Beginners Guide

Start here:
travel on points, explained

No jargon, no 40-flights-a-year assumptions. How the points you're already earning turn into flights and hotel nights — written the way I'd explain it on a job site.

Credit card points become free travel when you stop redeeming them for cash and start transferring them to an airline or hotel program. The same point is worth about 1 cent as a statement credit and roughly 2 cents transferred to the right partner at the right time — so the whole skill is knowing which programs your bank reaches, and which redemptions are worth reaching for. That's what this guide covers, one bank at a time.

You don't need to spend more money. You need the money already going out the door — materials, fuel, insurance, groceries, advertising — running through the right cards, and you need to get the order of those cards right the first time.

Three steps, in order

Most people skip straight to step two and end up with the wrong cards in the wrong sequence.

01

Find out what your spend is worth

Put your real monthly business and household spend into the calculator. It tells you roughly how many points a year you're leaving on the table right now.

Open the calculator
02

Learn one bank all the way through

Don't collect cards from four issuers at once. Pick the program that fits your spend — for most business owners that's Chase — and read its guide end to end before you apply for anything.

Read the Chase guide
03

Get the order of applications right

Application order is the part that can't be undone. One wrong card in the wrong month can lock you out of the best offers for two years. This is what a Strategy Session is for.

Book a Strategy Session

Start with your bank

Each guide is the complete program — what the points are worth, every transfer partner with current ratios, the application rules, and the redemptions worth booking.

Go deeper

Program guides, booking walkthroughs and card strategy. For news and trip reports, head to the blog.

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Read the guide. Then get the order right.

Knowing how the programs work is the easy part. Which card, in which month, with which spend behind it — that's the part worth an hour of planning.

Book a Strategy Session — $500

One points move every week

Free, plain-English, and written for people who'd rather be working than reading a finance blog.