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🤙🏿 Welcome back to the Better Than Points Newsletter - the premier place for all things Credit Card Points News and Travel

My name’s Luis and I’m the one writing this (hit me up here!)

Man, this has been a crazy week of information and things happening.

Almost as bad as all the crazy weather we've been having.

Hopefully ya’ll were able to take advantage of some of those decent days before the rain.

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✈️ Thrifty Traveler is About to Get More Expensive, Here’s How to Lock in the Lower Price for Life

If you’ve ever wasted hours hunting for award availability (and still came up empty), this is your shortcut.

Thrifty Traveler Premium is one of the easiest ways to get award + cash flight deals emailed to you, so you can stop refreshing airline sites all day and just book when the alert hits.

Here’s what’s happening:

Starting Saturday, March 14, pricing is going up:

But from March 10–13, new members can:

✅ Lock in the current lower price for life (before the increase kicks in)
✅ Get $20 off their first year using my link/coupon (BTPOINTS)
✅ Start getting award flight alerts sent straight to your inbox (you book directly with the airline Thrifty Traveler just finds and sends the deals)
✅ Save time, save points, and actually catch the good redemptions before they disappear

If you’ve been thinking about trying it, this is the best window you’ll get.

👉 Grab $20 off + lock in the lower price for life (March 10–13 only)

Each week, I’ll share something cool I’ve discovered or tackle a question from the community. It’s my little corner to explore ideas, offer fresh perspectives, and hopefully spark your own curiosity.

The last couple days have been a mix of flip flops, ups and downs, and straight chaos.

TSA closing and reopening.

Oil spiking over $100 a barrel, then dropping back down.

A whole lot of uncertainty.

But here’s why that matters for travel.

If crude oil prices keep climbing, airlines are going to price that in.

Fuel is one of their biggest costs, so when fuel goes up, ticket prices usually follow.

And it’s not just cash tickets.

Fuel surcharges and taxes on award tickets can creep up too.

So if you’ve been eyeballing a trip, I’d lean toward booking sooner rather than later.

Not saying fees will jump $200 overnight, but with this kind of volatility, I wouldn’t be shocked if taxes and surcharges start moving fast.

A few practical moves:

Set Google Flights alerts for the routes you’re watching.

Expect wild swings.

Avoid Basic Economy.

If you need flexibility, buy something you can change.

If you buy travel insurance, don’t buy it through the airline.

Use a third party like InsureMyTrip.

Even after you book, keep tracking prices.

If the fare drops, you might be able to reprice or get a credit.

There are also tools that help with this.

Withautopilot and Paidback can help with this.

Points Path can alert you if award pricing changes too, which is clutch when cash fares go nuts.

I saw this firsthand with someone stuck in Qatar trying to get out.

Cash prices were insane, and he had to rebuild his whole trip.

That was demand driven, but in the future we could see similar pain just from fuel costs.

Bottom line, with this much uncertainty, get alerts set, book smart, and don’t wait until everyone else is scrambling.

Shout out to Marriott Bonvoy.

With all the crazy hotel changes lately (looking at you Hyatt), it’s nice to see a rare positive update.

Marriott just increased how much you can top off a night certificate.

It used to be up to 15,000 points.
Now it’s up to 25,000 points.

That’s a big deal.

A lot of the Marriott cards come with intro bonuses of 3-5 night awards, and those certs are usually capped at 50,000 points each.

With the new top off, that effectively means you can now book an 85,000 point night using one of those 50k certs.

That opens up way more hotels that were previously out of reach.

And it’s even better for anyone with the 85,000 point certs.
You can now top those off and book nights that cost up to 110,000 points.

For once, a change that actually helps us.

Global Entry lines are back open, but I don’t know what game we’re playing.

Even with Global Entry and TSA running again, some airports are still seeing brutal lines.

I’m talking 4+ hours.

So still get to the airport early.

Wait times are going to vary a lot depending on the airport and how many agents are actually working the lines.

With the partial shutdown still dragging, call outs are still a thing, and they may need to pull people from TSA or Global Entry to cover other areas.

So be prepared to wait.

And be nice to the people working.

A lot of them are still showing up while not getting paid, and they’re doing the best they can.

If you want a resource, download the MyTSA app.

It’s not being updated right now, but it still shows typical wait times by time of day, so you can at least sanity check whether your departure window is usually a mess and plan to arrive earlier than normal.

With what I think is the best season of travel coming up, Southwest has a pretty solid offer right now.

They’ve got three cards that give you Companion Pass just by opening the card and hitting minimum spend.

If you’re not familiar, Companion Pass is basically a BOGO.

You book one ticket, and your companion flies on the same itinerary for just the taxes and fees, regardless of the cash price.

You do have to pick who your companion is, but you can change it if that changes.

Right now, you can earn Companion Pass through February 28, 2027 just by opening one of their annual fee cards.

Annual fees range from $229 (Southwest Rapid Rewards Priority) down to $99 (Southwest Rapid Rewards Plus).

If you don’t care about preferred seats, upgrades, extra legroom, or elevated earning, the $99 card is the easy route.

You just have to hit the minimum spend.

Normally, earning Companion Pass takes either 135,000 points in a calendar year or 100 flights.

So being able to lock it in until 2027 just by opening a card and doing some spend is a great shortcut.

If you know you’ve got a couple of trips coming up and you’re flying with Southwest, this can save you real money fast.

Check out these crazy award deals!

This section includes some of the best award flights of the week bookable with points and miles.

Chat with TravelBot - my AI clone. It’s trained on every newsletter I’ve published along with my 10+ years of points and credit card knowledge 🧠.

It’s also trained on my voice, so you can call it and have a full blown conversations. Give it a try and let me know what you think.

This section includes some of the best links videos and articles of the week around the points and travel community