Point Me To First Class

There's a good chance one of your best rewards cards quietly stopped paying its full bonus rate months ago, and never said a word about it. It's called a bonus category spending cap, and more of the cards you carry probably have one than you'd expect. These limits are one of the quietest ways to leave points on the table, and they catch even seasoned points travelers off guard. In this episode, I walk through which popular cards have these caps and which don't, how to tell whether you're close to hitting one, and what to do when you are, because there are more ways around a cap than most people realize. The goal isn't to collect more cards for the sake of it, it's to keep the money you're already spending earning at the rate you signed up for. If you've ever picked a card for one great category and funneled all your spending to it, this episode will help you make sure those points are still landing where you think they are. Get full show notes and transcript: https://pointmetofirstclass.com/credit-card-spending-caps Eager to learn the secrets of award travel so that you can turn your expenses into unforgettable experiences? Join the Points Made Easy course waitlist here: https://pointmetofirstclass.com/pointsmadeeasy

You can have a small fortune in points between two people and still not be able to book the trip you want. That's the trap this episode is built to help you avoid. Combining or sharing points with a partner, a spouse, or a family member sounds like it should be simple, but every points currency plays by its own rules, and a couple of them won't let you share points with someone else at all. Knowing which is which, well before you've found the award you want to book, turns out to be one of the quietest but most important parts of planning travel with another person. I walk through all six major transferable currencies: Amex, Chase, Citi, Capital One, Bilt, and Rove, and grade each one on how easily it lets you combine points with someone else. Not all of them pass. More useful than the grades, though, is what to do about them, the setup worth doing now so the points you've earned together are usable when the trip you want finally appears. If you earn points with a spouse, a partner, or anyone you travel with, this is the housekeeping that keeps you from finding out too late that half your points are stranded in the wrong account. Get full show notes and transcript: https://pointmetofirstclass.com/combine-credit-card-points-with-partner Eager to learn the secrets of award travel so that you can turn your expenses into unforgettable experiences? Join the Points Made Easy course waitlist here: https://pointmetofirstclass.com/pointsmadeeasy

Planning an entire trip around one airline seat is a backwards way to travel, and every so often it's exactly the right one. My friend Andrea and I have wanted to fly first-class Singapore Airlines Suites on the A380 for years. When we two award seats on their newest first class on a long-haul flight, we built a five-day trip around the world around them, five flights, and almost no regard for where any of it landed on a map. What follows is the whole story, the planning, the flying, and the frankly ridiculous decision-making it took to pull it off. We get into how a trip like this comes together, why it turns the usual way of planning award travel on its head, and whether spending this many points on a few days of flying was worth it. You'll also hear our candid take on every cabin we flew, where we agreed, where we didn't, and which experiences lived up to the hype. Whether Singapore Suites is already on your wish list or you just want a fresh way to think about award travel, my hope is you come away seeing that a dream flight doesn't have to wait for the stars to align over your home airport. Listen in as you learn that sometimes the smartest move is to grab the seat when it appears and let the rest of the trip take shape around it. Get full show notes and transcript: https://pointmetofirstclass.com/singapore-suites-around-the-world Eager to learn the secrets of award travel so that you can turn your expenses into unforgettable experiences? Join the Points Made Easy course waitlist here: https://pointmetofirstclass.com/pointsmadeeasy

Some of the biggest points opportunities have nothing to do with your credit card at all. It turns out hotels quietly reward the person who books an event with them, a conference, a retreat, a wedding, a family reunion, and most people have no idea. They're called planner points. To unpack them, I sat down with Rachel Posada Fletcher, who spent years as an event manager negotiating exactly these kinds of hotel contracts. And the best part is you don't have to plan events for a living to earn and benefit from planner points. Tapping into this points earning potential comes down to simply knowing the opportunity is there and being willing to ask for it. Rachel gets into how these rewards work, the ways a single event can pay off on more than one front, and what she wishes more people understood before signing a hotel contract. If you run a business, help pull together events at work, or have a big celebration on the horizon, I think you'll finish this one seeing your next gathering as more than just an expense. Get full show notes and transcript: https://pointmetofirstclass.com/hotel-planner-points Eager to learn the secrets of award travel so that you can turn your expenses into unforgettable experiences? Join the Points Made Easy course waitlist here: https://pointmetofirstclass.com/pointsmadeeasy

Have you ever wondered what your award search tool can see that you can't? My guest this week is Keith Van, who leads community at seats.aero, one of the award search platforms I reach for most. What made this so fun for me is that his team sees something the rest of us never do. They can watch how travelers everywhere are searching for award space all at once, which means they notice patterns in demand and in availability that none of us could piece together alone, and a few of the ones Keith shared upended assumptions I didn't know I was holding. We also get into the part of these tools that trips people up the most, the gap between what a search shows you and what you can book right now, and how to protect yourself before you move your points. And Keith pulls back the curtain on how a platform like this works, from why it can see some airlines and not others to the features longtime users walk right past. Whether you've never opened an award search tool or you consider yourself a power user, I think you'll finish this one seeing these platforms, and the data underneath them, differently. Get full show notes and transcript: https://pointmetofirstclass.com/seats-aero-award-search-data Eager to learn the secrets of award travel so that you can turn your expenses into unforgettable experiences? Join the Points Made Easy course waitlist here: https://pointmetofirstclass.com/pointsmadeeasy

Have you ever wondered whether there's still travel value hiding inside the expenses you already have, points you could be earning but aren't, with no real way to know for sure? That's one of the few questions in this hobby I've never been able to answer for you, and it's probably one you've quietly wondered about yourself. We have a rough way to gauge how well we redeem points, our cents per point at least gives us a benchmark, but there has never been a clean way to know whether the expenses you already have are earning a fraction of the points they could. So in this episode I get into why earning potential is so hard to pin down, why two people who spend the same amount can have completely different potential, and the difference between an optimized card portfolio and a maximized one. Listen as I introduce the first version of a tool I built to take a crack at it, the Hidden Travel Budget Calculator. You give it your annual spend across a handful of categories, and it shows you how many points your expenses could earn, what those points could be worth in travel, and how much of that potential you're capturing right now. Whether you're newer to points and wondering if it's even worth it for the expenses you have, or you've been at this a while and just want to know how much room you have left, my hope is you come away seeing the opportunity that might still be sitting inside the spending you already do. Get full show notes and transcript: https://pointmetofirstclass.com/points-earning-potential Want to see how much spending could be hiding in your own expenses? Try the Hidden Travel Budget Calculator here: https://points.pointmetofirstclass.com/discover-your-hidden-travel-budget Eager to learn the secrets of award travel so that you can turn your expenses into unforgettable experiences? Join the Points Made Easy course waitlist here: https://pointmetofirstclass.com/pointsmadeeasy

If you've ever looked at the cash sitting in an emergency fund, a business account, or your tax reserves and wished it could earn travel points the way your spending does, this conversation is for you. For as long as I've been earning points and miles, one piece has been missing. We've gotten very good at earning points on the money we spend, but almost no one has offered a way to earn transferable points on the money we save. That's what made Symphony worth a close look, and I sat down with co-founder James Berry to understand how it works. Upfront: this isn't a recommendation and it isn't sponsored. I opened an account myself to see it firsthand, I do have an affiliate relationship with Symphony, and my goal is the same as always, to give you enough to decide for yourself. We get into how the platform actually works, the fixed rate you earn and whether you take it as cash, as points, or a split of both. We also spend real time on the questions worth asking before putting money anywhere new, why it isn't FDIC insured, how the risks weigh against the rewards, and who it fits versus who should stay away. And we close on the bigger question underneath it all, whether saving could become a new way to earn points alongside spending. Whether you decide it's for you or you'd rather watch from the sidelines for now, the approach is the same, understand it first, then make the call that fits your own goals and risk tolerance. Earn up to 5,000 bonus points for opening and funding a new Symphony account: join.symphony.io/devon Get full show notes and transcript: https://pointmetofirstclass.com/earn-points-on-savings-symphony Eager to learn the secrets of award travel so that you can turn your expenses into unforgettable experiences? Join the Points Made Easy course waitlist here: https://pointmetofirstclass.com/pointsmadeeasy Some links in these show notes are affiliate links, meaning we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.