I Rebuilt Travel Summary: Here’s What’s New

Before anything else, the part regular readers already know: there are no affiliate links on Travel Summary. I don’t earn a thing if you apply for a card, book a hotel, or sign up for any tool I mention. As of today, there aren’t even ads on the site. I’m just trying to help (and if you ever want to say thanks, you can buy me a coffee).

For years I’ve kept a running list of things I wished this blog had, most of them answers to the questions friends and family ask me over and over (“what card should I get next?” wins that contest by a mile), but also sometimes things I would use myself. Over the last few months I finally started building them, over the last few weeks I’ve been testing them, mostly on myself, and I’m now at the point where I can announce them with confidence. These aren’t just features I’d recommend and then never open again. I actually plan to use many of them myself, and I suspect a lot of you will end up bookmarking them and sending them to friends the way I will.

The Card Finder: “What Card Should I Get Next?”

This is the question I (and the experts among you) get more than any other, and the one I ask myself every few months. The Card Finder will ask you the same kind of questions I’d ask you (which cards you already have, how many you’ve opened in the last 24 months, where you fly, what you want to use the points for, etc.) and give you a list of recommendations on cards to get now, along with my reasoning and the best offer you can get on each. It works whether you’re opening your first card or your thirtieth, and yes, I run it myself before I apply for anything for me or my wife.

The Best Credit Card Offers, Ranked

Not everyone wants a quiz. If you just want to see what’s out there, The Best Credit Card Offers Right Now is my ranked list of the 25 best welcome offers you can get today on the cards I review. It’s in my order, not a straight sort by bonus size: offers at their best-ever level get extra weight, and I factor in how much you have to spend, the annual fee, and whether it’s waived the first year. Each card links to my full review, and like everywhere else on the site, it’s the best offer you can get on your own, not the one that pays someone a commission.

60 Credit Card Reviews, And Counting

Every card review on the blog was rewritten from scratch, new ones get added as cards launch (or as I feel like it), and you can filter them by bank or find them through the new Credit Cards menu. Each one shows the best available offer I’m aware of, meaning anything you can get on your own (the bank’s public page, a direct landing page, an in-flight offer, and in-branch offers marked as such), rather than the best offer someone gets paid to show you. That’s what the small “No affiliate link” tag next to every offer is there to remind you of.

The popular and premium cards also come with two things I always wanted when deciding on a card:

• Offer history: every offer since late 2024 with dates, so you can tell whether today’s offer is one to grab or one to wait out.
• “Is it worth it for you?” calculator: on every card with an annual fee above $200, you use the checkboxes to tick the credits and benefits you’d actually use (or customize its value to you) and see what the card really costs you per year. The welcome bonus makes almost any card worth it in year one, so that’s not the point; the real question is whether the credits you’d use cover the fee after that.

Reference Guides Worth Bookmarking

These are the pages I find myself opening most, and they all live under the new Guides menu:

• Beginner’s guide to points and miles: this one existed before, but I’ve updated and rewritten it for today’s rules, for anyone starting out (or anyone you’re tired of explaining this to).
• Credit card application rules by bank: Chase 5/24, Amex and Citi bonus limits, which credit bureau each bank pulls, and reconsideration phone numbers.
• Transfer partners: every airline and hotel partner for Amex, Chase, Citi, Capital One, Bilt, and Wells Fargo, with ratios and transfer times, filterable by bank.

• Travel benefits compared: a card-by-card tool for rental car coverage, trip delay, lost bags, and lounges, including which coverage applies to one-way and award tickets.

• Southwest Companion Pass: when to earn it so it lasts as long as possible, and what changes on January 1, 2027. I was unlucky enough to write this the day before the program changed, and basically had to rewrite the whole thing after.
• What points and miles are worth: my minimum values for dozens of airline, hotel, and bank programs, with the reason behind each. I’m not a fan of putting a single value on points, so treat these as a floor for spotting a bad redemption, not a target.
• Sharing points and miles: which programs let you pool miles with family, move points to a spouse, or book awards for someone else, with the rules for every major bank, airline, and hotel program in one table.

Award Search Tools, Compared

Finding award space is the harder half of the battle, and picking the right search tool shouldn’t be as hard as it is, partly because nearly every one of them runs an affiliate program, making an honest comparison hard to find. My award search tools comparison puts the flight search, hotel search, and alert tools side by side, with which airlines each one covers, what the free versions actually get you, and when paying is worth it. Most of them are more alike than their marketing suggests, and most run Black Friday and holiday discounts, so don’t pay full price.

Sweet Spots, Program by Program

Once you have the points, the next question is where they go furthest. My sweet spots guides go program by program through the major airline and hotel programs: the awards that still hold up, what each one costs in points and taxes compared with the cash price, the catches to watch for, and which bank points transfer in. I’m still working on many of these: a few are up now, and more will go live over the next few weeks, so be sure to check back.

Tools for the Cards You Already Have

Getting a card is the fun part, but keeping it (or not) is where most of us leave money on the table, so these three are built for that:

• Credits calendar: tick the cards you have and see every statement credit, free night, and companion certificate they come with, when each one resets, and how many days you have left. You can also add the reminders to your own calendar so nothing quietly expires.

• Premium card calculator: the same “is it worth it” math as the reviews, with every card above a $200 fee in one place.

• Downgrades and retention offers: what every card I review can be downgraded to, what you give up, each bank’s rules, and hundreds of dated retention offers cardholders reported, so you know what to ask for before you call.

Data and History

These are a little different from the guides: dated records of how points, miles, and cards have changed, each with a source. For the nerds among us.

• Annual fee history: every fee change on the premium travel cards I review, going back to 2015. The Amex Platinum went from $450 to $895 in that time, and not one of these cards has lowered its fee. Shocking, I know.
• Devaluation timeline: every major airline, hotel, and bank-points devaluation since 2020, dated, with how much each one raised prices.
• Welcome offer history: the best offer you could get on the most popular and premium cards since October 2024, side by side.

The Weekly Travel Summary

Travel Summary has never been about reporting every single daily change in the points and miles world, and that isn’t changing. Still, plenty happens in a week that’s worth knowing without being worth a full post from me, so every Friday I’m putting out The Weekly Travel Summary: quick hits of the week’s important miles/points and travel news, with links to the sites that posted them if you want to read further. It’s a return to how this blog posted in its earliest days, and the first issues are already up. If you already get Travel Summary by email, there’s nothing extra to sign up for: starting this Friday, each issue lands in your inbox in full, the same way new posts do. If you don’t, the Subscribe box at the bottom of every page covers both.

A New Look, Too

If the site looks different, that’s because it is. It’s now much easier to read on a phone (which is where most of you read it), it’s dark by default, and the new Guides and Credit Cards menus put everything above within a tap or two. Comments got an upgrade as well, with upvotes, sorting by newest, oldest, or most voted, threaded replies, and the option to get notified when someone replies to you. I also went through years of older posts, retiring the ones that no longer hold up and adding dated updates to the ones that still matter.

More Is On The Way

These took a long time to go from a list in my notes to pages on the site, and there’s a lot more I want to add, plus plenty I want to refine in what’s already here. As always, I’m open to suggestions on other features or topics, and if you spot something wrong, missing, or out of date, tell me in the comments or through the contact form, and I’ll fix it everywhere it shows up.

I’m looking forward to once again helping you travel better for less. And if something here saves you a few hundred dollars (or a few hours), a coffee is always appreciated.

Happy Travels!