Let’s get the party started – intros!

It is with immense excitement that I am kicking off this blog fresh in the Fall of 2025. There may always be too much to do and too little time to do it, but that’s no excuse not to prioritize things that bring you joy. Little brings me more joy than sharing the outrageous deals, perks, and schemes that have helped sponsor my adventures across the glove. And with that, it is my explicit goal of this blog to help inspire others to have a taste of those sweet, sweet experiences.

Let me start with some bullets to help kick us off strong.
– My name is Alex
– Happily married with an amazing wife (Kathy) and two fiendishly troublesome dogs – Oscar (Pug) & Walter (Pug/Brussles Griffon mix)
– Living in Richmond, Virginia
– Anything and everything outdoors is how I like to spend my time – from biking to hiking to surfing to snowboarding
– Scheming my way to free travel is almost as much fun as the actual travel themselves
– I have many-too-many credit cards and bank accounts, and more spreadsheets than even I care to admit is sane

I expect future posts to cover many wide ranges of deals and offers and schemes with both the many successes and the occasional failures mixed in throughout. I hope you enjoy, and perhaps find some value and/or learnings from my experiences.

Let’s kick off with a teaser with some of the fun and recent soundbites for why I think this is going to be such an enjoyable experience, for us:
– As I write this, I’m on a trip in Northern California which included a credit-card-perk companion pass (thanks Delta!), a quarterly $50 hotel credit with Hilton, and credit card Primary Rental insurance (thanks Capital One Venture X!)
– Last night I booked two round-trip tickets to France for June’26 for a whopping $72 + points, saving ~$1,100 from paid cost
– Over the past 3 years I’ve managed over $12,000 in rewards/year of sponsored travel, benefits, and straight cash (2024 was $1,532 in hotels, $5,760 in airfare, and $5,819 in cash!)

This is going to be great, and I hope you enjoy even half as much as I do.