442 | Intermediate Travel Rewards

24:28They'll tell you exactly how much to use. And that's a really, really fine tool. It does take a while to do the search. So I'll often surf Instagram or Facebook or read an article on the newspaper while I'm waiting for the tool to finish. But I use mine all the time to book things. And it saves me, like I pay the, I think it's$240 a year annual fee. And it really saves me so much time than having to go to individual websites. And the nice thing too, that I want to point out is it also takes advantage of alliances. So I'm not sure how much you guys touched upon airline alliances. A little bit, but I'd love for you to give an overview of this because I think it's really important right now.

25:11Okay. So with Point.me, you might need to take a flight that's on American Airlines, but it turns out it shows you that if you use your British Airways miles that you converted from one of the other currencies, the credit card currencies, that you can actually pay a lot cheaper compared to using your American Airlines miles. Okay. So alliances are important because all of the airlines work together so that when they bring you from region A to B, then their alliance buddy is going to help bring you to that next part where the original airline doesn't fly to. So let's take, for example, United. United is in the Star Alliance and they use people like Lufthansa, Singapore Airlines, Turkish Airlines.

26:00So, you know, one of the sweet spots that it might show you on maybe point.me is that very little known sweet spot, or at least little known to most people, of the 7 ,500 point to go from the mainland U.S. to Hawaii on a United flight, but it's using Turkish miles. Okay. So you convert your Turkish miles from one of the banks. And I forget who transfers there. I think Citi does and some of the other ones do. But instead of paying like, I don't know,$30 ,000 one way to go there to Hawaii, you might be paying$7 ,500, which is a lot less, you know. And so it'll point out those alliances without you having to know exactly who pals with who, you know, who flies with whom.

26:45And it's a nice way to save on points. Now, one of the downsides is sometimes when you book with these other airlines, if you do use their miles, what might happen is if you have to cancel that ticket, they do charge you a fee to reinstate the miles. Here's an example. Because my son ended up getting COVID when we were supposed to go to Portugal last year, on the day that we were supposed to go, he was asymptomatic. We tested. And I had some Air Canada miles that we were going to use to get us back from Portugal to get back to Dulles Airport. We weren't even flying on Air Canada. We were using an alliance at that time.

27:21But we ended up having to cancel the trip. And then now we have all these miles stuck in Air Canada. And I did have to pay a fee to reinstate that. Now, fortunately, because I have travel insurance, they reimburse me for that fee. But there are benefits to using those cheaper people, like using British Airways or using Flying Blue, which is Air France, rather than using your Delta miles. because Air France, well, for example, when I went to the US Open last year, I think I paid maybe 12 ,000 Air France miles to go on a Delta flight from Richmond to LaGuardia airport. And that was cheaper than what the cash price or what the airline price was with the Delta miles instead.

28:01Oh, that's interesting. Yeah. It's funny because that is one I actually completely forgot about. I recently booked, I'm taking my younger daughter, Molly, on a kind of daddy-daughter a weekend trip to New York City in August, which is fantastic. We're using Hyatt points to stay at the Thompson Hotel, which is right near the park and should be amazing. And we're flying on American Airlines using British Airways miles. And it was a great sweet spot. It was 15 ,000 round trip, which again, because of British Airways and their award chart based on distance, I was able to get that nice little sweet spot.

28:36But I had totally forgotten about SkyTeam and Air France miles being able to be used on Delta. So it's funny because I actually ran out of Delta miles recently, Susie, and I would imagine I have access to Air France miles from multiple transfer partners. So that's something I need to look into when we're done with this podcast, actually. Well, did you search on point.me or use anything to look for it? No, it's funny. I'm still in the stone ages. So I'm still just going like bit by bit through each of the websites and just using the currencies that I have. Because I mean, frankly, like I have been traveling so infrequently over the last couple of years due to COVID that I think my mind is just like out of it with the optimization on travel rewards.

29:20But now that I'm getting back into it, I'm going to have to lean on you a lot more. And hopefully our community can benefit from that. Oh, sure. And actually, you know, I want to tell you, Brad, I'm going to stay at that same Thompson for the first time in July. So I'll give you some feedback or things to do. Yeah. I had a United credit that I had to burn that was also left over from COVID. It was the same Portugal trip. So I had to use it or lose it. So I'm just going up and meeting up with an aunt up there. So we're going to stay at that Thompson and enjoy it. And so I'll let you know the secrets of the hotel or if there's any, any ins and outs or hacks about it.

29:51Do you have global status over there at Hyatt? I don't, unfortunately, no. We don't. So yeah, I don't get any of the benefits. Well, I was going to say, I might have globalist status with Hyatt by then. So if you end up wanting to rebook your thing, I might be able to do guest of honor for you. But anyway, that's an entire, that's a travel hacking 303, right? Yeah, that's next time. Yeah, what's so cool. Also, if by some freak chance, you have a terrible experience. And this is, again, not for me. I'm I'm giving this story because again, it's so people have that mental framework for how to approach travel rewards with a Hyatt hotel.

30:27You can just cancel. There are 20 Hyatt's or more in Manhattan. If by some chance you had a terrible experience, I could just cancel and book at the park Hyatt, or that would be a little more in terms of points or any of the other dozens of plays. We get the grand Hyatt in time square, et cetera. It's as simple as just literally clicking to cancel it and then just booking a new one. So that's a really nice thing about hotels is there's no downside. Like you're saying with the airlines as well, I've found you can speculatively book hotels. And really, again, the only downside is that opportunity cost of having some points tied up.

31:03But if you have a lot of points, that downside is essentially nil, more or less. Yes. And you know, the thing also, I don't want people to get overwhelmed because here are all these trips that I go on. But I did start off small. And you know, it's just you start off with small, small scale. And you know, not all Hyatt's are going to be 40 ,000 points like the Park Hyatt, or there are 5000 point Hyatt's that I stay at too. So I want to go back to one thing about the point.me is that they also will incorporate the idea of transfer bonuses into when they do their calculations for how much points are for tickets.

31:39So if you're familiar with transfer bonuses. For example, with Chase, they had a 25 % transfer bonus of Chase points to Flying Blue. So when I booked that ticket to go up to the US Open, I ended up not spending as much in the way of Chase points to convert it to the same number of points for that Air France ticket because of the 25 % bonus. And recently with the bill rewards, they had like a hundred percent bonus. It was, you know, basically you convert one point equals two points to Air France. I think it was about two months ago. So that was a really amazing one. I don't have a built card, but knowing of when these transfer bonuses are available is really, really key because then you can really take advantage and stack the savings, finding something early.

32:25And if there's a transfer bonus going on, then you really save money and points. That is huge. So this is obviously not an advertisement for points on me because frankly, like I'd never use it, but it sounds like a remarkable, remarkable service. Yeah. And I have no sponsorships with anybody or anything. Yeah. No, of course not. I know you don't, but no, it sounds like an amazing thing. So now I think a lot of people might be turned off by the$240 a year. I'm assuming that's something that they could get a free trial for, or maybe buy it month by month. I'm not saying that definitively, but I'll look into that certainly.

32:58And it's actually$5 for 24 hours if you want to just try it out. So if you have like, okay, I'm going to look for all my spring break trips now and see what I can get, you can get that done right there for five bucks. Or if you do a month to month, it's$12 a month. Gotcha. Okay. That's fantastic. So let's keep going with point on me though, because I think there's, there's some additional flavor here in terms of, okay, like you said, I'm really flexible with where we're going to go. So like my dream search, which again is not doable just at united.com with the, the hunt and peck method that I've been doing, but let's say, okay, okay, I'm leaving from Dulles, right?

33:34You're about an hour and a half from Dulles airport. And from Dulles, you have more or less the world if you have United miles or I guess star lines miles, let's say. And if you said, okay, I want to go to Europe for Christmas break. Is there a way to effectively do that where you're not just saying like, okay, IAD to LHR, you know, Heathrow or like do it individual. Can you just say, this is the rough area that I want to go to and it knows many of the different options? Well, what I would actually do is I would go to Google Flights first and then put a search in for the Christmas dates that you would look at and then go from IAD to Europe as the destination.

34:17And then you can look at what the cash prices are going to be. And when you see those cash prices, a lot of times those cash prices are going to correspond to what will be relatively cheap for the point awards to not always, but you can get a general idea of it. And it's like, hmm, it's pretty cheap to go to Amsterdam over for the Christmas markets or to go to Budapest, you know, if you want to go somewhere like that. So that will help you dictate, well, why don't I search on point.me Amsterdam first or Budapest? Those are two places that I could totally see myself going for Christmas. Interesting.

34:49Okay. So Google flights, and it's funny because Chris Hutchins, my good buddy from all the hacks podcast, he loves Google flights. And I still am just like such a stick in the mud and I haven't tested it out yet. So I have some homework after this, Susie. So I'm going to really dive into Google flights and then the interaction between that, the knowledge you gain there, and then point at me. So I guess what you're saying is, of course, there's not a one-to-one direct relationship between, oh, there's a cheap flight to Amsterdam. Then that means by definition, there's going to be a saver level flight on United or on Delta or whatever it is.

35:25But in general terms, there might be a loose correlation, right? That's what you're saying is like, obviously, if you saw a$5 ,000 round trip in economy to Europe, then you're saying there's a very high likelihood, at least as I'm understanding, that there's not going to be those low level saver award availability. But if you see a super cheap flight, just unexpectedly, then there's a higher likelihood there will be saver levels. That's been my observation so far. Interesting. Cool. So right. That's anecdotal, but that is really important. And that's not to say, of course, that there won't be that one errant saver level flight on an expensive itinerary because you just never know.

36:03But that does stand to reason when you think about it, because the airlines, they have control over the number of award seats in essence. So if they believe they can sell that flight out and they can sell it for a premium, my supposition would be they're going to have very few award flights and certainly very few at the lowest number of points. Yeah. And also they do that dynamic pricing with their points. Before there used to be these fixed award charts that always said, oh, if you go to Europe from mainland US, it's 30 ,000 points one way. Now it's all going to be based on the location in Europe, the demand, the time of year.

36:39So they're also adjusting the price and points based on that too. Yeah, that is a good point. So that is, again, where I'm stuck in the old days. So because my mind immediately goes to award charts. But yeah, that's kind of defunct in a lot of cases. So I know British Airways still does have their award chart, though, right, based on distance? Ah, yes. Yeah. And there are still other ones that are based on distance. Like I know, for example, people take advantage of Aeroplan with Air Canada. And because of the distances they're flown, you can be able to put together some amazing itineraries with that, with a stopovers and, you know, six layovers and stuff, something crazy itineraries.

37:18if you want to just hop all around Europe, for example. But those distance-based award charts, if you really know how to use them, can be to your advantage. But for me, I don't do crazy itineraries like that. The really super fast travel, you're just tired by the end of that vacation and you need another vacation. Yeah. Oh, I hear you. I definitely hear you. So are there other award searching tools that you use other than Point.me? Well, I don't use them as much, but I do want to highlight there are things. award logic is also similar to point.me. I haven't really tried that one out. And then some people love something called seats.aero.

37:54And that is, I don't think it's as user-friendly, at least for me, but it gives idea of last minute seats. And from what I can tell, it's mostly international flights. It has to be a direct flight that you put in, or I should say nonstop. So for example, I have a itinerary coming up where we are going from Washington, Dulles to Dubai, to Manila. We're celebrating our 20th anniversary in two weeks and going to the Philippines, showing my kids where my part of the family is from. My husband is from like Scotland. Her family's from like Scotland and England and Ireland. But anyway, they want to see the Asian side of the family.

38:27So anyway, the point is in order to search to see, I was just curious to see were there any open seats and how much would they cost, you know, two weeks in. I put it on seats.aero and you have to pull apart that itinerary. You can't just say, hey, I wanna go IAD to Manila. You have to break it into IAD to DXB, which is Dubai and see, is there any availability there? And there was none. And then you have to also do Dubai to Manila. And sometimes it'll say that route is not followed. So I haven't had as much luck with it, but some people swear by it. I know that some of the bloggers, they love it and it's their new tool.

39:07and it's more so for people have that flexibility, I think, to get some last minute seats. Gotcha. Okay, that's very cool. First, congrats on the upcoming anniversary. That's amazing. And second to the audience. So that was seats.aero.aero. And we will put all the links and tools we mentioned in the show notes, which you can always find. I haven't mentioned this in a long time, but you can always find the show notes in your podcast player. If you don't know how to do that, just maybe do a quick Google search or just click, click on some buttons and usually can find the show notes, or we've always set it up that you can find it at our website.

39:44So just go to choose a buy.com. And usually the most recent podcast episode is right there, or you just click at the top click podcast, or the other direct way is actually just this episode is four 42. So just choose a buy.com slash four, four two, and that'll take you directly to this page with all of Susie's links. So that's both for this episode and all future episodes. I just wanted it as kind of a public service announcement because I haven't mentioned that in probably about a year. So, okay. You mentioned also expert flyer in passing. Is that something that is a more advanced tool? Is that something I think you said you can put in searches and it works in the background maybe over days and then alerts you when something becomes available?

40:29Yeah, I don't use it so much, but the people who do use it, they basically will put in a route that they're watching. Okay, I want to take this flight on, you know, Lufthansa first class, and there's no availability now. So that tool is going to tell you when and if they become available and it'll send you an alert so that you can go ahead and book it. So some people who are super hung up, especially on the premium cabins, because those really good premium cabin redemptions are sometimes hard to find. But when you do get them, it's great. And you're getting like 10 cents per point redemptions or even more than that.

41:02But I don't use it as much because like I said, I just tend to book out so far out that I already have my plans all set. But people who do kind of more last minute or if they have the patience to wait to see if it comes available. But remember that I'm also looking for four people. It's not always easy to find four open seats. You might have one seat and a lot of these bloggers and digital nomads can capture that one seat. But when you have a family of four, you can't always do that. Now, and one thing I do want to point out to for family travelers, just as little aside, is that Air France and KLM, they're the ones who make a Flying Blue, they often have really good award availability for families at decent prices.

41:41Now, they might have higher taxes and fees because of the airports you have to go through, but I do find a lot of my awards going to Europe, going to Croatia when we went two years ago, it was really, really nice to be able to have that availability. So anyway, that was a little aside for family travelers. No, that's really important because I think there are a lot of families that are listening and trying to figure out how can I do this in my own life. And I guess my follow-up question for, let's say this four award seats. So has there been an example where you were only able to get, let's say two or three award seats, but you actually decided to book them and then book the other one or two with cash?

42:21Or is that just like so complex that it's a non-starter? I haven't done it that way, but what I have done is sometimes I'll only have two award seats at this level of 20 ,000 points, and then the rest of them are now 23 ,000 points. So I have split up our itineraries so that I am on a ticket with one son and my husband is on a ticket with another son, and we end up saving the extra 6 ,000 points by splitting the itineraries. But I haven't had to divide our family up and pay cash for one and put the other three on a points. Not yet. I mean, I could do it. And the only reason I would ever do it is if there was some awesome Amex offer, like pay$200 on JetBlue, get$80 off or something like that and take advantage of that and then put the rest of us on points.

43:08Yeah. So that's great, actually, because that actually paints the picture of, okay, if I book far enough in advance and if I'm flexible enough, even you in this scenario can get four award seats pretty much every single time you try, which is actually an amazing takeaway that I think you're not even probably don't realize you should give yourself way more credit for that than you otherwise would have. Because I think a lot of people just say, oh, I have a family of four. I have a family of five. I can't do this. And I guess you're saying if you have that built-in flexibility, you certainly can do this and you're the proof of it.

43:40Yeah. And one of the things I often will do when I'm using point.me is first search for just one person to see what the lowest amount of points are for a certain itinerary. And then I'll put it in for four and see if that lowest points change. Because if so, that means that there are only yay many number of award tickets. They don't have four that are going to be at that cheapest price point. And then that's when I split my itinerary. Such an important piece of clarification because actually I was a little bit confused but didn't ask the follow-up question. So that is the scenario where in your hypothetical, there may be two at 20 ,000 and two at 23 ,000.

44:14If you booked all four of them on one, it sounds as if they would give you all four at 23. Correct. But if you split it and did two, you'd get those two at the 20, and then you'd get the other two at 23, thus saving the 6 ,000. Exactly. That is huge. So you mock that up on point.me, one seat, then two seats, or I guess you would go from one to four. And if there was a difference, then you realize, oh, it's somewhere in between. I need to figure that out. Yep, exactly. That's super cool. Now, some people won't care about that extra 6 ,000 points, but for me, sometimes 6 ,000 points can get you somewhere.

44:51Yeah, seriously. I mean, especially if it's not too onerous to split it up into two, I guess there's some slight downside and then I guess somebody could book them and it could go up. But the like, I mean, you're doing this almost simultaneously. So the likelihood of that is pretty slim, right? Yeah. It's just an extra three minutes to do the second search, you know? Nice. Yeah. That seems well worth it. So, okay. In terms of how to book. So now we've talked about how to find the award booking. Now you use point.me. So you find the availability and now I'm guessing you don't book it through there.

45:22You would then go to the airline. And And if you don't have the points there and you had to make a transfer from Ultimate Rewards or Membership Rewards or Ventures or Citi thank you points, you'd make the transfer then and then book it. Talk me through the process of, okay, I found award availability. What do I do next to actually book this? So the next very important thing is to make sure that you go and see that that particular airline does have it on its website. Okay. So it might show that United has an availability to go to Europe for$40 ,000 one way. They unfortunately just increased their prices to go to Europe.

46:01But in any event, you go and check on United's site and make sure that it's there and it's not phantom space. There is something called phantom award availability. And now you've verified on the website that there is availability and you have enough seats. So once you do that, you get into your credit card account, or if you already have the miles in United, then you go ahead and book it. And I always will book with the website that I have the miles in. If I'm ever paying cash, one thing is I always also book directly with the airline. I never ever or rarely ever book through any online travel agencies.

46:34Okay. So no kayak or Travelocity. If you can avoid it, you go directly to the airline. Yeah. There's only one occasion where I'll use an online travel agency and that's when I have to use my Capital One visa. It's the VentureX gives a$300 travel credit, but you have to use it through their travel portal. But everything else, I always book directly with the airlines because people will find out if you're booking directly with the airlines, if there's something that needs to be changed or your flight gets canceled, it's so much easier to deal with it than to have to go through the online travel agency.

47:06Agreed. Totally agreed. And it's funny, I actually just booked through Capital One because I have that VentureX card as well, which I love. And yeah, I booked another flight to New York City. Actually, I've been up there a couple of times recently. I did a very spontaneous trip to see Bono from U2 in concert, actually, which is super cool. So yeah, I was able to, I realized that that$300 wasn't going to expire because I was aware of it, but the months were running short. So it was the perfect opportunity to just book that. And it's a regular travel search in essence. So yeah, it was super simple, booked it through Delta and I was good to go.

47:43And Susie, I'm curious in the actual booking, because again, I think this is where people get bogged down. So they've found this award availability. They understand they have to go to the airline. Are there ever instances where, where there's something complex that you've come across in terms of the actual booking? So you found an itinerary on point.me and you go to United. I think United should be a little bit easier. But I think when people start hearing about potentially foreign airlines or alliance partners, what am I going to do with Flying Blue or LaFontza? I don't know what to do. Do you ever run into issues or is it pretty straightforward in your experience?

48:21I mean, for me, it was pretty straightforward. For example, there was one time when I went to the Bahamas and this was in, of all things, July of 2020. I actually had booked that ticket using Qantas miles to fly American down there because they're in an alliance also. And I had found that with what was the predecessor of Point.me, it was called Juicy Miles at the time, and then they converted it to Point.me. But in any event, I had to open a Qantas account and I hadn't done that. And there are some airlines that make sure they have to be open for a certain amount of time before you can transfer miles into them from a credit card.

48:55So one of the things I would recommend for people is if you ever think you might use British Airways or Flying Blue or anything, just start opening your frequent flyer accounts with them now so you have already an established relationship with them. I had no problem at all with that transfer. It was pretty instantaneous and it was a pretty quick account that I had just opened either that day or the day before. But I got down to, of all things during the middle of COVID, my family and I ended up going on a Bahamas scuba vacation. And we were only there for a few days because then they were closing the Bahamas and there were no flights that were going to be coming in to take us back out.

49:32So we had to cut our vacation short for three days. But of all things, I use Qantas miles. I didn't fly to Australia. I didn't use Qantas airplanes, but I took advantage of the alliance and it was a lot cheaper than using American miles. That's amazing. Yeah, there's just so many. And I suspect people, A, are learning a ton from this episode, but B, even though we're trying to make this as simple as possible, it's a little bit head spinning sometimes, especially for people just getting into this, wondering if they can do it. And I think you and I would both say, you can do this. You really, really can.

50:04It's not as complex as it sounds. There's a lot of nuance, but in this day and age of, like you said, all these websites, you're a Google search away, you're a podcast list in a way. There's a ton of information. So as long as you understand the steps, I think you can very easily find out the individual pieces of knowledge, because even something like that British Airways flight that I just mentioned. So I use British Airways miles to book on American airlines from Richmond to New York city, the simplest itinerary of all time. Right. And what I realized was, okay, I booked this with obviously British Airways, obvious miles.

50:40How do I get it linked up into my American account so that they know my global entry number, my TSA pre, all that, that kind of stuff. And I just did some quick Google searches on, oh, here's how you do it. And I think it was actually something bizarre. It was through another travel partner, like Norwegian or Swiss or something crazy. And I was able to just do two little steps. I suspect there was an easier way, but it was simple because I just knew what to ask Google in order to link it up. And And this was even for me, I had a little bit of that moment where I was like, oh, man, what do I what do I do?

51:16What do I do? And then I just quickly took a breath and said, I just Google search like always. So this is really, really simple. Yeah. And what I usually do in that situation when I use British Airways to book American, which we do, we have a couple of trips down to Florida that is I'm going to be British Airways miles to go on American. But what I do is I just call British Airways. I ask them what the confirmation number is with American. and then I have American add it to my account. So the nice thing is now you see it in your account. If there's any changes, you get the emails from American in addition to British Airways.

51:51Plus if you have status, the beauty of the status is you might get that upgrade too. Yeah, and that was exactly why I wanted it to show up in my American account. And ideally I wanted to avoid a call to British Airways. So that's why I did find that end around to do it online, which was pretty cool. If I can dig up that article that I found, I'll put it in the show notes, but that's probably unlikely at this point. But now you probably would never do this, but there are these award booking services and some of them are pretty expensive. I know a good friend of mine who has his own website called Boundless Miles.

52:24His name is Dominic and he actually writes a whole bunch of articles for me at travelmiles101.com. He has the most reasonable award booking service fee that I've ever seen. I don't know precisely what it is now, but I know It's dramatically less than any other company that I've ever seen or heard anybody using. And he's a personal friend of mine. He's really, really good at what he does. So if you're listening to this podcast and you're still nervous that you can't do this, well, still dive in. Try Point.me. See if you can do this. If you can't, just go to boundlessmiles.com and Dominic will definitely help you.

52:57And if that's the difference between you going and not going, it's probably worth whatever he charges,$50,$75 a ticket to book the thing. Because again, you're saving potentially thousands of dollars. Now, obviously Susie can do this by herself. I can mostly do it by myself, but if you need that help, there are experts out there, which again, if that can make the difference between you going and not going, really think about it. Yeah. And initially what you'll do is you find you might use these people. And what I would do is if you do use a booking service, ask them exactly how they did it. Let them teach you how to do it.

53:31I did it initially. We went to Hawaii back in 2017 and to Kauai, Grand Hyde, Kauai. Of course, it was all points and hotel certificates. It was all with miles. It was a very complicated itinerary because we had to stop by LAX to visit my sister on the way back over this Christmas break vacation. I used a booking service then. They did the four tickets. I think they might have charged me$150, but it was worth it because I was like way just starting in this and then they showed me how to do it and then I learned it and I don't need to use anybody like that again. But I do have friends who are more advanced than me and I'll ask them, hey, how do you do this?

54:11Or if Google can answer it, I'll ask them or get their opinion on, hey, do you think I should book the seat now? Or do you think I should do the mattress run to get the globalist status, you know, through the Built Challenge, all those things. I'll bounce off. There's always somebody who is smarter than me and smarter than you, who you can always bounce things off. Yeah, totally agreed. So are there particular resources? I know back in the old days, there were some forums, which just seemed like these like mean corners of the internet that I was always like a little bit daunted by. But have you come across any, if somebody doesn't have that personal expert in their life or a friend group that they've cultivated.

54:52Are there any message boards or sites where you feel people are pretty open-minded and helpful? Well, yeah. I mean, Instagram and their stories and reels is a really good way to pick up on this stuff. And there's people like Max Miles and Points, Julia of Geobreeze, and she does a podcast, Ben's Big Deals. They'll put up little reels and give you little snippets of, did you know that you can do this? And you just learn little by little. It's like a little tidbit every day. And I still learn from those reels. And when I don't understand how to do it, you can just message them and they can answer it that way.

55:27So, you know, you just bounce it off the experts. The other thing that if you want some information from experts, they do have conferences, you know, for nerds like me who love doing this. There was something I went to called Frequent Traveler University at the beginning of May, and that was up in DC. And it was a whole bunch of us points and miles geeks. And then it was just more advanced techniques. So it was fun because I met some friends up there and now we're doing virtual mattress runs, you know, things like that together. I was like, Hey, how's your view from your hotel room? Anyway, but that's, again, that's like 401.

56:00Right. That's to get crazy stuff, like getting status and making sure. But going to those types of conferences, they also have ones that are beginner level or they'll have a mix of beginner and not so, you know, like intermediate, like what we're talking about now, as well as advanced. Yeah, that's great. I love the concept of just getting these little snippets of background knowledge and you just piece it together. I mean, that essentially is what we say here at Chooseify for learning anything or taking action. It's literally, it's that little 1 % at a time. And with travel rewards, when you have 20, 50, a hundred of these little tips, well then all of a sudden, especially once you listen to a show like this and our more beginner episodes, you have that mental framework for, okay, now I can succeed at this.

56:44Now I feel confident. Now I know I can do this. So I think that's wonderful. I'm curious. So you mentioned a bunch of those reels podcasts. I know you listened to a bunch of travel rewards podcasts. Are there just a couple that you could recommend? Yes. Miles to memories that usually comes out on Thursdays miles to go is Wednesdays and geo breeze is coming out on Sundays. It's nice because there's almost like every day there's like a new podcast, but I would like maybe start with those three. Oh, and also on, this is a little bit more deep in the weeds on Saturday, it's frequent miler. They go into a lot more talk.

57:18I mean, there there's are over an hour about debates of, should you get this card? Should you do this? Should you take advantage of that type of savings? And for people who are really into it, like me, you enjoy it. I think if you're just starting out, that might be a little bit too deep, but once you get to that level, I do love listening to frequent miler and i got to meet like nick reyes at that frequent traveler university and compliment him on how eloquent he is when he's talking on his podcast as as you are too brad i love that you don't say uh and um and all that all the time i try it's a 600 episodes well thank you for the compliment i appreciate it i guess uh i'm curious how do you know because i think this is something people are also just worried about in the background is how do you know if you're getting a quote unquote good deal or if something rises to the level of, okay, I'm actually going to book this.

58:13This makes sense for me to use my hard-earned points on. Is there some heuristic or rule of thumb that you use? Well, I use one for me, but I would use a different rule for people who are beginning. I would book the deal that makes you happy. Okay. So that when you're just starting, book the deal that makes you happy. Now, just as a general Flamework, if you have the Chase Sapphire Preferred, which if you ended up cashing in those points through their travel portal, you'll get 1.25 cents per point, right? Or if you have the Chase Sapphire Reserve, it gives you 1.5 cents per point. So you want to at least maybe, if you have any of those two cards, get more than 1.25 cents per point or 1.5 cents per point.

58:53And the way you calculate that is you see how much they're charging for the regular fare. So let's say, for instance, going to Paris from Dulles is$500. That's actually kind of cheap, but$500. And then you have to subtract taxes and fees. Because when you pay in points, you have to also pay in addition the taxes and fees. And depending on what airport you go through and the airline you go on, that can be pretty high. So you have to subtract from that$500 the taxes and fees. So let's say$100 in taxes and fees. So what you're paying is$400 really, and you divide that by the number of points they're charging.

59:29Okay. So if they're charging 10 ,000 points, you're getting 4 cents per point. If they're charging 20 ,000 points, you're getting 2 cents per point. So anyway, that's how I, in general, will figure it out. You take the number, the cash price, subtract the taxes and fees, and then you divide that by the amount in points that you would be paying for the same ticket. Okay. And for me, my own personal goal is usually to get 2 cents per point. Sometimes I'll get a little less. But if I got four, my family of four, a little bit less than that, then that's fine. And my sister, she goes through the Chase portal and will book things that I normally would have transferred to the Hyatt and booked a Hyatt with to get a better value.

1:00:09But I'm like, good, I'm happy you got that redemption. I'm glad you're starting to do this. I'm not going to point shame people because they didn't get the absolute best redemption. One of the things about being math people and geeks is that sometimes we always want to calculate and get the absolute best redemption and optimize things. And then you get into this paralysis analysis, you know? So go get the one that makes you happy if you save money anyway. Yeah, that's really great. That's a perfect place to start because, yeah, I mean, we're talking about nearly free travel here, right? And if you can get one free trip a year, even if it's not the perfectly optimized trip and that makes you happy, then go for it.

1:00:51That's wonderful. And yeah, I think that it's funny. Basically how you described it is almost exactly how I would describe is two cents per point is roughly what I'm trying to get. I feel pretty good if I'm getting a two cent per point redemption. And this again is on my normal travel. It's easy. And you see a lot of these 22 year old kids who are flying first class or in those Singapore suites and saying they got 30 cents per point in value, but they weren't really going to book that $15 ,000 special cabin. It's, they would have booked an economy seat if they were paying in cash. So I think that concept of opportunity costs is really important of, Hey, what am I, am I diluting myself here?

1:01:31Or is this actually what I would have spent and therefore what value I'm getting? So that's kind of a sidebar, but I want to just very quickly dive into what you said about the taxes and fees. So on U.S. domestic point bookings, there is a$5.60 one-way fee, which is just unavoidable. So you'll see when you book a round trip, it's$11.20. And obviously, that's nominal and it's essentially free. So most people don't even consider that. But when you're starting to talk about international flights, it's actually going to vary depending on where you fly. So the UK is notorious for having significant fees, I think more so than it could be just a neighboring country, literally could be half the taxes and fees.

1:02:19And you're going to just see that when you mock that up. So that's something to consider. Even if you're just using points, you find the most amazing 60 ,000 mile round trip flight to Europe, you still might see, oh, I've got to pay the Netherlands government, in essence,$120. And it is what it is. That's just part of it. But like you said, you're not actually getting that value when you really think about it from all those points, because if the flight would have cost$800 in cash, that includes those fees. So you're only getting the difference between the 800 and the 120 that you're spending out of pocket by using miles.

1:02:55So in that case, we're talking a value of$680 for, let's say, 60 ,000 miles, which is just a little bit over, I guess, 1.1 cents per point. So in that case, you and I would both say, oh, if you're going to do that, just mock that up through the Chase travel portal and use your points that way and you're going to get more value. I think both of us would probably hopefully look to get a slightly better value, but that would be, I think, at least the mental framework of how you'd approach that. Does that sound roughly accurate? Yeah. And there's some people that in general, you just want to avoid because you know, they're notorious for tacking on taxes and fees.

1:03:30Like going to Britain on British Airways is always going to be high because they're going to typically go through London Heathrow Airport if you're coming from the US. And they just charge a lot over at that airport. If you go on point.me and it's like, oh, look, British Airways, they have so much availability and it's only many points. But look at the taxes and fees. You're paying$600 for taxes and fees. Well, that's not really that great. So there are other things like ANA, I think they charge taxes and fees, but a lot of American airlines, they don't. So you just have to be aware of those so you can get your best value for what you're redeeming.

1:04:06All right, Susie, this has been incredible. I think the last place we want to leave for this episode, and we are definitely doing at least a part two, and I suspect there will be a part three and four at some point in the not too distant future, because you gave me a four-page outline that is chock full of info and we got to maybe one page of it, but let's talk a little bit about hotels. So now I think we did a reasonably good job already of talking about Hyatt and how there's significant value. We mentioned Marriott and the fifth night free. And I think you and I both like hotels in the sense that, okay, there are still, at least for some of the hotel chains, there are still award charts.

1:04:43So you can find those really cool values. Like I always say the Berkshire Hathaway event in Omaha, Nebraska, when the Hyatt, instead of being$89 for a night and still costing whatever it is, 5 ,000 or 8 ,000 points a night, it would have cost you$800 a night for that weekend in May, but it's still the same amount of points because of that award chart, which I think is really phenomenal. And I always use these ridiculous examples of, hey, if the Super Bowl's in town, it's still the same number of points. If the Pope's in town, Still the same number of points. It doesn't matter because there's an award chart.

1:05:17So that's the background on hotel. But is there any additional flavor maybe on some of the free night certificates or things like that that you wanted to leave us with? Oh, absolutely. One of the things about having multiple credit cards once you open them is if you have the hotel credit cards, a lot of them come with that free hotel night. And it might be something as simple as up to 35 ,000 points for a one night, or it could be even something that comes with the Ritz Carlton card. which is up to 85 ,000 points per night. So if you can find places that are either in high demand or it's high season, and you might not be paying that amount in cash or ever stay there otherwise, you can get such a great deal.

1:05:58I'll give you an example. When I was in London, when we arrived, I stayed over at this autograph collection. It was called the Bankside Hotel, and it was on the south bank of the Thames. And it's number nine on TripAdvisor out of over 200 hotels in London. So very, very nice Marriott hotel and it definitely lived up to its reputation. Being a Marriott Platinum, because I've been with them since 2003 and did a lot of credit card spend until I got really into travel hacking and opening up more cards, I ended up being a Platinum and I'm a lifetime Platinum. So they ended up upgrading me. The original room I was supposed to be in was supposed to be$1 ,000 a night and I had used my Ritz-Carlton certificate to redeem for that because it was otherwise, I think, 70 ,000 points if I would have had to pay or a thousand dollars.

1:06:46So my sister and I ended up staying there and Tina had the benefit of also getting the free breakfast that the Marriott Platinum get. And we got the late checkout with it and the upgrade. So the upgrade was the$1 ,300 room. Later at the end of the cruise, we ended up staying over at the Andaz in London, over on the east side on the north bank of the Thames in order to see a different part of London. And it was beautiful. It was artsy, had a nice happy hour for the guests. So you can mingle for an hour, a little free crudités and hors d 'oeuvres if you wanted to enjoy the lobby. And it was great and also got an upgrade.

1:07:27Since I have the Hyatt status, I'm an explorist right now working on the way to Globalist. But that was with points. I apologize. That wasn't a free hotel night certificate, but I do have a credit card with Hyatt that I definitely use to book amazing Hyatt redemptions. Here's one example coming up in, when I go to Buenos Aires, we have to be in Miami on the way back and we're going to be staying at one of the Hyatt houses there. And I was able to get something that normally is$356 a night using my free hotel certificate. And it only cost me, I think$95 for that World of Hyatt visa. But because it's around Christmas and a lot of people are traveling, then I got a good redemption there.

1:08:10So you can find little sweet spots when you're padding times where you might just need one day before a cruise, or you're just going to be in a city for a day or two. Or if you have that free hotel certificate and you have points, then you can book some consecutive nights, or you can do the two-player mode thing. You have a credit card for the world of Hyatt or with Marriott and your husband or your wife has it too. And you both use it and ask to just link the reservation so that you can get back to back nights. Definitely saves a ton of money. I mean, I saved over$3 ,000 with our London three nights, all of it for free.

1:08:44Wow. That's incredible. Yeah. You can definitely find some real amazing sweet spot rewards, I guess, just using those certificates. I know. So everybody at this point, I'm sure is tired of hearing me give this example, but I've mentioned now twice in the last six weeks that I'm still contemplating taking my daughter to the Taylor Swift concert in Pittsburgh. So I actually didn't give the full story in that I found this Hyatt place right next to the Pittsburgh stadium. And it was a category four Hyatt, which is 15 ,000 points a night. And I was thrilled. I was able to find somebody must have canceled because I was checking back every single day.

1:09:21I found a room opened up because literally there wasn't award availability the day before. But then that very next day, a room opened up for points. I actually had a free night certificate that was almost going to expire. I had forgotten about the thing. And because that free night certificate is category one through four, this was the absolute top end in terms of categories I could use it. And because the Taylor Swift concert was there, it was six, seven or eight hundred dollars a night. So I used a nearly expired pre-night certificate on a category four, which is the best as it is for a room that would have been eight hundred dollars in cash.

1:09:56That was the best redemption. That is amazing. That's amazing. Good for you. What was the sense? Did you calculate the sense per point on that one? Well, yeah, I mean, well, I guess it's infinite because it's priceless with the if you bring your daughter to Taylor Swift, I mean, she'll always remember that so that you can't even put a value on that. Good for you. Yeah, so that's going to be pretty amazing. But yeah, I guess it's probably, what, close to six cents per point it would have been? Nice, yeah. And you know, the thing of it is, a lot of these credit cards are about 95 or$99. Their annual fees are.

1:10:28Yeah, their annual fees. And you can get such a great deal by learning how to take advantage of them. You know, because we travel every month or every other month, there's always some type of thing, whether it's a fun weekend up in DC or using it up in New York City or whatever, that you can just enjoy it and be able to have a nice little weekend vacation with it. Yeah, I love it. Susie, this has been incredible. Thank you so very much for coming on. Like we said repeatedly, this is part one of many. If people are looking to get in touch with you, is there any way people can reach you? I know you have a lot of, obviously, travel rewards tips, any type of contact information?

1:11:04Yeah, sure. If anybody is on Facebook, I write a private Facebook blog about travel hacking, and that one is called Sonic Travelers. And then I'm also on Instagram. It's just mostly my vacation pictures, artsy pictures. And I'm at Suzy Spad, S-U-Z-Y-S-P-A-D. Those are the easiest way to get to me or to message me. So hopefully I'll hear from some of the Choose FI people. I bet you will hear from a bunch. We will definitely put those links in the show notes. I'm a member of your private Facebook group and it's great. You're always coming up with new information for everybody. So it's really, really helpful.

1:11:41Susie, again, thank you for coming on. Happy to be here. I can't wait to do it again. Thank you for listening to today's show and for being part of the Chooseify community. If you haven't already, the best ways to get involved are first subscribe to the podcast. So you're listening to this on a podcast player and just hit subscribe and then subscribe to my weekly newsletter. I actually sit down every Monday and write this by hand, and I send it out Tuesday morning. So just head over to choosefi.com slash subscribe, and it's really, really easy to get on the newsletter list right there, and I would greatly appreciate it.

1:12:15It's the best way to get in touch with me. You can actually just hit reply to any of those emails, and it comes directly to my inbox. So that's the way that I keep a pulse of the community and how we keep this the ultimate crowdsourced personal finance show. And finally, if you're looking to join an in-real-life community, we have Chooseify local groups in 300-plus cities all around the world. So head to chooseify.com slash local, and you'll find a list of all of those cities in 20-plus countries all across the world. And if you're just getting started with FI, or you have a family member or a friend who you think would be interested, two easy ways.

1:12:51Chooseify episode 100 is kind of our welcome to the FI community. and even though it's a couple years old at this point, it still stands up and it's a really great just starting point to get an understanding of what is financial independence? What are we doing here? Why are we looking to live a more intentional life where we save money and use it as a springboard to live a better life? And then Choose a Vi created a Financial Independence 101 course. That's entirely free. Just head to choosefi.com slash fi101. And again, thanks for listening. Thank you.