Yes, I tack the wire at each pad. If the solder sticks to the pointy thing that would keep the pointy thing attached to the circuit board. We wouldn't want half a dozen dental picks hanging off the back of the circuit board!

 

You can use 1 mm steel wire for terminals solders almost as fast as copper wire.

 

I use the Ernie method, too, except I have a roll of enameled 30 ga. wire that I strip with my pocket knife. It's good for 100 ma according to the last look-up I did...probably 25 years ago. My standard advice is: Soldering is like painting, it's 90% preparation. If you do your prep work right, the solder will literally jump into place. This applies to everything from SMT devices to pipes on a water heater where solder will climb straight up to get into a joint (capillary attraction).

ps, it's good to have a pointy thing to stick in the holes when you have to do a 90 degree turn. It makes the job nice and neat. The pointy thing must be unsolderable, like a stainless steel dental pick, but a jewelers screwdriver will work, too.

On some occasions I've used press in and solder test point pins for routing bundles of wire around stripboard, but they tend to be a bit short for larger bundles.

For larger wire-wrap boards, some suppliers carry castellated plastic strip, they have pegs moulded on the underside so they press fit into a row of spare holes.

You can cut the strips to whatever length you want to guide wires around.