Earn 7x points on everyday spending

Good morning from back in Yining, China. After four months on the road, I’m just now beginning my journey home to Indonesia (after a pit stop in Hong Kong).

But before I collapse out of exhaustion, we’ve got one last newsletter this week, so let’s get into the good stuff:

• 💳 Earn 7x bonus points on everyday spending

• 🏨 How to save money in Europe this summer

• 🍬 Sweet Spot: Fly around Europe for 4k points

💳 Earn 7x bonus points on everyday spending

This bank is back with another set of targeted spending offers on its portfolio of cards.

Every quarter, you can check your accounts on this website to see if you’ve been targeted.

Just enter your info and see what happens.

Personally, the only offer I got was on this IHG co-branded credit card (which actually has an elevated offer right now): earn 7x bonus points on grocery stores, gas stations, and restaurants – which is pretty sweet.

Obviously, IHG points aren’t super valuable. But I also love having more IHG points, so earning them on very common everyday purchases is fine by me.

Generally speaking, these offers pop up more on co-branded cards than UR point-earning cards – but check all your accounts anyway just to be safe.

It’s also worth noting that this is a total of 7x points, not an additional 7x on top of the normal earnings.

But still, you can max this out and earn 7,000 IHG points, which is enough to book a free night at a hotel in my home country of Indonesia, for example.

Not bad for doing literally nothing (except registering for the offer).

Anyway, this is yet another reason it’s good to have a card or two from this bank.

🏨 How to save money in Europe this summer

Despite being a pretty stingy human, I somehow have no problem shelling out some bucks when it comes to travel.

But there’s one part of the world that is often so unbearably expensive that I just… can’t… I can’t do it.

I’m talking about… you guessed it… Scandinavia… especially in the summer. 😬

Thankfully, Strawberry Hotels has a new offer to help us solve this problem for the 2026 summer season.

Woah, woah, woah… wait… WTF is “Strawberry Hotels?” 🤔

They used to be known as “Nordic Choice” hotels, which is essentially the same as “Choice Hotels,” but in Scandinavia.

So you’ll recognize many of Strawberry’s brands like Comfort Hotels, Quality Hotels, Clarion Hotels, and more.

Anyway, they’re offering a Summer Pass that allows you to prepay for five nights at varying levels of luxury:

• Five nights in budget hotels: €450 (76 different hotels)

• Five nights in standard hotels: €600 (139 different hotels)

Once you’ve prepaid for the pass, you can redeem those nights at over 200 different hotels around Scandinavia.

Before we go any further, I want to point out some of the fine print here:

• Not every hotel in these countries is participating. You can see the full list on this website

• The stay window is from June 18 to August 24, 2026.

• Breakfast is included with your stay (nice 😊)

• There are some blackout dates

• You do not need to book consecutive nights. You could even redeem them as one-night stays if you want!

• The nights are redeemable for two people staying in a double room

All in all, the restrictions are pretty reasonable, and the website does a great job of making the parameters clear, so I approve. 👍

And as you might imagine, booking hotels for a flat rate of €90 or €120 per night in Scandinavia could save you boatloads of cash.

For example, this hotel in Oslo costs around $907 for a five-night stay in the summer (and doesn’t even include breakfast).

Since this hotel is eligible for the €600 “standard” pass, you’d save over $200 by buying it (and get that free breakfast).

If you’re traveling with a partner, spouse, or friend, you could each buy this pass and stack up some savings.

So here’s the bottom line:

Scandinavia is a popular tourist hotspot in the summer. This hotel pass allows you to join in on the Nordic fun without breaking the bank.

🍬 Sweet Spot: Fly around Europe for 4k points

Saving money on hotels in Europe is great… but what about flights? 🤔

Flying around Europe used to be super cheap and easy, but that has changed a lot in recent years.

If you don’t want to get crammed like a sardine into a RyanAir or EasyJet flight, it can get pretty expensive.

Thankfully, there’s an easy sweet spot to help. And it comes from our friends at Virgin Atlantic.

Normally when we talk about Virgin, we talk about flying to Europe on an excellent airline, often with good award pricing and solid transfer bonuses.

But what you might not know is that you can also use Virgin Atlantic miles to book flights on KLM and Air France for as few as 4,000 miles on flights within Europe.

You’ll have to pay more in taxes and surcharges than you would for a U.S. domestic flight, but it can still be an excellent deal.

What’s better is that you can book the flight above in business class for just 8,000 miles.

What’s even better is that Virgin uses the starting and ending point of an itinerary to calculate the distance flown and, therefore, the award price.

For example, if you fly from Athens to Amsterdam on KLM, Virgin will charge 9,000 miles in economy. 👇

That’s already not a bad deal, especially considering it costs 16,500 miles when booking the same flight through KLM’s own program…

However, if you book the SAME flight on the SAME day but continue to Rome from Amsterdam, you’ll pay just 7,500 Virgin miles for BOTH flights.

Because Virgin prices the award based on starting in Athens and ending in Rome, you’ll pay fewer miles to fly further.

If you “accidentally” miss the second flight to Rome and just stay in Amsterdam, you will have saved 1,500 miles on that flight… just saying… 🤐

Another reason we love Virgin is that there are frequent transfer bonuses of 20-40% from various U.S. banks.

So, if you wait until a bonus rolls around, you could transfer some points over and be able to book tons of intra-European flights.

So here’s the bottom line:

We spend a lot of time talking about the best ways to fly to and from Europe on the cheap.

This lesser-known sweet spot is a great way to save money flying around the continent on some awesome airlines once you’re there.

As a reminder, you can transfer points to Virgin Atlantic from the following programs:

• MR points

• UR points

• Capital One miles

• ThankYou Points

• Bilt Rewards

If you want to rack up some quick points, here are a few cards that I just signed up for because of their excellent offers:

• 🏆 Capital One Venture Rewards Credit Card

• 🤯 This premium card (which is currently offering 150,000 points)

• 🍔 This all-purpose card has some tasty food credits to offset the annual fee

That’s all for this week, my friends.

Take care, have a lovely weekend, and I’ll see you again on Monday.

43.9771° N, 81.5273° E

With contributions by Sam Anthony.