Whew, what a hell of a month! It feels like we were absolutely raking in points. The total value of our points rose by around $3,400. We actually accumulated 3 bonuses this month. Jenn finally finished off her spending on her Chase Ink Cash Card and received her 90,000 Ultimate Rewards point bonus and I finished off my Bank of the West cash back card for a $200 cash bonus. We also pulled off a rare wham-bam-thank-you-Capital-One by having Jenn sign up for the Capital One Venture Card to pay our taxes, and earned a 75,000 point bonus by paying for our taxes, the credit card fees and the Turbotax software.
A Couple of Travel Redemptions
I did have a couple of small redemptions for our trip to Europe. The only thing missing from our travel itinerary was train tickets from Venice to Rome. I was able to book those through Italotreno and wipe those charges out with the cash back from my Bank of the West bonus. I also used cash back to book a ghost tour in Venice, which sounds fun. We’ve done a couple in New Orleans and they always turn out to be a fun combination of history and spooky stories and as a bonus, they freak my daughter out. With just a couple months before our trip to Europe, I’m really trying to pre-book some tours before we leave so that we have some structure built into the trip. I’m a little afraid that with us visiting 6 cities in 14 days that we could easily become overwhelmed if we don’t have that structure pre-built into the trip. We normally don’t travel like this so being prepared is a little foreign to me. We also booked a Vacasa in Nashville for the fall by buying and using Wyndham points which turned out to be an insanely good deal.
Capital One Venture Card
The Capital One Venture Card is a great all around travel card. It comes with a $95 annual fee and has some of the same benefits that a lot of $100-ish travel cards come with such as TSA precheck credit, travel insurance, and no foreign transaction fees. It also does have a couple of one-time lounge passes that you might be able to use. However, in my opinion, the best thing about this card is that it allows you to earn a decent amount of points very simply. It’s 2x everything. That’s it, 2x on everything. In addition, the Points Guy values these points at 1.85 cents per piece (only if you transfer the points, of course) which means that you’re really getting a return of 3.7% on everything you buy with this card. They have 18 transfer partners which allow you to really get the most of these points. In our case, I was really looking to boost our ability to get Turkish Miles and Smiles points because they have a ridiculous deal where you can book United Airlines Saver fares for 15,000 miles round trip for all US domestic flights and 20,000 miles to fly round trip to Mexico. There are a crazy number of ways to get great value for Turkish Miles as God Save the Points describes.
Honestly, if I knew someone who wanted to get into miles and points but didn’t want to sign up for credit cards all the time, I would tell that person to just get the Capital One Venture Card and learn how to book flights using Turkish Miles and Smiles. I mean, every $7,500 spent on the card is equal to a domestic round trip ticket, every $10,000 spent is a round trip ticket to Mexico. It honestly doesn’t get much easier in the miles and points world than that. That being said, booking flights with Turkish is a pain, but it’s worth it.
Anyway, On to the Points Check!
Jenn spent over $300 on her Chase Ink Unlimited and earned 500 Ultimate Reward Points. She also spent $3,100 on her Chase Ink Cash card and earned 5,100 points plus the 90,000 point sign up bonus. I spent $1,100 on my US Bank Altitude Connect card and earned $27 in cash back. Jenn spent $1,400 on her Wyndham Business Earner Card and earned 2,000 points. I also spent a little less than $300 on my Citi Premier Card and earned over 500 Citi Thank You Points. We also paid our taxes with Jenn’s new Capital One Venture Card and with all of the fees it was around $4,200 and with the points earned and the 75,000 point bonus we earned a total of 83,300 Venture Miles. In addition to all of that I spent a little over $200 on my Bank of the West Cash Back Card earning over $2 and the $200 bonus which I quickly redeemed on train tickets in Italy and a ghost tour in Venice.
All of this left us with a total of 24,500 Citi Thank You Points, 40,700 United Miles, 51,300 Marriott Bonvoy Points, 1,600 Hyatt Points, 300 Delta Miles, 272,200 Ultimate Reward Points, and 83,300 Capital One Venture Miles as well as around $40 in Cash Back. Using The Points Guy’s points valuations, these points are worth just shy of $8,400 which is much higher than our previous high of $5,100 just before we redeemed a bunch of miles to book our trip to Europe.
Newby to Expert Traveler 