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August 28, 2026 | View Online
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Do you hear that rumbling in the distance?
It’s the muffled thud of a thousand-strong army of Ugg boots, plaid scarves, and yoga pants descending upon their nearest Starbucks, heeding the annual call as fall creeps upon the rabid masses.
P-S-L, P-S-L, P-S-L
They are coming.
And if you’re one of them, I’ll show you the best ways to earn as you blow your money on rubbish coffee.
Let’s get to the points:
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Reader Audits
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PSL-evate your spending
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Beat me at my own game
Cheers,
Steven
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| STRATEGY
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Make Your Coffee Work For You
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I was having a little laugh at the expense of the Pumpkin Spice Latte crowd, but it does lead me to an important aspect of earning points – the little purchases.
Now, you can argue Starbucks is overpriced sugar water and technically not a little purchase anymore, but it’s still an immensely frequent stop-off for millions of Americans. The average customer now spends a whopping $9.34 at Starbs, and I know some of you are heading there every damn day. To show you how big a difference this can make to your miles, I’m going to show a purchase done three different ways.
For consistency, we’ll assume the customer is spending the average figure of $9.34 four days a week.
Scenario 1: The Autopilot
If you have a card like the Capital One Venture X Rewards Card, you might just be on autopilot. It offers 2x miles per dollar on all purchases. You haven’t signed up for anything else, so by the end of the year, you’ll accrue 3,885 miles on your Starbucks spending.
Scenario 2: You Use a Strong Dining Earner
You use a little more thought and pull this card from your wallet each time. With 4x points per dollar earned at restaurants, you’ll earn a far more impressive 7,770 points — already enough for some flights to London.
It’s worth noting that Starbucks app reloads currently register as restaurant purchases with Amex, too. So if you add money to your account using the card, you should still trigger the 4x points per dollar. You’ll then earn Starbucks Stars as you spend that balance, too.
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Scenario 3: The All-Out Strategist
In this case, you do the following:
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If you’ve just opened the previous card, use it to pay directly for your Starbucks purchases while working toward the intro bonus. The current offer effectively adds another 12.5 points per dollar to every qualifying purchase if you complete the full requirement. Add the regular 4x restaurant earning and, for those first six months, your coffees are effectively earning 16.5 points per dollar. At our spending rate, that’s around 16,000 points from Starbucks alone during that period.
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Once you’ve hit the intro bonus, you can get even nerdier. Reload your Starbucks account in $50 chunks using the same card. Each reload should earn 200 Membership Rewards points, while Starbucks also gives you 25 bonus Stars for digitally loading $50 or more. You’ll then earn your normal Stars as you actually spend the balance.
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Once a month, cheat on Starbucks with the monthly credit on the card at another competitor.
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Link your Delta and Starbucks accounts, and you’ll earn one SkyMiles per dollar on qualifying Starbucks purchases. At this spending level, that’s almost another 2,000 miles over the course of a year. You need to have flown Delta at least once in the past year to qualify, though.
I’m using Starbucks as an example, but the point is that these little everyday purchases are the things that add up across the year. If you take a minute to build the strategy, you’ll reap the benefits. Take a long, hard look at your habits and see where you can tighten things up.
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| LEARN THE LANGUAGE
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Your Points Get You There, But Babbel Makes It Worth It.
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You know how to travel smarter than anyone. But speaking even a little of the local language is the move most travelers never make.
Right now Babbel's Labor Day Sale gets you Lifetime access to all 14 languages for just $199.
This is their best price of the year, and once it's gone, it's gone.
Get lifetime access for $199.
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| GAMES
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Can You Beat Me
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I have a mild obsession with this geography-based game called MapTap. I’ve created a group so you can join in and try to beat me on the daily games. It only accepts twenty, so if enough of you join, I’ll make a new one. Just send an aggressive email.
Sign up to try and beat me here
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| READER AUDITS
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Always Double-Check Your Transfer Bonuses
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I’m still working back through your questions, so if you’re still waiting for an answer, I’m sorry! I promise it’s coming. For today, though, I’m going to do a quick audit of a reader’s recent redemptions.
Matthew, a teacher from New York, was asking about a potential redemption for the start of August. Here’s what he sent — cut down slightly.
Hey Steven, I'm a bit nervous as this is my first time reaching out, but I've been following your newsletter for a bit now. I just booked my first trip using points a few days ago, and I wanted you to tell me how I did with navigating everything. I'm a teacher, so I usually have the summer off. I am doing summer school (July 6 - July 31) this year. Staff at my school usually start to come back around mid-August to get ready for the year and everything, so I had a pretty tight window. I wanted to visit the UK, so I looked for flights for around July 31 to August 9ish.
He told me he has the following:
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130,000 Capital One Venture Miles — earned with this card
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150,000 future points from this card — once he hits the $6,000 spending threshold (that bonus has changed now)
He then said he booked the following:
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JFK to London in economy with Virgin Atlantic on July 31st — 12,000 points + $161.50
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London to JFK in Premium Economy with Virgin Atlantic - 16,500 points and $620.53
*As for hotels, I'm still having trouble navigating that, so I just opted for the cheapest thing I could find, which was a hostel (Pub Love), but it looks cool. I'm still young and spry (24), so I don't mind too much. Let me know how I did and if I missed anything!
I will, Matthew. First, thanks for reading, and I’m sorry I didn’t get your email! Please try again so I can chat to you about all this in more depth. Second, you’ve done a pretty solid job straight off the bat.
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Flight 1
With the first flight, obviously the date has passed, so we can’t see how much flights cost at that time. But based on a few checks, that could cost anywhere between $450 and $700 for a reasonable flight including checked luggage. At the low end, you’re getting around 2.4 cents per point and saving $288.50, while at the higher end, you’re getting 4.5 cents per point and saving $538.50 out of pocket. That’s bloody great.
Flight 1 Grade: A++
Flight 2
Your return leg is a little more complicated. On paper, you’ve done well. Virgin regularly charges up to $1935 for a premium economy ticket on this route, so even with $620.53 in fees, you’re still scoring around 8 cents per point and saving $1,314.47. That’s amazing.
The only issue here is with real value and subjective value. If you would never have paid $1935 for a premium economy seat in cash, it’s not a true saving. It’s up to you to decide if the experience was worth that over another economy redemption.
But you said something that worried me:
*The fee for the return flight was pretty high, but I paid for it instead of doing an alternative flight for more points and to get closer to that threshold for that bonus.
This is a big red flag. If the only reason you opted for the more expensive flight was to get closer to your intro bonus spending goal, you’ve just lost value across the board.
Think about it like this:
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Your bonus is 150,000 points (around $3,000 in value)
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You spend $620.53 instead of the $161.50 that you could have spent
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That’s $459.03 of value you’ve technically lost on your bonus — about 15.3%
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Sure, you used your card and got 4x points per dollar on that extra spend (about 1,836 points), but that’s only worth about $37 at best
In this case, I’d have stuck with the economy flight.
Flight 2 Grade: B-
Hotels
As for your hotel choice, hostels are a brilliant way to save, and if you’re down for that, save your points. If you had wanted to, you could have used All Accor to grab six nights at a hotel like the ibis London Greenwich. All Accor points are priced at 40 euros per 2,000 points, so you could have got creative. Still, your remaining 100,000 points could get far greater value than that, so opting for the hostel is a smart call, too.
Hotel Grade: A-
Your Overall Grade: A-
Great work, Matthew. Please email again! I’d love to know how the trip went.
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