Author: David Cox

Points Check August 2022

Posted on by David Cox

By this time, we felt pretty confident that we had accumulated enough points to pay for the flights to Europe and now we were trying to figure out how to reduce our costs for lodging.

I’m going to say something that is going to get me scorned by the miles and points community – We are VRBO and Airbnb enthusiasts. I know that they can be inconsistent, but you get more space and the kids can get their own rooms, usually. The most important thing for us, however, has always been the kitchen. Why? Well a couple of reasons, really. First, we’re kind of cheap, and eating out for 3 meals a day can get super expensive for a family of 4, especially if it’s a family of 4 people with adult-sized appetites. Hell, if we walk into a Starbucks to get a round of coffee and scones, we’re going to drop $40. We would easily spend $200 per day on meals alone on vacation, and that’s if we were being fairly cheap. The second reason is that while we like to eat out, it doesn’t match our dietary restrictions very well. We started eating mostly vegetarian a few years ago, and what Jenn and I both noticed right away is that when we stick fairly close to a plant-based diet, we generally feel better. When we stick to that diet, typically my joint pain goes away and Jenn’s stomach issues are gone and we both feel more energized. The moment we stray away from that, the old sluggishness returns, Jenn starts complaining about stomach discomfort and my knees and back start hurting again. So the typical plan for us when we are on vacation is to buy some healthy groceries and do our best to eat a couple of fairly healthy meals at the Airbnb and then eat out for one meal each day.

Ok, but how do we get vacation rentals on points? Airbnb and VRBO have no point programs that I could figure out. There was something that I had stumbled across called Marriott Homes and Villas. They have a smaller group of properties than Airbnb and VRBO, but from their website, they looked very well curated. It looked like there were a lot of high-quality vacation rentals that were available with Marriott Bonvoy points. Awesome! Now we needed to get some points to pay for those stays.

I was still working on spending on my Chase World of Hyatt card, but Jenn could get a new card. Marriott had rolled out a great offer with Chase. They were offering 5 certificates of up to 50,000 points per night if you spent $5,000 in the first 3 months of getting the Marriott Bonvoy Boundless card. Great, that’ll take care of 5 nights in Marriott Homes and Villas in Europe. Some of you are laughing at me right not because you know my mistake – those certificates are not good at Marriott Homes and Villas. Marriott Bonvoy points are, but the certificates most definitely are not. The day that we figured that out, well, let’s just say Jenn was not happy with me.

The Chase Marriott Bonvoy Boundless card has a $95 annual fee, was offering a huge bonus of 5 50,000 point certificates on $5,000 in spending (their typical offer is 3 50,000 point certificates for $3,000 in spending). It offers 17x on spending at Marriott, 3x on first $6,000 spent on groceries, dining, and gas stations, 2x on everything else and a 35,000 point certificate every year on your account anniversary.

Anyway, on to the point check!

Our spending was quite a bit higher for this months statements because the spending from our trip to Colorado hit our cards. I spent a whopping $3800 on my Chase World of Hyatt card which resulted in me earning 7700 points on the spend and my 30,000 point bonus! I also spent $1,100 on my Citi Premier card resulting in around 1700 points. We somehow managed to spend small amounts on all 3 of our United cards totaling $400 earning us 400 points. Jenn spent $2,100 on her new Marriott Bonvoy Boundless card and earned 5000 Bonvoy points. I don’t even want to think about how much we spent on gas towing a camper at 8 miles to the gallon, over $4 a gallon and around 2,000 miles, yikes. Anyway it was a fun trip.

That left us with about 246,300 United miles, 62,300 Citi points, 41,000 Hyatt points and 5,000 Marriott Bonvoy Miles.

What we did right

There are two ways to really approach point accumulation in the miles and points hobby. The first is to grab the best possible deals when they come up and get the most points you can in a point currency that you will use in the future, even if you don’t have a current use for those points. That is probably the best long-term strategy. The second way is to look for a need and try to fill it. That’s what we were doing. Long term, I would like to be doing more of the first method, but we were trying to take care of a trip to Europe, so for us that was the correct strategy.

What we did wrong

The Marriott card Jenn applied for had a certificate bonus and not a point bonus, which meant we couldn’t use it for what we really wanted, which was a vacation rental and not hotel stays. I believe at the time we could have applied for Marriott cards that were offering point bonuses and not certificates. The bonuses were bigger with the certificates, but weren’t really what we wanted. Lesson learned, make sure you understand how you can use what they are offering you.

Points Check July 2022

Posted on by David Cox

There wasn’t much going on for us in the miles and points space during July. We did take an amazing camping trip to Chatfield State Park outside of Denver and Cheyenne Mountain State Park outside of Colorado Springs. 2 weeks of hiking, white-water rafting and breweries was just what I needed. I will talk about that in greater detail in other, non-points related, posts.

I did want to point out a couple of things if you are trying to follow along on these point checks. First, I’m rounding and so at some point the math probably won’t quite add up correctly. Secondly, spending from one month to another can be extremely variable on this. The reason is that I’m going off of the statements that end during the month that I’m posting about. Some credit cards have statements that post at the beginning of the month and some at the end, and with us constantly changing credit cards that’s going to make our spending look erratic. This month is a good example, as the total spending is only $3,100 and last month was $4,800. That is mostly a factor of me switching a lot of our spending to the Hyatt Card which has an earlier closing date.

Anyway, on the point check!

I spent almost $1,700 on my Citi card earning me almost 2,600 Citi points. I spent $1,100 on my Chase World of Hyatt Card earning 2,200 points. Jenn spent around $300 on her Chase United Business card and earned around 400 points.

That left us with about 245,900 United miles, 60,600 Citi points, and 3,300 Hyatt points

Points Check June 2022

Posted on by David Cox

When I booked our flight and Airbnb for Cabo San Lucas, I left 2 days off the calendar. We had 6 days between flights and the last 4 days were locked in at the Airbnb, but I hadn’t booked anything for the first 2 nights. My plan was to get a credit card to pay for 2 days in an all-inclusive resort. I looked around and there wasn’t much you could book on points in Cabo at the time. The only hotel I could find that had pretty consistent award availability was the Hyatt Ziva Los Cabos. That meant that I needed a Hyatt card.

I applied for the Chase World of Hyatt personal card, it was offering a 30,000 point bonus after 3,000 in spend and a total of 2x on everything until you spent $15,000 on the card for the first 6 months. The card has a $95 annual fee and earns 2x points on Gym memberships, dining out, transit and flights. It also earns 9x on Hyatt stays. You also receive a one night certificate each year for a category 1-4 hotel on your anniversary date. In other words, each year you pay $95 for a one-night certificate. That being said, I just did a random search for a Saturday night in October in Chicago and found out that a Hyatt Place that would be $460 on that night would qualify for the certificate. Not too bad, if you plan to use those certificates.

The Hyatt Ziva was typically 20,000 points per night for 2 people and so I figured I needed to spend around $5,000 on the card to get the necessary 40,000 points to book the hotel for 2 nights.

On to the point check!

I spent about $500 on the Hyatt card and earned around 1000 Hyatt points. Jenn spent around $1,600 on her United Business card and earned 1700 points, and she hit her 75,000 point bonus! I also spent $2,700 on my Citi card and earned 3500 points

That left us with around 245,300 United miles, 58,000 Citi points and 1,000 Hyatt points. I thought that the 245,300 United miles was enough to fly to and from Europe, and it is, sort of, but in our case, not so much. I’ll explain this in a later post, but I found out when I tried to book flights that you really can’t transfer points between family members, so that threw a wrench in my plans.

Points Check May 2022

Posted on by David Cox

By this time, we had been able to increase our spending on credit cards to virtually all of our spending except for our home loan and automobiles. Most utilities, insurance companies, streaming services, etc. all take credit cards as payment, and if it leads to a credit card bonus, then great! Not a whole lot interesting happened in May, no new credit cards or redemptions so there really isn’t too much to talk about.

On to the point check!

I spent around $1200 on my Citi Premier Card and earned around 2000 Citi points. I also spent around $300 on my United Explorer card and earned around 400 points. Jenn spent around $3500 on her United Business card and earned around 4400 points. Jenn also spent around $200 on her United Explorer card and earned another 200 points.

That left us with around 168,500 United miles and around 54,500 Citi miles.

Points Check April 2022

Posted on by David Cox

Jenn is a residential house cleaner and owns her own business. That’s a huge bonus when trying to accumulate points. Why? Because if you own a business, you have access to business credit cards. One problem though was that even though she had owned the business for years, she didn’t have a bank account or any credit cards assigned to the business. She applied for the United Explorer business card but was put in purgatory until she was able to open a bank account. Once that was cleared up though, she was good to go with our 3rd United Airlines credit card.

The bonus on the United Business card was 75,000 after a spend of $5,000 in 3 months. This was the highest required spend that we had dealt with up to that point, I didn’t think it would be a problem, but Jenn was a little nervous about it.

The United Business card has a $99 annual fee, waived for the first year. It earns 2x points per dollar on dining, gas stations, office supply stores and United purchases, 1x on everything else. It also gives you a free checked bag on any flight and 2 one-time United Club passes annually. Also, on renewal if you have a business card and a personal card you get 5,000 point bonus each year you hold those cards.

I was also able to refer Jenn’s business from my personal United account which earned me an additional 10,000 points.

My First Redemption!

By this time, I was starting to feel pretty confident in our abilities to get points. It was also going to be our 25 anniversary so we decided that we would do a anniversary trip. I decided that we should visit Cabo San Lucas in Mexico, and Jenn was okay with me making the travel plans, which was unexpected. The issue for going to Cabo was that I didn’t want to use United miles because we were saving them for the flight to Munich. The two main airlines that fly from Chicago to Cabo are United and American. The problem was that Citi points don’t transfer to either one of those airlines. But, you can book a United flight through the Turkish Airlines Miles and Smiles program and they are a Citi transfer partner. I will go into greater detail on this in another post, but I was able to book 2 round trip tickets to Cabo San Lucas for 40,000 points and around $225. The $225 dollars is because while you can use points to pay for the flight, you can’t use them to pay for taxes, and Mexico has some pretty expensive taxes on flights, in this case, over $100 per ticket.

Ok, on to the point check!

Since I wasn’t working on a bonus, I went back to using my Citi card for everything because it has a lot of 3x categories and it’s transferrable points. I spent just shy of $2,300 and earned around 4,200 points. Jenn was using her personal United card and spent just over $2,300. She earned around 2,500 miles. I earned 10,000 United miles on the referral. Jenn also spent $800 on her business United card and earned 900 miles.

That left us at around 163,500 United miles and after the redemption and 52,600 Citi points.

What we did right

At the time of booking the flight, a round-trip cash ticket from Chicago to San Jose Del Cabo Airport was running around $450, so if you figure that the flights would have cost $900 and the taxes were $225, then I saved $675 on the flights for 40,000 points. That gave me a redemption value of right around 1.7 cents per point, which is what most people pegged the value of Citi points at, so I was pretty satisfied with the redemption.

What we did wrong

I also put a down payment on an Airbnb in Cabo. The rate for the Airbnb was $1200 for 4 days. I don’t know if I would spend that much on that place again. It was very nice, but it was also $300 per night. Also, it sure seems like our spending was really high that month, so I have a feeling we spent a little over our budget for the month.

Points Check March 2022

Posted on by David Cox

We didn’t have any new credit card applications in March. We did, however, take a spring break trip to Biloxi, MS and spent a night in New Orleans on the way to Biloxi. Our spending was a little higher as a result of that trip. Since we were still new to points and miles, no points were used on the vacation.

On to the point check!

Jenn spent almost $2,100 on her United Explorer card, which got her to her bonus. She earned about 2300 points on that spend and the 60,000 points on the bonus. Adding that all up she had almost 64,000 points. I spent $2,400 on my United Explorer account and earned 3700 points and a 60,000 point bonus. We had spent around $8,100 to earn those points which were worth about 1.3 cents per point meaning that we had accumulated around $1,950 worth of points on $8,100 in spending for a return of around 24%. That’s a whole lot more than the 1% cash back we used to get with Discover.

We finished the month with 88,400 Citi miles and 149,700 United miles those points were valued at around $3,400.

Points Check February 2022

Posted on by David Cox

During January 2022, I did a ton of research on points and miles and I began to figure things out. First of all, I started to do all of this to save money on a trip to Europe. At the time, our plan was to fly into Munich and stay there for 10-14 days. I did a ton of research and decided that I would target United miles for the flight to Munich. They had direct flights from Chicago to Munich and while I understood that you could book flights on partner programs and get better value than by booking directly with United, I was a newby. I’m not trying to do calculus when I barely understand basic math. So we made the decision, everyone is getting United cards.

I signed up for the United Explorer Card. $95 annual fee, waived the first year. There was a 60,000 mile bonus when you spent $3,000 in the first 3 months. 2x on dining, hotels and United purchases, 1x on everything else. $100 credit for TSA precheck (this is a super common credit on credit cards that I will probably never use). They also give you 2 United Club passes annually. We recently got to use the United Club passes and now I don’t know how I’ll ever just sit in a terminal again. I’m honestly shocked by how much I care about those passes.

I also referred my wife to a United Explorer card, which meant not only did she have her own 60,000 point bonus that she was working on, but I also got a 20,000 point bonus for referring her. I know that doesn’t seem like it should work, but it does.

On to the point check!

I spent an additional $650 on my Citi Premier card to round out my required spend on that bonus. I earned the 80,000 point bonus and an additional 1100 points which put me around 87,000 points total on that card. At the time, Citi points were generally valued at 1.7 cents per point. That meant that those points were worth about $1,480, if you subtract the $95 annual fee and divide by $4,200 spent to get those points, that means I got a 33% return on my spend. That is bonkers!

I spent about $1,600 on my United Explorer card, and got a total of 1,800 miles from that spend, plus 20,000 points for referring my wife. Jenn spent $1,600 on her account and earned 1,700 points on her United account.

We finished the month with 87,000 Citi points and 23,500 United miles.

What we did right

We got into Chase credit cards. Also, we kept separate accounts, which allowed me to refer her for the referral points as well as set up multiple sign up bonuses. I also had a plan for what I was going to do with the points. I now knew that “saver” rates to Europe cost about 30,000 each way and I was going to need around 240,000 United miles to do a round-trip to Munich.

What we did wrong

We signed up for our credit cards pretty close to each other, which meant that we essentially had about 3 1/2 months to spend $6,000. We had a spring break trip in March which made the spending pretty easy to hit, though.

Points Check January 2022

Posted on by David Cox

When we got started in points and miles, I really wanted to find real world examples of people who were doing this and had done it for a while. Mostly I found a bunch of people who wanted to brag about flying first class to the Maldives. That’s cool and all, but I have a family of 4, and frankly I don’t mind flying coach. Sure, I’m 6’2″ and getting crammed into a seat with no legroom sucks, but I’m more interested in maximizing the number of vacations and the amount of time we can spend on vacation. I wanted to see how regular people were doing it, so hopefully I can provide you with that information. I’m writing this in January 2023, so we need to do a bit of a trip down memory lane, to my first points credit card statement.

In late December 2021, I applied for the Citi Premier Card which was offering an elevated 80,000 point bonus after spending $4,000 within 3 months. It comes with a $95 annual fee (I cringed at first about annual fees, but I’ve learned to accept it as a necessary entry fee into benefits that outweigh the fees). One other caveat here, I have no idea what my interest rates are on my credit cards, and don’t care, because I don’t pay interest, ever. If you are holding balances on credit cards, points and miles credit cards will kill your finances. They all have insane interest rates, and any benefits you get from the points is quickly destroyed by the interest charges. If you want to do the points and miles thing, set your autopay to full statement balance and mind your budget.

Anyway – on to the point check!

The Citi Premier card has 3x points on Restaurants, Gas Stations, Travel and Supermarkets and 1x on everything else. We used this card almost exclusively that month and spent around $3,600 and earned around 5900 points. No bonuses earned in January.

What We Did Right

Citi points are transferrable to a lot of programs and these points allowed me to makes some pretty good bookings later on.

What We Did Wrong

One thing that I was completely unaware of was the Chase 5/24 rule. I don’t want to go into it too much, but Its really important to people who are trying to maximize points and miles. It basically means that Chase will not approve you for a new credit card if you have been approved for 5 credit cards (of any kind) in the last 24 months. Chase has a huge variety of credit cards that have really nice bonuses to a variety of points and miles programs. I applied for a Citi card and that put me at 1/24, I could have gotten 5 Chase cards and applied for the Citi card afterward, not a huge deal, but also not ideal.

The real bonehead move here, though, was making my wife an authorized user. I know you’re probably thinking that I don’t trust my wife, no, that’s not it. By making her an authorized user, it also put her at 1/24. One thing that I will hit on in other posts is why you and your spouse need to have separate credit cards. The main reason though is twice the credit cards, twice the bonuses.