Tag: credit-cards

Points Check April 2025

Posted on by David Cox

April was about the only breather we could take for a while. March consisted of a trip to Spain and Portugal to do a week on the Camino de Santiago. In July, Jenn is taking our daughter Emma, as well as her sister and niece, to Munich and Dublin. Meanwhile, I will be taking our Son Alex to Berlin and Dresden as well as doing a little hiking in Bohemian Switzerland National Park. In September, we will be going to Nice, France, to participate in the UTMB Nice Côte d’Azur. It’s almost a little too much traveling in too short a time, but I’m willing to take this challenge head-on.

A Decent Deal on a Delta Flight?

I had been looking for months for a decent price on a flight for Alex and me to go to Europe, preferably Germany. For a while, I was getting frustrated because I could get flights to Europe for a decent number of points, but the prices for getting home were more than I wanted to spend. I was patient, and finally, Delta came through with round-trip flights for 40,800 Delta miles and $132 each. The price was 48,000, but Jenn has a Delta Gold Card, so the redemption was 15% off.

That meant Alex and I were set to go to Berlin in July for 81,600 Delta Miles and $264. That’s a pretty good price, but the downside was that it was the price for Basic Economy. In other words, we don’t get to choose our seats, so Alex and I may not be sitting together. I’m sure he’ll survive; he is 16 after all.

Those points came from a small amount of Delta miles that Jenn had, but she also had to transfer 76,000 American Express Membership Rewards points to Delta to cover the rest. Those flights would have cost around $1,000 each, so the redemption came to around 2.1 cents per point, which isn’t bad.

This was the last of the redemptions that we have planned for flights this year. It’s honestly difficult for me to believe it, but we booked 12 flights to Europe this year on points as well as a flight to San Antonio. Those flights weren’t “free” because they always come with taxes and sometimes come with fuel surcharges, but they have always been at severely discounted prices.

There is no way I would have paid cash for all of those flights, so I’m glad that we were able to use points to get to these amazing destinations. This year alone, I will have visited Portugal, Spain, France, Monaco, Ireland, Germany, and the Czech Republic. That’s pretty amazing, and I’m very thankful that I’m able to take these trips.

Sign Up Bonuses

In January, I signed up for the Alaska Airlines Visa Signature Card, which had a signup bonus of 75,000 Alaska miles and a companion fare after $3,000 spend in 3 months. In April, I finally completed my spending and received the bonus. The companion fare is essentially a $122 fare that you can use on any Alaskan flight if you purchase a second flight. It’s only good for a year, and I don’t think I’ll get an opportunity to use it. The Alaska Air miles, though, will definitely come in handy, especially when there are a lot of chances to use 4,500 Alaska miles to fly American Airlines on short flights. For us, they are especially useful for flying from our home airport in Moline to Chicago O’Hare.

Jenn got her 75,000 Membership Reward Points bonus for spending $6,000 in 6 months on her American Express Gold Card. That came just in time to replenish the points I used to book the Berlin flights for Alex and me. Membership Reward points are very valuable, and it’s always nice to have a little stash of those.

100K on Chase Sapphire Preferred

It doesn’t happen very often, but Chase occasionally offers a 100,000 point bonus on the Chase Sapphire Preferred card. When it does happen, every points and miles enthusiast checks to see if they’re eligible to receive the bonus. The basic requirements are that you have signed up for less than five personal credit cards in the last 24 months, you haven’t received the bonus in the last 48 months, and you currently don’t have a Sapphire Card.

Chase Ultimate Rewards points are the most coveted points in travel rewards outside of Bilt points. Getting 100,000 Ultimate Rewards points with one signup bonus is phenomenal, but the card itself is an excellent travel credit card. This card earns 5x on travel through the Chase Travel portal and 2x on all other travel purchases. It also earns 3x on dining, online groceries, and streaming services, and 1x on everything else. There is also a $50 hotel credit per year that you can receive if you book a hotel through the Chase Travel Portal.

What makes the points valuable, however, is their transfer partners. They have some great Airline transfer partners such as United, Southwest, Air France/KLM Flying Blue, Aer Lingus/Iberia/British Airways Avios, Air Canada, and Virgin Atlantic. A lot of people, however, love their Chase Ultimate Rewards points because they transfer to Hyatt at a 1:1 ratio. Hyatt has the most valuable hotel points, with most people valuing their points at around twice the value of Marriott points and about triple the value of Hilton points.

Jenn referred me to the Chase Sapphire Preferred card, so she will receive 10,000 points, and I will receive 100,000 points. I need to spend $5,000 in three months to receive the bonus. She also referred another friend, so she will be getting an additional 10,000 for that signup. I think I know five people who jumped on this deal, because it was so good.

On to the Point Check!

Most of our spending in April was on cards for which we were working on signup bonuses, so the spending below is almost entirely recurring charges. That being said, a 7.1 percent return on those charges is phenomenal, so I feel good about how I have our recurring charges set up.

Card UsedSpendPoints EarnedPoint ValuePoints Per $Return on Spend
Amex Gold$5522,130$42.603.97.7%
Ink Cash$4452,224$45.595.010.2%
Wyndham Business Earner$3471,736$19.105.05.5%
Venture$345690$12.772.03.7%
Total$1,6896,780$120.054.07.1%
This month’s spending not devoted to earning a signup bonus

On top of the spending listed above, I spent a little over $1,000 on my Alaska Airlines Card, earning over 1,500 Alaska miles as well as the 75,000 Alaska mile bonus. Jenn spent a whopping $8,500, a good portion of which was our annual taxes, nailing down her 75,000 point bonus as well as an additional 12,000 Membership Reward points. After all of that, we ended the month with:

  • 126,900 Chase Ultimate Rewards Points
  • 122,600 Amex Membership Rewards Points
  • 93,000 American Airlines Miles
  • 85,000 IHG points
  • 79,100 Alaska Miles
  • 60,000 Marriott Bonvoy Points
  • 58,900 Wyndham Points
  • 32,100 Citi Thank You Points
  • 15,900 United Miles
  • 6,500 Hyatt Points
  • 1,100 Delta Miles
  • $109 in Cash Back

When you add everything up, the total value of points and miles, using the valuations from The Points Guy, comes to over $10,400. That is a $1,300 increase over last month. I don’t anticipate us booking very much for a while, since our trips for the year are pretty much planned. That means our point totals should be growing for the rest of the year and hopefully leave us with enough points to make some fun decisions for trips in 2026.

Points and Miles has an Influencer Problem

Posted on by David Cox

I’ve been using points and miles to help me and my family travel for a little over three years now. In that time, I have been consuming large amounts of podcasts, blogs, and YouTube videos to learn how to maximize earning points and miles, as well as using those points and miles for maximum value. The information that I’ve gotten from these influencers has been invaluable in helping me set up my own strategies for travel, but lately, I have to admit, I’m getting annoyed.

I’m annoyed because many influencers present an unrealistic idea of what points and miles can do, especially for the average person. They also miss the point of what travel should be. I’m afraid people are paying attention to these influencers and not listening to what is best for themselves.

The Myth of Unlimited Points

There are three points and miles podcasts that I listen to on a regular basis. Every host on these podcasts takes multiple trips a year. These aren’t normal trips either; they are trips to Asia or Europe, and they fly their entire family in business class and stay in luxury hotels when they are there. They do this all on points. Listening to these conversations, the listener might think, “Maybe I can do this too?” Chances are, you can’t. These podcasters are spending millions of points per year, and that’s just not feasible for most people.

The podcasters fall into two categories: people who travel a lot for business and people with a lot of business spending. If you are a person who falls into one of these two categories, congratulations, you are going to have a lot of fun traveling on points. If you’re not, it gets considerably harder.

What really annoys me, however, are the ones who aren’t honest about this fact. I follow someone on Threads who, earlier this year, claimed that she had earned over 800,000 American Express Membership Rewards points on normal spend in three months. When pressed about it, she said that she had been getting 15x on a lot of purchases through Rakuten.

15x is pretty amazing but let’s, for the sake of argument, say that she got 20x on all her spending, which would be next to impossible, by the way. That would mean that she spent over $40,000 at 20x in 3 months to earn those points. That is not “normal” spending, and I guarantee she would have to spend way more than $40,000 to earn those points.

On one of the podcasts I listen to, a question was posed from a listener who asked how the hosts are earning all of their points. One of the hosts started talking about paying estimated taxes with a credit card, and while that will boost your point totals and help you earn signup bonuses, it doesn’t explain the number of points he must be earning to do the travel that he does.

I’m not saying that they aren’t earning a lot of points; I absolutely believe they are. However, can we be honest about how they are doing it? It’s not what they say. Here is how they are actually earning their points:

Lots of Business Spend

Many of these influencers are either owners of businesses that spend a lot of money on credit cards, or they are people who can spend and be reimbursed for expenses. This opens up the ability to earn a lot of points. This is especially true if you are a business traveler because that opens up the possibility of earning a lot of frequent flyer miles with airlines as well as lots of hotel points. It also opens up the possibility of earning status with those hotel and airline programs.

Manufactured Spend

A lot of points and miles people earn points and miles through manufactured spending. This comes in many forms, but generally it involves buying items, such as toys or gift cards, and then selling them for little or no profit. There are actually buyer’s groups that facilitate this for people who don’t actually want to handle the items themselves. There are all kinds of risks that are involved in doing this, including the fact that it’s frowned upon by credit card companies. This is probably why people don’t want to talk publicly about it. Understand, though, that there are a lot of folks doing this to boost their point totals.

Referral bonuses

For a lot of credit cards, you are offered a bonus for referring someone to apply for that card. These are generally limited to a certain number of referrals per card per year. For many of these cards, you can earn 100,000 points per year by referring applicants. If you have quite a few cards and a means to promote those referrals, like a blog or a YouTube channel, you can accumulate a lot of points and miles. However, for the average person, hounding all of your friends and family members to sign up for cards to earn a signup bonus may not make you very popular.

The Luxury Problem

Travel influencers are obsessed with luxury hotels. Hearing them talk about a Park Hyatt, a Ritz-Carlton, or an Andaz property makes me wonder if the only reason they traveled was to stay at that hotel. I understand that if you stay at a resort, you stay there because it’s the destination. But most of the time, the hotel shouldn’t be the destination.

We recently stayed in Madrid, where we used an IHG free night certificate that was good up to 60,000 points. We ended up staying at the Intercontinental Madrid, which was 59,000 points, so we maximized the value of the certificate. When we checked in, they double upgraded us because of Jenn’s status with IHG. The room was really nice, the service was great, but it was in the middle of the Financial District, and I would have preferred to be in an area with a bunch of tapas bars. In that case, maximizing the value of the certificate cost us the opportunity to be in a neighborhood that suited us better.

When we were in Amsterdam, we stayed at the Kimpton. It was a fun, quirky hotel with great service. When we checked in, they gave us $30 in bar credit because we used the Kimpton secret code, and Jenn had status with IHG. We didn’t use the credits. The reason why was simple – we were in Amsterdam! I don’t want to hang out at the hotel. I want to walk the canals and visit their bars and restaurants. We had a blast in Amsterdam, and all we did in the room was sleep.

At the end of the day, if you are out enjoying the place that you went to visit, the only thing that really matters is that you have a comfortable bed, a clean room, and a hot shower. Guess what? That’s nearly every hotel room. You don’t need to be that picky. If you have small kids and you will spend more time in the hotel because of naps, then maybe you want to be pickier, but for most people, what does it matter?

Flying in Economy is Fine

The obsession among points and miles people with flying in business class is ridiculous. Some of the comments from the folks I follow on Threads have been “I don’t care where I’m going as long as I turn left when I get on the plane,” and “Stop wasting your points on economy flights.” I mean, seriously, those are crazy statements. Are you only traveling so you can take a selfie in your lie-flat business class seat? That’s seriously weird.

I’ll tell you a little secret. When Jenn and I fly, she always wants an aisle seat, so if the seat arrangement is window, middle, aisle, I take the middle. I’m 6’2″, 220 pounds, and I can handle a 10-hour flight in the middle seat in economy just fine. The way influencers talk about economy seats, they act like they’re being stashed in the baggage hold under the plane.

Flying in economy is wasting my points? Really? At best, your business class flight costs twice the number of points that my economy class flight costs. That means that I can travel twice as often for the same number of points. The magic of flying is that I can be transported to a completely different part of the world in a matter of hours, it’s not that I can take a nap during the flight.

The Insanity of Positioning Flights

The worst part is the lengths people will go to get a business class flight. A good price on a business class flight is difficult to find. It’s so difficult that there is a term for a flight that you take to get to a business class flight. It’s called a positioning flight. In other words, you need to take a flight to get to the airport where your desired flight departs.

Typically, you want to fly a positioning flight the day before, that way if there is a delay on your positioning flight, you won’t miss the more important, business class flight. This is where, for me, the logic of doing this begins to break down.

Earlier this year, we booked flights from our home airport to Nice, France, for 19,000 American Airlines miles. Let’s say I have a friend who wants to join us there, but he wants to fly business class. He finds a business class flight from New York to Nice for an excellent price of 50,000 points. He’s going to have to book a positioning flight, which, if he’s lucky, will cost around 10,000 points, but he’ll have to get there a day early, so he also needs to book a hotel. Let’s say he books a Hyatt for 12,000 points near JFK airport. Now that a 50,000 point flight really costs him 72,000 points and a day of his time. Not only did I save 53,000 points compared to my friend, but I’ll be enjoying a latte and a chocolate croissant at a cafe in Nice while he’s on the plane.

This even gets more extreme, though. I’ve actually heard two people recently suggest that it’s easier to get a business class flight outside of the country, and you should try to take a positioning flight outside of the country. Let me get this straight: you want me to take a four-hour economy flight to Mexico, so that I can get a business class flight to Europe? Nope, nope, nope.

What is your Time Worth?

At the end of the day, many of the complaints I have are based on the amount of time required to earn the volume of points to go on luxury vacations. If you are lucky enough to earn points through large amounts of business or travel spend, then you are holding the golden ticket. However, for the rest of us, you would probably need to earn those points through some kind of manufactured spend scheme. I don’t really feel like spending my free time driving around town buying gift cards and products on sale and then posting those items on eBay.

Even if I had an unlimited amount of points, I don’t have an unlimited amount of vacation. Do I really want to waste a vacation day positioning so that I can take a business class flight? No, just get me to my destination so I can enjoy my vacation.

Know Yourself and Your Needs

Knowing yourself is important, however. If you are someone who appreciates luxury, maybe you’re willing to take fewer vacations to have that one dream vacation. That’s fine, and you shouldn’t be ashamed. It’s not for me, though. I want to experience the world, and that means that I need to make the most out of every single point that I earn.

We just got back from Spain and Portugal, where we hiked the Camino de Santiago. We ate at tapas bars and stayed in hostels. We flew in economy. Guess what? It was fantastic, and we were spending less than 50 euros per person per day, including lodging and food. It was fantastic because it was an authentic experience. We used points and miles to help us afford the flights, as well as a hotel in Madrid and one in Porto.

Points and miles have opened the world for us by lowering the cost of taking vacations. I’m proud of what we’ve done and the precious time that I’ve been able to spend with my family on those vacations – and you know what? I’ll never feel bad about turning right when I enter a plane and it wasn’t a waste of points, that’s for damn sure!

Points Check March 2025

Posted on by David Cox

Oh, that’s an ugly chart. For several months, the value of our points and miles has been tanking. There is a very good reason for this. We have been planning a lot of vacations, and we’ve been using those points and miles to book those trips.

This year, we’ve had a ton of flights to book and quite a few hotel rooms to book as well. We are taking full advantage of the points and miles that we’ve accumulated over the past couple of years, and we will enjoy our trips. We just got back from Spain and Portugal, where we spent a week hiking the Portuguese route of the Camino de Santiago. This summer, Jenn and Emma, along with Jenn’s sister Misty and our Niece Zoey, will be going to Munich for five days and Dublin for four days. At the same time, my son Alex and I will be hiking the Malerweg on the border of the Czech Republic and Germany. In the fall, Jenn and I will be joining our friends Bill and Theresa when we participate in the Nice Côte d’Azur UTMB trail running event in Nice, France.

In addition to that, Jenn will be flying with me on a business trip to San Antonio in May. After hiking in Spain and Portugal, she is very excited to relax by the pool and read while I’m in day-long seminars.

That makes for a very packed schedule and declining point values. That’s okay, though – that’s what those points are for!

Redemptions

We used 12,000 Marriott Bonvoy points to book a night at the Courtyard by Marriott in Wood Dale/Itasca near O’Hare airport. This was really more about parking than anything else. On our way to O’Hare to fly to Porto, we parked at the Courtyard and took the hotel shuttle to the airport. Then we stayed at the hotel when we returned eleven days later.

Before we left, Jenn was trying to figure out how much the Courtyard charged for parking, since we would be staying one night and parking (without a hotel room) for ten nights. Before we booked the room, Jenn called the front desk to ask about the cost of parking. They told her that parking is always free for guests. She reiterated what we were doing, and he repeated that parking was always free. We didn’t believe him, but we showed up anyway.

When we went to the front desk, the day of our flight out of O’Hare, we found out that parking was $15 per day. Jenn told the attendant that we were told it was free, and she said that she needed to have another conversation with the guy who answered the phone. Apparently, this is an ongoing problem for them. We pretty much expected to pay the $150 for the parking anyway, since we didn’t really believe the guy who answered the phone. It’s fine, but if you work at a hotel with an airport shuttle, maybe you should know how much parking costs – just saying.

We also booked the missing leg of Jenn’s summer trip. We had already booked the flights to Munich and the flights out of Dublin, but had no way to get from Munich to Dublin. Using the 20% transfer bonus from Chase Ultimate Rewards to Aer Lingus, we transferred 25,000 Chase points to get 30,000 Aer Lingus Avios. From there, we booked four flights from Munich to Dublin for 7,500 Avios and $56 each. The four flights cost a total of 30,000 Avios and $224, which isn’t too bad. The Airbnb they booked in Dublin is right in the middle of town, by the Temple Bar District and Trinity College. I’m excited for them, I think they will love Dublin.

Confusion with Points Pooling on United

We booked Jenn a flight on United to join me on a business trip to San Antonio. I was able to find her a seat on the same flight I was going on for 12,900 United miles from Moline to San Antonio. We transferred 11,000 Chase Ultimate Reward points to United and added them to the United points pool we had set up months ago. To my surprise, I wasn’t able to book the flight with the pooled miles. At the time, I wrongly assumed that it was because one of the legs of the flight was using a SkyWest plane flying as United Express. I couldn’t reverse adding those miles to the pool. The only way to reverse it seemed to be to dissolve the pool, which I didn’t want to do.

Instead, I decided to transfer another 13,000 Ultimate Reward points to United, so that we could book it directly from Jenn’s United account. That means we stranded the first 11,000 point transfer to United.

I found out later that the reason we couldn’t book with the pooled miles had nothing to do with the flight being SkyWest operating as United Express. Instead, there is a 24-hour hold on pooled miles, so you can choose to reverse adding miles to the pool. I don’t know how to reverse that action, though, because I couldn’t find that option anywhere. Suffice it to say, be careful with United mileage pooling.

The return trip from San Antonio to Moline was booked on American Airlines for 7,000 American Airlines miles, $5.60, and zero drama.

On To The Points Check!

Card UsedSpendPoints EarnedPoint ValuePoints Per $Return on Spend
Citi Premier$67889216.061.32.4%
World of Hyatt$6233,114$52.945.08.5%
Wyndham Business Earner$5012,944$32.385.86.5%
Ink Cash$4442,224$45.595.010.3%
Venture$345690$12.772.03.7%
Citibusiness AAdvantage$283283$4.671.01.7%
Blue Business Plus$67134$2.682.04.0%
Total$2,94110,281$167.033.55.7%
This month’s spending not devoted to earning a signup bonus

Once again, we managed to achieve over a 5% return on our spending not devoted to earning a signup bonus, so I’m happy about that. Besides that spending, I spent a little over $1,000 on my Alaska Airlines card and earned a little over 1,000 Alaska miles. Jenn spent a little over $1,100 on her American Express Gold Card, earning her just under 2,600 Amex Membership Rewards points. That left us with:

  • 124,700 Chase Ultimate Reward Points
  • 108,600 Amex Membership Reward Points
  • 93,000 American Airlines Miles
  • 85,000 IHG Points
  • 60,000 Marriott Bonvoy Points
  • 57,200 Wyndham Points
  • 32,100 Citi Thank You Points
  • 16,600 United Miles
  • 15,500 Hyatt Points
  • 6,300 Delta Miles
  • 2,500 Alaska Airlines Miles
  • $109 in Cash Back

We’ve been redeeming points at a feverish pace, but that’s why we have the points. Even with all of the points that we’ve redeemed so far this year, we still finished the month with a total valuation, according to the Points Guy, of $9,100, and that’s really not that bad. The most important thing to me is that we have three great trips to Europe this year, and I couldn’t be more excited about that.

Points Check February 2025

Posted on by David Cox

Looking forward to the Camino

We’ve spent a good deal of time in February planning our spring break trip to Portugal and Spain as well as booking some parts of a summer trip to Europe.

“Planning” is an odd way to put how we’re approaching our spring break trip. We’re doing a week on the Portuguese route of the Camino de Santiago de Compostela, a thousand year old tradition of folks, primarily Spanish Catholics, taking a pilgrimage to the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela to visit the final resting place of Saint James. The fact of the matter is that planning, other than making sure you have the correct gear, is unnecessary and maybe counterproductive for the Camino. It’s probably best to do the Camino with spontaneity, and this is driving me crazy because I want to plan SOMETHING!

This will be our first opportunity to do participate in something in Europe, instead of just being a tourist. While Americans certainly are welcome on the Camino only about 8 percent of pilgrims are Americans. Pilgrims come from around the world, but the majority are Europeans and hence this is primarily a European phenomenon. Knowing that the stops along the Camino are primarily to cater to the needs of them and not just Americans hopefully will mean that this will seem more authentic and not altered to appeal to American tourists.

We will be spending an evening in Porto on the day we arrive and a night in Madrid the day we leave. We booked a room in Porto at a hotel not affiliated with any major program using Jenn’s Delta Business Gold Card and the Delta Stays site, because her Delta Gold card has a $150 hotel credit which was immediately credited to her account.

We also used two IHG certificates to book a night at The Intercontinental Madrid. We had to book 2 rooms because, as usual, booking any room in Europe with 4 people is next to impossible, especially with points. Those rooms cost us a 60,000 point certificate each, but the cash rate for those rooms are $273 per night, which is right at about the maximum value you can expect to get for a 60,000 point IHG certificate.

American Express Gold

I referred Jenn to the American Express Gold Card and she was approved. I immediately received a 15,000 point referral bonus and Jenn will receive a 75,000 Membership Rewards point bonus when she completes $6,000 in spend in 6 months. It has a pretty steep $325 annual fee.

Despite the high annual fee, it’s actually one of my favorite credit cards for families. The reason is that it earns 4x on groceries and 4x on dining. Those are two categories where people tend to spend a lot of money, so it has the ability to accumulate points very quickly.

The 4x bonus categories wouldn’t be good enough to offset the $325 annual fee, but if you are able to use some of the credits available on the Amex Gold card, you should be able to get all or most of the annual fee back. Those credits include $100 per year at Resy restaurants, $120 per year Uber credit, $120 per year dining credit and a $84 per year credit at Dunkin.

Amex points are extremely flexible since the transfer to 18 airline reward programs and 3 hotel programs. I’ve had no problem finding good use for Amex points but I do have a problem keeping them around, so earning a few more is always good.

Booking Jenn’s Summer Trip

We booked the main legs of Jenn’s trip this summer with her sister, our niece and our daughter. The four of them will be flying from Chicago to Munich on a direct flight on United that we booked using Singapore Krisflyer miles. We transferred 87,000 Citi Thank You points and 35,000 American Express Membership Reward points to get the 122,000 points needed. Booking using Krisflyer miles meant that the flight was 30,500 points per ticket and $5.60 instead of 40,000 United miles and $5.60 each.

We also booked the flight home, a direct flight on Aer Lingus from Dublin to Chicago. That cost 20,000 Aer Lingus Avios and $155 each. We transferred the 80,000 points from American Express to book that flight.

I’m waiting to book the flight from Munich to Dublin until they decide on what day they want to travel. They might even want to take a train or bus to another nearby city like Vienna or Zurich, spend a day and fly out of those cities. They need to hash out those details before I book anything else.

On to the Point Check

Jenn didn’t have a welcome offer to work on, so her default credit card was her Amex Business Gold card, which she earned a surprising 2.4 points per dollar spent on. We almost never use my World of Hyatt card because it’s just not good for earning points. However, they had an offer of 5x on groceries for up to $1,000 spent this quarter, so we started to use it for our groceries. I’ll take 5x Hyatt points any day of the week. So for all of our credit card spending not going towards a welcome bonus, we earned a 6.2% return. That means that we were doing a good job of taking advantage of the bonus categories on our credit cards to maximize point accumulation.

Card UsedSpendPoints EarnedPoint ValuePoints Per $Return on Spend
Amex Business Gold$1,0592,59151.822.44.9%
Ink Cash$4452,224$45.595.010.3%
World of Hyatt$3561,783$30.315.08.5%
Venture$345690$12.772.03.7%
Wyndham Business Earner$3062,253$24.787.48.1%
Blue Business Plus$234468$9.362.04.0%
Citi Premier$206271$4.881.32.4%
Amex Gold$127508$10.164.08.0%
Total$3,07810,788$189.673.56.2%
This month’s spending not devoted to earning a signup bonus

Besides that, I spent a little over $1,500 on my Alaska Airlines card and earned around 1,500 Alaska miles. With the redemptions for the summer trip, that leaves us with:

  • 170,000 Chase Ultimate Reward Points
  • 105,000 Amex Membership Reward Points
  • 99,700 American Airlines Miles
  • 83,800 IHG Points
  • 71,900 Marriott Bonvoy Points
  • 54,300 Wyndham Points
  • 32,000 Citi Thank You Points
  • 12,400 Hyatt Points
  • 6,300 Delta Miles
  • 2,800 United Miles
  • 1,500 Alaska Airlines Miles
  • $109 in Cash Back

It feels like lately we’ve been absolutely bleeding points, but we are getting to the end of most of the points redemptions, at least for flights, that we will need for 2025. That means that we should be able to concentrate more on enjoying our trips and accumulating more points to get ready for whatever we have plan for 2026. In October our points, according to the Point Guy, was worth $16,500. With all of the redemptions that we’ve made since October, we are down to $9,900. Time to earn some more points!

Points Check January 2025

Posted on by David Cox

January was the start of a pretty big year for us. Just two years ago, I was in the middle of planning our first trip to Europe. I honestly couldn’t believe that we were going, it had been a dream of mine my entire life and then finally, in my late 40’s I was getting a chance to go. And then, last year we got a chance to go to Europe for a second time.

This year, however, we have plans to go to Europe three times, and that just seems crazy to me. In March, the four of us will be heading to Portugal and Spain so we can hike the last 120 kilometers from Tui to Santiago de Compostela on the Portuguese route of the Camino de Santiago.

In September, Jenn and I will be going to Nice, France for the UTMB Cote d’Azur Ultramarathons, where I will be doing a 54 kilometer race and Jenn will be doing the 22 kilometer version. Our friends Bill and Theresa will be joining us and also doing the 22 kilometer race. After going to Nice, we will end up for a couple days in Dublin before heading home.

The summer trip, is a little unsettled at this point. It’s not booked, but Jenn and Emma will be going to Europe with Jenn’s sister and our niece, who will be graduating from high school this year. The tentative plans are to go to Munich for a few days, then to Dublin and head home.

This leaves our son Alex and I with nothing to do, so I’m hoping we can find an excuse to go to Europe around the same time, maybe for a hiking trip. I’m eyeballing the Alps, or the Malerweg near Dresden, Germany or perhaps even Madeira, Portugal. I’m going to wait until after our trip to Spain to see how much we feel like hiking. It might be up to what flight deals are available to determine where we are going.

Taking Alex to His First Concert

Alex’s favorite band had a concert in a small venue in the West Loop of Chicago. He asked if he could go and we decided to buy him and our daughter, Emma tickets and told Emma that she needed to take him, since she is 19 and he was about to turn 16.

As the concert got closer, we started thinking “Are we really going to let them go to Chicago on their own and stay the night in a hotel there?” We eventually decided that we would drive them to Chicago and book separate hotel rooms, that way they could at least pretend to be somewhat independent and we could enjoy a night away.

We stayed at the Hyatt House West Loop – Fulton Market and we used a free night certificate from my World of Hyatt personal card for one room and 12,000 Hyatt points transferred from Chase Ultimate Rewards for the other. Those rooms typically cost around $180 per night so we got about 1.5 cents per point value on the redemptions, which is a little low for Hyatt points, but I really liked the hotel. The rooms were very large, modern and comfortable. They also had mini kitchens. I would definitely stay there again.

We also got a chance to use our semi-annual $50 Amex Resy credit at Cruz Blanca which was a combination brewery/Mexican restaurant. We had a nice meal there, but honestly I was more impressed by the drinks at Haymarket Pub and Brewery that we got before we went to Cruz Blanca. All of the beers that we tried at Haymarket were very well made and I was particularly fond of their Dopplebock. If you find yourself in the neighborhood, give Haymarket a try, it’s really good.

The kids enjoyed their illusion of freedom for a night and Alex came home with a ton of merchandise from the band. I’m glad he got a chance to see them, since they were not going to be in our town anytime soon.

This is really the kind of thing that we wouldn’t have done without points and miles since the cost of a couple of hotel rooms, dinner and driving up to Chicago would seemed too much for him to just see his favorite band. However, because we were able to redeem points and a certificate the cost was low enough to go ahead and say yes.

Alaskan Airlines Visa Signature Card

I applied for and was approved for the Alaskan Airlines Visa Signature Card. This card has an annual fee of $95 and right now has a signup bonus of 75,000 Alaska miles and a companion fare when you spend $3,000 in the first 3 months.

Outside of the signup bonus, it’s not a particularly great card for earning miles. The card earns 2x per dollar on gas, EV charging stations, transit, cable and select streaming services. It earns 1 point per dollar spent on everything else. It also has a companion fare that allows a companion to fly for $122 ($99 plus applicable taxes) round trip when you book a paid economy fare on Alaskan Airlines. An additional companion fare can be earned each year, after the cardholder spends $6,000 on the card.

That being said, I think Alaskan miles are great, and they are pretty hard to come by. They offer some really great deals on domestic flights, for example, we used Alaskan miles to book one-way American Airlines flights from Moline to Chicago for 4,500 points. That was on the same flight that we had previously booked with 7,500 American Airlines miles. Obviously we canceled the AA booking and went with Alaskan.

On to the Point Check

For the first time in a while, neither Jenn nor I wasn’t working on a signup bonus. There really hadn’t been any huge credit card offers that we just had to jump on. I did signup for the Alaska Airlines card, but I hadn’t had a chance to start using it before the end of the month.

Card UsedSpendPoints EarnedPoint ValuePoints Per $Return on Spend
Citi Premier$1,2232,79450.292.34.1
Amex Gold$11504,327$86.543.87.5%
Venture$9121,824$33.742.04.0%
Ink Cash$6303,150$64.585.010.3%
Wyndham Business Earner$4172,306$25.375.56.1%
US Bank Triple Cash$286416$4.161.51.5%
Total$4,61814,817$260.533.25.6%
This month’s spending not devoted to earning a signup bonus

That being said, I was surprised by the fact that we had earned 5.6% as a total return with no signup bonuses. At least I know that if we stopped signing up for credit cards we’re still capable of getting more than 5% return on our spending.

With all of points earned and the two hotel rooms that were redeemed. We were left with:

  • 203,900 American Express Membership Rewards Points
  • 167,800 Chase Ultimate Reward Points
  • 143,800 IHG Points
  • 116,800 Citi Thank You Points
  • 99,700 American Airlines Miles
  • 71,900 Marriott Bonvoy Points
  • 52,000 Wyndham Points
  • 10,600 Hyatt Points
  • 5,700 Delta Miles
  • 2,700 United Miles
  • $109 in Cash Back

The value of all of these points and miles according to the Points Guy, totals up to $12,850 that is just a touch lower than in December. Next up will be booking for a summer trip, and I think we should have enough points and miles to make that work. After that, we won’t need to book very much because we would have three trips for 2025 already booked. Sounds ridiculous, but that’s okay with me!

Single Card Solutions – Citi Strata Premier

Posted on by David Cox

I am a travel hacker, and the amount of travel I do is unusual. We traveled three times last year, including a week in Canada, a week in Costa Rica, and a week and a half in Italy. I also had a extended weekend trip to Montana with my old high school friends. I do realize that this isn’t normal and it’s also a lot more than we did even a few years ago. We also did that without spending a lot of money, because of points and miles.

Most Americans, if they travel at all, probably plan just a single vacation a year. If you only travel once a year, though, you really want to make the most of it. This is where doing a little bit of travel hacking would allow you to stretch your budget and allow you to travel with a little more panache.

The average American who wants to take one trip per year, should maximize that trip as much as is possible by using a one credit card per year strategy. This gives the average traveler the ability to reduce the cost of their vacation or increase the luxury of the vacation without having to become a crazy travel hacker.

Why New Accounts are Important

Let’s say that you already have a Chase Sapphire Preferred card. It’s a great card with good earning categories and great benefits. Why would you need anything else? Well, the truth is that signup bonuses are really important to building point balances. In the case of the Chase Sapphire Preferred card, if you spent $3,000 per month on that card, you would probably earn around 4,000-4,500 points, depending on what categories most of the spending was in. That means that at the end of the year, you would have earned somewhere around 50,000 points on $36,000 in credit card spend.

The signup bonus for the Chase Sapphire right now is 60,000 points. That means that if you signed up for the card and did the above spend, you would end up with 110,000 Ultimate Reward points. For 50,000 points, you can probably eek out enough points for 2 to fly to Cancun, if you’re flexible on when you fly. For 110,000, you can fly to Cancun and stay in an All-Inclusive hotel for 2 or 3 nights. For 110,000 points you could also pretty easily fly 2 people to Europe and back, if you transferred those points to KLM/Air France Flying Blue, or Iberia/Air Lingus/British Airways/Finnair Avios. If you were only paying for one flight, you could probably get to New Zealand and back for that, but that’s a long flight in economy.

Signup Bonus Frequency

The problem is that you can’t sign up for the Chase Sapphire Card each year. Chase only allows for you to get a signup bonus on the Sapphire Card once every four years. The same is also true of the Capital One Venture Card and the Citi Strata Premier Card. The American Express Gold Card is technically for a lifetime, but apparently people do get a second bonus on that card, usually after around 7 years.

I mention these cards because they have transferable points, meaning that you can earn them as Citi Thank You points, Chase Ultimate Reward points, Capital One Venture miles or Amex Membership Reward points and you can transfer them to any of their hotel and airline partners to take advantage of their best deals.

It’s also fortunate that there are four of these cards and with the exception of the Amex Gold card, you can get an additional bonus once every four years. This means that you can signup for one of these cards, earn as many points as you want during the year, transfer the points out and either downgrade or cancel that card and move on to the next card in this group. With the exception of the Amex Gold card on the 4th year, you could rotate though those cards every year.

Work With a Friend

While solo travel can be fun, traveling with a spouse, significant other, or a friend can make trips extra special. Working together to earn points also makes for a great strategy. In the travel hacking community, they affectionately call this ‘two player mode’.

Let’s say that you’re married and your spouse will be traveling with you. Two player mode essentially works like this: You sign up for the Citi Strata Premier card. You do the required spending and earn your signup bonus, but you DO NOT add your spouse as an authorized user. Then your spouse signs up for the same card and earns the same bonus. After both of you have earned your bonuses you continue to use those cards for all of your credit card spend for the rest of the year.

In two player mode, assuming the $3,000 per month spend listed above, in addition to the 50,000 or so points you would earn on your normal spend, you would also earn two 75,000 point sign up bonuses. That would mean a total of 200,000 Citi Thank You points that can be used to vacation in a variety of places.

Citibank’s Transfer Partners

If you just used Citi Thank You points to pay for items on your card, you would get .8 cents per point for a total of $1,600 for those 200,000 points. Don’t do that. The best way to use those points to transfer to airline partners and purchase flights. Citi has quite a few transfer partners. They are:

PartnerCiti Points UsedPoints Received
Aeromexico Rewards1,0001,000
Accor Live Limitless1,000500
Avianca Livemiles1,0001,000
Cathay Pacific1,0001,000
Choice Privileges1,0002,000
Emirates Skywards1,0001,000
Etihad Guest1,0001,000
EVA Air1,0001,000
Air France/KLM Flying Blue1,0001,000
Jetblue Trueblue1,0001,000
Leaders Club1,000200
Preferred Hotel and Resorts1,0004,000
Qantas Frequent Flyer1,0001,000
Qatar Privilege Club1,0001,000
Singapore Airlines1,0001,000
Thai Royal Orchid Plus1,0001,000
Turkish Airlines Miles and Smiles1,0001,000
Virgin Atlantic Flying Club1,0001,000
Wyndham Rewards1,0001,000

This list can be a bit overwhelming, but if you spend a little effort you can use these transfer partners for some great value. There are too many great uses of these points to discuss all of them but I’ll give you some surprising examples:

Using Turkish Airlines Miles to Fly To Hawaii on United Airlines

This is one of those bizarre combinations that works pretty well if you are flexible about when you go to Hawaii. You do this by finding saver awards to Hawaii on the United Airlines website. Once you find this then you search on the Turkish Airlines Miles and Smiles website for Star Alliance award space for the same day. Usually if saver awards are available on the United website, you will find it on Turkish Airlines for 10,000 points each way. If you used United miles, it’s probably going to be 25,000 miles.

This is because Turkish Airlines uses a zone based award chart and any flights within the United States are 10,000 miles each way, even those going to Hawaii. If you are lucky enough to find business class awards, it would be 15,000 miles each way. This used to also be the case for flights to Mexico, Canada and the Caribbean but that changed in a recent devaluation for Turkish Airlines that I was very disappointed in.

Air France/KLM Flying Blue Flights to Europe

Flying Blue used to offer a lot of flights to Europe for an extremely low 20,000 points. A recent devaluation happened that has raised that price to 25,000 points. There are some great things about this program. One is that it covers both Air France, which uses Paris as its hub, and KLM, which uses Amsterdam as it’s hub, making a single platform that covers both airlines’ reward programs. The second thing is that it covers a whole lot of award flights to Europe from the United States. Using the Daydream Explorer feature in PointsYeah, I came up with a ton of 25,000 point flights to Europe in May.

However, one of my favorite things about Flying Blue is that it allows for stopovers in Paris and Amsterdam. In other words, if I’m flying from Chicago to Munich on KLM, there is going to be a stop at it’s hub in Amsterdam. I can choose to do a stopover for up to a year in Amsterdam before moving on to Munich. This allows me to book one flight to Munich, pay one fare, and stay in Amsterdam for a few days, a week, whatever I feel like doing. The bad news is that there isn’t a way to do it on the website, you’ll have to call. The worse news is that if you book with an agent on the phone, it costs 50 Euros per ticket. That being said, I’ll gladly pay 50 Euros for a stopover in Amsterdam.

East Coast to London on Virgin Atlantic

I honestly can’t believe this hasn’t dried up yet, but for some reason Virgin Atlantic offers flights from mostly JFK airport in New York to London for 6,000 points and around $70 in taxes. They also have the same prices for some flights from Washington Dulles and Boston Logan, but most are from New York to London. It seems to be too good to be true, so get it while you can, I guess.

Qatar Privilege Club for Transferring to Avios

I really like the Avios program. It is a points platform that is used by Qatar Airlines, British Airways, Iberia Airlines, Aer Lingus and Finnair. In the case of Citi, it only transfers to Qatar, but once you transfer points to Qatar you can transfer to these other programs, although it can get a little complicated, One Mile at a Time has a good explanation of how to do it.

Once you convert your Citi Thank You points to Avios, you can use them for such things as 13,000 point off peak flights from most of the eastern portion of the US to Dublin, 17,000 points from Chicago to Madrid off peak on Iberia Airlines, and 30,000 points to Helsinki from the US. These are obviously not always the prices, but they are fairly typical, and available if you are flexible.

Other Examples

There are some other transfer partners that can be very useful as well. If I were booking anything to Central America, South America, Mexico, or the Caribbean, I would start my search with Avianca Lifemiles. They consistently have competitive prices to those areas. I recently saw an example of 14,000 points and around $65 to San Jose del Cabo from Chicago.

Keep your eyes on JetBlue as well. There is a new partnership with TAP Portugal where you can get to Portugal from the United States for as low as 19,000 miles and $5.60 using JetBlue Trueblue miles. The Points Guy went into depth on this new sweet spot, and I think I’m going to have to look into that one a little more, it sounds very promising.

Citi’s Hotel Partners

While I love the choices for transferring to Airline partners, Citi’s hotel partners aren’t as exciting. You can get some value by transferring to Choice hotels at 2 Choice points per 1 Citi Thank You point. You could also transfer to Wyndham and take advantage of their partnership with Vacasa that has been a little watered down, but it’s still pretty good.

For the most part, though, the best use of Citi points will be to book flights, so I would hesitate to transfer to hotel partners in less you found a great use for those points. Of course you should never feel bad if you choose to use your points in a suboptimal way, since they’re your points and you should use them the way you want, but making the most out of your points will help stretch your vacation budget.

How Much Can This Save You?

If you are only going to take advantage of one signup bonus per year, it becomes imperative that you do everything you can to maximize the use of those points. This is where you should spend your mental energy. The good news is that there are a ton of resources on how to take advantage of these transfer partners to get the most of those points.

I suggest using PointsYeah as a good place to start. You can search a number of airline programs simultaneously so that you can choose where to transfer your points an book your flights. Also, sometimes just spending a few minutes googling for the best use of points for flights to the destination you want to go to will yield you a blog article that will be very beneficial.

So how much can you actually save doing this? Let’s look at the example of a couple in two player mode that earned 200,000 Citi Thank You points. From the examples above, probably the easiest, and most available redemption opportunities would be to book two sets of one way flights to Europe using Flying Blue. If they had a family of 4, they could book one set of flights on KLM with a stopover in Amsterdam and then head on to Munich. On the way back, they could book a flight with Air France and stop for a few nights in Paris. In this example, the family of four would spend 50,000 points and around $300 in taxes and surcharges each. Those flights probably would normally cost over a $1000 each. I would imagine that this would save the couple around $3,000 on this trip.

In the Turkish Miles and Smiles example above, booking from the US mainland to Hawaii for 10,000 points each way would mean that for 200,000 points that couple could book 10 round trip tickets. Those tickets typically cost between $600 and $1,000. So in this example it could save the couple between $6,000 and $10,000.

The amount that you save is definitely going to vary by location and airline, but it can definitely stretch that vacation budget out to save money on the flights.

A Simpler Way to Travel Hack

By using a one card per year strategy, you can reduce the cost of your vacations without putting too much of an effort into it. Juggling multiple credit cards to maximize point accumulation in bonus categories and having multiple signup bonuses per year takes work and mental energy. Most people would prefer to not have to think so hard about which credit card to swipe on every single purchase.

By signing up for one card per year, you can take advantage of the signup bonus and continue to use that card throughout the year. The key is to be smart when redeeming those points with transfer partners and Citi Thank You points have some really great transfer partners. Doing this one thing, can save you thousands of dollars per year on your travel plans. It can also be the key to unlocking vacations that you wouldn’t have considered before. Doing just a little travel hacking absolutely has the potential to open the entire world to you.

Points Check December 2024

Posted on by David Cox

December is always a month to get together with family and friends to celebrate the holidays. For a lot of people there is holiday travel, but this has always been a time for us to stay home. Now that we’ve been traveling more, this is time that I get a chance to slow down and think about next year’s travels.

While children dreamed of Christmas morning, I was dreaming about where we are going in 2025. Over the last few years, we have done a great job of building up our point balances in a variety of programs, and that opens up a lot of possibilities for our 2025 travels.

It has been tempting to think of places in South America or Asia, but right now, we really love going to Europe. Even though it can be a challenging distance to fly, it’s still close enough that a seven to ten day trip isn’t dominated by flights and the accompanying jet lag. The infrastructure of subways, high speed rail and airports makes getting around in Europe without renting a car easy.

Europe is beginning to feel like an easy destination, where I don’t have to worry too much about how to get around, where to stay or for that matter the language barrier, since so many Europeans speak English well. Plus, we have so much left to see in Europe. Because of that, we have three trips to Europe in 2025 in various stages of planning.

Redemptions Galore

I went on a bit of a booking spree in December. It started with me noticing a great deal on an American Airlines flight to Nice at the perfect time for the UTMB Nice Cote d’Azur Ultramarathons. I wanted to do the 54 kilometer trail race, but I also wanted to make sure that I could get a decent price on a flight before I committed to it. We booked the way there from Moline for only 19,000 American Airlines miles and $11 each. Getting home wasn’t quite as affordable as going to Nice, so I ended up booking a flight out of Dublin, Ireland instead for 19,000 American Airlines miles and $47 in taxes.

That meant we needed to book a flight from Nice to Dublin which we were able to secure on Aer Lingus for a 6,500 Aer Lingus Avios and $37 each. We transferred Amex Membership Rewards points to Aer Lingus Avios at a 1:1 ratio to acquire the necessary Avios. So in the end, for Jenn and I to fly to Nice from Moline and then on to Dublin for a couple days and then back to Moline, cost us 76,000 American Airlines miles, 13,000 Amex Membership Reward points and $190 in cash.

In November, we had booked a flight for Jenn and I and our two kids Alex and Emma from Chicago to Porto, Portugal for 48,000 Virgin Atlantic miles transferred from 35,000 Chase Ultimate Reward points and $702 in taxes and fees.

We did however, need to get back so we booked 4 flights from Madrid to Chicago for 88,000 Iberia Avios and $512 dollars in taxes and fees. Those points were transferred from American Express Membership Reward points and we used 50,700 Capital One Venture miles at one cent per point to wipe out all but $5 of the taxes and fees.

So in two months we booked four flights from Chicago to Porto, four flights from Madrid to Chicago, two flights from Moline to Nice, two flights from Nice to Dublin and two flights from Dublin to Moline. These flights in total cost us 101,000 Amex Membership Reward points, 76,000 American Airlines miles, 50,700 Capital One Venture miles, 35,000 Chase Ultimate Reward points and $897 in cash. I was able to redeem $875 in cash back to help out with the cash for taxes and fees, so out of pocket these flights cost us a grand total of $23. I’m not mad about that at all.

The cash value for the flights from Chicago to Porto were $433 each on KLM. The cash value for the flights from Madrid to Chicago on Iberia was a shockingly high $901 each. The whole Moline to Nice to Dublin to Moline itinerary had a cash value of $1,253 each. The grand total for all of that would have been $7,842 so to only fork over $23 isn’t bad. The 262,700 points and miles we used ended up netting us over 2.6 cents per point in value which is way above what they are actually valued at, so we did a tremendous job of redeeming those points.

A Couple of Bonuses

The $875 in cash back didn’t appear out of thin air. I happened to finally get my $750 sign up bonus for hitting the required $6,000 in spend in the first five months of opening my US Bank Triple Cash card. I actually spent a little over $6,400 and the total cash back was over $850. That meant I got around 13.3% cash back for all of that spend on the Triple Cash over the first 4 months. That’s pretty good, I’ll take it.

Jenn also hit the signup bonus that she was working on. She signed up for the Citi Strata Premier card, which had a 75,000 Thank You point bonus after spending $4,000 in the first 3 months.

This leaves us with no current credit card signup bonuses we are working on, so I’ll have to make a decision about how I’m going to go about building up our points balances after using so many in the last couple of months.

Never Forget Those Credits

I’m supposed to be an “expert”, right? Well, I was listening to a podcast (It was probably Frequent Miler on the Air), and they mentioned that you need to make sure to use up the credits that were expiring at the end of the year. One of the credits that they mentioned was that many Delta Airlines credit cards have hotel credits that can be used once a year. I knew Jenn had a Delta Airlines Business Gold card and so I checked out the credit. Sure enough, there is a $150 annual hotel credit if you book the hotel though Delta Stays.

We used the credit to do a short trip to Iowa City for an Iowa Hawkeye Women’s Basketball game – Go Hawks! We also use this as an opportunity to use up the $50 semi-annual Resy credit that comes with my American Express Gold card.

This was a huge reminder to me to make sure that I not only understand all of the benefits of the credit cards we have, but to actually use them. Most travel credit cards with annual fees will have some benefits or credits that will expire if you don’t use them. It’s important to remember to use those, or you’re not getting the full benefit of a card you’re paying for.

On to THe POint Check!

We didn’t stray too much from the cards that we were working on for a bonus this month. Most of the spending that we did on cards not earning a signup bonus was on recurring charges like utilities, insurance, streaming services, etc. The good news is that you can get a pretty good return on that spend and we were able to get a fairly impressive 7.1% return on all of those recurring charges last month. I’ll take it.

Card UsedSpendPoints EarnedPoint ValuePoints Per $Return on Spend
Ink Cash$4632,317$47.505.010.3%
Wyndham Business Earner$4502,591$28.505.86.3%
Venture$345690$12.772.03.7%
Total$1,2585,598$88.764.47.1%
This month’s spending not devoted to earning a signup bonus

Besides the spending listed above, I also spent a little over $2,200 on my US Bank Triple Cash card earning $37 in cash back as well as the $750 sign up bonus. Jenn spent a little over $2,800 on her Citi Strata Premier card and earned almost 5,600 Citi Thank You points as well as the 75,000 point bonus on that card.

After earning two bonuses and having a whole lot of points redeemed for flights, we were left with:

  • 199,600 American Express Membership Rewards Points
  • 176,700 Chase Ultimate Reward Points
  • 142,300 IHG Points
  • 113,900 Citi Thank You Points
  • 99,700 American Airlines Miles
  • 71,900 Marriott Bonvoy Points
  • 49,700 Wyndham Points
  • 19,600 Hyatt Points
  • 5,100 Delta Miles
  • 2,700 United Miles
  • $105 in Cash Back

According to the valuations published by The Points Guy, the total value of our points, miles and cash back is $12,950. That is a significant drop from November when the total was worth $15,600, but that’s fine. We are using those points wisely and have all of the flights for two trips to Europe out of the way. I just need to book a summer trip and all of our plans are ready for 2025. It’s going to be a fun year.

Points Check November 2024

Posted on by David Cox

November was a pretty good month for us. Why? Well we were in Italy for a couple weeks of it. Italy is a magical place where climate, landscape, food, culture and history all come together to make an incredible place to visit. There is no doubt why it is one of the most visited countries in the world and it did not disappoint.

We stayed in Florence, Venice and Rome and we also had a nice day trip to Cinque Terre. Rome and Venice were repeats for us. Rome is fine, I’m sure we will visit again, but I’m amazed by how much we’ve enjoyed Venice. Before we went the first time, I thought Venice would feel extremely touristy. It turned out to be quite different than I imagined. It really felt more authentic than the other places we visited. That being said, I think we spent more time on the side streets away from the tourist traps than the other cities we visited. It’s a reminder to us to actively get away from the main tourist areas of a city.

I’m determined to revisit Cinque Terre, hopefully for a few days. I’d love to hike the trail between the five towns and really spend some time exploring each of them. A day trip just wasn’t enough to fully appreciate Cinque Terre. As far as Florence is concerned, it’s the most beautiful city I’ve visited thus far, but even during the off-peak travel season, it seemed overrun with tourists. I might have appreciated Florence more if we would have wandered out of the main tourist areas.

A Couple of Redemptions

We have three trips planned for next year. The first is a spring break trip to spend a week on the Portuguese route of the Camino de Santiago de Compostella. The second trip is a summer trip where we haven’t determined locations or dates. The third is a trip to Nice France to participate in a UTMB trail running event where Jenn and our friends Bill and Theresa will be doing the 22 kilometer race and I will be participating in the 54 kilometer race.

In November, we started the planning of these trips by booking a flight from Chicago to Porto. Virgin Atlantic was charging 12,000 miles and $175 per ticket to book the flight but with a 40% transfer bonus from Chase it ended up costing us 35,000 Chase Ultimate Reward points and around $700 for four tickets.

In cash, those flights would have cost $433 each. That means that we ended up getting a little over $1000 value for those 35,000 Ultimate Rewards points. That works out to 2.9 cents per point value, when Chase Ultimate Rewards points are typically valued at 2 cents per point so I’m pretty happy with the redemption.

We also used 38,000 Capital One miles to wipe out the cost of some train tickets from our trip to Italy. This isn’t the best use of Capital One miles, because we just get one cent per point on reimbursement for travel purchases. However, my goal is to use all of Jenn’s Capital One miles so she can cancel her Venture Card and then I will apply for one. Capital One allows people to get a bonus every four years so I think with the two of us working together, the smart thing is for us to alternate every two years who is carrying a Venture Card. That will allow us to maximize signup bonuses for Venture cards.

Barclays Aviator Red Bonus

I had one signup bonus hit in November. I received the 70,000 American Airlines mile bonus for signing up with the Barclays Aviator Red card, which is scheduled to no longer be with Barclays in 2026. This is part of an exclusive deal between American Airlines and Citibank, making Citibank the exclusive bank of all of the American Airlines credit cards moving forward. Customers who hold American Airlines cards issued by Barclays will probably be transferred to Citibank and I would assume that the Aviator Red card will no longer be taking new applicants. Therefore if you if you want sign up for the Aviator Red card, the clock is ticking, and I would assume that some time soon, Barclays will no longer be taking new applications.

On to the Point Check

I’ve been working on a signup bonus for my US Bank Triple Cash card and I had some issues with it that really boils down to me not paying attention to what I was doing. Without getting into the boring details of it, I’m an idiot and I ended up having to get new credit cards issued, with the correct business name on it. This happened right before we went to Europe, so I basically wasn’t using the card for most of the November billing period.

Card UsedSpendPoints EarnedPoint ValuePoints Per $Return on Spend
Amex Business Gold$8891401$28.021.63.1%
Amex Gold$8172,148$42.962.65.3%
Venture$7521,504$27.822.03.7%
Citibusiness AAdvantage$698698$11.171.01.6%
Ink Cash$4592,298$47.115.010.3%
Wyndham Business Earner$4222,288$25.175.46.0%
Total$4,04610,337$182.252.64.5%
This month’s spending not devoted to earning a signup bonus

My spending primarily got put on my Amex Gold and the Citibusiness AAdvantange, where they didn’t take American Express, which was in a lot of places in Italy. It wasn’t really ideal, and that’s why my non-bonus spend only returned a disappointing 4.5% last month. I ended up spending less than $500 on my Triple Cash card and earned about $8 in cash back.

Jenn has been working on her bonus for her Citi Strata Premier card and spent less than $1,500, earning over 2,500 Citi Thank You points.

Between the points earned this month and the redemptions the total value of our points went down slightly. We finished the month with:

  • 298,200 American Express Membership Rewards Points
  • 175,700 American Airlines Miles
  • 174,300 Chase Ultimate Reward Points
  • 142,300 IHG Points
  • 71,900 Marriott Bonvoy Points
  • 48,900 Capital One Venture Miles
  • 47,100 Wyndham Points
  • 19,600 Hyatt Points
  • 5,000 Delta Skymiles
  • 2,700 United Miles
  • $227 in Cash Back

All of these miles, when using the Points Guy’s valuations, add up to around $15,600. That should give me plenty of room to do all of the travel planning that I need to do for 2025. That’s the fun stuff, I can’t wait!

Points Check October 2024

Posted on by David Cox

Much of our time in October was spent preparing for our trip to Italy. Our trip included our good friends Bill and Theresa and Jenn’s Parents. None of them had been to Italy before and we wanted to make sure that they had a great time. I spent a decent amount of time researching places to visit, things to eat, train tickets, etc.

Meanwhile, Jenn spent a good deal of the month making ensuring that our kids had everything they needed to survive while we were gone. Emma and Alex are 19 and 15, respectively and they are definitely at the age where leaving them for another continent is questionable. I am, however, a firm believer that giving children challenges is a great way to turn them into functioning adults.

I can tell you that Emma passed this challenge with flying colors. She was not only responsible for taking care of Alex while she was gone, but she also was working, going to school and taking care of Jenn’s Parents’ dog. On top of that, she was coaching a youth basketball team. She took care of all of that and made sure that our house didn’t turn into a scene from Lord of the Flies. We couldn’t be prouder of her.

Citi Strata Premier Card

Right before we left for Italy, Jenn applied for, and her application was accepted for the Citi Strata Premier card. This is Citibank’s premier card and it’s a pretty good one. It has a $95 annual fee and has some pretty good bonus categories.

  • 10x on Hotels, Rental Cars, and Attractions booked through the CitiTravel.com
  • 3x on Groceries
  • 3x on Restaurants
  • 3x on Gas and EV Charging stations
  • 3x on Flights and Other Hotel Purchases
  • 1x on Everything Else

Getting 3x on groceries, restaurants and gas means means the cardholder can get 3x on a large portion of their spending without worrying about using one card for dining, and one card for gas, etc. It is a great credit card for people who don’t want to think too hard about points and miles.

This card currently has a 75,000 point welcome offer when the cardholder spends $4,000 within 3 months. Citi points are valued at 1.8 cents per point by The Points Guy, so that bonus is worth $1,350. In order to get that 1.8 cents per point value, you would need to use one of Citi’s transfer partners, including some of my favorites like Air France/KLM flying blue and Avianca Lifemiles.

It has a $100 credit on a hotel purchase of $500 or more using the Citi Travel site. It also has some trip protections and no foreign transaction fees. Overall, it’s a really solid travel credit card and especially good for people who don’t want to manage multiple cards.

Ok, On to the Point Check

This was not a great month for spending on non-bonus cards. We’ve gotten a little lazy about what card to use. For the vast majority of the month, Jenn didn’t have a card where she was working on a signup bonus. She is usually the one yelling at me that we need to sign up for a new card, because she can’t stand not working towards a signup bonus. Because she didn’t have a signup bonus to work towards, she just used her IHG Premier and her Amex Business Gold, neither of which were particularly great choices.

Card UsedSpendPoints EarnedPoint ValuePoints Per $Return on Spend
Amex Business Gold$1,1431,310$26.201.12.3%
IHG Premier$8142,695$13.483.31.7%
Ink Cash$5612,783$57..055.010.2%
Venture$372745$13.782.03.7%
Wyndham Business $2841,588$17.475.66.2%
Total$3,1749,121$127.982.94.0%
This month’s spending not devoted to earning a signup bonus

Because of that, the return on spend on cards where there wasn’t a signup bonus was 4%. I like to keep that number above 5% and lately we’ve been over 6%. Note to self – make sure Jenn has a signup bonus to work on.

Besides the spending on the above chart, I spent over $3,200 on my US Bank Triple Cash card, earning a little under $50 in cash back. That puts me more than halfway to the $6,000 in required spend to earn the $750 bonus on that card.

That meant that we finished the month with:

  • 296,700 Amex Membership Reward Points
  • 217,000 Chase Ultimate Reward Points
  • 141,700 IHG Points
  • 104,800 American Airlines Miles
  • 85,400 Capital One Venture Miles
  • 71,900 Marriott Bonvoy Points
  • 30,400 Citi Thank You Points
  • 11,300 Hyatt Points
  • 5,000 Delta Miles
  • 2,700 United Miles
  • $220 Cash Back

Using the Points Guy’s valuations, all of this totals to an all-time high for us of $15,800 in points, miles and cash back. We have some pretty big travel plans for 2025, so we’re going to need a big stash of points available. Hopefully I see some Black Friday deals so I can lock in some plane tickets!

Points Check September 2024

Posted on by David Cox

September was a fairly normal month for us. No traveling this month other than Jenn and I did spend a night in fabulous Cedar Rapids, Iowa at the luxurious Residence Inn. I know that sounds funny, but we had an expiring Marriott hotel certificate. Unfortunately, we just didn’t find a use for it until it was close to expiring.

The funny thing was we just didn’t want to drive too far for a one night stay, and the only places that seemed interesting enough to drive to within a couple of hours was Cedar Rapids and Iowa City. It was the day of the annual Iowa Hawkeyes/Iowa State Cyclone football game so finding a good use for that hotel certificate anywhere near Iowa City on that weekend was tricky, since the hotels were pretty full.

We ended up staying in a hotel that frankly was a little run down, but it was fine and we had a little night out in Cedar Rapids. It was fun to visit a city nearby that we hadn’t had a chance to experience yet. It was also a good reminder to stay on top of those free night certificates.

Rebooking a Positioning Flight

We had a couple of flights booked to go to and from Chicago O’Hare from Moline at the beginning and end of our trip to Italy. With the new ability to transfer points to Alaskan Airlines through Hawaiian Airlines from American Express, we rebooked the exact same American Airlines flights we had already booked. I know that sounds nuts, but I swear it’s all perfectly logical, and I explained my reasoning and the method in a previous post.

The flights now cost a grand total of 18,000 Amex Membership Reward points and $72 instead of the original 30,000 American Airlines miles and $22. Since I really value American Airlines miles, I was glad to have those returned.

Keeping It Loosey-Goosey

I’ve been spending a decent amount of my time getting ready for our trip to Italy. When we went to Europe last summer, I made sure to book all of our train tickets, museums and tours in advance. That was necessary, in my opinion, during high season. This time we’re going during November, which I’m hoping means that we can be a little bit more relaxed about our schedule. It is a bit of a gamble, but I think it will pay off.

The way I see it, if we plan to visit the Colosseum one day and the Vatican a different day, and it rains on the day we go to the Colosseum, that’s not great. By keeping it open, we can watch the weather forecast and visit the Vatican on the day it rains and the Colosseum on the day it doesn’t. Unfortunately, by not buying skip-the-line tickets ahead of time, it might mean that we’re waiting in line. With it being off-peak, however, I don’t think it will be too bad. That being said, I’m not certain what off-peak season is like so I’ll just cross my fingers that we’re not making a horrible mistake.

Instead of tediously planning out a bunch of activities, I’m just keeping a list of things we can do, with the thought that we can make those decisions on a day to day basis. Hopefully that will turn out to be the best approach.

What’s The Value of a Hotel Certificate?

Jenn earned her bonus for her IHG Premier card this month which was 5 free night certificates worth up to 60,000 IHG points each. What does that really mean?

Free night certificates are hard to value. As noted earlier in this post, they’re usually only good for one year and they expire. They also have a maximum value that cannot be exceeded. One thing is almost assured, and that is that we will never redeem any of those certificates for a stay at an IHG property that is charging exactly 60,000 points for a stay. Finding that one hotel room that you need at maximum value is very close to impossible.

So what is the actual value for those certificates? For some people, they would try to maximize the value of those certificates by searching for the best hotel and if they have to go out of their way to maximize the value of that certificate, they will. We really use certificates because we need to stay somewhere, often for just one night, and that might mean on a stopover on a long flight. The most important thing to me is location and Jenn likes a free breakfast. Considering how we use certificates, the chances of us getting full value out of our certificates is basically zero.

That being said, we already used one of these certificates to book the Kimpton De Witt in Amsterdam. We have a 25 hour stopover in Amsterdam on our way to Rome and this checked a lot of boxes for us. It was a short train ride from the airport, right by the train station and downtown by the canals. We were going to have to leave for the airport too early for breakfast, so the fact that they didn’t have free breakfast is irrelevant. This hotel is going for 47,000 points per night, so we used almost 80% of the full value of the certificate. Honestly, that is about as good as you can reasonably expect. The cash value of the hotel room was $302, so I’m not mad about the free night.

For the sake of simplicity, I just value certificates at half of their maximum value. So if I can get a hotel room worth more than 30,000 IHG points with one of these certificates, I’ll be happy. With IHG points being worth around half a cent each, I would say the sign up bonus that Jenn earned was 150,000 points at .5 cents or $750. Considering the first certificate we used saved us $300, I think we’re already ahead.

US Bank Triple Cash

I signed up for the US Bank Triple Cash Rewards Business Card. This is a card with no annual fee. It earns 3% cash back on gas, EV charging stations, office supply stores, cell phone providers and restaurants. It earns 1% cash back on everything else. There is also a $100 per year credit for recurring software purchases, like Quickbooks.

The signup bonus is $750 after spending $6,000 in 6 months. I’m always a big fan of having some extra time to complete a spending requirement, so 6 months is great. This bonus will give us a little cash back to pay for some of those annoying taxes and surcharges when booking award flights.

American Airlines Aviator Red

I also signed up for the American Airlines Aviator Red card, under the assumption that it was going to disappear and this was my last chance to get the 70,000 American Airlines miles bonus for just one purchase and a paying the $99 annual fee. It’s just too easy to pass up. I already met the requirements now and I’m just waiting for those sweet, sweet AA miles to show up in my account. For more information about that card, read my post.

On To The Point Check

We did a pretty good job this last month continuing to use the bonus categories on some of our existing credit cards which led to a total of 6.3% return on all of our spend not devoted to earning a signup bonus.

Card UsedSpendPoints EarnedPoint ValuePoints Per $Return on Spend
Amex Gold$5921,862$37.283.16.3%
Ink Cash$5582,772$56.835.010.2%
Venture$5471,094$20.242.03.7%
Wyndham Business $3521,955$21.515.66.1%
Citi $297667$12.012.24.0%
Amex Business Gold$190546$10.922.95.8%
Total$2,5368,898$158.783.56.3%
This month’s spending not devoted to earning a signup bonus

Aside from the spending in the above chart, Jenn spent around $4,300 on her IHG Premier card earning her 19,000 IHG points and the signup bonus of 5 free night certificates worth up to 60,000 points per night. I spent a little over $500 on my US Bank Triple Cash card earning around $13 in cash back. At the end of the month, we were left with:

  • 293,000 Amex Membership Rewards Points
  • 214,000 Chase Ultimate Reward Points
  • 139,000 IHG Points (includes 4 free night certificates)
  • 104,800 American Airlines Miles
  • 84,700 Capital One Venture Miles
  • 71,900 Marriott Bonvoy Points (Includes 2 free night certificates)
  • 43,000 Wyndham Points
  • 30,400 Citi Thank You Points
  • 11,300 Hyatt Points (includes a free night certificate)
  • 5,000 Delta Skymiles
  • 1,900 United Miles
  • $170 in cash back

Using the valuations from the Points Guy, those points are worth a grand total of nearly $15,600. We’re going to need them, because we have big plans for 2025.