Points In the Bank



If you are a collector of rewards points or frequent flyer miles then you know the feeling of when those bonus points hit your account. It's a great rush and maybe it reinvigorates you to start collecting more.

 

IHG (Holiday Inn brand) usually offers about 60,000 points if you sign up for their credit card. Right now you get an extra 10,000 points (= 70,000) and then if you were targeted, which I was, you were offered 80,000 points if you spend $2,000 in 3 months. 80,000 was just too good for me to turn down.

 

Now this card has some bonuses that our trusty United card does not. It offers 2x the points for gas, groceries and restaurants and only costs $65 annually. United only offers 2x the points when you book airfare on their website and its $95 annually. For us, since we take a minimum one trip a year the $95 is worth it just to get the priority boarding and free checked bag.

 

Also, I didn't just go and get the IHG card because of the bonus; there is a plan to us those points. We are hoping to take a trip, just the two of us, to Yellowstone National Park sometime next year and there is a Holiday Inn on the outskirts. And we're hoping to take baby girl on her first beach trip to Florida at the end of the summer next year. We will be taking full advantage of these points for these two trips and hopefully we'll have enough by then where it will all be free!

 

 

 

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Cutting Costs to Save for Travel

I follow a lot of travelers on social media that just travel full time. Sometimes they write articles on how they are able to afford to do all that traveling without having a job. Thats all well and good but what about those of us that have a job, a house, a family (dogs, kids, whatever)? How are we supposed to travel if we can't just drop everything? Here are some things we do to save:

Every year since we have been married we have taken a vacation; some might even say a fancy-shmancy vacation. In 2010 we went to Key West, Florida; in 2011 we took our first trip to Hawaii Island and then went back in and visited Kauai in 2012. We skipped 2013 because we bought a new house and in 2014 we went on a mini tour of Europe and Chicago.

We don’t travel as much as I'd like to; we're constrained by distance (the US is a big place) and vacation time (on average Americans only get 13 vacation days a year... we get 15).  And we don’t travel as much as my ex-pat bloggers do (those luck ducks)! But I wanted to share a few things that we cut back on so we can save more money and in turn take a fantastic vacation every year.

1 - We use the United MileagePlus credit card with Chase to its fullest. We put everything on it, even the $4.00 convenience store purchases. All of our bills go on this card and we even used it when we bought our new car. Keep in mind that we pay this off at the end of each month, if you aren't paying it off you're actually paying them for your points.

We also just opened our first hotel rewards credit card and are planning on using those points for three free nights in Hawaii next year.

*there is a lot that goes into using these credit cards. Please make sure you read all the fine print. Email me if you want to discuss more.

2 - Speaking of a new car, we just traded our gas guzzling truck (everyone has one in Texas) in for a Toyota Prius V. Now instead of getting 13 mpg we're getting on average 50 mpg! I can see the savings in gas already!

3 - We don’t have cable. Yes, you read that right, we don’t have cable and we haven’t for about two years. We have an over the air antenna that lets us get all of our local channels for free. We do share a Netflix account with another family member.

4 - We just made the jump from AT&T to Ting for our cellular provider. We were paying $140 a month for our two iPhones and their data plans and now we're looking at paying about $80 a month and we still have our iPhones. Click here to make the switch and save $25!.

To save on the vacation itself, be smart, by a bundle from a travel agent (AAA has great deals) or rent a house instead of staying at a hotel. And if you are staying in a house cook your own meals. Pack your lunch for your outings and skip paying 4,00€ for a soda. We always pack our lunch when we're on vacation. Bring an empty, reusable water bottle with you and fill it up as you go instead of buying a new one every time. 

How do you save for travel? 

And Happy 4th of July to my fellow Americans! 

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Kudos to United

I have to say I was really pleased with United's customer service the other day...but maybe it was because I was preparing for the worst in my head.

When we booked our flights for Hawaii I was really excited because we were landing in Maui at 1pm versus the normal 6pm or later. We had a VERY early flight from Houston to LA at 6:15am...but then United changed that flight to 7:30am and that only left us with a 30 minute layover. I wasn't comfortable with that. If our flight from Houston was 10 minutes late we would miss our connection.

So I called United and I was expecting them to give me a hard time because I booked with points and I was expecting to pay a small fee of some sort since I was changing flights even though it wasn't my fault. Unfortunately there wasn't any flights that would get us there around the same time so we decided to fly out the night before and stay a night in LA. I was really happy everything worked out and we didn't have to pay anything for the flight change, especially since it was moved to another day.

Yes, we'll have to pay for an extra night in LA but I'm hoping to cash in some rewards points with the new SPG rewards card we got. And we'll probably hit up Manhattan Beach and In-N-Out Burger (since they don't have those in Houston yet). 

{Source}

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Hotel Rewards Credit Cards

If you have been a follower on here for a while then you know I LOVE my United MileagePlus credit card (how can you not when you can get tickets for two to Hawaii for $20?!?!) Well… we decided to take the plunge and get a hotel rewards credit card too. We went with the American Express SPG card; they are running a special (until June 30^th) where you can get an extra 10,000 rewards points for a total of 30,000 by spending $5,000 in 6 months…um, we can do that! And it works out that one of their many hotels is where we are going and only 10,000 points a night. So we’ll get 3 free nights! HOLLA! I am hoping this rate is still the same when we are ready to book and the points per night don’t increase.

{SPG Hotel Brands, source}

One of the perks to having this card is that they give you credit towards Elite Status; every year you’ll get credit for 5 nights and 2 stays to boost you closer to the Elite Status mark! Here is the breakdown on how many points will get you a free stay in any of their 1,100 hotel/resorts in over 100 countries.

{Source}

 Category 1: You will need 2,000 Starpoints® for a free weekend night and 3,000 Starpoints for a free night during the week at a Category 1 hotel

Category 2: You will need 3,000 Starpoints® for a free weekend night and 4,000 Starpoints for a free night during the week at a Category 2 hotel

Category 3: You will need 7,000 Starpoints® for a free night at a Category 3 hotel

Category 4: You will need 10,000 Starpoints® for a free night at a Category 4 hotel

Category 5: Depending on the season, you will need between 12,000 or 16,000 Starpoints® for a free night at a Category 5 hotel

Category 6: Depending on the season, you will need between 20,000 or 25,000 Starpoints® for a free night at a Category 6 hotel

Category 7: Depending on the season, you will need 30,000 or 35,000 Starpoints® per night for a free night in a standard room at a Category 7 hotel

Categories 5-7 have A LOT of exceptions and terms with how you’ll need to use your points so make sure you read them all!

If you wish to apply please click here. 

I’m interested to see how this will work with our new hotel points – Do any of you have a hotel rewards credit card? Where do you see the benefits? In the hotel points or airline points?

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Our Business/First Flight Home

Thank you so much for keeping up with our trip to Europe! I took Friday off from blogging because it was a BUSY week and I feel like I have been posting NON STOP about this trip! I have been posting here and on TripAdvisor. I have one more post about it and then I'm done...I promise! 

First I want to talk about the airports themselves and security. The security in Frankfurt was pretty intimidating. They don’t talk to you…they just stare at you making you feel like you've done something wrong…but you haven’t so don’t worry! I noticed that people weren't taking their shoes off through security so I asked if I had to (I was wearing boots that were hard to get off). She said no but the minute I walked through they patted me down and made me sit and remove my boots?!?! What the heck! When I did this in Paris I asked the same question and they said yes, you need to remove your boots and even gave me some little booties to put on over my socks so I didn't get them dirty.

This was my second time flying this Frankfurt to Houston route. The first time is was horrible because I was sick and in coach. I have to say that our flight back on United was more enjoyable than the flight to Amsterdam. I can’t really put my finger on it but I think the seats were more comfortable but one thing is for sure, they were less noisy! The Lufthansa seats would make a lot of noise when we moved them into reclining position or a bed. So I heard everyone moving them up and down, up and down all night!

Here are some pictures from our flight home.

{Lufthansa Paris Lounge}

{Food on the plane}

{Amenities kit}

If you collect rewards points from you preferred airline Mike over at IFlyWithMiles.com can hook you for WAY less points then what you can book them for.

See all the other posts about our trip in the following links:

Flight to Amsterdam

Amsterdam

Germany Pt. 1

Germany Pt. 2

Lucerne, Switzerland

Moulin Rouge

Palace of Versailles

The Eiffel Tower 

Paris Pt. 1

Paris Pt. 2

Holiday Inn Notre Damn

Review and Video

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Flight to Amsterdam

Hey y’all! I took Monday off because I was tired from the 11 hour flight home and then we had to drive to pick up the pups from my parents.

I bet you’re wondering how our trip was! Well I’m going to take it day by day and maybe have a few breaks in-between for editing and going over some pictures.

I’m going to start this blogging journey with our flight to Amsterdam. We used rewards points so we had a few stops. We started in Houston and flew to Dallas, then went to Frankfurt and then made it to our final destination, Amsterdam.

We flew Lufthansa Business Class and it was nice! I don’t think I can go back to sitting economy for long distance ever again! We had an updated aircraft so everything was new. We enjoyed out preflight cocktails, before dinner drinks, appetizers, main course and dessert. After all that we settled in for some sleep by reclining our seat into a flat bed…oh so nice! My only complaint here was that the seats made a noise when you moved them and even with earplugs I could still hear everyone adjusting their seats.

We woke up and had some breakfast before landing … you sure get a lot of food up in Business and First Class.

We made our way through the passport and security checkpoints and I will say that they were very rude to us as we went through the security checkpoint. Both Matt and I got a pat-down.

We made it to our connecting flight and on board we were given another meal! Their shorter flight business class consisted of a row of three seats but no one sat in the middle seat. 

When we landed we had about an hour and a half before our free transfer to the hotel. We opted to take advantage of that instead of wasting money on a taxi, bus or train.

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Frequent Flier Programs are Changing

Hope y'all had a great weekend! We spent the weekend working in the yard and upgrading flowerbeds for the spring! I have to say, if I ever became an expat I think yard work is one thing I will miss! Anyway, on to today's topic of frequent flier programs...

Looks like airlines are making it harder to earn and use rewards miles. Both United and Delta have changed the way you will qualify for Silver/Gold/Platinum statues but they have also upped the amount of miles you'll need to get you that free flight…bummer! As of this month, Delta’s mileage requirement for round-trip business-class reward tickets for travel from the United States to South Asia has been raised to 140,000 miles from 120,000 miles. And some business-class reward tickets to Europe on United now require 15% more miles than before. United is also raising the number of miles required for first-class reward travel on Star Alliance partner airlines by 18.5% to Europe and Japan, and by 20% to the Middle East.

The other change to the programs is now members who live in the United States need to spend a certain amount and fly a certain amount on United or a partner airline to achieve any sort of frequent flyer "status".

{Source}

Premier Silver: spend $2,500 annually and fly 25,000 qualifying miles annually

Premier Gold: spend $5,000 annually and fly 50,000 qualifying miles annually

Premier Platinum: spend $7,500 annually and fly 75,000 qualifying miles annually

Premier 1K: spend $10,000 annually and fly 100,000 qualifying miles annually

Delta has also done the same thing with their SkyMiles:

Silver Medallion: spend $2,500 annually and fly either 25,000 qualifying miles or 30 nonstop flights annually

Gold Medallion: spend $5,000 annually and fly either 50,000 qualifying miles or 60 nonstop flights

Platinum Medallion: spend $7,500 annually and fly 75,000 qualifying miles or 100 nonstop flights

Diamond Medallion: spend $12,500 and fly 125,000 qualifying miles or 140 nonstop flights

Both carriers waive their spending requirements if a loyalty program participant runs up $25,000 a year of purchases on a carrier co-branded credit card. You can read the whole article on this topic here.

This new way of accumulating miles makes the infamous "mileage runs" no longer worth it.

This will seriously affect how we fly since we have finally stated to accumulate enough points to cash in on free flights, looks like we'll need to save a little more.

Will this affect how you travel and fly?

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How to Earn Mileage Points

On Wednesday I talked about how Mike was able to get us a sweet redemption using our United mileage points. I also stated how I had over 205,000 of them! You may wonder how the average person collects so many points (we only take about one vacation a year so a small fraction of those were actually mileage points). Here is how we earned all those points:

1 - We got the Chase United Mileage Explorer credit card: You'll get something like 40,000 points just for signing up. Some of the perks are free bags and priority boarding. If you book your flight through United.com you'll get x2 the points and you get 10,000 bonus miles a year once you charge $25,000 on the card. Now we are not the kind of people to keep debt so we just pay off the credit card every month...and we literally use it for EVERYTHING!!! Even if its just for $3 at a gas station. (The card is free for the first year and $95 a year after that...worth it just for the free bags since one checked back is $50!)

2 - Mileage Plus Shopping: You can shop online at select retailers (through the mileage plus shopping web site) and get x2, x3 and sometimes x10 the amount of points. We have been doing this for home decor and pet supplies. (You have to register your card)

3 - Mileage Plus Dining: You can even earn x3 the amount of points just by eating at the places you love. We just moved close to a Which Wich and we love earning the extra points when we eat there! (Again, you have to register your card)

4 - e-Rewards: You can take online surveys and earn "dollars" that you can trade in for miles $25 = 500 miles

5 - Bonuses: They offer all kinds of big bonuses. They had one where it was 5,000 extra points if you signed up with Netflix or switch your energy provider to Company 'X' and get 15,000 bonus points, get 4,000 bonus miles for joining the wine of the month club (which I cancelled after the 2nd month). Try to take advantage of these if they work for you and your budget.

6 - Hotels: Instead of collecting hotel rewards switch it to airlines miles

7 - Mileage sales: United has sales on their miles every now and then so if your budget permits and you are really close to your needed amount I would snatch some up.

Those are just a few ways to earn miles for your next trip. And say you don't have enough miles for a flight, they can also be used for hotel stays and car rentals!

What have you used your miles on?

How to Use Your Rewards Miles

Well....maybe the title to this post is a little deceiving because I really don't know the secret. But I know someone that does. I first heard about Mike of iflywithmiles.com from J.Money of BudgetsareSexy.com. Every now and then J.Money hosts a Side Hustle series and back in January Mike was the guest post.

{Source}

I emailed Mike a few times since reading the post asking questions about how many points we would need for our trip to Thailand and Cambodia. After finally accumulating 205K points (been saving since Feb. 2012) we were finally ready to see how far that would get us. It got us an economy seat over and first class back. But since we weren't going to "destination" cites like Bangkok, Tokyo and Seoul it was going to take us three days to get to Siem Reap, Cambodia and then it would take us another three days to get back to Texas. In the end we couldn't justify 6 days of travel for 7 days of true vacation time. We needed a plan B.

Our Plan B came after about a week of discussion on what we wanted to do and where we wanted to go. We finally settled on a Trafalgar tour starting in Amsterdam and ending in Paris! I am so excited! I emailed Mike back and apologized for our indecisiveness. I gave him our dates and he was able to find something pretty quickly. We are flying a combo of United and Lufthansa business class for 100K mileage points each (and some additional money for taxes and surcharges)! I know that if I was to book though United's website for that same flight it would cost either $8,000 or 500K mileage points!!! I think its safe to say Mike is awesome!

And there is a bonus! I guess when booking overseas you get a free domestic layover (staying in a city for a night) and since we didn't take advantage of that we could book an inbound flight to any city - we chose Chicago. So we are going to Chicago next year too! I am so excited for both our trips and I cant wait to go!

Let the planning begin!