44. What’s Coming in 2024 on the Point Me To First Class Podcast

Welcome to Point Me to First Class, the only show for employed professionals, entrepreneurs, and business owners who are looking to optimize their higher-than-average expenses to travel the world. I'm your host, Devon Gimbel, and I believe that your expenses are your greatest untapped asset if you know how to leverage them. Ready to dive into the world of credit card points and miles so you can travel more, travel better, and travel often? Let's get started.

Happy new year everyone, and welcome back to the podcast. I have just returned from what I hope was an incredible 10 days in St. Kitts enjoying one of my favorite properties, the Park Hyatt St. Kitts. I say I hope because I haven't actually gone on his trip at the time that I'm recording this podcast, but I will have just returned from it when this episode airs on January 1. 

Now I'm going to assume that it was a wonderful vacation unless my children were being especially childreny and managed to destroy it.  I plan to do a dedicated podcast episode with a detailed trip review of our time in St. Kitts soon, but that's not what I've planned for today's episode. 

I'm actually not going to do a deep dive into any particular points travel topic today because instead, I want to do a short and sweet episode on what you can expect from the Point Me to First Class podcast in the upcoming year. It's actually hard for me to believe that this little podcast was only born about nine months ago, and hasn't even hit its first birthday yet. But we have covered a lot of ground in that time. 

When I look forward to 2024, I have big plans for where this podcast is going. When it comes to points travel, obviously two huge areas of importance are earning points and then using those points. So many episodes this year will continue to dive into focus topics in those areas, including reviewing the major points currencies and loyalty programs and their special sweet spots for award travel.

Individual credit card highlights so that you can pick the cards that are going to be the most rewarding for you and your travel goals, and more detailed trip reports of specific airline products, hotel stays, and points destinations that you can use for travel inspiration or just plain entertainment. 

While I do a fair amount of traveling, and I'm excited to start sharing more about my own points travel adventures with you all, I also don't travel all the time, nor does my travel necessarily reflect the travel that you might want to do with points. 

So I'm definitely going to be inviting even more guests on the podcast to share their unique travel experiences and travel tips so that whether you travel solo, travel with a partner, travel with a family, want the inside scoop on booking the most aspirational high end points travel opportunities, or prefer to maximize your points value by stretching your points booking more economical points travel, you're going to hear from a diverse range of guests and experiences.

Rewards credit cards and points are obviously about travel, but I think they're also part of a bigger conversation about money and wealth, especially as money and wealth relates specifically to women.

So one thing I am particularly interested in and excited about is having more podcast episodes this year exploring that intersection between points travel and financial responsibility and wealth building for women and bringing some guests on the podcast to help explore and challenge some traditional and, I think, outdated lessons that women are taught about money in general and how that impacts the way that we use credit cards and make decisions around spending money and how we travel. 

Finally, this doesn't have to do with the podcast specifically, but if you're a listener here, I consider you part of my points community. One thing I would love to do in 2024 are in person meetups to be able to meet some of you in person and share points travel stories and tips and just be able to enjoy each other's company in real life. I already have a few ideas of what an in person meetup could look like. Once I have more details on that, you'll be sure to hear more about it on the podcast. 

Ultimately, this podcast exists to help educate and entertain you when it comes to points travel. So now I have a request to make of you. If there are particular topics that you especially want to hear covered on the podcast, if you have an interesting points travel story to tell and would love to be interviewed as a guest for the podcast. Or if the idea of Point Me to First Class in person meetup sounds great to you and you want to propose a fantastic location to hold one, I would love to hear from you. 

You can email me anytime at [email protected] to share your ideas or comments about the podcast or just introduce yourself and say hi. I honestly would love to hear from all of you. So that's it for today everybody. Like I said, this episode is short and sweet because it's the new year and next week we are going to be diving in, and I mean diving in deep, to a two part podcast series with my friend Kelly, The Points and Miles Doc.

Where we're going to be doing a comprehensive look back at 2023 and give you an inside look into how many points we both earned last year, how we earned those points, and what exactly we booked with our points, including how much money we saved on our travel and how you can do the same thing in the upcoming year. So happy new year everybody. Thank you for being a listener and a fan of the podcast. I can't wait to see what 2024 brings for all of us in the points travel world. See you again back here next week.

Thank you for joining me for this week's episode of Point Me to First Class. If you want more tips on turning your expenses into travel, visit pointmetofirstclass.com to learn more. See you next week.