Points and Miles – Page 2 – Newby to Expert Traveler

American Airlines makes Citi Thank You Points Much More Valuable

Posted on August 3, 2025December 28, 2025 by David Cox

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.

Those airline miles aren’t created equal either. The Points Guy does valuations each month, which look at the price of flights in miles and compare it to the price in cash for the same flights. In July 2025, the values of those domestic airline miles are:

Delta Skymiles- 1.15 cents per point
United Mileage Plus- 1.3 cents per point
Southwest Rapid Rewards- 1.4 cents per point
JetBlue TrueBlue – 1.45 cents per point
Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan- 1.5 cents per point
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.

Points Check June 2025

Posted on July 8, 2025December 28, 2025 by David Cox

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.

Points Check May 2025

Posted on June 19, 2025December 28, 2025 by David Cox

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!

The Aer Lingus Avios Sweet Spot Nobody Talks About

Posted on June 13, 2025December 28, 2025 by David Cox

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.

What Would I do?

In practice, when we travel to Europe, I prefer to have a destination that I want to go to and a stopover that’s a bonus. When Jenn and I visited Italy last fall, we had a stopover in Amsterdam that was a great add-on to the trip. That being said, I almost always book one-way flights. In order to keep the cost of the taxes and fuel surcharges down, I would probably book one of the one-way flights with one of the American carriers.

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.

Points and Miles has an Influencer Problem

Posted on May 2, 2025December 28, 2025 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 April 25, 2025December 28, 2025 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 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.

Singapore Krisflyer Saves Points on United Airlines Flights to Europe

Posted on February 20, 2025December 28, 2025 by David Cox

In what is becoming a new family tradition, to celebrate our niece, Zoey graduating from high school, we are going to Europe to celebrate. Well, not really we, since I’m not going, but Jenn and her sister Misty are taking Zoey and our daughter Emma to Europe this summer.

It is, however, my responsibility to do a lot of the trip planning. The parameters were fairly loose. It needed to be in mid-July. Jenn wanted to take Misty to Munich because she will absolutely love Munich, and maybe a day trip to Neuschwanstein Castle. Zoey wanted to travel to Dublin or Italy.

So, I got on my laptop and started to search on PointsYeah.com, thinking that this wouldn’t be that hard since they were pretty flexible. To my horror, there wasn’t anything that was very good. Almost everything was over 40,000 points one-way per person in economy for flights that were less than desirable. A lot of them had taxes and surcharges of well over $200 per ticket – for economy flights out of the US!

What surprised me the most was that typically you can count on Flying Blue to have flights available from Chicago throughout Europe on KLM or Air France for 25,000 points and a little over $100 each. Those deals were no where to be seen.

Flying United Airlines with Partner Miles

I was beginning to notice that United had a number of flights available for 40,000 points. I wasn’t interested at 40,000 points, but I also know that is the saver fare price for a flight to Europe and sometimes those saver fares end up on partner websites. Maybe I should check those partner sites?

Turkish Airlines

I’ve used Turkish Miles and Smiles to book United flights before. In our case, I used it to book flights to San Jose del Cabo Airport for 10,000 miles from Chicago. That is no longer a thing, because the new price after devaluation is 30,000 points. I wasn’t expecting this to be very good because the devaluation has made most of their partner awards more expensive, but I thought I should look. Sure enough, it was 55,000 miles instead of 40,000. Not worth it.

Air Canada Aeroplan

Next I checked out Air Canada Aeroplan and found the same flight for 40K points and $80 CA ($56 USD). This is the same number of points but about $50 more expensive for taxes and fuel surcharges. This might actually make sense to do, because Aeroplan transfers from Amex, Capital One, Chase and Bilt whereas United miles only transfer from Chase. So if you can’t come up with United miles, this might make some sense. 40,000 points still seemed to steep for me, though.

Avianca Lifemiles

Avianca Lifemiles does have quite a few partner redemption options and that is why it’s good to check them as well. They had the flight listed at 40,000 miles and $28.50, which is still a little more than United at 40,000 miles and $5.60. However, like Air Canada, you can transfer to Avianca Lifemiles from more programs than United does. Avianca transfers from basically everyone including Amex, Capital One, Chase, Citibank and Wells Fargo. If you’re too short on Chase points or United miles, Avianca Lifemiles might make sense.

Singapore Airlines

I had basically forgotten about Singapore Airlines. I always found it difficult to find any availability on their website when I was looking. I decided to try them anyway and yes, that flight was available. They had four tickets available at 30,500 Krisflyer miles each and $5.60 for taxes. That’s great! Singapore Airlines also transfers from Amex, Chase, Citibank and Capital One, making it easy to get enough points.

What I Ended up Booking

So obviously on the way there I booked the United flight direct from Chicago to Munich for 30,500 points transferred from Citibank and $5.60. I will be booking a connecting flight from Munich to Dublin on Aer Lingus for 7,500 Avios transferred from American Express and $53. The return flight from Dublin to Chicago was also booked on Aer Lingus with American Express Membership Rewards transferred to Avios for 20,000 points and $155. So each complete itinerary was a total of 58,000 points and $204.

When I priced out the entire itinerary as a multi-city cash flight with United Airlines it was $1,550 per ticket. That means that the 58,000 points saved around $1,350 or about 2.3 cents per point. I’m always happy to get over 2 cents per point, so I’m happy with this redemption and that wouldn’t have been possible without remembering that I could redeem Singapore Airlines Krisflyer miles for United saver award flights. In the end it saved us a total of 38,000 transferable points.

Finding United Flights on Singapore Airlines website

The only flights that will normally be available on partner sites like Singapore Airlines will be saver awards. It is also important to note that not all saver awards will be available to partner websites. If you are looking to book one of these saver awards on a partner airline, you need to find when one should be available.

The best way is to go United.com and DON’T SIGN IN. The reason that you shouldn’t sign in is that if you have a United credit card, you have access to additional award inventory. This will not be available to partner websites. You’re looking for basic saver awards.

What you want to do is search for flights, but make sure you check the checkboxes for one-way, book with miles, and flexible dates. As soon as you hit search it will prompt you again to sign in – DO NOT DO IT, just click on the ‘x’ in the corner.

In this case, I see a ton of available flights for 40k + $5.60. When you look below on one specific flight, you see “Saver Award” listed for this day. Looking at this, I would assume that it’s likely that there are a ton of available flights in July from Chicago to Munich on United that I should be able to find on Singapore Airlines Krisflyer.

If you then go to the Singapore Airlines website and search for award flights from Chicago to Munich for that date, at first you won’t find anything. That’s because the default is to search Singapore Airlines flights. You need to click on the Star Alliance tab in order to find anything from United Airlines.

Not only will you find wide open availability on United for July, as was indicated by saver awards on the United website, but you also see flights for Lufthansa as well. That is because Lufthansa is also a Star Alliance member. The number of points is the same as the United flights because Singapore Airlines has a standard award chart that has North America to Europe as that number of points. The difference, however, is the amount of taxes and fees that are required to book that flight. On United, it’s $5.60 and with Lufthansa it’s $316.50 and has a stop in Frankfort. Yeah, I think I’ll take the United flight.

When To Book United on Partner Sites

So this is when things can get complicated. Earlier in this post, I mentioned four different ways to book the same United Airlines flight from Chicago to Munich. In my analysis, Singapore Airlines was the cheapest and so I booked with them. The problem is that Singapore Airlines will not be the cheapest all of the time. Each of these programs have different award charts that mean that depending on where you are flying, different programs might be the ideal for that particular flight.

Some of these award charts are regional, and some are distance based. For each of these charts, they define regions differently or they are using different cut-offs for distance. I’m not going to go into the different award charts here, but I want to show what it’s like for those of us who routinely use Chicago Ohare airport to demonstrate just how different it can be.

Chicago to:	United Airlines	Singapore Airlines	Air Canada Aeroplan	Avianca Lifemiles	Turkish Airlines
Munich	40,000 miles and $5.60	*30,500 miles and $5.60*	40,000 miles and $56	40,000 miles and $28.50	55,000 miles and $5.60
Tokyo	60,000 miles and $5.60	59,500 miles and $164.50	*50,000 miles and $56*	*55,000 miles and $28.50*	75,000 miles and $5.60
Cancun	20,000 miles and $47.47	19,500 miles and $47.47	*12,500 miles and $98*	*15,000 miles and $58*	30,000 miles and $47.47
Honolulu	25,000 miles and $5.60	19,500 miles and $5.60	22,500 miles and $44	25,000 miles and $15.20	*10,000 miles and $5.60*
Auckland	*55,000 miles and $40.90*	66,000 miles and $40.90	60,000 miles and $92	*60,000 miles and $36.93*	100,000 miles and $40.90
Denver	*8,800 miles and $5.60*	14,000 miles and $5.60	*10,000 miles and $33*	15,000 miles and $5.60	*10,000 miles and $5.60*

Prices for identical saver award flights on United, with the award redemption I would consider in bold and italics.

In the above chart, you will notice that even though these are identical United Airlines flights, they have wildly different prices. That is because of the award charts that each of these programs use. If you are aware of these price differences and check on multiple websites, you can save a lot of points as well as money on taxes and fuel surcharges.

In addition, these programs have different transfer partners, which might affect your decision as well. In the case of the Denver flight, the lowest price is 8,800 miles and $5.60 but the miles are United miles which only transfer from Chase. If you don’t have any United miles or Chase Ultimate Reward points, you might decide that 10,000 Turkish Miles and Smiles is better for you because you can transfer those points from Citi Thank You points or Capital One Venture miles. If all you have is American Express Membership Reward points, you might want to use Air Canada Aeroplan, even though the taxes are higher, because you can transfer to Air Canada from Amex.

Think Before You Book a United Flight

I enjoy flying United. I haven’t yet had a bad United flight. Generally the seats have been comfortable and the planes have been in good shape. I know that’s not the case for everyone, but I’ve had pretty good luck on United. That being said, I find that booking award flights with United to be generally overpriced, although I love that they don’t tack on huge fuel surcharges on their award flights.

In addition to the fact that their award prices can be elevated, the fact that their only transfer partner is from Chase makes it sometimes difficult to amass the amount of points necessary for those flights.

Understanding how and when to use partner awards for those flights can save you a ton of points and might mean the difference between being able to make the trip at all. Keep in mind, you don’t need to memorize the award charts to make this work. All you need to do is when you identify a saver award flight on United, remember that you might be able to book that flight on partners like Turkish Airlines, Singapore Airlines, etc. Then start looking for that flight on other sites and see if you can find a better deal for you. This one little trick can make a huge difference in the price of identical flights.

Points Check January 2025

Posted on February 16, 2025December 28, 2025 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 Used	Spend	Points Earned	Point Value	Points Per $	Return on Spend
Citi Premier	$1,223	2,794	50.29	2.3	4.1
Amex Gold	$1150	4,327	$86.54	3.8	7.5%
Venture	$912	1,824	$33.74	2.0	4.0%
Ink Cash	$630	3,150	$64.58	5.0	10.3%
Wyndham Business Earner	$417	2,306	$25.37	5.5	6.1%
US Bank Triple Cash	$286	416	$4.16	1.5	1.5%
Total	$4,618	14,817	$260.53	3.2	5.6%

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 February 3, 2025December 28, 2025 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:

Partner	Citi Points Used	Points Received
Aeromexico Rewards	1,000	1,000
Accor Live Limitless	1,000	500
Avianca Livemiles	1,000	1,000
Cathay Pacific	1,000	1,000
Choice Privileges	1,000	2,000
Emirates Skywards	1,000	1,000
Etihad Guest	1,000	1,000
EVA Air	1,000	1,000
Air France/KLM Flying Blue	1,000	1,000
Jetblue Trueblue	1,000	1,000
Leaders Club	1,000	200
Preferred Hotel and Resorts	1,000	4,000
Qantas Frequent Flyer	1,000	1,000
Qatar Privilege Club	1,000	1,000
Singapore Airlines	1,000	1,000
Thai Royal Orchid Plus	1,000	1,000
Turkish Airlines Miles and Smiles	1,000	1,000
Virgin Atlantic Flying Club	1,000	1,000
Wyndham Rewards	1,000	1,000

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 November 2024

Posted on December 27, 2024December 28, 2025 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 Used	Spend	Points Earned	Point Value	Points Per $	Return on Spend
Amex Business Gold	$889	1401	$28.02	1.6	3.1%
Amex Gold	$817	2,148	$42.96	2.6	5.3%
Venture	$752	1,504	$27.82	2.0	3.7%
Citibusiness AAdvantage	$698	698	$11.17	1.0	1.6%
Ink Cash	$459	2,298	$47.11	5.0	10.3%
Wyndham Business Earner	$422	2,288	$25.17	5.4	6.0%
Total	$4,046	10,337	$182.25	2.6	4.5%

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!