About Us

How we became lazy point nerds

For years, my fiancée Shawn and I mostly thoughtlessly used whatever cards we had in our wallets. When we went to Europe together for the first time, though, Shawn had to pay for everything, since my only card had foreign transaction fees. After returning to the US, I decided to get a suitable travel card, and landed on the American Express Gold Card, mostly because we were living in downtown DC and ordering a lot of takeout, so the $240 in dining credits easily offset the annual fee. With the sign up bonus and the rewards from the card, we were able to book several thousand dollars worth of flights, but I still didn’t put any thought into optimizing my rewards. 

Once we moved to the suburbs, those credits were not as easy to use, and I started shopping around for a new card.  Amex offered me an incentive to keep the card, but the damage (i.e. research) had been done. One day I presented Shawn with my spreadsheets and a question: “Am I crazy, or was I crazy before to not take advantage of these deals?”  She might have leaned “crazy” initially, but a few months later we were getting hundreds of dollars of travel from paying our rent with our Bilt card, enjoying airport lounge food with the Venture X card, and using our IHG card for 4 nights in a hotel for a ski vacation. All for free.

In the meantime, I began pestering her with near-daily updates on new ways to get extra rewards (with a focus on laziness). Shopping portals. Dining programs. Airline partnerships. Eventually, we decided it was good material for a blog, and here we are.  The focus is going to be on simple, easy ways to turn your regular, normal-person spending into more cash back or travel. We hope you find it helpful.