Our Points Update: 20 free nights this year!

It’s been a busy year for us! We’ve traveled most months, had a whole bunch of visitors (thanks for coming, guys!), moved to a new house, found out we’re having another baby annnndddddddd Owen started KINDERGARTEN. Whew. Oh yeah, in between there we were also working and keeping our children in one piece.

I’m going to have some fun looking back at our year this week (I hope), but I wanted to start by giving a bit of an update on our use of points (and perks and credits) to pay for some of our trips this year. It’s no secret that we are playing the “points game” to help defray the costs of all the trips we want to take (I’ve talked about this before (here and here), but this year we ended up going a little different route.

Basically, this year we didn’t go back to the U.S. (except for Chris for work) and we exclusively booked trips using low-budget carriers. EasyJet, RyanAir, Volotea — that was it for the year. Since you can’t use points for low-budget carriers like those, we didn’t have the need (opportunity?) to burn ours that way, unlike years past.

SO: We set out to defray the cost of our trips by reducing the other major expense of traveling: accommodations. Here’s how it shook out.

February: 4 nights at AppartBrussels (roughly 30,000 Chase points)

May: 3 nights in the Berlin Marriott Hotel (120,000 Marriott points)

June: 3 nights in Edinburgh AirBnB (used our $300 annual travel credit from Chase to cover the $100/night cost)

August/September: 5 nights at Hilton Malta (200,000 Hilton points and 5th night free)

October: 2 nights at Berlin Marriott Hotel (70,000 Marriott points)

November/December: 2 nights at Hampton by Hilton Frankfurt Messe (50,000 Hilton)

December: 1 free night at Aparthotel Adagio Access Petit France (Hotels.com free night after booking 10 nights on hotels.com in the past couple years)

By far the best was our stay at the Hilton Malta, our first resort experience! It was also the only time we very specifically churned points to go to a specific hotel property. To get to the 200,000 Hilton points we needed, I signed up for an American Express Hilton Surpass card (now called a Hilton Ascend) and a regular AmEx Hilton Honors card. Those two combined, plus the points generated as a minimum spend, easily got us to 200,000.

If you are interested in the Hilton Ascend card, it is a good time to get it (better than when I did, haha). Right now there is a sign up bonus of 150,000 points after you spend $3,000 in the first three months, which isn’t bad for a $95 fee. Plus, it comes with Gold status, which had some fun perks we enjoyed. If you are considering signing up for this one, please consider using my referral link here.

We ended up getting Chris the AmEx Hilton Honors card as well, a no-brainer since there is no annual fee on it. That, plus some points generated by our actual stays and Chris’ work stays, paid for our nights in Frankfurt plus another 60,000 stashed away for some time in the future.

If fee cards aren’t your bag, the no-fee Hilton Honors card is a great option! 100,000 points for $1,000 spend in three months. This one doesn’t come with gold status though. Here’s our referral link.

I’ve mentioned plenty of times before that we tend to prefer apartment rentals for a lot of reasons, one of which is that we don’t like sharing a room with our kids. Um, still true. In some of our points-stay situations we did still get our separate sleeping space: the Brussels and Strasbourg places were one-bedroom apartments with a sofa bed, and the Edinburgh place was a 2-bedroom AirBnB. Speaking of AirBnB, I just looked at we stayed in NINE different ones this year. Whew.

Of course, clearly hotels did happen this year– sometimes because we wanted to go to a specific property, some for convenience, some for points — and it honestly went way better than I expected! The older the kids get, the easier (at least marginally) hotels are because they can stay up a bit later, making it less frustrating for Chris and I to be sitting in a dark hotel room at 7:30 p.m. It was also a nice reminder of why hotels are awesome a lot of the time … fresh towels and a made bed every morning? WHAT LUXURY! We were also very partial to free breakfasts (gold status perk with Hilton!).

That said, I doubt we’ll be doing many hotel stays next year when we have an infant with us!

For our Marriott stays in Berlin, we had some leftover points from the past but we also had signed up for American Express Starwood cards in the past, which got us something like 25,000 SPG points each. Since Starwood and Marriott have merged, we transferred those to Marriott at a 3-to-1 ratio. It worked out great for us, but we’ve since cancelled those particular cards since it wasn’t worth it to us to hang on to the annual fee. If we happen to want to stock up on more Marriott points in the future, we’ll probably branch out to the Chase brand ones.

Which brings us to our last, and my favorite, credit card program. Chase! I know I’ve talked about this extensively before, but we really like how flexible this program is. Points can be transferred between spouses or to a lot of partner rewards program, but so far we’ve exclusively used to the Chase portal to book flights, hotels and rental cars where needed. (It basically works like a Travelocity website, you search for your destinations and it shows you options on a variety of carriers. Except then you can pay in cash, points or a combination of the two).

In the past, we’ve used our Chase points for a lot of things: covering the cost of 1.75 trips back to the States, flights to Paris last year, a hotel in Munich for Oktoberfest and a rental car for Slovenia. I’m not sure that the “experts” would say using the points for hotels in the portal is the best value, but basically it comes down to this for me: do I want to pay cash for this particular event? In February, it was worth it to me not to have to spend about $500 for accommodations for our low-cost Belgium trip ($40 flights!). It was also helpful to be able to use points for “apart-hotels,” which is rarely the case with mainstream points programs.

Chris has the Chase Sapphire Preferred card, which earns him 2 points per dollar on all travel spending and comes with an annual fee of $95, waived the first year. I have the Chase Sapphire Reserve card, which earns 3 points per dollar on travel and dining, plus a whole host of other perks. For us, the most important of these is primary rental car insurance and travel insurance. It comes with a whopping $450 annual fee per year, which hurts my heart every time, but that is pretty much outweighed by the $300 annual travel credit that resets each year. As I mentioned, we used ours this year to cover the three nights we spent in an AirBnB in Edinburgh. That was a long trip and the UK isn’t exactly known for being cheap, so it was nice to save some money where we could.

For this next year, we’re shifting our focus away from specific hotel points programs because with the new baby, that will be less of a practical option since one sleepless baby = five cranky travelers. Instead, I’m giving Capital One Venture Card a try, as you can use your points to “erase” travel-related purchases. Since the card had a 50,000 sign-up bonus ($500) and earns 2 points per dollar on every purchase, with the $95 fee waived the first year, we figured it was worth a try. I look forward to using it to cover some AirBnBs or EasyJet flights next year, once we get the newbie a passport!

Speaking of AirBnB, if you haven’t given it a try I’d highly suggest it! It can be a mixed bag — read reviews carefully! — but we really like having the added space so it shouldn’t be a surprise that we stayed in nine different ones this year. You can save $40 off your first booking (plus getting my gratitude) by using my referral link!

So, I think that about does it for now. Next up: a look at our flights from this year! Because I am a nerd.

The post 2018 Points Review: 20 free nights! first appeared on Babies With Backpacks.

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Basically conversations with Chris lately have gone something like this:

“So I’m thinking we should go to (place name) over Columbus Day weekend.”

“We’re going to Oktoberfest right before that and Venice after, it is too much.”

“Huh? No, I’m talking about the next Columbus Day. 2018!”

” … seriously?”

So yeah, I’m trying to map out our travel destinations for all of 2018, basically. Yes, Chris (and uhh a few other people I’ve mentioned this to) think I’m crazy.* But listen, I have my reasons (beyond being obsessed.)

1. Making sure we are being strategic about what weekends we plan travel.* Chris’ work schedule means that he gets every other Friday off (he works nine hour days). This year, I didn’t really look ahead well enough at the combination of RDO days and federal holidays, and missed some opportunities where we could have timed trips differently to use less leave. Next year, I’m planning our longer trips in ways so that we can end up with, say, 10-day trips that use only four days of Chris’ vacation time.*Originally ony of my goals was to avoid having trips super close together (our two big trips, France and Ireland, were less than a month apart) but it kind of seems like they are going to end up being close together anyway because of when holidays fall. Ha! 
2. Planning for when visitors come. If we get a schedule set for when we’ll be out of Sicily, the various friends and family members who are talking about visiting next year can use that to plan their own trips to see us! (Which we are so excited for, guys!!)
3. Being strategic with our credit card points. As I mentioned in this post, I have some hotel points stockpiled in a few different currencies. Knowing when we want to go where helps me a) decide at which property I’d like to use them, and b) actually make this happen. Award space can fill quickly at highly desirable places and times of year, so booking early is often a must. Knowing that we want to go to the Hilton Malta on X weekend also allows me to check to see how many more points I need to make it happen, and thus make an informed decision about what credit card I want to be using to rack up points.
4. Top pick of AirBnBs (and hotels). In the summer months here, the best AirBnBs at desirable tourists destinations (like San Vito Lo Capo or Tropea, for example) can book up quickly. Knowing where we want to go when means I can be looking ahead and get the best selection when time comes to actally book. I actually already booked one place a few weeks ago for summer 2018. It is a cool treehouse on Lake Bled in Slovenia that Chris saw last year and wanted to visit, but there was no availability even months ahead of when we wanted to go. This year, I was on top of it!  Added bonus: they honored the 2017 prices even though I found out they intended raise them by 20 euro per night in 2018 (we communicated via e-mail because rooms weren’t even available to be booked online yet).

   

5. Getting the best price for flights. Trying to time it right when buying a plane ticket is a frustrating business. Booking too early could mean missing out if prices become cheaper down the line, but waiting too long could mean your preferred flight sells out. Planning ahead means I can set up price alerts for flights and, combined with looking at options compulsively periodically, I at least have a general idea of what pricing has been doing for a specific place. For instance, if I saw a flight for Rome to Lisbon for 100 euro it might seem good, except that I know a few weeks ago I saw one for 75 euro. See? 

*This post is in no way intended to lay out the case to my husband for why I’m not crazy. Well, “in no way” is probably a bit strong. I should probably say it is mostly not aimed at Christopher. Love you hon!

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*Yesterday I talked about our experience with Chase Ultimate Rewards points, which can be used for flights, hotels, rental cars, cash back, etc. Today, I want to move on to the hotel cards we’re currently carrying!

As you already know from this post, in general Chris and I prefer to stay in AirBnBs for a variety of reasons. However, I’m already looking ahead to next year’s travel plans (a post on that later) and I think it is likely that on a few trips we’ll be in various cities for shorter amounts of time compared to five days in a single place. In those cases, I think it may be more convenient to just pick a hotel in a popular area rather than settling into an apartment like we did in Paris. There is also one particular hotel that I’m angling for with one of my cards, as you’ll see below.

I haven’t yet done any redemptions with these points — though in the past Chris and I have used his Marriott points to go to the Preakness Stakes in Baltimore when I was pregnant with Owen! — so a full review will have to come later.

Hilton Honors Surpass from American Express

So, all the time I’ve seen the advice that you should get credit cards with a specific goal in mind. This is uhhh the first time I’ve actually done that. In this case, my goal is the Hilton Malta! Malta is only a 40 minute flight from Catania, and practically everyone I know here raves about it. As you guys know, we aren’t usually fancy hotel people but we thought it would be a nice change of pace to give it a try. The public offer on this one is at 75,000 points after a $3k minimum spend in three months, but there are referrals out there for 100,000 points after you hit the minimum spend. I got one of those referrals from one of my travel hacking groups and that’s I used. (I also now have five of these referrals available if anyone wants one).

This card earns 3 points per dollar for most spending, 6 points per dollar at US restaurants, gas stations and supermarkets and 12 points per dollars at Hilton hotels. That middle category would have been super useful at home, but obviously less so here. At any rate, basic rooms at the Malta resort are 37,000 per night and as one of the perks of this card is Gold status with Hilton — which includes fifth night free on award stays and free upgrades where available — I’m feeling like we should be able to get a good trip out of these points, combined wih the 15,000 or so I already have. I probably won’t hang onto this one long-term because it does have a foreign transaction fee — meaning I won’t use it much except in the base commissary and US websites to meet the minimum spend — but it might be useful for people back home who spend a lot at gas stations, supermarkets, etc. And as it does come with a free weekend night certificate after the first anniversary ($75 annual fee) I can see the argument for keeping it after all since any hotel stay in Europe is going to be worth more than that. We’ll see!

If you are interested in this card, pleeease consider using my referral link when you do! This is one of the 100,000-point offers (available only on referral, not publically) and I have five available. If you are interested, comment and I will email you one!

Disclaimer: I obviously think that using credit cards to earn points/miles is a great option. However, I hope it goes without saying that this makes sense only when you are using cards to pay for things you already planned to buy. Don’t rack up a ton of debt in hopes of getting miles/points.

Starwood Preferred Guest by American Express

I’ve always heard rave reviews about Starwood, and in particular how their points are the most valuable. This past spring I decided to give it a shot, though without a specific redemption plan in mind. (Though I considered either of the two SPG resorts in Malta before deciding to go to with the Hilton if I can). I’m thinking these might come in handy on a trip to the Netherlands/Belgium next year that we are hoping to take. Since SPG is merging with Marriott, these two points can be transferred between each other pretty easily (1 SPG point = 3 Marriot points) so that gives us a little more flexibility as well. There are no foreign transaction fees on this card, so no worries there. There are several other perks with this card, such as free wifi at Boing hotspots and SPG properties, return protection and a few different kinds of travel-related insurance coverage, which you can read about here if you are interested.

The offer for this one is 25,000 SPG points ater $3,000 minimum  spend in 3 months. Rooms start for a couple thousand points a night at Category 1 to something like 20,000 a night for a super swanky place. In my preliminary searches, I’ve found some surprisingly nice places for not too many points — a resort I was considering in Malta, for instance, is only 7,000 points/night. However, at most properties my family will need a bigger room since European hotels are very strict on the number of people who can be in a room at one time, so we probably will have to use a few more points. Points can also be transferred to certain frequent flier programs, and if you transfer 20,000 at a time you get a 5,000 point bonus, which is something we may consider as well.

This card has no fee the first year, then $95/year after that. I’m not sure yet whether I will keep mine past the first year because the Chase Sapphire cards are our primary ones, but we’ll see!

If you are interested in getting this card — 25,000 SPG points (this equals 75,000 Marriott) after $3,000 minimum spend in 3 months — please consider using my referral link:

Apply for The Starwood Preferred Guest® Credit Card from American Express with this link. We can both get rewarded if you’re approved! http://refer.amex.us/KASEYHG3dK?xl=cp01-158

Well, that about does it for my travel-related cards at the moment. Credit churning friends: any suggestions for a next move?

Note: I initially worried that applying for more credit cards would hurt my credit, but I’ve found it to be the opposite — my credit has actually gotten a bump overall. When I am not interested in keeping a card, I always see if I can downgrade it to a no-fee card rather than canceling (such as I did with the Chase Sapphire Preferred). 

The post Trip planning with points, continued: hotel points first appeared on Babies With Backpacks.

The post Trip planning with points, continued: hotel points appeared first on Babies With Backpacks.

So first some news: we’re coming back to the States in this fall! 

Christmas in Chicago last year!

Today we cashed out our entire Chase Ultimate Rewards hoard — roughly 144,000 points, plus about $450 since we were a bit short — for four round-trip tickets to Chicago in November. I have to admit that it felt a bit shocking to see all those points go at once since I’ve been stockpiling them for a while without a specific purpose in mind, but I can’t think of a better way to use them than to get to see our family and friends back home.

At any rate, this all put me in the mood to talk about credit card miles/points and what cards we are carrying these days. I’ve been following quite a few “travel hacking” groups for the last year or so but I am not even remotely an expert, so for a lot more detailed information I’d suggest you check out blogs like The Points Guy or Million Mile Secrets. That said, I wanted to share my experiences — first with Chase cards, and then with the other travel-related cards I’m carrying in a separate post tomorrow.

Disclaimer: I obviously think that using credit cards to earn points/miles is a great option. However, I hope it goes without saying that this makes sense only when you are using cards to pay for things you already planned to buy. Don’t rack up a ton of debt in hopes of getting miles/points!

Anyway, on to the Chase cards …

So, Chase Ultimate Rewards is my favorite points/miles program. You rack up UR points on any of several Chase cards, then you can either exchange them for cashback or — for a higher redemption rate — use them in the Chase travel portal. The travel portal basically works like any travel aggregator site (Kayak, Momondo, albeit with fewer filtering options) and presents flight/hotel/rental car/etc. options from a wide range of companies. You can pay entirely or partially with points, which is nice when you are a short of what you need.

My one complaint with the Chase portal is sometimes the options aren’t that great — excessively long flights, or flights that for some reason seem a little more expensive than what I’d see on a Momondo or similar site. That was my complaint — until today. Turns out, you can call into Chase’s travel center, they can (at least sometimes) find the flight you are looking at elsewhere AND book it with points! 

I was again frustrated because an excellent, low-cost, relatively short Lufthansa fare I saw on Momondo wasn’t coming up on the Chase portal. I called and boom! (Ok, 45 minutes and then boom!)They found it for me, and for basically the same much-cheaper rate I’d seen online! Doing this rather than picking the best option coming up on the portal meant we saved hours of travel time on both ends of the trip, and at least a couple hundred bucks.

I’ve seen a lot of arguing in the points/miles world about the usefulness of the Chase portal versus transferring to various mileage programs, but because prices are so low right now (in the offseason anyway) we’ve found that using the portal makes the most sense because it is pegged to the actual price of the flight. We also don’t care about booking business class — a big perk of transferring to partners — so that is a nonissue for us. But, to each their own!

This is the fourth tme we’ve used the Chase points to book travel (not counting the flights we booked, and then had to cancel, for our friend’s wedding in Mexico since we moved here. Still sad about that). The other times were:

1. Paid for part of our tickets home for Christmas last year (I believe points covered almost half)
2. Four tickets to Paris in April
3. Hotel in Munich for Oktoberfest because I couldn’t stomach paying cash at the elevated prices.

We used two different cards — in particular the sign-up bonuses — to earn the points for these trips. 

Chase Sapphire Reserve

This is our primary travel card. I was enticed to get this card during their initial (since expired) 100,000-point bonus offer. Even with the hefty $450 yearly fee, the 100,000 points (worth $1,500 in travel portal) and $300 travel credit made it a no-brainer. At the time I meant to cancel it, but I’m now thinking I’ll keep it at least until we move back to the United States. We’ve gotten a lot of value out of it thisyear because you get 3x the points on travel and dining out expenses, plus the card functions as primary rental car coverage when used to pay for a rental so you can save money by declining it. There are a bunch of other perks (replace your stuff if the airport loses a bag, gets you a hotel room if your flight is delayed, etc) but you can look those up on your own. It is now a bit less enticing now with “only” 50,000 sign-up bonus after a $4,000 minimum spend in three months, but still a good one if you travel a lot. Remember that the first $300 in travel-related expenses is credited back to you almost immediately, so you could argue that the fee is “really” only $150/year. Also noteworthy, points are worth more in the travel portal than the Preferred; 1.5 cents per point versus 1.25.

Chase Sapphire Preferred

If you are looking for a card for traveling overseas and don’t want to pay for the Reserve, this is your best option. It is $0 fee the first year, and $95 annually after that. We’ve had two — one for Chris and one for me — but I have since gotten mine switched to a no-fee card since I got the Reserve since it didn’t make sense to pay the fee for one I wouldn’t use as much. The 50,000 sign-up bonus is worth $625 in travel ($750 if you or your spouse has a Reserve card to transfer the points to for higher redemption), which can take your pretty far with airline prices being as low as they have been this year. It has no foreign transaction fees, you can transfer to various other airline or travel partners, and you get 2x the points on travel and dining. Because of the relatively low fee, good sign-up bonus and versatility of Chase points,  this is the card I see most often recommended for people getting into the points world. Plus, you could totally use the points to come visit us! Ha.

If you are interested in this card, please consider using our referral link so we get some bonus points too:

https://applynow.chase.com/FlexAppWeb/renderApp.do?SPID=FNLC&CELL=63HF&MSC=1536510093

Tomorrow: Moving on to the hotel cards I’m working on right now!

In the meantime: What’s in YOUR wallet? 

The post Trip planning with points: what’s in your wallet? first appeared on Babies With Backpacks.

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