The unconventional story of how I got into points starts with my parents

We've been writing Points Well Made for over a year now and I haven't really told you much about myself. Perhaps it's time to fix that with explaining how I found myself in the points world, and how that led to us starting Points Well Made.

There's a standard points-blog origin story. City job, corporate travel, expensive American Express. Mine doesn't really go like that. I don't work in London, and I don't travel for work. Also, my first American Express was a free one.

So if you've been reading along and wondering who's actually behind this site, here's the honest answer.

It starts with this guy.

Hopefully I won't come to regret putting up this photo on the internet...

That's me, somewhere around age 10. Odd place to start, I know.

To explain where any of this came from, it begins with my parents. But don’t worry, this story doesn’t start with me attending some fancy prep school with my parents handing out Amex’s like sweets.

Just like your parents, they both worked full-time, raising me and my two sisters, doing the most they could to give us the best lives possible. Doing overtime, night shifts, moving shifts around to facilitate childcare, essentially, whatever they could do to grease the wheels of family life.

But there was one thing they did that I've come to realise wasn't typical.

Every week they’d do the food shop at Tesco, nothing strange there right? But they were less concerned with the food, more focused on collecting every single Clubcard point going. If something was on a points offer, it went in the trolley. We had bananas we didn't need, more cans of tuna than a cat could eat (not that we had one), and as soon as pizzas were on a points offer, you guessed it, we were having pizza. Fuel, all bought at Tesco. My parents were doing points before "doing points" was really a thing.

Then once a year, they'd cash the whole lot in for vouchers and we'd use their entire year's worth of saving for a two week summer holiday to France.

Most years it was a Keycamp, Eurocamp, or Siblu campsite somewhere on the western coast of France. Name a town between Brest and Biarritz and I've probably been there.

This was the only sunny day we had over two weeks spent near Bayonne

To some of you, that may not sound like much. But through their saving of Clubcard points, my parents were able to effectively "spend" an extra grand or two a year, just through the savvy use of points.

That's my unconventional route in. These points weren't a side-effect of business travel or a corporate Amex. They were collected, deliberately, to give your run of the mill middle class family the best summer they could afford.

The slow start

In 2018 I signed up for the free British Airways American Express, which was about as far as I dared go at the time. I wasn't earning much at the time, so no annual fee appealed to me. I took it out with the standard sign-up bonus of 5,000 Avios, because I didn't know that it could be boosted.

I hadn't had a credit card before this so this was me dipping my toe into the water. With the lingering stench from the 2008 financial crash, "credit" was still a bit of a dirty word. To some, a card with 30% APR was akin to the devil!

It then took me four years to do anything with it, not because I just sat on that card doing nothing - but because that's how long it takes just slowly putting your weekly spend through one card, and I knew that a long haul business class trip was the aim. Hell, it took me about two years to learn that you could earn Avios through normal online spending through the Avios website. I came to rue all the points lost in car insurance renewals.

In 2022, we redeemed for our first proper trip. California in Club World, in the Club Suite, using a Companion Voucher (as the free card still had a full strength Companion Voucher). I remember sitting in the North Galleries lounge in T5 before the flight thinking "this actually worked", half expecting a tap on the shoulder telling us we'd been downgraded. We sat there with our glass of Champagne, thinking how lucky we were getting to do this, and also wondering "if we can do it, why isn't everyone doing this".

Yes, I am on Flightradar

We were hooked. We caught a glimpse of this fantastic hack to a better life that seemingly blew straight past most people, and like any good drug, we wanted more of it.

Once back, we pushed to earn even more by learning everything we could. We of course made plenty of mistakes along the way, but ultimately we earned as many points as possible.

What's happened since

For us, once we'd done that first redemption, the whole thing just clicked.

Our travel life is, frankly, mad, and none of it would have been possible without points. We've since flown to New Zealand in business, Singapore in First, but it's not always about the turning left on a plane. We've used points to save thousands of pounds on hotels, book economy tickets for next to nothing when cash fares are sky high, and we've even booked box seats at the O2 later this month.

That's the bit I want to be honest about. We're not insiders. We're not flying around on someone else's expense account and writing about it. Every redemption on this site is one we worked out for ourselves on cards we apply for just like every one of you. That may change over time as hopefully this little project becomes more successful, but it all started from humble origins.

Coming full circle

A couple of years ago I sat my parents down and walked them through Virgin Atlantic Flying Club. We created their account together. Signed up for the Virgin Reward+ card. Converted their Clubcard points to Virgin Points. Showed them how the Virgin reward voucher works, and so on.

Well, they've now been to the Maldives twice using their Virgin Points, even managing a trip in Upper Class - although mum's seat wouldn't go flat, and then the screen decided to fall apart, maybe the less said about that the better...

Gaffer tape never looked so good!

Regardless of the broken seat, holidaying in the Maldives on points is certainly not a bad way to enjoy your retirement.

Only after teaching my parents how to use Virgin Points, did I realise how I came to have this silly little hobby. They taught me, as a kid, that points could buy you a holiday you couldn't otherwise have. A decade or so later, I'm now teaching them the same thing, just with a slightly different currency.

We're even now.

Why this site exists

That's it. That's why Points Well Made isn't corporate, and never will be. We are here for people just like you.

We're trying to show you how a normal person, on a normal budget, can use points to live a life that feels a lot bigger than the one your salary thinks you can afford.

It doesn't matter how much you earn, but what you do with your everyday spend is the difference between a nice holiday that you pay for in cash, or an unexpectedly incredible adventure which has been partially paid for in points thanks to all your spending you did on boring, mundane things such as petrol, the food shop or the kids school uniform.

My parents worked that out with their Clubcard. We're just doing a slightly more elaborate version of the same trick.

Sam

Points Well Made is a passion project from Sam and Helena. If you've enjoyed this and want to help us keep the lights on, please consider buying us a Ko-fi or subscribing monthly. You can also find us on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok for more of the same. Thanks for reading.