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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!)

After a couple of weeks with sub zero temps in Minnesota.

On a boat to the Bahamas for a week.

And doing the 26 hour 1400 mile one way roadtrip three times.

I can finally say I’m back home from traveling for a bit.

With all of that Happy New Years!

Lets get to the good stuff

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If you're new to my newsletter, I recently published a book that packs over a decade of experience using points to travel the world.

But today, I’m doing something a little bit crazy.

To help bring down the cost of printing more books, I’m offering a one time, ultra personalized travel service to just one person in each of these two groups:

✅ Must have 2 million+ transferable credit card points (doesn’t need to be all with one bank)
✅ Planning to travel in 2026—solo or with family
✅ I’ll help you plan and book every point for flights, hotels, and more—all for a one time $2.5k fee
✅ You’ll get far more in travel value than you’re paying

This is something I normally charge $10,000+/year, but I’m offering it at this price to help fund the next print run of my book.

✅ You don’t have 2M points yet—but you want to
✅ I’ll work with you 1 on 1 to earn and redeem 1 million points in 18 months or less
✅ This includes planning, card strategy, and redemption support
✅ Same $2.5k one time price same limited spot

Only one person will be accepted into each option.
If traveling more this year is on your list, and you’re serious about using points the right way this is your chance to have someone in your corner to make it happen.

👉 If you're interested, fill out this quick form. First come, first serve.

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.

As I mentioned earlier, I drove down from Minnesota to Austin yesterday.

To get up there, I had to book a last-minute flight from Austin to the Minneapolis Airport.

I just wanted to go over it to help those new to booking flights with points, as well as some people who have done it in the past.

One of the great things about points is that, depending on the program that you're booking, the price fluctuation won't change how many points you need to redeem a flight.

This is especially good for last-minute flights where prices spike or places that get high in demand.

For me, I ended up booking my flight through Alaska flying American Airlines, given I didn't have any American Airlines miles, and you can use Alaska miles to book AA flights.

It ended up being 9,000 miles for one flight (which was business) and 7,500 miles for the other flight.

I'll essentially go into why it ended up being that way.

If I had booked both of the flights, it would have been between 12,500 and 15,000 miles.

One of the things to watch out for that's inevitable is ghost availability.

It's essentially when award programs are talking to other airlines, sometimes they will show availability that isn't there.

I tried booking the whole trip under one itinerary, but kept getting an error once I got to the final page.

I ended up calling them, and they let me know that unfortunately, what I was seeing wasn't an actual flight that was bookable.

What I had to do, and what you might have to do in the future, is spread out segments and see if they show up that way.

The original flight that I wanted wasn't available in economy and it was only available in business class, so that first segment (which ended up being 9,000 points) had to be business, and then the second segment ended up being in economy.

Another thing that gives you a little bit more flexibility is that you're able to book flights closer together, but you have to watch out you’ll have enough time to make the connection.

Unfortunately, I didn't make my second flight, even though my first one got there early.

My second one ended up leaving 10 minutes earlier than it was supposed to, so I missed it.

I was put on standby for the second flight because due to both of my tickets not being booked under the same award, the system couldn't see that I just got off a flight.

After talking to one of the customer service reps in person and showing them my other ticket, there was no fee in taking the later flight.

One of the benefits of taking the first flights of the day is giving you a lot more options to take flights later in the day.

It sucked I missed my second flight of the day, but I was able to hang out in the lounge until that second flight.

There were over 20+ seats open in that second flight, so while I was still waitlisted, I had nothing to worry about.

Something that would cost me almost $500 given that I booked it a day out ended up costing me a little over 16,000 points and $40.

P.S. Do you know anyone hiring in the newsletter, partnership or points space? If so let me know since I’m looking for a new role.

If you're not familiar, every month Flying Blue (which is Air France and KLM's travel program) runs deals on select flights.

This month is pretty good, given that it includes a lot of U.S. cities for economy, premium economy, and business class. Two things to know:

The deals break down into two tranches:

The Flying Blue extra members’ exclusive program you have to sign up for every year, which gives you a little bit more in terms of discounts, but you have to pay for the yearly subscription, which ranges between €400 to €700.

In that case, you'd have to do a little math to see if signing up for the program makes it worth it.

Some good flight options for discounted points, which is nice if going to Europe is on your 2026 list. One tip (I'll leave the tip for the tip section, but it'll be in reference to this)

It's crazy to see that Chase is already flip flopping and making some more changes to the Sapphire Reserve and Sapphire Reserve for Businesses.

This new benefit might be because of the “up-to” wording added to redemptions through their travel portal.

From January 1st, 2026, through the end of the year, card holders will get up to $250 in statement credit for prepaid bookings through Chase Travel for select hotel chains.

Some things to note:

So you'll have to use their travel portal to book the hotel to be able to get the up to $250 statement credit.

The hotel chains that are eligible for this benefit include:

While I am all for more credits, it is concerning that they are making so many changes to the card so soon after the "revamp" was done.

This might be that they're not seeing the type of signups that they wanted to on the card, and who would blame them?

A $795 annual fee is really high, and honestly, the benefits aren't doing it for people and maybe Chase is seeing it.

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