July has been another month where we haven’t been traveling. It’s a little funny – for the last few years, we seemed to spend all of our time either traveling or planning for our next trip. We haven’t been thinking about that very much right now. I think we’re going to finish 2026 having only traveled once. In March, we did a spring break trip where we visited London, Madrid and Tenerife. Years ago, this would have seemed like a once in a lifetime trip but now its pretty normal.
This is a little boring, but its by design. We are only a year away from being empty nesters and we don’t want to miss anything with Alex’s last year in school. We also are making sure that we have enough points for us to do his graduation trip. In what is now a family tradition, we will be taking Alex on a trip to celebrate his graduation from high school, and we are in the process of negotiating locations. He originally wanted to do Finland and Iceland, and we had to tell him that those are two of the most expensive places on earth; maybe we can go to one, not both. Since then, we’ve discussed cities like Barcelona, Dubrovnik, Bari, Copenhagen, Brussels, Paris, Prague, etc. In reality, we tend to let the points determine where we go, but having a menu of cities we want to visit is always a good start.
New American Airlines Cards
There is a current offer for 80K AAdvantage miles to sign up for the American Airlines Platinum Select card issued by Citibank. This offer requires $3,500 in spending in the first 120 days of opening the card. Since this was such a good deal and we could always use more AAdvantage miles, especially while we are planning a trip to Europe next year, Jenn and I both signed up for the card.
The card only earns 1x on most purchases, but does earn 2x on gas, dining, and American Airlines purchases. It’s a little light on benefits, but it does offer free checked bags on American Airlines domestic flights (for you and 4 companions). I’m not sure why they don’t offer free checked bags on international flights – seems like a weird distinction to make. The annual fee is $99 but that is waived for the first year.
Cardholders also earn loyalty points on the American Airlines Platinum Select card. For every point earned through spending on the card, you earn a loyalty point. This does not include points earned through signup bonuses. This could be interesting to people who fly a lot of paid flights on American Airlines and use this card exclusively, since card spending could move you up in status with the airline. For us, I don’t think we could reach meaningful status by spending on the cards and paying for American Airlines flights, so it’s not something we will be pursuing.
On to the Points Check
While we both have new American Airlines cards, neither of us had managed to use them in July, so all of our spending was on cards that we’ve already earned signup bonuses. We did a pretty good job using our cards strategically finishing the month with a total return on spend of 6.7%. Currently the one irritation I have is that our son Alex keeps using the Amex Gold, that he is an authorized user on, for his Amazon habits. Seriously Dude, we don’t do 1x in this house – use the Bilt Palladium!
| Card Used | Spend | Points Earned | Point Value | Points Per $ | Return on Spend |
| Bilt Palladium | $2899 | 9,232 | $203.10 | 3.2 | 7.0% |
| Custom Cash | $602 | 2,604 | $49.48 | 4.3 | 8.2% |
| Ink Cash | $460 | 2,302 | $47.19 | 5.0 | 10.3% |
| Amex Gold | $449 | 674 | $13.48 | 1.5 | 3.0% |
| Wyndham Business Earner | $378 | 1,890 | $13.23 | 5.0 | 3.3% |
| Ink Unlimited | $77 | 116 | $2.32 | 1.5 | 3.1% |
| Blue Business Plus | $68 | 136 | $2.72 | 2.0 | 4.0% |
| Total | $4,933 | 16,954 | $331.52 | 3.4 | 6.7% |
After all of the spend on the above cards, we are left with:
- 266,900 Chase Ultimate Reward Points
- 230,700 IHG Points
- 156,600 Alaska/Hawaiian Airlines Atmos Miles
- 125,700 Wyndham Points
- 97,700 Bilt Points
- 95,700 Amex Membership Rewards Points
- 92,600 American Airlines Miles
- 81,800 Avios
- 33,700 Marriott Bonvoy Points
- 30,200 Citi Thank You Points
- 19,300 United Miles
- 1,500 Delta Miles
- 300 Hyatt Points
- $133 Cash Back
According to the Points Guy the total value of these points are just over $18,000. This should provide us with enough points to plan out at least a couple of great vacations for 2027. We do have to keep earning though. We’re going to be empty nesters soon, and I can’t wait to do some traveling outside of spring and summer school breaks!
Newby to Expert Traveler 