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Wednesday, February 12, 2025

Pairing the Right Credit Cards with the Right Rewards Strategies Can Help You Live Your Travel Dreams

Picking The Right Credit Cards Can Help You Travel In Style
Mike Senecal

Writer: Mike Senecal

Mike Senecal

Mike Senecal, Staff Writer

Mike Senecal draws on more than 20 years of editorial experience to update CardRates.com readers on industry trends, business news, and best practices in budgeting and credit use. Mike has worked for decades in academic and trade publishing, including roles as managing editor and technical editor at the University of Florida and as contributor to finance industry publications, including Surety Bond Quarterly and Independent Agent, among others. Mike holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of South Carolina, and he enjoys bringing his years of academic and industry expertise online to help consumers of diverse financial backgrounds.

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Lillian Guevara-Castro

Editor: Lillian Guevara-Castro

Lillian Guevara-Castro

Lillian Guevara-Castro, Senior Editor

Lillian Guevara-Castro brings more than 30 years of editing and journalism experience to the CardRates team. She has worked at The Atlanta Journal and Constitution, Gwinnett Daily News, Gainesville Sun, and The New York Times, where she covered demographics, consumer issues, and the business and financial sectors. Lillian has a degree in journalism and communications from Georgia State University and brings her fact-checking expertise to ensure Digital Brands content is accurate and engaging.

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Ashley Fricker

Reviewer: Ashley Fricker

Ashley Fricker

Ashley Fricker, Senior Editor

Ashley Fricker has more than a decade of experience as a finance contributor and editor, and has specialized in the credit card industry since 2015. Her credit card commentary is featured on national media outlets that include CNBC, MarketWatch, Investopedia, and Reader's Digest, among many others. She has worked closely with the world’s largest banks and financial institutions, up-and-coming fintech companies, and press and news outlets to curate comprehensive content and media. Ashley holds a bachelor's degree in multimedia journalism from Florida Atlantic University.

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In a Nutshell: For Dave Grossman, flying around the world in first-class seats and staying in some of the world’s finest hotels is its own reward. Lucky for us, he built MilesTalk to share his tips. MilesTalk is Grossman’s comprehensive information hub for travel credit cards, airline miles, hotel and casino rewards, travel news, and deals. Automation to connect users with deals was missing, so he created a sister site, Your Best Credit Cards, with customizable bonus notifications. The combination produces the stuff travel dreams are made of.

Card companies, airlines, and hotels don’t make travel rewards easy, but there’s a smorgasbord of points and miles perks available to those willing to do a little digging.

For Dave Grossman, digging to find travel rewards began as a hobby and became a career. Thanks to points and miles, Grossman has flown in first-class seats worth tens of thousands and stayed in some of the world’s finest hotels.

Grossman is the creator of MilesTalk, a comprehensive compendium of travel tips and tricks built to help everyday travel wannabes enjoy the same high-end yet cut-rate travel experiences he has.

He has also created Your Best Credit Cards to connect travelers with time-sensitive notifications for bonus offers and transfer bonuses.

MilesTalk logo

Grossman is part of a family that has always appreciated good deals. His travel obsession started around 2003 when he began lurking at FlyerTalk, the popular frequent flier community.

By 2006, he got hooked when he snagged a $100 mistake rate at the Conrad Bora Bora Nui hotel, which was a Starwood Preferred Guest property at the time, for a 10-day stay that normally would have cost $10,000. He then learned about upgrade rewards and saved points for a free stay in a Butler Suite at Le Méridien Beach Plaza in Monte Carlo.

One thing led to another, and by 2016, he was such a presence in the travel community that the South by Southwest conference and film festival invited him to present a travel seminar. He knew it was time to build a site when attendees at the packed event asked him for the link to his website, and he had none to give.

MilesTalk started that year. A Facebook group followed in 2017.

“It was a passion project,” Grossman said. “I have a 2-year-old, so I’m not on the road as much as before, but I still find time to travel.”

MilesTalk: A Friendly Travel Community

MilesTalk and Your Best Credit Cards form a seamless solution for everyone interested in traveling for less, whether they’re just getting their travel feet wet or are seasoned savers like Grossman.

The message is that anyone can learn to travel for free, but there’s no one-size-fits-all solution to put rewards on autopilot for everyone. Grossman is here to help you work on “earning and burning” points and perks to serve your unique travel goals.

In addition to making frequent media appearances, Grossman is also the author of “MilesTalk: Live Your Wildest Travel Dreams Using Miles and Points.” The book provides the foundation all travel buffs need to get started in points and miles.

Dave Grossman
Dave Grossman is Founder of MilesTalk and Your Best Credit Cards.

Opening the Card Explorer at Your Best Credit Cards extends Grossman’s capabilities by putting his recommendations to work via an automated card filtering solution.

But MilesTalk remains the hub of Grossman’s burgeoning travel presence on the web. The site offers essential foundational content, such as Grossman’s guide to abbreviations and acronyms in points and miles, explanations of unit values, and the advantages of transferring points.

The section on credit cards covers business and personal offers, with sections dedicated to Amex, Capital One, Chase, Citi, and Bilt Rewards. The section on airline miles follows almost two dozen global purveyors, and the section on hotels and casinos covers the top providers.

Over on Facebook, the tone is decidedly friendly. Grossman remembers getting walled out of discussions on FlyerTalk as a new user, and the Facebook group concertedly enforces collegiality in the comments.

“It took me about six years to be at a point where I could say this is something I do for a living,” Grossman said. “I know there are bigger groups out there, but we hang our hat on being the friendliest.”

Learning Experiences for Travelers at All Levels

Grossman is still at it. He traveled to Japan and Taiwan a few months before he sat down with us in the summer of 2024 “because I was able to find award space in 1st Class.” Not that it’s easy for anyone to keep up.

“Nobody can go at the speed I go,” he said. “I want to see everything. I’ll walk 12 miles and eat nine meals in a day.”

The site isn’t devoted to that type of all-in travel. Grossman noted that there are three types of travel enthusiasts, and MilesTalk strives to appeal to all three.

First are the newbies. MilesTalk is on the record as a welcoming place where there are no wrong questions.

Middle-of-road types who crave points-and-miles experience as breaks from everyday life are also welcome. Although they may not be interested in rewards travel above all else, they find the nuts-and-bolts information they need to pick the right cards and plans for themselves.

Your Best Credit Cards logo

Then there are true travel aficionados like Grossman — people for whom the deal is almost as compelling as the experience. For those folks, MilesTalk is where minds meet and strategies evolve to maximize provider offerings.

While the middle-of-the-roaders come and go in the forums as their needs rise and fall, these aficionados seemingly value deals and experiences above all else. It takes work.

“People like me just read and consume everything — blogs, FlyerTalk, general news, and everything related to travel,” Grossman said.

The mission at MilesTalk is practice. Grossman said the key to high-end travel is absorbing information and learning to jump through the hoops efficiently. Determine your travel goals and master the institutions, strategies, and procedures to accomplish them.

“There’s a myriad of things that you just kind of learn,” Grossman said. “But you have to put in the time.”

Your Best Credit Cards Lets You Automate the Search

That said, Grossman is in the timesaving business with Your Best Credit Cards.

Far more than a simple marketplace for credit cards, Your Best Credit Cards allows users to create an account with a spend profile. The site ranks cards by how well they are suited to the user’s needs. Grossman said it even works with card combos.

“You can say, I have a Chase Sapphire Reserve and this is my spend. What’s the best second card to pair with that?” he said.

Card Explorer at Your Best Credit Cards
The Card Explorer at Your Best Credit Cards works via an automated card filtering solution.

But because points and miles rewards come and go on schedules only the card companies, airlines, and hotels know, Your Best Credit Cards pairs industry-leading filtering with granular notifications. Users can set and forget the app, put it to work behind the scenes, and wait for good things to happen.

Bonus offer notifications inform subscribers when bonus offers change. Among the highly customizable options, users can set the app to ping when a particular card reaches a specific threshold.

“Ten steps further than that,” Grossman said, are transfer bonus notifications.

Transfer bonuses pay users extra for transferring points from one platform to another. For example, Virgin Atlantic Flying Club may offer a 30% bonus on Amex Membership Rewards points.

The idea to create notifications around those announcements came to Grossman after MilesTalk users commented they wished they knew more about them in advance.

Users can select any or all issuers with transferable points and click to receive notifications when new offers drop, seven days before expiration, and two days before expiration.

While other sites may promise similar inside info in return for a newsletter signup or some other intrusion, Your Best Credit Cards keeps the clutter to a minimum.

It’s the latest development in a decade-long quest to make travel points and miles as rewarding as possible.

“I like to tell people it’s my attempt to create an automated Dave,” Grossman said.