Tools we use to win the points & miles game | Frequent Miler on the Air Ep348 | 3-6-26

This is a Voicecape Podcast.

You can find all of our travel podcasts from around the world at Voicecape.com.

On today's show, Nick and I are going to talk about the tools we actually use day-to-day

to earn more rewards, to organize our points and rewards, and to spend our points wisely.

Frequent Miler on the Air starts now.

Today's main event, tools we use to win the points and miles game.

I like to think of points and miles as a game where the way you play is you do stuff to

get points and miles and then you do other stuff to redeem the points and miles for travel.

You win by collecting as many points and miles as you can for the lowest possible cost

in terms of time and money and even more importantly by redeeming that stuff for

the best possible experiences you can get.

To do that, to win at this game, it helps to know your toolbox, have a toolbox of tools

that can help you both on the collecting side of things and on the redemption side of

things and also miscellaneous other stuff that goes on around the edges.

Yeah, and so wherever you're watching or listening, don't forget to like this video, give

us a thumbs up, leave us a review, we always appreciate that, we always love to see and

read your comments so we thank you very much for that.

But now before we happen today's main event, we should mention that this one was pre-recorded.

Yeah, I am on vacation as you're listening to this and so we didn't have a chance to

record it in near real time.

So as a result, what we did is we recorded this main event about tools as a standalone

show today.

So we have none of the usual mail bag question of the week or any of the other segments

that we normally do.

We're going to just jump right into the main event.

So main event time.

All right, let's start with miscellaneous tools that we use to play the points in miles

game.

I'm going to kick it off with a plug for our own site FrequentMilor.com is a, it's

a blog, but it's also a website that has lots of useful resources and in this show, we're

not talking, we're not going to try to talk about all the tools that are out there.

We're talking about tools.

We actually return to time and again to do what we do and even though we produce the

content for FrequentMilor.com, we use it as consumers to figure out like what's the

best credit card to sign up for, what's the best card to use for different purposes,

things like that and those kind of resources are all over FrequentMilor.com and we believe

it to be the best of that sort of thing on the internet and we behave that way.

So when people ask us what card should I sign up for under these conditions, I mean,

we don't know the answer off top of our head.

We go to our own site and check it out and so hopefully you will too.

Yeah, I do that all the time.

I just opened a few new credit cards and the first place I went was the best offers page to look

at the best first year value out of the different things on the market and then I decided I specifically

wanted to also open a cash back card and so I was looking through the best cards with cash back

bonuses and whatnot.

So a lot of stuff there that we use and not just that, but also when I'm trying to figure out

how something works within a particular program, I'll often go to our resource page and look at our

guides.

So it really is a great, great tool.

Now, we do between the two of us probably apply for open quite a number of credit cards.

So the next tool that I know you use quite a bit use more than I do is travel freely.

Yeah, travel freely.

It's a free tool and it's really designed to help you through the process of

seriously signing up for credit cards for the purpose of getting big welcome offers.

So what it does is it'll recommend cards and when you apply for one, you just need to enter in

like what card you applied for and then it will and when you applied and then it will do things

like remind you that you have to have spent a certain $3,000, $5,000, whatever it is by this

given date, it'll send you email reminders about that after as it gets close to a year of you

having the card, it'll send you reminders saying you might want to downgrade or cancel this card.

If you don't want to pay the next year's annual fee, that sort of thing.

And what I really like about this tool too is that it's a few things.

One, the travel freely owners follow the same rules that we do about

credit card bonuses, where on FrequentMilor.com, we only show the offer that is best for the consumer,

even if it doesn't pay us anything, travel freely follows that same approach, which is fantastic.

The other thing, another thing that I really like is they've done their best to try to code

sign up bonus rules into their system. So for example,

Marriott credit cards, if you already have a Marriott card issued by American Express or Chase

or you've had one in the past, understanding which card you're eligible for

is really difficult because they have very complex rules about that.

Travel freely has incorporated rules like that into their system.

So when it recommends cards, it'll recommend cards that you should actually be eligible for,

given that it knows what you've signed up for in the last, you know, however many years you've

been using it. So anyway, so that's a really cool free tool. Yeah, and that's one that I honestly,

I didn't use in the beginning because I didn't think I needed it. And now I have so many cards that

I wish I had set it up sooner. And so I'm constantly like, oh, I don't have all the old data now,

I can't do it. And really actually, as you were talking about it, I thought to myself, I know

when I just opened up a bunch of them recently at least. So at the very least, I can start there

and try and keep better track moving forward. So I'm going to do that because it is a good tool.

And now I need to get disciplined with that because it'll really help me organize things.

You know, as you get complicated in this game, it's hard to keep track of everything.

It is. And so I do recommend when people are just starting, you know, that's a great time to

get in the habit of using travel freely because I mean, both you'll be in a position where

its advice will be most meaningful to you, I think, because once you get into the game more,

you're going to be your own ideas of what the best card is. You're not going to need the

recommendations necessarily. But that way too, you'll have all the data all the time in there.

And that's really helpful. Yeah. Speaking of keeping track of everything,

one of the tools that I use all the time for that is a Word wallet. A Word wallet is a tool you

can use to track your balances in all the various frequent flyer programs to keep track of how many

miles and points you have when they're set to expire, which free nights certificates you have,

what the expiration dates are. And most programs, not all, but most programs it can track automatically

for you. So that's really helpful. I get reminders all the time when something is about to expire,

so that it doesn't go unused. And because I manage not only my own frequent flyer accounts,

and I've got tons of them because I've, you know, opened up all the various accounts over the years

because I've had to transfer some miles for this or that. And sometimes, you know,

award gets canceled. And then I end up with a balance in an airline that I don't use all the time.

And so I'm managing all of mine. I'm managing my wife's. I'm helping some other family members too.

And so being able to do all of that centrally in one place for me is huge. That simplifies my

life so much. And I before I got in the habit of using it frequently, there were times I wrote about

where I had some miles expire unused. And I was kicking myself because if I just put that into

award wallet, then I would have gotten a notification before it expired and would have made sure

not to let that happen. So yeah, to me is invaluable. Yeah. So just last week, I use it exactly as Nick

described. And just last week, I got an email from award wallet saying that my 10,000 mile choice

benefit selection from Alaska's Atmos program was about to expire. And now that wouldn't be like

the end of the world because at 10,000 miles, you don't get great choices. But I was able to pick,

I don't remember something like 750 points. And so I just jumped on and picked those points. And so

that's like 750 points I would not have if it wasn't for award wallet. Normally,

you know, I'm mentioning that because it just happened. Normally, it's bigger things like, you know,

this free 85k for marry out free nights or do gets going to expire in a couple of months. So I

make sure to find a good use for that. But still, you know, every little bit matters and having

a tool watch out for you for those things is absolutely huge. Well, and I should add on to that. I

think if I remember correctly, correct me if I'm wrong, but a few years back, I say a few years

as probably six or seven now at least, you had your Hilton account hacked and wasn't award wallet,

how you found that out because you got a balanced notification, I think that it dropped or something.

That could be. Yeah, I don't remember the details with that, but that sounds right. You know,

it probably is that I was like, wait, wait, where? Yeah. Well, you know, what's going on here with

that huge decrease in points. So yeah, probably is the case for that too. All right, next up on the

list is Tripit. I don't know if you do use Tripit as much as I've been using it lately or I've

been using it quite a bit. Yeah, I've used Tripit for many, many years and absolutely love it.

There are several tools that do the same thing or very similar thing, but at its core,

the way I use Tripit is I, every time I book a hotel,

flight, a tour, activity, I forward the email confirmation to Tripit and it puts it

into, it puts it all into a trip in order. So for example, I book a trip to Hawaii, so I send it

the confirmations of the flights, I send it confirmations of maybe I'm staying on multiple

islands during my trip and staying at a lot of different, multiple different hotels.

Yeah, you know, I send all that to Tripit and it automatically puts it into one trip and lines it

all up and it makes it really easy for one to see if there's something missing. Like, oh, I forgot

to book a hotel for that night or if there's something wrong, like, oh, I accidentally book this flight

for the day before I'm going to be arriving. In fact, when a few years ago, Nick and I traveled to

Dubai and then onward to the Maldives and there was a point where he was sending me like all

these confirmations and I put it all on Tripit. I think before Nick was using Tripit and because

it was in Tripit, I noticed exactly that that one of the flights was taking off before we would arrive.

So it's luckily easier. And you know, I find it's just also a great way to have all the confirmation

numbers at your fingertips. One time like at a transfer desk at an airport, they're like, I need to

see your onward flight information and just showing them Tripit was enough. You know, it's just

super easy for so many reasons to do that and great for families who organize stuff kind of

together so that you can share all the stuff and you can each send different confirmations to

the same place. Yeah, that aspect I love because some things I'll book under my wife's account,

some under mine, but we've got all the email addresses in there so that I can forward from

multiple email addresses and it knows it's all under our account and puts it all together in the

trips. So that's super convenient, also super convenient for me. For years, I had kind of a

mind like a steel trap in the sense that I could just somehow mentally keep it organized as to where

we were going and when and what time things arrived and that's fading. So I'm not always remembering

and my wife will ask me, when are we getting here or when is this flight or what is and she'll ask

me details that I'm like, I can't remember off the top of my hat, I have to go to my email, I have to

search for it, I have to look for an airport code, you know, it takes a while to find with Tripit,

it's so much easier because it's just there and you got the confirmation numbers and the times

like you said, when I had a flight where it was disrupted recently, it recognized that I should be

eligible for an EU 261 claim. That's really handy. I used this years and years ago in my wife and I

were kind of backpacker style traveling so that family would be able to track where we were and

know where to find us in case of an emergency as we were traveling around. Then I got away from

using it for a while and I came back to it in the last year or two and I'm glad that I have because

it's helped make things much more organized. So that's been useful for me. You use another tool that

kind of has some similar functionality but some different stuff too called flighty, right?

Yeah, I actually wouldn't say it has similar functionality but they go together well.

So flighty can, you can hook it up to your Tripit account to see which flights you have and it'll

monitor those flights in depth and it'll tell you everything you could possibly want to know about

your flight, including many details that you probably don't care about, like tell number was

assigned but it often comes in really handy to where like I'll know way before the airline will

tell me that a flight is going to be delayed for example. So it's monitoring not just your specific

flight but how that the plane that is scheduled to fly you where it monitors where it is and whether

it's arriving at your departing airport on time or not and if it's not it's going to let you know

that you know the incoming plane is delayed by an hour or whatever it is so that is likely to

affect your departure things like that and equipment swaps that'll let you know. It'll even tell

you what gate to go to and show you airport maps. So we had this, we were flying to London from

Detroit to Chicago to London and our flight to Chicago was very delayed and so it looked like we

would only have 15 minutes once we landed to get to the gate for departure and you know it was

pretty helpful seeing a little map right in and I think I think actually Tripit does a stupid flighty

had a really good one showing exactly where we were expected to pull into the airport and luckily

in that case it was very close story to departure gate. Nice nice that's helpful yeah so there you

go and so flighty automatically integrates with Tripit so that you don't have to feed it the

itinerary information separately you don't have to double up on that. Exactly there's other ways to

feed it the information but I just do it just through Tripit. One thing it doesn't do or it doesn't

do yet is no to remove a flight when you remove it from Tripit. So I often have flighty telling me

about flights that I had long ago you know canceled or changed and then it's easy enough to

delete it out of out of flighty but it can give you a little little shock when you realize your

your flight is departing 10 minutes early and you haven't even thought about going to the airport

because you don't think you're actually flying. Right well you know but that's you know it's funny

as that is that's one of the reasons why I've been using Tripit more and more is because I do book

some things that are speculative I don't know whether we'll take this trip or that trip and and

again that was all stuff that I just stored mentally for a long time and kind of kept track of

mentally and then I started to just realize it wasn't even necessarily the difficulty it's not

necessarily that I can't remember it as much as it is I'm feeling the mental burden of remembering

it like I feel my brain sifting through okay if I done this if I done that I've done the other

thing and so I'm trying to eliminate some of that and so Tripit helps with that because it'll let

me know okay I got this thing I got a cancel if I just keep an eye on it so very helpful for that

all right another helpful tool is save wise save wise is kind of similar to cashback monitor in

the sense that it monitors a whole bunch of different shopping portals so that if you're looking

for a particular store you can compare and see how many miles per dollar the various airline

shopping portals are offering or how much cash back the cash back platforms are offering so

it's a good tool for comparing cash back and and cash back monitors the tool I still use

at that that does that job very well also the reason I've been using save wise more and more

lately though is because it also keeps track of card linked offers and so when I'm looking to buy

something and I just want to know is there a card linked offer for it then I'm very frequently

using save wise now we also have a current MX offers page on the frequent mile or website and I

used to use that a lot looking for MX offers the reason I'm using save wise more and more now is

because it also has the chase offers and the city offers city merchant offers and I find that

helpful because sometimes there's a place I'm shopping that doesn't have an MX offer but might

have another offer and I don't want to have to go through all of my cards every time I want to buy

something and see is there a card linked offer for this so it saves me a lot of time I'll I can

narrow it down and say oh there is a chase offer so I guess I do have to go through the chase cards

looking for this one or oh there's a city merchant offer for this one I just have to go through

the city cards or whatever the case might be so I'm using that quite a bit now there's some additional

functionality where you can track things and get alerts and whatnot I'm using it primarily as a

shopping portal comparison and more importantly as a card linked offer comparison and database

do you use it it also will let you it'll automatically add the offers to your

you know different accounts I have not been using it that way and maybe I'll change on that at some

point I've been a little conservative on that and wondering if that's not going to cause a problem

at some point but it it hasn't for a long time now and it's not the only tool that's offering

that functionality as we'll talk about in a second so I was a little gun shy on that because I

thought that maybe the card issuers wouldn't like that but thus far it hasn't caused anybody a

problem so so I might consider doing that my my main hesitation with that is that I won't see it

when I log in I want I might notice the new offers because they're constantly added so I I won't

discover offers so to speak except right probably there's more value in making sure that they're

added and I use them even accidentally then there is in the chance that I might discover a new one

at some point right right so speaking of automatically adding offers to your account so you know

american express chase like a lot of these programs have these offers that that are linked to your

card and and so for example a you know 10% back when you spend at least x amount at

at this store or whatever but you often you have to log in your account and go and actually

add that offer to your account before it'll work and so save wise and also the next tool we're

going to talk about card pointers have the ability to automatically add offers to your account and

all all you have to do is you have to have the toolbar on your browser and then you log in

to your american express account or your chase account whatever it is that we're talking about and

then it notices that you're logged into that and automatically adds all the offers that are

available that's that's great for that that works out great for me because I don't tend to

you know take the time these offers come and go so often that I just rarely even bother looking

at what's there and yet because I'm using card pointers to automatically add the offers I've

actually probably five times in the past year I'm kind of guessing have just

received cash back for things that I had no idea that I had an offer for and that's awesome

you know and sometimes that's like 75 bucks or you know it's sometimes it's significant so

you know for me having a tool like that I think you probably need to pay for the pro version

to make them do that it easily pays for itself from that kind of automatic use

the the other thing it these tools can do is with some programs like mx where you're you you're

only supposed to have an offer linked to one card it can sometimes load that same offer to multiple

cards and then you can use it multiple times so that could be really great too when that when

you need to use an offer more than once yeah yeah and I think that that has lots of potential value

that was really what made me has a tent on this that obviously mx went through the steps to

make that difficult to do because it used to be easy to do and then it's kind of difficult to do

and then it became basically impossible to do and so there's a little concern that they didn't want

that behavior and so they yeah decide they don't like it sometime but yeah you know like I said

so far so good so one of these days maybe I will start using that all right next up google

Gemini now whereas most of the things we talked about so far have been kind of more administrative

keeping track of everything staying organized Google Gemini is one that I've been using more and

more lately it's Google's AI tool so the similar to chat GPT or cloud or all the other AI tools so

really lump in your favorite AI tool whatever it might be I've been using Gemini because I got

a free year because of my Google one subscription or whatever so that's why I'm using that particular

tool not because it's better than others at what it does but I've been using it more and more

for trip planning asking about areas to go and particularly about family travel stuff things that

are more kid friendly and so I've used it quite a bit for stuff like that I've also used it for

asking for tips like I'll talk a little bit more about trains in a little while but I asked it

about the best trains to take in different scenarios in Europe and European trips and so

it's able to give a pretty detailed breakdown and then I follow up with additional questions

and so it's I found it particularly helpful in figuring out where I want to go or what types of

things I want to do and then being able to get basic simple answers like to give you a for instance

this summer we're hoping to do some kinder hotels and maybe not that specific brand but that

kind of idea so Austrian Switzerland have a bunch of these kind of family oriented hotels with a

lot of stuff for the kids and both of those countries Austrian Switzerland have a number of these

Alpine coasters that you can do in the mountains and stuff that that looks like a lot of fun but

some of those places are geared towards certain age levels and not others and so I've been using

Gemini to ask about the the ages where you're allowed to do A or B or C and stuff like that and

that has helped me narrow my search down because sometimes when you start with a really broad search

it can be hard to figure out well there's a choice privileges you know preferred hotel over here

and there's this over there and I don't know which area to go to and so I found it particularly

helpful for narrowing things down in situations like that I don't tend to lean on this and we talked

about this on a recent episode in a question of the week I don't tend to lean on this for like

finding me points in my sweet spots or summarizing points in miles related information it's more

of the travel stuff yeah that I'll ask for for good advice with yeah yeah that makes a ton of

sense you know I I don't do this but not because not for any good reason other than it just doesn't

occur to me too and and I really probably ought to try that out more often my son had a lot of

good success with using chat GPT to plan his trip around Japan with a friend and that worked out

really well for him even even with like finding what train to get on you know to get to his next

destination everything like that so yeah it definitely could be a fantastic trip planning tool

I think so and I like to be able to follow up with questions to like narrow things down a little

bit more whereas I can google basic details like the age types of things that I was talking about

a second ago but I can give it some more information about our tastes and wants and it can help

me all things a little bit so that can be helpful I think but all right we'll be back after

this message with even more tools we hope you're enjoying the frequent myler on the air podcast

did you know that frequent mylers also a website at frequentmyler.com you'll find all the latest

deals news about points miles and rewarding credit cards the single best best credit cards page

on the web guides to all popular rewards programs and many other terrific resources if you'd like to

get our post sent to your email go to frequentmyler.com forward slash subscribe and sign up for free

and we're back we're now going to cover specifically flight trip planning so where we're looking for

you know how to how to find the best flight for what we need and I'm going to start this off with

a tool that I use quite a bit to figure out which flights are available to and from different

airports that I want to get to and that's called flight connections it's just a super easy to use

visual tool that just shows a map and you put in you could put in for example a destination airport

and it'll show you all the flights that go to that airport you could filter it to specific airlines

or particulars airline alliances you could even filter it to you know class of service like if

you only want to fly business class things like that and it's so it's not really it's never the tool

that I use to like you know figure out exactly which flight I'm going to get but it gives me a

really good idea of what flights are potentially available so that then I know where to begin looking

for example like maybe I'm going to the Caribbean and maybe it wouldn't even occurred to me that

jet blue would be a good option but I see that jet blue is one of the airlines that fly there and

so I'm going to be looking towards jet blue is one of the options when I'm going to figuring things out

yeah I find it especially useful as somebody who's not located next to a major airport and I'm

kind of equally distant from the New York City airports or Boston and I've even gone to Philadelphia

once or twice before that's a little extra far but I but at any rate I've got a number of different

options I normally fly out of Albany if I'm if I'm flying domestically but but for instance I got

a trip coming up to the west coast in a couple of months and I wasn't sure can I get to this

specific airport I want non-stop from anywhere in the east because if I get there non-stop from

Boston maybe we would drive to Boston for that rather than having to connect and so there's a lot

of routes that I just I wouldn't know where to start looking if I don't I just don't know the routes

so I find it really helpful for that type of situation where it's an airport I don't know very

well I just want to know who who goes there and where do they go there from I'm more important

yeah yeah recently I was looking at how to get back from Australia we're going to be in Perth at

the end of our trip and one of the routes is to fly through Japan you know through Tokyo and back

to the U.S. but the best flights from Tokyo to where I want to end up are through

Haneda Airport yet you know connections or flight connection showed me well wait a minute the

direct flights from Perth to Tokyo go to and are to Nareeda Airport and so that yeah connecting

between the two is like forget it I mean so that's a long train ride so you know that's all very

look look elsewhere that's just one of many examples where I turned to flight connections yeah

very useful tool I use it all the time more and more anyway speaking of flight connections though

then obviously the next step after you found the airports that are going to work for your situation

is to find flights and compare against cash prices because if you're going to use points then you

want to know well am I getting a good deal on the way you know I get whether you're getting a good

deal or not is by comparing against cash prices and I use Google flights and I know you do too

just flights.google.com it's probably the the site I visit the most often which is a little ironic

I laugh at myself a little bit over that because I don't book that many paid tickets but I do want

to know okay well how is the is this a good value should I be paying cash instead and also it helps

me know what is for sale that day whereas flight connections might let me know which routes exist

that doesn't necessarily mean that they're available for sale at the time when I want to travel

so it might be only certain days a week or certain seasons so I use Google flights all the time

to look at the schedule. Yeah same for me I mean there's not a single trip I take by air where I

haven't opened up Google flights to see what the options are what the prices are what you know

non-stop versus multi-stop routes are available and even like some little details you wouldn't think

let's say you're looking to fly business class and you want to know is this like a true

live flat business class is is this even better maybe one of those what they call a sweet where

there's like a door that closes when you pick a flight and when you're searching business class

in Google flights and you click on a flight it'll actually tell you that this is a business

this a recliner seat which that's what you don't want if it's a really long flight

or it's a lifeline seat or it's a sweet you know that kind of thing is all listed there so

there's endless amounts of good information the ability to use it to find cheap flights is

tremendous you can do things like you could use Google Explorer by just saying I want to fly

for example I want to fly from Detroit to Europe and I'm open to going just about anywhere in

Europe you could actually put that Europe as your destination and it'll show you all the options

and you can find like great great deals that way so so much to like and love about Google flights

yeah and because both of us use Google flights so much a tool that we always use without even

trying is points path so points path just plugs in it's an extension plugs into your browser

and looks for award flights on those flights you're seeing at Google flights and gives you the

award pricing information among a number of programs now if you use the free version I think

it's just the major US airline programs that it shows if you have the pro version then there's

a bunch more airlines that it supports airline programs I should say that it supports so you can

see award pricing right there side by side with the cash prices yeah it's so valuable for that I

can't even begin to say how great how much I love that feature of it there's also some other

features I really like that points path has if you have the pro version you can look at award

availability for a week at a time there's a way to see like a calendar and then you could actually

move the week over I think to see multiple weeks what I use even more than that is I watch fairs

I watch point fairs so you know maybe maybe there's no award for a given flight that I really want

and points path will let me like watch it and alert me if if it becomes available with points

or maybe it is available with points but it's just way more points than I want to spend I could

watch it for that reason or another maybe you know like some programs like Delta the price the

award pricing is variable there's it changes all the time so maybe I did book it but I just want to

be alerted when the point price goes down so that I can rebook it at the lower price and get some

miles back for all those reasons I use that feature a lot yeah yeah super valuable for that

and you mentioned that and and actually brings me back to Google flights for a second because

hadn't been on my mind but you've mentioned recently because I can't remember how this came up

but you mentioned using Google flights to track prices on flights cash prices on flights yeah

and that's something I hadn't really been doing because like I said I don't book lots of cash

tickets every year but lately I've booked quite a few because I've got a bunch of united travel

bank credits to use a bunch of Southwest credits to use and a few trips this year planned like

you know for work related stuff and so I've I've started tracking flights and even right now I'm

not I'm not at home as we record this and I saved a bunch of money on flights home this weekend

because I was able to change when Google flights alerted me I I tracked the flights that we've

already booked and I've been able to rebook a few times already because Google's let me know

when the prices have dropped so I find that tracking feature to be more valuable than I've given

it credit for before because yeah now it's just automatically doing that I several times now I've

just automatically saved money that I wouldn't have because I probably wouldn't have checked and

noticed that yeah yeah and just anecdotally this has happened to me a couple times where I track

I use both Google to track the cash price and points path right next to it to to track the points

price and sometimes those change together where the points price is tied to the cash price in some

way and so in two cases recently I've gotten the alert from points path before getting it from

Google about the price change so I'm just kind of interested at my guess as that points path does

checks more frequently than Google does for for you yeah nice that's awesome that's great all right

so then we use points path quite a bit but of course it doesn't support all of the programs that we

want to use or have quite all of the functionality that we're going to talk about here in a second

because we both frequently use I think a award tool to search for award flights that's the tool I

use most points path does a lot of very similar stuff so that's another good tool I just

am in the habit for whatever reason I don't know if it's just I like the interface or really

what I like is the ability to search with so many parameters like the 32 way search that you can do

with the the pro version there because I can put in so many airports and a set of multiple dates or

just a couple of airports and like 30 days and because we often have a fair amount of flexibility

I'm looking at any flight over the course of a week or two between several different airports and

so I find it really useful to be able to search in multiple different ways and decide how I want to

use that multi-way search so I use that to search for award flights all the time and to set award

alerts so that I can snag an award when it comes in and that has been really helpful a number of

times in snagging a hard-defined award that I used to search obsessively for and now I don't obsess

over because I know that there's a tool automatically searching for it in the background so that takes

some of that mental load off that I was talking about before I don't actually think about it so

hard anymore so I use a word to all the time yeah it's same same for me so it's it's more about the

ease ease of use of being able to search multiple things at once and setting set up an alert for

that tracks multiple things at once even though it uses up like behind the scenes it's it's basically

creating lots of individual alerts you don't need to know that when you're setting it up so

so I could say you know I'm gonna fly from I want to fly to Europe but I want to fly from Detroit

or from Chicago or from New York or Washington DC you know any of the places I can get to easily

and I want to get to Paris or Amsterdam right like I could put in I could put in several destinations

and and then I could say you know let's say I don't find anything good in a in a live search I could

just click a button to make it a alert and it alert me when you know I put in like only show me when

it's when the price is less than 100,000 points or something like that whatever I choose yeah and

and a couple of of key pieces to put along with that a word tool doesn't search every program on earth

so there are some other programs that aren't covered there but what's useful for me is that it

covers so many programs that I have a pretty good idea if I see a particular flight that it might

also be available via a program that's not in there and so then it gives me the you know sort of

the motivation to go oh okay I should check British Airways and see if this is available there

or Cathay Pacific and see if it's available there so it's useful in recognizing the awards that

are available to partners so that I know to search another partner to Delta flights I'm frequently

seeing this Delta flights that are available via Virgin Atlantic maybe but aren't showing up for

some reason via Air France and I can find them on the Air France website also worth sass sometimes

too so so it's it's useful for all of that I think in in discovering the the awards that might be

available even recognizing those situations where it's not one of those programs that's covered

also sometimes people will write in and say I'm looking to go to Athens in the summertime and I

can't find any awards and and so I'll take a look every now and then and be like okay well if you're

willing to position to this airport you can get this flight and that one another flight to a different

place because I can search multiple things with just one click and so it helps me broaden my

perspective and say okay maybe I want to go to Athens but maybe I can fly into Rome and then

get a cheap cash ticket to Athens from there and go see the Coliseum for a day or something so

I find it helpful for broadening my searches yeah yeah totally and there's a lot more functionality

in a word tool but we're just talking about the stuff that we use most often yep yep all right hotel

trip planning use way more tools for this than I do so so tell me how do you plan hotels for your

trips yeah well you know I make heavy use of Google hotels in the beginning of of my

work just to see like what hotels are highly rated in the place I'm going to it has the you know

Google reviews right in there and and that's what a thing and and also get an idea of the cash

prices for when I want to go gondola is the tool I use to do broad searches for both cash rates

and point prices so it searches across a number of hotel programs and we'll show you the point

prices and I'll let you do things like sort results by the best point value and by that I mean like

it actually has some understanding of what points are worth relative to each other so

a Hilton might might cost 100,000 points but that might actually be much better that are value

than a high it that costs 60,000 points because Hilton points are worth so much less and

so the tool understands that and we'll sort it accordingly when you're sorting by by point

value whereas most tools won't you know we'll just sort by number of points required and and so

in that case high it will always look better than Hilton regardless of whether it's actually

better then let's see yeah so that's that's gondola rooms dot arrow that's a add on to

Seats dot arrow so Seats dot arrow is an award search tool which it's a flight award search tool

Seats dot arrow is and I realized we didn't mention that before because we're talking about

the tools that we go to over and over and over again and Seats dot arrow is not one

it has certain really great uses but it's just not one that I tend to turn to regularly for flight

planning but it's sister site rooms dot arrow is one I turn to because if you want to stay at a

particular points hotel I don't it it's super super easy to use it to find points availability or

to set an alert to let you know when the points availability shows up so for example I recently

book the Hyatt Regency coconut point in Florida for me and and three other family members so we

had four rooms there I had to do it in steps because that hotel in the winter time is really hard

to get like they charge like over $1,200 a night in high season which is insane but

but it's a reasonable number of points and you have to wait for Santa room to open up and so a great

way to do that is to set alerts on with a tool like that yeah absolutely yeah that's I think that's

an awesome capability of some tools now I haven't been using rooms dot arrow for that I've been using

Max my point for that and so Max my point does basically the same kind of idea where you can you can

set alerts for award availability you can also I like this I don't know from set arrow does this

actually I haven't looked so tell me if it does but I like that you can set alerts for instance for

the ability to use a Hyatt Suite upgrade award I don't know from stud arrow offers that but Max my point

does so so I've set alerts for yeah I've set alerts for let me know when when it comes available for

a suite upgrade award and that that's been useful as well as of course like Greg explained when

I need multiple rooms out book one that's available and then set an alert book the next one and then

the next one so I've been very happy with Max my point for that and I've been using Max FHR which is

basically the sister tool sort of like you explained rooms dot arrows is a sister tool to seats

dot arrow Max FHR goes along Max FH or Max Max my point Max FHR though instead of looking for

award availability helps you search for for good uses of final tells and resorts maybe not

even good uses it helps you search for which properties are in fine hotels and resorts without

having to log into mx and without having to know where to search necessarily you could look at

all of the properties around the world and sort them by price or you could search for a particular

area country or a city and so I found that really useful because we have so many FHR credits to use

that's really helping narrow down is there any FHR or hotel collection property where we're going

that'll fit our needs and because we've got so many of them I have spent quite a bit of time in

recent months anyway looking for those opportunities so Max FHR has been a tool I keep going back to

for that yeah that that makes a lot of sense yeah you know I think rooms dot arrow versus Max versus

Max my point I think there are pluses and minuses to each one of them and it's hard to really say

that one of them is necessarily better than the other one one thing that I believe rooms dot arrow

does better but I haven't used Max my point for a while is that a number of hotels will only release

rooms with a minimum number of days that you stay and so if you go to you know one of those highly

sought after hotels and if you're looking like night by night you're not going to find any availability

but like when you go to a particular hotel and in rooms that arrow it'll actually show you right

up front like how many uh awards are available for one night how many are available for two nights

I'm ready for three nights so it would kind of like that and so you can see at a glance oh there's

a ton available for three nights but none available for one or two nights that means they have a minimum

length of stay and and then it then you can more easily find those um nights that are available

very good yeah great great tool for that too all right now uh next up we got car rentals

what do you use for your car rentals uh I use auto slash it lets you do two different things one

as you can put in uh you know the dates and location where you want to rent a car and I'll send you

an email of like the best prices it found um the other thing you can do is if you've booked a refundable

rate with a car rental company you can uh put it into auto slash and and they will email you

if they find a better price and then you can rebook at that better price and so um I honestly

use it I use it a good amount not you know not all the time and I'm not always renting cars either

so it's more of you know maybe a few times a year I turned auto slash yeah so you almost always

rent a car by contrast so we're kind of on the opposite end of that uh so I use it all the time

for researching I'm not always booking through it because capital one shopping has had so many good

rental car offers I mean just yesterday I booked a whole bunch of rental cars because I had 45

percent back at six I had 36 percent back at Hertz I had 30 percent back at dollar and so uh so

I have had to book direct in a lot of those cases because the the amount back the potential

amount back has been so high but I almost always search via auto slash first to see who's got the

best price to know and then I will frequently track also through auto slash to make sure that I

I keep the best deal that if a better deal comes along that I can jump on that now a number of

readers have have mentioned anecdotally I've seen this in our our Facebook group quite a bit

that they've found even better pricing than what they've seen via auto slash in two places one

some people say Costco travel even though auto slash searches for Costco discounts

I frequently see people say that they get a better deal through Costco travel sometimes

personally I haven't found that to be the case when I go to Costco travel I can't I just I'm

not running into that situation where they've got a better price than whatever I've already found

via auto slash maybe it has to do with where you're going or when so it might be worth of your

Costco member checking Costco travel and making sure that it doesn't have a better deal available

because enough people have mentioned it over time that it must be the case in some situations

I mean the other side there is I have had auto slash tell me the Costco rates that were better

you know like so it does raise Costco rates but yeah I understand that you're saying that people

claim that it's not necessarily finding those best rates all the time well or that even that is

the the the break that they see through Costco travel is better and so and I don't I don't know that

again I haven't had that experience but I've seen it from enough people that I feel like

must be some truth to it the other thing that people have pointed out and that now that I've

done some searches I've anecdotally found to be true is that capital one travel has surprisingly

good car rental prices and so there's been a number of situations lately where I have found

better pricing via capital one travel and often six in particular has had very good pricing

through capital one travel I don't know why because I never in the past found six to to be my

best option but now I've got a couple of six car rentals so so anyway it's worth checking and

that's yeah I bring that up specifically because I rarely ever think about looking at the credit

card portals because they just so rarely in the past have ever even been close to competitively

prized but I kept seeing people say it so I started doing some searches and I said well it has

actually beaten what I've seen elsewhere a few times lately so it might be worth checking if

you got a capital one card yeah yeah and and this is sort of worth saying overall almost all the

things we talked about especially where we use tools to find good prices or point prices there's

often alternatives that those tools can't capture like like what you could get through a portal

in the example that Nick just gave or when you're looking for flights there there are definitely times

where you know maybe you have the ability to get you could transfer your points to

Cathay Pacific and if and Cathay Pacific itself might have better pricing than you you could get

it elsewhere and the tools don't necessarily know that because they don't have the ability to

log in a Cathay Pacific to run their award searches and that kind of thing happens a lot united

is very common with that especially if you've united credit card the tools aren't necessarily

going to show you what price you're going to get as united card holder so no matter how many tools

you use you might still have to do the legwork and and go to different now places to try to find

a good deal if you can't find it through if you can't find a deal that you're happy with through

those tools yep very good last but at least I wanted to give a quick mention and trains to the

website man in seat 61 because if you're going to travel particularly in Europe and you want to

travel by train anywhere that is the resource that I use and and I don't always plan train trips

when I go to Europe but when I do I almost always end up on man in seat 61 just recently I was

looking for information about trains between Zurich and Innsbruck and there's one particular train

each day that has a panoramic car first class car and it so it told me which time you know which

which which one it is that I want to book and and which car number I want to get in in order to

have that and so it's really useful for that type of thing and then also sometimes comparing

doesn't matter should I get first class or very very frequently I find man in seat 61 saying

it doesn't really make much of a difference you don't necessarily need first class on this

particular train it's about the same as second class and so there's a lot of times where maybe

the price was close enough where I would have been like I guess let's try first class where he's

probably saved me a bunch of money over time and I'm sure it's not even worth it in this particular

route so so I find that to be a very useful resource all right I think that brings us to the end

of today's episode if you've enjoyed what we've talked about don't forget to go to frequentmiler.com

slash subscribe to join our email list follow us on all the various social media join our frequent

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