Point Me To First Class

One of the most useful hotel programs in my wallet right now is also the most boring, and that turns out to be exactly why it works.

That program is Accor, and it tends to get overlooked in the points world, often by the very people who would get the most out of it. My guest, Dr. Suzanne Manzi, is the one who got me paying attention to it, and she knows the program inside and out.

We talk through what makes Accor so different from the hotel programs most of us default to, why its quietest qualities turn out to be its most useful ones, and the kinds of trips where it has come through for me when my usual strategy couldn't. If you travel internationally, travel with a family, or just want a dependable backup for the moments your favorite program comes up empty, I think you'll finish this one seeing Accor very differently.

Get full show notes and transcript: https://pointmetofirstclass.com/accor-points-explained

Eager to learn the secrets of award travel so that you can turn your expenses into unforgettable experiences? Join the Points Made Easy course waitlist here: https://pointmetofirstclass.com/pointsmadeeasy

You can have a small fortune in points between two people and still not be able to book the trip you want.

That's the trap this episode is built to help you avoid. Combining or sharing points with a partner, a spouse, or a family member sounds like it should be simple, but every points currency plays by its own rules, and a couple of them won't let you share points with someone else at all. Knowing which is which, well before you've found the award you want to book, turns out to be one of the quietest but most important parts of planning travel with another person.

I walk through all six major transferable currencies: Amex, Chase, Citi, Capital One, Bilt, and Rove, and grade each one on how easily it lets you combine points with someone else. Not all of them pass. More useful than the grades, though, is what to do about them, the setup worth doing now so the points you've earned together are usable when the trip you want finally appears. If you earn points with a spouse, a partner, or anyone you travel with, this is the housekeeping that keeps you from finding out too late that half your points are stranded in the wrong account.

Get full show notes and transcript: https://pointmetofirstclass.com/combine-credit-card-points-with-partner

Eager to learn the secrets of award travel so that you can turn your expenses into unforgettable experiences? Join the Points Made Easy course waitlist here: https://pointmetofirstclass.com/pointsmadeeasy

Some of the most valuable miles in award travel belong to a program most people have written off.

For years, Alaska Airlines miles were easy to overlook, and unless you lived in Alaska or flew the airline often, you probably had little reason to think about them. My guest, Betsey Wilson of Become Travel Rich and Alaska Airlines University, has spent more than two decades in this program and knows it better than anyone I know. As she explains, the real value of these miles, now part of the revamped Atmos Rewards program, shows up somewhere most people never look.

Betsey and I get into why this program has been so easy to dismiss, why that's been a mistake, and what makes it, in her words, one of the most generous loyalty programs out there. She shares where she's still finding standout value, which redemptions have gotten harder, and how to think about the Atmos credit cards and elite status without getting lost in the fine print. If you've ever looked at Alaska miles and decided this program wasn't for you, this conversation might change your mind.

Get full show notes and transcript: https://pointmetofirstclass.com/atmos-rewards-alaska-miles

Eager to learn the secrets of award travel so that you can turn your expenses into unforgettable experiences? Join the Points Made Easy course waitlist here: https://pointmetofirstclass.com/pointsmadeeasy

Planning an entire trip around one airline seat is a backwards way to travel, and every so often it's exactly the right one.

My friend Andrea and I have wanted to fly first-class Singapore Airlines Suites on the A380 for years. When we two award seats on their newest first class on a long-haul flight, we built a five-day trip around the world around them, five flights, and almost no regard for where any of it landed on a map. What follows is the whole story, the planning, the flying, and the frankly ridiculous decision-making it took to pull it off.

We get into how a trip like this comes together, why it turns the usual way of planning award travel on its head, and whether spending this many points on a few days of flying was worth it. You'll also hear our candid take on every cabin we flew, where we agreed, where we didn't, and which experiences lived up to the hype.

Whether Singapore Suites is already on your wish list or you just want a fresh way to think about award travel, my hope is you come away seeing that a dream flight doesn't have to wait for the stars to align over your home airport. Listen in as you learn that sometimes the smartest move is to grab the seat when it appears and let the rest of the trip take shape around it.

Get full show notes and transcript: https://pointmetofirstclass.com/singapore-suites-around-the-world

Eager to learn the secrets of award travel so that you can turn your expenses into unforgettable experiences? Join the Points Made Easy course waitlist here: https://pointmetofirstclass.com/pointsmadeeasy

Collecting a big pile of points is not the same as being able to book the flights your family wants.

That gap shows up nowhere more clearly than when you're trying to get your whole family into business class to Asia. This week my guest is Maria Fung, founder of Maria Points the Way, who helps families use points and miles to reach Asia and Asia-Pacific.

When Maria moved from Hong Kong to the US, she did everything the points world tells you to do, and soon found it wasn't getting her family home in the cabins she wanted. That led her to build a completely different approach, one that reverses the usual order, starting with the exact trip you want and working back to the points that get you there.

Maria and I get into why this goal trips up so many families, and why the usual points playbook quietly works against you here. She walks through the destination-first approach she built, a framework she calls the ASIA Method, and the shifts that make several premium seats far more attainable than they look. Whether Asia is an occasional trip to see relatives or a business class dream that has felt out of reach, you'll come away thinking about the whole thing differently.

Get full show notes and transcript: https://pointmetofirstclass.com/family-award-travel-to-asia

Eager to learn the secrets of award travel so that you can turn your expenses into unforgettable experiences? Join the Points Made Easy course waitlist here: https://pointmetofirstclass.com/pointsmadeeasy

Some of the biggest points opportunities have nothing to do with your credit card at all.

It turns out hotels quietly reward the person who books an event with them, a conference, a retreat, a wedding, a family reunion, and most people have no idea. They're called planner points.

To unpack them, I sat down with Rachel Posada Fletcher, who spent years as an event manager negotiating exactly these kinds of hotel contracts. And the best part is you don't have to plan events for a living to earn and benefit from planner points.

Tapping into this points earning potential comes down to simply knowing the opportunity is there and being willing to ask for it. Rachel gets into how these rewards work, the ways a single event can pay off on more than one front, and what she wishes more people understood before signing a hotel contract. If you run a business, help pull together events at work, or have a big celebration on the horizon, I think you'll finish this one seeing your next gathering as more than just an expense.

Get full show notes and transcript: https://pointmetofirstclass.com/hotel-planner-points

Eager to learn the secrets of award travel so that you can turn your expenses into unforgettable experiences? Join the Points Made Easy course waitlist here: https://pointmetofirstclass.com/pointsmadeeasy

Six months ago, Bilt rebuilt its entire rewards program, including releasing the new premium Palladium card with its promise of earning transferable points on rent and even mortgage payments, drawing a lot of attention in the points world. Today we are following up on what it's actually been like to carry and use the Bilt Palladium card now that the shine has worn off and real life has set in.

Kelly and I have almost identical points philosophies, which is exactly why it's so much fun that Bilt is where we split. She loves this card without reservation. I have a full love-hate relationship with mine, and over the course of the conversation we get into why, where the card has delivered, where it quietly drives me up a wall, and how two people who want the same things from points can land in such different places on the same card.

Whether you already carry a Bilt card, you're weighing whether the Palladium belongs in your wallet, or you just enjoy hearing two friends disagree in good faith. I think you'll come away with a much clearer sense of who this card is for, and whether that's you.

Get full show notes and transcript: https://pointmetofirstclass.com/bilt-palladium-card-review

Eager to learn the secrets of award travel so that you can turn your expenses into unforgettable experiences? Join the Points Made Easy course waitlist here: https://pointmetofirstclass.com/pointsmadeeasy

Have you ever wondered what your award search tool can see that you can't?

My guest this week is Keith Van, who leads community at seats.aero, one of the award search platforms I reach for most. What made this so fun for me is that his team sees something the rest of us never do. They can watch how travelers everywhere are searching for award space all at once, which means they notice patterns in demand and in availability that none of us could piece together alone, and a few of the ones Keith shared upended assumptions I didn't know I was holding.

We also get into the part of these tools that trips people up the most, the gap between what a search shows you and what you can book right now, and how to protect yourself before you move your points. And Keith pulls back the curtain on how a platform like this works, from why it can see some airlines and not others to the features longtime users walk right past. Whether you've never opened an award search tool or you consider yourself a power user, I think you'll finish this one seeing these platforms, and the data underneath them, differently.

Get full show notes and transcript: https://pointmetofirstclass.com/seats-aero-award-search-data

Eager to learn the secrets of award travel so that you can turn your expenses into unforgettable experiences? Join the Points Made Easy course waitlist here: https://pointmetofirstclass.com/pointsmadeeasy

Have you ever run an award search, come up empty, and quietly wondered whether the flights you want are even out there?

That frustration usually comes down to one thing, and it isn't that the flights don't exist. It's that most of us were never taught how to search for them well. In this episode I break down two ways to search for award flights outside your credit card travel portal, where transferring points to airline partners can turn a one to one-and-a-half cent point into two, five, even ten cents of value, and why knowing how to search is the skill that unlocks all of it.

I get into both, the method most people lean on without realizing what it quietly misses, and the older, more hands-on approach that still turns up availability those tools can't see. Each one has real strengths and a few blind spots, and learning when to reach for which is what separates the searches that come up empty from the ones that end with a trip booked.

Whether you've leaned entirely on search tools and keep coming up short, or you're a confident manual searcher who has written those tools off, my hope is you walk away seeing why the best award searches use both, and where the flights you've been missing have been hiding all along.

Get full show notes and transcript: https://pointmetofirstclass.com/how-to-search-for-award-flights

Enrollment for Points Made Easy is open! Eager to learn the secrets of award travel so that you can turn your expenses into unforgettable experiences? Join the course here: https://pointmetofirstclass.com/pointsmadeeasy

Have you ever wondered whether there's still travel value hiding inside the expenses you already have, points you could be earning but aren't, with no real way to know for sure?

That's one of the few questions in this hobby I've never been able to answer for you, and it's probably one you've quietly wondered about yourself. We have a rough way to gauge how well we redeem points, our cents per point at least gives us a benchmark, but there has never been a clean way to know whether the expenses you already have are earning a fraction of the points they could.

So in this episode I get into why earning potential is so hard to pin down, why two people who spend the same amount can have completely different potential, and the difference between an optimized card portfolio and a maximized one.

Listen as I introduce the first version of a tool I built to take a crack at it, the Hidden Travel Budget Calculator. You give it your annual spend across a handful of categories, and it shows you how many points your expenses could earn, what those points could be worth in travel, and how much of that potential you're capturing right now.

Whether you're newer to points and wondering if it's even worth it for the expenses you have, or you've been at this a while and just want to know how much room you have left, my hope is you come away seeing the opportunity that might still be sitting inside the spending you already do.

Get full show notes and transcript: https://pointmetofirstclass.com/points-earning-potential

Want to see how much spending could be hiding in your own expenses? Try the Hidden Travel Budget Calculator here: https://points.pointmetofirstclass.com/discover-your-hidden-travel-budget

Eager to learn the secrets of award travel so that you can turn your expenses into unforgettable experiences? Join the Points Made Easy course waitlist here: https://pointmetofirstclass.com/pointsmadeeasy