you can even just do a Control + F on your keyboard or, you know, a find search on your iPhone or smartphone and look for the airport that you're departing from and see if you can get there, or search for the airline that you're trying to fly and see if they do in fact operate flights to that airport. It's a really good starting point for starting to explore the options of how to get where you wanna go. Yeah, I remember in, in May when I was planning my trip to Italy, we needed to go to Bari, and Bari doesn't have, like, a, a ton of flights from the US, just the one on United. So I was looking at, all right, who flies to Bari that I could possibly use points and miles to get there, and I remember looking and seeing like, oh, Air Dolomiti flies there from Munich. Like, that's an option I never considered, and that's because of the Wikipedia page just showing you the nonstop options. Um, a third shout, you can also use a site called Flight Connections. It'll show you all the possible options to fly between airports. There is a paid tier, um, that you'll need to access to go, like, date by date. Uh, but many travelers have said this is a site that's very helpful to them. I think you and I are both, uh, maybe stuck in the Stone Age with Wikipedia, but, uh, a lot of people swear by Flight Connections even though I myself don't have a ton of experience using it. Um, that is flightconnections.com. Of course, Google Flights is flights.google.com. And Wikipedia, I'm sure you know where to find that one. I think they can figure it out. Okay. Um, I'm gonna move on to another tool that I know you also love, Kyle. Before I book Any flight, I search AeroLopa to take a look at the seat map first. Uh, you may have heard of SeatGuru, which back in the day was definitely the gold standard in airplane seat maps. Um, it was purchased and gutted and is no longer operating, period. Um- J- just an all-time fumble. Yeah. I w- what was TripAdvisor thinking with this? Yeah, it's sad. It was, it was really, like, one of the best tools in all of travel, and TripAdvisor effectively bought it so they could shut it down. Yeah. Um, which is really too bad. But the good news is that AeroLopa kinda rose from its ashes. So AeroLopa is now the gold standard. It provides much more detail and, like, these beautiful maps of the inside of almost every airplane on Earth at this point. It is quite the resource. It's a crucial bookmark to have if you wanna know what seat to choose, what airplane has what configuration, and even things like is your seat gonna have seat back screens, where are the lavatories compared to where you're sitting, does your seat have a window that's properly aligned, and more. Uh, it was created by an architect who was drawing seat maps for fun during COVID. It's an awesome story. Uh, then after SeatGuru shut down in 2025, the founder of SeatGuru joined voice- forces with him to create this incredible resource, AeroLopa.com. Uh, I assume you also use this before you book flights? All the time. Yeah. Uh, in the process of booking flights to identify those seats that have a misaligned window or the seats that are just way too close to a lavatory that you don't wanna be next to for two hours, let alone 12 hours. Really, really important stop in the booking process. I think really importantly, at, at launch, you know, this has been out for, you know, three, maybe even five years now, and it was really geared towards av geeks, people who live and breathe this stuff, and really just wanted to look at seat maps, not to learn. And over the course of the last year or so, it's really improved by adding the ability to just search for your flight, the flight that you're booking. If you're flying from, you know, Minneapolis to London on Delta flight number nine on February 22nd, you can put all that in and it will pull up the seat map for that plane as it's currently scheduled. That is something that was missing before. You had to know what kind of plane you were gonna be on in order to find and pull up that seat map. So this is now a really go-to tool. You do need an account in order to do that kind of searching. Those accounts are free. So this is an easy one to sign up for and just fold into your booking process. Yeah, it's, it, it, you know, if you're using your hard-earned points and miles, like you've been saving up for months to book this business class flight somewhere, right? You don't wanna get stuck on one of Delta's old planes, right? That's not the f- that's not the way you wanna use those miles that you worked so hard to earn. You don't wanna get stuck on a plane that doesn't have lie-flat seats, it only has an angled flat seat or something like that. That's exactly what Aerolopa does, is that it's just gonna check to make sure that you're getting the best product possible, and if, if not, at least you know going in. So Aerolopa, I will always sing its praises, aerolopa.com. Okay, now when it comes to actually finding and booking award space, there are other tools that you should know about. The first one is ours, of course, Thrifty Traveler Premium and Thrifty Traveler Premium Plus. For those who don't know, uh, about one of the other parts of our Thrifty Traveler family, the Premium team is constantly searching for points and miles award availability on flights and hotels. We search for more than 220 US and Canadian airports every day. We have a team of 12 flight deal analysts. We're working around the clock to search for award space. Uh, people probably don't know this is an incredibly manual effort. It's human beings that we hire constantly vetting award space to make sure it's actually bookable. We're not trying to be willy-nilly with anybody's points, right? If we're sending you an alert, it's for something that we know that you can book. Um, and it's meticulous. I mean, we have detailed booking instructions using every kind of point and mile you could possibly earn in the US to book flights in economy, in premium economy, in business, in first class. We're flying all over the world, too. Uh, as you can hear, I'm super proud of Thrifty Traveler Premium. I'm as much a fan as an active member of the Thrifty Traveler Premium Flight Deal Alert team. Um, if you're interested, sign up today at thriftytraveler.com/premium. We have a special promo code for this, uh, podcast called START, S-T-A-R-T, to get $20 off your first year. I don't know, what else is there to possibly say about Thrifty Traveler Premium? You know, we, just like the credit card benefit tracker, we built something that we wanted ourselves because we are selfish people, and it turns out other people like it, too. I am not alone in saying even though you and I are both paid to say it is the best flight deal alert service on the market We think it is. Give it a shot. You're gonna get some deals that teach you things about, "Oh, I didn't know that I could book this flight with these points," or, "I didn't know that flights to Iceland or to Chicago or Atlanta or Tokyo could be that cheap." Um, but it's also gonna get you to some places that maybe just weren't on your radar, which I think is invaluable too. Yeah. 100-day money back guarantee too, if you wanna just give it a go, see what you like out there, see if the booking instructions are helpful to you, thriftytraveler.com/premium. Um, let's talk about some ways to search for more specific award space. You know, premium hotel and flight deal alerts are good for alerting you to things maybe you weren't thinking of, or if you're flexible in your destination or time of year going. If you have very strict set-in-stone dates and a very specific set of points, maybe something more specific like Max My Point could help you find something for hotels. So this is from the creators of MaxFHR, which we talked about before. Um, Max My Point is a very useful tool to find hotel award space. You can use it for Hyatt, Hilton, Marriott, or IHG. It gives you a little calendar look at hotel night availability. It even color codes for things like Hilton's standard night award rates, which you need to use, um, for those, uh, free night awards that you get with credit cards. Um, I use Max My Point all the time, especially for Hyatts, to find hotel award space. Do you use this tool? Yeah, all the time. Um, it is great for, you know, when you know what hotel you wanna go to and you wanna figure out, is this gonna be an option to book with my points, or how does the points rate compare with the cash rate for that same night? Absolutely incredible. It, the ability to click month by month through the entire calendar, I think, is what really sets this particular tool apart. So if you have that special resort or that special property you wanna go to, and you're willing to plan a trip around when you can find that cheap award space or that savor award space or those nights that you can book with a Hilton free night certificate, to be able to click from month to month to month and see exactly when, in a color-coded calendar, when those dates are available makes this incredibly powerful for r- redeeming hotel points. Yeah. Check it out, maxmypoint.com. Um, similarly, but for flights, there are other tools you can use to find award space on specific dates or flying specific airlines to specific destinations. A couple of 'em, uh, PointsYeah is one of them, Point.me another. Uh, Seats.aero, SeatSpy are, all, are two other ones as well. Um, any of these that you wanna highlight? You know, I think Point.me is the best for true beginners because it walks you through every single step of the process, from searching for the specific route on the specific date that you wanna fly, to finding the award availability that's actually bookable in real time, to showing you what points you can use to redeem them, how to transfer those points, a walkthrough of the booking process, all of that. I think for, you know, kind of the next level, either PointsYeah or Seats.aero are two of the most incredible, uh, award tools on the market for these kinds of situations where you know exactly what you wanna book, or maybe you even wanna set an alert for that flight to London that you wanna take on March 1st, and that's the date that you have to travel and there's nothing available and you've checked Virgin Atlantic and British Airways and American and everywhere else. Using one of these tools to set an alert, I think, is a really powerful tool in the tool belt. Yeah. I think, um, all of these programs have both free and paid tiers. Is that right? That's right. So you can give 'em a try and see if you like the functionality. Uh, similarly, there are Google Flights Chrome extensions, so when you're searching Google Flights in a Chrome browser, you can add this extension which will basically show award fares alongside the cash price, in some cases. Um, those include Seats.aero and PointsPath. Uh, both have really solid Chrome extensions that we've tried out recently. And of course, uh, recently, as we're recording this right now, Google itself just announced that in its AI mode it is going to showcase some points and miles availability as of right now. This, of course, could become a game-changer if Google really dives all into this, then you have Google's power behind, uh, points and miles search, but those are some Chrome extensions. Do you think Google's gonna upend this thing? Yeah, I think it's only a matter of time. Uh, these, these browser extensions for now are much better, and I think they're, they're both free. They, they can be more powerful if you pay for either tier, but either way, uh, just a no-brainer to add as you're scoping out, uh, cash prices on flights of what the deal might be, is it actually bookable with some of these award programs? They all cover some different programs with some overlap, especially among the major US programs. Um, all of these things, I think you need multiple tools in your tool belt. You need, I think, something like Thrifty Traveler Premium But that's not gonna be the be-all, end-all. You need another tool like, you know, Seats.aero or Point.me or PointsYeah, and then having one of these free browser extensions you might as well add. You're just gonna learn more. Yeah. So those are PointsYeah, Point.me, Seats.aero, SeatSpy, and then the Google Flights extensions for PointsPath and for Seats.aero. And these, this is always changing. We, we get newcomers into this game all the time, and we've also lost some along the way. Remember, uh, Cowtool? I do. That's a good way- Cow- ... to search for Star Alliance award space. Cowtool, for the one-year window where it operated, uh, and functioned well, was the most powerful way to search for Star Alliance award availability flying like United or ANA and Air Canada and other airlines. This is a game of cat and mouse with a lot of these tools. A lot of these tools, uh, airlines don't love them. That's why I think Google is gonna change the game, is because airlines want to work with Google, so they are giving them their blessing. They are giving Google their data on award fare inventory. So it's only a matter of time before that really changes. But for now, all of these tools are really worth considering. Cow tool walked so Google could run, I guess, in the award searching world. Um, all right, let's get into our flight plan. At the end of every one of these Starter Kit episodes, we give you a flight plan or a to-do list of the big takeaways from the episode and the things you should get going on right now so you can start your award travel journey. I'll start with the first one, Kyle. Um, first, I would say find tools to manage your credit cards, your benefits, and your passwords, and get them bookmarked. And use them now, even if you swear you don't need them because you only have one travel credit card. Because it's only a matter of time before either that credit card adds some more benefits and raises the annual fee, or you open up a second or third or fourth credit card, and it starts to become unmanageable. The time to get organized is early. Yeah. Uh, the second one I would say, bookmark resources that can help you maximize your card credits and benefits. Anything on this one? Bookmark 'em. We had a really solid list of, of different resources that can point you in the right direction to make sure you're getting the most out of those benefits that you're getting organized with. Um, third one, I would say sign up for free sites that take the guesswork out of booking award travel. So sign up for a TripIt account, Aerolopa, Max My Point, and more. These are all really, really solid resources that are gonna help making your next award booking a lot easier. And then finally, consider signing up for our tools here at Thrifty Traveler, the free card benefit tracker at thriftytraveler.com/tracker, or for Thrifty Traveler premium flight and hotel deal alerts at thriftytraveler.com/premium. All right, Kyle, I think listeners here are well on their way to becoming sickos like us. What should we cover on next week's? We're gonna dive a little bit deeper on next week's Starter Kit episode with, um, kind of next-level tips to travel better, the things that we do to make our booking and our travel experience and our travel days even smoother and better and more comfortable. All right, that episode will be in your feed next Tuesday. For now, thank you so much for listening to this episode of Starter Kit from the Thrifty Traveler podcast. Rate us five stars on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your podcast platform of choice. Like and subscribe to Thrifty Traveler on YouTube, where you can watch all of our episodes if you're wondering what we look like. Send this episode to someone you know who needs a vacation. Maybe you have feedback for us. Send me a note at podcast@thriftytraveler.com. We would love to hear from you. Tell us about the team, Kyle. This episode was produced by your favorite host, who is gonna pour one out for Cowtool tonight, Gunnar Olsen. It was produced and edited by Sylvia Thomas, and edited by Kyle Thomas. Our theme music, as always, is by Benjamin Tissot. See you next Tuesday. See ya