🛫 FLIGHT PATH - Edition #31 Smarter travel. Less stress. More memories. 3-minute read Hey Reader, I woke up at 5 a.m. for an 8 a.m. flight to Vegas. I checked my email and there it was, sent the night before while I was asleep. My JFK to Las Vegas flight had been canceled. That left me about three hours before I was originally supposed to taking off to figure out another way to get there. The airline's app offered to rebook me automatically, and the option it gave me was two layovers and 19...
29 days ago • 4 min read
🛫 FLIGHT PATH - Edition #30 Smarter travel. Less stress. More memories. 2-minute read Hey Reader, Airlines don't lie about the price. They just don't show you the real one until you're three screens deep. You find a flight for $149. Feels like a win. You click through, already picturing the trip. Then you hit the bag screen and it's $40 each way to check a bag. Then the seat map. The free seats left are all next to the bathroom. Everything else is $30 each way. By the time you're at checkout,...
about 1 month ago • 2 min read
🛫 FLIGHT PATH - Edition #29 Smarter travel. Less stress. More memories. 2-minute read Hey Reader, Most travel arguments don't happen at the airport. They happen on day three. When one person wants to sleep in and the other wants to see another museum. When someone thought this was a food trip and someone else thought it was a beach trip. When nobody said any of this out loud before they got on the plane. That's the gap. Not the destination. Not even the budget. Two people with completely...
about 2 months ago • 2 min read
🛫 FLIGHT PATH - Edition #28 Smarter travel. Less stress. More memories. 3-minute read Hey Reader, Back in 2020, a week after I got laid off, I got on a plane to Cancun. The trip was already planned. The flights were booked. But the timing felt wrong. Nobody said it directly. It was more of a look. A pause. Is that really the best idea right now? And for a second, I felt it too. The guilt. The sense that I should be home refreshing job boards, not sitting on a beach. That travel was something...
2 months ago • 3 min read
🛫 FLIGHT PATH - Edition #27 Smarter travel. Less stress. More memories. 3-minute read Hey Reader, You see a limited time offer on a travel credit card. A friend won't stop talking about the points they're racking up. Or maybe you've been quietly eyeing a welcome bonus for months and finally pulled the trigger. Whatever got you there, the card is coming. And so is the most predictable mistake people make in the points and miles game. It's not one thing. It's a sequence. And most people go...
3 months ago • 3 min read
🛫 FLIGHT PATH - Edition #26 Smarter travel. Less stress. More memories. 3-minute read Hey Reader, In the last edition, I broke down how 150,000 credit card points can turn into business class flights, a week at a 5-star luxury hotel, or trips that would've cost $10,000+ out of pocket. But here's the question I get every time I share something like that: "Okay, but how do I actually find those deals?" That's what today is about. Because transferring points is a one-way street. Once they leave...
3 months ago • 2 min read
🛫 FLIGHT PATH - Edition #25 Smarter travel. Less stress. More memories. 2-minute read Hey Reader, I still think about the flight home from my honeymoon. My wife and I were sitting in business class. Fully flat seats, real food, the whole thing. A flight that would have cost over $5,000 out of pocket. I paid 85,000 Chase points, transferred to British Airways and then Qatar Airways. The same points sitting in my Chase account would have been worth $1,275 inside Chase Travel. Instead? I...
4 months ago • 2 min read
🛫 FLIGHT PATH - Edition #24 Smarter travel. Less stress. More memories. 2-minute read Hey Reader, One of the most common messages I get is some version of the same question. "I have the Amex Platinum / Chase Sapphire / Venture X... am I actually using it right?" And when I walk through it with people, the answer is almost always the same. They're taking advantage of the lounge. Maybe the travel credit. And that's about it. A few weeks ago a friend texted me because she was trying to figure...
4 months ago • 3 min read
🛫 FLIGHT PATH - Edition #23 Smarter travel. Less stress. More memories. 3-minute read Hey Reader, In the fall of 2018 I was grinding. I'd been working weekends for a few years straight. I had PTO that wasn't going to roll over. I was single, no obligations pulling me anywhere, and I hadn't done anything for myself in longer than I could remember. So I did something that was, by my standards at the time, completely impulsive. I booked a solo trip to Greece. Nine days in Santorini, Athens, and...
5 months ago • 3 min read