2022 – Newby to Expert Traveler

Year End Review 2022

Posted on January 7, 2024 by David Cox

2022 was the year that we got into travel hacking. It was out of a bit of desperation that we started looking into it as a way to reduce the expense of a trip I promised to take Emma on when she graduated from high school. The power of travel credit cards turned out to be much greater that I had anticipated when I started and now it’s become a way of life for us. We love to travel and if we spend less on each trip, then we can do it more often.

We didn’t take any trips using points and miles in 2022, it was mostly just a year of accumulating points and then booking the flights and hotels that we would be using in 2023. As you can see in the chart below, most of year was accumulating points and the dips were when we redeemed those points and miles for hotels or flights.

SignUp Bonuses – The Main Fuel of Travel Hacking

Nothing manages to pile up more points in this hobby than signup bonuses. It’s the fuel that makes travel hacking work. It’s also, essentially gambling with the credit card companies. The credit card companies are gambling that they can get you to sign up for their card, and you will begin to pay them interest and you are gambling that you won’t. It’s really a gamble on your self-control. They want you to pay them exorbitant interest rates and you want their points and miles. It’s very important that you have self-control because you need to win this gamble every time otherwise you won’t be saving any money with points and miles, you’ll be paying ridiculous amounts of fees and interest to the credit card companies.

Now this is going to sound ridiculous, but it’s really not – We signed up for 8 credit cards in 2022. Each of them had minimum spend requirements to reach the bonus. They were:

Citi Premier Card (Me)- $4,000 spend in 3 months, 80,000 Citi Thank You Points
United Explorer Card (Me) – $3,000 spend in 3 months, 60,000 United Miles
United Explorer Card (Jenn) – $3,000 spend in 3 months, 60,000 United Miles
United Explorer Business (Jenn’s Business) – $5,000 spend in 3 months, 75,000 United Miles
Marriott Bonvoy Boundless (Jenn) – $5,000 spend in 3 months, 5 – 50,000 point free night certificates
Marriott Bonvoy Boundless (Me) – $1,000 spend in 3 months, 3 – 35,000 point free night certificates
World of Hyatt (Me) – $3,000 spend in 3 months, 30,000 World of Hyatt points
Ink Unlimited (Jenn’s Business) – $7,500 spend in 3 months, 90,000 Chase Ultimate Reward Points (earned in 2023)

So we earned 7 signup bonuses in 2022, and that accounted for 660,000 of the 839,000 points and miles we earned for the year. There were also a total of 70,000 points and miles we earned from referral bonuses to each other. So 87% of the points and miles we earned in 2022 were because of signup bonuses in one way or another. That’s why they are important.

Complete Chart of Spending for the Year

Credit Card	Annual Fees	Spending	Pts Earned	Value of Points Earned	Return on Spending
Citi Premier	$95	$18,204	110,468	$1,878	10.32
United Explorer 1	$0 ($95 waived)	$7,585	107,776	$1,401	18.47
United Explorer 2	$0 ($95 waived)	$6,425	66,890	$870	13.54
United Business	$0 ($99 waived)	$6,768	82,954	$1,078	15.93
Marriott Bonvoy Boundless 1	$95	$7,906	309,620	$2,477	31.33
Marriott Bonvoy Boundless 2	$95	$1,569	108,341	$867	55.26
World of Hyatt	$95	$6,305	42,378	$720	11.42
Ink Unlimited	$0	$7,907	10,581	$217	2.74%
Totals	$380	$62,671	839,008	$9,291	14.83%

As you can see from the above chart, we spent over $62,000 in 2022 on credit cards, which just seems ridiculous, but we charge everything we can, which is pretty much anything besides house and car payments. Virtually everything is payable by credit card now including all utilities, streaming services, cell phone plans and insurance, in addition to the normal things like gas, groceries, dining and shopping. And when you total everything up and realize that you are getting almost a 15% return on all spending, it’s really hard not to want to process all payments through a credit card.

What did these points buy?

Credit Card	Pts Earned	Pts Used	TPG Value of Used Pts	Act Value of Used Pts	Exp Pt Value (Act Pt Value)
Citi Thank You Points	110,486	90,000	$1,530	$1,440	1.7 cpp (1.6 cpp)
United Miles	257,620	221,600	$2,881	$5,110	1.3 cpp (2.3 cpp)
Marriott Bonvoy	417,961	369,000	$2,952	$1,680	.8 cpp (.45 cpp)
World of Hyatt	42,378	41,000	$697	$763	1.7 cpp (1.9 cpp)
Totals	839,008	721,600	$8,060	$8,993	1.1 cpp (1.2 cpp)

TPG means “The Points Guy” and the values in that column is based on published valuations on the Points Guy website. “CPP” stands for cents per point.

So obviously, just collecting points does you no good. You have to spend those points wisely if you want to make the most of the spending that you have. In 2022, we had a very specific goal in mind and we burned our points as fast as we earned them. We were planning and booking a trip to Europe for the summer of 2023. It had been a promise that we made to Emma a few years back that we would let her pick a trip when she graduated and that bill was coming due. It’s primarily how I got into this hobby, because I was staring at a more that $10,000 upcoming bill I didn’t really want to pay. Jenn and I also celebrated our 25th Anniversary on a trip to Cabo San Lucas so all of that was booked using these points. Here’s what we redeemed points on:

2 Round Trip tickets from Chicago to San Jose del Cabo – 40,000 Citi points (transferred to Turkish to book United) – saved around $800
2 Nights at All-Inclusive Hyatt Ziva Los Cabos – 43,000 Hyatt Points (had to buy 2,000 points) – saved $763
4 One-way tickets to Zurich on United – 132,000 miles – saved around $2,300
4 One-way tickets from Rome to Stockholm – 50,000 Citi points (transferred to Avianca LifeMiles to book SAS) – saved around $630.
4 One-way tickets from Stockholm to Chicago – 89,600 United miles, saved around $2,800
2 Nights in Zurich Marriott, 2 – 50,000 point Marriott Certificates used, saved around $900
3 Nights, 2 Rooms in AC Stockholm Hotel near Stockholm, 3 – 50,000 point certificates and 3 – 35,000 point certificates used, $780 saved

All in all, the total saved on those two trips by using points was a little less than $9,000 which was a little better than the slightly more than $8,000 that those points were “worth”. Obviously the “savings” is debatable because there are so many ways to book, that it is nearly impossible to say that flight would have cost this or that hotel would have cost that. I’m doing my best to be honest with these numbers, but they aren’t exactly gospel.

Booking with Points Changes Travel Style

When you begin to book vacations with points instead of money, your travel style changes a little. Had we booked the trip to Europe with money I think our vacation would have been considerably different than what it ended up being.

One Way is OK

The thing that I think changes the most when you are traveling on points is that one way flights are perfectly fine when paying with points. I find it completely inexplicable that airlines charge almost the same amount for a one-way flight as they do for a round trip flight. It’s bonkers. I just looked at a February flight to Zurich on United and round trip they were charging a little less than $1,100 but one-way it was over $950.

Award flights, however, aren’t like that, they are priced individually. What this means is that there isn’t an incentive to fly back from the place you arrived, and that changes your travel itinerary. Our plan, before we got into points and miles, was that we would fly into Munich, stay for a little more than a week and fly home.

However, once we were into points and miles, there was no incentive to fly home from where we started, we simply looked for a place to arrive, a place to leave from and then connected the dots. What we ended up with was a trip that started in Zurich, then went to Munich, Venice, Rome and Stockholm before coming home. That is a much more interesting travel itinerary then just Munich and back.

Hotel Stays are a Little Different

For the most part, hotel stays for me are hotel stays. I’m not someone who needs a first class experience when I’m staying in a hotel, I just need a comfortable bed, a TV and a clean shower. I would like a decent coffee maker in the room, but that’s asking way too much of hotel chains. However, when you sign up for hotel co-branded credit cards, they like to give you free night certificates instead of points. This usually creates a situation where you try to maximize the redemption of the certificate by getting the highest priced hotel room that the certificate allows for instead of just getting the hotel room that works best for you.

We didn’t really like to play this game, and ended up using 6 certificates in Stockholm (2 rooms, 3 nights) at way less then their value simply because it was a nice hotel and they offered breakfast. We actually could have booked more expensive rooms closer to the city center because our certificates would have covered it, but Jenn loves a free breakfast. This hotel just worked better for us and on paper, it looks like a bad redemption, but it was what we wanted and what we needed.

Points just don’t feel Like Cash

When you are paying with cash, you have a tendency to horde it as much as possible. The reason is simple, the money you would spend on this vacation could be used on remodeling the house, getting a new dishwasher, buying clothes, etc. When you are paying with airline miles and hotel points, it’s pretty easy to go the extra mile knowing that’s what the points are for. It’s a lot easier to plan on a more expensive experience if you know that those miles and points can’t be used for something more practical.

5/24 and the Importance of Owning a Business

If you look at the list of 8 cards that we applied for in 2022, you will notice that 4 of them were mine, 2 were Jenn’s and 2 were for Jenn’s business. We are blessed to have a business that we can open up credit cards under, and that is because there are business credit cards and there are personal credit cards and if you don’t have a business, you don’t have access to business credit cards. Some of those cards are really good. The last card Jenn signed up for the year was Chase Ink Unlimited card which had a bonus of 90,000 ultimate reward points for $7,500 in spending in 3 months and it’s a $0 annual fee. That is a great deal, and if you don’t have a business, you are shut out.

As many people will tell you though, you can call just about any side hustle a business, even if you don’t make money. I now have a business and I have no revenue, although I plan to eventually, which makes me eligible for business cards. I just set up a checking account through my bank and picked a business name, and now I can get business credit cards. It doesn’t seem to matter that I probably won’t be earning any revenue for a while.

The other reason why business cards are important is that they don’t count against your personal 5/24 score (some do but most don’t). Chase has a rule that they don’t accept applications for new credit cards if you have opened at least 5 new personal credit card accounts in a 24 month period. This only really matters if you want Chase credit cards (and probably Capital One cards), so if you don’t care, then you are free to ignore this statistic. However, after one year, my 5/24 count is 4, and Jenn’s is 2 because she had 2 business cards and even though she had opened 4 accounts only 2 counted against her 5/24 number.

Looking Forward to 2023

2023, for us, is about finally being able to take advantage of all of these rewards that we accumulated in 2022. It’s when the fun stuff begins. Jenn and I have a trip to Mexico and we have our family trip to Europe coming in 2023. I am also looking forward to taking the knowledge that I gained in 2022 and really leveraging what I’ve learned into more points and miles and more great trips in the future. Travel hacking has really changed the way we do trips and I can’t wait to see what the future has in store.

Points Check December 2022

Posted on February 9, 2023December 28, 2025 by David Cox

Shortly after Jenn signed up for the Chase Ink Unlimited card, they changed their sign up bonus. It had been $750 back after spending $7,500 within 3 months. The new offer was $900 after spending $6,000 in the first 3 months. The first reaction I had was “You gotta be kidding me! We missed it by a couple weeks!” Then I heard from a number of bloggers and podcasts that Chase was basically letting everyone level up their bonus if they just asked. So we just sent them an email asking for them to give us the new deal. The response was that if we met the original requirement, $7,500 spending in 3 months, then they would up the bonus to $900. It wasn’t as good as the $6,000 spend requirement, but I’ll take it. Chase, in my opinion, was very generous in giving their customers something that they had no obligation to do. It was a very classy move, in my opinion.

Why does Chase Sapphire Preferred hate me?

We had been talking about trying to bulk up our cash so that we could lessen cost of our spending in Europe. Our strategy was that since I was already at 4/24 and I would only be allowed one more Chase card anyway, that I would get one more Chase card and then start getting cash back cards. So I applied for the Chase card that I wanted more than any Chase card – The Chase Sapphire Preferred. I was denied. It was actually the second time I was denied for that card. The first time, they sent me an invitation with an elevated signup bonus and then proceeded to deny me. Chase Sapphire Preferred, you are a tease. It’s the only card I’ve been denied for, and I’ve been denied twice. My suspicion about why I’ve been denied twice is that I hadn’t waited long enough between new credit cards, but, it’s hard to know.

Anyway, on to the point check!

I spent $200 on my Citi Premier card and received around 300 Citi points. I was still getting 10x on gas on my United Explorer card so I was using that more. I spent $700 on that card and received 3,400 miles. Jenn was using just her Ink Unlimited card and spent $4,200 and received around 6,300 points.

We finished the month with 20,500 Citi points, 36,000 United miles, 49,000 Marriott Bonvoy points, 1,400 Hyatt points and 10,600 Ultimate Reward points.

Points Check November 2022

Posted on February 8, 2023December 28, 2025 by David Cox

After we finished all of the travel plans and bookings for Europe, we no longer had a clear goal to work toward. We did, however, learn that because we had points in very specific programs, it made it difficult to get the best value for our points. Points and miles are really just weird currency. Their value can vary wildly from day to day and points are generally only good for one thing. Some points have transfer partners, others have alliances where you can book a flight on a partner airline with another airline’s miles. The best kind of points though are transferable points. There are a few, but the big transferable points are Chase Ultimate Reward points, Citi Thank You points, Capital One miles, and American Express Membership Reward points. Each one of these have their own set of hotels and airlines with which to transfer points and miles.

My belief is that these points should be used to round up other programs when redeeming. For example, if I had 25,000 United miles and needed another 5,000 miles to book a flight, I could transfer 5,000 Ultimate Rewards points to United to book the flight. There are a ton of different combinations and transfer rates between programs, and occasionally there are even transfer bonuses. The subject of how best to acquire and use transferable points could fill a book. However, the general theme is that transferable points are good and you should have some.

Let’s get some transferable points!

We decided that Jenn should pick up the Chase Business Unlimited Ink card. It was offering $750 cash back when you spent $7,500 in 3 months. It’s a pretty a pretty basic card, unlimited 1.5x on everything, no annual fee.

I thought you said you wanted transferable currency? What’s with the cash back card?

The Ink Unlimited is strictly a cash back card, but they give you the cash in Ultimate Reward points. If you only have this card then you can only redeem it for cash, but if you pair it with a Chase Sapphire or a Ink Business Preferred card then you can move your points to one of those other accounts and transfer them to hotel and airline partners. We didn’t have one of those cards yet, but I knew we would soon.

Anyway, on to the point check!

I spent around $500 on my Citi Premier card and received around 600 points. My United Explorer card offered me 10x points from October to December at gas stations, so that suddenly started to get more use. I spent $1,000 on my United card and received 3,200 points. Jenn spent $2,900 on her Chase Unlimited Ink and received 4,300 Chase Ultimate Reward points. She also spent around $300 on her Marriott Bonvoy Boundless card and received about 800 Marriott Bonvoy points.

We finished the month with 20,200 Citi points, 31,000 United miles, 48,800 Marriott Bonvoy points, 1,000 Hyatt points, and 4,300 Chase Ultimate Reward points.

Points Check October 2022

Posted on February 7, 2023December 28, 2025 by David Cox

We finally booked our trip to Europe! I’ll go into greater detail about how we booked this in a different post, but Jenn booked 2 tickets from Chicago to Zurich from her personal account and 2 from her business account. All were 33,000 points and around $26 each. I also transferred 50,000 Citi points to Avianca Lifemiles to book 4 flights from Rome to Stockholm for 12,500 points each and around $55. The return trip used 22,500 points and $62 each for 4 flights from Stockholm to Chicago. We used 2 50,000 point certificates and 16,000 points to book 2 nights in Zurich, Switzerland at the Marriott Zurich. We also used my 3 35,000 point certificates and 3 of Jenn’s 50,000 point certificates to book 2 rooms for 3 nights at the AC Hotel by Marriott Stockholm Ulriksdal.

Booking all of those hotels, vacation rentals and flights was a bit of an exhausting marathon session and we were thrilled to have it all booked and ready to go. It was hard to believe that we had really accomplished what we had set out to do and make a trip to Europe affordable. At the same time, when we were done, I looked at Jenn and said “Wow, I can’t believe we just did that. You know, the sad thing is, we could’ve done so much better.” She looked back at me and said “I know, that’s crazy right?”

We had just pulled off booking all of the airfare and accommodations for 2 weeks to Zurich, Munich, Venice, Rome and Stockholm for 4 people for less than $2,000 and we knew that we could’ve done better.

Anyway, on to the point check!

I spent almost $2,400 on my Citi premier card and earned around 4,600 points. I spent $1,600 on my Chase Marriott Bonvoy Boundless card and received 3,300 points and 3 35,000 point certificates. I spent around $800 on my Chase United Explorer card and earned 2,600 United miles. Jenn spend $1,900 on her Marriott card and received 4,500 points. Jenn spent about $100 on her Chase United business card and earned a little less than 200 points.

This utterly decimated our points total and we finished the month with around 15,000 Citi points, 25,000 United miles 41,000 Marriott points and 1,000 Hyatt points

What we did right

We did what we had set out to do, we dramatically reduced the price of a European vacation by taking advantage of points and miles. In addition, we actually made the trip more interesting, because the original idea was just to visit Munich and then maybe take a day trip to Innsbruck, but because of the way points and miles work, we expanded our thoughts a little and instead we now plan to see Brussels, Zurich, Munich, Bolzano, Venice, Rome and Stockholm in one trip. The economics of points and miles actually in many cases makes your trips better than trying to be frugal with cash, again something to be discussed in a future post.

What we did wrong

You definitely need to be cognizant of European rules on occupancy in hotels. Because most hotels have a 3 person limit, you might need to get 2 hotel rooms for a family of 4 in most European hotels. Luckily, the Zurich Marriott had rooms that accommodated 4 people, but the hotel in Stockholm did not. That meant we had to burn through more certificates than we wanted to. Also, we weren’t taking full advantage of the certificates. I think the rooms in Stockholm were only around 21,000 points per night each, but they did have free breakfast which is what Jenn was looking for. This is probably making a lot of people’s eyes twitch since we didn’t take full advantage of the certificates, but it was what we needed at the time, and those certificates do have a one year expiration.

Points Check September 2022

Posted on February 7, 2023December 28, 2025 by David Cox

In September, Jenn referred me to the Marriott Bonvoy Boundless card, and there was something odd about the offer that was sent me. If I applied for the card without a referral, I would have gotten 3 50,000 point certificates after spending $3,000, because that was the standard advertised deal at the time so that’s the deal I was expecting to get when she referred me. Instead, what I was offered was 3 35,000 point certificates after spending $1,000. Lower spend, lower reward, but Jenn would get a 40,000 point bonus. We talked about it for a while and determined that we could get a vacation rental from Marriott Homes and Villas for less than 35,000 points per night (obviously now we know you can’t book those on certificates). We went ahead and took the referral offer, because the extra 40,000 points were very nice to have.

We also pulled the trigger on the Hyatt Ziva Los Cabos. I had left a 2 day window open on our trip to Los Cabos. It really shouldn’t have made me nervous, but it did. Every day I was worrying that we wouldn’t be able to book it when I finally had the points in hand. But, I got my bonus and was excited to book it. I logged on, put the two days in my cart and went to check out and it told me that I didn’t have enough points. As it turns out, Friday was 20,000 points and Saturday was 23,000 points. I expected them to both be 20,000 points, so I didn’t quite earn enough points. I briefly considered waiting another month, spending the necessary $1,000 on my World of Hyatt card to get the necessary 2,000 points. Forget it, just buy the points and book the room. It cost me $48 to buy the 2,000 points, I was okay with that even though it pained me a little to buy points.

On to the point check!

I spent around $600 on my Chase World of Hyatt card and earned about 600 points. I spent around $2,200 on my Citi Premier card and earned 2,600 points. Jenn spent $3,500 on her Marriott Bonvoy Boundless card and earned 8,600 points for that. She referred me to the Marriott Bonvoy Boundless card and received an additional 40,000 points and she got her 5 50,000 point certificate bonus. I redeemed 43,000 Hyatt points for 2 nights at the all-inclusive Hyatt Ziva Los Cabos but I was a little short so I had to buy 2000 points for $48.

At the end of the month we sat at 245,900 United miles, 62,300 Citi points, 53,600 Marriott Bonvoy points, 600 Hyatt points, and 5 50,000 point Marriott certificates.

At this point, it did start to feel a little wild, this seemed like a lot to pick up in 10 months. People who have been doing this for a while know this is fairly normal, but we were new at this and it seemed crazy.

Points Check August 2022

Posted on February 7, 2023December 28, 2025 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 February 7, 2023December 28, 2025 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 February 7, 2023December 28, 2025 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 February 1, 2023December 28, 2025 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 January 30, 2023December 28, 2025 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.