Does anyone know if aligned incentives is still in business/functioning well?

Thank you for being such a great resource! You are my go to for all points and miles questions so here goes. I am taking a tour next year to Australia/New Zealand with Gate One Travel that requires that we use their airfare. I don’t know why I agreed to this but I did. I know we will be flying Air New Zealand. Is there a way I can transfer Ultimate Rewards points to either Air New Zealand or a Star Alliance partner to upgrade our seats. I
also have Capital One and Bilt points and am willing to open an Amex if I can make this happen. Thank again for your wealth of knowledge!

This might be a niche thing that everyone else is aware of but I wasn’t. The Uber benefit with my American Express gold and platinum card usually goes towards Uber eats or something else of not much value since I only Uber occasionally or on travel.. recently my family and I were in Rome and Athens before and after a cruise and we used Uber a few times because of the crazy heat and to give the legs a rest. I felt great that I was going to be using my Uber credit and I had already made sure to lock in my Uber app that I wanted to be charged in euros so I avoided any fees. When I returned home I opened up the Uber app and noticed that my credit remained. After chatting with the customer service rep asking why it wasn’t applied it turns out it was not applied for two reasons that I was not aware of.

Reason one: The American Express credit is only available to be used on domestic US Uber trips and we were obviously in Europe

Reason two: The Uber credit was in dollars and since I had made sure to be billed in euros it would not have applied.

Unfortunately I did take one final ride share trip home from the airport at Washington Dulles, but it was a Lyft since I thought I had used my Uber credit and lift offered me a 10% off notification when I arrived.

I love your content, thank you for all you do, but there is a huge question that I am extremely curious about.

You often say how you accrued millions of points, more than you can spend. For a “normal” person, even opening 8+ cards a year, getting to this level of miles accrual sounds so difficult, so I wonder where the gap is.

I would be curious to know these two things:

1) How many of your millions of miles come from sign up bonuses vs spending (rough percentage)?

2) What are your main sources of credit card spend? Is it your business expenses, reimbursement through work, genuine organic spending as part of your lifestyle, or other methods?

I started playing the game, open 3-5 cards a year, have about $50k of credit card spending a year (I put everything on my card, including rent!), but it’s highly discouraging, I cannot imagine reaching a balance that will allow this kind of “careless” flexibility.

Thanks!