Tools for Maximizing Points and Travel

Credit Karma--Free!!! This website tells you your credit and better yet when you first opened any cards you might have.  This is key to identify your oldest card (never close that one) and the age of your current cards to determine if you should downgrade or re-open for a fresh sign up bonus.

Nova credit--if you are new to the United States and struggling to secure credit, this website can help you either bring your previous credit history or begin building it.

Roame.travel--Winner of the TPG best new travel service, this website allows you search award travel for free.  They do have a paid option as well.

Pointsyeah--another flight award search engine, which is free for 3 days.

Seats.aero--another free tool to search for award hotels. It is a bit advance but equally great.  They also have a paid service with enhanced search capabilities.

Seatspy.com--Looking for a reliable travel award search engine? Check out this great option and take advantage of their free trial to see if it's the right fit for you. Serving the UK.

Awayz--another tool with a free limited time option to search for award hotels. Consider the paid version as it is a very good search tool.

Expertflyer.com--find airline information.

Rakuten--if you don't have a Rakuten account you are either missing out on free cash back or free American Express Membership Reward points! I have personally made thousands of points on my regular home purchases.

Viator--this website offers you many different tours for your upcoming trips.  I have personally used it fo a trip to Italy and it was great.  Make sure you visit it through Rakuten so you can get a discount! 

Flight connections--this free website helps you find what routes all airports fly non stip to, therefore you can figure out if you need a positioning flight.

Cheapoair.com--don't have enough points yet? You can book trip trips for less and take advantage of Rakuten cash back (or AMEX points)

 Travel Freely is a free and very user friendly app that helps beginners and experienced award travel seekers.  It helps with organization of your cards as well as making basic credit card recommendations. 

 https://travelfreely.com/travel-freely-partner-home-3/?ref=1&signup=1&utm_source=i-travel-with-laura&utm_medium=web 

 Points Path is a free for now Chrome extension that works with google flights, to alert you what would be most cost effective: using points or paying cash.  

 https://www.pointspath.com/#how-it-works 

Thriftytravel.com--would you like to receive travel deals straight to your inbox? Thrifty gathers deep discounted travel alerts for flights departing U.S. and Canada.

Rocketmiles.com--Earn thousands of miles/points per night from your favorite loyalty programs every time you book a hotel. You get to choose from more than 40 partners including Amazon, Southwest Airlines, United, and many more

Google Flights--This amazing free travel search engine can help you determine if you should use points of dollars for your travel, including hotels and car rental.

Autoshlash.com--This website will find the best deals in car rental, and they seriously deliver.  I have used it on a few occasions and it has been great for savings on rentals.

Maxmypoint.com--This website will find the best deals in car rental, and they seriously deliver.  I have used it on a few occasions and it has been great for savings on rentals.

awardtool.com--One more award travel search tool for your toolkit.  It resembles google flights but it can search several award programs for you.  Works great in Google Chrome browser

point.me--One more award travel search tool for your toolkit.  It is the most comprehensive award travel search. Pointme and American Express have a partnership and now Amex Cardholders can use Pointme for free! The bilt app also features award travel powered by pointme but it is limited to award search fueled by Bilt points.