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.
We’ve spent a good deal of time in February planning our spring break trip to Portugal and Spain as well as booking some parts of a summer trip to Europe.
“Planning” is an odd way to put how we’re approaching our spring break trip. We’re doing a week on the Portuguese route of the Camino de Santiago de Compostela, a thousand year old tradition of folks, primarily Spanish Catholics, taking a pilgrimage to the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela to visit the final resting place of Saint James. The fact of the matter is that planning, other than making sure you have the correct gear, is unnecessary and maybe counterproductive for the Camino. It’s probably best to do the Camino with spontaneity, and this is driving me crazy because I want to plan SOMETHING!
This will be our first opportunity to do participate in something in Europe, instead of just being a tourist. While Americans certainly are welcome on the Camino only about 8 percent of pilgrims are Americans. Pilgrims come from around the world, but the majority are Europeans and hence this is primarily a European phenomenon. Knowing that the stops along the Camino are primarily to cater to the needs of them and not just Americans hopefully will mean that this will seem more authentic and not altered to appeal to American tourists.
We will be spending an evening in Porto on the day we arrive and a night in Madrid the day we leave. We booked a room in Porto at a hotel not affiliated with any major program using Jenn’s Delta Business Gold Card and the Delta Stays site, because her Delta Gold card has a $150 hotel credit which was immediately credited to her account.
We also used two IHG certificates to book a night at The Intercontinental Madrid. We had to book 2 rooms because, as usual, booking any room in Europe with 4 people is next to impossible, especially with points. Those rooms cost us a 60,000 point certificate each, but the cash rate for those rooms are $273 per night, which is right at about the maximum value you can expect to get for a 60,000 point IHG certificate.
American Express Gold
I referred Jenn to the American Express Gold Card and she was approved. I immediately received a 15,000 point referral bonus and Jenn will receive a 75,000 Membership Rewards point bonus when she completes $6,000 in spend in 6 months. It has a pretty steep $325 annual fee.
Despite the high annual fee, it’s actually one of my favorite credit cards for families. The reason is that it earns 4x on groceries and 4x on dining. Those are two categories where people tend to spend a lot of money, so it has the ability to accumulate points very quickly.
The 4x bonus categories wouldn’t be good enough to offset the $325 annual fee, but if you are able to use some of the credits available on the Amex Gold card, you should be able to get all or most of the annual fee back. Those credits include $100 per year at Resy restaurants, $120 per year Uber credit, $120 per year dining credit and a $84 per year credit at Dunkin.
Amex points are extremely flexible since the transfer to 18 airline reward programs and 3 hotel programs. I’ve had no problem finding good use for Amex points but I do have a problem keeping them around, so earning a few more is always good.
We also booked the flight home, a direct flight on Aer Lingus from Dublin to Chicago. That cost 20,000 Aer Lingus Avios and $155 each. We transferred the 80,000 points from American Express to book that flight.
I’m waiting to book the flight from Munich to Dublin until they decide on what day they want to travel. They might even want to take a train or bus to another nearby city like Vienna or Zurich, spend a day and fly out of those cities. They need to hash out those details before I book anything else.
On to the Point Check
Jenn didn’t have a welcome offer to work on, so her default credit card was her Amex Business Gold card, which she earned a surprising 2.4 points per dollar spent on. We almost never use my World of Hyatt card because it’s just not good for earning points. However, they had an offer of 5x on groceries for up to $1,000 spent this quarter, so we started to use it for our groceries. I’ll take 5x Hyatt points any day of the week. So for all of our credit card spending not going towards a welcome bonus, we earned a 6.2% return. That means that we were doing a good job of taking advantage of the bonus categories on our credit cards to maximize point accumulation.
Card Used
Spend
Points Earned
Point Value
Points Per $
Return on Spend
Amex Business Gold
$1,059
2,591
51.82
2.4
4.9%
Ink Cash
$445
2,224
$45.59
5.0
10.3%
World of Hyatt
$356
1,783
$30.31
5.0
8.5%
Venture
$345
690
$12.77
2.0
3.7%
Wyndham Business Earner
$306
2,253
$24.78
7.4
8.1%
Blue Business Plus
$234
468
$9.36
2.0
4.0%
Citi Premier
$206
271
$4.88
1.3
2.4%
Amex Gold
$127
508
$10.16
4.0
8.0%
Total
$3,078
10,788
$189.67
3.5
6.2%
This month’s spending not devoted to earning a signup bonus
Besides that, I spent a little over $1,500 on my Alaska Airlines card and earned around 1,500 Alaska miles. With the redemptions for the summer trip, that leaves us with:
170,000 Chase Ultimate Reward Points
105,000 Amex Membership Reward Points
99,700 American Airlines Miles
83,800 IHG Points
71,900 Marriott Bonvoy Points
54,300 Wyndham Points
32,000 Citi Thank You Points
12,400 Hyatt Points
6,300 Delta Miles
2,800 United Miles
1,500 Alaska Airlines Miles
$109 in Cash Back
It feels like lately we’ve been absolutely bleeding points, but we are getting to the end of most of the points redemptions, at least for flights, that we will need for 2025. That means that we should be able to concentrate more on enjoying our trips and accumulating more points to get ready for whatever we have plan for 2026. In October our points, according to the Point Guy, was worth $16,500. With all of the redemptions that we’ve made since October, we are down to $9,900. Time to earn some more points!
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.
December is always a month to get together with family and friends to celebrate the holidays. For a lot of people there is holiday travel, but this has always been a time for us to stay home. Now that we’ve been traveling more, this is time that I get a chance to slow down and think about next year’s travels.
While children dreamed of Christmas morning, I was dreaming about where we are going in 2025. Over the last few years, we have done a great job of building up our point balances in a variety of programs, and that opens up a lot of possibilities for our 2025 travels.
It has been tempting to think of places in South America or Asia, but right now, we really love going to Europe. Even though it can be a challenging distance to fly, it’s still close enough that a seven to ten day trip isn’t dominated by flights and the accompanying jet lag. The infrastructure of subways, high speed rail and airports makes getting around in Europe without renting a car easy.
Europe is beginning to feel like an easy destination, where I don’t have to worry too much about how to get around, where to stay or for that matter the language barrier, since so many Europeans speak English well. Plus, we have so much left to see in Europe. Because of that, we have three trips to Europe in 2025 in various stages of planning.
Redemptions Galore
I went on a bit of a booking spree in December. It started with me noticing a great deal on an American Airlines flight to Nice at the perfect time for the UTMB Nice Cote d’Azur Ultramarathons. I wanted to do the 54 kilometer trail race, but I also wanted to make sure that I could get a decent price on a flight before I committed to it. We booked the way there from Moline for only 19,000 American Airlines miles and $11 each. Getting home wasn’t quite as affordable as going to Nice, so I ended up booking a flight out of Dublin, Ireland instead for 19,000 American Airlines miles and $47 in taxes.
That meant we needed to book a flight from Nice to Dublin which we were able to secure on Aer Lingus for a 6,500 Aer Lingus Avios and $37 each. We transferred Amex Membership Rewards points to Aer Lingus Avios at a 1:1 ratio to acquire the necessary Avios. So in the end, for Jenn and I to fly to Nice from Moline and then on to Dublin for a couple days and then back to Moline, cost us 76,000 American Airlines miles, 13,000 Amex Membership Reward points and $190 in cash.
In November, we had booked a flight for Jenn and I and our two kids Alex and Emma from Chicago to Porto, Portugal for 48,000 Virgin Atlantic miles transferred from 35,000 Chase Ultimate Reward points and $702 in taxes and fees.
We did however, need to get back so we booked 4 flights from Madrid to Chicago for 88,000 Iberia Avios and $512 dollars in taxes and fees. Those points were transferred from American Express Membership Reward points and we used 50,700 Capital One Venture miles at one cent per point to wipe out all but $5 of the taxes and fees.
So in two months we booked four flights from Chicago to Porto, four flights from Madrid to Chicago, two flights from Moline to Nice, two flights from Nice to Dublin and two flights from Dublin to Moline. These flights in total cost us 101,000 Amex Membership Reward points, 76,000 American Airlines miles, 50,700 Capital One Venture miles, 35,000 Chase Ultimate Reward points and $897 in cash. I was able to redeem $875 in cash back to help out with the cash for taxes and fees, so out of pocket these flights cost us a grand total of $23. I’m not mad about that at all.
The cash value for the flights from Chicago to Porto were $433 each on KLM. The cash value for the flights from Madrid to Chicago on Iberia was a shockingly high $901 each. The whole Moline to Nice to Dublin to Moline itinerary had a cash value of $1,253 each. The grand total for all of that would have been $7,842 so to only fork over $23 isn’t bad. The 262,700 points and miles we used ended up netting us over 2.6 cents per point in value which is way above what they are actually valued at, so we did a tremendous job of redeeming those points.
A Couple of Bonuses
The $875 in cash back didn’t appear out of thin air. I happened to finally get my $750 sign up bonus for hitting the required $6,000 in spend in the first five months of opening my US Bank Triple Cash card. I actually spent a little over $6,400 and the total cash back was over $850. That meant I got around 13.3% cash back for all of that spend on the Triple Cash over the first 4 months. That’s pretty good, I’ll take it.
Jenn also hit the signup bonus that she was working on. She signed up for the Citi Strata Premier card, which had a 75,000 Thank You point bonus after spending $4,000 in the first 3 months.
This leaves us with no current credit card signup bonuses we are working on, so I’ll have to make a decision about how I’m going to go about building up our points balances after using so many in the last couple of months.
Never Forget Those Credits
I’m supposed to be an “expert”, right? Well, I was listening to a podcast (It was probably Frequent Miler on the Air), and they mentioned that you need to make sure to use up the credits that were expiring at the end of the year. One of the credits that they mentioned was that many Delta Airlines credit cards have hotel credits that can be used once a year. I knew Jenn had a Delta Airlines Business Gold card and so I checked out the credit. Sure enough, there is a $150 annual hotel credit if you book the hotel though Delta Stays.
We used the credit to do a short trip to Iowa City for an Iowa Hawkeye Women’s Basketball game – Go Hawks! We also use this as an opportunity to use up the $50 semi-annual Resy credit that comes with my American Express Gold card.
This was a huge reminder to me to make sure that I not only understand all of the benefits of the credit cards we have, but to actually use them. Most travel credit cards with annual fees will have some benefits or credits that will expire if you don’t use them. It’s important to remember to use those, or you’re not getting the full benefit of a card you’re paying for.
On to THe POint Check!
We didn’t stray too much from the cards that we were working on for a bonus this month. Most of the spending that we did on cards not earning a signup bonus was on recurring charges like utilities, insurance, streaming services, etc. The good news is that you can get a pretty good return on that spend and we were able to get a fairly impressive 7.1% return on all of those recurring charges last month. I’ll take it.
Card Used
Spend
Points Earned
Point Value
Points Per $
Return on Spend
Ink Cash
$463
2,317
$47.50
5.0
10.3%
Wyndham Business Earner
$450
2,591
$28.50
5.8
6.3%
Venture
$345
690
$12.77
2.0
3.7%
Total
$1,258
5,598
$88.76
4.4
7.1%
This month’s spending not devoted to earning a signup bonus
Besides the spending listed above, I also spent a little over $2,200 on my US Bank Triple Cash card earning $37 in cash back as well as the $750 sign up bonus. Jenn spent a little over $2,800 on her Citi Strata Premier card and earned almost 5,600 Citi Thank You points as well as the 75,000 point bonus on that card.
After earning two bonuses and having a whole lot of points redeemed for flights, we were left with:
199,600 American Express Membership Rewards Points
176,700 Chase Ultimate Reward Points
142,300 IHG Points
113,900 Citi Thank You Points
99,700 American Airlines Miles
71,900 Marriott Bonvoy Points
49,700 Wyndham Points
19,600 Hyatt Points
5,100 Delta Miles
2,700 United Miles
$105 in Cash Back
According to the valuations published by The Points Guy, the total value of our points, miles and cash back is $12,950. That is a significant drop from November when the total was worth $15,600, but that’s fine. We are using those points wisely and have all of the flights for two trips to Europe out of the way. I just need to book a summer trip and all of our plans are ready for 2025. It’s going to be a fun year.
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.
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)
The ability to transfer American Express Membership Rewards Points to Hawaiian Airlines is no longer available. However, this article is an example of what is possible if you are creative with your points and miles.
Recently, I transferred 18,000 American Express Membership Rewards points to Hawaiian Airlines, then transferred them from Hawaiian Airlines to Alaska Airlines to book a round trip positioning flight on American Airlines for my wife Jenn and I. To anyone other than a hardcore travel hacker that seems insane. Yet, to hackers, that sounds like a normal rational decision.
This process was actually rather easy, but there is a lot to unpack in that sentence. Doing this has only really been possible for a few days, and for me it is the result of learning a lot about travel hacking over the course of the last few years. A recent merger between Alaska Airlines and Hawaiian Airlines is the reason why this is suddenly possible.
What is a Positioning Flight?
A few months ago, we booked a trip to Italy using Flying Blue miles to fly KLM to Rome from Chicago and we booked United Airlines to fly back to Chicago from Rome. The problem is that we live 3 hours away from Chicago O’Hare Airport. The reason why we booked it out of Chicago is that the flights were much cheaper than out of our home airport, Quad Cities International.
A one-way ticket from Chicago to Rome was 20,000 Flying Blue miles and $122, but if you tack on the Quad Cities to Chicago leg, it becomes 53,000 Flying Blue miles and $127. It seems insane that from Chicago to Rome was 20,000 Flying Blue miles but adding the leg from Moline to Chicago was 33,000 miles. I’m not doing that.
We were okay with driving to O’Hare, but we didn’t want to. Instead we (originally) used American Airlines miles to book a separate flight from the Quad Cities to Chicago that would save us the drive. Those flights were 7,500 American Airlines miles per passenger each way, or a total of 30,000 American Airlines miles. This is called a positioning flight because we had a separate booking to position us to the airport we wanted to fly out of.
What is a Transfer Partner?
Transfer partners are basically what makes the points in banks’ reward programs so powerful. The reason why people covet Amex Membership Reward points or Chase Ultimate Reward points is that they can be transferred to various airline and hotel programs. Having transferable points lets you keep your points flexible while you’re earning them and then choose the best way to use them when you are redeeming those points.
American Express Membership Rewards have a number of transfer partners. One of those transfer partners is Hawaiian Airlines. You can transfer your Membership Rewards points to Hawaiian Airlines at a rate of 1:1 with a minimum of 1000 points transferred. American Express does charge an excise tax of 60 cents per 1000 points transferred.
OK, But you Booked with Alaska Airlines Not Hawaiian Airlines
Alaska Airlines has been an amazing program for a long time. According to their website, they partner with 31 different airlines. You can redeem Alaska miles for flights on many of them, when they are available. There have been several times that I’ve used Pointsyeah.com to find the best award flight, and Alaska has had the best price.
The problem with Alaska Airlines was that it was hard to amass a lot of miles in their program. There are only a couple of credit cards issued by Alaska, and the signup bonuses are lackluster. They also, until recently, haven’t had any transfer partners. They did, recently, sign a deal with Bilt Rewards to be a transfer partner, but Bilt doesn’t have signup bonuses so amassing a stash of Bilt Rewards points can be difficult.
Nevertheless, when Alaska Airlines and Hawaiian Airlines agreed to a merger, they made an agreement to allow transfers between the two programs. This opened up a back door to move points from American Express Membership Rewards to Alaska miles through Hawaiian. This is fantastic, because amassing a large number of American Express Membership Rewards points is not difficult.
Exact Flights, Different Prices
One of the most consistently baffling things to me about points and miles is the fact that sometimes the same flight is being offered by different programs at different prices. In this case, we had an American Airlines flight booked with American Airlines miles leaving on a Sunday night and returning on a Sunday night. Using American Airlines miles it was 30,000 AA miles and around $22 in taxes for the two of us.
When we originally booked with American Airlines, I saw that Alaska had the same flights for 4,500 points and around $18 per person per flight, so in other words, 18,000 Alaska miles and around $72 in taxes and fees. At the time, I didn’t have access to Alaska miles.
When the backdoor transfer option from American Express to Alaska Airlines materialized, I checked to see if that was still available and it was so I jumped on it. American Airlines has free cancellations, so it wasn’t a difficult to have my points and fees returned.
Saving American Airlines Miles
One big reason that we changed how we booked this flight was being able to use something other than American Airlines miles. American Airlines doesn’t have any transfer partners and lately it seems like whenever I’m comparing prices on award flights American Airlines always has competitive pricing. I didn’t want to use AA miles that I find so valuable if I don’t need to.
Also, earning 30,000 AA miles using just credit card spend requires a lot of spending. If we did it using the Barclays Aviator Red card, all purchases except American Airlines purchases earn 1 point per dollar spent. That means I would have to spend $30,000 on that credit card to earn 30,000 points.
On the other hand, I transferred 18,000 American Express Membership rewards points to Alaska and those are much easier to earn. When I buy groceries or dine out using my American Express Gold Card, I earn 4 Membership Rewards points per dollar spent on that card. That means I would only need to spend $4,500 on that Amex Gold Card, assuming I only use it for groceries and dining out, to earn the 18,000 miles necessary to book the flight. That’s a huge difference! Yes, the Alaska flights cost an extra $50 in fees but I was happy to spend that to keep those 30,000 AA miles.
Will This Back Door Transfer Option Remain?
It is unclear at this point whether transferring American Express Membership Rewards points through Hawaiian to Alaskan Airlines will remain an option. We know that transferring points between Hawaiian Airlines and Alaskan Airlines will be around for the foreseeable future. This has created a lot of interest in the travel hacking community for Hawaiian Airlines credit cards.
In the past, most travel hackers weren’t very interested in Hawaiian Airlines credit cards. Hawaiian miles weren’t worth a whole lot and because of that, the credit cards weren’t interesting. In fact, the Points Guy used to value Hawaiian miles at .9 cents per point and Alaskan miles at 1.5 cents per point. Moving 100,000 Hawaiian miles to Alaska Airlines increases their value, according to these valuations, by $600. That’s a big deal.
The problem for American Express is that now this throws their agreement with Hawaiian out of balance. If Hawaiian miles are suddenly worth more, will Hawaiian Airlines/Alaska Airlines demand more money to sell those miles to American Express? I don’t know, and there has been a lot of speculation in the travel hacking community that this transfer agreement could end.
The potential end of this agreement has me tempted to move some Membership Rewards to Alaska, but I don’t really have enough to just move them without a flight in mind. Instead, I think I’ll just wait and hope that Membership Rewards continues to allow transfers to Hawaiian Airlines. That being said, I might just be looking at a Hawaiian Airlines credit card soon. It’s never a bad idea to take advantage of a great deal when it pops up.
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.
I was having a conversation with some friends about travel when I made an off-handed comment “It’s probably cheaper to travel to Europe during Spring Break than to go to Florida.” As I started to defend my off-handed comment, I started to think, maybe I’m right. Okay, it’s probably not true if you’re paying full price for flights, but if you’re traveling on points, I think it might be absolutely true. As a matter of fact, I think it could be a tremendous savings, in addition to being a much more enjoyable experience.
I’m Kinda Done with Florida
We’ve taken multiple trips to the panhandle of Florida, as well as the coasts of Mississippi and Alabama. These trips were reachable by car in about 15 hours from our house in Iowa. These spots along the Gulf Coast weren’t necessarily my ideal vacation, but it was warm and the beaches are lovely. Frankly, we went there because we could do it in a week and it’s around 70 degrees in March along the Gulf Coast and it’s, I don’t know, negative 50 in Iowa, something like that?
However, everything that is located along the “Redneck Riviera” eventually just begins to look like a Waffle House and a t-shirt shop sitting on white sands. It’s true, Florida has some of the world’s most amazing beaches, but outside of that, I just don’t see the attraction. So whenever I would see the prices of an Airbnb, I would grimace and think, ‘but it’s just Florida’.
The main thing that was keeping us from doing something else was the cost of airfare. This is why we drove, and why we kept picking the Gulf Coast – because it was warm and close. Once we got into points and miles, the calculations changed, because we could fly cheaply. What I quickly realized, was that not only was Florida filled up during Spring Break, but so were vacation destinations in Mexico and the Caribbean.
What if we did something different, like Europe?
Destin Vs Barcelona
We’ve been to Destin, or at least near Destin a couple of times during spring break. It is probably one of the most sought after destinations for spring break and because of that the prices for vacation rentals are extremely high. Spring break is peak season for Destin, but for Barcelona it’s off-peak. Both of these locations are prized tourist destinations, but since Europe doesn’t really celebrate spring break like the US, prices are a bit lower than normal. The cost of the vacation rental makes a huge difference in the analysis here.
In the past, before we started to collect/use points and miles, we would’ve looked at the price of a flight to Barcelona in March and laughed. A quick check on Google Flights shows that we could get our family of four to Barcelona from Chicago for about $2,750 total, which is actually a really good price, but not really what we want to spend for spring break. Even with points and miles, the cost of just the fuel surcharges and taxes on round trip flights for four to Barcelona is over $1,000, but that savings does make it more palatable.
If we used our old method of spring breaking, we would just drive to Destin, which eliminates the need for a rental car, or public transportation pass. The cost, in the example below, is the cost of fuel for approximately 1,000 miles each way and 500 miles while in Destin. Assuming 25 miles per gallon and $3 per gallon for fuel, then the cost of transportation is $300. If we flew to Destin, we would have to rent a car which is $645 (midsized sedan for a week on Expedia), plus $60 for fuel.
I used a $200 budget in Davenport, Iowa (my hometown) as the basis for the cost of groceries in both Destin and Barcelona and compared them to Davenport using Numbeo. According to Numbeo.com, both are less expensive than Davenport for groceries, but Barcelona is considerably cheaper. The cost for meals was calculated as one inexpensive meal for four people daily, using the inexpensive meal price listed on Numbeo for each city. Barcelona was again cheaper for dining out.
The cost for public transportation was the cost of four public transportation passes for the amount of time that we would be in the city. The cost for the flights was determined by a search using Pointsyeah.com.
For the price of the Airbnbs, I picked the timeframe, zoomed the map into the area that I was looking at and filtered by minimum of 3 beds, 2 bathrooms. I then counted the number of available properties and chose the one that was priced at the 25 percentile. I picked the 25th percentile, because I think that accurately reflects “I’m cheap, but I have standards.”
Using this method shows how expensive Florida is during spring break. The 25th percentile property for a week during spring break in Destin was $4,388! Good lord. In Barcelona, which is notoriously expensive for Spain, it was $2,410. When all that gets added up, Barcelona ends up being more than $1,000 cheaper than driving to Destin. That’s kind of crazy, right?
Driving to Destin
Flying to Destin
Flying to Barcelona
Airfare (Using Points/Miles)
$0
$45 (and 84,000 American Airlines Miles)
$1064 (and 136,000 Avios)
Car Rental
$0
$645
$0
Fuel for Car
$300
$60
$0
Public Transportation
$0
$0
$183
Airbnb rental
$4,388
$4,388
$2,410
Dinners
$504
$504
$452
Groceries
$152
$152
$129
Total
$5,392
$5,842 (&88K AA Miles)
$4,279 (& 136K Avios)
Example is for a family of four renting an Airbnb at the 25th percentile in the area for 6 nights, with 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms. Car rental is cheapest midsized sedan using Expedia. Assuming 500 miles of driving while at location and 1,000 miles each way to drive to Destin for driving example. $3 per gallon assumed for price of fuel and 25 mpg fuel efficiency for car. Numbeo.com used for cost of dinners and groceries.
Miami Beach vs Tenerife
One of my complaints about going to the Destin area during spring break was that it’s just not hot enough, so lets pick warmer destinations then Destin and Barcelona and compare Playa de las Americas, on the Island of Tenerife in the Canary Islands, Spain with Miami Beach. Both are major beach destinations and both are pretty warm in March.
Using the same resources (Numbeo for Restaurants and groceries prices, Airbnb website for vacation rental prices and Expedia for midsized car rentals) we see that once again it’s cheaper to go to Europe (using points), in this case the Canary Islands. Again the biggest driver for this is the cost of the vacation rental. Once you are able to shrink the cost of the flights by using points, everything else just is cheaper in the Canary Islands, especially since it’s off-peak.
On top of that, since it is off-peak, you probably won’t be sitting on a crowded beach or struggling to get table at a restaurant for dinner. Considering how much cheaper it is to do a vacation rental in Tenerife, I would argue that it’s competitive even if you had to pay full fare for the flight, and you wouldn’t have to deal with drunk college students at the beach.
Driving to Miami
Flying to Miami
Flying to Tenerife
Airfare (Using Points/Miles)
$0
$44 (and 82K AA miles)
$1140 (and 196K Avios)
Car Rental
$0
$325
$408
Fuel for Car
$396
$60
$112
Public Transportation
$0
$0
$0
Airbnb rental
$4,276
$4,276
$1,307
Dinners
$700
$700
$336
Groceries
$206
$206
$36
Total
$5,578
$5,611 (& 82K AA Miles)
$3,339 (& 196K Avios)
Example is for a family of four renting an Airbnb at the 25th percentile in the area for 6 nights, with 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms. Car rental is cheapest midsized sedan using Expedia. Assuming 500 miles of driving while at location and 1,400 miles each way to drive to Miami Beach for driving example. $3 per gallon assumed for price of fuel and 25 mpg fuel efficiency for car for Florida and a little less than $6 per gallon for Tenerife. Numbeo.com used for cost of dinners and groceries.
Scottsdale Arizona Vs Split Croatia
What about a couple of places that are a little more quirky for spring break? Scottsdale Arizona is an interesting place to visit at that time of year, especially if you’re a baseball fan, because of Cactus League spring training that takes place every year. There is also some pretty good hiking within a reasonable drive.
Split Croatia is becoming a destination that people are starting to wake up to. It’s got great architecture, culture, and food, but it also has a mountainous coastline that dips into the crystal clear waters of the Adriatic sea. It’s an absolutely gorgeous city that I cannot wait to visit someday.
Using the same resources (Numbeo for Restaurants and groceries prices, Airbnb website for vacation rental prices and Expedia for midsized car rentals) it turns out to be much cheaper to go to Split than Scottsdale. Again the main driver is the cost of the Airbnb, with the vacation rental being about a third of the cost in Croatia than in Scottsdale.
Driving to Scottsdale
Flying to Scottsdale
Flying to Split
Airfare (Using Points/Miles)
$0
$44 (& 68K AA miles)
$899 (& 240,000 Avianca Lifemiles)
Car Rental
$0
$411
$300
Fuel for Car
$420
$60
$120
Public Transportation
$0
$0
$0
Airbnb rental
$4,513
$4,513
$1,556
Dinners
$553
$553
$345
Groceries
$172
$172
$60
Total
$5,658
$5,753 (& 68K AA Miles)
$3,280 (& 240K Lifemiles)
Example is for a family of four renting an Airbnb at the 25th percentile in the area for 6 nights, with 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms. Car rental is cheapest midsized sedan using Expedia. Assuming 500 miles of driving while at location and 1,500 miles each way to drive to Scottsdale for driving example. $3 per gallon assumed for price of fuel and 25 mpg fuel efficiency for car in Scottsdale and $6 per gallon in Split. Numbeo.com used for cost of dinners and groceries.
Reality vs Example
The reality is that I’d never pay $4,500 for a week in vacation rental. I probably would’ve looked for a less desirable beach along the coast and found a much simpler place to stay. One of our kids is definitely sleeping on the couch. However, with the examples in Barcelona, Tenerife, and Split Croatia, there wasn’t any compromising. I could literally choose a great location and get a great price for a week in a vacation rental. Why? Because it’s off-peak, Europe doesn’t have a big spring break tradition like the US, and Americans don’t spring break in Europe very often.
Rethinking Spring Break
Spring break is a very important ritual for a lot of Americans, especially those of us who live in the Midwest, where winters are oppressive and people don’t leave their houses for months on end. That’s probably the reason why Florida and other warm destinations in the US get overrun by people just looking to escape the miserable, miserable winter.
However, taking a little time to think outside of the box could result in a vacation that you will remember for a lifetime, and the cost could be surprisingly inexpensive, especially if you are using points and miles. I mean, if you’d rather fight for sand space with a bunch of drunk teenagers in Miami instead of being in the Canary Islands, that’s fine, it’s just not for me anymore.
Newby to Expert Traveler 