Then I discovered what points and miles could do.

Points and miles have allowed us to keep prioritizing travel as our family has grown, and to give our kids some of the same perspective and experiences that travel has given us.

For our family, they didn't suddenly make travel “free.” They changed the decisions we could make. Five plane tickets to Europe became more realistic. A bucket-list trip to the Galápagos could be shared with our kids. Experiences that might have felt too expensive suddenly became possible. Money we would have spent on flights could go toward experiences once we got there.

That's ultimately what led me here.

I don't think the goal is to get the most points, squeeze out the highest possible value, or “win” at this hobby. The goal is to use points to make the travel you actually want more possible.

In short, the travel is the point!

I’ve Been Helping People Travel for a Long Time

Travel was a huge part of my life long before points and miles entered the picture.

In 2008, my wife and I left our jobs and spent a year traveling around the world, spending time in South America, New Zealand, Southeast Asia, and India. The entire experience, from deciding to go, to planning the trip, to traveling, and eventually coming home, completely changed the direction of my life.

When we returned, I left my career as a high school English teacher and started working in the travel industry.

We wanted to travel farther and longer, and give our kids some of the experiences we'd had before they came along. But airfare times five made that increasingly difficult.

In 2022, we added points and miles to the equation.

Some of our favorite travel experiences have come from watching them experience places that once felt like they belonged to a very different chapter of our lives.

What started as a way to make family travel more affordable turned into something I wanted to understand inside and out. It was a natural transition to start writing professionally about credit cards, points and miles, and digging into everything from card strategy and application rules to transfer partners, loyalty programs, and redemptions.

Make Travel Possible brings those two parts of my experience together: more than 15 years of helping people think about travel, and the points and miles knowledge that can help make more of that travel possible.

Since then, I've spent more than 15 years writing about travel and helping other people make their own travel goals happen. I started by writing about our trip, then became an editor, worked in travel marketing, and helped people plan complex, multi-country and around-the-world trips. Along the way, I developed a deep understanding of airfare, airline geography, and international travel.

My wife and I eventually traded backpacks, buses, hostels, and budget travel for family travel, adding two boys to the mix.

The trips changed, but the priority didn't.

We stretched our travel budget as much as we could, even driving to central Mexico in 2017 with our 4- and 1-year-old boys in tow. We spent three months there and seriously contemplated staying. Ultimately, we returned home and added the final piece to our puzzle when our daughter completed our family.

Why I Started Make Travel Possible

The more I learned about points and miles, the more I realized that finding information isn't really the problem. In fact, there's an overwhelming amount of it out there.

The hard part is figuring out which of that information actually matters to you.

There are endless lists of the “best” credit cards, the “best” ways to redeem points, and the “best” strategies. But points and miles don't fit particularly well into a standardized roadmap.

Everyone has different goals and travel dreams. The right strategy for someone who wants to open several cards a year and learn every transfer partner isn't necessarily right for someone who just wants to take their family to Europe without spending $5,000 on airfare.

And even the right advice doesn't stay right forever. Card offers change. Application rules change. Benefits change. Partners change. Transfer bonuses come and go. Loyalty programs change their redemption rates.

What makes sense for you today may be different from what made sense six months ago, or what will make sense six months from now.

I spend a lot of time keeping up with this stuff because it's my job. I don't expect you to. My goal is to be someone you can turn to when you need help figuring out what makes sense now.

Some people want to make points and miles a hobby. Others want one or two good cards and never think about this stuff unless they're planning a trip. Most people probably fall somewhere in between.

That's why I started Make Travel Possible.

I want to help people figure out which parts of points and miles matter for the way they actually want to travel. I want to help people build a strategy around their goals, spending, existing cards and points, how involved they actually want to be, and the opportunities available to them right now.

You don't need to become an expert in points and miles. You just need to understand how to make them work for you.