En route to Mexico City (photo: Dave Lee)
The travel geek’s Holy Grail has arrived in the form of a simple yet robust travel rewards tracking program.
Award Wallet is the latest travel tool that deserves a spot in your bookmarks and iPhone.
Everyone has a credit card, airline, rental car, hotel, and numerous off the wall rewards programs, some you probably forgot about.
Award Wallet can centralize all of those rewards into one easy to access summary.
Award Wallet is not for the traditional American vacationer.
If you take a single one week vacation per year and never think about leaving the country, stop reading here.
If you’ve heard of the term “travel hacking” and have too many reward programs to keep track of, this is just the tool you need.
Did you forget you had 23,000 OnePass miles and that you only needed 2,000 more for a free flight?
With Award Wallet, you will instantly know how much you have and where all of your miles, points, dividends, and credits are at.
It takes 10 minutes to plug in all of your rewards accounts and Award Wallet will instantly track, update, and alert you of your rewards.
Price: FREE!!! Okay, the membership site offers two subscription levels depending on how intensely you want to track your rewards.
The free version is very robust and will take care of tracking all the rewards programs you can possibly imagine.
The premium version costs $5 and includes additional tracking information and most importantly an unlimited number of expiration notices (the free account only has 3).
Why Award Wallet is Awesome
Central database – Award Wallet creates a one-stop-shop for you to view all of your rewards programs, see which ones have changed, and add new programs.
Click-through – It took me by surprise but it was amazing when I clicked the name of a reward program in my account and it automatically took me to the program’s website, logged me in, and opened it in a new page.
Free – Aside from the extreme amount of convenience the site provides, being free is the best aspect of the service. Yes, there is a premium version but the free version provides a tone of features that will keep any travel hacker happy.
Simple – There really isn’t much to the site. You log in, add your membership programs, and view them from one simple screen. You can add a profile photo and participate in the forums if you like, but the simplicity of the site makes it easy to get in, check your balances, and get out. The iPhone app is even easier to use.
iPhone app – Although the web site is cool and easy to use, the iPhone app is my first choice for checking my reward balances. The app is free and automatically updates all of your accounts when you start it up.
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This story was brought to you in partnership with Award Wallet. The author's words are his own.
Hansen Hunt is an avid traveler passionate about sustainable tourism. After studying and travelling through Europe and backpacking through Mexico, Hansen started his personal travel blog at Unomos.com to share his adventures and travel tips. Currently, he quit his desk job and is working on publishing his first sustainable travel guide that will help people support the local culture and environment of a destination. You can connect with Hansen through Twitter and Facebook.
Planning a trip? Go Backpacking recommends:
- G Adventures for small group tours.
- Hostelworld for booking hostels.
