🤯 Business class to Europe for $653

Estimated read time: 5 minutes and 11 seconds

Good morning from Bulgaria, where I had a few too many Guinnesses (Guini? What’s the plural of Guinness?) last night for St. Patty’s Day.

While I nurse myself back to health, here are some really special travel tips:

• ✈️ Book cheap business-class flights with this points sale

• 💳 The simplest card setup for everyday spending

• ✨ A sparkling hydration upgrade

✈️ Book cheap business-class flights with this points sale

Buying points is usually a bad idea.

Like… genuinely. Most of the time, the math doesn’t work, and you’re better off either paying cash or transferring points from a credit card instead.

But every now and then, a sale comes along where the numbers do make sense.

Right now, Finnair is selling Avios at up to a 40% discount.

Before you go try it, though, there’s one weird rule: You need at least 50 Avios in your Finnair account for the sale to show up.

When I first checked my account, I had zero Avios. Buying 85,000 Avios would cost a whopping $1,938.

But here’s the fun part:

You can freely transfer Avios between airlines that use them, like British Airways, Iberia, Aer Lingus, and Qatar Airways.

I happen to have around 500,000 Avios due to six cancelled Qatar flights, thanks to the Iran War.

So I used the Avios transfer tool to send exactly 50 of them to British Airways, then again to Finnair.

… and suddenly the discounted pricing appeared. Boom. Now 85,000 Avios (the minimum needed to unlock the full 40% discount) cost just $1,163.

So… is this a good deal?

Well, let me illustrate the value with an example of a flight I booked literally yesterday.

I’m flying to Estonia today, where I’ll be hanging out for a few weeks.

I had a bunch of travel planned, but due to some recent personal events, I’ve decided to escape back to Asia.

So I booked this Finnair flight from Helsinki to Nagoya in early April.

It’s a brand-new route, and it cost me 62,500 Avios + $160 for nearly 13 hours in lie-flat business class.👇

Now, I didn’t buy points for this – I transferred them from Qatar as I explained earlier.

But it also got me thinking… what if you didn’t have the points?

Well, if you buy Avios at the full 40% discount, you’re paying 1.3 cents each.

To book the same flight I booked, it would cost $813 in Avios. 

Even when you add in the $160 in taxes and fees, that’s still $973 total for 13 hours in lie-flat business class.

That’s a deal I’d pay for any day. But when you compare it to the cash price of the same flight on the same day, it’s even crazier. 👇

In this case, strategically buying points would save you over $4,000.

And this isn’t just a Finnair trick.

Remember how you can transfer Avios between airlines? That means you could buy Finnair Avios, transfer them to Iberia, and book this flight from New York to Madrid using 40,500 Iberia Avios and $126 in business class.

At 1.3 cents per point, that’s $653 total (including the taxes) for a lie-flat flight across the Atlantic.

Just for fun, let me ask you:

So here’s the bottom line:

The best way to book business class is still to transfer points from a credit card.

But if you don’t have enough points, or you’re okay spending some cash to unlock a huge discount, this is one of the rare cases where buying points can actually make sense.

One last thing: Buying points doesn’t code as travel or airfare, so use a card that earns a lot of points on everyday spend.

My go-to card for buying points is always the Capital One Venture Rewards Credit Card.

💳 The simplest card setup for everyday spending

There’s a trap a lot of people fall into with credit cards.

They try to find the one perfect card to use for everything… And that’s fine, but there’s no one-size-fits-all solution.

The better move is to pair two cards that complement each other – so each handles a specific type of spending.

And one of the simplest (and most effective) setups right now is pairing the Venture card with the Capital One Savor Cash Rewards Credit Card.

How this actually works

Think of it like this:

The Savor card is what you use for your everyday spending – restaurants, groceries, going out, streaming, all the stuff you’re already spending money on.

The Venture card is your catch-all for everything else, earning 2x miles.

So instead of juggling categories or overthinking every purchase, you’re basically just using:

• The Savor card for food and fun

• The Venture card for everything else

On its own, the Savor card earns cash back.

Which is fine… but not that exciting.

The reason this setup works so well is that you can move those rewards into your Venture card as miles.

So now:

• 3% back on dining, groceries, entertainment, and streaming becomes 3x miles on the Savor card

• 2x miles on everything else

And now you’re earning more miles on basically all your spending.

Why this is so valuable

Miles are usually worth more than straight cash back when you use them well.

You can use them to:

• Cover travel purchases

• Book through Capital One Travel, or

• Transfer to airline and hotel partners for outsized value

That last option is how you unlock the kinds of redemptions we’re always talking about.

Why I like this combo

The best part about this combo is that the combined annual fee between both cards is still just $95.

This means you don’t need to worry about paying massive fees up front, juggling credits, and stressing out.

It’s also nice because you just focus on the categories where the Savor card earns more points. EVERYTHING else is just one bucket: Venture card spending.

The bottom line

Individually, both of these cards are solid.

But when you combine the two, you end up with a setup that’s simple, efficient, and rewarding.

That’s it, folks. Have a good one and see you tomorrow. 🫡

42.6977° N, 23.3219° E

With contributions by McKay Moffitt and Sam Anthony