transcript
Speaker 1:
[00:00] Yo, welcome to the show. I am Gunnar. That's Kyle. Today, we're shining a light on our own little corner of the travel industry, Kyle. We want to tell you all the dirty little secrets behind award travel and points and miles. If you've read a blog or watched a TikTok where someone seemingly has infinite points, there are reasons for that. And they probably don't want you to know some of those reasons. So we want to kind of lay it all out there for you listeners and talk a little bit about what we see out there. But first, Kyle, I want to find something out. As we kind of tell on ourselves as an industry and our fellow travel sickos, what's the best and worst part of your job? It doesn't have to be a dirty little secret. Just like what are some of the perks and drawbacks of being a travel professional?
Speaker 2:
[00:43] Oh, man. I thought I got to put you on the spot this week. I'm not prepared for this. The best part by far, the main reason why I love what I do so much, and it will probably be my career for the rest of my life, is helping people travel more for less is just incredibly important. It feels just as important as the work that I did covering state and national politics almost a decade ago now. It's much more fun to help people figure out how to use the points they have or help figure out how to find a cheaper flight so they can take a really important, cool trip. That will always be like, I think collectively our entire mission here at Thrifty Traveler, but for me, that's why I love what I do. This is going to sound like the biggest first world, first class problem of all time. The one thing that is difficult is because this is how I see the world, it means that even when I'm traveling for vacation, it's hard to shut that part of my brain off. That's not to say that every vacation is work. That's not the case. I am fortunately able to unplug and get away, and shut the laptop and just enjoy my time. But there's always that part in the back of my brain now that's like, well, what if this was a story? Should I write about this when I get home? And what does that story look like? Or should we talk about this on the podcast? And that just kind of seeps into how you see the world. And I think in many ways, that's a good thing. It's a good way to see the world of trying to figure out how to spin your personal experience to help people. But it does kind of change the way that you experience your travels.
Speaker 1:
[02:14] Yeah, my wife's like, do you really need a photo of that airplane? Is this photo going to get used for anything? I'm like, you never know. It could be. No, I would agree with both those things. I also think one of the underrated perks is just being able to talk to friends and strangers because everyone loves talking travel. That's an easy perk. Then the biggest drawback for me is just the FOMO of it, just seeing other people out and about and just feeling like, oh man, I could have been on this deal or every single flight deal we send is good enough that I would want to book it. There's always just the having to watch deals pass you by is hard when you're seeing every single deal every single day.
Speaker 2:
[02:51] Yeah, but the upside is, is you are more able to take advantage of those deals than perhaps any other human being on the planet. So it's not so bad.
Speaker 1:
[02:59] Yeah, there are very few drawbacks to this. I promise you that. All right, let's get into it. Today on the show, we're doing a little quarter year airfare check-in and then we're lifting up the rug and exposing our industry's dirty little secrets. All that and more. Hi, this is Melissa in Cappadocia, Turkey. Welcome back to The Thrifty Traveler Podcast. All right, that was Melissa from Cappadocia, Turkey. What an incredible backdrop. Thank you so much, Melissa. You've done that, Kyle. Is that worth it?
Speaker 2:
[03:30] Yeah, it's amazing. It is one of the few things where I'm excited to wake up at like 3.30 in the morning, because that's what you have to do in order to get to the balloons before six in order to go up. It's amazing, it's worth the trip for sure.
Speaker 1:
[03:46] Really cool video. Thank you for thinking of us while you were there, Melissa. If you want your video featured on the show, upload it to thriftytraveler.com/voicemail. I don't know who needs to hear this, but that random airport Wi-Fi you just connected to? Yeah, it's probably not the safest move. We've all done it, checking emails, logging into accounts, booking flights, all while connected to unsecured public Wi-Fi without thinking twice about the risks. And the thing is, on those networks, your data can actually be exposed or intercepted, which is obviously not ideal when you're traveling. That's why I use Surfshark VPN when I travel. The VPN basically encrypts your internet connection so everything you do online stays private and secure, even on sketchy public Wi-Fi. And you can change your virtual location too, which is super handy. For example, if you're traveling abroad and you want to watch your usual shows or access content from back home, you can just switch your location and still use everything like you normally would. It takes two quick taps to turn on, and with one subscription, you can use it on unlimited devices. They also have features like Surfshark Alert, which can notify you of things that your credit card information are ever leaked online, so you can take action right away. Surfshark also offers a 30-day money-back guarantee, so you can try it risk-free. So go to surfshark.com/thrifty4, that's the number four, or use code THRIFFTY4 at checkout to get four extra months of Surfshark VPN. You can also find that link and code in the show notes. All right, back to the show. Okay, let's get into something hot and something cold, a look at the good and bad news out there for travelers every week. And this week, now that we've gotten to the quarter poll of 2026, we want to do a quick check in on what we're seeing in airfare. And we'll start with something hot. So Kyle, where have you noticed deals are hottest right now?
Speaker 2:
[05:28] It's tough sledding out there on the whole. I think we've said again and again, and I continue to see, I mean, all of my Google Flights price alerts are going up and not down. And that's affecting everything because supply and demand is everything, competition is everything. Airlines clearly feel like they can get away with charging us more than they did just a few weeks ago. That said, I've been pleasantly surprised at the amount of economy award space, basically everywhere, including some things that just a couple of months ago were much harder to do. So for example, we sent a deal now probably two-ish weeks ago, flying nonstop from most Delta hubs to Honolulu, Bookable, through Air France, KLM, Flying Blue, not for 150,000 Delta Sky Miles, which Delta was charging, but for as low as 50,000 Air France, KLM, Flying Blue miles round trip. That is a stellar deal. It's typically hard to piece together dates that will work for a round trip. And our team found enough. That's really indicative of, I think, what we're seeing across the board on the economy award front.
Speaker 1:
[06:34] Yeah, definitely. Economy awards are really the sweetest spot right now. Your points and miles truly have never been more valuable as these cash rates go up because of these economy award rates staying where they are when you book with partners. We saw the same deal on the Delta non-stops to Europe, for instance, for a fraction of the price of the SkyMiles price if you book with Air France, KLM, Flying Blue or with Virgin. We also have seen the Delta SkyMiles flash sales. We've been talking about these for what seems like more than a year now are still as hot as ever. We saw SkyMiles flash sales to Brisbane and Auckland with really good availability in November, which is right at the beginning of their peak season. Then we saw this awesome deal I wanted to highlight, Newark to Madeira on United with ANA miles and peak summer from, I think, 50,000 miles round trip. That's June, July, August availability flying to Madeira, which is a really cool deal on the non-stop from Newark. If you're looking at some of those economy awards, I think that's just where the absolute best fairs are going to be found right now.
Speaker 2:
[07:38] Yeah, and I guess I want to call out one more exception to this rule, overarching rule of thumb about economy being the sweet spot. We've talked again and again on the show about how great some Delta Skymouse flash sales and Delta One can be. And that's typically on newer routes or routes that are struggling. And again, there's a new route starting this summer from JFK to Malta in the Mediterranean. Bookable for, what, 84,000 sky miles during the peak of summer that we found a couple of weeks ago now. I wouldn't be surprised if we continue to see this deal pop up in the weeks and months to come because it's such a new route. It's not starting until later this spring. There's going to be more deals on that front. That's another one to watch for, for sure.
Speaker 1:
[08:24] Yeah, that's one of the best Delta One to Europe deals we've ever seen. It might not be Delta One's finest suite, but it is a lie flat seat to Malta. It's hard to do better than that. Another kind of trend I'm seeing so far this year is, usually we see a pretty significant discount on airfare if you're willing to take a connection. When fares go up like this, we kind of tend to see the opposite. A lot of nonstop fares are actually what's going to be the cheapest right now. We're seeing, and this is mostly because these are flying major hubs and competition is still king, and airlines are going to charge what they think that they can charge you. It doesn't matter what the fuel prices look like. Competition still drives airfare more than anything else. We've talked about this plenty. But we're seeing a lot of nonstop flights getting cheaper from the West Coast to Asia, from the West Coast to Oceania, from the East Coast and the Midwest over to Europe as well. Nonstop flights are actually where you're going to find maybe the best bargain right now. And I think, you know, I pointed out some of those economy awards. A lot of those are on nonstop flights too. So you may have to position to get to some of these best deals. But check for those places where you know there's a ton of competition. Look at some of those nonstop flights, especially from your home airport. You might be surprised.
Speaker 2:
[09:43] I do wonder if there is a piece of this where while competition is always king, and that's really what drives flight prices down. If there's an element here of that, because fuel prices are so much higher, airlines are less likely to discount those connecting itineraries because those are going to cost them more. Now, you got to fill up two planes with fuel instead of just one. I don't know. I might be reading too much into that, but it is an interesting element because you're right. I mean, we're seeing far more, at least decent deals on those non-stops to Europe, to Asia, to wherever than we typically do, and less in kind of the nationwide deals where American will sell a connecting itinerary from Minneapolis at a cheaper price than just their non-stop from Chicago.
Speaker 1:
[10:25] Last trend I'll point out, flights in early 2027 right now, including like some Caribbean flights and some business class availability to Europe and really all over the world. Some of those early 2027 flights are steeply discounted right now too. We're seeing a good amount of deals. I know it's hard for people to wrap their mind around, I'm planning my spring break vacation already for next year, or I'm planning my winter escape for next year already. I get it, that's a really long way away. But with the way airfare is going, I would say secure one of these tickets at a flexible rate and then see what else happens. But man, you can get some really good stuff to the Caribbean. We had a big Grand Cayman deal. We've had a ton of Puerto Rico stuff. We had some St. Thomas and some St. Croix fares pop up recently. Next winter is on sale and you'd be hard pressed to beat those fares even if you book a little closer in. So, I would take a look at those early 2027 flights as well. Anything else to add on this?
Speaker 2:
[11:27] No, I think we covered it good. As much as we can given the circumstances right now.
Speaker 1:
[11:32] Yeah. Let's pivot to something cold then. So where are these deals the coldest? I'll start with one. The economy prices to Europe right now, especially for peak summer, whereas last year around this time, we saw fares starting to drop all over the place, especially during peak summer, which was perhaps a bit of an anomaly. But economy prices to Europe are sky high right now. And we're seeing that pretty consistently. Anything else jump out at you?
Speaker 2:
[12:00] I mean, I would say economy domestically too feels like it's just as, if not more, expensive as we've ever seen. Some of the prices that I see for flights that I need are just kind of tooling around in Google Flights are, if not 40 to 50 percent higher than I'm accustomed to seeing. Seeing the lowest prices for a round trip to New York in the 500s, if not 600s instead of 200s and 300s, it can get pretty gross. You can still find deals, but you got to be so much more flexible. If you're going into planning even a quick domestic trip with, I'm going to leave on a Thursday and come back on a Sunday, odds are the airlines are going to charge you out the butt for it. You know, some of the prices are just gross.
Speaker 1:
[12:46] Yeah, Thursday to Sunday is just a complete no-go right now for domestic flight pricing. Tuesday, Wednesdays, there's still plenty there, especially if you like time a good Southwest sale or something like that. We saw a few weeks ago now, we saw a bunch of Southwest fares for $96 round trip, that lovely little Southwest sale. Usually those are on shorter flights and they're always leaving Tuesday, Wednesdays. But if you can book yourself into the middle of the week, you can still find something. But man, those peak times and peak days are as expensive as ever. It's really hard to see out there. Anything else jump out at you as where fares are looking the worst right now?
Speaker 2:
[13:24] Our premium team continues to tell us that while there are still business class award deals out there, it's probably about as hard to find availability as it's ever been. There are still deals. It doesn't mean that you're hopeless. And especially if you are willing to put in the work to find that one seat on that one day and you're flexible enough to depart on May 27th instead of May 21st and you're willing to fly to Chicago in order to get on that nonstop flight to Zurich instead of departing from say JFK or Newark or wherever. You can still make these things work, but the big drops of award availability, especially from the airlines that for years we've relied on, like Finair or Iberia or Aer Lingus flying over to Europe, that stuff has just become much, much harder to find. I think the fever is going to break at some point, but for now it has definitely gotten a lot harder to book a lie flat seat for at least through the summer and into early fall. Time will tell if that's going to change.
Speaker 1:
[14:28] Yeah. I think this is a pretty good round up of the quarter poll look at the airfare climate. I think we'll do this again at about the half year, and I'll be very interested to see where we're at at that point. Hopefully, the fever has broken and we're getting a little bit closer to normal. But let's get into our main topic today. We've got some dirt to dig up and some tea to spill. But first, we're going to take a quick break.
Speaker 2:
[14:47] You've heard me talk about Bilt as the loyalty program that lets you earn points on rent wherever you live and they just leveled up even more. As of 2026, homeowners can also earn up to 1.25x points on their mortgage payments. This is thanks to Bilt's three new credit cards, the Palladium Card, Obsidian Card and Blue Card. All three turn your housing payments, rent or mortgage into flexible rewards. So you can choose the card that fits your lifestyle without missing out on points and exclusive benefits. Bilt points can be redeemed at top airlines and hotels, amazon.com purchases, future rent payments and more. Bilt points have also been ranked by top publications as the industry's most valuable point currency. Your housing payment is already your biggest expense. Make it your most rewarding. Find the card that fits your lifestyle and apply today at joinbilt.com/thrifty. That's joinbilt.com/thrifty. Make sure to use our URL so they know we sent you. Terms and limitations apply. Subject to approval and eligibility. Bilt cards are issued by Column NA member FDIC, pursuant to license from MasterCard International Incorporated.
Speaker 1:
[15:59] Okay, we're back and it's time for The Extra Mile, where we dig a little deeper on an important travel topic. And this week, we're exposing some of the dirty secrets, some of the unsaid perks, some of the things travel creators and bloggers like us maybe haven't told you about, or at least haven't been totally clear about. And Kyle, I wanted to break our format a little bit and start with a listener question from Melanie. Before I read her message, a reminder to send your questions to podcast at thriftytraveler.com, where they're always gratefully received. But we'll start with Melanie's question because I think she gets at something that I hear a lot from friends and family who are new to this and from other travelers who are just sometimes a little confused as to how so many people are traveling so, so much.
Speaker 2:
[16:40] I mean, we've had some version of this question just in the year and change that we've done this podcast at least a dozen times. And it does get to the core of why we're talking about what we're talking about today.
Speaker 1:
[16:51] Okay, Melanie says, Hi, Gunnar, Kyle and team. How are people earning all of these points? After years of being a one rewards card holder and only earning enough points to pay for a round trip international economy flight every few years, I spent the first few months of this year doing a deep dive into rewards, points and miles. She goes on to say, but then I go online and see people in the travel space taking three, four, five trips per year in business class, staying in luxury hotels, often bringing along spouses and multiple children. How are they earning enough points to do this? She goes on, please give me a reality check. What are the travel influencers doing to earn so many points? What are they not disclosing? Should I just be thrilled to be able to take one to two trips per year each? I am. Or is it possible for me to bank enough points where splurging on business class or a mid-tier hotel doesn't feel like robbing the points I'll need for the next trip? Thanks so much, Melanie. First, any initial reactions to Melanie's question?
Speaker 2:
[17:49] Two things, Melanie. One, I totally understand and sympathize with this because there is, first and foremost, a massive disconnect between the way that most people talk about travel on social media, especially your favorite creator or influencer or blogger or journalist or whoever, whoever you're following, there's a massive disconnect between the things that they talk about publicly and what they're actually doing in their day-to-day lives in order to fund that kind of a frequent travel lifestyle. So that's really kind of the heart of why we're talking about this now, is try to help people connect the dots about how people are going on six plus luxury vacations, always flying business class, always staying in Waldorf Astoria's or Park Hyatt's, and what they're talking about in terms of trying to help you earn points in order to do that. Because if you just follow the things that they're talking about, you are not going to be able to do that. But maybe more importantly, I just need everybody to remember this isn't a contest. Travel isn't about numbers. Travel is about you doing the cool things that you want, hopefully using credit card points and airline miles or just the money that you have saved and use some of the stuff that we talk about in order to do more of it for less. As long as you're doing that, you're in good shape. So don't use your favorite travel influencer as a measuring stick to try to figure out what am I doing wrong? You can use them as a guide to figure out what can I do next time in order to make my next trip a little bit longer, a little bit more special, a little bit more comfortable. But you're just going to be, everybody is going to be setting themselves up for failure by following what people talk about online as gospel. Because if you followed them to a tee, there's still no way that you would be able to take the trips that they take. Yeah.
Speaker 1:
[19:37] The only benchmark that you should be comparing yourself against is, are your redemptions towards things you otherwise wouldn't be able to afford? It's not good podcasting because you can distill everything we talk about into that one sentence. That is really my North Star in all of this. Whenever we talk about these things is, are you doing this to fund travel that you otherwise wouldn't be able to afford? The answer for me is always yes. That's the key here.
Speaker 2:
[20:03] Are you doing smarter things or doing cooler things than you were a year ago or two years ago? Are you improving? Are you getting smarter with how you're redeeming points and earning them? That's a pretty good benchmark. You should be measuring against your past self, not against what other people are doing.
Speaker 1:
[20:18] That's right. Just because everyone's in Japan doesn't mean you have to go to Japan. But you should go to Japan. I just want to be super clear.
Speaker 2:
[20:25] I want to go to Japan.
Speaker 1:
[20:26] Japan is worth the hype. Okay, let's get into a couple of these kind of, I'll call them dirty little secrets. They're not all really that dirty. And the first one is especially, I would say, prevalent in this industry. Tell me, Kyle, what is a credit-card affiliate network?
Speaker 2:
[20:44] This is the beating heart of everything that gets said online right now about travel. There is no travel, everyday modern travel influencer. There is no Thrifty Traveler, for that matter. We are a piece of this too, without credit card affiliate networks. So this just absolutely dominates how influencers, how websites, how bloggers make money. Like in many cases, 80 to 90 percent of their money, if not closer to 100 percent. So the reason why so many people talk about credit cards is because they are of course getting paid to do so. I think everybody intrinsically knows that, but maybe doesn't understand how much it drives, what is being talked about and how often it is talked about. So everybody has some kind of affiliate relationship with a credit card network where they provide links to apply for cards. Those influencers or bloggers share those cards. And if you apply for one, that creator you apply through gets a kickback. They get a commission and every card has a different amount of commission. Those are agreed upon between individuals and their credit card affiliate networks that they work with. Which means that some cards pay more than others. Which also means that if you see a creator talking about a credit card a lot, if you see an influencer talking about the Chase Sapphire Preferred a lot or the Capital One Venture a lot, it may be because that card has a bigger bonus than it normally does. And that's a good reason to promote it. But often it is also because those are the cards that pay the most. Those are the most lucrative cards to talk about. And so people talk about them all the time. And again, I just want to stress, we are a piece of this too. We are not alone in this. We need to hold our hands up. If you apply for a credit card through our website, we will get a commission on it most of the time. There's more to that. We'll talk about it in a second. But this is really what drives all things in travel right now. I mean, I think back to before the pandemic, very few websites, virtually no people on social media were talking about travel credit cards. And now it is absolutely dominating social media to the point where talking about points and miles has become truly mainstream.
Speaker 1:
[23:06] OK, so you mentioned that we do this too. How do we do this differently?
Speaker 2:
[23:11] Again, I want to stress that we're not alone. There are a handful of other sites, I think, most notably Frequent Mylar and Doctor of Credit, who either don't have affiliate credit card relationships or just make a commitment. If there is an offer that is better for everyday readers or listeners, then what they can get by applying through one of our links, we're going to tell you because we feel like it's our responsibility, and we share that with sites like Frequent Mylar and Doctor of Credit. There are others too. Those are just the two biggest that come to mind. I think it's also really important for us, and I think what does set us apart and why we are able to do some of the things that we do, and maybe more importantly, talk about some things that would not sit real well with the likes of big banks like Chase or Capital One at times, is that we are not nearly as reliant on credit card revenue as most other travel sites and influencers out there. Again, for whom credit card revenue is 80 to 90 plus percent of how they make their money. For us, we talk about Premium A because we think it's the best flight deal service in the world, and it helps people travel more for less, and it's our mission to do that. But B, that gives us a lot more freedom because most of our money does come from selling our Premium service. We don't have to worry as much about angering the big banks and being punished for writing something negative about Chase or Capital One or Bill.
Speaker 1:
[24:41] Yeah. The number of times that I've watched and listened to our cards team discuss finding a better offer on a different link elsewhere and plugging it into our stories or our discussions wherever. Just to help our listeners get the absolute best deal. I mean, we're not going to recommend that everybody always go to our links. If you want to support a small business like us and use our links, please, please do. It helps us. But we're never going to urge people to sign up for credit cards through our links at the expense of a better deal or at the expense of their own financial health.
Speaker 2:
[25:15] Yeah. I mean, that's the same reason why I've lost track of how many times on this podcast, let alone on our website. We've used the phrase, credit cards are a serious business. I think especially as social media has become the entry point for people learning about how to use credit card points to redeem miles and all of this. People have lost sight of the fact that credit card debt is one of, if not the biggest problems in American society. It is massive. It is so easy to dig a hole that you cannot get out of, which means if you're going to start to dip your toe into this, you need to do it slowly. You need to be careful. You need to pay your bills in full on time every single month in order to earn points. And if you're not doing that, it's time to stop.
Speaker 1:
[25:57] Yeah, absolutely. Okay. I think that's good on that. Let's move on and talk about freebies and these kind of special relationships, Kyle. Sometimes you see people flying in a business class seat that they didn't pay for. Is that right?
Speaker 2:
[26:11] Oh, yeah. It's funny. I'm going to sound like I'm harping on influencers in this conversation. If I'm being honest, I kind of am. But I do think that that has become the driving force in how the travel world is covered now. It has shifted away from, I mean, a decade ago, it was all about magazines like Condé Nast and Travel and Leisure. Now, where people are getting that information about the coolest new hotel, the brand new airline, the new business class seat is on social media, it's on Instagram, it's on TikTok. And I want everybody to understand that when your favorite influencer is on a plane, capturing content and posting it to Reels, that whether that's being paid for or not, that is in many ways an advertisement. That is a decision that an airline or a hotel or a travel company has made, that having this person here is good for our brand. Some cases they're being paid for it, but whether they are being paid for it or not, you need to understand that relationships are everything to people who cover the travel world in the same way that it is to us. Whether it's disclosed as an ad or not, I think it dilutes the independence of what you're talking about and what you're encouraging your readers or your listeners or your followers to think about. Are you not criticizing the, I would say, pretty haphazard relaunch of Chase Sapphire Reserve or what I would call the botched rollout of the Bilt 2.0 cards because you genuinely like them or you're not doing it because you have done sponsored content with those companies before and you don't want to lose out on that revenue. I think everybody needs to take all of the information they consume, but especially on social media, and I would say especially on the travel world, including this podcast with a massive grain of salt. Just considering the source of the information and why it's coming to you now.
Speaker 1:
[28:19] Yeah, and when it comes to us, this is a pool we absolutely do not play in. We don't accept freebies for every single flight review that you see on our website or in our Extra Mile newsletter or on YouTube. We pay for those using our own points and miles. That kind of independence is just really important. We're trying to tell people what it's smart to spend their money on or their points on, and we're not going to dilute that by accepting freebies from airlines. So this is something we definitely, absolutely do not do. Anything else on airline, hotel, freebies, and sponsored relationships like that?
Speaker 2:
[28:55] This is just something that we personally have drawn a hard line on, right or wrong. I mean, you know, we've not made a lot of friends across the industry as a result of this policy because we want the freedom to be able to criticize airlines and hotels and banks when we feel like they've screwed up because that's the way that we can best level with our listeners and our readers.
Speaker 1:
[29:18] Yeah. Okay. Let's talk about, I guess I'll call this credit card volume, Kyle. You know, Melanie's question was, how do people seemingly have infinite points all of the time? Tell me about some strategies that some people use in order to just continually stack points.
Speaker 2:
[29:37] Let me put it this way. Your favorite travel influencer has probably talked ad nauseum about the Chase Sapphire Preferred Card in the same way that we have. And I think that's good. I think that is the best possible entry point for most travelers just getting started with this. But they talk about it in a way that, you know, it presents like, take a round trip business class flight to Europe with your Chase Sapphire Preferred Card, which may or may not be possible once, but then they're doing it all the time. They're always in that next new business class seat. And so I would just say, ask yourself, or maybe ask that influencer, hey, how many chasing business preferred cards do you have? Because I would bet you that the answer is more than three. Business credit cards are the, not untold, but I think underappreciated aspect of how people earn points at scale now. It is absolutely the secret sauce of how people earn a ton of points, because eventually a couple of things happen. The everyday person hits a wall at some point with which new credit card that they can open because of restrictions from banks, because they've just gone through them all and there's not a new welcome bonus that they can earn, and business cards open up another pathway. Maybe more importantly, it opens that pathway where you can continue opening business credit cards. Banks will continue sending you mailers to open the next Chase Business Inc preferred card or an MX Business Gold card again and again, and the gravy train just never stops. But again, most people online don't talk nearly as much about how much they're using business cards to fuel their own travels while still traveling just as much by the graces of those business cards that they're continually opening because they are running a small business. You know, being a travel influencer and getting payouts from Chase for sponsored content or, you know, going on business trips in order to film content, that is a business. They should have business credit cards. I just think that everybody should talk a lot more about them if that is truly how they are funding their personal travels.
Speaker 1:
[31:52] Yeah, the Chasing Preferred Card is a great example of that. I think it is worth pointing out that more people are eligible to get a business card than they think, right?
Speaker 2:
[32:03] Oh, absolutely. I mean, it is, it should be talked about more in part because it is a very worthwhile avenue to earn a lot more points, especially within the last, I would say, maybe two or three years. In many cases, you can earn far more points on, you know, a Chase or an Amex business card than you can on the equivalent personal card from Chase or Amex. And you don't need to own a company in order to do this, doing things like consulting on the side or just having a side hustle. Heck, even if you're just driving for Uber on the weekends, that technically qualifies you as a small business and makes you eligible for many of these cards. So this is not something where you should try to, you know, play dirty tricks on the bank and stretch things in order to get qualified for business cards. But it is something that you can easily be eligible for. And again, I just, I don't think enough people talk about this.
Speaker 1:
[32:56] Yeah. OK, I think that's good on the cards discussion. Let's talk a little bit about some spending trickery. The ways that people can create more and more points in their accounts by doing things with spend that are not normal or usual and that you probably and definitely should not do. So, tell me about some of these tactics that people use that you've heard of.
Speaker 2:
[33:21] So, I mean, we talk about how we're sickos and how much we care about earning points and miles and finding cheap flights, and this is the next level of it. There is a whole ecosystem, counterculture, whatever you want to call it, of people who, in some cases, their entire livelihood is just earning points to travel, to then take points that they're not using for travel to cash out and turn into basically income. And the way that people do this, and which is, in many ways, just not talked about period, at least not very much publicly, is there are ways to basically juice your credit card spend in order to meet the thresholds to earn a big welcome bonus of 80 to 175,000 points or more, by spending, in some cases, 25, 30 grand in a three or six month span. But that's not sustainable for the average American, right? And so the work around here is that there are ways to creatively do this, to spend that amount of money, but then turn around and turn that spend into cash, which you then, again, turn around and pay off the credit card that you just charged everything to in order to earn these points. It is a self-sustaining economy to continue earning points. It is like the, let's just call it the dirty underbelly of everything in this space. There are many people that you know who talk about points in the way that we do who are spending hours a day in some cases. In some cases, a good chunk of their day at grocery stores, buying gift cards, going to Costco and buying gold and reselling it. I mean, there are some truly seemingly absurd things that you can do in order to do this, which none of this is an endorsement of that. And I just want to stress, Melanie and whoever else is listening to this, you don't need to do this stuff in order to earn points to travel more for less. I don't do it personally. I don't think you do either. I don't think anybody on our team currently does. But a lot of people who talk about how easy it is to earn points, engage in some of these creative spending tactics, let's call them, without ever talking about it. I think people need to recognize that, especially if they're looking at somebody who has three million points, odds are they are doing something that just is not going to be palatable to you in order to earn all those points that you seemingly can't.
Speaker 1:
[35:50] Yeah. I think the banks obviously despise this. This is playing in a gray area that you just don't need to be in. There are other ways to meaningfully earn points without doing these tricky little tactics. There's really not a good reason to do this. I mean, the whole buying and reselling gold bars from Costco or the sack of Jewia gold coins that people were buying and then immediately depositing. I mean, these are things that are just like you said, this is real sicko stuff. We use sickos as a term of endearment. This is where the term of endearment gets dark.
Speaker 2:
[36:31] It gets a little bit iffy. Look, I don't want to demean people who do this because everything that we talk about is all about how to maximize, how to find the wiggle room to make the best redemption, how to utilize a workaround, how to read through the terms and conditions and find how to thread the needle to earn more points or how to get more out of the points that you already have. And what we're talking about here is taking that mentality and cranking it up to 11. It's not illegal. It is frowned upon by the banks. But it is, to your point, maybe most importantly, not something that you need to engage with if you just don't have the appetite for it. And you and I don't. Many of us here in the office don't. In fact, probably all of us in the office here don't. And that doesn't stop us from traveling as often as we do.
Speaker 1:
[37:18] Yeah, for sure. Kind of along these lines, there are creative opportunities to quote buy points out there through the shopping portals like Rakuten or Capital One Offers, where you know, I've seen in some cases where you donate to a certain cause and you're earning so many points on that donation that it's almost like buying points at a much cheaper rate than you could buy them. There are some Rakuten bonus offers that are just wild, like huge multipliers where you can earn so many points by purchasing something that it's almost like buying points at a steep, steep discount. But some of these, this is not the same. I don't want to equate the two, but it is putting spend somewhere where you're earning an outsized number of points in return.
Speaker 2:
[38:00] Well, I think that should be the takeaway for everybody, is you don't need to go into the deep end of spending tens of thousands of dollars a year, if not a month, in order to earn more points. Looking for these kinds of opportunities to take advantage of a promo from Rakuten to quote unquote buy points at a much cheaper rate than you can ever buy miles from airlines like Delta or American. So many, many years ago, Iberia had this amazing promotion where you could earn 9,000 avios for every flight you booked, whether you actually took that flight or not. So I booked 10 one-way flights from Madrid to Malaga in Spain for like $35 apiece, earned 90,000 avios, turned around and did the exact same thing for my wife. So we each had 90,000 avios, which was more than enough to cover round trip flights at the time from Chicago to Spain in Iberia business class. Things like this don't come around often, but if you're on the lookout for them, there are ways to add to your stash, in some cases add a lot of points to your stash without spending a ton of money and without kind of delving into the deep end of how you can earn and how many people do earn a ton of points whether they're actually talking about it or not.
Speaker 1:
[39:19] Yeah, and you better believe that when those opportunities come around, we're going to be covering it at thriftytraveler.com and in the Extra Mile newsletter. All right, let's move on. What's a points mule?
Speaker 2:
[39:30] A points mule is a, it's not a derogatory term. It is a term of endearment that has been passed around in the office here for spouses of people who are earning points. Because one of the things that not enough people talk about is, if you have a travel companion, if you have a wife or a husband or a partner, there's no reason that you can't both open the same credit card and earn the same welcome bonus. You can refer each other and earn a referral bonus, and then your spouse or your partner can earn that welcome bonus themselves as well. So this is, people call it player two. Again, in the office, the shorthand has been points mule, especially if it's somebody who is not necessarily is on board with having credit cards open in their name, but doesn't really want to learn about it. There are ways, it's just all a way to think about how to get more out of playing this game, earning more points by using both of your credit scores, using both of your spend, in order to earn double the points.
Speaker 1:
[40:37] Opening cards for other people is one of those untold ways in which people are earning outsized points based on those big spending bonus, or those big welcome bonuses. So it's just a quick one. Anything else on that? I think that's pretty self-explanatory. I just wanted to talk about points mules a little more.
Speaker 2:
[40:56] Can I tell you something?
Speaker 1:
[40:57] Yeah.
Speaker 2:
[40:58] I hate the term P2. I hate it so much. My wife is not P2. She's not a player two. She is my wife. My wife is Alex. She is very important to me. She cannot be represented in two numerals or in a letter and a number. It's just not enough. It's not enough to talk about your spouse and your favorite person in the world in shorthand like that. I hate it so much.
Speaker 1:
[41:21] You would rather refer to her as a mule?
Speaker 2:
[41:24] No, I don't refer to her as a mule. Thank you very much.
Speaker 1:
[41:28] She's her own traveler.
Speaker 2:
[41:29] All right.
Speaker 1:
[41:30] She's nobody's mule, nobody's P2. Okay, let's move on. One thing, this also we don't have to go very deep on, but a lot of people in Points and Miles who you're seeing and listening to and who are traveling all the time, all over the world in business class, a lot of those people either for that trip or as a result of many of those business trips are earning points and miles as business travelers. And a lot of those business travelers are traveling on expense accounts. And that is a very, very quick and easy way to earn a high level of status and a ton of points and miles that you can use for your personal travels. So if you're seeing someone out there saying, man, I'm listening to their advice and I'm just not getting as many points and miles as they are, it's because maybe they're a road warrior. Maybe they're traveling 50 to 100 days a year. And that's why they have infinity Hilton points and they have infinity Delta of Sky miles. And that's why they're traveling around the world in the first class cabin.
Speaker 2:
[42:28] Yeah, this is another great secret weapon. If you travel for work, if you haven't already negotiated it or you're talking with another job, do your best to be able to say, I'm going to charge my work travel to a personal credit card. Because then you get both. You get the miles for the flight that you actually take on your employer's dime, but then you can actually use that spend. And in some cases, if your employer is flying you over to Europe in business class a couple of times a year, that's probably 15 or 20 grand in annual spend on a credit card that you could use to earn welcome bonuses and then fuel your personal travels as well. This is a really good, it's not a hack, but it's something that I don't think enough people appreciate when they look at how many people are traveling and how often they're traveling. If they're traveling for work paid for by their employer or by their own small business as a travel creator, there's a lot there.
Speaker 1:
[43:23] Yeah, for sure. Just wanted to bring that one up too. And then another short one here. We talked about when you have a points mule player too, another person that you get, you can refer them to a card you already have and get a little referral bonus. Something that is usually unsaid is when you have a large following, you can, and you do have that referral link that gets you a referral bonus, you can stack up a lot of points really quickly. And I will admit that at times we've used our own personal referral links on our web stories on thriftytraveler.com. And sometimes we can get those referral bonuses too. So I have personally been able to stack up points pretty quickly. Thanks to those referral bonuses. We're usually capped at something. I'm not earning millions and millions of points here. Usually it's just like tens of thousands of points, which is still not nothing, and has definitely fueled some personal trips for me. But this is one of those things where if you have a big following, you put your referral link out there and then people click on it really quickly and all of a sudden you've got a ton of points in a short amount of time.
Speaker 2:
[44:20] Yeah, and this has changed just within probably most of calendar year 2026 so far. But for a long time, you could get much bigger bonuses on Amex cards by using a personal referral link than using a link from a site like ours or from your favorite social media influencer or just applying directly at amex.com. So that became a big work around for people to add to their stash of points. I think one last really important call out on this, unlike the points that you earn just from your everyday spend or from a welcome bonus on a new credit card, most banks treat referral bonuses as taxable income, which means come January or February of 2027, you're going to get a 1099 from American Express or Capital One showing. If you got 100,000 points from that bank in referral bonuses, they're going to treat that as about $1,000 in taxable income that you need to add to your taxes that following year. Yep.
Speaker 1:
[45:18] Good call out there. Okay. Last thing I want to talk about in the kind of dirty little secrets discussion isn't really a secret or like a points earning strategy, but I'm just calling this Kyle, the availability problem. What am I talking about? Read my mind.
Speaker 2:
[45:34] Do you not know?
Speaker 1:
[45:36] No, I do know, but I know that you're going to be able to speak more eloquently about this than I will.
Speaker 2:
[45:41] So there are two sides of the equation for every award trip that you take. There's the award rate, the amount of points that you need to book it, and we all try to find the lowest rate as possible in order to make our points stretch further. But the other side of the coin and the much more important side is award availability. Is the flight that you want to take actually bookable with the points that you have? Because so much of the coverage of all things travel and especially award travel is built around the ecosystem of credit cards. People talk a lot about this amazing business class deal that's bookable for 55,000 points without ever really mentioning availability. Can you actually book it? And this leads to so much confusion, frustration. It can be maddening, I think, especially for people whose entry point into credit card points, airline miles, all things award travel, is social media because they see, oh, I can, if I open a Chase Sapphire Preferred Card, I can transfer those points to Virgin Atlantic. It's the first time I'm transferring my credit card points ever. And I can book a business class seat from Chicago to Tokyo and ANA's the room for 60,000 points. That's amazing. What the person forgot to tell you, forgot, is being very gracious to them. What they didn't say is that finding that flight for 60,000 points is damn near impossible. And it's a piece of the equation that not enough people talk about. And it leads to a lot of false expectations for just how easy these points are to earn and use.
Speaker 1:
[47:26] Yeah, I guess I'll dunk on the social media people again. But it's hard to, in a one-minute video, where you're trying to show, look at how beautiful this seat is, look at this one card you need to sign up for, and also go through and be like, you know, this deal only comes around like once or twice a year, and there's usually only a few dates available, and you have to have a ton of flexibility in order to book it, and you also need to book this positioning flight. That's not a good video. That's not gonna catch fire in the algorithm. So I guess I understand why some of these influencers don't dig into this stuff, but it is the most important part of the equation. You know, 100,000 chase ultimate rewards, in your example, does not equal a business class flight. There's the availability element that doesn't get talked about. And to toot our own horn, it is the problem we're trying to solve with Thrifty Traveler Premium, our flight deal alerts. This is why we're going through and doing hundreds, thousands of manual searches a month to try and find all this availability and vet it to make sure it's bookable for people so that they actually have good uses for their points and miles. But telling somebody to sign up for a credit card that you might be earning a kickback on, promising them business class flight that may or may not exist is slimy. And it's the part of the kind of travel rewards internet that I think is a little corrosive. And it makes people lose trust in all of us is the problem. So I don't know, I get pretty worked up about this too. This is just kind of my least favorite version of talking about points and miles where spending bonus A equals flight B. It just doesn't work like that, but it's hard to talk about. I mean, this is why the podcast is a good format for this, because it is hard to talk about in a quick, piffy way.
Speaker 2:
[49:08] Yeah. And again, for as much as we've ragged on people on social media, I think it's good on the whole that more people are aware of the power of credit card points and airline miles and how they can leverage their spend in order to travel more for less. I think that that is a really, really good thing. But I do think everybody could use a much bigger dose of honesty about how much harder it has become by virtue of how popular this stuff has become in the last few years, how much harder it actually is to book the seats that they're talking about. And even if it's just a tag at the end of a 60-second reel that says, you know what, this is much harder to book, so click this guide for more information, I think adjusting expectations would help everybody a lot in terms of how easy it is to book this stuff, how much points you can earn. I think level setting expectations would help people a lot. And to your point, this is really the entire reason why we started this podcast in the first place is because there is much more room in a 50-60 minute podcast to talk about nuanced, complicated things like finding award availability and the importance of opening business credit cards in order to earn points at scale than there is in a 30-60 second reel or TikTok. It's just a tough medium to be your go-to, to learn everything that you need to learn in order to take those principles and apply them to your own travels.
Speaker 1:
[50:39] Yeah. And we don't really want this to be a purity contest or sound like we're being too virtue signally here, but it's just better when people are more clear about this stuff. We've told on ourselves a little bit in the show about our relationship with credit card affiliate networks and how you and I have both gotten extra points based on these referral bonuses that come with having somewhat of a following. But the more clear we are about how this all works, the easier it will be for people to understand and realize that not everybody who's traveling five round trips in business class a year are earning points and miles the same way that you are.
Speaker 2:
[51:21] Again, I think it just comes back to level setting expectations about what is really realistic, especially as you're just getting started in this. Because if your entry point and your endpoint is social media or it is just reading a blog one day or two days a week or whatever, there's just not going to be enough there to help you really understand what's going on and what truly is realistic to apply to your own travels.
Speaker 1:
[51:49] Yeah. Okay. I think that's good on that discussion. We had Melanie's listener question earlier, so I think we're going to skip the listener question. Melanie, you gave us about 45 minutes worth of topics, so that's plenty good there. We'll move to on the spot to close the show, and it's Kyle's turn to put me on the spot. What do you have?
Speaker 2:
[52:07] We've spent now 45 plus minutes talking about what other people need to do better. What's something that you think we could do better to help travelers? Here in the podcast, on our premium service, on our website, in our newsletters, wherever. Where do we need to step up to help people more?
Speaker 1:
[52:24] That's a good question. I think one thing that us and the entire industry needs to do better is talk more openly about taxes and fees when it comes to booking flights like this. We usually do, especially in our premium deals, we do. It is hard to explain to someone like, wow, you're getting this incredible business class flight from Amsterdam to Minneapolis for 60,000 points. What a deal. Sometimes it's very easy to say, add $490 in taxes and fees. It's hard to always include that stuff. It's way less sexy. I think we do a pretty good job of this, but I think taxes and fees, especially as they rise as precipitously as they have been, it's more important than ever to factor that into the equation. A lot of these flights aren't just 60,000 points, they're also $500, and that's meaningful money to a lot of people.
Speaker 2:
[53:16] That's a really good one. Good answer. I agree. I think we especially, but I think everybody could do a better job about doing both. It's not just 60,000 points. It's not just $5.60 to fly business class to Europe, it's also 60,000 points or 70,000 or 80,000. Both of those pieces of that award booking are really, really important to people when they should be, and I think we should help people understand that.
Speaker 1:
[53:44] Yep, more clarity, more transparency. That's what we love here at Thrifty Traveler, and I hope that you get more of that from your Traveler Awards content, wherever you get it, and hopefully again here next week on the show. Sound good?
Speaker 2:
[53:55] No promises.
Speaker 1:
[53:56] All right, thank you so much for listening to The Thrifty Traveler Podcast. Please rate us five stars on your podcast platform of choice and like and subscribe to the show on YouTube. Send this episode to someone you know who needs a vacation. If you have feedback for us, send me a note at podcast at thriftytraveler.com, and we'd love to hear from you there. Kyle, tell us about the team.
Speaker 2:
[54:12] This episode was produced by your favorite host who wants you to know exactly how much in points and fees your next flight will cost you, Gunnar Olson, who is produced and edited by Sylvia Thomas and edited by Kyle Thomas. Our theme music is by Benjamin Tissot. See you next week.
Speaker 1:
[54:29] See you.