When I started in points and miles, it was thrilling.
I opened my first card, hit the spend, and watched 60,000 points show up in my account. Credit cards weren't just paying for things anymore — they were paying me. I was hooked. Within a year I'd opened a few more.
That's when it got hard.
Why It Gets Hard Fast
Once you have more than a couple of cards, the game stops fitting in your head.
Every program earns at a different rate — 3x dining here, 4x groceries there, 2x flat on this other card. Every program transfers to a different list of airlines and hotels, at different ratios. Every point is worth a different amount depending on how you redeem it.
And on top of all that, if you're working toward a sign-up bonus — which is where most of the real value in this game lives — you're also racing a spend clock. Hit the minimum spend in the window, you get the bonus. Miss it by a hundred dollars, you get nothing.
Pretty quickly I had balances in twelve different programs, two sign-up bonuses running at the same time, and a wallet full of cards that I couldn't keep straight at checkout. The whole point of the game is to maximize — but I had no way to tell, on any given day, whether I was.
I needed a system. So I built one.
"The whole point of the game is to maximize. But I had no way to tell, on any given day, whether I was."
The Spend & Points Tracker
It's a free spreadsheet with eight tabs. Each one answers a question I was tired of trying to answer in my head.
The Dashboard
One screen. Total cash value across every program. Total points. Goal trip progress. 5/24 standing. Annual fees due. Nine live KPIs that update automatically as you fill in the rest of the workbook. Where do I stand? — answered in five seconds.
The Sign-Up Bonus Tracker
For every card you're still earning a bonus on, a visual progress bar shows you exactly where you are against the spend requirement and how many days you have left. The tab that paid for the whole tracker many times over — because missing a 100,000-point bonus by $200 of spend feels worse than just about anything in this game.
The Card Portfolio
Every card you carry. Annual fee. Real value you get from it. Net ROI. Flagged in green or rust so you know at a glance which cards are earning their keep and which ones aren't.
The Spend Tracker
Log monthly spend by category. The workbook shows you which card you should be using for what — and surfaces the cases where you're putting $400 of groceries on a 1x card when you have a 4x sitting in your wallet. Fix that one mistake, add 14,000+ points a year.
The Goal Trip Planner
Pick a real redemption you want. The workbook calculates how many points you need, looks at your balances, shows the gap, and tells you exactly which transferable programs can close it. The difference between "I have a lot of points" and "I'm 65,000 Chase points away from the trip I actually want."
Plus three more tabs
Cents-per-point valuations for 21 programs. A 5/24 calculator. A full instructions tab if you want the walkthrough.
How to Get It
Drop your email in the box below. The tracker lands in your inbox in under a minute. It's a Google Sheet, so it works on any device — phone, laptop, iPad. You can also download it as an Excel file if that's your preference.
About ten minutes to set up the first time. Two minutes a month after that.
Get the Spend & Points Tracker.
A free command center for your points balances, sign-up bonuses, card ROI, and dream redemptions — built by the author of The Window Seat Life.
No spam. Unsubscribe any time.
The Bottom Line
Points and miles is a game you can play in your head — for a while. Once it grows, you need a real tool.
This is mine. It's yours now too.
