Gunnar and Kyle go back to basics on the pod: It’s not the Five D’s of Dodgeball, it’s the 10 Commandments of Points and Miles. Whether you’re just getting started with travel rewards or consider yourself a pro, this (only slightly irreverent) list can help you take things to the next level with your points. The guys also break down a troubling trend in frequent flyer programs … and Kyle roasts Gunnar for his clothes.
Gunnar and Kyle go back to basics on the pod: It’s not the Five D’s of Dodgeball, it’s the 10 Commandments of Points and Miles. Whether you’re just getting started with travel rewards or consider yourself a pro, this (only slightly irreverent) list can help you take things to the next level with your points. The guys also break down a troubling trend in frequent flyer programs … and Kyle roasts Gunnar for his clothes.
(00:00) Making memes & fun new airline routes
(04:15) Something hot: Revisiting that huge new 100K bonus
(08:27) Something cold: U.S. airlines are pulling the strings with devaluations
(13:10) A word from our sponsor (us … and our really cool tool that’ll help you pick your next travel card!)
(14:51) The Extra Mile: The 10 Commandments of Points & Miles
(17:30) 1. Start slow
(20:03) 2. Learn about how your credit score really works
(24:04) 3. Don’t rule out cards with annual fees
(28:52) 4. Stop before you swipe - maximize your spending
(32.41) 5. & stop swiping your airline credit card everywhere
The 3 Kinds of Credit Cards I Have (But Don’t Always Use)
(37:06) 6. Honor transferable points and airline alliances
(39:53) 7. But don’t transfer your points without a purpose
(42:42) 8. Use services (like ours) and other tools to help you get ahead
Travel Freely, our favorite tool to stay organized
(48:33) 9. Travel is not a contest
(51:03) 10. Resist points paralysis: Earn and burn
(55:04) A listener wonders how to tackle points & miles with a spouse - aka “two-player mode”
(59:13) Kyle puts Gunnar on the spot about his outfit
Produced by Gunnar Olson & Nick Serati
Edited by David Strutt
Show music: “All That” by Benjamin Tissot
Yo. Welcome back to the show. I'm Gunnar Olsen here with a guy who went to journalism school just so he could make White Lotus memes. It's Kyle Potter. It is truly the pinnacle of my career in journalism so far.
Is making all of these memes. It's what I was born to do, I think. That and do this podcast and mess around with you. I just love to hear, from your journalism professors who are reaching out to you and congratulating you on another excellent meme today, Kyle. Good work.
No. What they're saying is Kyle who? Alright. Kyle who? I need to find something out quick.
So in the last few weeks, we've seen a bunch of new exciting routes announced. Delta and United, chief among them, announced some exciting nonstop routes for next winter. So I'm thinking specifically of Delta's routes from Atlanta to Marrakesh, Detroit to the Cayman Islands, and Minneapolis to Nassau, leaving from our backyard, of course. And then on The United Side, some really interesting stuff to Asia. So, San Francisco to Bangkok and Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam with a little one stop in Hong Kong as the caveat there.
And then San Francisco to Adelaide, down in Australia. So which one of these routes, if any, or maybe one that I missed, are you most excited about this year, Kyle? There's a lot to pick from. And and, typically, you know, we see this big news from airlines adding additional routes for, you know, later that year or the following in the fall. So it's kinda cool to have this jolt of spring news from airlines adding new destinations to the fold.
You know, I would have said San Francisco to either Bangkok or Ho Chi Minh because being able to do that nonstop would just be incredible. No US airline does it currently. But, you know, it turns out that United is is routing all of that through kind of it's it's creating kind of a mini hub in Hong Kong. So you get a quick connection, from San Francisco to Hong Kong and onward to either Bangkok or Ho Chi Minh. But, you know, that just kind of takes a little bit of the fun out of it.
You know, there are plenty of ways to fly from the West Coast, even the Midwest, 1 stop to, you know, basically anywhere in Thailand or Vietnam. So I gotta give the nod to Atlanta to Marrakesh here. Marrakesh is an amazing city. Would highly recommend to anybody who hasn't been. It's been, you know, six, seven years since I've been, and I'm itching to get back there at some point as well as explore some of the rest of Morocco.
But I think it's been proven pretty quickly that this is gonna be really popular because, both United, which already flies nonstop to Marrakesh from Newark, and now Delta, which just recently added Atlanta to Marrakesh to its schedule, have increased the volume of flights that they're sending there at least over the winter. So I think that says that people are excited about this, at least as excited as I am about it. Yeah. We've we've already seen some deals on the Atlanta Marrakesh route, including a lot of connections, bookable from all over the country because you can fly Delta all over from Atlanta. So, good SkyMiles sale we, found and sent to our subscribers recently, but, there's more to come.
And and the reason why we love new routes and obsess about this stuff is because this news almost always leads to great deals for flyers. So especially if you wanna fly up in the front of the plane, watching for new routes closely, is one of the best ways to do it. And, actually, you don't have to watch for new routes closely because we'll do it for you here at Thrifty Traveler. It's one of the first things that you guys look at every time an airline adds something new to their schedule is, alright, what are prices looking like? What are they looking like today on day one?
What are they looking like the following week? Because, you know, eight or nine times out of 10, an airline announces one of these new routes, and then they really wanna make a splash with their members, with their travelers, with their frequent flyers, and they're not so frequent flyers. And the best way to do that is to cut people a good deal. Yep. That's the sweet spot.
Alright. Today on the show, we're gonna follow-up on the incredible Chase Sapphire preferred sign up bonus offer. We're also gonna chat a little bit about you know United and Delta bullying their partners a little bit. And then in our featured segment called the extra mile, we're gonna lay out what we're calling the 10 commandments of points and miles. Miles.
Welcome back to the Thrifty Traveler podcast. Alright. Let's jump into something hot and something cold where we look into the good and the bad news out there for travelers from the last week, and we'll start with something hot. I hope you all listen to our emergency podcast about the Chase Sapphire Preferred hundred k offer. But I think we have to touch on it again because it's kinda hitting me in waves how incredibly valuable this is.
I've held this card for years and at $95 annual fee, it's one of the annual fees I I really just don't give much thought to because of how valuable the card is for me. I'm I'm making more than that on the card every year. But just this is such a wild deal. This is the amount of free money if you wanna think about it like that or free opportunity you're getting for $95 is actually crazy. Yeah.
It is. I'm glad you corrected yourself because it's definitely not free money. I mean, you have to spend $5,000 in three months, in order to earn this big new bonus of a hundred thousand points. But the the the point of everything that we talk about when we talk about credit cards is, first and foremost, it's always serious business. I mean, credit card debt in particular is one of the most harmful things in our society today.
But if you can do this responsibly, you can do it well and wisely and time it right to pair a big bonus like this with, you know, some big spending that you may have coming up, whether it's, you know, federal tax payment or a big home project or whatever money you have set aside, say, $5,000 or even $4,000 to knock out a good chunk, if not the whole thing in one fell swoop. That is the perfect way to do this. I can't think of a better way to kind of capitalize on this opportunity that Chase rolled out, which, you know, I think we did a good job in the emergency pod, which, you know, if you're listening to this and you're not sure about the context of the Chase Sapphire Preferred card and and why they're doing it, Gunnar and I talked about that for, you know, a good thirty minutes, quite a bit longer than we expected to. So I'd go back and listen to that if you haven't already. But yeah.
I mean, I'm I'm still, you know, it it is out in the wild now. It had been rumored not just for weeks, but for more than a month. And I'm still pretty shocked that we're talking about it today. Yeah. It's if you can spend $5,000 in three months, which, I I know just from, my wife and my day to day expenses, we definitely can.
And I know a lot of people out there are in the same boat, and you're you're okay soaking a $95 annual fee. It's pretty pretty unbelievable. I wrote a story. One of the first stories I ever wrote here at Thrifty Traveler was how I got over my fear of annual fees. And it was just from, basically, learning how to do math, which is something I did in my late twenties, apparently, when I started at Thrifty Traveler.
They do not teach you that in journalism school. I can confirm that. No. They don't. I don't know where along the way the, Illinois public school system, failed me, but I never learned any any math.
But I figured out that, a $95 card like that that offers so many benefits is, pretty surreal, when you really break it down. So I I recommend everybody go to our website right now. We have tons of coverage about this, card and just exactly what you're getting out of it, and you'll be amazed when you start putting it all together. Yeah. We'll throw something in the show notes.
I wanna point out again that, you know, if you do choose to apply for a Chase credit card through us, virtually any though not every single credit card that we write about, we do make a commission, but that's not the only way to apply for this card in particular. I know a lot of people out there who already have a Chase Sapphire Preferred or maybe their spouse or their favorite travel companion does. They're waiting for these referral links to go online, go online where you can refer a friend, give them a big bonus, but you also get a bonus if your friend eventually gets approved. We still, as we're recording this, haven't seen those referral links go live with the bigger elevated bonus of a hundred thousand points. But typically it takes, you know, sometimes a week in some cases to for those referral links to update.
So by the time that this episode airs on Thursday, the tenth, April tenth, you nailed it. I wouldn't be shocked if we see that. Otherwise, it might just be a short amount of time afterward. Yeah. Absolutely.
I've already told some people in my life, don't wait on my referral link. Just go ahead and go get the card. It's too good of an offer to wait around on. Let's dig into something cold, Kyle. United and Delta flights, especially if you wanna fly up front, have often been cheaper to book when you book using their airline partner miles.
So, Virgin Atlantic for Delta, Air Canada for United are two, obvious examples there. But recently, these partners have made big negative changes, to bring their rates a lot closer to or mirror exactly Delta and United. What are you seeing here? What's going on? Well, first, let's back up and and just kinda set the table a little bit.
All of the things when it comes to booking, award tickets using miles and trying to book for the fewest amount of miles as possible, it's just a puzzle. And trying to figure out the best way to put that puzzle together to book a flight for the fewest amount of miles as possible is the name of the game. And for not just years, but decades, the cheapest way to book a flight, whether it was actually flying Delta, actually flying United, was not by using Delta SkyMiles or United Mileage Plus Miles, but by turning to their foreign airline partners like Air Canada, Avianca LifeMiles, also another United partner. And what we've seen is that, you know, these foreign airline programs really are go tos that have always been the cheapest way to book a United flight, the cheapest way to book a Delta operated flight, have been bringing down the hammer and raising the award rates. So just within the past, couple of weeks, you know, we've seen both Avianca LifeMiles and Air Canada Aeroplan pretty drastically raise award rates on United operated flights.
And then, you know, just just last week, as we're talking about this, Virgin Atlantic did the same thing again. You know, they have now come back again and again and again to really drop the hammer on Delta award rates. So, you know, flight short Delta flights, you know, from Minneapolis to Cancun, let's say, that used to cost, you know, 12,500 miles each way now cost more than 20,000 miles each way. You know, those dirt cheap delta one business class redemptions from The US to Europe that used to cost 50,000 miles now costs, in some cases, closer to 60,000. And, oh, by the way, you know, what used to be $6 in taxes and fees is now over a thousand dollars in taxes and fees.
And then finally, Virgin came back to finish the job last week. They had left untouched, while, you know, flying from The US to Europe. Those business class awards got hit with nasty surcharges. Coming back home from Europe, those escaped largely untouched. You know, you were only paying a couple hundred dollars in taxes and fees on those awards.
And now finally, they have gone back and slapped those business class awards from Europe back to The States with, you know, a pretty much identical surcharge of north of a thousand dollars. So you put it all together, and it's hard not to think that, you know, the big US airlines are pulling the strings here. I mean, what do you see? Yeah. It's first of all, I like, you're relating this to kinda organized crime, people coming back and finishing the That was unintentional, but I it's not wrong.
Virgin and Delta as mobsters, in this story. We'll have to work on that metaphor, for the rest of the episode. It's no it's no pool episode. Although, if we can work a horse head in the bed of, you know, the Virgin Atlantic CEO, no. That doesn't work.
Alright. Let's move on. Yeah. There's always gonna be efficiencies in all of this too. We talked about it in in our third episode where we interviewed Jared, our cofounder, and just talking about the the golden age of points and miles and, you know, is are all the best redemptions behind us.
And I just don't it's still never gonna be the case. You know, if, if this is a game of cat and mouse, we are we're always on the hunt, and we find new stuff, new exciting stuff all the time. So there's, no reason to fear, but it is, a little annoying that Delta and United seem to be strong arming their partners a little bit and and getting them kinda more in line with what they would like to charge. Yeah. I think Jared put it best in that episode that that we did with him a couple ago, which is that one when one door closes, another one opens.
And we're seeing some doors close right now. And, you know, I expect this trend is going going to continue that, you know, whichever workaround you're using in order to book a flight for fewer points, you know, the days of that might be numbered that, you know, the airline that's calling the shots, whether it's the one whose miles that you're redeeming or, you know, the very powerful US airlines that can kind of push their foreign airline partners around a little bit and force them to make these changes. You might not be able to do that forever, but at the same token, you know, it's only a matter of time before the next opportunity comes up, and we'll always be looking out for it. Alright, let's take a break for a word from our sponsor and that sponsor is Thrifty Traveler. Are you feeling overwhelmed by all the travel credit card options out there?
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The best part is that it's completely free as well. No gimmicks. No hidden fees. It's just expert guidance from our credit card pros here at Thrifty Traveler. And, actually, I wanna put in, an official notice to all of my friends and family, Kyle, who have abused my free expertise for years before any listeners of this podcast?
Exactly. Mom, dad, before you text me, hey. I'm thinking about picking up this car. What do you think? No.
Stop. First, you're gonna go head to Cardpilot. You're gonna put in all your information there. Once you get those results, the actual results that you should be listening to, the real expertise, then you can bring those questions to me. But I promise you Cardpilot's gonna do a better job, and you don't have to bother me to do it.
So that's a new rule for friends and family. So before you apply for another card, make sure it's the right one. Head to thriftytraveler.com/cardpilot, and let Cardpilot help you with your rewards game. That's thriftytraveler.com/cardpilot, your first class ticket, smarter travel. Alright.
Let's get into the extra mile topic where we just dig a little deeper on the topic of our choice for each week. Kyle, I think the hardest part about points and miles is getting from the beginner level to the intermediate level. I'd say a lot of travelers get stuck in between kinda earning and burning sky miles like I just mentioned earlier and and earning and burning flexible points, and they just kinda never move on. I'm sure you get a lot of the same, but people think this credit card points and miles and award travel stuff is voodoo or magic or that, thrifty traveler is giving me lots of points to use as as I please, which is, I promise you, not the case. Jared, where are the free points?
But, basically, I wanna do an extra mile segment, and you came up with this list, which I think is really good for all points and miles people out there. Whether you're getting started or you're booking first class tickets around the world, and most importantly, everybody in between those two poles of this game. So, Kyle, what should we call this list of, tips and reminders? The seven wonders of the world, the five d's of dodgeball? What do you think?
Dip, dodge, dive, duck, and dodge. Exactly. Joe over. No. You know, I think you summed it up well.
I think a lot of what we we talk about and then sometimes we talk about really fast and then in passing about how to redeem miles and why these things are important. It can be really intimidating and pretty dense, involves a lot of jargon and code words. And I think to the average person, it understandably comes across as a scam that we're basically selling essential oils or or spices door to door or knives door to door or something like that, you know. So I wanted to boil this down to some core principles. This does not cover everything.
This isn't gonna be you're gonna listen to this podcast, and all of a sudden you're gonna be an absolute pro and you're gonna know every in and out of how to book the best flight from point a to point b to point c. But it is gonna give you, you know, a base to build on so that you can take something from this. Hopefully, whether you're, an absolute beginner just opening your first ever travel credit card or frequent flyer account. Or, you know, you've been doing this for a long time and you just need a different way of looking at things. Either way, it'll give you a base to build on and kind of right size it to what travel approach is right for you.
And I wanted to make this fun. So with the hope that this is easy to understand and not too blasphemous, we're calling this the 10 commandments of points and miles. I like it. I like it a lot. Let's get going.
Alright. Commandment number one, thou shalt start slow. And I'm gonna ask now, should we continue using this kind of phrasing as we go through these next nine commandments? I think so. I think it's the only thing that makes sense.
And, if we're anything on this show, we are committed to a bit, and, it's already started. So here you go, Kyle. Too late now. Alright. Number one, thou shalt start slow.
You know, we said it before, but I wanna say it again. Credit cards are absolutely serious business. If you're getting into this world because you saw something in particular on social media, but also, you know, in the blogosphere and in the ad, it's very tempting to just dive headlong into this. But credit cards are serious business. Credit card debt is incredibly serious.
It is far too easy to overextend yourself and rack up charges that you can't afford to pay off. The next nine commandments that we're going to talk about don't mean a thing if you aren't responsible with credit, if you don't pay your bill in full on time every single month. That is the absolute core tenet of everything that we're talking about. And you need to start there. And I think the easiest way to start slow.
You know, we have a phrase that we've been using since, you know, doing in person Thrifty Traveler University kind of all day travel hacking seminars. And that phrase is set a goal and then work backwards. The best way to start slow is to start with a goal of what you want for your travel, whether that's a quick trip to Washington, D. C. For a weekend or, you know, flying business class for the first time to Southeast Asia.
You set that goal and then you start to work back or backwards and figure out what kind of points do I need? Need? What is the best way for me to book this based upon the points that I can earn and then go from there. And then after that, you start to branch out into, you know, learning about different frequent flyer programs and learning which points are gonna be the best to fit your travels. But if you don't start slow, if you don't set a goal and work backwards from the outset, I think you're gonna get off on the wrong foot.
Yeah. That's a pretty common mistake. I hear about it all the time. I just picked up a SkyMiles credit card, and I wanna fly round trip in business class to Italy for my honeymoon. And I tell people, you got the wrong points.
I'm really sorry to say, but your points are not worthless, but that's not the trip that you wanted to take. And so you're right. The exact the very simplest thing to do is look for the trip that you wanna take, preferably, like, fourteen, fifteen months in advance. Right. And then go get those points that are gonna help you book that thing as soon as it's bookable ten or eleven months in advance.
So that's some of the best advice that we can give. Commandment number two? Take us there. While credit cards are serious business, commandment number two is you should learn the truth about credit cards and credit scores. So there is so much misinformation, misconceptions about how, you know, this credit card landscape works and what truly does affect your credit score.
And understandably so, I think, you know, given how big of a problem credit card debt is, people should be concerned that they're going to tank their credit score by even opening one travel credit card. So start with that base of, you know, you know, just kind of keeping it at an arm's distance, I guess. But at the same time, it's important to understand that as you do more of this, your credit score is not going to tank as long as you do this well, as long as you follow commandment number one and do this responsibly and treat credit cards like a very serious financial instrument and not a plaything. As you add more credit to your portfolio, as you add more credit to your credit profile, your credit score will go up. And that's, you know, largely a byproduct of a misunderstanding about how credit scores are calculated.
There is, you know, the number one misconception is that every time you open a new credit card, your credit score is gonna tank. And that is not true. There it is true that your credit score will decrease in most cases very slightly after you are approved or in some cases decline for a new credit inquiry. But that pales in comparison to the importance of two things. Number one, paying your bill on time every single month.
That's the number one most important thing to do. Followed by number two, your credit utilization ratio. How much of the credit that's being extended to you that you're actually using? So if you have, you know, a grand total of $20,000 in credit extended to you and you're not not just using a thousand dollars of that, you're using zero of it because you're paying off your bill in full on time every single month. Those two things combined mean that even as you add additional credit cards to your wallet over time, responsibly, slowly, understanding what you're getting into, your credit score is going to go up over time.
I mean, we've both seen that firsthand. Right? Yeah. Yeah. I saw I mean, I'm a good example of this.
My credit was not horrible, but not very good for a long time. And then when I started opening credit cards, paying them off religiously, and making sure that I was on top of it. My score has crept up over time, and it's never been better despite me holding 12 credit cards right now. So and, you know, I'm only swiping three or four of them. So having a credit card in a drawer is not a bad thing for your credit either.
And, I hear a lot all the time, you know, oh, you're traveling around the world for free, but, you know, you probably tanked your credit score. And it's, you know, hard to explain why because you put it better than I can, Kyle, but it's, you know, it's really we have all this information on our website too. And if you do some research on the actually, what's going on with your credit score, you might be surprised. And, it's all good news for us. Hopefully, it leads to more travel rewards for everybody.
Yeah. Exactly. I mean, we'll link in the show notes our deep guide into exactly how your credit score is calculated. But let's be clear. Just because Gunnar here has has 12 credit cards and probably has a screenshot of his credit score that he shows on his phone to people and says, booyah, Doesn't mean you need to get 12 or even six or even three credit cards in order to to do this right and to do some really cool things in travel that you otherwise couldn't.
It's again, you go back to number one. Take it slow. That's probably the most important thing on this list. Yeah. And always keep a screenshot of your credit score on your phone so you can hold it up to people at the bar and say, boo, yeah.
Nothing plays better than that. I promise you. Especially on Wall Street. Yeah. Exactly.
Alright, Kyle. What's number three? Number three, thou shalt not rule out credit cards with even large annual fees. This one is tough. I think this one is probably one of the harder parts of the learning curve in getting started with this because nobody wants to pay annual fees.
And none of this is to say that you have to pay, you know, exorbitant annual fees in order to earn a meaningful amount of points and get some perks because that's not the case. That said, I think maybe the best thing to think about when you're, you know, thinking about adding additional credit cards to your wallet and diving deeper into the world of travel rewards in particular is that annual fees is not just money out the door. It's an investment into travel. You know, if you're going to spend the time learning about these things, clearly travel is important to you. And if travel is important to you, you're going to be spending money on it.
So think about the money that you're spending in credit card annual fees less about, again, money out the door, but more about what am I getting for this. You have to do the math on the on the annual fees that you're paying and figure out am I coming out ahead on this investment because you know for the cards that we talk about on a day to day basis at at Thrifty Traveler, the most popular travel cards out there. The answer for most people can very easily be yes. It is absolutely worth it. You just have to get past that knee jerk reaction of I don't wanna pay an annual fee, which Gunnar, I think you're probably uniquely qualified to tell people about because that was a big hurdle for you when you got started here.
Yeah. Especially when you look at some of the, I guess, you would call them premium or or high end cards, like, the Amex Platinum is definitely one at an annual fee of $695 a year. That was pretty eye popping to me. But you look at all the benefits that you get, and if you stay on top of it, I'm getting way more value than that out of a card. So it is an investment towards future travel, but it gets easier because there's cards like the Chase Sapphire Reserve and the Capital One VentureX where you're getting a $300 travel credit every year on a card that is, you know, right around is right around $400 a year for the VentureX.
What's this the CSR annual fee? Chase Sapphire Reserve is $5.50. So right off the bat, as you're saying, you know, the on the Venturex, you go from what looks like a $395 annual fee. You factor in that travel credit, which is very easy to use in most cases. You're looking at an effective $95 annual fee.
And so if you're the kind of person that is going to spend $300 a year or more on travel, that quickly becomes, you know, maybe not a no brainer, but certainly more palatable. And if you're not the kind of person that's gonna spend $300 a year on travel, you shouldn't be looking at any of these credit cards. Right. Yeah. Exactly.
It's but it's it makes the math a lot easier when you have just the simple credits like that, but there are even cards with more complicated credits. You know, I'm thinking, obviously, the Amex Platinum is talked about all the time. It's a coupon book full of credits, and you can do really well on it. But even just, like those SkyMiles credit cards, which are also becoming little coupon books of their own, but you get that hundred and $50 Delta Stays credit with the SkyMiles platinum card. That's a really valuable benefit.
I I use Delta Stays just to fill in, you know, hotel stays here and there or going to weddings or whatever, and that's a great benefit. That's a big chunk that you can take right out of that annual fee if you're doing the math for yourself. And there are so many examples of this all over. So just, you know, before you before you, apply for a card, make sure that you know what all these benefits are and just do a quick math. Through throw it all together and see how far into the annual fee you can get, and then decide what is actually the value of this card for me.
And then I think maybe even more importantly, do that again every year after you've had the card and you paid for it for one year as your second renewal fee is coming due. Alright. How did I do? Did I make my money back on this card or did I not? Because if the answer is very clearly no, then I think that's a sign that, you know, it's probably time to to not renew this card, to either cancel it or better yet to downgrade it to a cheaper, if not a free alternative.
So you get to keep that credit line intact. You're not gonna take a hit to your credit score, which you would if you were to cancel it outright. But you need to do the math, not just at the outset, which is very important, especially for getting over the hurdle of of, you know, paying for annual fees on credit cards, but doing the math every year and year out as your travel patterns change to make sure make sure you're getting your money's worth. Yeah. I'll save this for later in the show because our listener question touches on this just about getting organized in all of this.
And that's it's so crucial that you're writing all of this stuff down somewhere, and making sure that you're getting the value that you actually need. Move on to number four. Number four. Thou shall pause before swiping thy credit card. Now I mentioned that, you know, number three was was one of the hardest, but this one, I think, might be the most important.
I've pitched a version of this story for a couple of years, and I just don't know that I've I've found the right angle. And I think the right angle is to talk about it right here, right now on this podcast. The most important thing to do when you're trying to earn points to travel more for less is to just install a mental block anytime before you swipe your credit card, whether it's out at a restaurant buying groceries, making a big purchase, or, you know, buying something online. The mental block before you hit enter on that transaction is, how can I make the most of this? Now in some cases, it's as easy as just knowing which credit card earns, you know, four points per dollar on restaurants or grocery stores versus just one or two.
In other cases, it's it's even bigger. I mean, the best way to earn, you know, points at scale is on a brand new credit card that's offering a welcome bonus. So before you make that big purchase, like I'm going to in a week or so here of of a brand new couch, I always ask myself before I have that kind of a big purchase coming up. Okay. How can I make the most of this?
And if the answer is, and it often is, well, a new credit card bonus, if I can do it responsibly, if I have that money saved up and I can pay off that as soon as my statement clears, pay off that purchase. That is far and away the best way to do this. So the combination of those two, looking for those opportunities to add an additional credit card to your wallet in order to earn a new bonus and maximize the spending that you're doing, whether it's at the grocery store or the gas station using a card that you know is going to get you the best return on that spend rather than just having that go to credit card at the top of your wallet, whether it's gonna get you the best bang for your buck or not. That's the most important thing, and it really just requires a tiny bit of patience at the start to to stop yourself before going with your reflex of what you usually use and and asking yourself, okay. How can I get a little bit more out of this?
Yeah. I have a notes app, where I put down the category of spend, and I write down which card I use, at all times, and I share that with my wife as well. That's how we make sure that we, kinda go to that, like you said, just that quick mental check-in before you just grab the card at the top and swipe it just to make sure that you're getting the right one. Getting the most out of your points because that's that's how we earn these things. I'm not getting your credit card sign up bonus every month.
I'm not churning cards like that. So I need to actually earn on my spend, and that's what I do. And I and I think you need both. And, you know, you can use a nose app like you do just as kind of a reminder to reference when you when you aren't sure what to use. You know, some people, you know, print out labels where, you know, they put grocery stores, restaurants, and print it out and put it on, you know, their American Express gold card or their Chase Sapphire Reserve card.
If nothing else, you know, having a kind of a catch all credit card in your wallet, like one of the Capital One venture cards, that's always going to earn you two points per dollar no matter where you go, if not more for certain specific kinds of purchases that you can make, for example, through the Capital One travel portal. That is a is a great way to to make it a little bit easier on yourself if you don't wanna spend the time to try to remember exactly which credit card is going to get you the best return, which I promise you, I I understand that. I feel that way myself sometimes. That's why I always have one of the Capital One Venture cards in my wallet. So I know if I just can't remember it, the very least, I'm gonna get two points per dollar on that purchase instead of one.
Yeah. Alright. This ties in very nicely into number five. Tell us, Kyle. Commandment number five is thou shalt not swipe your airline credit card everywhere.
This is maybe the hardest thing for people to get over because if there is a reflex that people go to use their card in order to to earn miles, the hardest thing for people to get over is, well, what about my Delta SkyMiles credit card? What about my United Mileage Plus card? What about my American Advantage card? I use that every day, and I'm earning miles on every purchase. Isn't that what I should be doing?
And the answer is no. It's really not. And part of that, I think, is that people view credit cards as something that they have to use frequently in order for it to be worth it. But we divide this and we have a story on our site that will link in the show notes about different ways to think about the different purposes for your credit cards. And I divided it into three categories.
There are wallet cards, credit cards that you use every single day. So the Amex Gold and the Capital One Venture are perfect examples of this. Their cards that are gonna give you a good return on some of the things that you're spending frequently on, be that groceries or restaurants or just everyday purchases that maybe don't fit neatly into one of those buckets. And then there's drawer cards, which are cards that are worthwhile that you can make sense of the annual fee like we talked about in one of the earlier commandments, but that don't aren't necessarily good for your everyday spending. So those Delta Sky mouse cards that get you free baggage, and priority boarding.
And as you climb the list, a companion pass and maybe even Delta Sky Club access, these are perfect examples of a drawer card, a card that shouldn't necessarily live in your wallet because it's not great for spending money to earn miles or points. But they still get you those benefits regardless of whether you're using them to purchase flights or they're just sitting in your drawer unused. I mean, for example, my Delta SkyMiles card, I can't remember the last time I physically swiped it. It just sits in my drawer. I have, like, a Netflix bill that charges to it every month.
And then I know it's good. It's set to autopay, so it pays off in full every single month. I get free bags when I fly Delta regardless of whether I book a Delta flight with that or not, but I'm not looking to earn Delta SkyMiles. And even if I was using my Delta SkyMiles card is not the best card to use. And then the last and final category in this in this three category card structure is a bonus card where the primary purpose is not, you know, to have it open for a long time, but it's just for that time when I have a big purchase coming up, I know I can very easily meet a minimum spending requirement, earn a lot of points in one fell swoop.
And then at the end of that year, I do the math and I ask myself, is this card worth paying for for another year or is it not? And if it's not, I try to downgrade it if that's an option or I just cancel it understanding that there's gonna be another opportunity down the line. Yeah. I like that way to think about it. I, my cards are because I have sports brain, Kyle, I can't really think of anything in any other terms other than sports.
So I have my starters and my bench cards. And, you know, the bench cards just the bench cards are useful. You know, it's not a death sentence down there. You're you're you're doing important things. You're coming in when I need you.
You're giving me a free bag on a flight or whatever, and you're most importantly helping me earn a bonus at the beginning. But then there are the starter cards that I know I'm swiping every week. Those stay in my wallet, and the rest of them get relegated to the bench. But, all the card all those are important, kinda categories, but you shouldn't be, you know, swiping that airline credit card everywhere you go. It's a problem we see all the time.
I sometimes, work with my wife's company that sells things to people directly, especially here in the Twin Cities. And when I'm helping people swipe their SkyMiles cards over and over again over the course of a five hour shift, it just breaks my breaks my heart. But in that capacity, I'm not allowed to give advice on what card you should use. Yeah. I don't know how your wife would would feel about you getting on your soapbox while while selling merchandise.
Probably not a wise move. Yeah. You got another card in there? Starter and bench card, though. That's good.
We should run with that to continue the paint metaphors that we're very quickly becoming known for on this show. I'm in high school sports mode right now. So I, really, really been thinking hard about this metaphor as well. Can you take me to number six? What's our sixth commandment?
Commandment number six is thou shalt honor transferable points and airline alliances. So I think all of us who eventually make the the transition that you noted from beginner to intermediate, everybody has a light bulb moment and where something just clicks and you and you kind of understand, oh, this is what people are talking about or, oh, this is why this isn't actually a scam, but it is something that may actually be worth spending my time on. And for me and and I think for for countless others, it it's it's a two part thing that kind of added up to this light bulb moment that, you know, the flexibility of transferable points of, you know, from banks like Chase and American Express and Capital One and Citi and Belt gives you so many more options to use your points and kind of guide them into the direction of what's gonna get you the best deal so that you aren't just tethered to to one airline program, that your eggs aren't all in the Delta SkyMiles or the United MileagePlus basket. And that the second part of it is that, you know, Delta SkyMiles aren't just good for booking Delta flights, that you can use American advantage miles to book flights to Tokyo on Japan Airlines or to The Middle East with Qatar Airways.
And that the best way to book a united flight from, you know, anywhere in the Continental US out to Hawaii and back isn't by using United's own miles, but it's using Turkish Airlines miles. You know, an airline program with an airline that you may never fly, but that you can earn through those transferable credit card points. Combining these two things of transferable points that you can send to an airline, even if you never fly them in order to get the best deal, that is where the magic starts to happen here and where, at least for me, things really start to click. Yeah. I'm a broken record about Virgin, but I've never flown that airline, and I've used that program to book more flights this year than any other.
So it's, that's where, like you said, that's where that next step is is to understand the partner affiliations and see where your where those kind of foreign airline points are are best to use. But yeah. And it's like you said, it's almost, using both is kinda where the actual value is. Right? Right.
Exactly. And if you're sitting here saying, okay. Well, you know, you sure. You told me that I can fly to Hawaii for the fewest amount of points possible by using Turkish Airlines miles, but how am I supposed to remember these things, let alone try and figure out all of the countless, combinations of credit card points to airline program in order to make redemption x, y, and z. We've got more on this on an upcoming commandment.
Good. Next one? Next one. Even though transferable points are so powerful, commandment number seven, thou still shalt not transfer points speculatively. The number of times that I have heard from from people I'm close to, even people I'm not that close to that just like to talk to me about travel, where they come up to me and they say, I had, you know, 80,000 chase points, so I just transferred them all to Virgin Atlantic.
Right? Transfer them all to Air France flying blue because I know you can book Delta flights that way. And trying to trying to not discourage people in that situation because I understand the impulse to just have your points, turn them into miles, and be done, Especially when, you know, these big banks are often rolling up big transfer bonuses where, you know, you might get a 20 to 30, even 40% bonus by transferring your points from Chase or American Express to Air France or British Airways or Virgin Atlantic. But at least until you get deeper into this and you learn about all of these different combinations in order to get the best deal possible using your points, you're much better off just letting those points sit in your airline in your credit card account until you need them, until you know exactly how you're going to redeem them. Even with one of those big bonuses, in many cases, the worst thing that you can do is transfer them into an airline account where they may not fit your travel plans once, you know, it it comes time to actually book something.
I think, crucially here, transfers points transfers are almost always totally instant now. So with a few exceptions that you can find in our master guide, our master guide to transfer partners on our website, you can transfer points and they'll be there within, you know, one minute in a lot of cases, within five minutes in most cases. And that's how you book the flight deals right when they happen. And the power of flexible points is while they're still flexible. Right?
Once you send them away, those transfers only work one way. So going speculatively can work out for you if you hit it really big during a transfer bonus, but you are rolling the dice a little bit and taking away, you know, most of the power of what those points really are. Yeah. I I there there are exceptions to this, but I think the rule is pretty firm. And as Gunnar said, you know, these transfers are a one way street.
Once you send your credit card points to an airline or to a hotel chain, you're not going to get them back into your credit card account, which means you're much better suited by letting them live in that credit card account until you know exactly how you want to use them and you're going to use them just as soon as that transfer clears, which again is Gunnar said is pretty much instantaneous now. Yeah. Really good advice. And that takes us to commandment eight, Kyle. Commandment number eight is thou shalt enlist help from services and other tools.
So when we talk about, you know, finding the right combination of credit card program a transferring to airline b in order to book, you know, a flight from New York to Milan or from Chicago to Tokyo, Figuring out all of the different ways to do this is really hard. It's something that I think all of us still struggle with because there is so much to know. I mean, there are dozens of airlines. There are many different, you know, credit card programs. Figuring out and remembering the right combination can be difficult.
And so you need help. Even, you know, the people that have been doing this for not just years, but decades need some reference points or some services and tools in order to unearth the best options for for doing this and to stay organized with all of their credit cards and end points as well. So, you know, we're biased, but let's just say it. We believe Thrifty Traveler Premium is the best flight deal service on the planet. And that is in large part because we like to think that it makes this process of figuring out the best way to use the points that you have in order to book a flight that you want for the fewest amount of points as possible.
That is what we do. We we try to guide people through that process. So we list out all of the best ways to book a flight again, whether it's from New York to Milan or Chicago to Tokyo, the best ways to book that flight, the points that you can transfer, and, you know, dedicated video walkthroughs of how to actually transfer those points. So trying to make it easy and make each flight, no matter how daunting it might seem, kind of a one stop shop in order to get from seeing what the deal is to having that on the books within a matter of, in some cases, just clicks and minutes. You know, that's what what we do is all about and what we try to help people with.
Yeah. And I think, my favorite part about what we do is just how incredibly human powered it is. Like, all these things are Unbelievable. Yeah. Vented down to, like, the very final checkout page.
And in a lot of cases, we're gonna go ahead and book it just to make sure it is bookable online. Or in a lot of cases, poor Peter Thornton, our chief award deal analyst who spends so much time on hold with airlines, checking with representatives to make sure things are bookable. So, Peter, for all the hold music you have to listen to, I'm so sorry. But your work is, so important. I think in the guise of this conversation, we should probably call him Saint Peter.
That's right. Saint Peter, you're the man. Thank you for everything you do for Thrift Australia. Hours on hold with Virgin Atlantic to make sure that that space that award space we're about to send out isn't phantom, that it's not gonna disappear and you're gonna error out. Now that it is it is truly manual.
And there are let's be clear. There are a lot of other really good tools out there. We have a great, guide on our site, which will link in the show notes of some of our favorite award search tools. There are more of them than ever. It seems like every month we learn about a new one because there's more and more coming out on the market.
You know, I would say some of some of my personal favorites, the ones that I recommend to people, you know, if you're just getting started in this PointMe is is pretty revolutionary, not just because it it does, you know, these big awards searches for you, but also it does give you step by step with screen recordings to show you exactly how to search for that flight on Emirates or American Airlines site and and how to transfer those points and then gives you a link to click so that you can do it on your own. So if you're just getting started, that's an incredibly valuable tool. Roam travel, I would say, kinda fall somewhere in the middle. You know, a lot of very powerful features. So, for example, if you wanna make sure that you're flying, Japan Airlines brand new Airbus a three fifty, but you wanna broaden your search to make sure you're searching from all of the different hubs where Japan Airlines is operating that flight with that specific aircraft.
There's a lot of powerful things there while still being pretty easy to understand. And then on that kind of more expert end of the spectrum, seats.arrow is is probably to to to me the most powerful one on the list. There are so many great features to that tool, but, you know, seats.arrow, you really need to know what you're doing in order to understand the interface and start to use the search tool. All of these have both free and paid versions. All of them are worth considering.
I don't think and and I would say even the even the same for for Thrifty Traveler Premium. I don't think that there is a silver bullet for figuring this stuff out and getting the best deals. I think most people are probably gonna need a combination of some of them. But just having that extra bit of help, whether you're getting an email directly to your inbox that says, oh, wow. I didn't even know that I could book flights on Fiji Airways using Alaska and and American Airlines miles, to actually kind of running the searches for yourself and getting a walk through from a from a tool like PointMe or Rome.
Absolutely invaluable for figuring this world out. Yeah. For sure. And then, another tool, that I think you and I both use is travel freely. Great way to make sure that, you have all your credit cards in order, as well.
It gives you, information on where you are at on Chase's five twenty four rule, for instance, And it shows you when your annual fees are coming up. And this is the number one, way that I keep track of just all the cards I have, at a certain time. And like I mentioned earlier, I have quite a few of them at the moment. Yeah. Yeah.
The best time to get organized is before you even get started. And having a having a true, tool like travel freely, just invaluable, to have from the very beginning to make sure you stay on top of, you know, when when credit card annual fees are coming up, where you're at in terms of being able to get approved for, you know, maybe that next Chase card. Yeah. It's it's a must. Two more really important and fun, commandments here.
Number nine, Kyle. Commandment number nine is thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's points and miles. As you do more of this, and I think especially as you start to see more and more of, you know, points and miles in a word travel on social media, it it becomes way too tempting to turn it into a measuring stick and, you know, to to make sure that you you're doing just as good, if not better than your favorite influencer in in redeeming points or getting the absolute points that you're redeeming. And I just wanna be clear. Just like travel itself, all of this stuff is really deeply personal.
You know, we can sit here and talk as we have about, you know, how to build a good foundation and try to understand this world. But what's right for me isn't gonna be right for you. It's not even right for you, Gunnar. You know, the my travel goals are different than yours, which means that, you know, the things that I'm going to do in order to earn points and which points I should earn are going to be different than yours. Just because we sit here and and we talk, you know, a fair amount about booking fancy business and first class cabins doesn't mean that that needs to be the mindset that everybody listening to this has.
Everybody has their own travel goals. Travel is so personal, and this is not a contest. This is about travel. This is about having fun. This is about having really cool experiences, and whatever that cool experiences means to you is what should dictate how you go about this.
Yeah. And there's, you know, also no shame in using travel or points and miles for travel that you need to do. Right? I think a lot of people, especially kinda in their late twenties or thirties are dealing with a a wedding lineup this summer and trying to figure out how am I gonna make this work financially. Well, a really good option for you might be using your points and miles.
And while you might not be getting, you know, the craziest value or you're not gonna be flying first class to get there, if you need to burn, you know, tens of thousands of points just to get to that remote wedding in Montana, like I flew a few years ago. Thanks everyone for coming and paying. That's the best way to use it. And if it's gonna save you $2,000 on that round trip, then that's a really good redemption. Booking using points and miles is always a good thing if you're booking it, for something that you otherwise wouldn't be able to afford.
That's usually just kind of the benchmark for me. Is it what I have been able to afford this without points and miles? If if not, then this is a good booking. And that is the perfect segue into our tenth and final final commandment, thou shalt resist points paralysis. I think Gunnar said it best.
The best use of points is for something you otherwise couldn't afford, for an experience you otherwise wouldn't have. Whether that's, you know, taking that last minute trip to Montana for a wedding that you either can't afford the flights or just don't wanna pay that money or, you know, it's your first ever or your hundredth business class lie flat seat over, you know, the Atlantic or Pacific Oceans. It's just about experiences. It's too tempting. And I think a lot of people who talk about the things that we talk about when it comes to travel and redeeming points try to reduce this down to a number and travel is not a number.
Travel is about real things and real people and getting out into the world, whether that's, you know, Montana or Montenegro. You can't measure these things in numbers. And when you do that, you get what we call points paralysis, which is just waiting for the perfect deal, the deal that's gonna get you the absolute most bang for your buck. I got you know, this flight cost $10,000, and I booked it for 57,500 points, and therefore, it's worth it. And if it was 65,000 points, I'm not gonna do it.
And I just think that that is a kind of poisonous mindset, in large part because it prevents people from doing the most important thing, which is actually redeeming this stuff. If you're earning points and you're not using them, what are we doing here? We're just looking at a a balance like it's an investment account, which none of those are are going up anyway. But even if they were, that's not the point of points. The point of points is to do cool things.
Because the longer you wait, I guarantee you whether it happens next week or next month or next year, those points are going to be less valuable. You know, we talked at the top of the show about all of the airlines that are raising award rates. That is only going to continue. It's not gonna stop. The points that you have are only going to get less valuable over time as airlines seek to limit how much value you can get from them.
So the best time to use whatever points you have is yesterday. And if it's not yesterday, then it's today. Yeah. Having, a million and a half Amex membership rewards is not cool. Having four, Virgin Atlantic points because you just spent them all on a trip that you otherwise wouldn't have been able to take is cool.
I I do think, you know, people like to brag about their big, you know, their big piles of points that they have in their accounts, and, I just think that that's kinda misguided. And if you're having trouble using those points, honestly, like, that's where kinda those tools that we all mentioned above come into play. Let's find ways to use those and use them. You know, there's you can get around the world very many times with a million Amex membership rewards. So there's no need to stack points like that.
Earn and burn. That's it. How'd we do? Pretty good. Those are some good commandments.
If you can live by those 10, you're gonna do pretty well in this in this game. This is these are the the rules that we all live by, and, it's a really good reminder just hearing some of them again and talking through it. It helps kinda, cultivate a good strategy and and make sure that you're doing this in an intentional way, and you're not just, signing up for cards, will you know, you're being irresponsible with any of this. Yeah. And and that's, again, that's the entire point of of why we're talking about this on the show today is that is not to tell you exactly how to do something, what's right or wrong, but to help people figure out again whether you've been doing this for years or just a couple of weeks exactly what's right or wrong for you to kinda take this as a foundation and then build a strategy around travel, around using points and earning points and redeeming miles to, again, do cool things and have cool experiences, which is what all of this is about.
Yeah. Absolutely. Alright. Let's get into our listener question of the week. We got a really good one here from Megan g who asks, my husband and I are working on, quote, two player mode and maximizing our points together.
Do you have tips for how to best approach this? Should you open the same cards to get lots of points for one airline or hotel or diversify for wider flexibility? And she also asked about organizing in two player mode and getting started in points and miles. Kyle, what are, some of your best ways to organize in two player mode? Because I don't wanna brag or anything, but we both have wives.
For now. For now. Until we started a podcast Yeah. Started talking about said wives. But we are both kinda entrenched in this two player mode.
So what are you doing to maximize it and to stay organized doing it? We talked about travel freely earlier. I think especially for people who are trying to do this with a spouse or a travel companion, that is an absolute must, to stay organized from the very beginning. You know, travel freely, really importantly, allows you to track not just your own credit cards, but also a spouse or whichever, you know, second user that you have. So that is huge to make sure you're staying on top of, you know, which credit cards you have open when annual fees are coming to all of that stuff.
So that's a big one. You know, I think the biggest thing is just to look at any new credit card loyalty program as an opportunity to double down. You know, so for example, you know, let's say, one of one of you already has a Chase Sapphire Preferred card. You know, once those referral links come lot, go live, you know, you can refer each other for that card. You know, one spouse can refer use their referral link and send it to their spouse and have them open it and earn that bonus.
There are so many different variations of of doing that and taking things to the next level. And and I think we should stress a common thing that that people get hung up on is if I am an authorized user on my spouse's credit card, does that mean that I'm ineligible to earn that bonus myself or open that credit card myself as a primary user? And the answer is absolutely not. There is no restriction on doing that. You can be an authorized user and a primary user on the exact same credit product.
Yeah. I think, for us, one tip I would do is just one sign up bonus at a time. Don't, get out over your skis, so to speak, and, you know, make sure that you're just earning bonuses responsibly. I am not a an Excel person. I am not good with spreadsheets, not a freak in the sheets as they say.
I don't know the source. Hang on. Hang on, though. Nobody says that. Nobody says that about about this crowd.
Let's be clear. I think I saw a t shirt on Twitter once. Anyway, I'm not good with Excel, but if I were, I would love to build something that would allow me to track all these things. But for me, I just build little notes apps. For instance, all the credits that we get from every credit card, I have in a checklist.
Just a very simple checklist, and so that's how we make sure that we use all of our credits every year. That's how my wife can find out exactly what card to swipe is from that same little document. So we have just a few kinda shared documents that we can both use to make sure that we're keeping up with everything on a yearly basis. But staying organized is, of course, the key to all this. Anything more for Megan g?
Shared notes are great. And then I think to get to kind of the heart of Megan's question, you know, I would I would say, again, set a goal and work backwards. You know, if you're unsure what the right strategy is, it's best to kind of go on a trip by trip basis and figure out which points you need, how many of them you should have, and both set out on that journey to earn those points. And then over time, you'll start to learn exactly which points, you know, you should be earning, not just for the next trip, but for, you know, two, three trips from now. And then and then that will kinda start to come together organically, I think.
Yeah. Megan g, you are already asking all the right questions. We're excited for you. I can't wait to see what trips you book. Let us know when you do.
If you want us to answer your question, email us at podcast@thriftytraveler.com, and your question might be featured in next week's show. Alright. We're gonna go on the spot now, and it's Kyle's turn to put me on the spot this week. You ready? No.
What do you got? Alright. So for those of you who are just listening, I encourage you to to pull at least this final segment up on YouTube because it's not gonna be super relevant unless if if you're looking. So, Gunnar, to put you on the spot, when you got dressed to record this podcast episode this morning, were you thinking about Chessy from The Parent Trap? No.
I was not thinking about Chessy. So that's all I could see as soon as I walked in the office is, oh, Gunnar's wearing his Chessy outfit. Cool. Looks good. Man, I'll take the comp, I guess, you know.
It's not a bad thing. Just so we're just so we're clear. That's not a roast. This is not turning into the roast of Gunner Olson at the end of the pod. Yeah.
Well, we accidentally almost wore the same thing for two of the first five episodes. So I was thinking maybe there's no way that Kyle's gonna wear something similar. And then we actually did kinda get Pretty much our. Mine's a little bit and mine's more like, chassis light. It's kinda darker tones, maybe like goth chassis.
But, yeah, we're still in the same ballpark. Yeah. We're running the white guy gambit of how to, dress for a podcast, but that was fun. Thanks, Kyle. Alright.
Thank you all for, listening to the Thrifty Traveler podcast. It would mean a lot to us if you'd rate us five stars on your podcast platform of choice, and like and subscribe to Thrifty Traveler on YouTube. All that will help others find the show. And if you have feedback, as always, send us a note, podcast at thrifty traveler dot com. We would love to hear from you.
And, Kyle, let us know who put the show together this week. This episode was produced by Long Tran and my favorite chassis look alike, Gunnar Olson. It was edited by David Strutt. Our theme music is by Benjamin Tissot. See you next week.
Later.