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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!)

Alright, this week is packed with moves, wins, and a few “well, that could’ve been better” moments.

We’ve got everything from paying rent and student loans with points, to last minute trip redemptions, and even a look at what Capital One might be up to with Discover.

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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

Bilt 🤝 Student Housing (LINK)

If you’re a student or a parent with a kid in college, listen up because this one's for you.

Starting in late May, Bilt is rolling out the ability to earn points on student housing.

They're kicking things off with Baylor and expanding to university housing across the ACC.

It’s really cool to see Bilt stepping up and letting you earn points not just on rent, but now on college housing too making it a solid first card for anyone headed to college.

And speaking of school… the average undergrad walks away with $38,000 in student loans (myself included…really putting that Actuarial Science degree to good use 🫠).

Bilt is also letting you redeem points to pay down student loans with select major loan servicers.

It might not wipe out your debt entirely, but if you’re living on free pizza and ramen, every bit helps.

And hey, if you wanted to completely wipe out that $38K in debt, you’d just need a cool 3.8 million Bilt points. No big deal.

Bonus news: Bilt also just added Southwest as a transfer partner at a 1:1 ratio. I’m kinda indifferent about it right now, given that Southwest is in full dumpster fire mode with all their recent changes and devaluations. But hey I’m never going to knock a new transfer partnership.

Eva Air Dallas to Taipei (LINK)

Selfishly, I like to keep track of new international flights popping up from the middle of the country because, well, that’s where I live. And flying to Europe or Asia from here is way better than tacking on a 3+ hour flight to either coast just to get started.

Dallas, in particular, is starting to shape up as a nice little international hotspot. You’ve got nonstop flights to Hong Kong, Sydney, Japan, and even Istanbul and Dubai, many of them on brand new aircraft. But I digress...

Starting October 3, 2025, EVA Air will launch a 3x weekly route (Sun, Wed, Fri) from Taipei to Dallas, and here's the schedule:

• BR50 Taipei → Dallas: Departs 7:45 PM, Arrives 7:05 PM (same day) 🤯

• BR49 Dallas → Taipei: Departs 10:50 PM, Arrives 5:25 AM (+2 days)

I see this as a win-win not only do we get more options to fly to Asia, but it hopefully means more award seat availability too.

And for my East Coast friends, this could be good news as well, you might not need to fly all the way to LAX or SFO just to catch an award ticket to Asia anymore.

Capital One’s $35B deal for Discover (LINK)

Last week, Capital One got the green light from bank regulators to move forward with its acquisition of Discover.

While Discover hasn’t exactly been crushing it lately, this is still a big deal, especially since both companies are major players in the credit card space.

One thing I’ll definitely be watching.

Will Capital One move all of its cards from Visa to Discover, now that they’ll own the network?

If so, could the savings from cutting out Visa lead to better rewards or point multipliers for us?

It’s also worth asking, since regulators just approved a merger between two pretty big names, does this open the door for more acquisitions in the credit card space?

I’ve got a feeling this won’t be the last one we see.

🤓 Hack

• If you’re not seeing the award availability you want on United’s site, try switching your location to Canada.

  Really. It’s been reported that changing your location to Canada in your United search settings can reveal more award space.

• If you’re booking a flight on Japan Airlines, consider using JetBlue points they can now be redeemed for JAL flights.

🛋️ 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.

So I’m heading to a conference in New York next week.

If you’re local, send me your food recs, please don’t make me eat bad pizza.

Now, I couldn’t decide If was going until yesterday… so naturally, a week out, I wanted to see how much of this trip I could book with points.

Spoiler: it wasn’t the most amazing redemption, but I was able to cover the whole thing and here’s how I did it.

Flights

Flying into New York gave me three airport options: JFK, LGA, and EWR.

I checked Seats.aero and found a flight from Austin to JFK for 25K miles on

American Airlines. Thankfully, it was bookable through Alaska Airlines. Cash price was $600.

I didn’t have Alaska miles, but I did have some Hawaiian miles saved up from my last trip to Hawaii, so I topped them off with 10K Amex points, transferred them to Hawaiian, and then converted them to Alaska (remember you can still do this thanks to the merger).

On the return, I wanted to use up 12K Aeroplan miles I had left over from missing a business class flight out of Hawaii (another story for another time).

I manually searched all three NYC airports to AUS across two days and found a flight that worked. No business class, but found economy for 15k Aeroplan miles which beats the 6 or 7 AM departures.

Hotel

I’m running low on Chase points, so I couldn’t book any of the Hyatt Category 5 hotels, and the only Cat 4s were out in New Jersey, not ideal given the 45 min commute to the conference.

I had Amex points, but didn’t really want to burn them.

Then I remembered: my Venture X card just renewed, so I had a fresh $300 travel credit plus 10K anniversary miles.

Combined with what I had saved up, it was enough to book a room at the conference hotel.

Not the best redemption, but everyone else is staying there, so I was cool taking that loss for the convenience.

Total Breakdown:

• Flight there: 25K miles + $19

• Flight back: 15K miles + $46 CAD

• Hotel: 58,368 Capital One miles

• Total: 98k points but saved $2,000

All in all, I used a mix of Alaska, Aeroplan, Capital One, Hawaiian, and Amex to make the whole trip happen with points.

Hope that little breakdown was helpful and again, send me your NYC food spots, because I refuse to come back with regrets (or bad pizza).

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.

• Had someone reach out for flights to Australia for next year

👀 My Favorite Finds

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

• These newsletters are changing the game (LINK)

• Here’s how to redeem points for domestic flights (LINK)

• Citi devalues emirates transfer from 1:1 to 1 to 0.8 (LINK)

• Virgin will fly from London to Seoul starting March 2026 (LINK)

• Thai Airlines can fly to US directly for first time in 10 years (LINK)