September was a fun month. We took a trip with our friends Bill and Theresa to Nice, France, to compete in the UTMB Nice Côte d’Azur ultramarathons. Obviously, that wasn’t the only reason we went there. We also took a day trip to Monaco and spent quite a lot of time walking the beautiful streets of the old town of Nice.
The Nice area is stunning with deep blue Mediterranean waters and marinas filled with massive yachts. This area is where the Alps meet the Mediterranean, creating amazing coastline views from hundreds of feet above the water. It’s simply beautiful.
Beaches along the Quai des Etats Unis taken from Colline du Chateau
We stayed in the old town of Nice, which is a tightly packed group of old buildings with restaurants and shops along narrow streets. It’s pretty touristy, but it’s also a very nice place to walk around. The old town is actually a fairly large area, which makes its winding, narrow streets easy to get lost in.
Nighttime on the narrow streets of Old Nice
We also spent a couple of days in Dublin on the way home. During our time in Dublin, we visited some classic Irish pubs and walked through Grafton Street and the Temple Bar district. We just happened to be there right after the Pittsburgh Steelers played the Minnesota Vikings in Dublin, so there were a ton of NFL fans and bars decorated to draw in those fans. It felt a little too much like being in the US.
The Norseman in the Temple Bar district decorated in Minnesota Vikings colors for the Dublin NFL game
My favorite stop in Dublin was the Jameson Distillery. I thought they did a fantastic job explaining the history of the distillery as well as the process of making their whiskey. They also, of course, had samples of their products to try along the tour.
No Real News
This may be hard to believe, but I’ve lost some of my desire to aggressively accumulate points through signup bonuses. Every new account adds complexity to what I need to keep track of, and I’m probably going to close a few accounts soon that have annual fees that we don’t use. Those were cards where the intention was to get the signup bonus and cancel them anyway.
The other reason why I haven’t been as aggressive is that we don’t have a ton of travel planned. We have a half-booked Spring Break trip to the Canary Islands, but we already have the points to book the rest of it. We thought we might take it a little easier next year, because our youngest child is going to be a Senior in high school and we don’t want to miss anything. We were hoping to do some camping next summer, but that doesn’t require any points and miles.
What that really means is that we’ll probably take advantage of great offers when they pop up so we can accumulate some points for later, but it will most likely be at a slower pace. Once Alex goes off to college, though, Jenn and I can finally take vacations whenever we want without worrying about missing anything. That sounds amazing!
On to the Point Check!
Most of our spending that isn’t devoted to a signup bonus looks pretty solid; the one exception to that is the spend on the Sapphire Preferred. However, I can explain. Those were charges that were done overseas, where bonus categories are not really a thing. The Sapphire Preferred is a pretty good card for foreign transactions, because it’s accepted just about anywhere (I’ve had issues using Amex in Europe) and it doesn’t have foreign transaction fees. Overall, it’s a good overseas choice, even if the points earned there aren’t great. Overall, we managed a return of 6.6% on that spending, and I’m happy with anything that is above 5%.
Card Used
Spend
Points Earned
Point Value
Points Per $
Return on Spend
Amex Gold
$991
3,164
$63.28
3.2
6.4%
Ink Cash
$716
3583
$73.45
5.0
10.3%
Sapphire Preferred
$522
522
$10.70
1.0
2.0%
Wyndham Business Earner
$513
3,063
$33.69
6.0
6.6%
Total
$2,742
10,332
$181.13
3.8
6.6%
This month’s spending not devoted to earning a signup bonus
The only card that we had where we were working toward a signup bonus was Jenn’s Citi AAdvantage Platinum card. Jenn spent just under $1,100 on that card, earning her a little over 1,700 American Airlines AAdvantage miles. She still has around $2,000 left to finish her spend to earn the 80,000 point signup bonus.
At the end of the months, we were left with:
264,400 IHG Points
239,600 Chase Ultimate Reward Points
135,700 Amex Membership Rewards Points
90,600 Wyndham Points
79,100 Alaska Miles
37,700 American Airlines Miles
33,400 Marriott Bonvoy Points
33,300 Citi Thank You Points
16,700 United Miles
9,300 Hyatt Points
1,500 Delta Miles
$133 Cash Back
According to The Points Guy’s Valuations, the total of those points, miles, and cash back is worth around $12,400. That is up from last month’s total of $12,000. We need to book flights back from Tenerife and some hotel stays, but after that, we don’t have much to plan for, so I expect our point totals will grow a lot in the next 12 months or so.
August was a month when we spent considerable time preparing for our trip to Nice, France, at the end of September. Unlike most trips, this didn’t mean finalizing trip details or finding places we would like to visit. Instead, it meant training – lots and lots of painful training.
Our trip is based around participating in the Nice Côte d’Azur UTMB Ultramarathons. I will be doing the 55K, and Jenn is doing the 23K. This means that we are spending a lot of time on our feet running and preparing ourselves physically for this challenge. On the last day of the month, I completed a 31-mile training run, which destroyed me physically for about three days, so this seems like a fantastic idea.
Besides that, we used some of our points and miles to finalize the details of our trip as well as beginning to book a spring break trip. I hadn’t planned to start booking anything yet for spring break, but I came across a fantastic flight deal, and I believe in booking something when you have the opportunity.
The Beginnings of a Trip to Tenerife
After we hiked part of the Portuguese Route of the Camino de Santiago last spring break, I promised our kids a more laid-back beach vacation for the next spring break. For a couple of years, I’ve been thinking about visiting the Canary Islands during spring break, because unlike Florida, Mexico, and the Caribbean, March is the offseason for them. The weather should still be great, but there shouldn’t be crowds, and the prices should be cheaper. I really wanted to fly into Tenerife South Airport, because that is the center of beach tourism for the islands.
When I was looking for flights, it quickly became obvious that it would be cheaper to fly to somewhere in Europe and then get a separate flight from Europe to Tenerife. What we discovered was that we could fly from our home airport in Moline to London Heathrow for 19,000 American Airlines miles and $5.60. Then we could fly British Airways from London Gatwick to Tenerife South for 13,750 British Airways Avios (transferred from Chase Ultimate Rewards) and $1 each.
That meant that we could fly for a total of 32,750 points and $6.60 each, which was considerably less than the more than 40,000 points each I was seeing for similar flights on one itinerary. The bonus was that we were able to schedule a couple of nights in London, which should allow us to enjoy a taste of England while we’re getting over jet lag.
We had Emma use some of her American Airlines miles to book her flight, so we only needed to pay for 3 of the American Airlines flights, but we did need to pay for all 4 of the British Airways flights. Altogether, we spent 57,000 American Airlines miles and 55,000 Chase Ultimate Reward points transferred to British Airways to book the flight to Tenerife.
Finalizing our Trip to Nice and Dublin
After 5 nights in Nice, we will move on to Dublin for a few nights before heading home. We hadn’t, however, booked any lodging in Dublin. Booking a hotel in Dublin for a reasonable number of points was difficult. The best option was to book the Hyatt Centric Dublin, a category 5 hotel with 17,000 points per night. Because it was a category 5, I couldn’t use my category 1-4 certificate. I ended up using 34,000 Hyatt points, 9,000 from my Hyatt account, and 25,000 Ultimate Reward Points transferred to Hyatt.
This will be the fifth Hyatt brand we’ve stayed at on my Hyatt account, which means that I will hit my first Hyatt Brand Explorer reward and will earn a category 1-4 certificate with this stay. That takes a little bit of the sting away from having to use so many points for this redemption.
Citi AAdvantage Platinum Select
Jenn applied for the Citi AAdvantage Platinum Select World Elite Mastercard. That name is way too long, but it comes with an elevated 80,000 AAdvantage mile bonus after she spends $3,500 in the first three months.
It earns 2x on gas, dining, and American Airlines purchases. It has a $95 annual fee, but it is waived the first year. There really isn’t much to be excited about with this card other than the signup bonus. It does give the cardholder free checked bags and priority boarding, which is pretty standard for an airline credit card.
She signed up for this card in order to boost her American Airlines miles balance. We’ve been using American a lot more, and we find it to be extremely reasonable for flights out of our local small airport in Moline.
On to the Point Check!
Without having a signup bonus that I was working on, our spending on our regular cards was a little higher than normal, and some of it was not ideal. We used my Sapphire Preferred card on categories that weren’t earning a lot of points. In addition, I used my Citi Custom Cash on camping fees, wondering whether or not it would code as one of the 5x categories, which it did not. Oh well, it was worth a try.
I usually say that I’m happy if we earn a 5% return on our spending on cards where we weren’t earning a signup bonus, but I feel like we were a little sloppy this month, and we could’ve done better. It seems like lately we’ve been able to earn 6% to 8% on that spending, so I know we can do better than that.
Card Used
Spend
Points Earned
Point Value
Points Per $
Return on Spend
Amex Gold
$1260
3,351
$67.02
2.7
5.3%
Sapphire Preferred
$890
980
$20.09
1.1
2.3%
Wyndham Business Earner
$730
4,218
$46.40
5.8
6.4%
Ink Cash
$466
2,335
$47.87
5.0
10.3%
Citi Custom Cash
$364
364
$6.55
1.0
1.9%
Total
$3,710
11,248
$187.93
3.0
5.1%
This month’s spending not devoted to earning a signup bonus
Besides the spending listed above, Jenn spent a little under $2,200 on her IHG Premier Business card, earning 7,000 IHG points. It also meant she reached the second bonus threshold and an additional 60,000 points. That card had a weird double bonus, which earned 140,000 points after $4,000 in spending and another 60,000 points after an additional $5,000 in spending.
All of that leaves us with:
261,800 IHG points
235,500 Chase Ultimate Reward Points
129,000 Amex Membership Rewards Points
87,500 Wyndham Points
79,100 Alaska Miles
36,000 American Airlines Miles
33,400 Marriott Bonvoy Points
32,700 Citi Thank You Points
16,700 United Miles
7,800 Hyatt Points
1,500 Delta Miles
$133 in Cash Back
All of that together is worth, according to the Points Guy’s valuations, a little over $12,000, which is down more than $2,000 from the previous month. Most of that is due to the flights booked to Tenerife. We keep using these points to book some amazing vacations, so the dip doesn’t bother me at all. We seem to be constantly earning and burning those points, which is how it should be done. That being said, I’ll worry about my points totals later because I have a race to train for.
July was a fun month. Jenn and I took separate vacations. While Jenn and Emma went on a girls’ trip to Munich and Dublin with Jenn’s sister and our niece, I took our son Alex to Berlin and Dresden. It was a little strange being on separate vacations, but with us both being in Europe, texting our adventures back and forth was fun.
Alex and I wanted to do a lot of hiking in Saxon Switzerland National Park in Germany along the Czech border. Unfortunately, it rained a lot while we were there, and we only got to hike for a couple of days. Because of that, we spent more time in Dresden than we originally planned, which turned out to be great. I absolutely love Dresden and hope to return someday.
The girls enjoyed their trip as well. Between the two cities they visited, two of the girls preferred Dublin and two preferred Munich. That just goes to show that everyone has different travel preferences. I’ll get a chance to spend a little over a day in Dublin in late September, so I’ll get to see what I think soon enough.
Chase Sapphire Preferred Bonus
Back in May, I signed up for the Chase Sapphire Preferred card, which at the time had a 100,000 point bonus. This month, I finally finished the required spending on the card and received the bonus.
In the meantime, Chase has “refreshed” their Chase Sapphire Reserve card, which is the big brother of the Preferred card. The big news was that the annual fee jumped to $795 per year. At one point, this card had an annual fee of $450. A few years ago, it was increased to $550, and now with this refresh, it’s an eye-popping $795.
Each time the annual fee is increased, there are new benefits and credits added, which theoretically add value. Obviously, if you don’t use those credits, they are worthless. The list of credits is quite long, but most involve travel. In fact, the card seems to be designed for people who are very frequent travelers. It gives 8x on travel purchased through the Chase travel portal, 4x on flights and hotels not purchased through the portal, 3x on all restaurant spend, and 1x on all other spend. It has great airport lounge access benefits as well.
By contrast, the Chase Sapphire Preferred has a $95 annual fee and gets 5x on the Chase travel portal, 2x on other travel, 3x on dining, 3x on groceries, and 3x on streaming services, and 1x on everything else. There really aren’t any benefits to speak of on this card, except for the ability to transfer points to a variety of hotel and airline programs.
Personally, I’m glad I went for the Chase Sapphire Preferred. It’s a great choice for normal people. 3x on dining, groceries, and streaming services are categories in which most people spend a significant amount of money. There are good bonus categories on the Reserve card as well, but they are mostly related to travel, which is great if you travel a lot, but for people who don’t, the Preferred card makes much more sense.
Either way, it’s going to take a lot to convince me to spend $800 on an annual fee, and right now, I’m not interested.
On to the Point Check!
Our spending was a little higher than normal, mostly due to being on vacation. As much as I obviously try to reduce our vacation spending on flights and lodging, there really isn’t too much you can do about things like train tickets, bus tickets, and dining out. There’s no way I’m going to Germany without eating döner, and I’m certainly not denying Alex his currywurst. For some reason, they won’t let me pay for my döner box with Wyndham points.
We did a pretty good job of using the bonus categories of some of our credit cards, which meant that we earned a 7.7% return on spending on cards that we weren’t trying to earn a bonus. I’m pretty happy with any number over 5%, so I’m thrilled with that number.
Card Used
Spend
Points Earned
Point Value
Points Per $
Return on Spend
Amex Gold
$533
1797
$35.94
3.4
6.8%
Ink Cash
$449
2,247
$46.06
5.0
10.2%
Wyndham Business Earner
$410
2,242
$24.66
5.5
6.0%
Total
$1,392
6,286
$106.67
4.5
7.7%
This month’s spending not devoted to earning a signup bonus
In addition to the spending on cards where we aren’t working on a bonus, I spent a little less than $3,900 on my Chase Sapphire Preferred card, earning over 7,600 Chase Ultimate Reward Points. That also put me over the required spend to earn the sign-up bonus of 100,000 points. Jenn spent a little over $2,100 on her IHG Business Card and earned almost 8,900 IHG points. She had previously earned the 140,000 point signup bonus for $4,000 spending in 3 months, but she is now just a little more than $2,000 in spending away from earning the additional 60,000 point bonus for spending a total of $9,000 in 6 months.
All of that left us with a total of:
272,100 Chase Ultimate Reward Points
194,600 IHG points
125,500 Amex Membership Rewards Points
93,000 American Airlines Miles
83,300 Wyndham Points
79,100 Alaska Miles
33,400 Marriott Bonvoy Points
32,700 Citi Thank You Points
16,800 Hyatt Points
16,700 United Miles
1,500 Delta Miles
$133 in Cash Back
According to the Points Guy’s valuations, the grand total of those points, miles, and cash back is a little less than $14,200. That is an increase of around $2,600 from the previous month, mostly due to the Chase Sapphire Preferred bonus. That’s a pretty massive jump in just a month. Our total points values have increased for the last few months, so hopefully, we’re really starting to stockpile some points in programs that will really allow us to book some great vacations in the future.
In a widely expected move, American Airlines is now a transfer partner from Citi Thank You Points. Rumors have been circulating since it was announced that American Airlines was phasing out its Barclay’s credit cards and signing an exclusive deal with Citibank. Finally, Citibank has added American Airlines to its Thank You Points transfer page, making those points much more valuable.
How This Transfer Partnership Works
People who hold a Citi Strata Premier, Citi Prestige, or Citi Strata Elite credit card can now transfer Citi Thank You Points to American Airlines AAdvantage Miles at a 1:1 ratio. Adding a coveted transfer partner makes any Citi Thank You Points much more valuable, especially since Citi is the only bank that transfers its points to American Airlines.
In addition, this also means that as long as you hold one of those cards, any points earned with a Citi credit card that earns Thank You Points, such as the Double Cash or Custom Cash, can also become AAdvantage Miles. This is because you can combine your Thank You Points and then transfer them to any of 15 airline partners or 5 hotel partners.
The reason why transferring points is so important is that in many cases, you can book hotels and flights with fewer points when you transfer them to a hotel or airline loyalty program. Even better, if what you’re looking for is actually a better deal to book with points through a travel portal, you have that option as well.
Domestic Airlines are (Mostly) Monogamous
Many international airline programs, like Air France/KLM Flying Blue, Avianca Lifemiles, and Air Canada Aeroplan, are polyamorous, allowing transfer partners from multiple bank points programs. For example, Flying Blue allows transfers from Chase, Citibank, American Express, Capital One, Bilt, and Wells Fargo. This is extremely common for international programs. Even Virgin Atlantic, despite its name, is a bit of a swinger.
Airlines based in the United States aren’t the swinging type; by comparison, they’re mostly monogamous. Delta Airlines only allows transfers from American Express Membership Rewards, American Airlines only allows transfers from Citi, and Alaska Airlines allows transfers from Bilt Rewards.
There are three airlines that, however, that aren’t exclusive. Southwest Airlines and United Airlines allow transfers from both Chase and Bilt, while JetBlue allows transfers from Citi, Chase, and American Express.
Your Airline Preferences Matter
Because of several factors, such as route networks, hub locations, award pricing, or just which airline you prefer, you should earn points that transfer to the airline that works best for you. For example, I know people who absolutely love Southwest Airlines. They fly a ton of flights out of Midway Airport in Chicago, which is an airport that isn’t far from where we live. Unfortunately, we do a lot of our flying to Europe, and Southwest Airlines doesn’t fly to Europe. We’re just not going to use it.
United Airlines flies to Europe and has a great network there, but generally, I find that it takes a lot of United miles to book a flight to Europe. Also, even though they fly out of my small home airport in Moline, the point prices for United flights out of Moline are extremely high.
Delta Skymiles is probably the most popular airline award currency in the world, but I struggle to find good value with Delta. They overcharge for one-way flights, and usually it’s difficult to find competitive pricing for round-trip tickets as well. That being said, I do occasionally find a great deal, and did recently book round-trip tickets in the summer for a little over 40,000 points each to Berlin. Unfortunately, those deals are not the easiest to find, and I don’t consistently find good value with Delta.
American Airlines, however, has a lot of great flights out of our local airport to Europe and some for extremely low prices, in points. In September, we are flying to Nice, France, from our local airport for only 19,000 AAdvantage miles each, and we were able to find a flight home from Dublin for only 19,000 miles as well. I have also seen several flights to Italy, Spain, and England for only 19,000 miles. Overall, it’s just a program that works well for us.
American Airlines AAdvantage – 1.55 cents per point
As you can see, according to the Points Guy, AAdvantage miles are the most valuable of the domestic airline currencies, so having an additional way to earn those miles is a very good thing.
This Will Shift My Focus to Citi
Lately, I’ve been concentrating on earning American Express Membership Reward Points and Chase Ultimate Rewards. That’s because they have excellent ways of earning points, and they have great transfer partners. Both have great ways of accumulating points through sign up bonuses and cards with great earning rates.
For example, we put all our internet and cell phone charges on our Chase Ink Cash card because it earns 5x in those categories. Also, as much as possible, we use our Amex Gold Card for restaurants and grocery stores because they earn 4x in those categories. Those are both great ways to accumulate a lot of points without sign up bonuses.
However, with Citi, I have a Custom Cash card which earns 5x on all spending in your top category, up to $500 in a billing cycle. This means that if you pick a category that you can come close to spending $500 on each month and only use it in that category, you can accumulate 2,500 Citi Thank You points each month without a lot of spending. I haven’t been doing that, however, because I just wasn’t that excited about accumulating Citi Thank You Points.
The partnership with American Airlines changes that. Because AAdvantage miles are very valuable to me, I will be going out of my way to earn Citi Thank You Points so I have points available to transfer to American Airlines.
Current Citi Strata Travel Credit Cards
Now that Citibank has revamped its travel cards, they are currently offering three different credit cards that all earn Citi Thank You Points: one is an entry-level card, one is a travel card, and one is a premium travel card.
Citi Strata Card
This is the entry-level travel card, and it is a pretty good starter card. It has no annual fee and is currently offering a 30,000-point welcome offer if you spend $1,000 in 3 months. For being a no annual fee card, it has tremendous bonus categories including 5x on travel through the Citi Travel Portal, 3x at supermarkets, 3x on gas and EV stations, 3x on a self-selected category, 2x on dining, and 1x everywhere else.
The downside is that it has a limited number of transfer partners (Does not allow transfers to AAdvantage), and those points transfer at a worse ratio. You could however, hold onto those points until you get a Citi credit card with a better transfer ratio, or perhaps transfer those points to a family member who holds a Citi credit card with better transfer options and have them book flights or hotels for you.
Citi Strata Premier
The Citi Strata Premier is a great travel credit card. It has a $95 annual fee and is currently offering a 60,000-point bonus if you spend $4,000 in the first 3 months. It offers 10x on hotels, attractions, and car rentals booked through the Citi Travel Portal, 3x on other air and hotel purchases, 3x on supermarkets, 3x on restaurants, 3x on gas and EV Charging stations, and 1x on everything else.
Unlike the Citi Strata Card, the Citi Strata Premier transfers to all of Citi’s partners at the best transfer rate that Citi offers. This also includes the 1:1 ratio to American Airlines. In addition, the Citi Strata Premier also offers a variety of benefits, including trip delay coverage, trip cancellation, and protection insurance, lost and damaged luggage coverage, and some car rental coverage.
Citi Strata Elite
The Citi Strata Elite is a brand-new premium credit card offering from Citibank with a $595 annual fee. It is currently offering an 80,000 point bonus when you spend $4,000 on the card in the first 3 months. It earns 12x on hotels, car rentals, and attractions booked through the Citi Travel Portal, 6x on air travel through the Citi Travel Portal, 6x on dining on Friday and Saturday nights, 3x on dining other nights, as well as 1.5x on all other purchases.
To compensate for the high annual fee, it offers $300 per year in hotel credits, $200 on an annual splurge credit, $200 Blacklane credit, a Priority Pass Select Membership, 4 American Airlines Admirals Club Lounge passes, as well as a $120 Global Entry or TSA pre-check credit.
My Favorite Strata Card
In my opinion, the Citi Strata Premier Card is the best of this group. The 3x categories of groceries, dining, and gas can help users accumulate a lot of points quickly. It has access to all of the transfer partners that the Citi Strata Elite card does, but with a $95 annual fee instead of a $595 annual fee. Also, I don’t find the credits on the Strata Elite to be enticing enough to pay an extra $500 on an annual fee. The only reason I would consider the Strata Elite is if I were a very frequent flyer, and I used those lounge passes a lot.
Being Strategic about Your Credit Card Choices
The points and miles world is extremely complicated. There are multiple banks with multiple cards, and each comes with different earning rates, benefits, and transfer partners. If you wish to turn all of your everyday purchases into great vacations, it’s important to try to be as strategic as possible.
For travel hackers who are using points to supercharge their travel, they must use the points programs that fit their travel plans the best. That really means working backwards from the destinations that you would like to visit, figuring out the best airlines that service those destinations from where they live, and then trying to figure out the best way to earn points to use with that airline. If American Airlines miles are a good fit for your travel plans, then this new partnership with Citi is a very exciting development.
We’re getting ready to embark on another European adventure, although this time we will be on separate vacations. Jenn is visiting Munich and Dublin with our daughter, her sister, and our niece. That was planned as a girls’ trip to celebrate our niece graduating from High School.
Meanwhile, my son Alex and I will be visiting Dresden and Berlin, and spending a significant amount of time hiking in Saxon Switzerland National Park on the border of Germany and the Czech Republic.
It’s getting a little weird, this being our fourth trip to Europe in three years, since I thought that a European vacation was out of reach for us a decade ago. Knowing how and where we can save money on these trips makes all the difference.
For instance, for Alex and me to go on our trip, the round-trip flight cost $264 in taxes and fuel charges on top of the 81,600 Delta Skymiles. We will be taking Flixbus from the airport to Dresden and then from Dresden to Berlin the following week. Those bus tickets will cost a total of $80. We will spend about $140 for two Deutschland tickets, which will cover all of our public transportation while we are there. That means that our transportation costs are a total of $484.
Knowing that we would spend only a little time in our Airbnb, we rented a small apartment near a train stop in Dresden for $490 for 6 nights. We also have two nights in the Holiday Inn Express Alexanderplatz, where we will use two IHG free night certificates.
That means that, outside of food and activities, we will spend less than $1,000 on the trip. I get a lot of odd looks from people who can’t believe that we can afford to keep going to Europe, but it’s absolutely possible if you know what you’re doing.
IHG Bonus
Jenn earned the first of her bonuses on the IHG One Rewards Premier Business Card. She signed up for the card when there was a 140,000 point bonus after $4,000 in 3 months and an additional 60,000 points after $9,000 spent in 6 months.
IHG isn’t a luxury brand, but it offers many affordable options and has locations worldwide. I’ve especially been pleased with its footprint in Europe. Plenty of hotels are available wherever I look in Europe on the IHG app. Having a stash of IHG points will be nice to have when planning trips in the future.
On to the Point Check!
Most of our spending was done on the two cards for which we are working on signup bonuses. That would be my Chase Sapphire Preferred and Jenn’s IHG Business Card. There was some spending done on cards that we use for recurring billing. We’ve optimized them so that we earn 5x on utilities and 8x on gas with the Wyndham Business Earner card as well as 5x on streaming services and cell phone plans on the Ink Cash. All of that means that for these cards we earned 8.3% back on all spend on the cards listed below – not too bad.
Card Used
Spend
Points Earned
Point Value
Points Per $
Return on Spend
Ink Cash
$502
2,510
$51.46
5.0
10.2%
Wyndham Business Earner
$407
2,234
$24.57
5.5
6.0%
Amex Gold
$165
660
$13.20
4.0
8.0%
Total
1,074
5,404
$89.23
5.0
8.3%
This month’s spending not devoted to earning a signup bonus
In addition to the spending listed above, I also spent a little less than $3,000 on my Chase Sapphire Preferred Card, earning around 4,700 Chase Ultimate Reward points. Jenn spent over $3,100 on her IHG, earning 11,900 IHG points as well as the 140,000 point bonus for spending $4,000 in the first 3 months. If she ends up spending an additional $5,000 over the next 4 months, she will earn an additional 60,000 point bonus.
At the end of the month, we had a grand total of:
185,000 IHG points
161,800 Chase Ultimate Rewards Points
124,600 Amex Membership Rewards Points
93,000 American Airlines Miles
81,100 Wyndham Points
79,100 Alaska Miles
32,300 Citi Thank You Points
16,700 United Miles
15,900 Marriott Bonvoy Points
9,300 Hyatt Points
1,500 Delta Miles
$132 in Cash Back
According to the Points Guy’s valuations, the grand total of those points, miles, and cash back is a little less than $11,600. That is an increase of around $800 from the previous month, as our point totals finally start to recover from the massive amount of point redemptions we made at the end of last year and the beginning of this year. Of course, the most important thing is that we get to enjoy another wonderful vacation.
May wasn’t terribly exciting, but Jenn did join me on a business trip to San Antonio. While I’m not a huge fan of being in Texas during the warmer months, I love the River Walk. What is unique about the River Walk is that San Antonio built a giant flood tunnel and a lock and dam system along the San Antonio River to ensure that the river stays at the same level, regardless of the amount of rain they receive. That allows for the walkway to be only a few inches above the water level, and all of the shops and restaurants can be extremely close to the river. It makes for a unique and beautiful experience, especially at night.
While much of my time was spent at a convention, the evenings allowed us to check out many of the breweries and restaurants in the area. While I love walking around the main commercial area on the River Walk, the restaurants and bars there are expensive and underwhelming. When you get off the main area of River Walk, the food and drink seems to improve dramatically. We had the opportunity to visit my favorite place in San Antonio, Dos Sirenos Brewing, a couple of times when we were there, which made me and my belly, very happy.
Some Hotel Redemptions
My son Alex and I are going to Berlin and Dresden for a week this July. We hope to do a little hiking at Saxon Switzerland National Park and explore both cities. I waited maybe a little too long to book our lodging, but I was able to find a cheap Airbnb along the main train line in Dresden that should mean quick transit to the national park as well as Downtown Dresden. We also used the last two of Jenn’s IHG free-night certificates to book a Holiday Inn in Downtown Berlin.
In addition, we used Jenn’s Marriott free-night certificate, which was about to expire, to book a hotel in Peoria for a quick weekend getaway with our friends Bill and Theresa. While I hate that we almost had a certificate expire, using it for a quick getaway with some good friends is never a bad use of a certificate.
Slow and Steady
I’ve been a pretty big fan of the Wyndham program for a while. One reason is that Jenn’s Wyndham Business Earner card earns 8 points per dollar spent at gas stations and 5 points per dollar on utilities. That means that we are typically earning a couple of thousand Wyndham points per month on those categories. In addition, it gives any cardholder a 10% discount when those points are used.
Also, when the $95 annual fee is paid each year, the cardholder receives a 15,000-point bonus. Since those points are valued at 1.1 cents per dollar, we receive $165 in Wyndham points, and if you figure in the 10% point redemption discount, it’s closer to $180. That’s a pretty good reason to hold the card by itself.
Over the last 21 months, our Wyndham points balance has gone up by 78,000 points by doing nothing but using it for utilities and gas, and earning the annual bonus. This demonstrates how slow and steady growth can lead to a meaningful number of points.
At 81,000 points, we will have enough points to book a 1-bedroom Vacasa vacation rental for 6 days that is priced up to $250 per night. Since we really love to use vacation rentals, the ability to book one with points is fantastic. Also, the ability to get a free vacation rental worth up to $1,500 for just 81,000 points is pretty nice. There just happen to be quite a few Vacasas in Tulum, Puerto Vallarta, and Cabo San Lucas that fit that category, so there is a good chance I’ll be booking a trip to Mexico at some point.
On To The Point Check!
Once again, our spending not committed to earning a signup bonus was spent strategically. We earned 6.9% on that spending, and I’m generally happy when we earn over 5%.
Card Used
Spend
Points Earned
Point Value
Points Per $
Return on Spend
Wyndham Business Earner
$918
4,879
$53.67
5.3
5.9%
Ink Cash
$724
3.622
$74.25
5.0
10.2%
Venture
$455
910
$18.20
2.0
3.7%
Amex Gold
$421
1,684
$33.68
4.0
8.0%
Sapphire Preferred
$157
247
$5.06
1.6
3.2%
Total
$2,675
11,342
$184.86
4.2
6.9%
This month’s spending not devoted to earning a signup bonus
Besides the spending on the credit cards listed above, Jenn spent almost $1,600 on her IHG card, earning over 5,000 IHG points. I spent almost $1,500 on my Chase Sapphire Preferred card, earning me over 3,800 Chase Ultimate Reward points and getting me closer to my 100,000 point bonus. At the end of the month we were left with:
154,600 Chase Ultimate Rewards Points
124,500 Amex Membership Rewards Points
93,000 American Airlines Miles
79,100 Alaska Miles
78,800 Wyndham Points
60,000 Marriott Bonvoy Points
33,200 IHG points
32,100 Citi Thank You Points
16,700 United Miles
9,300 Hyatt Points
1,500 Delta Miles
$132 in Cash Back
When you add up all of those points, according to the valuations published by the Points Guy, they are worth a grand total of $10,700. That is slightly higher than the previous month, but still well below our all-time high of $16,500. Given the fact that we have some signup bonuses that we are working on and the fact that I don’t have to much to redeem our points on soon, I think we might top that this year. We’ll have to wait and see how that plays out though. Either way, I have a trip to Germany to get ready for!
Aer Lingus Avios is a tremendous program that almost nobody in the points and miles community talks about. The program is great because it provides a predictably great value on award flights. It is also easy to accumulate points because of its great transfer partners. What makes it fly under the radar, however, is that it is a confusing website and is not scanned by award websites like awardtool.com and pointsyeah.com.
Not Kidding – This Website is Terrible
One of the main reasons people don’t pay attention to this program is that the website is just horrible. For instance, you would think that if you logged into the website and then went to book a flight, you would be able to toggle between paying with Aer Lingus Avios and paying with cash. You would think this because almost every other airline has this feature on their website—not Aer Lingus, however.
This is the normal interface for the website, but there isn’t an option to pay with points.
Instead, you need to click on the AerClub tab at the top and under the “Spend Avios” section, select “Book a Reward Flight”.
When you click on “Book an Award Flight”, you would expect it to take you to a page where you could book an award flight. Unfortunately, you need to find the little button that says “Buy a Reward Flight,” which is about halfway down the page after a bunch of information about the kinds of flights that you can book with Avios.
Once you do that, there will finally be an interface to allow you to search for an award flight. Just type in the airport that you wish to depart from and the airport that you want to arrive at, as well as the date, and then click the “search flights” button.
That sounds easy enough, but the problem is that for some reason, you can only search for direct flights. For instance, I can search from Chicago to Dublin. I can also search from Dublin to Edinburgh, because both of those are direct flights. What I can’t do is search from Chicago to Edinburgh, because there would be a stop in Dublin. That’s utterly insane. I cannot think of another airline website that is unable to book an award flight with a stop. It’s non-stop flights or nothing.
How A Limitation Can Be an Advantage
This limitation, though, can be used to your advantage. I am a huge fan of stopover flights and because you need to book all of the awards as separate itineraries, that makes stopovers simple.
Let’s look at the above example. I want to fly from Chicago to Edinburgh, Scotland, and do it on points. Clearly, I can’t book it as one itinerary, because the website only allows for non-stop flights. However, that does mean that I can break the two segments up into separate days and instead plan a stopover in Dublin for a day or two. Now, instead of flying directly into Edinburgh, I can stop for a day or two, visit Dublin Castle, have a couple of Guinness stouts, and adjust to the jet lag before moving on to Edinburgh. Stopovers are a fun way of getting a little extra out of a vacation.
Unfortunately, that means that if you are planning to fly from America to Europe using Aer Lingus, you will need to fly from one of the few cities in North America that have a direct flight to Dublin or Shannon. There are a couple of dozen American cities that you can fly to Ireland on using Aer Lingus, and Flight Connections is a great way to find out where those airports are that connect via Aer Lingus.
Award Flights are Consistently Available at Reasonable Prices
The Aer Lingus website is clunky and hard to use, but the payoff is predictable pricing and fairly consistently available awards, at least in economy. Aer Lingus has a distance-based award chart, and they seem to release five economy seats for each flight. I have no idea how many business class awards they release, because they are always sold out. If you find one, consider yourself extremely lucky.
The points charges for economy flights within Europe are pretty good, with flights from Ireland to the UK or within Ireland costing 4,000 Avios off-peak and 4,500 peak. From Ireland to most of Europe, it is 6,500 off-peak and 7,500 at peak. When you get a little further out, like Ireland to Greece, the Canary Islands, or Croatia, it gets up to 8,500 off-peak and 10,000 peak.
The calendar for peak/off-peak is also fairly generous, with peak pricing basically being summer and a few holiday-related dates the rest of the year.
Where this program gets extremely interesting, for Americans, is the fact that you can fly to Dublin from most of the Northeast and Midwest in the US for 13,000 miles off-peak and 20,000 miles peak. For destinations in Florida, Denver, and the US West Coast, it costs 16,250 miles off-peak and 25,000 miles peak. To view the full award chart, click on this link.
What this means, at least for me, is that you can use Dublin as a great launching point for trips from the US to different parts of Europe. I’ve been promising my family a Canary Islands trip for years and haven’t pulled it off yet. Using Aer Lingus Avios, we could fly to Tenerife during spring break, for 13,000 miles to Dublin. We could stopover in Dublin for a night or two and then get back on a plane and fly to Tenerife for 8,500 Avios. That’s a total of 21,500 Avios each for a pretty great flight itinerary.
You could do the same thing and end up in Munich for 19,500 Avios with a stopover in Dublin, or go to virtually any place in Ireland or the UK for only 17,000 Avios. That’s not unheard of, but the fact that it’s available most of the time on the Aer Lingus website makes it unique. It might not be available on the exact date you want to fly, but usually within a few days of when you want to fly.
Also, if you really need to fly on a Saturday, because you really can’t do a Tuesday-to-Tuesday trip, Aer Lingus offers the same good flight prices on the weekends as they do on any other day of the week. You might need to plan ahead and book early if you want to get those flights, however.
Aer Lingus Avios are Easy to Earn
Accumulating Avios is one of the easiest things you can do in travel hacking. You can transfer points directly from American Express Membership Rewards, Bilt Rewards, Chase Ultimate Rewards points, and Wells Fargo points. You can also transfer points from Citi Thank You points and Capital One by transferring to other Avios programs and then transferring to Aer Lingus Avios. In addition, Chase has three personal credit cards: the British Airways Visa Signature Card, the Iberia Visa Signature Credit Card, as well as the Aer Lingus Visa Signature Card, which earn Avios. There are also two credit cards issued by Cardless that earn Qatar Privilege Avios. If you earn Avios in any other program, like Iberia, you can just transfer those points to Aer Lingus at a 1:1 ratio.
All of those points can be consolidated into any Avios program. That probably makes Aer Lingus, as well as British Airways, Qatar Airlines, Finnair, and Iberia (all Avios programs), the easiest programs to accumulate points in. This means that not only will it not take a ton of points to book those flights, but it’s relatively easy to get those points.
Taxes and Fuel Surcharges are Relatively High
One thing that can be a little frustrating about the Aer Lingus program is that the taxes and fuel surcharges are relatively high. They’re not high compared to other European programs like Flying Blue or Virgin Atlantic, but compared to Alaska Airlines, American Airlines, Delta, or United, those fees are pretty high. At current exchange rates, a round-trip flight to Dublin from Chicago costs $299.71 in taxes and fuel surcharges. On an identical United flight itinerary, the taxes are $50.41.
US-based programs like Alaska, American, Delta, or United are going to charge much less in taxes and fuel surcharges, but the number of points needed will typically be much higher. In the United Airlines example that I mentioned earlier, the total number of points needed was 80,000 United miles round-trip, as opposed to the 26,000 points needed with Aer Lingus. So the question is, would you rather pay 26,000 points and $300 or 80,000 points and $50? That’s really an individual decision.
Why Aer Lingus For Transatlantic Flights is Clutch
Recently, the Chase Sapphire Preferred Card had a 100,000 Chase Ultimate Rewards Points bonus. This will probably be the most popular signup bonus for 2025. Anyone who signed up for this credit card and completed the $5,000 spend in 3 months necessary to get the bonus will be sitting on at least 105,000 Chase Ultimate Reward Points.
If you have a family of four that you would like to fly to Dublin from Chicago, in an off-peak time like September, for example, you could book that with Aer Lingus for 26,000 Avios and $300 each, for a total of 104,000 Aer Lingus Avios and $1,200. Those flights currently cost around $800 each, or around $3,200 total. Since the Avios needed to book those flights transfer from Chase Ultimate Reward Points at a 1:1 ratio, that means that this one signup bonus can ultimately save $2,000 on these flights.
One credit card signup and one transfer, and you can save $2,000 on flights to Dublin. That’s pretty good.
Let’s say I wanted to visit Prague in September. Alaska Air has a flight bookable with Alaska Miles (ironically, an Aer Lingus partner award) for 27,500 miles and $24. I would book that and then book a flight from Prague to Dublin using 6,500 Aer Lingus Avios and $32 as well as a flight from Dublin to Chicago for 13,000 Aer Lingus Avios and $167. That means that for 27,500 Alaska Miles, 19,500 Aer Lingus Avios, and $223, I can fly from Chicago and visit both Prague and Dublin. That’s a pretty solid itinerary for a fairly low price in points and dollars.
Don’t Overlook Aer Lingus
The Aer Lingus rewards program flies under the radar as a pretty great way to book inexpensive economy awards from the United States to Europe, especially Ireland and the UK. While the website can be a little clunky, and all of the award flights have to be booked as separate legs of direct flights, understanding the Aer Lingus program can yield amazing value.
The fact that everything has to be booked as non-stop flights means that you can add a day or two stopover in Dublin. This allows people to add an additional destination to a European vacation. Having to book separate legs could be an annoyance, or it could be a benefit. It’s really just a matter of how you look at it. That being said, 13,000 miles one-way from the northeast and midwest of the US is a deal that just amazing, and it’s basically standard with Aer Lingus.
It’s easy to overlook this program because if you are trying to find the best deal on award flights with a website like pointsyeah.com or awardtool.com you won’t find Aer Lingus awards. But don’t forget to go to Aer Lingus and see what’s available, especially if a trip to Ireland or at least a stopover would be desirable. It’s a great program that flies under the radar, so don’t ignore it.
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 Used
Spend
Points Earned
Point Value
Points Per $
Return on Spend
Amex Gold
$552
2,130
$42.60
3.9
7.7%
Ink Cash
$445
2,224
$45.59
5.0
10.2%
Wyndham Business Earner
$347
1,736
$19.10
5.0
5.5%
Venture
$345
690
$12.77
2.0
3.7%
Total
$1,689
6,780
$120.05
4.0
7.1%
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.
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!
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 Used
Spend
Points Earned
Point Value
Points Per $
Return on Spend
Citi Premier
$678
892
16.06
1.3
2.4%
World of Hyatt
$623
3,114
$52.94
5.0
8.5%
Wyndham Business Earner
$501
2,944
$32.38
5.8
6.5%
Ink Cash
$444
2,224
$45.59
5.0
10.3%
Venture
$345
690
$12.77
2.0
3.7%
Citibusiness AAdvantage
$283
283
$4.67
1.0
1.7%
Blue Business Plus
$67
134
$2.68
2.0
4.0%
Total
$2,941
10,281
$167.03
3.5
5.7%
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.
Newby to Expert Traveler 