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

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.