Baja Brewing Company – Cabo San Lucas

Posted on by David Cox

The main brewery in Cabo San Lucas is Baja Brewing Company. It was founded in 2007 in San Jose Del Cabo. In 2009, they opened a second location in Cabo San Lucas on the seventh floor of the Corazon Cabo Beach Resort, which looks like an amazing beach hotel perched above the sand at Medano Beach. Follow the signs through the hotel to find the brewery. On the seventh floor, the elevator door opens to a beautiful unobstructed view of Medano beach. There are clear views to the east and west stretching for miles along with a view of Lover’s Beach. There cannot be a better view of the area around Medano Beach than this.

Baja Brewing Company is an open air rooftop bar with a very large pergola/sunshade covering to protect from the relentless Baja sunshine. It is a fairly large bar and restaurant with about 25 to 30 tables and a large bar. There is a great view from nearly every seat. I cannot say enough about the view from this bar, it is absolutely amazing. On top of that, we were in Cabo San Lucas in January, when the high temperatures were 76 to 79 degrees every day and the breeze was fairly gentle. I cannot imagine a more ideal place than this on a winter’s evening.

I emailed Baja Brewing Company a couple of months in advance asking for a reservation along the glass. I wanted to have a sunset dinner with my lovely wife on our 25th Anniversary. I apparently am not that great at geography, because you can’t see the sunset from here, but it was beautiful nonetheless. They did not disappoint and arranged a nice table right on the glass for us.

There were 3 cruise ships anchored in the bay outside Medano Beach. From what we could gather, there are always cruise ships parked there. If you plan to come to Baja Brewing Company, I would suggest you make a reservation in advance, if you want to sit by glass. Both nights we were there, there were available seats, but all of the seats near the edges were reserved.

The beer was, and keep in mind that I’m a tremendous beer snob, pretty good. Every beer I tried, which was a red ale, a stout and an IPA, was solid. There wasn’t any beer that I tried that blew me away, but there wasn’t any beer that disappointed me either. It was good microbrewery beer.

The food we had was also okay, not great. I believe I had the Fish and Chips and Jenn had Fish Tacos, neither of us were thrilled or offended by the food, it was fine. It seemed like pretty standard bar food that you would order at a microbrewery.

That being said, it was such an amazing place that even though the beer and food were just okay, we did return a couple of days later for a couple of beers. The atmosphere is just too good to pass up. Honestly, if you like beer at all or food for that matter, you need to stop in if you are in Cabo just for the views. It’s just too good to miss.

Is this a scam?

Posted on by David Cox

When we started into the points and miles hobby, I didn’t think about whether I was scamming the credit card companies that much, but each time we opened an additional credit card account it bothered me more and more. What if they figure out what we’re doing? Will we be caught and put into some sort of credit jail and never be able to borrow anything ever again? Ok, that’s overly dramatic but I was worried that we’d get cut off, and we wouldn’t be able to do this anymore.

After spending way too much of the last year thinking about how and why the points and miles game works, I believe I have a theory, of sorts. It’s basically this – You’re not screwing the credit card companies over, they’re more than happy to do this, it’s a symbiotic relationship.

Relax, you’re not in control.

What? But I can only relax when I’m firmly in control!

Look, the credit card companies are in 100% total control of the points and miles world and you have zero control, but it’s fine. That’s why I’m convinced that I’m not scamming anyone. Every time I apply for a credit card, they pull my credit history, it’s literally right in front of them, if they wanted to stop me from doing this, they would, but they don’t. I’m not hiding anything, hell there are a ton of blogs and podcasts where they flat-out discuss all the ways they maximize the points and miles game and those people haven’t had their accounts shut down (ok, there have been a couple, but only when they’ve violated terms and conditions).

There is a huge difference between the value of points and the cost of points

Hands down, the greatest value that someone earning credit card rewards will get is in travel rewards. It’s way more valuable than cash back. But, I’d bet it’s also less expensive to give out. Look at the massive rewards companies are willing to give out for airline or hotel rewards. A quick glance at Chase’s website shows bonuses for co-branded hotel and airline cards easily worth between $600 and $1500. Cash back cards on the same site, however, are usually $200. That seems like an odd disconnect, unless you figure out that they want you to use it for travel and why they want you to use it for travel.

Law of Supply and Demand

The supply of hotel rooms and flights are completely inelastic. Flights have the same number of seats on Tuesday as they do on Saturday. It is the same with hotel rooms. There are days which are extremely popular and others that are not. For example, if you own a hotel by the beach, there is a good chance that you are going to be fully booked on a weekend in the summer. On the other hand, you might be completely empty on a Wednesday in the winter. On the flipside, if you have a hotel near a convention center, a weekday in April might be fully booked where a weekend might be mostly empty. Getting people in those empty rooms can make a huge difference in your profitability. The problem is that cutting your prices to fill rooms could be counter productive. Lets say you own a hotel that has 100 rooms. The typical going rate when you are busy is around $200 and you have no problem filling up at those prices. However, on an off-day, a $200 room charge only gets you 30% full. The typical thought would be that you need to cut your prices. The problem with that is that you might have to cut the price of the room to $100 just to get 50% full. Your revenue actually drops doing that.

What you need is a way to offload extra inventory without cutting the price for the people who are still willing to pay you $200. I’m sure there are a variety of ways that hotels do that, but setting up an alternative currency that isn’t really going to compete with cash is a really good idea. First of all, the hotel chain can urge loyalty by getting you into their points program. Maybe you go out of your way to stay with a certain hotel chain, because you like their points program. That’s good for them. Secondly, when someone does book a hotel on points the hotel does receive compensation for the room, although I assume it is at a much lower rate. But since so much of hotel costs are fixed, the additional room can still be profitable at that lower compensation.

Airlines are similar to hotels, the costs to operate the flight are going to be very similar whether or not all the seats are full. Yes, technically if there is more weight on the plane and if the person in that seat is getting snacks and drinks, it will cost more to operate the flight, but not a lot more. So getting some sort of marginal compensation from those points does make the flight more profitable.

Because of this, airlines and hotels work with credit card companies to develop these alternate currencies that can help fill seats or rooms on days when they wouldn’t ordinarily be full. The credit card companies make money on interest and credit card processing fees and they use the lure of signup bonuses to acquire new customers. They are literally begging you to take the points, and that’s fine, it’s good for you too. That is, as long as you follow the first commandment of points and miles.

Thou shalt not pay interest, ever.

Points and miles can be very lucrative for consumers, but the interest on rewards cards, especially, are ridiculous. Here’s the thing, I don’t know what the interest is on any of my cards, because I never pay interest. Every month I autopay the full statement balance. Set it and forget it. If you are paying interest on those cards, all of the benefits you are getting from those cards disappear very quickly.

You’re not really getting the deal you think you’re getting

Hotel and Airline programs are not going to give you awesome points and miles deals on flights and rooms that they expect to sell out. If you think you’re going to use your airline miles to get Saver rates on a flight to Cancun on a Saturday during spring break, I got bad news for you. You’ll probably be able to book with points, but those rates are probably 3x off-peak rates or higher. I looked at how much United would charge for a Saturday to Saturday roundtrip to Cancun during spring break and it was 110,000 miles, if you shifted it to Tuesday to Tuesday, all of a sudden its 40,000 miles, if you look in October, all of a sudden you can go round trip for around 25,000 miles. If you are going to get maximum value for points and miles, you will need to be flexible about when you book, because that’s what this is about. They are trying to get rid of their excess off-peak inventory of seats and rooms.

That sounds bad, but I kind of like it. We recently stayed at the all-inclusive Hyatt Ziva Los Cabos in San Jose Del Cabo in early January. We were able to book that for 43,000 points for 2 nights for a room that routinely goes for $600 a night. The hotel was about 25% full, and that’s why we got such a good deal. I actually enjoyed it more, because the pool wasn’t full and we got great service everywhere in the hotel. As it gets closer to spring break however, the availability has dropped off and the available rooms have much higher point rates per night.

I don’t think points and miles are going away any time soon

I’m convinced now that this is not going away anytime soon. I’ll be able to earn massive amounts of points and miles and use them for vacations for as long as I want. It’s because hotels and airlines have excess inventory that they want to get rid of and I’m happy to take them up on the offer. The more flexible that we can be, the more ridiculous the deals will be, and as the kids get older, we are able to be more flexible. So again, I’m not scamming the credit card companies, I’m working with them.

Newbies

Posted on by David Cox

We are the Cox’s. We are a quasi-normal, family of four. We love to travel, but we’ve always had to do it on a budget, and still do. Recently, we’ve learned some helpful things which allow us to have greater adventures and stay within our limited budget. This has opened up the world for us, literally. We’re still newbies but we now know the path to become expert travelers. Please follow along with us as we go from newbies to experts.

Motivation

We’ve always set aside money for travel. This was a non-negotiable part of our monthly budget. When the kids were younger, our trips were short and nearby. We live in Iowa, and a typical trip for us was Chicago, St. Louis, or Minneapolis. We looked for places that we could visit on a fairly short drive, stay in a cheap hotel, and we would visit zoos, children’s museums, and parks. We tried to pack in as much fun as we could as cheaply as possible.

As we got older and our budget grew a little bit more, we took longer trips. We visited further away places, like Florida, Virginia, and Washington DC. We bought a camper, and we use it a lot. We never flew, every place had to be within a couple days drive, because once we bought 4 plane tickets and rented a car, the budget was already almost blown. Flying internationally, let alone intercontinentally might as well have been flying to the moon.

One day, when our daughter Emma was a freshman in high school, she told us that she wanted to take the school trip to Greece. This was one of those trips contracted through a travel agency that they market to high schoolers as a “class trip” but only like 5% of the kids actually go, because it’s just too expensive for the average family. Thinking that it wouldn’t be that bad because it was a group trip marketed to kids, I asked “How much will that cost?” She said, “It’s only $4400!” Uh, okay, that’s not gonna happen. She might have well asked for a Porsche. And then I said something which probably changed our lives. “Emma, I promise you, when you graduate from High School, we will travel anywhere you want to go.” That was both a promise seemed completely unattainable, and a promise that I had no intention of breaking.

Revelation

In December of 2021, I started to realize that I had a future 8-to-10-thousand-dollar bill coming due in a year and a half and I was looking at having to completely drain our savings to pay for that. I would have, I just wouldn’t have been happy about it. How can we reduce the cost of this trip?

We were watching TV one night, and a commercial for a Capital One travel card came on. I thought, okay, well, I guess if I applied for a travel credit card, I might be able to pay for one of the flights, maybe? I googled travel cards like crazy, with no real direction, just trying to get the best possible credit card that could, maybe, pay for a flight. I settled on the Citi Premier card, it was offering an 80,000-point bonus and filled out an application. It was approved.

Now what? I had no idea what I was doing. I had this card, I needed to spend $4000 on it in 3 months to get the 80,000-point bonus. Not a problem for a middle-class family of 4, we almost spend that on groceries in 3 months, but what do I do with the points? How do I cash them in, what are they even worth? Then I hit YouTube – hard – and I kept seeing people talking about how they traveled all the time, for free. What? Now, spoiler alert, there is a lot of exaggeration on YouTube. However, points and miles are actually really valuable, and surprisingly easy to acquire. Fast forward one year and I had booked 2 round-trip flights to Cabo San Lucas, 2 nights in the All-Inclusive Hyatt Ziva Los Cabos, 4 nights in an AirBNB in Cabo San Lucas, 4 one-way airline tickets from Chicago to Zurich, 2 Nights in Zurich Marriott, 4 nights in an AirBNB in Munich, 3 nights in an AirBNB in Venice, 2 Nights in an AirBNB in Rome, 4 one-way tickets from Rome to Stockholm, 3 nights in a Marriott in Stockholm, and 4 one-way tickets from Stockholm to Chicago. All of that cost me a total of $3100 out of pocket. Of that, $2500 of that was AirBNBs which we prefer to use because having a kitchen saves us money on food. However, AirBNB doesn’t have a real points program. Also, that could have been much better, but I overspent on an AirBNB in Cabo ($1200), because it was our anniversary. The power of points is absolutely real. All of those points were acquired in one year of normal spending for us, just using the right cards.

We still have a lot to learn, and I invite you to learn with us. This blog will be about making the most of your money and your time. I’ll probably delve into some of our other vices/hobbies like running, camping, and beer. What I’ve learned in the last year is that there are a lot of things which are attainable if you stay focused on a goal.

Points Check January 2023

Posted on by David Cox

Because I had been denied for the Chase Sapphire Preferred card, Jenn decided to apply for it. I told her that I had been denied twice and that she shouldn’t get her hopes up. She filled out the application, hit enter, waited about 30 seconds and then began to taunt me because not only was she approved instantly, but they gave her a pretty big credit limit. Chase Sapphire Preferred, why do you hate me?! She still needles me about it, waving that card in front of me. I should probably divorce her.

Anyway, the Chase Sapphire Preferred has a $95 annual fee. It offers 5x points on travel purchased through the Ultimate Rewards program, as well as a $50 hotel credit when booked through the Ultimate Rewards program. The card also earns 3x points on dining, streaming services and online groceries, 1x on everything else. She also will receive a 60,000 point bonus when she spends $4,000 within 3 months. What makes this card valuable, though, is the fact that it can be used to transfer points to 3 hotel programs and 11 airline miles programs. Also, it makes some other Chase cards in your wallet more useful, because, for example, if you had a Chase Freedom Flex, you can take advantage of the 5x points on certain categories and then transfer those points through the Sapphire and into those other programs.

I moved on to cash back cards, I know, boring. I applied for the Bank of America Customized Cash Rewards card. It earns 3x on a category of your choice, 2x on grocery stores and warehouse stores and 1x on everything else. It offers a $200 bonus after spending $1,000 in 3 months. I don’t think I will use this card too much after earning the bonus, but it doesn’t have an annual fee, so there’s no reason to get rid of it.

Anyway, on to the point check!

I spent a little over $1,000 on my Citi Premier card and earned almost 2,900 Citi points. I also spent almost $600 on my United Explorer card and earned around 1,200 points. We spent almost $200 on Jenn’s Marriott Bonvoy on a hotel/park & ride near O’hare Airport with what I assume was a concrete mattress. That stay earned us almost 1,000 Marriott Bonvoy points and a massive backache. Jenn spent $2,600 on her Chase Sapphire card and earned almost 4,600 Ultimate Reward points. She also finished off the necessary spending on her Ink Unlimited card with $1,300 and earned 2,000 points plus the 90,000 point bonus.

That left us with 23,300 Citi points, 40,400 United miles, 50,000 Marriott Bonvoy points, 1,400 Chase points, and 107,100 Ultimate Reward points.

According to valuations assigned to those points by The Points Guy, found at https://thepointsguy.com/guide/monthly-valuations/, these points and miles are worth around $3,400. At this point, we’ve developed a solid strategy and have stacked up quite a bonuses that should be hitting in the next few months. I expect this valuation to balloon over the next few months.

Points Check December 2022

Posted on 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 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 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 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 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