One of the most frustrating things that I encounter when I’m discussing points and miles strategies with individuals is that they get so lost in how to organize everything. How do I remember which cards I have? How do I remember where I have points? How do you keep track of what you’ve spent so you don’t overspend? How do you find cheap flights?
The first tool that I used was an Excel spreadsheet that I updated everyday. It was exhausting! In a quest to simplify my life (and get everything in order), I have tried countless tools to try and help me organize my flights, spending, credit cards, and points total.
Through trial and error, I have found myself consistently using a couple of different tools to help me stay organized and find the best deal in travel (whether by earning points and miles or by helping me use points and miles or just helping me travel in general).
It is my hope that you are able to use them to help simplify your life and get better value for your travel. Even if you use one of them, I know you will have a leg-up on tracking your spend, gaining more miles, and using them more effectively.
1. Google Flights
Once I found this site, it was a game-changer. Traditionally, I would pull up American Airlines website, type in my origin, destination, and dates, and then go from there. However, once I was pointed to Google Flights, I knew that this would be the only place I would go to search flights.
Why is it so great? Because it doesn’t just pull data from one airline, but from dozens of airlines. It compares prices, routings, time, number of connections, you name it. Anything that you could possibly want, it checks for. It even tells you if you can take a carry on bag or not.
There are so many features with Google Flights, I can’t even describe them all.
However, I will note my favorite feature: instead of putting in a departure point and an arrival point, you can put in your departure point, some dates, and click search. You’ll then see a global map that shows you all of the places that you can go and the price!
I once found some sub-$300 weekend flights to Berlin (leave Friday evening, arrive Saturday morning, come back Sunday afternoon). If I hadn’t had to teach that Monday, I would have bought them!
One thing I will note about Google Flights – You won’t find Southwest flights in the results. Southwest sells their flights through one channel and one channel only: their website. It’s a minor inconvenience for those who are loyal to Southwest, but I personally only use them when I need one way flights (as they aren’t really cheaper on roundtrips anymore anyways).
Regardless, Google Flights is a fantastic tool that can help you find cheap flights to all over the world. With a little flexibility and with some elbow grease looking around, you can go anywhere for cheap.
2. You Need a Budget (YNAB)
For anyone who has read my first few blog posts, you know that the fastest way to get tons of points in order to travel is by signing up for credit cards and hitting sign-up bonuses. Now, while that is all nice and dandy, you have to make sure that you spend within your limits. You have to stick to a budget. If you spend outside your means, you won’t be able to pay off your credit cards, and you’ll be hit with interest. Interest rates on reward cards are pretty high (think ~20%), and any points you earn will be completely negated by the interest that you pay for your credit cards.
Thus, it’s good to get into the habit of setting a budget for each month, and sticking to it. There are many ways in which you could do this: you can go old school and do the Dave Ramsey envelope-full-of-cash method, but that won’t get you any points. You could use Excel and track your expenses everyday, manually adding and subtracting what you spend. You could use something like Mint, where you set up your bank account and then it automatically tracks what you spend and resets your budget accordingly.
I personally don’t like any of those. I settled on a website called You Need a Budget (YNAB). YNAB is great because it does all of the math for you. All you have to do is set up your budget, and, when you make a purchase, go in, log it, and it automatically recalculates what you have left to spend that month in that category. What makes it even better is that they also have a mobile app, so you can update your budget on the go!
First, you’ll set up your budget. You go to your budget, enter your income, and then designated how much money you want to spend each month in different categories (i.e., housing, groceries, fun, etc.). You are able to change up what categories you have for your specific situation (for example, my wife and I get a certain amount of money to do whatever we want with. Mine is designated as “Hunter’s FUNds,” which mostly goes to travel stuff!). We have things such as student loans, cell phone, and even a sly “Stuff We Forgot to Budget For” (Note: if this is your fist time setting a budget, it may take a few months to figure out how much you actually spend on things each month. For example, we had to trial and error our actual grocery bill based upon our eating patterns when we got married).
Then, throughout the month, when you buy something, you open up the app, click on “Add Transaction,” enter in how much it cost and where you bought it from, click the category, and hit “Done”! It then subtracts what you spent from how much you designated to that category for the month, and shows you how much you have left to spend for the month. Once you hit zero dollars in a category for a month, you know to no longer spend in that category.
They have all kinds of other neat little features (such as budgeting classes, moving money between categories, etc.) that have made this invaluable for my wife and I to take control of our finances (and maximize our spending with our credit cards). I used it religiously in graduate school, as I needed to know where every penny of my budget was going, so I could minimize the amount of student loans I needed to take out.
YNAB costs $14.99 a month or $100 for the year. I highly recommend it, as it’ll just help you get your finances in order in a great way. Use my referral link below for a free month to test it out.
My referral link for a free month
3. Travel Freely
My favorite organizational app for helping me keep track of my credit cards (and, importantly, when I should expect to pay an annual fee/know when to cancel) is Travel Freely. Travel Freely was started a couple of years ago by Zac Hood, who, at the time, was a teacher in Denver, Colorado. I got connected with him through a travel forum (if my memory serves me correctly), and I became one of the first people to try out his website, giving him feedback on how to make it better. He sent me some stickers too at some point, which I have proudly placed on my water bottle! Whenever I sign up for a new card, and he has the best offer, I always go through Zac’s affiliate link because I truly appreciate the tool that he built. It even has an app to put on your phone (and it’s really slick too!).
This FREE site should be used by everyone with a credit card. It’s main purpose is to help you get organized around what you have in your wallet. It helps you keep track of when bonuses are due, when your annual fee is coming up, and when you should be applying for new cards. The two best features that he has built is that he has built an algorithm that tells you which card to sign up for to get the most bang for your buck, and the website helps you keep track of your Chase 5/24 status.
In terms of the algorithm (it’s called the Card Genie), I actually use it as a reference (I’ve been in the game a long time). When I am applying for a new card, I always go to his website to make sure that I am signing up for the best card. What his algorithm does is give you a list of cards and what monetary value you can get from the sign up bonus. What makes it so special is that it compares across issuers and reward programs so that you always know that you are getting the best deal. Additionally, the list of cards in his database is quite extensive. I haven’t tried to reach the end of it, but I know that the tool still shows me the top 50 cards that I could apply for…the list is never ending!
His second feature is Chase’s 5/24 tracker. Chase, which, IMO, has the most well-rounded group of cards, has a rule that if you have applied for and received more than 5 consumer credit cards (not business cards) over the past 24 months, they won’t approve you for any credit card. Travel Freely has a tracker that helps you see what you’ve applied for over the past two years so that you know when you are eligible to get a new Chase card. It has helped my card planning strategy immensely, and I will continue to use it for years to come!
I don’t have any kind of referral, as the website is free to use.
4. Cashback Monitor
A few days ago, I wrote a blog post about the top 4 ways to obtain points and miles this year. One of them was by using cashback portals that give you money back every time you shop online. I shop a lot online, and I’m able to collect an incredible amount of points and miles online every year.
Instead of going site-by-site to try and figure out which portal gives me the greatest number of points for a purchase, the first place I go is to Cashback Monitor.
Cashback Monitor is a website that actually aggregates all of the different portals and then puts them into a searchable format to see which portal offers to most cashback. For example, I shop for Scooby’s dog food at PetSmart. I live in DC proper, and it’s kind of a pain to go and get it myself. Instead, I order his food online and then have DoorDash deliver it.
When it’s time to order his dog food, instead of going straight to PetSmart’s website, I go to Cashback Monitor to see which portal that I regularly use (I use TopCashback, Rakuten, and, now that American Airlines is awarding Loyalty Points for purchases) to see which one is offering the most cashback. i then click on that website under PetSmart, go to PetSmart’s website, make my purchase, and get money or points and miles back!
You’d be amazed at what you can get cashback on. There’s even places like GiftcardMall and Giftcards.com, where you can actually go through the portal, buy a gift card (getting cashback), and then go through the portal again to use the gift card at a retailer (for example, if you bought a Gap gift card, you could get cashback for buying a Gap gift card and for making a purchase at Gap!). I personally rarely go through the hassle of doing that, but it is possible!
Cashback Monitor is free to use, and I highly recommend starting all of your online shopping here to make sure you’re getting cashback where you can!
5. Award Wallet
Once you start earning points and miles, it’s important to make sure that you know where all of your points and miles are. This is where I use Award Wallet.
Award Wallet is a service where you link up your accounts, and they track your points balances for you. This is helpful for two reasons.
First, it just helps you remember where your points are located. They send you updates each month with how many points you have in each account, they let you know when points are expiring, and they even let you know if a free night certificate in different hotel programs are about to expire.
Second, it’s great for making sure that no one steals your hard earned points. I have several accounts with over 500,000 points. I can get some real value out of that! I’ve also seen others who have had their accounts liquidated due to having weak passwords. I update my Award Wallet about once a week to check and make sure that all of the points that are supposed to be there are there.
It is frustrating for tracking American Airlines, Delta, and United accounts, as they aren’t allowed to track those programs. Hopefully, they regain that functionality in the future.
I pay 30 dollars a year for it so that it automatically checks all of my balances for me, but they have a free version to where you have to go in and update it manually (you click a button and it checks all of your balances for you).
Here’s a referral from me to use Award Wallet: click here
Here’s a free upgrade code for first time users (enter the code when signing up). First 10 people get to use it: free-yukmig
Conclusion
I have gone over 5 essential tools that any travel hacker should become intimately familiar with. There are many other tools that serve more niche purposes, but each of the tools that I have discussed has a unique place in every travel hackers toolbox. Together, they make traveling on a budget incredibly easy.
What tool are you most interested in using?
-PoP
I love and use all of these! Great list.
Thank you! They are incredibly helpful, so I’m glad you find them useful as well!