Category: Travel Hacking

The Bilt Obsidian Card Could be Perfect For Families

Posted on by David Cox

The Bilt Obsidian Card is a card that could be interesting for families or anyone who has a significant amount of dining or grocery spend, especially for a family with a large rent or mortgage payment. Prior to February 7th, 2026, Bilt allowed people to earn points on rent payments, but after that date, it will allow people to earn Bilt Points when you pay your mortgage.

The payments aren’t charged to the card, but rather you use the Bilt platform to make the payment with your Venmo or bank account and routing number. You earn 1 point per dollar on the transaction, as long as you make the necessary non-housing transactions on the credit card. But finding out how much will require some math.

What is the Bilt Obsidian Card?

The Bilt Obsidian Card is the middle-tier card of the three new cards created for the Bilt program. It has a $95 annual fee and earns 3X on your choice of grocery or dining, 2x on travel and 1X on all other purchases, including 1X on mortgage or rent payments paid through the Bilt platform.

The card also comes with two $50 hotel credits, one in the first half of the year and the second in the second half of the year. These credits are for two-night stays booked through the Bilt Travel Portal. Honestly, this feels almost useless, unless you prefer to use the Bilt Travel Portal, then it’s a nice $50 coupon. Most likely, I wouldn’t even use this credit.

The Bilt Obsidian Card also comes with some travel protections, including MasterRental Coverage, trip delay, and cancellation coverage. It also comes with no foreign transaction fees, purchase assurance, and extended warranties.

The Bilt Obsidian Card currently comes with a signup bonus of $200 in Bilt Cash.

Unlocking Points on Rent or Mortgage

The biggest selling point of Bilt is that they allow you to earn points when you pay for your rent or mortgage through the Bilt platform. However, it’s not as simple as that. Because the points have a cost to Bilt, they have set up a system to ensure that they can recoup the cost of those points.

As with all credit cards, they make money through interchange fees. Therefore, Bilt requires that you spend on the card to help recoup the cost of those points. With the old Bilt Credit Card, you only had to make 5 purchases throughout the month. Now, the rules are, well, a bit more complicated.

Option 1 vs Option 2

As if the new Bilt system isn’t complicated enough, they have introduced two options to unlock the points that are earned on rent or mortgage. Option 1 sets your earning rate on those housing charges based on a “simplified” chart. It looks like this:

Non-Housing Spend as Percent of Housing SpendEarning rate on rent or mortgage
0% to 25%no points earned on rent or mortgage
25% to 50%.5 points per dollar on rent or mortgage
50% to 75%.75 points per dollar on rent or mortgage
75% to 100%1 point per dollar on rent or mortgage
Over 100%1.25 point per dollar on rent or mortgage

The more you spend on non-housing expenses, the more points you earn per dollar on your housing expenses, maxing out at 1.25 points per dollar. In order to choose Option 1, you need to forgo Bilt Cash, which is a feature of Option 2.

In Option 2, you earn 4X per dollar spent on non-housing expenses in a second currency called Bilt Cash. You can use the Bilt Cash at a rate of 3% of the housing expenses to unlock the Bilt Points earned by housing expenses. For example, a $1,000 rent payment would earn 1,000 Bilt points unlocked and paid for with $30 in Bilt Cash. At 4X per dollar, that amount of Bilt Cash is earned with $750 in non-housing expenses.

With Option 2, any spend above what is necessary to unlock Bilt Points can be banked as Bilt Cash, which can be used for a variety of things. These potential uses are mostly coupon-like credits for some of Bilt’s corporate partners. They include things like Lyft rides, Bilt Dining experiences, hotel credits, fitness classes, and even Blade helicopter airport transfers.

The best use of Bilt Cash is the points accelerator, which allows you to turn $200 in Bilt Cash into an extra 1X on all spend for the next $5,000. This means that instead of 3X on grocery or dining, 2X on travel, and 1X on everything else, this card would earn 4X on dining or grocery, 3X on travel, and 2X on everything else for the remainder of the accelerator period. Essentially, it’s a way for the cardholder to turn $200 in Bilt Cash into 5,000 Bilt Points.

The Confusing and Rewarding World of Bilt Cash

When the new Bilt credit cards launched on January 14th, 2026, there was a lot of confusion about Bilt Cash. A week later, Bilt explained what it is used for. Most of the uses are not that interesting, but the point accelerator seems to be the clear best use of Bilt Cash.

David Cox's avatar by David Cox

Average Family of 4 Using Option 2

According to Google AI (take it with a grain of salt) the average family spends around $2,300 per month on mortgage plus taxes and insurance. For the sake of easy math, let’s just say $3,000 all together with taxes and insurance included. The average family of 4 also spends around $1,400 per month on groceries (also according to Google AI).

In order to unlock the 3,000 points earned from the mortgage payment, they would also have to spend a total of $2,250 on non-housing expenses on the card. If they put the entire $1,400 of groceries on it then they would need to spend an additional $850 on other expenses on the card.

That means that they would earn 3,000 Bilt points on the mortgage, 4,200 points on the groceries (3X on groceries), and 850 points on the other spend. That is a grand total of 8,050 Bilt Points earned on what is $2,250 in credit card spend. That is almost 3.6X, which is fantastic. It’s actually more than the 6,450 Amex Membership Reward points that you would earn on that spend on an Amex Gold where there is 4X on grocery spend.

Bilt Points are the Best Points

Bilt points are generally viewed as being the most valuable points of the major programs. That is primarily because they have a great list of transfer partners, with some highly coveted partners such as Atmos Rewards and World of Hyatt. The full list of partners are:

  • Aer Lingus (1:1)
  • Air Canada (1:1)
  • Atmos Rewards (Hawaiian Airlines and Alaska Airlines) (1:1)
  • Avianca Lifemiles (1:1)
  • British Airways (1:1)
  • Cathay Pacific (1:1)
  • Emirates (1:1)
  • Etihad Guest (1:1)
  • Flying Blue (KLM and Air France) (1:1)
  • Iberia (1:1)
  • Japan Airlines (1:1)
  • Southwest Airlines (1:1)
  • Spirit Airlines (1:1)
  • Tap Portugal (1:1)
  • Turkish Airlines (1:1)
  • Qatar Airways (1:1)
  • United Airlines (1:1)
  • Virgin Red
  • All Accor Limitless (3:2)
  • Hilton (1:1)
  • Hyatt (1:1)
  • IHG (1:1)
  • Marriott Bonvoy (1:1)

Rent Day Specials

Bilt Rewards has a tradition of having special deals only available on rent day. They have offered things like free fitness classes in the past, but the thing to really look out for are massive transfer bonuses.

In December 2025, for example, British Airways offered a transfer bonus of up to 100% based on your Bilt Status. The bonus was 100% for platinum members, 75% for gold members, 60% for silver members, and 50% for blue members. Your membership tier is based on how much you spend within the Bilt program. For a Silver member, this transfer bonus would mean that if you transferred 10,000 Bilt Points to British Airways, you would end up with 16,000 British Airways Avios. That’s a great way to get extra value for your Bilt points.

There is an indication that you can use Bilt Cash to unlock higher transfer bonuses; however, we have no idea how much Bilt Cash will be required to do so. But there is a chance you could make good use of your Bilt Cash to take advantage of status for these rent-day transfer bonuses.

Who is the Bilt Obsidian Card For?

I think, if there is one thing common to the three new Bilt Cards, it is that they are great for people who would like to earn points for travel but don’t want to sign up for a bunch of credit cards. There is no doubt that signup bonuses are the best way to accumulate a ton of points and miles, but there are many reasons why people might not want to sign up for a new credit card every few months. Bilt Cards appear to be designed to be more rewarding the more you use them, making them perfect for people who only want to deal with one credit card.

With the ability to earn points on rent or mortgage, as well as 3X on your choice of groceries or dining, 2X on travel, and 1X on everything else, depending on what you use your credit card for, it could be a pretty good overall earner. If you are able to accumulate enough Bilt Cash to activate the point accelerator and add 1X to all spend, it could get really lucrative.

The $95 annual fee isn’t too much of a barrier for most people, and besides the two $50 hotel credits there isn’t any coupon-like things to worry about, so it is fairly simple.

Overall, I think it’s a great card for someone who has a decent amount of grocery or dining spend each month, to take advantage of the 3X category (or 4X with the point accelerator). To me, it makes a lot of sense for a family, because of how much a family spends on groceries.

Let’s go back to the earlier example, but in addition to the $3,000 mortgage, $1,400 in grocery spend, they have an additional $2,600 in spend on the card (at 1X). In this example, they earn Bilt Cash along with their points and use the vast majority of Bilt Cash earned toward the point accelerator.

Over the course of one year, they would earn 36,000 Bilt Points on Mortgage, 50,400 Bilt points on grocery spend, 31,200 Bilt Points on other spend, and 25,000 Bilt Points on the point accelerator. That totals 142,600 Bilt points for the year. The Points Guy values Bilt points at 2.2 cents per point, meaning that amount of Bilt Points is worth a little over $3,000. That’s not bad for simply using one credit card for everything.

Conclusion

While not being as lucrative as signing up for multiple credit cards, the Bilt Obsidian Card is a great credit card for anyone who wants to earn a decent number of Bilt Points but doesn’t want to spend all of their time thinking about points and miles. Cardholders can simply put all of their spend on one card and earn the most valuable transferable currency in points and miles.

While the Bilt program itself is complicated, having to just concentrate on the one program will make it much easier for people to learn the nuances of the program and take advantage of transfer bonuses and Bilt Cash. It’s a great card for people who want to do a little travel hacking, but don’t want to spend too much time on it.

The Bilt Blue Card is Disappointing, But is Still a Good Option

Posted on by David Cox

On January 14th, 2026, Bilt released the details on the three credit cards that were replacing the original Bilt credit card. The original Bilt card was issued by Wells Fargo and it was widely reported that it was a significant money loser for them. These three new cards are issued by Cardless, and are intended to be a profitable way for the Bilt Program to issue credit cards.

The Five Banana Problem

The original Bilt credit card allowed users to earn one point per dollar when putting their rent on the credit card as long as they used their card five other times per month. The intention was that Bilt would recoup the money lost from interchange fees (which landlords don’t pay but retailers do) by generating it back through interchange fees from other purchases. The problem was that many savvy users swiped the card for five small purchases each month (such as a single banana), which didn’t generate much revenue for Bilt. Therefore, the joke was that Bilt had a five-banana problem.

With the new credit cards, Bilt believes they have solved the five-banana problem by creating a second currency called Bilt Cash that is earned each time the user swipes the card on non-rent or mortgage purchases. That Bilt Cash can be used to unlock the points earned from rent or mortgage payments. It’s strangely complicated, but the short answer is that if you spend 75% of your mortgage payment on other things, you earn enough Bilt Cash to unlock your points. In other words, to get the 1,000 points earned from a $1,000 mortgage payment, you would need to use it for $750 worth of other spending. Five banana purchases won’t work anymore.

What is the Bilt Blue Card?

The Bilt Blue Card is a no-annual-fee credit card that earns 1X on all spend and 4X Bilt Cash on all purchases (mortgage and rent payments are not made on the card itself). It also earns 1X on all rent or mortgage payments, but requires 3% of the total transaction in Bilt Cash to unlock those points. In other words, you need $30 in Bilt Cash to unlock the points from a $1,000 mortgage or rent payment, and at the 4x rate to earn those points, you would earn $30 in Bilt Cash after $750 in purchases.

Technically, the 1X earned on housing spend is not on the credit card, since that is not allowed. The housing payments must be done by ACH or Venmo using the Bilt website. The old card allowed you to charge the rent to the card itself, and this change appears to be an effort to reduce costs and make the Bilt card profitable.

Yes – I get it – this is complicated, but the point is that you can earn valuable Bilt Points on your rent or mortgage as long as you are actively using that credit card for a significant amount of your monthly spend. This is unique because you cannot do this to earn Chase Ultimate Reward Points, Citi Thank You Points, Amex Membership Reward Points, or Capital One Venture Miles.

Transfer Partners

What is also unique about the Bilt Blue Card is that it is a no-annual fee that allows you to earn points that can be transferred to airline and hotel programs. Transfer programs are what really make Bilt Points valuable, and while Citi, Chase, Amex, and Capital One have transfer partners as well, most require a credit card with an annual fee to unlock the ability to transfer.

In addition, Bilt points are the most valuable of any of the major transferable currencies. That is because they have a ton of transfer partners, and some of the most coveted. On the airline side, Atmos rewards is a highly valued currency for its ability to book partner awards for not a lot of points. On the hotel side, you can transfer to Hyatt, whose points are extremely valuable. The complete list of transfer partners, as of January 2026 are:

  • Aer Lingus (1:1)
  • Air Canada (1:1)
  • Atmos Rewards (Hawaiian Airlines and Alaska Airlines) (1:1)
  • Avianca Lifemiles (1:1)
  • British Airways (1:1)
  • Cathay Pacific (1:1)
  • Emirates (1:1)
  • Etihad Guest (1:1)
  • Flying Blue (KLM and Air France) (1:1)
  • Iberia (1:1)
  • Japan Airlines (1:1)
  • Southwest Airlines (1:1)
  • Spirit Airlines (1:1)
  • Tap Portugal (1:1)
  • Turkish Airlines (1:1)
  • Qatar Airways (1:1)
  • United Airlines (1:1)
  • Virgin Red
  • All Accor Limitless (3:2)
  • Hilton (1:1)
  • Hyatt (1:1)
  • IHG (1:1)
  • Marriott Bonvoy (1:1)

Why are People Disappointed?

The old Bilt Card was a fantastic card, especially for young renters. For example, let’s say that you are a 25-year-old who is out of college and lives in a major city, but you’re not earning a big salary yet. In this example, let’s say that you are spending $2,500 per month on a small apartment and it’s a large chunk of your salary. With the old card, you would earn 2,500 Bilt points for simply putting your rent on the card and then swiping it 5 times throughout the month.

Now, to unlock the 2,500 Bilt points, you would need to spend $1,875 in other spending on the card. Even if you are putting your car insurance, cell phone, all utilities, your groceries, and all of your shopping and entertainment on the card, you might not reach that amount. So, for the person who spends a large portion of their income on rent, they’re not going to earn all of the points that they would have with the old card. In addition, the old card earned 3X on dining and 2X on travel, while the Blue Card is 1X on everything.

There is also the pesky problem with how Bilt changed the way that it allows you to pay rent. With the old card, you could actually use the card to pay your rent. This meant that you could essentially float your rent for 30 to 45 days by waiting until the credit card bill is due. With the new program, that is gone, and you have to pay by ACH, which saves Bilt money in interchange fees. In practice, this means that there are a whole bunch of people who are going to have to pay two rent payments in March as the last rent payment on the Bilt Card comes due, and they have to pay their rent with ACH simultaneously.

These changes are painful for people who had the old Bilt Card. I would argue, however, that if you forget about the old card for a second, the Bilt Blue Card is probably still the best option for this person.

Comparison to Venture Card

I think one of the best travel cards for someone in this situation is the Capital One Venture Card. That is because it earns 2x on all purchases and has only a $95 annual fee. It also has great transfer partners, although not as great as Bilt Points transfer partners. Let’s talk about the same person in the above example.

Let’s say that their personal spending can’t quite reach the $1,875 that they would need to unlock all of the points from rent. Instead, they average $1,500 per month other spending on their credit card. Since no points are earned on rent with Capital One, they would earn 2x on the $1,500 spent. That would total 3,000 Venture Miles.

On the Bilt Card, the $1,500 in spend would unlock (and I’ll spare you the math on this) 2,000 (out of the total of 2,500 points possible), plus 1,500 points from the spend. That is 3,500 Bilt Points earned. If you ignore the housing spend for this comparison (since Bilt is the only card that allows it), until you unlock all of the Bilt Points from the housing spend, you earn 2.33X on all spend.

That’s 500 more points, and I would prefer Bilt Points over Venture Miles, because the transfer partners are better. In addition, the Bilt Blue card is a no-annual-fee card, while the Venture Card costs $95 per year. In the end, it’s actually better than the Venture Card, even though it’s 1X vs 2X if you don’t spend past the threshold where you’ve unlocked all of the points from rent.

What about Bilt Cash?

Bilt Cash was created to force people who wanted to earn points on rent or mortgage to spend on the Bilt credit cards. It solves the five bananas problem mentioned earlier. However, because each card earns 4x Bilt Cash on every purchase, there is a real possibility that there will be excess Bilt Cash accumulated by any Bilt cardholder who uses their card for most or all of their everyday spend.

For the most part, Bilt Cash can be used to essentially purchase coupons on various things like Lyft rides, Bilt Dining experiences, hotel credits, fitness classes, and even Blade helicopter airport transfers. The best use of Bilt Cash appears to be the points accelerator, which is unfortunately unavailable on the Bilt Blue card.

The Confusing and Rewarding World of Bilt Cash

When the new Bilt credit cards launched on January 14th, 2026, there was a lot of confusion about Bilt Cash. A week later, Bilt explained what it is used for. Most of the uses are not that interesting, but the point accelerator seems to be the clear best use of Bilt Cash.

David Cox's avatar by David Cox

Option 1 vs Option 2

If all of this sounds confusing to you, you’re not alone. So many people complained about this that after 2 days, Bilt offered an alternative. Option 1, is to completely forgo the Bilt Cash system and instead earn points on your rent or mortgage based on this chart:

Non-Housing Spend as Percent of Housing Spend
0% to 25%no points earned on rent or mortgage
25% to 50%.5 points per dollar on rent or mortgage
50% to 75%.75 points per dollar on rent or mortgage
75% to 100%1 point per dollar on rent or mortgage
Over 100%1.25 point per dollar on rent or mortgage

Option 2 is using Bilt Cash to unlock points on housing. Based on what we know about Bilt Cash and the fact that the point accelerator isn’t available for the Bilt Blue Card, you would have to look through the list of uses for Bilt Cash and decide whether or not anything is interesting to you. I would guess that many people will choose option 1, because it’s just simpler.

Who is the Bilt Blue Card For?

Because it is a 1X on all spending credit card, it’s not going to be great for earning points unless you are using it for rent or mortgage. I think the ideal candidate for this card is someone with a fairly large rent or mortgage payment and just enough everyday spend to earn all of the points on that housing spend. Frankly, I see the ideal candidate as a young professional with oversized rent or mortgage payments.

In the example above, the individual with a $2,500 mortgage and $1,500 in other spend per month would earn 42,000 Bilt Points in one year. I put that into Daydream Explorer on PointsYeah.com for the entire month of February (filtered for Bilt Points), and this is what I got for one-way fares from Chicago:

Obviously for a round-trip ticket you would need a ticket home as well, but there are plenty of places in Florida that you can fly for 7,500 points, Cancun for 10,000 points, or Punta Cana for 11,600. A category 1 Hyatt during standard time can be had for 5,000 points or a category 2 for 8,000 points. It might not be the most luxurious vacation ever, but when I was that age I just wanted to go somewhere warm and hang out at the beach. While 42,000 points isn’t a ton, a vacation can be assembled for that, especially if traveling with friends.

The card is currently being offered with a $100 Bilt Cash signup bonus, which would make it easier to unlock the points earned from rent or mortgage.

Conclusion

I think the Bilt Blue Card, while a disappointment to people who loved the old Bilt Card, is a good card for a fairly specific segment of the population. For other people, the Bilt Obsidian Card or Bilt Palladium Card might be a better fit. But for a young professional who doesn’t want an annual fee and wants to be able to take a no-frills trip every once in a while, I think this works better than any other option I can think of.

The Confusing and Rewarding World of Bilt Cash

Posted on by David Cox

On January 14th, 2026, Bilt launched three new credit cards to complement their rewards program. The reactions were mixed, with some people really excited about the new options plus the ability to earn points on mortgage payments, while others were angry about the changes. Both groups, however, agreed on one thing – Bilt Cash was baffling.

The three credit cards, including the no annual fee Bilt Blue Card, the $95 annual fee Bilt Obsidian card, and a $495 annual fee Palladium Card, all have one thing in common – they earn 4x Bilt Cash on every purchase. Each card earned Bilt Points at different rates, but they all earned Bilt Cash at the 4x rate.

What is Bilt Cash?

Bilt Cash was essentially created to solve a problem. Bilt’s biggest selling point was that you could earn 1X Bilt Points on rent. With the new relaunch, Bilt was extending that feature to mortgage payments. They are allowing it through their payment portal on their website using Venmo or ACH payment.

The problem for them is that there is zero money in doing that. They needed to create a way to get income to cover the cost of the points. They need people to spend on the Bilt credit cards, so they can collect interchange fees as well as interest payments on recurring balances.

Bilt Cash was created to force people to spend on the cards. The way it works is this: to unlock points for housing spend, you need to pay 3% of that amount in Bilt Cash. For example, on a $1,000 rent payment, you would need to spend $30 of Bilt Cash to unlock the 1,000 points earned on that rent. At 4X Bilt Cash earned on all non-housing spend, you would need to spend $750 outside of rent or mortgage to earn those $30 in Bilt Cash.

If your rent or mortgage was $2,000, you would need to spend $1,500 in non-housing spend on the Bilt Cards to unlock the 2,000 points earned from the housing spend. Yes, I know this is a lot of math.

What About Excess Bilt Cash?

Using Bilt Cash for unlocking points on rent or mortgages has been understood since the day they announced the new Bilt credit cards. The confusing part was about the leftover Bilt Cash, not used to unlock those points.

At first, Bilt simply said that you would be able to use it within the Bilt ecosystem on things like Lyft rides and hotel credits. What was unclear, was whether you could use Bilt Cash to completely pay for a Lyft or a hotel, or whether it would be a discount.

The Reveal

I had wondered if Bilt had a fully formed plan when they launched or if they were planning to create this over time. On January 21st, 2026, Bilt sent out an email that made it clear that they had a plan all along, and they were waiting to release the details.

Bilt has created a menu of ways to spend your Bilt Cash. For each of these, you would need to redeem Bilt Cash for these benefits on a $1 Bilt Cash to $1 US ratio. According to that email, Bilt Cash can be redeemed for:

BenefitBenefit per useFrequency/Annual Max
Grubhub Credits$10Monthly/ $120 per year
Bilt Home Delivery$5Monthly/$60 per year
Gopuff FAM membership$100Annually/$100 per year
Bilt Dining Partners$25Monthly/$300 per year
Bilt Dining Experiences$50Monthly/$600 per year
Hotel Credit through Bilt Travel Portal (Blue and Silver members)$50 (minimum 2-night stay)Monthly/$600 per year
Hotel Credit through Bilt Travel Portal (Gold and Platinum members)$100 (minimum 2-night stay)Monthly/$1200 per year
Lyft Credits$10 Monthly/$120 per year
Blacklane Rides$50 for Blue and Silver members, $100 for Gold members, $150 for Platinum membersAnnually/$50 to $150 per year
Blade Credit$350Twice Annually/$700 per year
Fitness Classes (Barry’s, Soulcycle, etc)$40Monthly/$480 per year
Walgreens$10Monthly/$120 per year

I looked through this list and said, “Oh, just a bunch of coupons”. It wasn’t that exciting, although I did see some usefulness, and I’m not gonna lie, I’m very curious about the Blacklane and Blade credits. However, it just wasn’t anything that I found particularly valuable. But then I kept reading and suddenly got very happy.

Burying the Lede

Right near the bottom of the email was some extremely valuable information. It stated “Point accelerator on everyday spend. Enable +1X bonus points on all everyday spend for the next $5,000 following activation; exclusively available to Obsidian and Palladium Cardholders; Cost $200 Bilt Cash; up to 5 activations annually; expires after $5,000 in spend or calendar year-end.”

Once this is activated, the Obsidian Card earns 4x on dining or grocery (you have to choose one), 3x on travel, 2x on everyday spend. On the Palladium card, it would earn 3x on everything once it’s enabled. That is huge! The Palladium card would earn 3x Bilt Cash on all spend, and it’s the most valuable transferable points of any program.

It’s a shame that they don’t offer this benefit to people with the no annual fee Bilt Blue Card. However, for people who are holding the Obsidian or Palladium card and will spend a lot on those cards, using $200 in Bilt points to unlock 1X on all spend for the next $5,000 in spend is awesome.

Bilt Palladium Example

For this example, I will use a fictitious scenario of a family with a $2,000 per month mortgage and sufficient income/expenses that allow for $4,000 in credit card spending. They pay for their mortgage through ACH on the Bilt platform and signed up for the Bilt Palladium Card.

Since the Palladium Card has, as part of the signup bonus, $300 in Bilt Cash, they immediately use $200 in Bilt Cash to unlock the point accelerator. Each month, they would earn $160 in Bilt Cash from the $4,000 in spend on the Palladium card, $60 of which is needed to unlock the 1X from the mortgage payment, leaving an excess of $100 in Bilt Cash each month.

This means they can unlock the point accelerator every 2 months, a maximum of 5 times. With the point accelerator, they can earn a total of 1X extra for $25,000 of their spend over the year.

In one year, they would earn 24,000 points for the mortgage, 96,000 points from the everyday spend, and an additional 25,000 points from the point accelerator. That would be a grand total of 145,000 points (not counting the signup bonus), which, if you divide by the $48,000 in spend, would equal a little over 3X on everything over the course of the year. There just isn’t any credit card available that offers that rate of return on everyday spend, especially when you realize the points are widely agreed upon as the most valuable of the transferable points currencies.

Conclusion

Bilt’s attempt to force their members to actually use their credit cards to earn points on their rent or mortgage payments, left them with an odd system for people who overshoot the goal. They created Bilt Cash, which at first glance, is a system that is designed to provide coupons for their corporate partners.

However, if you don’t see the usefulness of buying coupons with the Bilt Cash, you have a tremendous opportunity to increase your earning power on the Bilt Obsidian and Bilt Palladium cards. They were already cards that earned a decent amount of the most valuable transferable currency available. Using the point accelerator turns these cards into super earners, and I don’t see any reason why I would choose a coupon over that.

Hotel Credit Cards that are Worth it For Free Night Certificates

Posted on by David Cox

Credit cards that come with free night certificates can be a great way to reduce the cost of vacations or weekend getaways. We have been travel hacking for a few years now, which generally means opening up credit cards, earning points and miles, and then redeeming them for flights and hotel stays. Many of these credit cards aren’t worth keeping, and we close those accounts after a year, sometimes two, depending on the situation. This is generally to avoid paying ongoing annual fees on a card we no longer value.

However, hotel credit cards can often continue to be valuable every single year, even if you don’t use them, and even if they have annual fees. This is because many of them come with free night certificates and some level of hotel status. Typically, in my experience, it’s easy to get more value out of those certificates than the cost of the annual fee.

Hyatt

Hyatt has two credit cards, both issued by Chase Bank; one is a business card, and one is a personal credit card. The business card does not offer a free night certificate, but the personal World of Hyatt Credit Card does.

World of Hyatt Credit Card

The World of Hyatt Credit Card is a card issued by Chase. It has a $95 annual fee, but in exchange for the annual fee, you will receive a category 1-4 free night certificate. I find it fairly easy to book a hotel with these certificates that would normally cost between $200 and $300. In addition to the free night certificate, the cardholder will also receive:

  • Discoverist Elite Status (2nd lowest of 4 status levels)
  • 5 Elite Qualifying Nights
  • Additional category 1-4 certificate when you spend $15,000 on the card in a year

Marriott Bonvoy

The Marriott Bonvoy program has 6 credit cards, and all but one come with an annual free night certificate. The Marriott Bold credit card doesn’t come with a free night certificate, but it also doesn’t have an annual fee. The rest of the Marriott credit cards have a variety of annual fees as well as benefits and free night certificates. Marriott’s free night certificates allow you to use up to 15,000 Marriott Bonvoy points on top of the value of the certificate. This means that if a hotel is just a little too expensive to book with a certificate, you can add some points to make the stay work.

Marriott Bonvoy Boundless Card

The Marriott Bonvoy Boundless Credit Card is issued by Chase Bank and has a $95 annual fee. It comes with a free night certificate worth up to 35,000 Marriott Bonvoy points. I generally find it pretty easy to find a hotel that typically costs between $150 and $250 per night where these certificates work. In addition to the free night certificate, the cardholder will receive:

  • Silver Elite Status (lowest of 5 status levels)
  • 15 elite qualifying nights
  • 1 elite night for every $5,000 spent on the credit card

Marriott Bonvoy Business American Express Card

The Marriott Bonvoy Business American Express card has an annual fee of $125. Like the Marriott Bonvoy Boundless card, it comes with a free night certificate worth up to 35,000 points. In addition to the free night certificate, the cardholder will receive:

  • Gold Elite Status (2nd lowest of 5 status levels)
  • 15 elite qualifying nights

Marriott Bonvoy Bountiful Card

The Marriott Bonvoy Bountiful card is issued by Chase Bank and has an annual fee of $250. It receives a 50,000-point annual free night certificate. That certificate can be redeemed for a hotel that would probably cost $300 to $400. In addition to the free night certificate, the cardholder will receive:

  • Gold Elite status (2nd lowest of 5 status levels)
  • 15 elite qualifying nights
  • 1,000 bonus Bonvoy points with each qualifying stay

Marriott Bonvoy Bevy American Express Card

The Marriott Bonvoy Bevy card is issued by American Express and has an annual fee of $250. Like the Bountiful card, it also receives an annual 50,000-point free night certificate. Also, like the Bountiful card, the cardholder will receive:

  • Gold Elite status (2nd lowest of 5 status levels)
  • 15 elite qualifying nights
  • 1,000 bonus Bonvoy points with each qualifying stay

Marriott Bonvoy Brilliant American Express Card

The Marriott Bonvoy Brilliant card is issued by American Express and has a whopping annual fee of $650. This card comes with an annual 85,000-point free night certificate. That can be used on a luxury hotel stay, probably somewhere in the $500 to $800 range. In addition to the free night certificate, the cardholder will receive:

  • Platinum Elite Status (3rd highest of 5 status levels)
  • 25 elite qualifying nights
  • Priority Pass membership with 2 guests
  • $25 per month dining credit
  • Global Entry Fee Credit

Hilton

Hilton has four credit cards that are all issued through American Express. Only one of these cards has a free night certificate as a perk. The Hilton Honors and Hilton Business card don’t have any ability to earn a free night certificate, but the Hilton Surpass can earn a certificate after $15,000 in spend in a calendar year. That might seem like a lot of money to spend on a card just to earn a free night certificate, but Hilton certificates are uncapped. This means if you have your heart set on spending an evening in an ultra-premium hotel and being completely pampered, one certificate can get you there. Upgraded points has a great post on how to completely maximize the value of those certificates.

Hilton Honors Aspire American Express Card

The Hilton Honors Aspire card is issued by American Express and is a premium credit card with a $550 annual fee. It does come with an uncapped annual free night certificate that can be used on amazing ultra-premium hotels. In addition to the free night certificate, the cardholder will receive:

  • Diamond Status (highest of 3 Hilton status levels)
  • $400 Hilton Resort credit ($200 semi-annually)
  • $200 flight credit ($50 annually)
  • Clear Plus credit

IHG

IHG has three credit cards, with two offering annual free night certificates. The IHG One Rewards Traveler card has no annual fee and doesn’t come with a free night certificate. The free night certificates that are issued by IHG are worth up to 40,000 points and can be topped off. That means if the hotel room you really want costs 60,000 points, you can use a certificate and 20,000 points. For a 40,000-point certificate, you can generally expect to be able to book a hotel that would cost $150-$200.

IHG One Rewards Premier

The IHG One Rewards Premier credit card is issued by Chase Bank and has an annual fee of $99. It comes with an annual free night certificate worth up to 40,000 IHG points. Besides the annual free night certificate, the cardholder will receive:

  • Platinum Elite Status (2nd highest of 4 levels)
  • Fourth night free on award stays
  • Up to $50 per year United Travel Bank Credit

IHG One Rewards Premier Business Card

The IHG One Rewards Premier Business card is pretty much the same as the IHG One Rewards Premier card, but for businesses. It has an annual fee of $99 and comes with a free night certificate worth up to 40,000 IHG points. In addition to the free night certificate, the cardholder will receive:

  • Platinum Elite Status (2nd Highest of 4 levels)
  • Fourth night free on award stays
  • Up to $50 per year United Travel Bank Credit

Wyndham

With a collection of brands like Super 8, Travelodge, and Ramada, Wyndham Rewards isn’t the sexiest program on this list, but it is solid. Barclays issues 3 credit cards for Wyndham with impressive earning rates, especially on gas purchases. The Wyndham Earner card earns 5x on gas, the Wyndham Rewards Earner Plus card earns 6x on gas, and the Wyndham Business Earner card earns a whopping 8x on gas and 5x on utilities.

None of these cards issues a free night certificate per se, but they do issue points on an annual basis, which, unlike a free night certificate, don’t expire. The Wyndham Earner card has no annual fee and doesn’t earn any annual bonus points. However, the other two cards do issue annual bonus points.

Wyndham Rewards Earner Plus Card

The Wyndham Rewards Earner Plus card has an annual fee of $75 and earns 7,500 points each anniversary year. 7,500 points can typically book a room worth around $60 to $90. In addition to the 7,500 points, the cardholder will receive:

  • Platinum Status (2nd Highest of 4 levels)
  • 10% Discount on Free Night Awards

Wyndham Business Earner Card

The Wyndham Business Earner Card has an annual fee of $95 and earns 15,000 points each anniversary year. 15,000 Wyndham points can typically book a room worth between $125 and $200. In addition to the 15,000 points, the cardholder will receive:

  • Platinum Status (2nd Highest of 4 levels)
  • 10% Discount on Free Night Awards

Choice

Like Wyndham, many of the brands that Choice is famous for are low-end hotels, such as Travelodge and Rodeway Inn. They do have some nicer brands, such as Cambria and the Ascend Collection. Choice has two credit cards, which are issued by Wells Fargo: The fee-free card called the Wells Fargo Choice Privileges Mastercard and the Wells Fargo Choice Privileges Mastercard Select.

Wells Fargo Choice Privileges Mastercard Select

The Wells Fargo Choice Privileges Mastercard Select has a $95 annual fee. While it doesn’t come with a free-night certificate, the cardholder gets 30,000 Choice Privileges points every anniversary year. That number of points can book a hotel worth somewhere in the $125 to $200 range. Since they are points and not a certificate, you could also use them to book two nights at a less expensive hotel. Besides the free night certificate, the cardholder will receive:

  • Platinum Status (2nd highest of 4 levels)
  • Cell Phone protection (up to $800 per claim)

My thoughts

I love having free night certificates ready for me to use. Typically, we tend to stay in vacation rentals, but we like to use certificates to book one or two-night stays. If the place we wish to go to doesn’t have a major airport or is difficult to get to in one day, we like to stay for a night or two in a city with direct flights to the US like London, Madrid, or Amsterdam as a way of adding a little extra excitement to our trip and a good way to get over jet lag. Being able to book a hotel for free (or essentially the cost of the annual fee) is clutch in these circumstances.

We typically aren’t too picky when it comes to where we stay, as long as the location is good. We don’t spend a lot of time in the hotel when we are traveling, since there is always so much to see, drink, and eat in these locations. For these reasons, the credit cards that work best for our purposes (in order of my favorites) include:

  • World of Hyatt Card
  • Marriott Bonvoy Boundless Card
  • IHG Premier Card
  • IHG Premier Business Card
  • Marriott Bonvoy American Express Business Card
  • Wyndham Business Earner Card
  • Choice Privileges Select

The most expensive card on this list has a $125 annual fee, and I think that it’s pretty easy with each of these cards to get at least the value of the annual fee back. Usually, better, especially the ones higher on the list.

The ones I left off are ones where I think you basically need to be using the other benefits of the cards to make them worth the annual fee. They are also great if you need higher value certificates because you want to stay at luxury hotels. If your goal is to stay at luxury hotels and utilize status, your best bets are:

  • Hilton Honors Aspire Card
  • Marriott Bonvoy Brilliant Card
  • Marriott Bonvoy Bountiful Card
  • Marriott Bonvoy Bevy Card

Free night certificates can be a great way to enhance your travels. My suggestion is to take advantage of elevated sign-up bonuses on those cards when they are available and then hold onto them if you find the certificates to be worthwhile.

Vacasa and Wyndham are Divorcing, Now What?

Posted on by David Cox

Recently, the news broke that starting November 30th, 2025, Wyndham points will no longer be redeemable for Vacasa vacation rentals. Earlier this year, Casago, a vacation rental management company purchased Vacasa. Casago apparently didn’t like the arrangement with Wyndham and now has ended it.

What was the Vacasa/Wyndham Partnership?

Vacasa had a deal with Wyndham, which allowed people to rent vacation rentals that were posted on the Vacasa website with Wyndham points. Originally, they charged 15,000 Wyndham points per bedroom per night up to $500 per night, but eventually shrank that to $250 per bedroom per night. What that essentially meant was that for a one-bedroom vacation rental, if its cash rate was less than $250 per night, you could rent that for 15,000 Wyndham points per night. If it was a two-bedroom vacation rental with a cash rate under $500 per night, you could rent that for 30,000 Wyndham points per night.

View from Vacasa Jenn stayed at in Playa del Carmen

This was a tremendous deal, but it was made even better with the fact that Wyndham has one of the best/quirkiest business credit cards available. The Wyndham Business Earner card earns 5 points per dollar on utilities and 8 points per dollar at gas stations. At 8 points per dollar at gas stations, it’s not hard to imagine that someone who drives a lot could earn a ton of Wyndham points quickly. Holding that card also meant you got a 10% discount on points redemptions, making those Vacasa rentals 13,500 Wyndham points instead of 15,000 points.

For us, it was a way to quickly accumulate a lot of points that we could use for a vacation rental. We had actually booked with Vacasa using Wyndham points twice, once for a beachfront condo in Playa del Carmen and once for a condo in Nashville. Both were tremendous deals. In general, we prefer vacation rentals over hotels when they are available, and now the best method for booking them with points is no longer available.

What are the Alternatives?

Some partnerships could potentially be interesting. Hyatt has a Homes & Hideaways vacation rental program, and Choice has a partnership with Bluegreen Vacations, but both of those seem really limited in terms of properties. Marriott Homes and Villas has quite a few properties, but given the number of points needed to book a stay there, I wouldn’t even consider using points for it. I would consider paying for a Marriott Homes and Villas to earn Marriott points though.

If you can find vacation rentals through one of the bank travel portals, such as Amex Travel, Chase Travel, or Capital One Travel, you could potentially book on points that way. To be honest, though, nothing is really going to replace the Wyndham/Vacasa partnership. It was just a great way to get value for Wyndham points and rent a vacation rental for no out-of-pocket cost.

What am I to do with all these Wyndham Points?

One of the things that is painful about this is that we’ve been earning 2,000 to 3,000 Wyndham points monthly on the Wyndham Business Earner card, thinking that we would at some point book a Vacasa when we were vacationing in Mexico or the US (Vacasa doesn’t operate in Europe, where our recent vacations have been). Now we have close to 100,000 Wyndham points that would have gone a long way with Vacasa. Now what? Am I stuck with a bunch of points that are only good at places like Travelodge, Super 8, and La Quinta?

Ok, let’s be honest, Wyndham hotels aren’t typically high-end hotels. It’s known for its no-frills brands. That being said, Wyndham has been trying to expand its portfolio of hotels to include all-inclusive resorts in their Alltra brand as well as a boutique brand called the Registry Collection.

This appears to be working, as I was able to find several hotels in areas where luxury and all-inclusive hotels are typically located. There are nine all-inclusive resorts in the Riviera Maya area in Mexico alone, most of which were bookable for only 30,000 Wyndham points.

Additionally, they offer Club Wyndham, a timeshare organization that allows individuals to book select properties. Although most of those apartments will be occupied by timeshare owners, some are available for rent with cash or points.

Personally, I have a feeling we will be leaning toward an occasional all-inclusive stay. For 30,000 Wyndham points per night for many of those resorts, a couple of nights testing my liver at the pool sounds like a good use of all of those hard-earned Wyndham points.

Conclusion

The ending of the relationship between Wyndham and Vacasa is quite a bummer. There isn’t a good alternative way to book a vacation rental property at a good value using points. Since that was my primary reason for accumulating Wyndham points, I really thought long and hard about whether I would just use up what points we have left and abandon the program.

The problem with that thought is that the Wyndham Business Earner card earns 8x on gas and 5x on Utilities, which is so good that I would almost have to have no other use for the points to stop using that credit card. The earnings are too good, I just need to find a decent use for those points.

For the time being, I think we will try using them on all-inclusive resorts, and if we don’t like the quality, then we will have to use them on random hotel stays. For now, I think that’s okay, but I’m just not happy about this.

United Airlines adds European Routes for Experienced Travelers

Posted on by David Cox

Airlines make announcements about new routes all the time, and most of them don’t interest me very much, but the latest press release about United expanding its seasonal routes in Europe piqued my interest. These new routes seem to be targeting American tourists who have been to Europe, perhaps multiple times, and are looking for something a little different than the normal European stops like Paris, London, or Rome.

The destinations they have chosen to expand to are places that would be on a bucket list for experienced travelers. They definitely speak to me personally, since each one of these are places where I would like to visit.

Glasgow, Scotland

Starting on May 8th, United will start a daily flight from Newark to Glasgow, Scotland. This is probably the least quirky of the destinations that United picked. Scotland is a destination that I could imagine someone traveling to on their first big international trip. The cultural and language similarities to the United States make it an easier trip. It would also appeal to people who didn’t want to visit a huge European city like London or Paris.

Glasgow and nearby Edinburgh are Scotland’s population and cultural centers. They are less than an hour’s train ride apart, making it easy to visit both cities on the same trip. Around Glasgow, there are also many castles to visit, such as Stirling Castle, Doune Castle, and Bothwell Castle.

You can also take the train from Edinburgh or Glasgow through the Scottish highlands. I once asked a Scotsman where he would recommend going if I were to visit Scotland and he was practically gushing about how beautiful train trips through the highlands are. I will definitely be taking his advise on that someday.

Glasgow, I believe, will appeal to more Americans as a destination than the other new destinations that were unveiled by United. The others may be a little more obscure, but they are fantastic destinations.

Bari, Italy

Have you ever found yourself dining outdoors at a restaurant in Florence or Rome and thought “I wish the food was better in Italy?” Probably not, but apparently the region of Puglia in Italy has food that puts other Italian food to shame. I’m not sure how this is possible, but I’m willing to give it a try.

Bari is located on the heel of the boot of Italy, along the Adriatic Sea. It is famous for its beaches, focaccia, pasta, and polenta.

From Bari, it’s about an hour by car to Alberobello, a UNESCO world heritage site known for its Trulli houses. These are unique structures made of limestone with conical roofs.

Bari is less of a tourist trap than other parts of Italy, such as Rome, Florence or Venice. This might make things a little more complicated for people who don’t speak Italian, but it is a great way to experience more authentic Italy than those major tourist destinations.

United will begin flying to Bari four times a week beginning May 1st, 2026.

Split, Croatia

https://www.ricksteves.com/europe/croatia/split has some fantastic information about Split

As the memory of the Yugoslav Wars that took place from 1991 to 2001 fade from memory, the Balkan countries have received more and more attention for being great tourist destinations. Split, Croatia has become a popular destination for its beautiful city as well as the crystal clear, deep blue waters of the Adriatic.

From Split, you can use ferries to go to some of the amazing islands in the Adriatic, such as Brac, Vis, Bol, Korcula and Milna. You can also take the opportunity to visit the beautiful walled city of Dubrovnik.

Croatia has been growing in popularity for a while now and its no surprise to me that United Airlines wants to capitalize on the growing popularity. It’s an absolutely beautiful country, and its been on my short list for a while.

Starting April 30th, United begins seasonal direct flights from Newark to Split.

Santiago de Compostela

Santiago de Compostela is a fairly small community in the Galicia region of Spain. It has a population of around 100,000, The reason United Airlines would be interested in bringing direct flights there, however, is because it’s where the Camino de Santiago ends.

The Santiago de Compostela Archcathedral Basilica is the end point for all of the Camino de Santiago routes.

The Camino is a unique cultural experience. It consists of hiking one of multiple routes, the most famous is the French Way which starts in France and continues across Northern Spain to Santiago de Compostela. Some of these routes take over a month to complete and others a couple of weeks. Pilgrims, however, can choose to start their journey from anywhere and an official pilgrimage is anything more than 100 kilometers that ends at the Cathedral in Santiago de Compostela. Along the way there are hotels or hostels to stay at as well as a variety of pilgrim-friendly restaurants.

We had the pleasure of spending 6 days on the Portuguese route this spring and we met so many people who had done multiple Caminos. It’s an amazing way to see the Spanish countryside and really experience Galician hospitality.

For those brave souls who wish to participate in the Camino, United Airlines will start service three times per week from Newark to Santiago de Compostela on May 22nd, 2026 and continues through September 20th.

Flights out of Newark

So the good news is that these are amazing destinations but the bad news is they all originate in Newark. The Newark Airport has had all kinds of problems and I typically try to avoid flying out of there when possible. Since Newark completed reconstruction of a runway in June, I haven’t heard of as many issues in that airport, so hopefully service out of Newark is improving.

Newark has connections to more than 100 US cities on United, so you shouldn’t have too much difficulty finding connecting flights. This should make these flights accessible for much of the United States.

Award Prices

Right now, the award pricing on these flights are fairly elevated. This isn’t a surprise, since these are new routes. In the future, I would expect some award prices of these flights to dip down to United’s saver rates of around 40,000 points one-way for a flight to Europe. If you see those saver rates on one of these flights, I would also check Singapore Airlines. Often, you can book the exact same flight, if it’s a United saver award, for only 30,500 points. For more information, I have a post about how to use the Singapore Airlines partnership.

It’s also easier to get Singapore miles since they transfer from Citi Thank You points, Chase Ultimate Reward points, American Express Membership Reward points, a Capital One Venture miles. United miles can only be transferred from Chase Ultimate Rewards.

Conclusion

These newly added seasonal routes for United add great direct flights from the United States to amazing destinations that are on the radar for people who have a little experience going to Europe and would like to try something a little different. These are all fantastic choices and would make for a great vacation. These destinations certainly have me thinking about future trips.

Simplify Your Travel in Germany with the Deutschland Ticket

Posted on by David Cox

If you are traveling to Germany, you might be surprised to find out that your best public transportation option might just be a program developed for German citizens. The Deutschland Ticket or D-Ticket was first introduced in May 2023 as a joint venture between the German government and the individual regions within Germany. The original cost was 49 Euros, which was raised to 58 Euros in January 2025.

What is the Deutschland Ticket?

Deutschland Ticket is a subscription service that allows you to travel on virtually any public transportation system in Germany for one price. This eliminates the need to navigate multiple apps and ticketing systems for different public transportation systems in Germany. The service covers buses, trams, subways, and trains throughout Germany.

The Deutschland Ticket doesn’t, however, cover travel between cities. This means that long-distance buses such as Flixbus or Intercity Express (ICE), Intercity (IC), or Eurocity (EC) trains are not included. For example, when my son and I were in Germany recently, we had to purchase separate tickets for travel between Dresden and Berlin.

My Experience with the Deutschland Ticket

When I was planning our trip to Germany this summer, the plan was to spend six nights in Dresden and two nights in Berlin. We were also going to visit Saxon Switzerland National Park for a few days while staying in Dresden.

What this meant for me was that I needed to figure out how to navigate as well as purchase tickets for three separate transportation systems in Berlin, Dresden, and Saxon Switzerland National Park. That is a giant headache to deal with because if you don’t want to overspend on tickets, you need to know how much you plan to use that system. Should I get a single-day pass, a single-journey pass, or a week pass? How many fare zones do I plan to travel in? It can get overwhelming in a hurry.

For example, on the Dresden Public Transportation website, there is a map, ironically labeled “Fare Zones made easy,” showing the 21 fare zones in the Dresden Public Transportation system. That’s right, 21 zones. The prices vary depending on how many zones you plan to travel in.

Dresden Zone Map from the Dresden Public Transportation website.

I spent a considerable amount of time trying to figure out that I would need to purchase a ticket that was good for a week in two zones, plus Dresden. For a week, that would have cost almost 45 Euros per person. That also limited us to just part of the system around Dresden.

On top of that, I was going to need to buy tickets in Berlin as well as inside Saxon Switzerland National Park. I knew that the Deutschland Ticket was only 58 Euros, so it didn’t take me too long to realize that it was going to be cheaper and much simpler to just buy the D-ticket.

In practice, it was a huge relief to have the Deutschland Ticket. I didn’t spend any time worrying about whether or not my ticket was valid for any place I wanted to go. If it was public transportation, it was covered – all I needed to worry about was which train, tram, or bus to take.

This actually expanded where we traveled because we decided at the last minute to visit Meissen, which would have been in a fare zone not covered by the Dresden week pass. Having the pass meant that we actually went the full length of the train system from Meissen to the Czech border, which is about 50 miles apart. Knowing that was all covered by one ticket was incredibly valuable.

The Simplicity of the D-Ticket

The best thing about holding the Deutschland Ticket is the fact that it simplifies your experience on German public transportation. Purchasing separate tickets for each city means that you will need that city’s phone app in order to purchase tickets and view routes. If you purchase the D-Ticket, however, you can buy it on any of those apps you choose, and you only need that one app, not a different app when you visit a new city. The QR code on that app works anywhere the D-Ticket is valid.

In fact, we weren’t visiting Munich, but I already had that app on my phone, so I purchased my ticket using that app. Whenever I needed to show my ticket while I was in Dresden, Berlin, or in Saxon Switzerland National Park, I simply opened the Munich app and flashed the QR code. It really simplified things for us. Meanwhile, for routes and times, we used the transit features within Apple Maps.

The Deutschland Ticket is a Subscription Service

There are some downsides to using the D-Ticket that might keep you from wanting to use it. The negatives revolve around it being a subscription service that renews at the end of the month. While the ticket is allowed for use by tourists, it’s generally meant for use by residents. So the rules are set up for residents, not tourists.

The first issue is that it renews at the beginning of the month. This means that if you are planning a trip that starts in one month and ends in the next month, you will end up paying the 58 Euro subscription fee twice. If you are only visiting Germany for a week and have to pay 116 Euros, you might rethink the D-Ticket.

The other problem is that you really need to plan ahead. It is required that you cancel your subscription before the 10th of the previous month. For example, if you are going to Germany from October 15th to October 25th, you need to purchase the ticket between September 1st and September 9th, and then cancel the subscription before the 10th. It seems counterintuitive to cancel something before you start to use it, but once you’ve purchased the Deutschland Ticket you have that ticket for the next month.

All purchases are final, and you can purchase the Deutschland Ticket in the same month that you use it, but you won’t be able to cancel it for the first month. In other words, if you don’t plan ahead, you will be required to purchase it for two months.

Purchasing the Deutschland Ticket

The actual purchasing of the Deutschland Ticket is fairly easy. I used the MVV app which is Munich’s public transportation phone app. You can find the Deutschland Ticket subscription in the Ticketshop tab at the bottom of the screen. Once you are there, select Deutschland Ticket Subscription.

Once you get to that point, all you need to do is enter your payment method (they accept US credit cards), and complete the payment.

If you are only trying to purchase your ticket for one month, you must remember to purchase and cancel the ticket before the tenth of the previous month otherwise you will be charged for a second month.

Conclusion

The Deutschland Ticket is a great way for tourists, especially those visiting multiple German cities, to simplify their public transportation needs. You can travel on virtually all forms of public transport within cities, hold only one ticket, and use only one app.

It’s very likely it will save you money on your trip as well, since purchasing individual tickets or day/week passes can add up quickly. The biggest headache is managing the subscription. But if you make sure you understand the subscription rules and are able to purchase and cancel the subscription within the correct time period, you’ll be thankful you had it.

American Airlines makes Citi Thank You Points Much More Valuable

Posted on by David Cox

In a widely expected move, American Airlines is now a transfer partner from Citi Thank You Points. Rumors have been circulating since it was announced that American Airlines was phasing out its Barclay’s credit cards and signing an exclusive deal with Citibank. Finally, Citibank has added American Airlines to its Thank You Points transfer page, making those points much more valuable.

How This Transfer Partnership Works

People who hold a Citi Strata Premier, Citi Prestige, or Citi Strata Elite credit card can now transfer Citi Thank You Points to American Airlines AAdvantage Miles at a 1:1 ratio. Adding a coveted transfer partner makes any Citi Thank You Points much more valuable, especially since Citi is the only bank that transfers its points to American Airlines.

In addition, this also means that as long as you hold one of those cards, any points earned with a Citi credit card that earns Thank You Points, such as the Double Cash or Custom Cash, can also become AAdvantage Miles. This is because you can combine your Thank You Points and then transfer them to any of 15 airline partners or 5 hotel partners.

The reason why transferring points is so important is that in many cases, you can book hotels and flights with fewer points when you transfer them to a hotel or airline loyalty program. Even better, if what you’re looking for is actually a better deal to book with points through a travel portal, you have that option as well.

Domestic Airlines are (Mostly) Monogamous

Many international airline programs, like Air France/KLM Flying Blue, Avianca Lifemiles, and Air Canada Aeroplan, are polyamorous, allowing transfer partners from multiple bank points programs. For example, Flying Blue allows transfers from Chase, Citibank, American Express, Capital One, Bilt, and Wells Fargo. This is extremely common for international programs. Even Virgin Atlantic, despite its name, is a bit of a swinger.

Airlines based in the United States aren’t the swinging type; by comparison, they’re mostly monogamous. Delta Airlines only allows transfers from American Express Membership Rewards, American Airlines only allows transfers from Citi, and Alaska Airlines allows transfers from Bilt Rewards.

There are three airlines that, however, that aren’t exclusive. Southwest Airlines and United Airlines allow transfers from both Chase and Bilt, while JetBlue allows transfers from Citi, Chase, and American Express.

Your Airline Preferences Matter

Because of several factors, such as route networks, hub locations, award pricing, or just which airline you prefer, you should earn points that transfer to the airline that works best for you. For example, I know people who absolutely love Southwest Airlines. They fly a ton of flights out of Midway Airport in Chicago, which is an airport that isn’t far from where we live. Unfortunately, we do a lot of our flying to Europe, and Southwest Airlines doesn’t fly to Europe. We’re just not going to use it.

United Airlines flies to Europe and has a great network there, but generally, I find that it takes a lot of United miles to book a flight to Europe. Also, even though they fly out of my small home airport in Moline, the point prices for United flights out of Moline are extremely high.

Delta Skymiles is probably the most popular airline award currency in the world, but I struggle to find good value with Delta. They overcharge for one-way flights, and usually it’s difficult to find competitive pricing for round-trip tickets as well. That being said, I do occasionally find a great deal, and did recently book round-trip tickets in the summer for a little over 40,000 points each to Berlin. Unfortunately, those deals are not the easiest to find, and I don’t consistently find good value with Delta.

American Airlines, however, has a lot of great flights out of our local airport to Europe and some for extremely low prices, in points. In September, we are flying to Nice, France, from our local airport for only 19,000 AAdvantage miles each, and we were able to find a flight home from Dublin for only 19,000 miles as well. I have also seen several flights to Italy, Spain, and England for only 19,000 miles. Overall, it’s just a program that works well for us.

Those airline miles aren’t created equal either. The Points Guy does valuations each month, which look at the price of flights in miles and compare it to the price in cash for the same flights. In July 2025, the values of those domestic airline miles are:

  • Delta Skymiles- 1.15 cents per point
  • United Mileage Plus- 1.3 cents per point
  • Southwest Rapid Rewards- 1.4 cents per point
  • JetBlue TrueBlue – 1.45 cents per point
  • Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan- 1.5 cents per point
  • American Airlines AAdvantage – 1.55 cents per point

As you can see, according to the Points Guy, AAdvantage miles are the most valuable of the domestic airline currencies, so having an additional way to earn those miles is a very good thing.

This Will Shift My Focus to Citi

Lately, I’ve been concentrating on earning American Express Membership Reward Points and Chase Ultimate Rewards. That’s because they have excellent ways of earning points, and they have great transfer partners. Both have great ways of accumulating points through sign up bonuses and cards with great earning rates.

For example, we put all our internet and cell phone charges on our Chase Ink Cash card because it earns 5x in those categories. Also, as much as possible, we use our Amex Gold Card for restaurants and grocery stores because they earn 4x in those categories. Those are both great ways to accumulate a lot of points without sign up bonuses.

However, with Citi, I have a Custom Cash card which earns 5x on all spending in your top category, up to $500 in a billing cycle. This means that if you pick a category that you can come close to spending $500 on each month and only use it in that category, you can accumulate 2,500 Citi Thank You points each month without a lot of spending. I haven’t been doing that, however, because I just wasn’t that excited about accumulating Citi Thank You Points.

The partnership with American Airlines changes that. Because AAdvantage miles are very valuable to me, I will be going out of my way to earn Citi Thank You Points so I have points available to transfer to American Airlines.

Current Citi Strata Travel Credit Cards

Now that Citibank has revamped its travel cards, they are currently offering three different credit cards that all earn Citi Thank You Points: one is an entry-level card, one is a travel card, and one is a premium travel card.

Citi Strata Card

This is the entry-level travel card, and it is a pretty good starter card. It has no annual fee and is currently offering a 30,000-point welcome offer if you spend $1,000 in 3 months. For being a no annual fee card, it has tremendous bonus categories including 5x on travel through the Citi Travel Portal, 3x at supermarkets, 3x on gas and EV stations, 3x on a self-selected category, 2x on dining, and 1x everywhere else.

The downside is that it has a limited number of transfer partners (Does not allow transfers to AAdvantage), and those points transfer at a worse ratio. You could however, hold onto those points until you get a Citi credit card with a better transfer ratio, or perhaps transfer those points to a family member who holds a Citi credit card with better transfer options and have them book flights or hotels for you.

Citi Strata Premier

The Citi Strata Premier is a great travel credit card. It has a $95 annual fee and is currently offering a 60,000-point bonus if you spend $4,000 in the first 3 months. It offers 10x on hotels, attractions, and car rentals booked through the Citi Travel Portal, 3x on other air and hotel purchases, 3x on supermarkets, 3x on restaurants, 3x on gas and EV Charging stations, and 1x on everything else.

Unlike the Citi Strata Card, the Citi Strata Premier transfers to all of Citi’s partners at the best transfer rate that Citi offers. This also includes the 1:1 ratio to American Airlines. In addition, the Citi Strata Premier also offers a variety of benefits, including trip delay coverage, trip cancellation, and protection insurance, lost and damaged luggage coverage, and some car rental coverage.

Citi Strata Elite

The Citi Strata Elite is a brand-new premium credit card offering from Citibank with a $595 annual fee. It is currently offering an 80,000 point bonus when you spend $4,000 on the card in the first 3 months. It earns 12x on hotels, car rentals, and attractions booked through the Citi Travel Portal, 6x on air travel through the Citi Travel Portal, 6x on dining on Friday and Saturday nights, 3x on dining other nights, as well as 1.5x on all other purchases.

To compensate for the high annual fee, it offers $300 per year in hotel credits, $200 on an annual splurge credit, $200 Blacklane credit, a Priority Pass Select Membership, 4 American Airlines Admirals Club Lounge passes, as well as a $120 Global Entry or TSA pre-check credit.

My Favorite Strata Card

In my opinion, the Citi Strata Premier Card is the best of this group. The 3x categories of groceries, dining, and gas can help users accumulate a lot of points quickly. It has access to all of the transfer partners that the Citi Strata Elite card does, but with a $95 annual fee instead of a $595 annual fee. Also, I don’t find the credits on the Strata Elite to be enticing enough to pay an extra $500 on an annual fee. The only reason I would consider the Strata Elite is if I were a very frequent flyer, and I used those lounge passes a lot.

Being Strategic about Your Credit Card Choices

The points and miles world is extremely complicated. There are multiple banks with multiple cards, and each comes with different earning rates, benefits, and transfer partners. If you wish to turn all of your everyday purchases into great vacations, it’s important to try to be as strategic as possible.

For travel hackers who are using points to supercharge their travel, they must use the points programs that fit their travel plans the best. That really means working backwards from the destinations that you would like to visit, figuring out the best airlines that service those destinations from where they live, and then trying to figure out the best way to earn points to use with that airline. If American Airlines miles are a good fit for your travel plans, then this new partnership with Citi is a very exciting development.

The Aer Lingus Avios Sweet Spot Nobody Talks About

Posted on by David Cox

Aer Lingus Avios is a tremendous program that almost nobody in the points and miles community talks about. The program is great because it provides a predictably great value on award flights. It is also easy to accumulate points because of its great transfer partners. What makes it fly under the radar, however, is that it is a confusing website and is not scanned by award websites like awardtool.com and pointsyeah.com.

Not Kidding – This Website is Terrible

One of the main reasons people don’t pay attention to this program is that the website is just horrible. For instance, you would think that if you logged into the website and then went to book a flight, you would be able to toggle between paying with Aer Lingus Avios and paying with cash. You would think this because almost every other airline has this feature on their website—not Aer Lingus, however.

This is the normal interface for the website, but there isn’t an option to pay with points.

Instead, you need to click on the AerClub tab at the top and under the “Spend Avios” section, select “Book a Reward Flight”.

When you click on “Book an Award Flight”, you would expect it to take you to a page where you could book an award flight. Unfortunately, you need to find the little button that says “Buy a Reward Flight,” which is about halfway down the page after a bunch of information about the kinds of flights that you can book with Avios.

Once you do that, there will finally be an interface to allow you to search for an award flight. Just type in the airport that you wish to depart from and the airport that you want to arrive at, as well as the date, and then click the “search flights” button.

That sounds easy enough, but the problem is that for some reason, you can only search for direct flights. For instance, I can search from Chicago to Dublin. I can also search from Dublin to Edinburgh, because both of those are direct flights. What I can’t do is search from Chicago to Edinburgh, because there would be a stop in Dublin. That’s utterly insane. I cannot think of another airline website that is unable to book an award flight with a stop. It’s non-stop flights or nothing.

How A Limitation Can Be an Advantage

This limitation, though, can be used to your advantage. I am a huge fan of stopover flights and because you need to book all of the awards as separate itineraries, that makes stopovers simple.

Let’s look at the above example. I want to fly from Chicago to Edinburgh, Scotland, and do it on points. Clearly, I can’t book it as one itinerary, because the website only allows for non-stop flights. However, that does mean that I can break the two segments up into separate days and instead plan a stopover in Dublin for a day or two. Now, instead of flying directly into Edinburgh, I can stop for a day or two, visit Dublin Castle, have a couple of Guinness stouts, and adjust to the jet lag before moving on to Edinburgh. Stopovers are a fun way of getting a little extra out of a vacation.

Unfortunately, that means that if you are planning to fly from America to Europe using Aer Lingus, you will need to fly from one of the few cities in North America that have a direct flight to Dublin or Shannon. There are a couple of dozen American cities that you can fly to Ireland on using Aer Lingus, and Flight Connections is a great way to find out where those airports are that connect via Aer Lingus.

Award Flights are Consistently Available at Reasonable Prices

The Aer Lingus website is clunky and hard to use, but the payoff is predictable pricing and fairly consistently available awards, at least in economy. Aer Lingus has a distance-based award chart, and they seem to release five economy seats for each flight. I have no idea how many business class awards they release, because they are always sold out. If you find one, consider yourself extremely lucky.

The points charges for economy flights within Europe are pretty good, with flights from Ireland to the UK or within Ireland costing 4,000 Avios off-peak and 4,500 peak. From Ireland to most of Europe, it is 6,500 off-peak and 7,500 at peak. When you get a little further out, like Ireland to Greece, the Canary Islands, or Croatia, it gets up to 8,500 off-peak and 10,000 peak.

The calendar for peak/off-peak is also fairly generous, with peak pricing basically being summer and a few holiday-related dates the rest of the year.

Where this program gets extremely interesting, for Americans, is the fact that you can fly to Dublin from most of the Northeast and Midwest in the US for 13,000 miles off-peak and 20,000 miles peak. For destinations in Florida, Denver, and the US West Coast, it costs 16,250 miles off-peak and 25,000 miles peak. To view the full award chart, click on this link.

What this means, at least for me, is that you can use Dublin as a great launching point for trips from the US to different parts of Europe. I’ve been promising my family a Canary Islands trip for years and haven’t pulled it off yet. Using Aer Lingus Avios, we could fly to Tenerife during spring break, for 13,000 miles to Dublin. We could stopover in Dublin for a night or two and then get back on a plane and fly to Tenerife for 8,500 Avios. That’s a total of 21,500 Avios each for a pretty great flight itinerary.

You could do the same thing and end up in Munich for 19,500 Avios with a stopover in Dublin, or go to virtually any place in Ireland or the UK for only 17,000 Avios. That’s not unheard of, but the fact that it’s available most of the time on the Aer Lingus website makes it unique. It might not be available on the exact date you want to fly, but usually within a few days of when you want to fly.

Also, if you really need to fly on a Saturday, because you really can’t do a Tuesday-to-Tuesday trip, Aer Lingus offers the same good flight prices on the weekends as they do on any other day of the week. You might need to plan ahead and book early if you want to get those flights, however.

Aer Lingus Avios are Easy to Earn

Accumulating Avios is one of the easiest things you can do in travel hacking. You can transfer points directly from American Express Membership Rewards, Bilt Rewards, Chase Ultimate Rewards points, and Wells Fargo points. You can also transfer points from Citi Thank You points and Capital One by transferring to other Avios programs and then transferring to Aer Lingus Avios. In addition, Chase has three personal credit cards: the British Airways Visa Signature Card, the Iberia Visa Signature Credit Card, as well as the Aer Lingus Visa Signature Card, which earn Avios. There are also two credit cards issued by Cardless that earn Qatar Privilege Avios. If you earn Avios in any other program, like Iberia, you can just transfer those points to Aer Lingus at a 1:1 ratio.

All of those points can be consolidated into any Avios program. That probably makes Aer Lingus, as well as British Airways, Qatar Airlines, Finnair, and Iberia (all Avios programs), the easiest programs to accumulate points in. This means that not only will it not take a ton of points to book those flights, but it’s relatively easy to get those points.

Taxes and Fuel Surcharges are Relatively High

One thing that can be a little frustrating about the Aer Lingus program is that the taxes and fuel surcharges are relatively high. They’re not high compared to other European programs like Flying Blue or Virgin Atlantic, but compared to Alaska Airlines, American Airlines, Delta, or United, those fees are pretty high. At current exchange rates, a round-trip flight to Dublin from Chicago costs $299.71 in taxes and fuel surcharges. On an identical United flight itinerary, the taxes are $50.41.

US-based programs like Alaska, American, Delta, or United are going to charge much less in taxes and fuel surcharges, but the number of points needed will typically be much higher. In the United Airlines example that I mentioned earlier, the total number of points needed was 80,000 United miles round-trip, as opposed to the 26,000 points needed with Aer Lingus. So the question is, would you rather pay 26,000 points and $300 or 80,000 points and $50? That’s really an individual decision.

Why Aer Lingus For Transatlantic Flights is Clutch

Recently, the Chase Sapphire Preferred Card had a 100,000 Chase Ultimate Rewards Points bonus. This will probably be the most popular signup bonus for 2025. Anyone who signed up for this credit card and completed the $5,000 spend in 3 months necessary to get the bonus will be sitting on at least 105,000 Chase Ultimate Reward Points.

If you have a family of four that you would like to fly to Dublin from Chicago, in an off-peak time like September, for example, you could book that with Aer Lingus for 26,000 Avios and $300 each, for a total of 104,000 Aer Lingus Avios and $1,200. Those flights currently cost around $800 each, or around $3,200 total. Since the Avios needed to book those flights transfer from Chase Ultimate Reward Points at a 1:1 ratio, that means that this one signup bonus can ultimately save $2,000 on these flights.

One credit card signup and one transfer, and you can save $2,000 on flights to Dublin. That’s pretty good.

What Would I do?

In practice, when we travel to Europe, I prefer to have a destination that I want to go to and a stopover that’s a bonus. When Jenn and I visited Italy last fall, we had a stopover in Amsterdam that was a great add-on to the trip. That being said, I almost always book one-way flights. In order to keep the cost of the taxes and fuel surcharges down, I would probably book one of the one-way flights with one of the American carriers.

Let’s say I wanted to visit Prague in September. Alaska Air has a flight bookable with Alaska Miles (ironically, an Aer Lingus partner award) for 27,500 miles and $24. I would book that and then book a flight from Prague to Dublin using 6,500 Aer Lingus Avios and $32 as well as a flight from Dublin to Chicago for 13,000 Aer Lingus Avios and $167. That means that for 27,500 Alaska Miles, 19,500 Aer Lingus Avios, and $223, I can fly from Chicago and visit both Prague and Dublin. That’s a pretty solid itinerary for a fairly low price in points and dollars.

Don’t Overlook Aer Lingus

The Aer Lingus rewards program flies under the radar as a pretty great way to book inexpensive economy awards from the United States to Europe, especially Ireland and the UK. While the website can be a little clunky, and all of the award flights have to be booked as separate legs of direct flights, understanding the Aer Lingus program can yield amazing value.

The fact that everything has to be booked as non-stop flights means that you can add a day or two stopover in Dublin. This allows people to add an additional destination to a European vacation. Having to book separate legs could be an annoyance, or it could be a benefit. It’s really just a matter of how you look at it. That being said, 13,000 miles one-way from the northeast and midwest of the US is a deal that just amazing, and it’s basically standard with Aer Lingus.

It’s easy to overlook this program because if you are trying to find the best deal on award flights with a website like pointsyeah.com or awardtool.com you won’t find Aer Lingus awards. But don’t forget to go to Aer Lingus and see what’s available, especially if a trip to Ireland or at least a stopover would be desirable. It’s a great program that flies under the radar, so don’t ignore it.

Points and Miles has an Influencer Problem

Posted on by David Cox

I’ve been using points and miles to help me and my family travel for a little over three years now. In that time, I have been consuming large amounts of podcasts, blogs, and YouTube videos to learn how to maximize earning points and miles, as well as using those points and miles for maximum value. The information that I’ve gotten from these influencers has been invaluable in helping me set up my own strategies for travel, but lately, I have to admit, I’m getting annoyed.

I’m annoyed because many influencers present an unrealistic idea of what points and miles can do, especially for the average person. They also miss the point of what travel should be. I’m afraid people are paying attention to these influencers and not listening to what is best for themselves.

The Myth of Unlimited Points

There are three points and miles podcasts that I listen to on a regular basis. Every host on these podcasts takes multiple trips a year. These aren’t normal trips either; they are trips to Asia or Europe, and they fly their entire family in business class and stay in luxury hotels when they are there. They do this all on points. Listening to these conversations, the listener might think, “Maybe I can do this too?” Chances are, you can’t. These podcasters are spending millions of points per year, and that’s just not feasible for most people.

The podcasters fall into two categories: people who travel a lot for business and people with a lot of business spending. If you are a person who falls into one of these two categories, congratulations, you are going to have a lot of fun traveling on points. If you’re not, it gets considerably harder.

What really annoys me, however, are the ones who aren’t honest about this fact. I follow someone on Threads who, earlier this year, claimed that she had earned over 800,000 American Express Membership Rewards points on normal spend in three months. When pressed about it, she said that she had been getting 15x on a lot of purchases through Rakuten.

15x is pretty amazing but let’s, for the sake of argument, say that she got 20x on all her spending, which would be next to impossible, by the way. That would mean that she spent over $40,000 at 20x in 3 months to earn those points. That is not “normal” spending, and I guarantee she would have to spend way more than $40,000 to earn those points.

On one of the podcasts I listen to, a question was posed from a listener who asked how the hosts are earning all of their points. One of the hosts started talking about paying estimated taxes with a credit card, and while that will boost your point totals and help you earn signup bonuses, it doesn’t explain the number of points he must be earning to do the travel that he does.

I’m not saying that they aren’t earning a lot of points; I absolutely believe they are. However, can we be honest about how they are doing it? It’s not what they say. Here is how they are actually earning their points:

Lots of Business Spend

Many of these influencers are either owners of businesses that spend a lot of money on credit cards, or they are people who can spend and be reimbursed for expenses. This opens up the ability to earn a lot of points. This is especially true if you are a business traveler because that opens up the possibility of earning a lot of frequent flyer miles with airlines as well as lots of hotel points. It also opens up the possibility of earning status with those hotel and airline programs.

Manufactured Spend

A lot of points and miles people earn points and miles through manufactured spending. This comes in many forms, but generally it involves buying items, such as toys or gift cards, and then selling them for little or no profit. There are actually buyer’s groups that facilitate this for people who don’t actually want to handle the items themselves. There are all kinds of risks that are involved in doing this, including the fact that it’s frowned upon by credit card companies. This is probably why people don’t want to talk publicly about it. Understand, though, that there are a lot of folks doing this to boost their point totals.

Referral bonuses

For a lot of credit cards, you are offered a bonus for referring someone to apply for that card. These are generally limited to a certain number of referrals per card per year. For many of these cards, you can earn 100,000 points per year by referring applicants. If you have quite a few cards and a means to promote those referrals, like a blog or a YouTube channel, you can accumulate a lot of points and miles. However, for the average person, hounding all of your friends and family members to sign up for cards to earn a signup bonus may not make you very popular.

The Luxury Problem

Travel influencers are obsessed with luxury hotels. Hearing them talk about a Park Hyatt, a Ritz-Carlton, or an Andaz property makes me wonder if the only reason they traveled was to stay at that hotel. I understand that if you stay at a resort, you stay there because it’s the destination. But most of the time, the hotel shouldn’t be the destination.

We recently stayed in Madrid, where we used an IHG free night certificate that was good up to 60,000 points. We ended up staying at the Intercontinental Madrid, which was 59,000 points, so we maximized the value of the certificate. When we checked in, they double upgraded us because of Jenn’s status with IHG. The room was really nice, the service was great, but it was in the middle of the Financial District, and I would have preferred to be in an area with a bunch of tapas bars. In that case, maximizing the value of the certificate cost us the opportunity to be in a neighborhood that suited us better.

When we were in Amsterdam, we stayed at the Kimpton. It was a fun, quirky hotel with great service. When we checked in, they gave us $30 in bar credit because we used the Kimpton secret code, and Jenn had status with IHG. We didn’t use the credits. The reason why was simple – we were in Amsterdam! I don’t want to hang out at the hotel. I want to walk the canals and visit their bars and restaurants. We had a blast in Amsterdam, and all we did in the room was sleep.

At the end of the day, if you are out enjoying the place that you went to visit, the only thing that really matters is that you have a comfortable bed, a clean room, and a hot shower. Guess what? That’s nearly every hotel room. You don’t need to be that picky. If you have small kids and you will spend more time in the hotel because of naps, then maybe you want to be pickier, but for most people, what does it matter?

Flying in Economy is Fine

The obsession among points and miles people with flying in business class is ridiculous. Some of the comments from the folks I follow on Threads have been “I don’t care where I’m going as long as I turn left when I get on the plane,” and “Stop wasting your points on economy flights.” I mean, seriously, those are crazy statements. Are you only traveling so you can take a selfie in your lie-flat business class seat? That’s seriously weird.

I’ll tell you a little secret. When Jenn and I fly, she always wants an aisle seat, so if the seat arrangement is window, middle, aisle, I take the middle. I’m 6’2″, 220 pounds, and I can handle a 10-hour flight in the middle seat in economy just fine. The way influencers talk about economy seats, they act like they’re being stashed in the baggage hold under the plane.

Flying in economy is wasting my points? Really? At best, your business class flight costs twice the number of points that my economy class flight costs. That means that I can travel twice as often for the same number of points. The magic of flying is that I can be transported to a completely different part of the world in a matter of hours, it’s not that I can take a nap during the flight.

The Insanity of Positioning Flights

The worst part is the lengths people will go to get a business class flight. A good price on a business class flight is difficult to find. It’s so difficult that there is a term for a flight that you take to get to a business class flight. It’s called a positioning flight. In other words, you need to take a flight to get to the airport where your desired flight departs.

Typically, you want to fly a positioning flight the day before, that way if there is a delay on your positioning flight, you won’t miss the more important, business class flight. This is where, for me, the logic of doing this begins to break down.

Earlier this year, we booked flights from our home airport to Nice, France, for 19,000 American Airlines miles. Let’s say I have a friend who wants to join us there, but he wants to fly business class. He finds a business class flight from New York to Nice for an excellent price of 50,000 points. He’s going to have to book a positioning flight, which, if he’s lucky, will cost around 10,000 points, but he’ll have to get there a day early, so he also needs to book a hotel. Let’s say he books a Hyatt for 12,000 points near JFK airport. Now that a 50,000 point flight really costs him 72,000 points and a day of his time. Not only did I save 53,000 points compared to my friend, but I’ll be enjoying a latte and a chocolate croissant at a cafe in Nice while he’s on the plane.

This even gets more extreme, though. I’ve actually heard two people recently suggest that it’s easier to get a business class flight outside of the country, and you should try to take a positioning flight outside of the country. Let me get this straight: you want me to take a four-hour economy flight to Mexico, so that I can get a business class flight to Europe? Nope, nope, nope.

What is your Time Worth?

At the end of the day, many of the complaints I have are based on the amount of time required to earn the volume of points to go on luxury vacations. If you are lucky enough to earn points through large amounts of business or travel spend, then you are holding the golden ticket. However, for the rest of us, you would probably need to earn those points through some kind of manufactured spend scheme. I don’t really feel like spending my free time driving around town buying gift cards and products on sale and then posting those items on eBay.

Even if I had an unlimited amount of points, I don’t have an unlimited amount of vacation. Do I really want to waste a vacation day positioning so that I can take a business class flight? No, just get me to my destination so I can enjoy my vacation.

Know Yourself and Your Needs

Knowing yourself is important, however. If you are someone who appreciates luxury, maybe you’re willing to take fewer vacations to have that one dream vacation. That’s fine, and you shouldn’t be ashamed. It’s not for me, though. I want to experience the world, and that means that I need to make the most out of every single point that I earn.

We just got back from Spain and Portugal, where we hiked the Camino de Santiago. We ate at tapas bars and stayed in hostels. We flew in economy. Guess what? It was fantastic, and we were spending less than 50 euros per person per day, including lodging and food. It was fantastic because it was an authentic experience. We used points and miles to help us afford the flights, as well as a hotel in Madrid and one in Porto.

Points and miles have opened the world for us by lowering the cost of taking vacations. I’m proud of what we’ve done and the precious time that I’ve been able to spend with my family on those vacations – and you know what? I’ll never feel bad about turning right when I enter a plane and it wasn’t a waste of points, that’s for damn sure!