The travel rewards subscription services we love
A trip we took earlier this year to Savannah, after we were alerted to some AMAZING flight prices from Indianapolis - Savannah round-trip by Thrifty Traveler Premium+.
Background
We placed “frugal” in our name for three very particular reasons:
We liked the alliteration. “Frugal and Free” is fun to say!
Our first choice was “The Free Travelers” (still shocked it wasn’t copyrighted!) However, it felt a bit disingenuous to us. Although we spend way less on travel and do it way more often than we ever did before travel rewards, we still budget a lot of money for credit card annual fees, award flight taxes/fees, transportation and experiences costs during travel, etc.
It’s us to the core. Both Courtney and I hate frivolously throwing away money and are constantly on the prowl for great deals, and we are willing to wait for them! It’s one of the things that drew us to travel rewards.
In light of #3, for a LONG time in playing the points and miles game (think 5+ years!), we did everything on our own. Okay, not completely alone, as we followed blogs like The Frequent Miler, Doctor of Credit and Miles to Memories to help alert us to great credit card sign-up bonus offers (i.e. accumulation) and great award space deals (i.e. redemption), but it was only in the last year or so that we actually started paying for a subscription service related to points/miles! The time saved with these two subscriptions was just too much to overlook. We valued our time WAY more than the $188 total we paid last year for both services.
Here they are:
Thrifty Traveler Premium+
What purpose does it serve for us?
When it comes to the two main components of the points and miles game, accumulation and redemption, we believe the hardest part of that equation by far is redemption. Yes, it’s gotten easier over the years, as we grew in our knowledge of airline alliances, sweet spots, etc. However, it’s still way more labor intensive than filling out a credit card application, meeting the minimum spend and banking 100k points!
Thrifty Traveler Premium+ sends instant email notifications when one of their 30+ staff finds a cheap flight, mistake fare, and points & miles award availability (including business and first class deals.)
I used to spend an average of 30 minutes a night scouring various airline websites plugging in different itineraries, hoping to strike gold. And sometimes we did! However, the process was simply not efficient or effective. I now let the team at Thrifty Traveler do the time-intensive searching for us!
We have received over 65 e-mails in the last month with amazing cash and points/miles deals from only the airports we selected. Here’s an example of what one of those e-mails looks like:
Underneath this summary is the list of every airport that the deal applies to, what dates it applies to and how to book it!
What’s the cost?
We paid $59.99 this past year for Thrifty Traveler Premium+ (we were grandfathered in to the highest subscription, after they added another tier to the basic Thrifty Traveler Premium). If you were to start a subscription today, it would be $89.99.
Who do we recommend it for?
If getting a ton of email notifications isn’t overwhelming or annoying to you. We have only ended up booking 3 of the over 600 deals we’ve received since we started the service. However, those 3 deals saved us a ton of time, money, and points/miles!
If you have enough points/miles (or budgeted travel costs) to book at least one or two great deals you receive throughout the year. If you’re brand new to the points and miles game, I would first try one of the free options below first.
Are there any free options?
Yes! You can subscribe to the free version of Thrifty Traveler. The main difference will be that you’ll get 10x less flight deals than the Premium version, and you won’t receive business class fares and award alerts bookable with points and miles. In addition, you won’t be able to tailor your results to only get cheap flight alerts from your preferred airport(s).
We also subscribe to the free version of Ashley Gets Around, which is a very specific niche: they only send cash flights in premium cabins.
2. Point.me
What purpose does it serve for us?
Similar to Thrifty Traveler Premium+, Point.me’s main value proposition is how much time and energy it saves us! Point.me is live search engine for award availability across over 100 airlines. In addition to providing award availability, Point.me search results show you all of the cheapest ways to book the available award flights using points and miles. Before Point.me, we had to manually search award availability by going to each individual airline. Not anymore! Take a look at a search result from a trip we were researching for early next year:
What’s the cost?
We paid $129 this past year for Point.me.
Who do we recommend it for?
If you are searching for award availability at least once a week, Point.me is a no-brainer for saving time and frustration!
Are there any free options?
Within the Bilt app, there is a free version of Point.me. However, one major caveat: it only searches award availability for Bilt partners (American, Air France/KLM Flying Blue, Turkish, etc.)
In addition, there is a new player in this game: Roame. Although they do have a premium service, they offer a free version as well, unlike Point.me. Note: as of writing, Roame only searches award availability with 12 award programs, way less than Point.me. A major plus though: searches on Roame only take a few seconds, compared to usually 60 seconds plus on Point.me searches.
Pointsyeah is another new and free option!
At some point in your points and miles journey, you may decide you don’t want to go it alone and need to tap someone else on the shoulder and let them do some of the heavier lifting. We’re honored that you have put us in that category, by reading our blog, buying our Intro to Points and Miles E-book, or booking a consultation. There’s also a ton of other great services out there, like Thrifty Traveler Premium and Point.me!
