Starter Kit Vol. 4, The Best Tools to Get Ahead in Travel

The Thrifty Traveler Podcast

In this episode of The Thrifty Traveler Podcast's Starter Kit series, Kyle Potter and Gunnar Olsson dive into essential tools for organizing

Key takeaways

• Using a centralized tool like the Card Benefit Tracker can significantly reduce the complexity of managing multiple travel credit cards and their benefits.
• Tracking credit card perks helps travelers recoup annual fees and make informed decisions about which cards to keep or cancel.

Main topics

• Credit card benefit tracking
• Managing annual fees and perks

Notable quotes

"The time to get organized is right when you're listening to Starter Kit to get organized with this stuff."

Conclusion

Kyle and Gunnar emphasize that getting organized early with the right tool

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:00) Yo, welcome to the show. I'm Gunnar Olsson, a reporter for Thrifty Traveler and a flight deal analyst for Thrifty Traveler Premium. And joining me for this special series and every episode of the Thrifty Traveler podcast is Thrifty Traveler executive editor and our points and miles muse. It's Kyle Potter. Kyle, welcome back to Starter Kit. We've gone from Sherpa to coach to professor and now muse. Am I getting hotter or colder here on your epithet? What do you like? I'm just hung up on your use of the word Speaker 3 (0:27) epithet there. I don't love Muse because the first thing I hear is paint me like one of your French girls. So let's move on from that one, Speaker 2 (0:35) I think. Okay, not Muse. In this edition of Starter Kit, we are getting organized. Everything. and travel rewards is getting bigger and more unruly. Credit card annual fees are higher than ever, but there are more ways to recoup your annual fees than ever to there are more ways to earn points and miles to fuel your travel. But often that means tracking and paying more cards that come with more monthly, quarterly, semi-annual, annual credits sometimes. And then when it comes to actually booking award travel, finding availability isn't always a slam dunk either. That's why getting your house in order first is absolutely essential, especially if you're just getting started. So Kyle, did you have a light bulb moment when you decided it was time to get organized? And what did you do first? Speaker 3 (1:15) Yeah, you know, I think it has, this has gotten significantly worse just within the last year. And I think the tipping point for me was when Chase and then Amex both revamped their Chase Sapphire Reserve card and then the Amex Platinum card and added. quite literally hundreds of different individual benefits that you have to use with different timelines for when they might expire and reset. And that really was the trigger when we started talking here about how can we help people with this? Because primarily it's like, how can I help myself with this stuff? So that started what was initially a spreadsheet for the Amex Platinum card and then adding others. And then eventually, fortunately, someone far smarter than me, Nick, on our team. decided to turn this into a web app, our credit card tracker that's online now at thriftytraveler.com slash tracker. Free to use, amazing tool. It takes everything that I tracked in individual places, be it spreadsheets or shared notes with my wife about our points balances and puts it all into one place. But that has been the game changer for me. Speaker 2 (2:17) Yeah, absolutely. Okay, today on episode four of Starter Kit, we're talking about how to organize your credit cards and rewards, about how to use all of those weird but valuable credit card perks, and we'll show you all the tools we use to book travel using points and miles. All that and more. Welcome back to Starter Kit from the Thrifty Traveler podcast. Speaker 2 (2:40) Okay, we're back and we're going to talk about a bunch of tools here today. None of these are actually sponsoring this episode. These are all just tools that we use all the time to fuel our own travels, to get organized on the back end, to make sure that we're doing this hoppy both responsibly and just making sure that we have everything above board and we know exactly what's going on with our finances, our points and miles, our credit card perks and everything. And we can't have this conversation without patting ourselves on the back. I guess patting. Nick, our co-founder at Thrifty Traveler on the back, because Nick went out and built the exact tool that award travelers like us have been pining for forever. Forgive us if this sounds a little self-promoting, but this thing really works and it is tailor-made for points and miles people and especially for sickos like us. It's called the Card Benefit Tracker, which you can find at thriftytraveler.com slash tracker. It's totally free. You don't have to put a card number in. No bank logins, no financial data. There's just no strings attached. We just built the tool that we always wanted to use. So here's what you can do. You can choose from more than 100 travel credit cards, each of which gets its own tab in your section of the card tracker. You check off the credits as you use them. which then automatically tallies up the value that you're getting out of each card. So you can see how much of an annual fee you've recouped and how much you're paying in annual fees in total, which is a little bit of a wake-up call for me when I first put all my information into the card tracker. Speaker 3 (4:04) The first time you share with a spouse how much you're paying in annual fees, and maybe more importantly, how much they're paying in annual fees with their own social security number Speaker 2 (4:12) is a rude awakening. Thrifty tip, don't share it with your spouse. There are color-coded reminders in the tracker about what benefits are about to expire so you don't miss deadlines. This comes up at the end of every month. I'm on my card tracker making sure that I don't miss these. You can track up to four people's cards with no limit on the number of cards you get. And that includes when you've signed up for cards, where you're at on the 524 rule, and when you're in the clear to sign up for more cards. And then finally, there's also a handy points wallet so you can track your points balances too. I think you and I both used to use other websites, like several other websites to kind of take all this information and put it together. You could do some of this stuff using tools like award wallet or to track your points balances or travel freely to track your credit card statuses. Instead, we just rolled it all into one system that's totally free. No connecting your bank information. It's of course, I'm biased. I think the card benefit tracker is best in class, but again, it's also like custom built for me. So your thoughts, you had a, you had, you played a role in building this tool too. Yeah. Like I said, Speaker 3 (5:18) we Speaker 2 (5:18) started with a spreadsheet and then it just became Speaker 3 (5:19) clear that there was such an appetite for this, that, you know, Nick on our team decided to build it online. And this is as much of a one-stop shop as I have found. And, you know, not to toot our own horns, but beep, beep, we did it. This is. This is the single tool that I use now to stay organized with both points and tracking balances in my accounts and my wife's accounts, as well as our credit cards. And, you know, whether I remember to use that $10 Uber credit or that $7 Dunkin' Donuts credit, spoiler alert, I didn't. I forget it every single month, but that's fine because I'm recouping my annual fees and I'm making sure. that the credit cards that I have open and continue to renew are actually paying for themselves. And if I can't do that, then that's a sign that I got to cancel them, call for a retention offer to try to get some extra bonus points out of the airline. All of the things that as you add any more than basically one travel credit card to your wallet, you need some kind of structure. And the time to do this is right when you get started. It's when you're listening to Starter Kit to get organized with this stuff. And, you know, I do really think that this is the best free tool on the Internet to do that. Yeah. Speaker 2 (6:32) Awesome. If you are interested in it, sign up for free at thrifty traveler dot com slash tracker. OK, some more tools that I recommend as you're creating sometimes dozens of airline, hotel and rental car loyalty accounts like we told you to do in episode three of Starter Kit. Plus, you're getting all this new banking information and credit card information and TSA pre-check numbers and passport numbers. A good password manager becomes more or less essential in all of this, at least I've found. I'll admit I was a little late to the game on signing up for my own password manager. I've only had one for about two years now, but it's truly essential now for me to manage the approximately 50 logins my wife and I use just for travel rewards. I use 1Password. I pay $72 a year for my family, so for my wife and I. It's $48 a year for individuals. It works with most web browsers too. So when I log into Flying Blue or when I go to Flying Blue to search for award flights, it automatically asks me if I want to log in. It has a pass key right there. No 2FA, no nothing. One password handles all of it for me there. When I'm putting in our information into a flight booking. I have everybody in my family's passports, frequent flyer numbers, and TSA numbers at the ready. My password manager has become invaluable for award travel for me. Do you use one of these? I just use Google's, you Speaker 3 (7:52) know, through my own Gmail account, which fortunately does work with iPhone now, which is so handy. I cannot tell you the number of times when I've opened an app or gone to a website to log into a frequent flyer account and been like, do I have one of these? Do I have this account yet? And then... my iPhone just prompts me or my laptop just prompts me. Fill out your password. Here's your account. Here's your account email. All of those things. It really does automate it. I would have no idea how to track these things if not for a good password manager. I do think this is a must as you get into this stuff. Speaker 2 (8:27) Honey, what's your Singapore Chris Flyer password is a question that I only had to ask once Speaker 3 (8:32) before I signed up for one of these accounts. That is a good one. It Speaker 2 (8:36) makes it very simple. Yeah. Sign up for a password manager. We highly recommend it. The one I like is 1Password and Kyle uses Google's password manager. Do Speaker 3 (8:44) you have any of your either frequent flyer or TSA pre-check or passport numbers memorized? Speaker 2