About
Behind the atelier
Points Atelier is a guide to the points, miles and travel rewards most people earn and never use. It is written by Hina Sherwani and Aashir Jalil.
Who we are
Hina Sherwani
Favorite program
Hyatt
An economist who loves a five-star hotel but not its five-star price.
Favorite city · Medellín, Colombia
Favorite redemption
Two nights at Thompson Central Park, on Hyatt points
Booked for Ludovico Einaudi at Carnegie Hall, a two-minute walk away. A favorite since childhood, finally heard live, on dates that would have cost close to $2,000 in cash.
Aashir Jalil
Favorite program
Alaska Airlines
A software engineer who believes luxury is better when booked on points.
Favorite city · Budapest, Hungary
Favorite redemption
150,000 Bilt points became 300,000 Japan Airlines miles
Moved on Bilt's Rent Day, March 1, 2026, when transfers to Japan Airlines carried a 100% bonus. The miles paid for several round-trip Japan Airlines business class tickets.
How it started
Neither of us grew up with American credit cards.
We are both first gens: raised abroad, and building a life in the US from the ground up. Both of us started in the same place: no credit history, and a system nobody explains. How a credit score is built. Why one card earns three points on dining and another earns one. What a point is actually worth, and where it should go.
Working it out took years. Somewhere along the way it stopped being homework and became a habit, then something closer to an obsession. Points have since paid for trips across five continents, including two weeks in Japan this fall, and there is plenty more already on the calendar.
Points Atelier is the guide we wish we'd had at the start: what each card is really worth, how to build up to the good ones, and how to turn a balance into a trip.
Where points have taken us
Thirty-two countries on five continents.
Counted across the two of us, from the very first redemption to the latest.
- Visited on points
- Next, October 2026
If you hold a premium card or two, you probably have a balance sitting in an account somewhere: Amex points, Chase points, airline miles, hotel points. You know they're worth something. You don't have the evenings to work out what. That's who we write for.
What we do
We take one question at a time and answer it properly. Which card is worth its fee. How to turn 100,000 points into a business-class seat rather than a gift card. When a transfer bonus is worth acting on, and when it isn't. Which hotels are a genuinely good use of points, and which only look like one.
Every piece ends with The Atelier Take: our plain verdict on what we'd do.
How we work
Points programs change constantly, and much of what's written about them is out of date or quietly wrong. So we work from the source. We check numbers against the airline, hotel or card issuer's own pages, and when something is only reported so far, we say so. You can read exactly how in How We Verify.
We earn money from some of the cards we write about. That never decides what we recommend, and we say so wherever it applies. Our Affiliate Disclosure and Editorial Policy explain how that works.
What we don't do
We don't promise free travel. We don't count our referral bonuses as "free points for you." We don't recommend a card because it pays us well. And we don't publish a number we haven't checked.
Get in touch
Questions, corrections and partnership inquiries: hello@pointsatelier.com.