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!
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.
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.
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!
I love my local airport. It’s MLI, sometimes known as the Moline Airport or as it’s officially called, the Quad Cities International Airport. What is great about this airport is that you can pretty much roll into a parking spot 20 minutes before boarding and be alright. I personally am not brave enough to try it, but I’m certain you’d be fine. TSA normally takes less than ten minutes and you can literally park just a couple hundred feet from the front door. There are only a dozen gates, so it only takes a couple minutes to get to your gate. Whenever it’s feasible, we try to fly out of MLI. If we can’t, we generally fly out of Chicago O’hare.
On the other hand, I really hate the whole experience of going to Chicago O’hare. It’s a three hour drive and the last hour is in white knuckle traffic. Then we have to park something like a dozen miles away and take a shuttle to the airport. Getting to O’hare is usually a four hour ordeal for us and we have to leave at least two hours for security and getting to the gate. There is nothing pleasant about having to leave your house six hours before boarding.
Booking award flights out of MLI however, is a little tricky. Flying to Europe on points, we usually find the best deals on KLM/Air France Flying Blue or with either Aer Lingus or Iberia Avios. None of those airlines fly out of MLI, but they all have direct flights from Chicago O’hare to Europe. There are only three airlines that will book with points out of MLI: United, American, and Delta.
This leaves us with three choices. The first is to book with one of the European carriers and deal with the whole ordeal of driving to Chicago. This isn’t great, not only because of the way there, but generally that means we’re trying to stay awake while driving home after a seven hour time change when returning from Europe.
The second option is to book a separate award flight to get to Chicago and book with a European carrier out of Chicago. The problem with the second option is that if something happens to your first flight, such as a delay, the second flight doesn’t care that your first flight is delayed, since it’s not their fault and frankly not their problem. When I’ve done this in the past, I’ve booked a day early just so we could make sure to get there in time.
The third option is to book the whole trip with one of the American carriers that fly out of MLI. The problem with the third option is that it’s often a whole lot of points. United Airlines consistently charges a premium for flying to a small airport, and I usually just look at their prices and laugh. Delta rarely has good award prices and when you find a deal you need to book them as a round-trip ticket to get good rates. American Airlines, however, continues to surprise me with great value on award flights out of MLI, although you do have to hunt a little for them.
Punishing Myself in Style
I’ve been a distance runner for about eight years now and I’m turning 50 next year. I decided that as a challenge to myself, I would run my first 50K during my 50th year. But let’s face it, I’m a travel hacker, if I’m going to do a 50K, of course I’m going to do it with a little style.
I decided to do the 50K which is one of the UTMB ultramarathons that are taking place in Nice, France. The race in the 50K category in Nice is actually a 54K with around 7,000 feet of elevation gain. This is going to hurt – honestly it’s probably bordering on self-torture. But hey, If I’m going to torture myself, why not do it in the hills overlooking Nice, Monaco and the Mediterranean Sea, right?
Searching for Flights
Now that I knew what I wanted to do, I needed to get there. I started my search the same way that I always do, by searching on PointsYeah from Chicago to wherever I want to go, in this case the Nice Airport, NCE. Right away I noticed that American Airlines had a 19,000 mile award from Chicago to NCE.
If I see that any of the major American carriers have a cheap flight from Chicago, I instantly change it to MLI, just to see if they also have a cheap flight to the Quad City Airport. Sure enough, American tacked on an extra leg and it was still 19,000 points and $11 in taxes. I immediately jumped on that.
Flying home, the best I could find was again an American Airlines flight from NCE to MLI for 30,000 points and $130 in taxes and fuel surcharges. Honestly, that’s not bad, but I decided to look around a little bit. I went on Flight Connections and filtered down to see where American Airlines flew directly from Europe to Chicago, knowing that there are multiple flights from Chicago to MLI every day.
I then used PointsYeah to check each of these cities to MLI to see if American Airlines had any other great deals. I wound up finding a flight from Dublin to MLI for 19,000 American Airlines miles and $47. This of course means that we will have to get from Nice to Dublin, but Aer Lingus is available for 6,500 Aer Lingus Avios and $37 in taxes.
Why would we position ourselves to a different country just to fly home? Well, I always like a bargain, but this also means we can spend a day or two in Dublin. I love the idea of having a stopover like this, because it really gives you a quick sample of a city so that you can know whether or not you would like to return later. Honestly, I feel like being cheap can actually make your trips better.
What We Are Paying Vs Cash Flights
Once we book the flight with Aer Lingus, which I’ll book for 6,500 Amex Membership Rewards points transferred to Aer Lingus Avios and $37 in taxes, we will have essentially booked the entire trip for 38,000 AAdvantage miles, 6,500 Membership Rewards points and $95 in fees for each ticket.
Booking the American Airlines portion of the flights with cash would have cost $1,091 if we booked it as a multi-city flight with an open jaw (a flight itinerary where you fly back from a different city from where you landed). The cost of the Aer Lingus flight was $162 for a one way flight from Nice to Dublin. Together, the itinerary was $1,253 booking with cash. That means we got a value of 2.6 cents per point for our award flights. Considering The Points Guy values American Airlines miles at 1.65 cents per point and Amex Membership Rewards points at 2 cents per point, I’d say we did pretty well on that redemption.
Creativity and Thrift Wins Again
When we first started travel hacking, we didn’t have a lot of points to throw around for our trips. On our first trip to Europe, we had to fly back from Stockholm because that was the only flight we had enough points to book, even though we were going to be in Italy. We ended up having to book a separate flight from Rome to Stockholm to make it work. It turned out to be great though, because we got to experience Sweden for a few days. It taught me that thinking outside of the box can allow you to enhance your trips while essentially being cheap.
This time we had the points to fly back directly from Nice, but by being creative with how we booked our flights, it allowed us to retain more of our valuable American Airlines miles and we were able to tack on a side quest to Ireland. Enhancing our trip while getting great value is a win win, even though after running the 50K, I probably won’t be able to walk by the time we get to Dublin.
Amsterdam is a city that I’ve dreamed of visiting for decades. The center of Amsterdam is a magical area where the canals and the buildings that line them are practically frozen in the 17th Century, when merchants trading goods from Asia brought wealth to the Netherlands. It was amazing to visit Amsterdam, even though it was a short stopover.
Taking Advantage of KLM Stopover Rules
We had the opportunity to take a 25 hour stopover on our way to Rome. When we planned our trip to Rome, there was a flight we liked from Chicago to Rome, but the layover in Amsterdam was only a little over an hour. That was a dangerous connection since we would have to go through immigration and security. We might’ve made it, but any delay would have made it close to impossible.
Our solution to the short layover was to fly in a day earlier and use KLM’s stopover rules to our advantage. KLM gives flyers the ability to stop in Amsterdam for up to 12 months on flight itineraries that stop in Amsterdam. This adjustment meant that we had a day in Amsterdam to defeat jet lag and do some wandering.
The KLM flight from Chicago to Amsterdam was comfortable and we landed at the airport without incident. Amsterdam has fantastic train service at the airport and in less than 20 minutes we were at Amsterdam Centraal for about 5 Euros a ticket.
Row houses along a canal in Amsterdam
We stayed at the Kimpton De Witt near Amsterdam Centraal train station. They were gracious enough to find us a vacant room and allow us to check in at around 8:30 AM. The staff was very nice and even gave us a 15 Euro drink credit for using the current Kimpton Password.
What is the Kimpton Secret Password?
Kimpton has a secret password program that allows guests to get a little something extra if they know the secret password and tell it to the clerk when checking in. It's meant to be a fun little way to create a little buzz for the hotel.
We dropped our luggage off at the room, took a quick shower and we were off and running.
Walking the Canals
We were planning to take a nap, since we, as usual, were unable to sleep on the overnight flight. But first we wanted to walk along the canals and, more importantly, get some breakfast.
Wheels of Gouda are on display at a traditional cheese maker near our hotel.
The place we stopped at was a small but very busy breakfast restaurant called Omelegg. Seating there was a bit of a challenge. We ended up having to sit next to each other at a booth because the other side had a bench that was being used by a different table. It was a little awkward, but it was fine.
The Italian Job at Omelegg
Jenn ordered the Italian Job and I got the Chicken Harissa omelette. Both were very good and served with soft slice of dark wheat bread and an arugula salad.
Row houses right on a canal. Watch out that first step out the front door is a little tricky.
The Kimpton De Witt is right on the edge of the Red Light District, so most of what we noticed at the beginning of our walk was a whole lot of weed shops and erotic boutiques. We also noticed more litter than I was used to seeing in Europe. There was a pretty pungent smell of marijuana in the air as well as cigarette smoke.
Classic Dutch Row Houses
While those things are a little unpleasant, Amsterdam is so unbelievably gorgeous it easily makes up for those shortcomings. The canal houses with their narrow five story design, brick exterior and big windows are beautiful. The tree lined canals and herringbone pattern brick streets make for an amazing backdrop for a sunny crisp fall walk.
The Church of St Nicholas
It’s nice to walk without a purpose or direction. We wandered the brick streets admiring the houseboats and tiny cars that lined the edges of the canals. It was a fairly peaceful walk with only the occasional car, bike or pedestrian that went past us. After about an hour the jet lag caught up with us and we returned to the hotel for a nap.
After our nap, we headed over to Brouwerij’t Ij. It was about a 25 minute walk from the hotel but a lot of it went through some gorgeous newer neighborhoods. Even though these neighborhoods didn’t have 400 year old row houses, the buildings kept the spirit of Amsterdam architecture. Many of them were block long buildings, instead of the narrow and tall buildings but they still were mostly 5 stories with shops on the first floor.
When we arrived at Brouwerij’t IJ I ordered a Tripel and Jenn ordered the Columbus. I loved the Tripel because it had less funk then many of the tripels that I’ve had in the past. Jenn had the Columbus which is an hoppy imperial beer which she also enjoyed. We sat out in their beer garden and watched traffic along the street which was mostly pedestrians and cyclists. It was lovely and we would’ve stayed longer but I wanted to check out Gollum Aan Het Water.
The beer and the atmosphere at Brouwerij’t Ij was great. I would recommend visiting when you are in Amsterdam.
Gollum has a series of bars around Amsterdam with an impressive beer selection, especially in bottles. Gollum was on my list of places that I really wanted to visit in Amsterdam. I was hoping to try some Belgian Ales that don’t make it to the US.
Just a portion of the amazing beer selection at Gollum Aan Het Water
We started with a Rochfort and an Orval then moved onto some regional craft beers and other Belgian Ales. The quality and variety of the beers served at Gollum was off the charts so I was a bit of a kid in a candy store.
Orval is a beer produced at Orval Abbey in Wallonia Belgium and the sale of the beer helps support the monastery.
To be fair, we had perhaps too many beers at Gollum. As is sometimes the case with us, we got to chatting with other folks at the bar. We met a nice gentleman, originally from England, and his Bernese Mountain dog as well as a couple of guys from North Carolina. The bartender was extremely friendly as well.
It’s always tough to drag ourselves away when conversation flows as easy as the beer. It’s even harder when those conversations are with interesting people from various countries.
Boats illuminated in the night.
Eventually, a little tipsy, we pulled ourselves away from Gollum we walked back towards the hotel. By this time, it was evening and the lights of Amsterdam were dancing on the ripples of the canals. Amsterdam is lovely during the day, but it’s even more enchanting at night. The wind was calm and the air was a touch chilly. It was a perfect night for a lovely walk through Amsterdam.
Montelbaanstoren, a tower dating to the 16th century is illuminated in the evening.
On our way back, we popped into a fast food Kebab place to fill up on hummus, falafel and fries. It hit the spot. I have yet to be disappointed by a middle eastern food in Europe. It is always so good and this was no exception.
Every McDonald’s in America should be replaced by Turkish Street Food – Immediately!
We Will Definitely Return
Doing a stopover in Amsterdam turned out to be a fantastic addition to our trip to Italy. It allowed us to enjoy one of Europe’s great cities without devoting a week to it.
Amsterdam did not disappoint us. Despite our initial negative reactions to the litter and smoke clouds in the Red Light District, Amsterdam is an almost magical city. The architecture, canals, the sheer volume of bikes just make for a uniquely Dutch experience.
We most definitely will be visiting Europe in the future and knowing just how great a stopover in Amsterdam can be, I think there is a good chance we will do this again. Next time, though, we might have to spend two days instead of one.
September was a fairly normal month for us. No traveling this month other than Jenn and I did spend a night in fabulous Cedar Rapids, Iowa at the luxurious Residence Inn. I know that sounds funny, but we had an expiring Marriott hotel certificate. Unfortunately, we just didn’t find a use for it until it was close to expiring.
The funny thing was we just didn’t want to drive too far for a one night stay, and the only places that seemed interesting enough to drive to within a couple of hours was Cedar Rapids and Iowa City. It was the day of the annual Iowa Hawkeyes/Iowa State Cyclone football game so finding a good use for that hotel certificate anywhere near Iowa City on that weekend was tricky, since the hotels were pretty full.
We ended up staying in a hotel that frankly was a little run down, but it was fine and we had a little night out in Cedar Rapids. It was fun to visit a city nearby that we hadn’t had a chance to experience yet. It was also a good reminder to stay on top of those free night certificates.
The flights now cost a grand total of 18,000 Amex Membership Reward points and $72 instead of the original 30,000 American Airlines miles and $22. Since I really value American Airlines miles, I was glad to have those returned.
Keeping It Loosey-Goosey
I’ve been spending a decent amount of my time getting ready for our trip to Italy. When we went to Europe last summer, I made sure to book all of our train tickets, museums and tours in advance. That was necessary, in my opinion, during high season. This time we’re going during November, which I’m hoping means that we can be a little bit more relaxed about our schedule. It is a bit of a gamble, but I think it will pay off.
The way I see it, if we plan to visit the Colosseum one day and the Vatican a different day, and it rains on the day we go to the Colosseum, that’s not great. By keeping it open, we can watch the weather forecast and visit the Vatican on the day it rains and the Colosseum on the day it doesn’t. Unfortunately, by not buying skip-the-line tickets ahead of time, it might mean that we’re waiting in line. With it being off-peak, however, I don’t think it will be too bad. That being said, I’m not certain what off-peak season is like so I’ll just cross my fingers that we’re not making a horrible mistake.
Instead of tediously planning out a bunch of activities, I’m just keeping a list of things we can do, with the thought that we can make those decisions on a day to day basis. Hopefully that will turn out to be the best approach.
What’s The Value of a Hotel Certificate?
Jenn earned her bonus for her IHG Premier card this month which was 5 free night certificates worth up to 60,000 IHG points each. What does that really mean?
Free night certificates are hard to value. As noted earlier in this post, they’re usually only good for one year and they expire. They also have a maximum value that cannot be exceeded. One thing is almost assured, and that is that we will never redeem any of those certificates for a stay at an IHG property that is charging exactly 60,000 points for a stay. Finding that one hotel room that you need at maximum value is very close to impossible.
So what is the actual value for those certificates? For some people, they would try to maximize the value of those certificates by searching for the best hotel and if they have to go out of their way to maximize the value of that certificate, they will. We really use certificates because we need to stay somewhere, often for just one night, and that might mean on a stopover on a long flight. The most important thing to me is location and Jenn likes a free breakfast. Considering how we use certificates, the chances of us getting full value out of our certificates is basically zero.
That being said, we already used one of these certificates to book the Kimpton De Witt in Amsterdam. We have a 25 hour stopover in Amsterdam on our way to Rome and this checked a lot of boxes for us. It was a short train ride from the airport, right by the train station and downtown by the canals. We were going to have to leave for the airport too early for breakfast, so the fact that they didn’t have free breakfast is irrelevant. This hotel is going for 47,000 points per night, so we used almost 80% of the full value of the certificate. Honestly, that is about as good as you can reasonably expect. The cash value of the hotel room was $302, so I’m not mad about the free night.
For the sake of simplicity, I just value certificates at half of their maximum value. So if I can get a hotel room worth more than 30,000 IHG points with one of these certificates, I’ll be happy. With IHG points being worth around half a cent each, I would say the sign up bonus that Jenn earned was 150,000 points at .5 cents or $750. Considering the first certificate we used saved us $300, I think we’re already ahead.
US Bank Triple Cash
I signed up for the US Bank Triple Cash Rewards Business Card. This is a card with no annual fee. It earns 3% cash back on gas, EV charging stations, office supply stores, cell phone providers and restaurants. It earns 1% cash back on everything else. There is also a $100 per year credit for recurring software purchases, like Quickbooks.
The signup bonus is $750 after spending $6,000 in 6 months. I’m always a big fan of having some extra time to complete a spending requirement, so 6 months is great. This bonus will give us a little cash back to pay for some of those annoying taxes and surcharges when booking award flights.
American Airlines Aviator Red
I also signed up for the American Airlines Aviator Red card, under the assumption that it was going to disappear and this was my last chance to get the 70,000 American Airlines miles bonus for just one purchase and a paying the $99 annual fee. It’s just too easy to pass up. I already met the requirements now and I’m just waiting for those sweet, sweet AA miles to show up in my account. For more information about that card, read my post.
On To The Point Check
We did a pretty good job this last month continuing to use the bonus categories on some of our existing credit cards which led to a total of 6.3% return on all of our spend not devoted to earning a signup bonus.
Card Used
Spend
Points Earned
Point Value
Points Per $
Return on Spend
Amex Gold
$592
1,862
$37.28
3.1
6.3%
Ink Cash
$558
2,772
$56.83
5.0
10.2%
Venture
$547
1,094
$20.24
2.0
3.7%
Wyndham Business
$352
1,955
$21.51
5.6
6.1%
Citi
$297
667
$12.01
2.2
4.0%
Amex Business Gold
$190
546
$10.92
2.9
5.8%
Total
$2,536
8,898
$158.78
3.5
6.3%
This month’s spending not devoted to earning a signup bonus
Aside from the spending in the above chart, Jenn spent around $4,300 on her IHG Premier card earning her 19,000 IHG points and the signup bonus of 5 free night certificates worth up to 60,000 points per night. I spent a little over $500 on my US Bank Triple Cash card earning around $13 in cash back. At the end of the month, we were left with:
293,000 Amex Membership Rewards Points
214,000 Chase Ultimate Reward Points
139,000 IHG Points (includes 4 free night certificates)
104,800 American Airlines Miles
84,700 Capital One Venture Miles
71,900 Marriott Bonvoy Points (Includes 2 free night certificates)
43,000 Wyndham Points
30,400 Citi Thank You Points
11,300 Hyatt Points (includes a free night certificate)
Last week an article by CNBC indicated that Citigroup was in heavy negotiations with American Airlines to be the exclusive card issuer for American Airlines credit cards. These negotiations are immensely important for American Airlines because the revenue that comes from airline loyalty programs are now a huge portion of their income. It’s become so important, in fact, that it’s sometimes joked that airlines are credit card companies that fly planes. According to Delta CEO Ed Bastian, nearly 1% of the entire US economy is charged to Delta credit cards. The revenue from selling loyalty points to banks is a multi-billion dollar industry for airlines, and its a revenue stream they take very seriously.
American Airlines is in a strange situation because they have cobranded credit cards issued by two different banks. There are four credit cards issued by Citigroup which include three personal credit cards and one business card. Barclays technically has two personal American Airlines cards, but one is only available through upgrade, the AAdvantage Aviator Silver. The only Barclays American Airlines card with a current sign up bonus is the AAdvantage Aviator Red.
The fact that American Airlines has two banks issuing their credit cards is because of an American Airlines merger with US Airways over a decade ago. US Airways had a relationship with Barclays and after the merger US Airways credit cards issued by Barclays became American Airlines cards. American Airlines kept that relationship going, even as people began to forget about US Airways.
It makes sense for American Airlines and Citigroup to form an exclusive relationship. It would make the AAdvantage program more straightforward by reducing the complexity of having multiple card issuers. In the end, I think it’s highly likely that American Airlines will end their relationship with Barclays and form an exclusive relationship with Citigroup.
AAdvantage Aviator Red Card
If Barclays is going to get dropped from the AAdvantage program, it’s safe to say the Barclays AAdvantage Aviator Red card is going to go away. In some respects, good riddance, it’s not a very interesting card. It earns 2 miles per dollar spent on American Airlines purchases and 1 mile on everything else. You do get a free checked bag and preferred boarding but the annual fee is $99.
The thing that does make it interesting is that the signup bonus is incredibly easy to earn. Right now, there is a 70,000 mile signup bonus available through Frequent Miler’s website. What is the spending requirement? Signup and use it once. Literally, pay the $99 annual fee, activate the card and buy a pack of gum using the credit card and 70,000 AAdvantage miles are yours for the taking.
In addition, I’ve been eyeballing some deals to Portugal for spring break that are running around 22,500 AAdvantage miles one way per person. Having an extra 70,000 miles would top off our accounts enough to book the flights there, even though it wouldn’t be enough to get home.
Fear of Missing Out
I think that this is the last chance I have of taking advantage of one of the biggest no-brainers in points and miles. It’s legitimately buying 70,000 miles for $99. It’s not the best signup bonus the card has offered. Jenn got this card about a year ago when it offered 60,000 points for one charge and 15,000 for an authorized user and an additional charge to the authorized user card. However, it is definitely a solid deal, and waiting for a better deal at this point could mean that I miss out completely.
In the middle of writing this post, I actually did apply for this card and was approved. That’s fantastic and I will happily take my shiny new 70,000 miles from American Airlines. As a matter of fact, after I was approved, my daughter walked downstairs and I convinced her to apply for it as well and she was approved.
In all fairness, when I told her there was an annual fee she balked, but I told her if she would use her miles to pay for her ticket to Portugal, I would pay for her annual fee and she jumped on it.
Potentially Good News From the Exclusive Deal with Citigroup
Knowing that Barclays will likely be cut out of the American Airlines credit card business, it means that there will be less choices, and less available signup bonuses in the future. Still, it does raise the possibility of American Airlines becoming a transfer partner for Citi Thank You points.
American Airlines currently doesn’t have a transfer partner. Most major airlines have transfer partners, with Delta Airlines being a partner from American Express Membership Rewards points and United Airlines and Southwest Airlines being partners from Chase Ultimate Reward points. American Airlines was briefly a transfer partner of Citi Thank You points a few years ago, and was a transfer partner of Bilt Rewards very recently. A few months ago Bilt Rewards and American Airlines ended that partnership, and maybe that has to do with their negotiations with Citigroup.
With no current transfer partner, and with American Airlines negotiating a deal with Citigroup, there is a fairly good possibility that Citi Thank You points will become transferable to American Airlines. If that becomes a reality, I will definitely be attempting to earn more Citi Thank You points, because I find a lot of value in American Airlines miles.
In the end, I hope the changes that American Airlines makes to their credit card business with Citigroup works out to be beneficial to both them and their cardholders. Knowing how important that loyalty points are to the business of airlines puts a lot of pressure on them to have a good and profitable loyalty program. In the meantime, I need to figure out how I’m going to use these shiny new American Airlines miles.
We’ve been making preparations to go with our friends Bill and Theresa as well as Jenn’s parents to Italy. We will be visiting Florence, Cinque Terre, Venice and Rome on this trip. This is a little nerve-wracking, since we have made a lot of the plans and we don’t want to let them down. In the past, we’ve mostly just gone on trips with our kids and I’ve spent their entire lives trying to lower their expectations. But, we are going to Italy, how can you not have a great time there?
Signing up for the IHG One Rewards Card
Jenn applied for and was accepted for the IHG One Rewards card, issued by Chase. We wanted to jump on this because they had an elevated offer of 5 free night certificates worth up to 60,000 points per night. IHG points are worth around a half a cent each, so for the most part, these certificates can book you a room that would cost less than $300 per night. The card has an annual fee of $99 and each year on the anniversary date the cardholder receives a 40,000 point certificate.
It has a cool perk where you get a fourth night free if you book a 4 night award stay with points. That doesn’t count for free nights using certificates, so you would need to actually have 3 nights worth of points to take advantage of that perk.
The card earns 10x at IHG properties, 5x on travel dining and gas, and 3x on everything else, so you can earn quite a lot of points quickly. Unfortunately, with them being worth half a cent each, it does take quite a few points to book a hotel room.
A Couple of Bonuses
I finished the rest of my spend on the American Express Blue Business Plus card, earning me the 15,000 Membership Reward point bonus. Jenn also finished the required spend on her Spark Cash Select card which ended up earning her a $750 bonus and a total of $855 of cash back on just under $7,000 in spend over a few months which works out to a pretty impressive 12% cash back rate.
We used that cash back as well as other cash back that we had earned from other cards to cover the $1,500 in VRBO costs that we have for our trip to Italy this fall. We always like to have some cash back cards to cover VRBO charges or taxes and fuel surcharges on flights so cash back cards can be really helpful.
Anyway, on to the Points Check!
This month, we did fairly well focusing our spending on cards to earn signup bonuses. We do have our normal recurring payments set up to maximize the value of some of our cards. For instance, taking advantage of the 8x on gas and 5x on utilities on the Wyndham Earner Business card and using the Capital One Venture card’s 2x on everything to take care of our car insurance and Costco charges, neither of which are bonus categories anywhere that I know of.
The Citi Strata Premier charges are the only real exception, but that’s really because our daughter Emma is an authorized user and if we need her to buy groceries or something else for the family, she uses that. It is nice that she will run an errand once in a while for us, even though she treats a 15 minute trip to Aldi like a 2 month stretch on the Oregon Trail.
Card Used
Spend
Points Earned
Point Value
Points Per $
Return on Spend
Wyndham Business Earner
$805
4,961
$54.57
6.2
6.8%
Venture
$666
1,332
$24.64
2.0
3.7%
Ink Cash
$540
2,679
$54.92
5.0
10.2%
Citi Strata Premier
$152
262
$4.72
1.7
3.1%
Amex Gold
$101
404
$8.08
4.0
8.0%
Total
$2,264
9,638
$146.93
4.3
6.5%
This month’s spending not devoted to earning a signup bonus
Aside from the spend in the above chart, I also spent a little under $1,700 on my Amex Blue Business Plus card earning around 3,400 Membership Reward points as well as 15,000 bonus Membership Reward points. Jenn spent $4,800 on her Spark Cash Select which included a lot of those VRBO charges, earning her around $72 in cash back and finishing off her $750 signup bonus on that card.
At the end of the month we were left with 306,900 Amex Membership Reward points, 211,500 Chase Ultimate Reward points, 83,600 Capital One Venture miles, 74,700 American Airlines miles, 54,400 Marriott Bonvoy points, 41,200 Wyndham points, 29,700 Citi Thank You points, 11,300 Hyatt points, 5,000 Delta miles, 1,900 United miles, and around $160 in cash back. Using the Points Guy valuations, all of this is worth just over $15,000.
Wow, another big month of accumulating points as we continue to collect Membership Reward points from the three American Express cards that we signed up for this year. Last month Jenn earned her 130,000 point bonus on her Amex Business Gold card. This month, I earned my 75,000 point signup bonus on my Amex Gold Card. These bonuses in the last two months were the main reason why our total points valuations jumped from over $10,500 two months ago to over $15,000 now.
Hoarding Points
There is a a generally agreed upon philosophy in the points and miles community of “Churn and Burn”. It’s actually a very solid philosophy. The reason for that is because over time, points tend to lose their value. They don’t go bad like milk, but they do have a tendency to be worth less over time. For example, when we were planning our first trip to Europe, we accumulated a bunch of United miles with the hope that 240,000 points would be enough to fly round trip for four people.
This was actually the case for us on that trip, because at the time, 30,000 points one-way was actually pretty commonly available. However, if you try to use United miles to fly to Europe now, chances are that it will cost you over 40,000 points each way in economy. So if you were holding a bunch of United miles, you just saw the value of your points drop pretty significantly.
We are, against the advice of so many people, deliberately hoarding points. Why? Well, partly because of the fact that we have two kids and we are at the stage of our lives where we are unable to travel as much as we want. The other reason is that because of the kids we spend a lot of money on things like groceries, clothes, cell phones and especially car insurance that will be significantly reduced once they move out on their own.
This will eventually reverse and we will travel more, while spending and earning less. That is when we will definitely need to lean heavily on points and miles to allow us to maximize our travels. My rough goal is to save about $5,000 worth of points and miles annually until I’m eligible for retirement. It seems aggressive, however in two and a half years in the points and miles hobby, we’ve managed to accumulate $15,000 in points and miles, while still taking some pretty great trips.
A minor Redemption
We have a trip to Italy planned in November, where we were able to leave a 25 hour stopover on our flight from Chicago to Rome. The stopover is in Amsterdam, and I am very much looking forward to it. When we planned for that, I knew we would need to book a hotel. I was hoping to use our category 1-4 Hyatt certificate for the stayover. The problem was that the hotel that I really wanted to stay at was a category 5, and the only other Hyatt that made sense was a category 2.
I’m not going to burn a free night certificate on a category 2 hotel, so we went ahead and used 8,000 Hyatt points to book a room at the Hyatt Place near the Amsterdam airport. We’re going to have to take the train into the the center of Amsterdam to enjoy it, but at least we’ll be close to the airport when it’s time to catch our flight.
Capital One Spark Card Select
Jenn applied for and was accepted for the Capital One Spark Card Select. The Spark Card Select is a business card that earns an unlimited 1.5% on all purchases. It doesn’t have an annual fee and it comes with a $750 signup bonus when you spend $6,000 in the first 3 months.
One interesting wrinkle in this is that you can transfer any cash rewards to a Venture card, if you have one, at a ratio of 1 cent to 1 point. This means that if you have a Venture card, which Jenn does have, you can transfer the $750 signup bonus to the Venture card as 75,000 venture miles. The nice thing about Venture miles is that they can be transferred to any of Capital One’s many transfer partners.
This is probably not going to be a card we spend on once we hit the signup bonus. We already have a couple of 2% anywhere cards that work as a good base for any spending in non-bonus categories, so 1.5% just isn’t going to excite me much after earning the signup bonus. That being said, it doesn’t have an annual fee, so there isn’t a huge incentive to run out and cancel it either.
On to the Points Check!
Card Used
Spend
Points Earned
Point Value
Points Per $
Return on Spend
Venture
$1,292
2,584
$47.80
2.0
3.7%
Ink Cash
$534
2,651
$54.35
5.0
10.2%
Wyndham Business Earner
$450
2,734
$30.07
6.1
6.8%
Citi Custom Cash
$94
318
$5.72
3.4
6.3%
Total
$2,370
8,287
$137.95
3.5
5.8%
This month’s spending not devoted to earning a signup bonus
Aside from the spending in the above chart, I spent under $300 on my Amex Gold card, and under $700 on my Amex Blue Business Plus card. That spending, as well as earning the signup bonus on my Amex Gold, increased my Membership Reward points by a little less than 80,000 points. Jenn spent a little over $2,700 on her Amex Business Gold card. Some of that spending was at 14x on dining, which was part of the referral bonus to get me to sign up for the Blue Business Plus. That $2,700 in spending earned over 15,000 points, so I would imagine a decent chunk of that was part of that bonus.
After all of that, we finished the month with 279,400 Membership Reward points, 233,000 Chase Ultimate Reward points, 81,200 Venture miles, 71,400 American Airlines miles, 39,300 Citi Thank You points, 34,900 Marriott Bonvoy points, 33,000 Wyndham points, 5,000 Delta miles, 2,300 Hyatt points, 1,800 United miles, and around $800 in cash back. Using the Points Guy’s valuations, these points are worth around $15,300 – not too shabby.
Once people learn that I save a lot of money on vacations by using miles and points, I often get asked “What credit card should I get?” The fact of the matter is that it depends on the type and location of the vacation. Where you want to go on vacation, when, and what style of vacation matters when deciding which card to choose.
Making a rational decision really matters when you’re making these plans because earning a bunch of points that are irrelevant to your plans can be extremely frustrating and counterproductive. Also, earning points in programs that require you to use more points than other programs means that you’re working harder than necessary to achieve your goals.
What about Spain?
Spain has been on our minds lately. Jenn and I have discussed going to Spain multiple times and we just haven’t pulled the trigger. We’ve discussed doing a beach vacation to the Canary Islands or a city trip to Madrid, but lately we’ve been discussing doing a week of a pilgrimage on the Camino de Santiago de Compostela. It hasn’t worked out for us yet, but those tapas are calling me and I’m going to make it happen at some point.
Economy Flights
I’m an economy flyer. It’s not that I don’t want to fly business or first class, it’s just not that important to me. I really treat flights as a means to an end – just get me there. Look, I’d love to be more comfortable, but right now I’m trying to get a family of four across an ocean, and I don’t really feel like draining my points balances to do it. I’m not saying I won’t fly business or first class in the future, but right now it’s just not something I’m thinking about.
17,000 point is the typical off-peak price. Iberia’s hub is Madrid.
Flying Blue
20,000 to 40,000 one-way
$100-$170
20,000 points is fairly normal, some sales go as low as 11,500 points. Hubs in Amsterdam and Paris.
Virgin Atlantic
12,000 to 40,000 one-way
$170-$180
High fees, but 12,000 points are fairly easy to find, flights are usually KLM, Air France or Delta flights
Avianca Lifemiles
20,000-30,000 one way
$20-$70 (+25 booking fee)
Low fees and reasonable redemption prices. Avianca is usually good for United flights. Not as frequently available as Flying Blue and Iberia.
American Airlines
20,000-35,000 one-way
$5-$25
Low fees and reasonable redemption prices. Some flights that route through London have high taxes.
United Airlines
30,000-40,000 one-way
$5-$15
Low fees and high redemption prices, always check Avianca first before booking a United flight.
Award availability and pricing varies wildly, these prices may not be available when you want to book a flight.
The biggest problem here is that just because pricing for award flights are good and available in certain programs right now doesn’t mean that they will be available and good later. That’s why it is best to have the ability to use points with a variety of programs. Using a credit card with the ability to transfer points to a multiple programs is a good way to help you have the most options when it’s time to redeem those points.
Airline Award Program Transfer Partners
Point Program
Citibank
Chase
Amex
Capital One
Wells Fargo
Bilt
Iberia (Avios)
1:1
1:1
1:1
1:1
1:1
1:1
Flying Blue
1:1
1:1
1:1
1:1
1:1
1:1
Virgin Atlantic
1:1
1:1
1:1
1:1
1:1
Avianca Lifemiles
1:1
1:1
1:1
1:1
1:1
American Airlines
United Airlines
1:1
1:1
Transferring points from Capital One to Iberia Avios requires another step of first transferring points from Capital One to British Airways Avios and then to Iberia Avios. Transferring Citi Thank You Points requires a transfer to Qatar Avios, then to British Airways Avios and then to Iberia Avios.
I prefer to fly non-stop, if at all possible, and Chicago is our closest major airport. Most of the non-stop flights from Chicago to Madrid are on Iberia. That’s going to be my first choice. All major programs transfer to Avios, but Citi and Capital One don’t transfer directly to Iberia Avios, they both require transferring to a different Avios program and then to Iberia. That could create other annoyances that I might not want to deal with.
KLM/Air France Flying Blue is another great option, because they have a lot of flights that leave Chicago and fly to Spain with layovers in either Amsterdam (on KLM) or through Paris (on Air France). Virgin Atlantic and Avianca Lifemiles are great, but for Spain they are mostly booking partner awards, so they won’t be operating any flights to Spain. Their availability is going to be dependent on whether another airline allows them to book their flights. In other words, I would check for availability, but I wouldn’t count on them.
American Airlines sometimes has some amazing prices, but they don’t have any transfer partners so you would need to have an American Airlines card to earn those points. United Airlines usually has fairly expensive award prices, but their taxes are low and availability is good. It’s nice to have United as a backup option.
Hotels in Spain
For most hotel groups, I typically don’t consider transfer partners. The reason for this is because the transfer rates don’t make up for the fact that the points aren’t worth much. Most programs with the exception of Hyatt just aren’t worth transferring points to from one of the major bank programs.
Hotel Loyalty Program Transfer Ratios
Citibank
Chase
Amex
Capital One
Wells Fargo
Bilt
Hyatt
1:1
1:1
IHG
1:1
1:1
Hilton
1:2
Choice
1:2
1:1
1:1
1:2
Marriott
1:1
1:1
1:1
Wyndham
1:1
1:1
Transfer ratios of points from major bank travel award programs to hotel loyalty programs. For example Citibank transfers 1:2 to Choice Privileges, meaning 1,000 Citi Thank You Points can be converted to 2,000 Choice Privileges points.
If you are looking at a program besides Hyatt, you’ll probably want to get a cobranded hotel credit card if you want to build up free nights and points. The list of those cards and the pros and cons of each of those cards is too exhaustive to get into in this post, but I do think its important to be thinking about those cobranded cards when considering programs other than Hyatt.
The reason why Hyatt is different, is because their points are worth more than other programs. According to the Points Guy, Hyatt points are worth 1.7 cents per point. By contrast, Wyndham is worth 1.1, Marriott Bonvoy is .85, Hilton is .6, Choice is .6 and IHG is .5 cents per point. For example, Chase Ultimate Rewards points transfer to Hyatt, Marriott and IHG at a 1:1 ratio. However, on average, you’ll spend more than three times as many Ultimate reward points booking an IHG hotel than a comparable Hyatt hotel when transferring Ultimate Reward points to those programs.
Hotels in Spanish Tourist Locations
Madrid
Balearic Islands
Barcelona
Canary Islands
Hyatt
6
35
3
11
IHG
14
5
9
8
Hilton
6
4
5
0
Choice
7
0
9
3
Marriott
23
11
17
6
Wyndham
2
0
0
3
Number of hotels in/near various locations in Spain. Counts are across all brands in a program’s portfolio.
When looking at Spain specifically, the good news is that Hyatt has a lot of hotels in Spain. They especially have a large all-inclusive hotel presence in the Balearic Islands, which is a huge hot spot for Europeans to enjoy a beach vacation. Marriott also has a large number of hotels in Spain. A lot of those are in Barcelona and Madrid, which would make them a good program to use if you were looking for a more urban trip.
Potential Strategies for Earning Points for a Trip to Spain
There are a million different ways to accomplish the goal of earning points and miles to go on a vacation to Spain. I think its helpful here to explain what I would do, and why I would do it in a certain way. It doesn’t necessarily mean that this would be the optimal strategy, but I think it’s indicative of how someone should approach it.
All-Inclusive couple’s beach vacation to Mallorca
There are numerous Hyatt All-Inclusive resorts in Mallorca. Of the ones that showed up on the search that I did, there are a number of Category A resorts (15,000 points normally, 12,000 for off-peak and 18,000 for peak) and the most expensive was the Secrets Mallorca which is a Category D resort (30,000 points normally, 25,000 for off-peak, 35,000 points peak).
The best bets for available flights to Mallorca for a low amount of points is probably going to be Iberia Airlines (Avios) or KLM/Air France (Flying Blue). You can move points from Citibank, Capital One, Chase, American Express, Wells Fargo or Bilt to Iberia or KLM/Air France. This means you have a lot of choices on which credit cards you might want to sign up for.
The good news here, is that there is overlap between acquiring points for Hyatt and acquiring points for those two airline programs. Both Bilt and Chase offer transfers to all of these programs. Bilt never really offers signup bonuses, which is a big negative in this case, but they do allow you to earn points paying for rent, which nobody else allows, so if you are a renter, the Bilt card is a no-brainer. However, regardless of whether the Bilt card makes sense in your case, you’ll still probably want to sign up for a Chase card that allows you to transfer Ultimate Reward points.
In order to unlock the ability to transfer any Ultimate Reward points to partner programs you will need one of these three cards:
Chase Sapphire Preferred ($95 annual fee, 3x on dining, 3x online groceries, 3x on streaming services, 2x on travel)
Ink Business Preferred ($95 annual fee, 3x on shipping, internet, phone, cable and travel)
The typical signup bonuses for these cards are 60,000 each for the Sapphire cards and 100,000 points for the Ink Business Preferred. Once you have signed up and earned the welcome offer bonus you can refer your spouse or significant other and earn a referral bonus while they also earn a signup bonus for themselves. Once you’ve done that, then it’s just a matter of filling in the gaps with either some other cards that earn Ultimate Reward points or by getting cobranded cards. Here are some examples:
Ink Business Cash ($0 annual fee, $750 cash back which can also be used as 75,000 Ultimate Reward points, 5x internet, cable, phone and office supply stores)
Ink Business Unlimited ($0 annual fee, $750 cash back which can be used as 75,000 Ultimate Reward points, 1.5x on everything)
Ink Business Premier ($195 annual fee, $1,000 cash back which can be used as 100,000 Ultimate Reward points, 2x on everything)
World of Hyatt ($95 annual fee, 30,000 Hyatt point bonus, category 1-4 free night certificate each year on anniversary date)
World of Hyatt Business ($199 annual fee, 60,000 Hyatt point bonus, up to $100 off stays each year)
Air France KLM World Elite Mastercard ($89 annual fee, 50,000 Flying Blue point bonus, 1.5x on everything)
I think it should be feasible to book a vacation like this for around 50,000 points round-trip per person in economy and if you wanted 6 nights in an all-inclusive, it could be another 90,000 to 180,000 points. That would mean the totals here would be 190,000 to 280,000 points. Just doing the minimum spend on two Chase Sapphire Preferred cards, with a referral bonus between spouses or significant others, would probably earn somewhere in the ballpark of 150,000 Ultimate Reward points, so it’s not too hard to pick a card or two that fills in the gaps here.
Family of four to Madrid for Spring Break
For this example, the information about the flights would basically be the same. You’ll probably find that Iberia or Air France/KLM will be the best programs to serve the Madrid Airport. From Chicago, you are likely to be able be able to book those round-trip economy flights for 50,000 points each (probably less if off peak). You would probably need to earn somewhere in the 200,000 point range just for the flights.
Instead of going with Chase as is in the first example, I would probably go with the Capital One Venture Card. Instead of a 60,000 point bonus, the Venture Card comes with a 75,000 point bonus. It also earns 2x on everything and has a 20,000 point referral bonus. Therefore, if you sign up for the Venture Card and refer your significant other and do the minimum spend, you will end up with a combined 186,000 points. An additional $7,000 in spending would get you to 200,000 points. If you need to transfer those points to Iberia, however, you will need to transfer them to British Airways Avios and then from British Airways Avios to Iberia Avios.
As far as lodging is concerned, European hotels typically don’t like to allow people to sleep four to a room so you would probably need to get two rooms. That’s not ideal, not only because it becomes twice the cost to get hotels, but also depending on the age of your kids, your sleeping arrangements might not be what your used to.
Personally, because of the two room problem, I would just get an Airbnb instead of a hotel. However, if you would like to stay at a hotel on points, I would probably be considering Marriott hotels. They have a lot of hotels in the Madrid area. In order to earn points/free nights for the stay I would go for the Marriott Bonvoy Boundless card. Most of the time they offer three free night certificates as a sign up bonus. However, it seems like about once a year they offer five free night certificates, so if you time it right and your significant other also signs up at the same time, you could end up with ten free night certificates, and that would get you five nights of two rooms per night.
Conclusion
For the most part, whenever you want to fly somewhere, looking first at an airline based in that area better is always a good choice. In this case Iberia is a perfect example. It’s hub is in Madrid and they have very good award prices to Madrid. Luckily for the points and miles hobbyist, you can pretty much transfer any of the major bank programs’ points and miles to Iberia Avios. The second best option is Air France/KLM Flying Blue which also transfers from every major program.
This gives an incredible amount of flexibility when deciding which credit cards to use, however, if you are also looking at Hyatt simultaneously, you probably want to go with a Chase credit card because it also transfers to Hyatt. I think Capital One is a better choice for the Family trip to Madrid, even with the extra headache of having to transfer the points through British Airways to Iberia. While I would do an Airbnb in Madrid, if you do actually want to split your family into two rooms at a hotel in Madrid, the Marriott Bonvoy Boundless card can be a great choice for racking up a lot of free nights quickly.
Whenever you are trying to determine the best credit card to sign up for to help out with the cost of vacation, it is always important to think about the desired destination first. Doing a little bit of analysis should help guide you to pick the right credit cards to help you get there. Once you’ve done that, it’s just a matter of executing your plan and enjoying your vacation.
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