Point checks are updates showing how we accumulated points as well as spent them. This section is intended to let you know what we did, step by step, including all of the things we did right as well as all of the things we messed up. This is to highlight what is possible for a middle-class family in the points and miles space and help you learn from our successes and failures.
Year End Review 2022
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…
Point Check! December 2022
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…
Point Check! November 2022
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.…
Point Check! October 2022
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…
Point Check! September 2022
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…
Point Check! August 2022
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…
Point Check! July 2022
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…
Point Check! June 2022
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…
Point Check! May 2022
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…
Point Check! April 2022
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…
Point Check! March 2022
We didn’t have any new credit card applications in March. We did, however, take a spring break trip to Biloxi, MS and spent a night in New Orleans on the way to Biloxi. Our spending was a little higher as a result of that trip. Since we were still new to points and miles, no…
Point Check! February 2022
During January 2022, I did a ton of research on points and miles and I began to figure things out. First of all, I started to do all of this to save money on a trip to Europe. At the time, our plan was to fly into Munich and stay there for 10-14 days. I…
Newby to Expert Traveler 