Good afternoon everyone, and Happy Cinco de Mayo to all who celebrate! Back on May 1, 2013, Travel with Grant was born. I can’t believe it has already been 13 years. Where did the time go?!

This past year has been full of life-changing events, especially with the birth of my daughter, Madison, in August 2025. She is already 9 months old now. She hasn’t been on an airplane yet, but we have taken a few road trips up to Sacramento and down to Monterey and Carmel. She even enjoyed her very first hotel stay at the InterContinental The Clement Monterey on Cannery Row, just steps away from the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

Madison with her Sea Otter from the Monterey Bay Aquarium.
P.S. We found her missing sock too!

One thing I really appreciated about the aquarium was its in-and-out access throughout the day. It made it easy for us to head back to the hotel to change and feed Madison, then return later in the afternoon once the crowds had thinned out a bit. Laura also used her $300 hotel credit from the Citi Strata Elite Credit Card to cover about half the cost of the stay (plus free breakfast for both mornings). We also have a few road trips planned this summer, including Lake Tahoe and Southern California to visit family.

Becoming parents has definitely changed the way we travel this year. Instead of flights and international trips, we have been focusing more on road trips, hotel stays, and flexible travel closer to home. I’ve also really enjoyed spending parental leave with Madison, especially our daily walks around the neighborhood and trips to local grocery stores.

Between Laura and myself, we have a healthy stash of hotel free night certificates, along with various hotel and travel credits from our credit cards. Since we are not flying much this year, we’ve had to get a little creative with our redemptions. We have been using some of our certificates and credits for family members who need hotel stays near SFO or are visiting us and other relatives in the Bay Area.

On one hand, we could close several credit cards that we are not fully utilizing right now. On the other hand, some of these cards may be difficult or impossible to get again in the future. In the short term, we may not be extracting maximum value from every annual fee, but once we start traveling more again, I am confident we will be able to take full advantage of these benefits.

As for credit cards, we have not applied for any new credit cards since December 2025. I have really been enjoying using my Bilt Palladium Credit Card and redeeming Bilt Cash toward mortgage and HOA expenses, along with redeeming Bilt Cash for the 3x accelerators. I’m hoping Bilt continues expanding its redemption options in the future.

On the bank account bonus side, I am almost finished with the $750 Marcus savings account bonus and should receive the bonus later this month. There are also quite a few interesting business checking account and business savings account bonuses available right now, so I plan to take a closer look over the next few weeks.

When I started this blog 13 years ago, I never imagined it would still be around all these years later. I still remember the excitement of publishing a new blog post and receiving a handful of comments or hat tips from fellow bloggers in the BoardingArea community and across the travel blogosphere.

I also look back fondly on the days of Bluebird, Redbird, and Vanilla Reload Cards (RIP, old friends!). Nowadays, I mostly focus on gift card reselling with Aligned Incentives and the occasional Mint coin deal with PFS Buyers Club. Since we have not traveled much over the past year, our miles and points balances have quietly continued to grow, and I’m hopeful we will be able to put them to good use on a fun trip in the near future.

I truly appreciate all of my readers, especially the long-time readers who continue to subscribe, read, and comment on my posts after all these years. Once we begin traveling more again as a family and diving back into new credit card applications, I’ll have plenty of new content to share here on the blog. Until then, I’m still keeping up with the latest miles and points news and listening to all the great travel podcasts out there (shout out to my two favorites: Frequent Miler On The Air and All The Hacks with Chris Hutchins).

Thanks again for reading, commenting, and following along over the years. Here’s to another great year of Travel with Grant!