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🤙🏿 Welcome back to the Better Than Points Newsletter - the premier place for all things Credit Card Points News and Travel

My name’s Luis and I’m the one writing this (hit me up here!)

Something's brewing, and I'm here to call it out.

We’ve got some changes I don't like and a way to score a good chunk of points.

Let's get into it

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A Message from Me

I wasted hours and overpaid in points, but the right help would've changed that ✈️ 

I still remember the first time I tried booking a flight with points. I thought I was getting a deal, but between confusing award charts, hidden fees, and bad redemption rates, I spent way too many hours (and way too many points) just to book a single ticket.

Looking back, I could’ve booked it in half the time and saved thousands of points if someone had just shown me how.

That’s where I come in.

Here’s how I can help:

✅ Tell me where you want to go, and I’ll make it happen— in style (business & first class).
✅ Leverage my 10+ years of experience to save time and maximize your miles.
✅ Skip the frustration of award searches and hidden fees— I’ll find the best deals for you.
✅ Fly better, for less— experience business and first class without paying out of pocket.
✅ Get your trips booked for the year— rates start at $1k for two people roundtrip, and the experiences are priceless.

👉 Book an intro call today and start planning your dream trips!

Travel News

Chase Referral Update (LINK)

Who hurt Chase?

Because right now, Chase is on a tear with update after update and none of them are looking great.

The latest one is the new terms and conditions on Chase’s new business card.

“Effective October 7th, 2025, you will be eligible to receive referral bonus awards for new Chase Business card customers only. Referrals of individuals with existing Chase business card accounts will no longer qualify for the referral bonus”

This is a big deal.

For a long time, you could refer friends and keep the referral train rolling, picking up easy bonus points along the way.

But it looks like that’s going away.

And honestly, the scariest part is, if they’re doing this on the business side, what’s stopping them from applying it to personal cards next?

This follows a string of recent changes like removing the 48 month rule but replacing it with a new rule that you can only earn an intro bonus once per Sapphire product.

Chase is definitely shaking things up.

We’ll have to see how it plays out and whether we can still squeeze the same value from Chase points, especially with all the updates coming to the travel portal.

New Way To Earn 1 Million Miles (LINK)

Nothing better than free miles.

Turkish just dropped details on a wild new challenge and honestly, i’m behind it.

Miles & Smiles members who fly to 6 continents with Turkish Airlines will earn 1 million miles.

And no, this isn’t a raffle or one lucky winner.

Everyone who completes the challenge gets the million miles.

Here’s the fine print

• Travel and ticketing must happen between June 27, 2025 – October 27, 2025

• Unfortunately, award travel doesn’t count, so you’ll need to book paid flights

Still... for a million miles? That’s seriously tempting.

Here’s a post of a guy that figured out how to do it for less than $3,000

ANA One Way Award Flights (LINK)

For the longest time, ANA has had some of the best business and first class seats you could book with points.

We flew their business class from Tokyo back to New York and it was solid.

The only downside? You could only book round trip with ANA miles.

So most people used Virgin to book one ways instead.

But that just changed.

As of the end of June, you can now book one way ANA award flights using ANA miles directly.

And we’re starting to see some nice options pop up.

Here’s ANA Award Chart along with the chard for using ANA miles for Partner Award Flights.

One way U.S. to Europe flights are now showing up for 50,000 ANA miles in business class.

Flights from North America to Tokyo on ANA are showing for as low as 65,000 - 108,000 miles one way in business

This is a game changer because ANA has way more award availability for their own flights than what they release to partners like Virgin or United.

If this is something on your list, book it now, I’d be shocked if this pricing sticks around once more people catch on.

🤓 Hack

• S/O to Kerr for reminding me of this since I made my account so long ago but if you want to make a Turkish Airlines Miles & Smiles mileage account you need to download the app and make your password just numbers.

🛋️ Luis’ Lounge

Each week, I’ll share something cool I’ve discovered or tackle a question from the community. It’s my little corner to explore ideas, offer fresh perspectives, and hopefully spark your own curiosity.

Something’s Brewing Over at Bilt

I’ve started to see some rumblings that Bilt is closing in on a new round of funding.

Normally, I wouldn’t bring this kind of thing up, but since Bilt is now one of the few credit card issuers in the points game and they’ve been teasing new cards this feels worth paying attention to.

From what I’ve seen, this raise could be the catalyst that finally helps them roll out some of the features they’ve been hinting at, like:

• Launching new credit cards

• Moving into the mortgage space, with rewards tied to your mortgage

That second one especially would be interesting.

Now, for a little context, Bilt’s last valuation in August was $3.25B. And the word is they’re being valued closer to $10B.

That’s nearly a 3x jump in valuation, and if it holds true, it likely means a fresh wave of cash that’ll give them the flexibility to move quickly.

Whether it’s expanding into new products, launching cards, or doubling down on loyalty partnership, they’ve now got the runway to make it happen.

And honestly, with Chase tripping over itself lately, I wouldn’t be surprised if Bilt sees this as the perfect moment to make a move.

So I’m calling my shot now: I think we’re going to see something big from Bilt before the end of the year.

Check out these crazy award deals!

🔬 Secret Travel Research

This section includes some of the best award flights of the week bookable with points and miles.

• Some decent flights out of ORD to Tokyo later this month

🖥️ TravelBot

Chat with TravelBot - my AI clone. It’s trained on every newsletter I’ve published along with my 10+ years of points and credit card knowledge 🧠.

It’s also trained on my voice, so you can call it and have a full blown conversations. Give it a try and let me know what you think.

👀 My Favorite Finds

This section includes some of the best links videos and articles of the week around the points and travel community

• Hotel sneaky new fee (LINK)

• Oman Air joins Oneworld Alliance (LINK)

• These newsletters are changing the game (LINK)

• Amex will devalue Emirates transfer Sept 16th (LINK)

• How to book a flight to Japan with 63,000 Chase points (LINK)