Tools of the Trade | thePointsPage

Getting Started: Tools of the Trade

Whether you’re a seasoned adventurer or a newbie dipping your toes into the world of miles and points, maximizing your travel rewards can feel like a daunting task.

Fear not, for navigating the ever-evolving landscape of loyalty programs and credit card benefits doesn’t have to be a solo expedition. In this post, we’ll delve into the “tools of the trade”, specifically focusing on powerful apps designed to streamline your points and miles journey.

From tracking balances to monitoring expiration dates and keeping an eye on 5/24 status (Learn why your 5/24 status is important), these digital companions will become your trusty allies in maximizing your travel rewards and unlocking unforgettable experiences. Buckle up, get ready to explore the app store, and let’s transform your points game into a first-class adventure!

How Am I Ever Going to Keep Track?!

If finding unicorn redemptions and hitting minspend wasn’t hard enough, now you tell me I have to be an accountant to my points and miles stash? Ugh…what a pain!

Well, yea, you’re kind of right. It’s a LOT of work keeping things straight in this world, especially when talking about renewal dates, credit card annual fees, whether you redeemed the monthly freebie bonus from your special credit card, or so many other factors that come up when playing this game.

Good thing you’ve got thePointsPage to keep you grounded.

Read along for some of our favorite apps that keep us organized, up to date, and in the points.

Apps to the Rescue: Keeping an Eye on your Points

↳Award Wallet

Our first recommendation and leader of the pack is Award Wallet. This genius app lets you keep an eye on all of your reward account balances, renewal dates, award info, and more from a convenient user interface on any device. Not only will it track those items for credit cards, hotels, and airlines, but it’ll also generate in-line itineraries based on email confirmations you receive after booking trips. Combine that feature with pop-up notifications and you’ll be able to see your entire trip at a glance from your home screen.

One thing that we’ll recommend you set up as soon as you register is a 3rd party 2FA (2 factor authentication) link to make sure no one gets unauthorized access to your account. Google Authenticator (Android / iOS) is a great choice for this, the 2FA accounts you set up transfer from device to device when you download the app, and it’s organized quite nice.

↳ Max My Point

Now that you’ve got a system in place to track your points and miles with Award Wallet, we need to take a look at how to best utilize that point balance that you’re building.

MaxMyPoint is a hotel availability tool that allows you to target preferred hotels, then get an email as soon as points availability opens up. This can be particularly useful when looking to book an aspiration, high-demand, luxury hotel where availability gets snatched up months and months in advance, but where cancellations sometimes occur.

As soon as that cancellation happens, you’ll be the first to know that a new room is available to book and that it matches your search criteria initially set up in your alert. When you click the ‘bell’ alert icon, you can select which dates you’re looking to book, whether you want to be alerted when there’s availability for any day or just the full trip, and how many points you’re willing to spend for each night.

Not all of the features of MaxMyPoint are available for free users, but you’ll still have great functionality with the basics. The award calendar, for example, helps you find individual days that are available when your hotel website searches turn up as “sold out” for your full length searches.

Here’s a good example of how this can help you. Let’s say you’re looking to book this hotel from April 10 – 18, but every time you search that timeframe you get the result “not available” on the hotel website. The reason this happens is because the last day of your stay isn’t available for points booking.

So maybe after checking these dates nonstop for a week straight, you give up since the availability just isn’t there. How to fix it? Easy.

A quick search with MaxMyPoint will show you that only your last day isn’t available. Adjust your stay dates to cut that day off, or just back up the full search by a day, and you’ll be back in business.

This was an easy one, but it sure beats a heck of a lot of trial and error when availability isn’t so ample.

↳ Point.Me

Point and miles tracking – check ✅. Hotel availability – check ✅. Now it’s time to move on to finding those perfect award flights on your favorite airlines.

Point.me is a great tool for those of us starting out with our award searches, or even those with plenty of experience but who might want to hit the ‘easy’ button to start things out. The genius in this platform is just how easy it is to use.

When you first visit their page, you’ll sign up for a free or paid account, and be on your way to searching for award availability just like you’re searching Google Flights. Simply type in the type of trip you want (one way or round trip), how many passengers, and whether you want to fly economy / premium economy, or business / first class. You’ll pick your preferred airports and travel dates, then tap Search to get things going.

For our example we picked a one way flight for 2 passengers in economy from New York (EWR) to Detroit (DTW). The search itself can take a few minutes to complete, but once it’s done you can filter and sort through the results to find your perfect match. In this case, the ‘quickest flights’ (from the search filter on the top right of the screen) work for me, so no further slicing and dicing needed. To see more details about the flight in question you can click the drop down carrot on the right hand side.

In this view you can see the exact times, length of flight, type of aircraft (important for seating selections!), confirm the class of service, and then look at all the different booking options you can select from.

The best option we can see from the point.me picks is using Virgin Atlantic as the booking airline, and funding that account using Citi Thank You Points as the transferable currency due to the 30% transfer bonus. Now, that last part might be a little tricky – transfer partners, booking airline, and bonuses? What’s all that about?

Lucky for us Point.me offers an overview of what those terms mean, and what steps you’ll need to take to get the flight booked. Just click the ‘Book your Flight’ button and follow their easy instructions start to finish.

See? Couldn’t be easier.

↳ Seats.Aero

Maybe you’re not sure of where you want to fly to yet, which is surprisingly a pretty common problem to have in this hobby! We’ve got this stash of points burning a hole in our pocket, but don’t really have somewhere in mind to use them yet.

Well, enter seats.aero, the best place to search for random flights. This website provides a super simple way to see what kind of flights are out there, what’s in your budget, and when they’re taking off.

Seats.aero aggregates real-time award availability from a vast network of airlines and loyalty programs. Unlike traditional flight search engines, it focuses specifically on award seats, allowing you to search for flights redeemable with your points and miles. The platform boasts an intuitive interface, enabling you to search by route, date range, cabin class (economy, business, first), and even specific frequent flyer programs.

Seats.aero offers a range of features to enhance your award travel search:

Instant Search Results: Gone are the days of waiting for results to populate. Seats.aero leverages pre-populated data, providing instant insights into available award seats.
Extensive Search Capabilities: Search by specific airlines, alliances (Oneworld, Star Alliance, SkyTeam), or a combination. You can even set up custom alerts for desired routes and programs.
Upgrade Availability: (For select airlines) Explore the possibility of upgrading existing flights using your points and miles.
Explore Tool: Discover new destinations and award opportunities by simply clicking on an airport code, revealing all departing and arriving award flights.

As shown above, Seats.aero offers a free tier with limited functionality that allows you to search for award availability within the next two months. However, for the serious points and miles traveler, a Pro subscription unlocks the full potential of the platform. The Pro subscription extends search capabilities to a full year, providing ample time to plan your dream getaway.

Generally speaking, this website offers a valuable toolkit for points and miles enthusiasts seeking a powerful and efficient way to find award travel opportunities. With its extensive search capabilities, real-time data, and user-friendly interface (for experienced travelers), Seats.aero can be your secret weapon for maximizing your points and miles redemptions. Consider the free tier to test the waters, and if you find yourself constantly on the hunt for award flights, the Pro subscription might be a worthwhile investment. Click here to get signed up.

↳ Rakuten Shopping Portal

Rakuten is a leading e-commerce platform boasting over 3,500 partner stores. It acts as a one-stop shop for all your shopping needs, from fashion and electronics to home goods and travel bookings.

If you’re not familiar with shopping portals in general, they’re used to reward you for shopping online or in-store with their partner businesses. Before signing in to your favorite online shopping website, check out Rakuten first to see how much cash back or Amex MR points they’ll pay you for clicking through their shopping link. Easy as that!

Beyond the convenience of a vast product selection, frequent multiplier bonuses, and the in-browser Chrome extension, Rakuten offers several compelling reasons to make it your go-to shopping portal:

Earn Amex Membership Rewards points: Instead of settling for cash back, you can opt to convert your purchases into valuable points that can be redeemed for travel, statement credits, merchandise, and more. (This is the primary reason we love Rakuten)
Shop at your favorite stores: Rakuten boasts an extensive network of partnerships with popular retailers like Dell (for your Amex Platinum credits), Macy’s, Sephora, and Best Buy, ensuring you can earn points on your everyday purchases.
Enjoy exclusive deals and promotions: Rakuten frequently offers additional discounts and bonus points on top of existing store promotions, maximizing your savings potential.
Free and easy to use: Signing up for a Rakuten account is completely free and only takes a few minutes. As an added bonus you’ll receive $30 or 3,000 Amex MR points by using this link to sign up for your new Rakuten account.

Want to Make Sure you Earn Amex MR?

As mentioned above, you can opt to earn Amex MR points instead of cash back, which can be used for much better valued travel redemptions than their cash equivalents. Here’s how to make sure your account is an MR-earning account:

•1. Click here to sign up for a new Rakuten account with the $30/3,000 MR bonus and set up your set up your username and password.
•2. Log in, click the menu in the top right, then click My Account. Click the “Choose Payment Method” button on the banner at the top of the page about choosing how you’d prefer to get paid.

•3. Confirm your name and street address to finalize your account set up.

•4. Once complete, scroll down the landing page a bit and select select the option to “Switch to Membership Rewards”.

•5. Log in to your existing Amex account and you’ll be set! From this point on you’ll be earning Amex Membership Rewards points on your Rakuten purchases instead of cash back.

Worth noting, this process is final once submitted, and your Rakuten account can’t be switched back to a cash-back earning account. We don’t see this as an issue, of course, since the value of Amex MR can be much, much higher than their cash back equivalent through this shopping portal.

TopCashBack and CashBackMonitor Shopping Portals

Don’t want to get stuck with just one shopping portal? There are other websites that offer good alternatives to the MR earnings that Rakuten boasts. Check out TopCashBack which offers some of the highest cash-back rates at times. Another option to monitor all of the different earning opportunities (think cash back, airline miles, hotel points, and more) is CashBackMonitor.

↳ Credit Karma

The last app we’ll mention in the basic Tools of the Trade toolkit is Credit Karma. What Award Wallet does for tracking your points and miles, Credit Karma can do for the actual credit cards you’ll use to accrue those points and miles.

Credit Karma is a great resource for not only your points and miles game, but for general financial health. Within this app you’ll find resources dedicated to helping you improve your credit score, qualify for loans, and track other variable metrics over time.

The biggest benefit we’ll see from a points and miles perspective is by reviewing our credit scores, inquiries, and open credit card accounts.

First up, let’s take a look at your credit score.

While Credit Karma may not be the version of your score that lenders use when deciding if they’ll approve your application or not, it does provide great insight into score trends over time as well as a ballpark figure of where your score is at.

Clicking on one of the credit reports listed will show you a time-based graph of your credit score, and outline increases and decreases over time. If your score is increasing, you’re doing all the right things. Decreasing score? Time to consider making some changes.

Next on our list is the Inquiry Detail section.

Inquiries on their own aren’t that important for your score. Yea, they’ll make it go up or down a few points each time you get an inquiry, but only a small amount and only for a short period of time. Scores will usually rebound within a few weeks of new inquiries.

What we’re looking at with this report is which banks checked your credit, then matching up those check-ins with open credit cards. Doing this will help you determine your 5/24 number, which is incredibly important when considering Chase credit cards and their Ultimate Rewards points ecosystem.

Start your tracking process by opening a blank spreadsheet, writing out each of your current credit cards, then adding columns for important important such as open date and annual fee.

Ok, so you’ve got your spreadsheet started and you have a section for inquiries, but are all those inquiries actual open accounts? Maybe you applied for a few cards that ultimately were denied. You’ll still have the inquiry for that application on file (including for business credit cards), but the card itself isn’t going to be listed in your open account view (above).

This is the part where you compare the Inquiries to the Credit Cards sections. Only keep track of those inquiries that resulted in a new Credit Card account, and make sure you document it all. You can ignore inquiries for mortgages, car loans, and other non-credit card applications since those approvals aren’t considered for your 5/24 number.

Getting to the Point

While there are many different apps, website, tools, spreadsheets, and services you can use to help you on your points and miles journey, we feel that the few recommended here are the perfect set to start with. You’ll be able to track your points, grow your balances, search hotels and flights, and keep an eye on your credit score and 5/24 – all for free!

If you’ve been using any other apps that you find helpful, please send us a message or get in touch at our Facebook Group so we can add it to the list.

Join Community on Facebook for the latest updates, exclusive content, and vibrant discussions with other like-minded travel hackers.