Hi, we’re Ryan and Kate Murray — married, mildly obsessive about airline miles, and always looking for the next place to point a plane toward.
We didn’t grow up doing this. The points and miles thing started as a “wait, this could actually save us money” experiment not that long ago, and it snowballed fast. Now we’re the couple that reads bank transfer partner charts for fun, refreshes credit card forums looking for the latest sign-up bonus, and has strong opinions about which transferable points program is actually worth your time.
It’s a little ridiculous. It’s also gotten us on a lot of flights we never would have paid cash for.
From Ukraine to a Vegas Wedding
Travel isn’t just a hobby for us — it’s kind of how we ended up together in the first place. Kate moved to the United States from Ukraine when the war started, which meant rebuilding a life from zero in a new country. Not exactly a soft landing.
We handled that the way we handle most things: by booking a flight. After Kate’s first full year in the U.S., we decided — with basically no planning — to get married in Las Vegas, signing the paperwork just hours before our flight home took off. We made it to the gate with minutes to spare and a marriage certificate in a carry-on. That flight kind of set the tone for us ever since: travel is where we figure things out, celebrate, and plan whatever’s next.
Before we knew any of this points and miles stuff existed, we paid cash for trips to Dubai, Egypt, Israel, and Montenegro — and honestly, looking back, we wish someone had handed us this playbook back then.
Since then, we’ve started putting our points to work closer to home too, exploring major U.S. cities we’d never have prioritized paying full price to visit. And we’re not stopping there — we’ve already got upcoming trips booked entirely on points and miles to Hawaii, Japan, and Korea.
We’ve also gotten deep into cruising — currently working our way through different cruise lines to figure out which ones are actually worth it, and which ones oversell the “luxury” part.
What We’re Actually Here to Do
We’re not going to hand you a spreadsheet and tell you to figure it out. Points and miles can feel like a foreign language — transfer ratios, bonus categories, blackout dates — and most of the information out there is either outdated or written for people who already know what a “MSR” is.
We’d rather treat it like a game with real rules you can actually learn: how to pick your first rewards card without overcomplicating it, how to get more out of the spending you’re already doing, and how to turn all of it into a trip — or a cruise — that would’ve cost you thousands otherwise.
