Takeoff: A Points and Miles Podcast · Wednesday, August 26, 2026
Podcast hosts and contributors discuss the limitations of using spreadsheets to track points and miles, noting that they often become outdated or unmanageable as redemption methods and personal tracking needs change. The constant need to refactor or add columns makes them inefficient for long-term use.
“I was definitely in the the spreadsheet camp for a while. But I was constantly finding that like, I would have one spreadsheet that would work perfectly for one trip that I took and then I'd redeem points a different way or like use a different type of free night certification or something and then it would just like blow a hole in my spreadsheet and I'd be like, okay, well now I have all these random notes in this right hand column and it's really hard to go back and reference.”
“Once you do this long enough, unless you are really dedicated to that spreadsheet, what ends up happening is not that the spreadsheet is bad, it really only holds still if your behavior holds still. And the moment that you need to add new columns and it doesn't necessarily work with what you had had before, uh, you know, we've all been there, it's, oh, I'd kind of need to rework this, refactor this, readd to this.”
“And inevitably it just starts becoming comments and notes left all over the page to kind of make up for those times when it just fell apart.”