Many people dream of flying around the world, but Doug Maier (’21) is making it happen — and fast.

He and Dixie Finley Maier (’20), who married in June, will have traveled to 10 countries on five continents in three years after their next trip, to Japan, by turning their credit-card points into business-class and first-class plane tickets. In fact, Maier has become so masterful at leveraging credit-card rewards that The Points Guy website published a feature about his travel success.

Maier, a finance major, got his start collecting points to pay for travel even before he graduated. He discovered that he could pay for nontuition-related college costs with a credit card, paying them off through external scholarships and financial aid. That helped him pay for travel and flights home. (Maier’s sister, McKenzie Maier, graduated in 2023. The siblings’ father grew up in Greensboro, North Carolina, is also named Doug and graduated from Wake Forest in 1989, as did his brother, Jack Maier ’84, P ’17 .)

Kelly Greene (’91), managing editor of Wake Forest Magazine, talked with Maier, a private equity associate in Austin, Texas, and before that an investment banking analyst for two years with Goldman Sachs in New York, about his points-fueled strategy and adventures. Here are excerpts from the conversation, edited for length and clarity.

Kelly Greene: How did you amass enough points for all this travel?

Doug Maier: As a college kid I thought, “I need to figure out how to see the world, but I don’t have any money.” When you get external scholarships that help cover room and board and fees, you can pay with a credit card, and they’ll charge you a 1-2% fee. Once I figured out the math, that flying business-class to Japan would cost $12,000 a ticket, I was like, “Of course I’m going to pay those expenses with a credit card.”

Doug Maier as a Wake Forest President’s Aide in 2019. Photo by Ken Bennett

I also noticed that I could get points for referrals, and it was amazing to me how many of my friends at Wake didn’t have a credit card when they started college. I probably get between five to 10 referrals a year. I have more than a handful of credit cards, but if you do it correctly, your credit score will not suffer at all. You’ve just got to pay them off right away.

KG: How did you figure out how to get the most out of those points?

DM: I basically figured out how to leverage points to see things and memorized the award charts of good transfer partners. A lot of people will redeem points in their credit card portal, and it’s just a 1-cent-for-1-cent conversion. For example, they log onto the American Express portal, and it’s like, “Here’s the trip.” You either pay with points or pay with cash, but it’s only one version.

My senior year, after I had obtained my return offer (to Goldman Sachs) for after graduation, my schedule freed up. I got a job at Chick-fil-A and really dove into the points — I was determined to see the world. I figured out there are really two steps. The first step is, you can transfer the points out of the credit card portal. After that (the question is) what airline to transfer to? If you want to book on Delta, for example, you should look at all their code-share partners first and compare how many points it is on the code-share partner to book that same seat.

Over time, I accumulated this massive amount of information in my head on what partner and how to book and where, and then you can take it a step further: Some airlines use a “fixed-base” chart. On Air Canada, for example, if you fly from anywhere in the U.S. to anywhere in Europe (two different zones) with “saver award” availability, it’s something like 60,000 to 70,000 Air Canada miles. Other airlines do mileage-based and demand-based, so the pricing changes or is nowhere near as good a redemption. If you want to get the most bang for your buck, you should just stick with fixed-zone-based airlines.

You start learning who is zone-based and who’s not. So, it’s another step. It’s getting out of the (credit-card or airline) portal, figuring out the alliance structure and then further optimizing. It’s not only that I want to use my points, but I want to get the highest yield for my points. Over time, it’s become my hobby, and I love doing it.

KG: So what was your first big trip? How did you make it happen?

DM: We went to Switzerland and London in 2022. But we flew to Milan, because that was the flight where I could use points. And then we took a train into the Alps, and we stayed on the same train down to Zurich and flew from there back to London. We did Switzerland to go skydiving, because that was the first thing I wanted to do — jump out of an airplane. It sounds crazy, but it was an amazing experience. Dixie was like, “If we are doing this, we are going to do it once, and it’s going to be in the Lauterbrunnen Valley in the Swiss Alps.” And then we flew up to London, partly because we wanted to go see a Premier League game, and partly because there was also points availability to get back to the U.S. — Heathrow to JFK. What I remember is walking in the streets of London, and you go to a pub before the game, and everybody’s rowdy. It was pretty fun.

KG: And then you sprung the next trip on Dixie as a surprise?

DM: Yes, it was the week before Christmas in 2022, and we were eating with Dixie’s family in New York. And I told them that the next day (Dixie and I) were going to Brazil to hang out with her college best friend for Dixie’s birthday. I had messaged one of her friends from work to ask her boss if Dixie could have the next week off. I had booked the trip that day and gotten her engagement ring FedExed from North Carolina, and we got on the plane the next day. I found that Air Canada had a flight from Toronto to Sao Paulo, and the same flight continued to Buenos Aires. So, we did two nights in Sao Paulo with her friend, which was awesome. I had told her we were going early to celebrate her birthday, because it’s in January. But then we went on to Buenos Aires, and I surprised her with the whole proposal. We flew back, now engaged. It was fantastic.

KG: Tell us about the vacation you took in the middle of your move from New York to Austin, Texas?

DM: After moving, it would have made sense to rest. But then I found this flight from Houston where we could use points to take a flight straight to New Zealand. The movers picked up our stuff in New York, and the same night we’d leave Newark and drive straight to Texas. Then we hung out in New Zealand for a couple of weeks, and Australia for a week, then came back. Our stuff showed up in the moving truck the day we got back. It was a very, very long day.

(Maier confessed that he almost had to pay for their plane tickets home but was able to find points availability on a Hawaiian Airlines plane back from Sydney via Honolulu.)

KG: Do you have more fun figuring out the travel plans or actually traveling?

DM: Dixie would say that I have way more fun planning. We’ll have friends over, and I get so hyped up talking about the flights, because some of these flights are so hard to find. Japan Airlines has a brand-new plane and they only released two seats on each flight between Dallas and Japan. It’s super hard to get them, because there are crazy people like me in the world that will do this. Finding the flight is probably 70% or 80% of the thrill. I really, really enjoy seeing things and experiencing the world, but getting there in business class for free doesn’t suck.

KG: How many credit cards do you have again?

DM: I have four primary ones. To get the most points out of them, you need a card for food, you need a card for travel, so for flights and hotels. Then you get a card for all the everyday spending. And then I also have a fourth card that gives one times points on rent.

When I was first learning, I put a sticky note on the back of a credit card that would say: “This card is four times points on groceries, excluding Target and Costco, and four times on restaurants.” In Texas, we won’t go to Whole Foods with that card, because it doesn’t count as a grocery store. You have to know the rules.

KG: Tell us about your upcoming trip to Japan.

DM: On Saturday mornings, sometimes I’ll just go randomly search where I can go in the world. I knew that in Japan, early April is cherry blossom season, and ski season goes through the end of March. So you’ve got to book 362 days in advance on some airlines and 358 on another one. So at midnight in Japan, which is 10 a.m. in Austin, you get on the phone with the partner airline and ask if the seats are available. I got the two seats, but then to get home, you have to call back 10 days later and hope that somebody didn’t get them before you do.

Then I started looking for hotels, and in Kyoto and Osaka it could be $3,000 a night for a very nice hotel. But if you book with points, the Park Hyatt Kyoto is 45,000 Amex points. On a one-to-one basis, that’s $450.

KG: Let’s do a lightning round. Your favorite meal on the road?

DM: In Italy, on our honeymoon, we did a cooking class on this estate in Tuscany, and then we went to Bologna and went to the market and did a cooking class with some local people. When we came back to Austin, we made pasta using their recipe. That was sweet.

 KG: The place you tell everyone they have to go?

DM: In New Zealand, there’s a place called Lake Hawea Station. It’s like a little farm in the middle of nowhere in New Zealand on the south island, and it is just a slice of heaven and super cheap. It’s amazing. You have to go there.

 KG: Do you carry on or check bags?

DM: I will never check a bag. We had our wedding in Bermuda, and we flew straight from Bermuda to Italy. That was three weeks, and we didn’t check a bag. (They did send a bag back from Bermuda with her dress and his tux.)

 KG: Parting advice?

DM: You have to be flexible and open-minded. Let the points tell you where to go. Your dates have to be flexible, or your routing has to be flexible. And you have to book stuff far in advance if you want to get the best things. If I have to work a couple days during a trip, it’s worth it to me to force myself to travel and see the world.

A lot of people have a lot of points sitting there, and they’re waiting for the perfect redemption, but at the end of the day you’ve just got to get up and go.

KG: Thank you so much for sharing your strategies, Doug. Safe travels!