Five reasons I record every flight, hotel and award booking—and how this simple habit helps me get more value from my points and credit cards every year.

Most people are great at earning points.

Where they get stuck is spending them—I would know, as a recovering Points Hoarder!

The points and miles sits there, growing with every new credit card welcome bonus and every day spend. And a little voice says “that redemption isn’t good enough, save it for something better.”

So it keeps piling up month after month and that dream trip never quite happens.

For years when I started my points and miles hobby, I used to be exactly like that.

Then I started tracking my points and miles award redemptions—every flight, every hotel, every time I booked something with points instead of cash.

It’s a small habit. But it completely changed my travel mindset and how I feel about this hobby.

So if you’re like me, let me give you 5 powerful reasons why I track every redemption, and why I think you should too.

Points are just numbers on a screen.

It only turns into real value—both monetary and experience—when you actually take the trip.

When your redemptions are just numbers ticking up in ten different loyalty program accounts, it’s easy to get a dopamine hit of seeing the number grow later. And forget what points are actually for.

For me it’s about:

• Making memories with your friends and loved ones.

• Saving money on travel and taking every travel dollar further.

• Getting a world education by experience new food, culture and history.

When you log every travel redemption you make, your mindset shifts.

That 80,000 point flight in business class, becomes a food and cultural adventure in Tokyo, Japan.

That 105,000 point Ritz-Carlton hotel redemption, becomes a 2 night quiet and rejuvenating birthday staycation.

Suddenly it’s not hypothetical value but a real experience—you’re looking at a highlight reel of trips you actually took this year.

That’s the emotional payoff I love most. Come December, when I do my annual review and planning for the new year, I see my whole year of travel laid out on a page.

Every flight, every stay, everywhere we went. Not points saved for “one day,” but real memories I’ve made with people I care about.

This is a big reason that makes you a smarter traveller.

Every redemption has a dollar value. The trick is knowing whether yours was a good one.

Here’s how I keep it simple.

Inside my Points Hub PRO, the Redemptions Tracker calculates my cents-per-point value automatically—it takes the cash price of what I booked (minus taxes & fees), divides it by the points I spent, and shows me exactly what each point was worth.

Then I compare my cents/point number to The Points Guy’s published point valuations to give me a guy for whether its “worth it”.

So if The Points Guy values a point at 1.5 cents, and my redemption came out at 2.1 cents, I know instantly: that was an above average deal. Worth it.

And if it comes out below? That’s useful too. It tells me that’s it’s a below average redemption—but I might still take it if I have a ton of points and want to save cash.

No spreadsheets. No manual maths.

(🪧 Now I’ll be the first to say not every redemption needs to be “great value”. Often the value is just that you took the trip rather than delay it to “never”)

I don’t know about you, but things that happened a month ago, a year ago, becomes a bit blurry in my memory.

That’s why I love journaling, taking photos and documenting my travels—It’s a way of resurfacing memories which bring me a lot of joy when I reflect on it at the end of the year.

Can you remember what your last trip booked on points were like? What they were exactly?

Most people can’t. Life gets busy and it all becomes a bit of a blur.

Take 10 seconds to track your trip and redemption, its a great way to quickly pull it up to remind yourself 6 months down the road.

• What you booked.

• What it costs in cash.

• What it costs in points.

• Exactly how much you saved.

Personally, that highlight reel and clarity is so powerful when I do my annual review in December and get to see all the fun things I’ve got to do in the last 12 months.

Here’s where tracking redemptions pays off in actual dollars.

Every year, my credit card annual fee come up for renewal, and I have to decide: is this annual fee still worth it?

Without my records, that’s a vague guessing game.

With my Redemption Tracker and my Benefits Tracker, it makes the answer obvious. I can see all my redemptions in one spot. I can see all the travel benefits I’ve used and enjoyed—hotel credits, lounge access, dining credits etc.—with a dollar value I’ve assigned to it.

That’s how I know if a card earned it’s keep in my wallet.

“I got $250 of travel and credits out of this $95 card—an easy yes.”

The redemptions and the benefits feed each other. I can easily visualise the value I’ve gotten from the card.

Seeing my point and miles redemptions cured my point hoarding for good—it motivated me to use my points.

Instead of chasing a growing pile of points, I’m chasing:

• Opportunities to creating new memories with loved ones.

• A deeper understanding of the world.

• New trip experiences.

Tracking your redemptions and trips isn’t just a record of what you’ve done but a big nudge to do and experience more.

Points aren’t a savings account. They lose real value over time because loyalty programs and credit card programs devalue their points. The sooner you use them, the more you get out of them.

Hotel free night certificates and annual travel credits expire. If you don’t track them you’ll forget you even have them to use for your next trip.

Tracking your redemptions and trips helps you to clearly see the wins your building up. It’s gentle accountability.

Don’t leave points sitting on your proverbial shelf collecting dust—turn them into real trips and experiences.

As your travel wins grow, the points and miles hobby starts to feel really rewarding.

Tracking your award redemptions sounds like extra work, but it isn’t.

It shows you the real value of your points, helps you quickly decide whether to keep or cancel a card and and quietly pushes you to actually use the points you’ve earned.

And using your points is the most important part of collecting points and miles.

Come December, you get to scroll back through your year of trips and redemptions and think “look at everything we did!”—that’s one of my favourite parts of my annual review process I do with my husband.

That’s exactly why I built the Redemptions Tracker into Points Hub PRO. It logs every booking, calculates your cents-per-point value for you, and turns your redemptions into a running highlight reel of travel wins—so you can see, at a glance, how your points are working for you.

🍾 Early bird pricing for Points Hub PRO drops next week—saving you 70% — join the waitlist and be first to hear.

Until next time, happy travelling.

Janice

Creating memorable experiences is a smart use of your time and money.

I’m on a mission to help you how to unlock premium flights & hotels with points, capture photos worth framing and plan every trip without the chaos—stress-free and debt-free.

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I’m a Travel Writer, Photographer and Notion Consultant based in Perth, Australia. Got questions, comments or just a chat? Email me at hello@travellinglens.co.