I am grateful that the world of points and miles exists so that I can experience amazing travel options such as Emirates First Class! Photo by: Evan Berman

Happy Thanksgiving, All! This article is short and sweet, as the focus of the day should be on spending time with loved ones and celebrating your many blessings and treasures in life. What am I most thankful for? Obviously, the answer starts with the things that we often take for granted: health, friends, family, a good job, housing, freedom, and of course life itself. This article is focused on what I am most thankful for in the world of travel and points and miles.

Travel:

I am fortunate to be able to travel frequently (at least once a month), primarily leisure travel. I am grateful for many things that help me do so for a reasonable price:

• Google Flights
• Outsized earnings on spend
• The points and miles “game”

I’ve written articles before about the various aspects of Google Flights and how helpful of a search aggregator it is. The features that I value the most are the calendar price search, ability to search for fares from and to multiple cities/airports, excluding or including certain airlines, and the map search.

As someone who works remotely and has the ability to fly at nearly any day and time, I frequently book flights on a Tuesday, Thursday, or Saturday instead of a Friday or Sunday. The ability to see at a glance the prices for every day through the end of the schedule is extremely helpful. It often means I can structure a vacation around a much cheaper than usual flight or flights. I pair this with the use of filters which allow me to exclude airlines I do not wish to fly (Spirit, Frontier, and Southwest for example) or an alliance (such as only seeing oneworld airlines as I strive to acquire high level elite status with American Airlines) and get a true indication of what the prices are.

Similarly, I have no issues with using a different city as my departure airport, as evidenced by my recent article of flying to Seattle before taking Turkish Airlines Business Class to Istanbul, then on to Budapest. I almost always search for flights departing from New York (JFK, LGA, and EWR), DC (DCA, IAD, and BWI), Boston, Chicago, and my home airport of Charleston. Similarly, if I want to fly to South America, I will look for flights to Northern South America (think Bogota, Medellin, Cartagena in Colombia, Quito, Ecuador, and Lima, Peru) as well as Southern South America (Rio and Sao Paulo in Brazil, Santiago, Chile, and Buenos Aires, Argentina), no matter my destination.

The world of points and miles is enormous and there are many aspects of it. Let’s explore:

Points and Miles:

I frequently write about the points and miles world, talking about the flights that I take and hotels where I stay as well as tips and tricks on how to travel for less. This section could go on forever, there are endless things for which I am thankful in the points and miles world. That being said, a couple aspects stand out above the rest:

• Credit Card signup bonuses and transferable points
• Shopping Portals
• AAdvantage Hotels

I have many credit cards (13 currently!) and each serve a purpose. The ability to sign up for a card and earn up to 150,000 or sometimes 190,000 transferable points while meeting a minimum spend requirement is incredible! The existence of transferable credit card points is something to be thankful for in and of itself. Think about this statement for a second: “This year, I have visited 13 countries on two 2+ week international trips and have trips currently booked to visit 11 next year, with the long-haul flights almost exclusively in premium cabins and 3-5 star hotels.” That sounds extraordinarily expensive, something that is out of reach for 99% of people, but if you frequently read this blog, you know that it is not! I’ve waxed poetic time and again about the benefits of points and miles, but the fact remains that I would not visit nearly as many incredible places as I do without the ability to collect and redeem credit points for hotel points and airline miles.

Similarly, shopping portals take an everyday activity (buying items) and turn it into a game to collect enough points to travel the world! I’ve written before about how I use Rakuten and AAdvantage Shopping portals to ensure I earn every time I make a purchase. This year alone, I’ve earned over 25,000 AAdvantage Miles through the portal (not including AAdvantage Hotels where I’ve earned another 25,000+), helping me get to elite status and book luxurious flights like Qatar’s amazing QSuites Business Class from North America to South Africa for 75,000 miles and $45 one-way in February! And when I do spend money on flights and hotels, I make sure to use the right credit cards to earn big (5x points per $1 on flights with the AmEx Platinum or up to 18x points per $1 on Hilton stays with the Hilton Business Card from AmEx), powering my next vacation!

I am beyond thankful that lucrative partnerships such as Wyndham and Vacasa, American and their hotel service AAdvantage Hotels, and many many more exist.

Money for Nothing:

The Dire Straits song is pretty good, but that’s not what I’m referencing here! 😉 I frequently sign up for new bank accounts to earn bonuses. For example, here are this year’s earnings:

• $350 from Capital One for two deposits of $250+ within 90 days of opening
• $600 from US Bank for deposits totaling $10,000+ within 90 days of opening
• $325 from Wells Fargo for deposits totaling $1,000+ within 90 days of opening
• $400 from PNC for deposits totaling $5,000+ within 90 days of opening

While you need to pay taxes on these bonuses, that’s still $1,775 in pre-tax money for signing up for a bank account and “depositing” funds. Why is depositing in quotations? I’ll dive into this topic in more detail in a future article, but you *may* be able to transfer funds between accounts to trigger the deposit requirement. To reiterate, you might not always need to switch your employer’s direct deposit to a new bank each time that you sign up. This process of signing up for a new account takes ~5 minutes and you can often transfer in and out of bank accounts, as long as you note what the fee is for falling below a certain average balance or level of deposits monthly. As such, you need not worry about foregoing the high interest that you may earn in certain savings accounts currently (upwards of 5% in high-yield savings accounts!), making this truly free money!

Thank you for reading!

Finally, thank you all for reading my posts! I have enjoyed writing about my experiences and sharing information with others on how to explore the world for less. I hope that you have enjoyed reading as much as I enjoy writing. I’m hopeful that my blog makes your list of things that you are thankful for! Wishing you and yours a Happy Thanksgiving! -Evan

Evan