My best advice that saved me $80,000+ in travel, find the right seat on your next flight and how great value out of the Chase Travel Portal

Insider Letter #032

👋 Hey friends,

A quick update.

I published my first Substack post on 9th February 2025.

Little did I know 9 months later I would publish 78 posts and interact with 450+ subscribers. Just want to say a big thank you to each and every one of you for showing up, whether it’s reading, commenting or resharing my notes and posts.

It means a lot to me!

You’ve helped me understand more about what you enjoy and what content you find helpful to your travel, photography and points & miles journey.

From this month, the Insider Letter will move from a weekly to fortnightly cadence.

And thanks to all your reader feedback, I plan to spend more time sharing more personal travel stories, travel guides, reviews, points & miles strategies and photography how-to’s

(If you haven’t shared your feedback, I’d love to hear from you—it’ll only take 2 minutes)

Now, onto this week’s letter…

✈️ Travel, Points and Photography

💰 I recently shared my best travel and money tips with Matt Schulz, that helped me save $80,000+ in travel using rewards points and miles to see the world.

✈️ SeatGuru has shut down, so is there an alternative? Finding the right seat to book, especially when flying in premiumis one of the best ways to truly enjoy the premium experience. SeatGuru was the OG tool for breaking down every airplane’s seat map. Alas it’s officially shut down. But there is an alternative that works brilliantly and totally free.

💳 The Chase Sapphire Preferred card is one of my favourite travel cards. With the recent changes to the value you get from booking via the Chase Travel portal, try these points boost strategies to get the best value out of your points.

📸 Use these simple Adobe Lightroom tips and tricks to speed up your photo editing Workflow—especially when you have thousands of travel photos to edit like me. I use many of this tricks personally for my travel photos.

🤳 Smartphones these days double as very advanced cameras—right in your pocket. Listen to how this famous pro photographer uses his phone camera to capture beautiful travel photos.

In case you missed it 👇

Visiting the Houston Museum of Natural Science, Texas

I Visited the Plaza Premium Arrivals Lounge at Sydney Airport After an Early Morning Flight—Here’s My Honest Take

A travel accessory that solves 5 travel problems, Google Flights just got a powerful AI update and pitfalls to avoid when booking award travel

💡 This Week In Notes

These 7 tips to improve travel photos taken on your phone created a lot of buzz—have you tried them?

Your credit cards, points, and miles. All in one place.

If you’re a frequent flyer or are just getting into the points and miles game so you can travel for cheap, keeping track of your points and miles can feel overwhelming.

I’ve been using Notion to easily organise everything related to points and miles. So, if you’re looking a simple and flexible system to do just that, join the waitlist to be the first to know when my Points Hub PRO in Notion becomes available.

👀 Substack Finds

• If you missed Season 2 of Mixtape Travels by my one of my favourite travel writers & podcasters, Shannon from The Gomes Guide, you gotta check it out. And if you’re interested in travel recommendations in and around Australia, listen to my chat with Shannon, I dropped a bunch of gems!

• Fear of flying is real! But commercial flying is one of the safest ways to get from point A to B because of how highly skilled pilots are. Hear what pilot Nick from Lessons From The Flight Deck 💺 has to say about what happens when the cockpit explodes.

• What if the season you travel in matters just as much as where you go? There’s actually a science-backed reason why we gravitate towards certain times of travel as the weather changes. Katie Blake, PhD behind Psychologie takes 9 minutes break it down for you.

📚 Travel Reading

The God of the Woods by Liz Moore is a compelling “who dunnit” thriller mystery.

Lots of character perspectives and time jumps between past and present, to solve the mystery of two missing children. Moore did a great job slowly peeling back the motivations of each character to help us understand their actions and inactions.

The vivid description of the lush and green Adirondack area also made me feel like visiting such a beautiful area to hike and explore!

This book will make all the airport transit time and long flight times feel like it flew by.

💬 Final Words

Creating memorable experiences is a smart use of your time and money.

I’m on a mission to help you create memorable travel experiences, capture personal documentary-style travel photos and get the most out of your points & miles so you can see the world more often (and in comfort!)

Got a question? Send me an email or a direct message, I’d love to hear from you!

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If you enjoyed this, comment, restack or share it with one person—that’s the best compliment I could receive from you.

Your friend,

Janice

I'm a Travel Writer, Points & miles optimiser, Photographer and Notion Consultant. To get in touch, email hello@travellinglens.co.

p.s. Want to an easy & organised way to plan your next trip? Get my free Travel Hub trip planning system in Notion.