It seemed that July just flew by. I started July off in Montana with old friends celebrating our friend Mat’s wedding. Then a couple of weeks later we were hooking up our camper and driving it to Hamilton, Ontario where we stayed at Fifty Point Conservation Area right on the shores of Lake Ontario. We spent a fairly relaxing week up in Ontario visiting Niagara Falls and Toronto and we got to experience Canada for the first time. I still find it hard to believe I waited until I was nearly 50 to go to a place that I could get to in just a few hours by car.
A Small Redemption
We didn’t have any signup bonuses hit this month and we didn’t sign up for any new credit cards, but we did have one small redemption. For our November trip to Italy, our flights leave from O’hare Airport in Chicago, just about a 3 hour drive from our home in Iowa. We would rather fly out of the Moline airport, if possible, because of convenience and especially parking.
We were able to find flights that we could tack onto our trip on both ends from Moline to Chicago and back. Both legs were 7,500 American Airlines miles and $5.60 for taxes per ticket. So for a total of 30,000 AA miles and $22.20 we can have the convenience of flying out of our local airport, where the walk from the parking lot and TSA line is less than 10 minutes, total.
My First Airport Scramble
I knew this would eventually happen to me. I was sitting in the Kalispell Airport in Montana waiting on my flight and then I started to get a series of messages from American Airlines. There was a mechanical problem on the plane and they kept changing the takeoff time. At first, my flight had been delayed by an hour, then two, then three, and finally a little over four hours and now my comfortable 4 hour layover in Chicago was gone. If I kept that flight, I was going to be sleeping in Chicago instead of my bed.
Well what can I do? I knew the only other option to fly home would be United Airlines, so I opened my laptop, searched on United’s website and found a flight leaving in about an hour for 29,000 United miles. I didn’t have 29,000 United miles, nor did I have 29,000 Chase Ultimate Reward points, which transfers to United. Jenn, however, did have the Ultimate Reward points, and we have each other’s passwords.
Luckily, we had set up miles pooling on United the previous month, so Jenn could move those points into the pool and I could use them to book the flight home. So I moved her Ultimate Reward points through her United account into the pool and booked the flight. Then I walked over to the American Airlines counter to cancel my flight, and they just showed me how to do it on the app.
I did have to text Jenn and let her know that I had used her points to get me home, but lucky for me she actually wanted to see me so she was okay with it. It was great to know that in a pinch I could make a little magic happen and avoid a huge travel delay that would’ve kept me in an airport hotel in Chicago overnight.
After the cancelation, American Airlines didn’t return my points automatically, as they should have. I did have to make a phone call to have them return my AA miles. That was annoying, and I’m guessing not typically what happens when you cancel a flight, but the phone rep was very helpful and didn’t question anything. That was a good reminder to me to pay attention to my accounts to make sure that I’m not getting screwed out of any miles.
On to the Point Check!
We basically spent all of our spending other than recurring payments, gas, and Costco purchases toward minimum spends for bonuses. The Venture card gets used for car insurance and Costco, the Ink Cash card gets used for our bills for cell phone, internet and streaming services. The Wyndham Business Earner card is for gas stations and utilities. Most of these payments have been set based on bonus categories on those cards, and I have to say, getting a 6.9% return on all of that spending is pretty nice.
| Card Used | Spend | Points Earned | Point Value | Points Per $ | Return on Spend |
| Venture | $541 | 1,083 | $20.04 | 2.0 | 3.7% |
| Ink Cash | $535 | 2,651 | $54.35 | 5.0 | 10.2% |
| Wyndham Business Earner | $525 | 3,322 | $36.54 | 6.3 | 7.0% |
| Total | $1,601 | 7,056 | $110.92 | 4.4 | 6.9% |
Outside of that, Jenn spent a little less than $2,200 on her Capital One Spark Select Card earning around $33 in cash back. She also spent about $1,600 on her American Express Gold Business Card, which earned a little less than 6,900 Membership Reward points, some of that was earned at 14x on dining from a referral bonus. I spent around $1,700 on my American Express Blue Business Plus card which earned me around 3,400 Membership Reward points.
Since there were no signup bonuses or referral bonuses to hit this month, we ended up with a total of 287,000 Membership Reward Points, 207,000 Ultimate Reward points, 82,300 Capital One Venture miles, 64,500 American Airlines miles, 39,400 Citi Thank You points, 36,300 Wyndham points, 34,800 Marriott Bonvoy points, 5,100 Delta miles, 2,300 Hyatt points and over $800 in cash back. Using the Points Guy’s valuations, the value of all of the points, miles and cash back is a little over $14,850.
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