How to Fly Your Entire Family in Business Class (With Points)

00:00:00.000 | Booking travel with points for just one person is hard enough, but what if you want to book four,

00:00:04.660 | five, or even eight seats? Or what if you're coordinating around school breaks, holiday

00:00:09.660 | travel, or trying to book those seats in business or first class? It can feel nearly impossible.

00:00:15.260 | But today's guest, Nick Reyes, proves that with the right strategy, most of this absolutely is

00:00:21.320 | possible. You may know him from The Frequent Miler, but he's also one of the best when it

00:00:25.740 | comes to award travel and especially family travel, having booked countless trips for his

00:00:30.940 | family of four and even a recent amazing luxury trip to Europe on points for eight people. Today,

00:00:37.780 | we'll cover how to actually find multiple award seats, tools that make the searches way easier,

00:00:43.100 | booking strategies to save you thousands, so many different tricks for travel with family and kids

00:00:49.500 | and a lot more. I'm Chris Hutchins. If you enjoy this episode and you want to keep upgrading your

00:00:54.780 | money points and life, click follow or subscribe. Nick, you've traveled the world with your family,

00:01:00.540 | mostly on points, which most people think is impossible. What do they all get wrong?

00:01:05.120 | You have to kind of adjust the way of thinking about things. And instead of picking a specific

00:01:09.780 | spot we want to go, I'm much more open to different experiences. I just want the kids to get different

00:01:14.760 | experiences. And so I often plan trips based on where there's availability to get to, or at least

00:01:21.740 | getting to a general area that I would like to. And I try to keep my planning as open as possible in that

00:01:28.740 | regard, both in terms of the location and the specific dates. It's really hard if you say,

00:01:32.460 | I want to go to Paris on July 16th. But if you think, I want to go to Europe sometime in the summer,

00:01:36.920 | it's a lot easier to find the availability you need. And then really, it does require some time

00:01:42.320 | mastering the different programs. But there's so many great award search tools these days that it's far

00:01:47.840 | easier to find availability for a family now than it was when you needed to learn the nuances of every

00:01:53.600 | single program and search a million different sites. It's far simplified these days, I would say.

00:01:59.120 | But I think the other thing that most people probably get tripped up on is thinking that

00:02:03.680 | it has to be difficult, that it's not easy to do either in terms of finding award space,

00:02:09.880 | if you're looking to do it with miles and points, or just that it's hard to travel with kids. And it's not

00:02:14.240 | hard. It's just different. It requires a different outlook in terms of how you plan and what you plan

00:02:18.960 | to do and what your expectations are from the trip. But when you make that adjustment, it's not that

00:02:23.680 | tough at all, really.

00:02:24.520 | Yeah, I'm going to steal a line you guys use on your show. There's going to be timestamps in the show

00:02:28.560 | notes. We'll talk about the logistics of planning and the experience of going. So if you're someone

00:02:33.040 | who's like, you know what, I'm just going to pay for everything, skip ahead, you might find that pretty

00:02:36.800 | valuable. But you mentioned, you know, I'm flexible on where I go. And I know some people might hear

00:02:41.600 | that and think, oh, great. So I'm going to take my entire family during hurricane season to the

00:02:45.920 | Caribbean. And then you said you might not go to Paris on July 16, but it might be Europe in the

00:02:50.400 | summer. And I wonder if some people are thinking, is that really possible? So I know you just got back

00:02:55.360 | from a trip to Europe in the summer. So maybe if you could just give a glimpse at what you made possible

00:03:00.960 | and the family size and kind of how many points it took, because I think we don't need to go down

00:03:05.680 | every nuance of the trip. But I think it would be a good highlight. And there's a blog post that we can

00:03:10.400 | link to in the show notes, but to give people a sense of what is possible.

00:03:14.000 | Yeah. So we had found a way to get cruises for free. And so we have done a lot of cruises in the

00:03:20.240 | last couple of years. And some of those opportunities are drying up a bit. But that was where this all

00:03:24.320 | began. We found a cruise in Europe, departing Rome and ending in Athens that was going to go to a bunch of

00:03:29.520 | places in the Adriatic Sea and Greek islands and whatnot. And we said, you know what, we'd like to

00:03:33.600 | do that. And so we got another family member on board figuring out how to get the free cruise thing.

00:03:38.480 | And then another family member was interested. So in the end, there were eight of us, my family of four,

00:03:42.880 | and then four other adult family members that wanted to take this cruise from Rome to Athens. But we also

00:03:48.000 | wanted to build something more around that. And so what we did, the short story is we flew eight passengers

00:03:54.240 | in business class from New York to Milan. We spent a few days on Lake Como at an incredible hotel there

00:04:00.480 | using points. Then we spent a couple of days in Rome and cruised to Malta and Sicily and Dubrovnik and

00:04:07.360 | Montenegro and a bunch of Greek islands. Finished the trip up in Athens for a few days at the Grand

00:04:12.320 | Hyatt Athens and then flew everybody home in business class. So the whole thing, round trip business class

00:04:17.120 | for eight passengers. We flew business class on Air France and we booked it in different ways,

00:04:21.280 | but altogether it cost us less than 800,000 total miles for all eight people round trips. So that was

00:04:27.440 | pretty good deal there in terms of points. And we each paid, I think around $500 in taxes and fees

00:04:32.880 | round trip. And then of course, hotels were entirely covered with points. So we used Hilton points to

00:04:37.840 | stay at a fantastic small luxury hotel in Lake Como. We bought some points to make another stay. And so

00:04:44.400 | all together, our cash outlay for this for eight passengers was about $5,000 round trip in taxes for

00:04:55.760 | the flights. We paid a few hundred dollars for points for one of the hotels. All the rest of the hotels were

00:05:02.880 | covered entirely with points. And our cruise was about $3,000 because we upgraded to a larger room and added

00:05:09.360 | kids and whatnot. But if it were only two of us, the cruise would have cost us about $1,600. So

00:05:14.320 | it worked out pretty well altogether. We didn't spend all that much money for a pretty fantastic

00:05:19.360 | trip. The retail prices of everything for this trip, just the flights and hotels would have cost more

00:05:24.240 | than $50,000 for eight people. And our total out of pocket on flights and hotels was maybe $6,000

00:05:30.880 | altogether and points, of course. But I mean, that was a fantastic deal. I think everybody was pretty happy

00:05:36.080 | with what we got out of that. Yeah. It sounded like an amazing trip. We had a summer trip planned

00:05:40.240 | to Europe this year. We decided to push it back one year because one of our daughters is still napping

00:05:45.760 | and the naps throw a little bit of a wrench in the whole thing. And we'll get to a little bit of that.

00:05:49.440 | But I wanted people to hear that, look, you did a summer trip to Europe in business class,

00:05:54.800 | not for four, but for eight people went to Lake Como. You did the kind of trip I think a lot of

00:06:00.000 | people listening are like, I would love to take that trip. And for eight people with points is just

00:06:05.680 | incredible. And I want to inspire people there. And so let's jump in. And I think maybe we could

00:06:10.800 | structure this talking a little bit about flights, a little bit about hotels. Maybe we could jump into the

00:06:15.520 | other transport. We can come back to cruises and rental cars. And then we'll actually talk about just

00:06:19.760 | the experience of traveling with kids because I have some of those experiences as well. And then

00:06:24.480 | there's probably a few tips that you and I have picked up that we haven't used yet, but we're excited

00:06:29.200 | to with older kids. So when it comes to flights, you talked about the award tools and the flexibility,

00:06:35.520 | but is there anything else people should be thinking about if they're looking for three to four to even

00:06:39.920 | five award seats crossing an ocean or really just anywhere? Yeah. So there are some airlines and programs

00:06:46.720 | that often release more seats than others. And so it can be tough. There's no way around the fact that

00:06:52.480 | not everybody releases four or five seats in business class for an award ticket. However,

00:06:58.640 | there are some that reliably do. And Air France is one that very frequently, not as much over the last

00:07:04.560 | several months until just recently, but very frequently has a number of seats available in business class.

00:07:09.920 | And I was somewhat surprised to find eight seats, but it's not unheard of. And there's some other

00:07:14.560 | airlines that often do, but this is really where award search tools come in handy. And what you

00:07:19.200 | have to know is how to use partner miles to book various flights. And I say, you have to know that.

00:07:24.080 | And the nice thing with a lot of the different award search tools, and I know you've done an episode on

00:07:28.560 | award search tools before, is that many of them, you can search relatively broadly from a US airport.

00:07:34.320 | Let's say you're based in New York. You could search from New York to Europe and see where there is

00:07:39.120 | availability for four passengers. And the thing is, it can really vary. You might think, okay, well,

00:07:43.600 | if you're going to fly Air France, you have to find eight seats from New York to Paris. And the odd

00:07:48.640 | thing about award availability is that it doesn't always work that way. Sometimes you'll find eight

00:07:54.080 | seats from New York to Milan connecting in Paris, but you won't find eight seats from New York to Paris.

00:07:58.960 | It's not necessarily sensical. And that's why I find the award search tools helpful, because I'll

00:08:03.600 | often kind of scattershot my award searching to various different cities. And then I booked the way

00:08:08.320 | there using Virgin Atlantic miles to fly on Air France because they have a partnership. And Air France

00:08:13.040 | was charging far more. It would cost me, I don't know, eight, 900,000 million miles, something like

00:08:17.520 | that one way if I had booked through Air France. But I found the same seats available through Virgin

00:08:23.040 | Atlantic for 48,500 miles of passenger. And again, I found that thanks to the fact that I'm doing these broad

00:08:29.360 | searches using a variety of different search tools to search different airline sites. And that can kind

00:08:34.560 | of reduce the path and reduce the resistance in terms of finding the space. So that certainly helped.

00:08:39.840 | And in this case, I did want to fly into Milan. The cruise was out of Rome, but I knew I really kind

00:08:45.280 | of wanted to get to Lake Como. We've got this hotel, this small luxury hotel that we love on Lake Como

00:08:50.800 | called Grand Hotel Victoria. It's a fantastic hotel, regularly costs around $2,000 a night if you're paying the

00:08:57.200 | cash rate. And instead we used a combination of Hilton points and free night certificates.

00:09:02.480 | So about 120,000 points a night, I think at the time it might be 140,000 now and free night certificates

00:09:08.080 | that came from credit cards. That was kind of a goal that we had in mind. And so I just started searching

00:09:13.760 | and sure enough, I found a flight. Now, in this case, the other thing that I think I've discussed before

00:09:20.400 | is the need for flexibility. And so there weren't eight seats every day of the week, of course.

00:09:25.360 | And so we had a day that we wanted to be in Rome and I said, okay, well, we want to get to Milan

00:09:30.800 | sometime in the week before that. And it didn't really matter to me exactly which day. So I searched

00:09:35.520 | around until I found the day about a week ahead of time that had availability. And then we kind

00:09:40.240 | of reverse engineered and figured out the details once we found the space for the group size that we had.

00:09:45.200 | And you mentioned you were looking for business, but how would this change? Would it be easier or

00:09:49.600 | harder if someone was saying, you know what, right now we're not at the points balances to be flying

00:09:54.080 | business. We want to do it in economy or premium economy. Is that easier?

00:09:57.120 | It generally will be easier. Yes. Premium economy is kind of a weird space because

00:10:01.920 | some airline programs don't offer the ability to book premium economy awards, but that's been growing

00:10:07.600 | in recent years. So you're seeing it through more and more programs now than there once

00:10:11.440 | was in terms of your options for booking premium economy. Economy class tends to be very easy and

00:10:16.400 | sometimes surprisingly cheap. There have been plenty of flights from New York to London that I've seen

00:10:22.720 | in recent months for 6,000 miles and about $75 per passenger. And you know, of course I'm East Coast

00:10:29.280 | based and not everybody is. I know that. But even if you were based in Cleveland, you might say, well,

00:10:34.000 | I could fly to New York first. And then for 6,000 miles of passenger, I could get to London,

00:10:39.520 | for instance, if you wanted to get to Europe. Although I would say that that 6,000 mile example is an

00:10:44.720 | outlier that generally speaking, you're going to pay probably 20 to 30,000 miles a person in economy

00:10:51.040 | class. So you don't necessarily need a lot more miles in order to fly business. Really,

00:10:56.320 | it costs us about the same number of miles, just a little bit more than what people would pay for

00:11:00.960 | economy. And we had flatbed seats. So I find that to be really appealing. However, if you're traveling

00:11:06.320 | with four or five or six people and you're pretty restricted on dates, economy class is going to be far

00:11:11.520 | easier to find. And premium economy is something that you certainly may want to consider if you can

00:11:16.080 | find it, because it's going to be a little bit more comfortable for sleeping, probably a little

00:11:19.840 | more space. And I think that would be worth a few extra miles.

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00:13:54.800 | One thing that I noticed today, I did an award search, the business class award ticket was actually

00:14:00.960 | cheaper than economy. This doesn't happen often, but I bring it up only to say that the great thing

00:14:06.720 | about award search tools is sometimes you could say, show me all cabins. And I just don't want people to

00:14:10.960 | think, oh, business is expensive. I won't even search for it because sometimes it's actually cheaper. But how do you

00:14:16.960 | think about flying with kids and exposing them to the world of business class? I remember one time we

00:14:23.120 | got on a plane and my daughter said, oh, why don't I have a bed on this seat? And I was like, oh, do I

00:14:27.280 | want my kids doing this? And on the flip side, if you're flying a 12-hour flight, I also want everyone

00:14:32.480 | to get rest. Have you kind of had to process that or have you ever contemplated going the other direction?

00:14:37.360 | Sure. I mean, we definitely, my wife and I talk about this all the time because the magic of miles and

00:14:42.480 | points makes a world possible that's not realistic for people who aren't playing that game because we

00:14:48.080 | fly business class internationally. My kids are seven and four and they've been to each around 30 countries

00:14:53.680 | or so, maybe a few more than that nowadays. And I don't think either of them has flown long haul in

00:14:58.720 | anything other than business class so far. So very spoiled in that regard. And we have talked about,

00:15:04.240 | is that a mistake? And should we change things up? But we really do value arriving rested. And

00:15:10.800 | that makes the experience just far, far, far easier. Everybody gets a bed. They can fall asleep. We're

00:15:17.200 | not all on top of each other. And that's super valuable when you're traveling with kids because

00:15:21.600 | anybody with kids knows that tired kids are not fun for anyone. They're not having a good time. You're not

00:15:26.400 | having a good time. Nobody's having a good time when the kids are really tired and cranky. So I really do

00:15:31.440 | value getting rest on the way there. And because it's become a habit for our kids, our kids know

00:15:35.920 | that when we get on board, if we're flying overnight, then once we take off, we're going to recline those

00:15:41.360 | beds and we're all going to go to sleep. And they're pretty good about it. And I really think that that

00:15:44.960 | additional space is huge, no pun intended, because it gives them some room to move around too. Even if

00:15:50.720 | you're flying on a daytime flight, it gives them some space to move around without bumping into people.

00:15:54.880 | They're not kicking anybody's seat. They have the space for a toy or something to look at on their

00:15:59.840 | tray top table. So I really find it to be worth the extra miles. And that's from the lens of somebody

00:16:06.000 | who does spend time searching for good deals. I mean, like you said, Chris, sometimes business class is

00:16:10.880 | even less expensive than economy, or the difference in price is not nearly the same as the difference in

00:16:15.920 | cash price. Whereas the cash price of a business class ticket might be five or six or 10 times the cost of

00:16:20.960 | an economy class ticket, the mileage price might only be 50% more. And so I find it to be well worth the

00:16:28.160 | investment to make for a better experience for everyone. And yeah, it does run the risk of getting

00:16:33.760 | them used to this sort of unrealistic form of travel perhaps, or just being spoiled in that regard.

00:16:40.240 | But we do fly economy domestically. It's really more so a tool and something that we hope to teach them over

00:16:46.160 | time, how we do it to make it more affordable. And we do frequently discuss that this is a special

00:16:52.000 | experience that we're really lucky to have because we do A and B and we keep it pretty simple for the

00:16:57.120 | kids at this stage. But over time, they'll understand how we're doing it with miles and hopefully they can

00:17:02.240 | do it in the future. And of course, like you said, we value the ability to bring them around and show

00:17:06.320 | them the world. We're fortunate to live in a very small town. We enjoy small town life in many regards.

00:17:12.400 | It's very peaceful and quiet. But we also want our kids exposed to a wider world, a variety of

00:17:17.200 | different people and cultures and languages and food. And this gives us the opportunity to do that.

00:17:23.280 | I think it would be much more difficult if we were flying entirely in economy class. So again,

00:17:27.680 | I just really value that comfort. Yeah, I come back to it's about how your

00:17:33.200 | kids understand the experience. And so our kids are all young enough that they're probably not fully

00:17:37.760 | going to understand the difference between, oh, well, when we do it with miles, it's a better deal.

00:17:42.000 | And we're doing the credit card points thing. But over time, I think that will come through.

00:17:46.080 | We definitely talk about it, even though my kids are younger. But sometimes I think it's hard to even

00:17:50.480 | find those business class seats. And so there's a couple things that I'm curious if you've ever tried.

00:17:54.240 | So one, we are going to Japan next year and notoriously tough route to find fork seats in business class.

00:18:01.600 | And part of the reason that we had the same conclusion you did about wanting to do it in

00:18:05.920 | business was that we just have such a short window, right? When you look at spring break calendar or

00:18:10.960 | winter break calendar, you might have nine days. And if you're going to lose two of them to kind of

00:18:17.040 | adjusting for travel, that's a big chunk of your trip. And so what we ended up having to do was we

00:18:22.560 | couldn't find four seats yet, right? I say yet, because one of the magical things that I've talked

00:18:27.760 | about a lot and you have is you could book something, set some alerts with these tools.

00:18:32.240 | And more often than not, something over the next, I don't know, for us, 300 days might open up.

00:18:37.440 | But we actually ended up booking two seats on two flights. And we're fortunate that in the Bay Area,

00:18:42.880 | there's a SFO to Narita and SFO to Haneda flight on the same day within a couple hours. So we're all

00:18:49.360 | leaving around the same time, we'll get to the airport at the same time. And then, you know, we'll just

00:18:53.280 | have to get to the hotel separately. Have you ever split up the family on a trip? That's part

00:18:58.000 | one. And then I'll get to number two. Yeah. So we've been fortunate that we

00:19:01.280 | haven't had two yet, but I've done exactly what you're talking about a number of times where I've

00:19:05.520 | found two seats available. So I book those, I use an award alert to look for two more.

00:19:10.160 | And I've been lucky that in all of the situations where I've run into that, the other two have

00:19:15.280 | eventually popped up that I've needed. So I haven't yet had to split up. We will do that if we need to.

00:19:20.880 | And that's a technique that's, I think, a good idea and something that a lot of people probably

00:19:24.800 | don't consider. And on popular routes, sometimes the departure times can be very similar. I mentioned

00:19:30.080 | that for this recent summertime trip, we had eight passengers in business class and there was a

00:19:34.720 | schedule change. So we ended up on the outbound having to change to different flights. And so we

00:19:39.680 | did have to split our party on the outbound, even though we were originally all booked on a single

00:19:43.520 | flight. But the very fortunate thing is flying from the East Coast to Europe, much like flying from the

00:19:48.880 | West Coast to Japan. There are a lot of flights. So we were both on Air France flights that took off

00:19:54.080 | an hour apart from the same airport. So we arrived in Paris an hour apart. And so that I think is

00:20:00.320 | certainly an option that a lot of people should be considering and looking for. One of these days,

00:20:04.880 | we're going to plan a vacation where we say we're going to travel this week. And I don't know where,

00:20:09.120 | but three days ahead of time, we're going to just look at what's available and go somewhere.

00:20:13.920 | I haven't done it that way yet, but I would kind of like to one of these days.

00:20:17.520 | It would certainly make for a lot of options. Although I've been looking recently,

00:20:21.280 | the hotel options don't always open up last minute like the flight options. So I would say,

00:20:25.920 | you know, you might be last minute finding something great and then struggling with where you're staying.

00:20:30.160 | The other tactic that a friend of mine told me about and I'd never done, and he's more of a cash

00:20:35.520 | traveler. So this might be good for people who aren't using points and miles, is he was looking at the price

00:20:41.280 | difference for a family of four between economy and business. And like we talked about, sometimes

00:20:45.280 | it can be five, 10 times as much. But the difference between four seats and six seats in economy was an

00:20:51.760 | extra 50%. So much less expensive. So they would often block out, they'd buy an extra seat and some

00:20:58.080 | airlines make it really easy. I noticed United now has a little box that's just this is an extra seat.

00:21:03.040 | So you could get six seats. And then the kids, the parents, everyone has extra space. And I haven't

00:21:08.560 | validated this, but I have heard that because most of the taxes and fees that are associated with flights

00:21:15.200 | are per person, that you can often get some of those award taxes and fees either waived or refunded

00:21:21.120 | if you book with points and miles, extra seats. And so have you ever considered that in a scenario where

00:21:26.960 | maybe you couldn't find business or the economy flights were so cheap that you just wanted a little

00:21:31.120 | extra space? I haven't personally done that. But I think there are quite a few situations where that

00:21:36.480 | could be really appealing where the economy prices are just really good. And so you may want to do

00:21:42.240 | that because you can save a number of miles that way. And or like you said, business class can be

00:21:46.800 | harder to find. I think that actually seems like a brilliant technique. So that's certainly one that's

00:21:51.040 | worth investigating. That's one of our backups always is do that. But I would say always look at the

00:21:56.080 | way the seats are structured. You know, if you're in premium economy, a lot of times there's non-movable

00:22:00.720 | armrests. And the real value of getting three seats is that you flip up the armrest, kids lay down and

00:22:05.520 | go to sleep. And even though I don't think I would ever choose to fly economy over business class to

00:22:11.920 | New Zealand, we've long eyed the sky couch, which is this thing they have for anyone who doesn't know,

00:22:17.360 | where the three economy seats have leg rests that flip up and you basically get like a bed out of three

00:22:22.720 | seats and you can basically buy the third seat. I don't know if you could do it with points and miles,

00:22:27.040 | but if you were flying to New Zealand and you wanted a comfortable experience, I would absolutely

00:22:31.680 | look at that because I know it's way, way cheaper than getting two business class seats.

00:22:35.680 | Oh, for sure. Yeah. And it does look like a decent option. I've eyed that also. So I totally hear you

00:22:40.800 | there. And I wouldn't be surprised if other airlines come up with some sort of a similar product in the

00:22:45.760 | future. Sometimes you can find excellent business class pricing, particularly on flights that don't

00:22:51.760 | originate in the United States. And you might say, well, but I'm flying from the United States,

00:22:56.080 | so that doesn't really help me. But it can, because for instance, we often see great pricing

00:23:02.480 | from Europe to the United States. And so what you might do is book an award ticket to get to Europe

00:23:08.880 | and then book a paid cash ticket from Europe back home, because I'll sometimes see flights under a

00:23:13.600 | thousand dollars one way in business class from Europe to the US. And then maybe you have some credit

00:23:19.040 | card points that you can use for booking airfare and you could potentially get a decent value out of your

00:23:23.760 | points booking those paid tickets and earn miles on them as well. Last summer, we spent some time in

00:23:29.280 | Japan. And for our ride home, we flew Hawaiian airlines from Japan back to the United States

00:23:34.880 | because there was just a great deal on paid tickets. And I was able to use some of my credit card points

00:23:40.240 | to pay for those through the credit card portal and get a better deal or a comparable deal to an award

00:23:46.400 | ticket anyway, and earn a whole bunch of miles on the flight too. So that's a technique that's worth

00:23:51.680 | investigating. Sometimes often prices departing the United States can be relatively high, but for flights

00:23:56.880 | coming back to the United States, it's worth at least taking a look and seeing what the cash prices are.

00:24:01.600 | Yeah. And there's a couple no frills business class airlines like Zip Air, which flies from

00:24:07.120 | the Bay Area to Japan. I was talking to a friend who loves business class travel and I told him,

00:24:11.520 | he's like, that sounds like the worst thing. It's like, you've got to pay for your food. You got to

00:24:14.480 | pay for a pillow. You know, it's like the spirit of business class. But what is free is the lie flat bed.

00:24:21.920 | If like the real priority is a good night's rest for a family going to Japan, honestly, I'm not too

00:24:27.840 | concerned about having to pay for a meal or bring my own pillow or not get the Dom Perry on. A lot of

00:24:34.960 | that stuff is wasted on the kids. Right. Well, a lot of that stuff is wasted on the kids, number one.

00:24:39.040 | And number two, I think that as somebody who has gotten used to award travel, I've done a lot of award

00:24:43.360 | travel now. I've been very fortunate to be able to see a lot of the world. And so I enjoy the fancy

00:24:49.600 | aspects of the business or first class experience. But the priority for me usually is getting rest.

00:24:54.880 | And so I'm not always taking advantage of all those things these days. A lot of times

00:24:59.440 | I just want to go to sleep. And so I'll skip a meal on the flight anyway, because I really value

00:25:05.600 | getting rest on the way there and waking up and already being adjusted to the time zone. That is

00:25:09.520 | such a big hack, I think, for traveling internationally. You know, we just took this trip to Europe and

00:25:14.880 | everybody slept on the way there and there was no jet lag. The kids were good to go when we arrived.

00:25:19.520 | And we were up all day long and they went to sleep. And the next morning we got up at a regular time.

00:25:23.760 | So I really value that part of the experience. So I'd be interested in trying ZipBear someday if it

00:25:28.160 | ever came to work with my plans, because the most important part for me in booking a business class

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00:28:17.040 | technology company, not a bank. Banking services provided through Choice Financial Group, Column NA,

00:28:22.320 | and Evolve Bank and Trust members FDIC. I want to ask about jet lag, but really quick reminder,

00:28:27.680 | when I messaged the Zip Air support team to ask about the cancelability and changeability,

00:28:32.480 | they were completely non-refundable, non-changeable. So keep that in mind if anyone's looking to book a trip

00:28:38.560 | that doesn't have a lot of flexibility, it might be fine. But if you're potentially changing things,

00:28:42.720 | it might be kind of a mess. When it goes to jet lag, are you doing anything in advance? Are you trying to

00:28:47.440 | adjust the timing of sleep for a few days before you leave? Or is it just hop on the plane, sleep,

00:28:52.800 | and wake up? Hop on the plane, sleep, and wake up for the most part. But I say for the most part,

00:28:57.200 | because we do consider flight timing because flights obviously can take off and land all sorts of

00:29:02.240 | different times. And we do try to time things so that our kids are going to be able to fall asleep

00:29:07.680 | when we get on board. That may not matter as much to me if I were traveling solo, if I have to take a flight

00:29:12.400 | that leaves at two o'clock in the morning or get up and leave my hotel at three o'clock to get to the

00:29:16.960 | airport or stay awake until 11:30 at night, that's not necessarily a problem for me as an adult.

00:29:22.080 | But with kids, I don't want to keep my kids up until 11:30. Everybody's going to be overtired if we do

00:29:27.520 | that. So we do try to consider the timing of flights. Now you can only be so picky because I like, again,

00:29:33.280 | as an award traveler, you only have so many options. Not every single flight is going to be available as an

00:29:38.160 | award. But when we have the opportunity anyway, we try to pick flights that take off around seven

00:29:43.920 | o'clock at night. Our kids usually go to bed around 7:30. So if we're flying long-haul international,

00:29:49.440 | that is, we try to pick times right around bedtime so that we know we can get them to sleep relatively

00:29:54.960 | soon after takeoff. So we don't do anything in that regard. The one thing that we do sometimes that

00:30:00.640 | this is not really a jet lag solution, but it is a parenting solution, I guess, or a parent hack,

00:30:06.560 | so to speak. We almost entirely eliminate any screen time for days before we take a trip. And

00:30:12.560 | that's because we know we're going to have a bunch of downtime sitting in an airport and sitting on a

00:30:16.960 | plane and the kids are going to want to watch something. And so we essentially eliminate that

00:30:22.160 | in the days leading up. And then they know, okay, when we get to the lounge or we get on the plane,

00:30:26.800 | you're going to be able to watch or play the tablet or whatever it is for X amount of time before

00:30:31.280 | it's time to go to sleep. And so it's something that they look forward to. They get excited about it.

00:30:36.000 | And it also kind of keeps them occupied. And you know, you're going to have that. So you're not going

00:30:39.600 | to have a bored kid on hand. But like I said, we'll try and time it out so that it's about the time

00:30:44.240 | for them to go to sleep so that hopefully when we arrive, they're ready to hit the ground running.

00:30:48.320 | So a few quick hits that I think we didn't hit on discounts for kids pricing for lap infants. Are

00:30:54.320 | there certain airlines that are better or worse? Yeah, absolutely. So first up Air France has a 25%

00:31:00.160 | discount on long haul flights for kids up to 12 years old, two to 11 years old, perhaps it is. So

00:31:05.440 | our kids are both 25% less than the cost of an adult ticket. And that's awesome because they're adult

00:31:11.680 | tickets from the US to Europe in business class. The cheapest you'll find these days is 60,000 miles,

00:31:16.640 | but that means a kid is paying 45,000 miles one way. And so that's a pretty significant discount.

00:31:22.080 | It adds up for family travel round trip, each kid saving 30,000 miles at 60,000 miles on a round trip.

00:31:28.080 | That's another one way ticket to Europe in business class. So that can really be useful. So again, Air France,

00:31:33.600 | KLM, Flying Blue, if you're booking through them, you'll get a 25% discount. Now, if you're using your,

00:31:38.560 | say Virgin Atlantic miles to book on Air France, then you don't get that discount. It's just

00:31:42.800 | when you're using your Air France miles, but they're one that offers a discount for kids.

00:31:46.960 | SAS Zero Bonuses offers a discount for kids too, although those miles are much harder for most people

00:31:52.000 | to get. Lap infants, there's a wide range. So if you're traveling with a kid under two years old,

00:31:58.000 | you really need to spend a little bit of time. If you want to use miles and points to travel and you're

00:32:03.280 | traveling with a lap infant, you want to spend a little bit of time learning the ins and outs of this.

00:32:07.760 | Because a lot of airlines will charge you 10% of the cash revenue fare for a lap infant. And cash

00:32:14.880 | fares can be really expensive sometimes. And some airlines, like American Airlines specifically,

00:32:20.160 | I don't know where they get their cash fares from because they're not the cash fares I see online.

00:32:25.280 | The lap infant is always way more expensive if I'm booking it through American Airlines than whatever

00:32:29.920 | it is I expect. So, I mean, there are times where a lap infant in a business or first-class seat

00:32:35.040 | might cost you $1,000 or $1,500 or $2,000 for a lap infant, which is wildly crazy.

00:32:42.240 | Because instead, you want to pick programs that offer either a lap infant for 10% of the mileage

00:32:48.080 | price of an adult, because then that's going to be relatively reasonable. Or there are some programs

00:32:53.600 | that offer just a flat rate. So for instance, Air Canada Aeroplan, it's 2500 miles or $25 Canadian dollars,

00:33:00.080 | which is less than US dollars for a lap infant on an award ticket. And so it doesn't matter if you're in

00:33:05.120 | business class or you're in first class or how long it is, it's gonna be 2500 miles or $25 Canadian dollars.

00:33:10.720 | And so that's a great deal. Virgin Atlantic is also excellent about lap infant pricing. It varies by cabin.

00:33:17.360 | I want to say it's 2500 economy, 5,000 business, 7,500 first, if I remember correctly with Virgin Atlantic.

00:33:24.320 | So those are my favorite programs, Virgin Atlantic and Air Canada Aeroplan for lap infants.

00:33:29.600 | But British Airways Avios offers 10% of the adult mileage price. And there are some other airline

00:33:34.560 | programs that do that. And again, like I said, Air France, KLM Flying Blue for 25% off the adult price

00:33:39.440 | for a child ticket is a good deal.

00:33:41.520 | I think you wrote a post on this, or at least there's one on the blog. So I'll link to that.

00:33:45.520 | We had this experience going to Europe. And as much as this might seem obvious, I'll say it because

00:33:49.840 | the thought crossed my mind. I was like, oh, could we book our whole family on Air France and then maybe

00:33:55.440 | book the kid through some other program? And the answer is no, like the lap infant has to be booked.

00:34:00.160 | But you could split off one parent in a case where there's just an amazing deal, but it's with a carrier that

00:34:06.240 | has really, really egregious lap infant pricing. We've had one where I think it was like $50,000 a

00:34:11.200 | person, but the lap infant was going to be $1,000. And there was another program that was like $70,000.

00:34:16.800 | And we're like, oh, well, we'll just book one adult with a lap infant here and the other three here.

00:34:20.960 | Now, I don't love to do that, right? I prefer to have everyone on the same record,

00:34:24.400 | on the same everything in case something goes wrong or there's a schedule change. But in scenarios

00:34:29.120 | where that could make sense, it is possible. Are there any other airlines that for whatever reason,

00:34:34.720 | cash or points that you like for traveling for families more than others?

00:34:39.360 | Oh, that's a great question. Okay. Hold on two seconds before I answer that. I've done the same

00:34:43.440 | thing that you've done, split off a parent for a better lap infant price. So definitely done that.

00:34:47.680 | One other thing on the lap infant thing, before I get to that second question, is that generally

00:34:52.960 | speaking, the program that you use to book the ticket is the program you're going to have to deal with

00:34:58.720 | in order to add a lap infant. And so what you're mentioning there is if you use your

00:35:03.200 | Virgin Atlantic miles to book a flight on Air France and you want to add a lap infant later on,

00:35:09.120 | you've got to do that through Virgin Atlantic, generally speaking, you won't be able to call

00:35:13.680 | Air France and do that. So the rules for the program through which you're booking your ticket

00:35:17.840 | are the ones that apply, which is important. Like for instance, United charges 10% of the adult cash

00:35:23.360 | fare to add a lap infant. But if you book your ticket on United through Air Canada Aeroplane,

00:35:27.440 | you'll pay 2500 miles to add the lap infant because you booked through Air Canada Aeroplane.

00:35:31.840 | Now that's generally true. But I've had a few experiences where I have been able to contact the

00:35:37.600 | operating carrier and add the lap infant based on their rules. So for instance, I booked Cathay Pacific

00:35:43.520 | through American Airlines. And this is one of those examples where American was looking to charge me like

00:35:48.240 | $1,000 for a lap infant that I expected to be about $200 based on the fares I was looking at. And they

00:35:54.000 | were adamant that it was going to cost me $1,000. So I said, you know what, I'm just going to try to

00:35:58.240 | call Cathay Pacific and see, even though I booked it with my American Airlines miles, will they sell me a

00:36:03.040 | lap infant ticket? And sure enough, they did. And it was about the $200 I expected. Now, I didn't expect

00:36:07.840 | it would work, but it was worth a shot. So it might always be worth asking, even when you think something

00:36:12.800 | won't work or trying more than once. There was one time when I called to add a lap infant or to find

00:36:18.080 | out the price for a lap infant on a flight. And I called the airline six different times, and I got

00:36:23.600 | six different answers as to how much the lap infant ticket would cost, which blew my mind. So oftentimes,

00:36:30.160 | representatives aren't particularly attuned to the rules. So it really helps if you do some research

00:36:34.240 | before you get on the phone to know what you should expect. Now, back to your question, which was,

00:36:39.360 | are there any airlines that I prefer for flying with kids from the experience perspective?

00:36:43.680 | And I've got to say that Asian airlines in general are fantastic with kids. Many world airlines outside

00:36:50.960 | of the United States will have some sort of a little surprise for kids. So it's very common that we'll fly

00:36:56.800 | an international business class award, and they'll bring around some sort of little bag with some toys

00:37:01.760 | or games, things for the kids to do on the plane. That's relatively common. It's very common with Asian

00:37:07.200 | carriers that you'll get something like that. And the service tends to be fantastic. We find that

00:37:12.160 | many of the flight attendants are often very good at interacting with the kids. So we've had very good

00:37:17.040 | experiences with Singapore airlines, with ANA. Those are probably my two favorites out of the various

00:37:22.800 | carriers that we have flown with the kids. But European carriers as well often, again, have some little

00:37:28.080 | surprise, whether it's a deck of cards or a little plush toy for kids flying on the plane with you.

00:37:33.280 | Turkish Airlines had some cute little things in a bag. Actually, they had a bag that was designed to

00:37:38.320 | look like a Turkish Airlines plane that they gave each kid. And inside, there were some airport-themed

00:37:43.760 | toys, like somebody who directs the planes into the place where they park. And then, of course,

00:37:48.240 | the little Turkish Airlines plane and things like that. So we do often find that on non-US-based

00:37:53.680 | carriers. They do little things like that. I think the airlines that stick out to me, though,

00:37:57.840 | like I said, Singapore, ANA. ANA's service has been fantastic. Cathay Pacific, also excellent.

00:38:03.040 | And what I have also found, oftentimes, at least with carriers based in Asia, if there's an empty

00:38:08.000 | seat on the plane, if you have a lap infant, oftentimes they'll let you use that extra empty

00:38:12.320 | seat. And that's come in huge for us a few times. We've had a couple of times where we've had a child

00:38:17.120 | able to sleep for hours in their own seat, even though they were booked as a lap infant. So they tend

00:38:21.920 | to be pretty flexible in terms of trying to accommodate you and make things a little bit

00:38:25.120 | easier. And we've really appreciated that. We forgot to mention that many aircrafts

00:38:29.600 | have an area with a bassinet also. So if your child is small enough, and I only clarify this because

00:38:35.120 | lap infant and fits in bassinet are not the same thing. And so we did this and there was some website

00:38:42.080 | I found where people actually reported on the different measurements of the different bassinets.

00:38:45.680 | And we realized that we had booked one, but our child was clearly not going to fit. She was under two,

00:38:50.720 | but way too large for the bassinet. But that is something to keep in mind is you can reach out

00:38:55.360 | to the airline and say, Hey, we're traveling with an infant. Can you help us move to a seat that has

00:38:59.040 | a bassinet? And sometimes they'll be really great about it. Sometimes if that seats booked,

00:39:03.840 | you're kind of out of luck, but the bassinets are a great option, especially if you have your kid

00:39:08.160 | four or five months to one. One other thing that I'm guessing you're doing as well, if we're paying for

00:39:12.080 | cash tickets, both our kids have frequent flyer accounts with every airline we're flying or some

00:39:17.120 | alliance partner. And so they're earning United miles, Southwest miles, American miles, Delta miles,

00:39:22.640 | whatever kind of carrier. I love airlines that have some way to pull those miles.

00:39:27.600 | Yeah. So the ability to pull miles can be very, very useful. There are a few airlines that make

00:39:32.240 | that really easy. Air Canada Aeroplan has family pooling. And so we've got miles pooled there. We've

00:39:38.400 | had our kids earning miles with Alaska Airlines mileage plan. They don't offer pooling through Alaska

00:39:44.240 | mileage plan right now, but they're merging with Hawaiian airlines and Hawaiian has long offered an

00:39:50.000 | opportunity for that. And I've gathered from airline executives that they're going to offer

00:39:55.360 | some sort of ability to pool in the future. So hopefully that'll be the case. But yeah,

00:39:59.680 | I'm always making sure to get a frequent flyer account number on those paid tickets. Now,

00:40:05.760 | I've got to mention that it's easier to create a frequent flyer account for a child with some airlines

00:40:11.120 | than it is with others. And that's not to say that it's impossible. It can be done with almost every

00:40:16.160 | airline, but some airlines require that you call for a kid under 13 years old to set up an account. So

00:40:21.600 | times when I've been scrambling on my way to the airport to set up a frequent flyer account to make

00:40:25.520 | sure everyone can earn miles. Sometimes I've had to switch it up and choose a different one, but you

00:40:29.840 | mentioned alliances. And that is something that I think people need to be aware of that if you're flying

00:40:35.040 | a star Alliance carrier, for instance, Air Canada Aeroplan makes it really easy to pull miles. And

00:40:40.080 | maybe they're not going to give you the highest rate of return on every single flight that you take,

00:40:44.640 | but the ease of pulling them with your kids could make that a great choice to at least put your kids

00:40:49.840 | Air Canada Aeroplan numbers on whatever star Alliance flight it is. Even if you want to use a different

00:40:54.720 | frequent flyer number frequent flyer program for yourself, then you may choose to pick the one where

00:41:00.080 | kids can pull easily for the kids specifically. And another thing along those lines is that I always put

00:41:06.880 | the frequent flyer numbers on flights, even when we're flying award tickets and you don't generally earn

00:41:12.480 | miles when you're flying an award ticket. But I always make sure to put a frequent flyer number

00:41:16.320 | on there because you never know what might happen. Just recently, we flew Air France and it was an

00:41:20.640 | award ticket booked through Virgin Atlantic and there was a schedule change. They had to rebook us and

00:41:25.360 | it just so happened they rebooked us into a revenue fare class. Everybody earned miles on the flight.

00:41:29.760 | Shouldn't have by the rules, but that's just the way it worked out. And I always make sure to have

00:41:34.000 | frequent flyer accounts on my bookings just in case, because sometimes you get lucky.

00:41:37.840 | Yeah, that's a great tip. Southwest is another one that's not obviously easy to pull,

00:41:42.640 | but if you have a Southwest credit card, they reimburse you the fees to transfer miles. And so

00:41:47.520 | Southwest for domestic travel is a great option. I guess that's one thing we didn't talk about was

00:41:52.560 | these companion fares and passes for us having a Southwest companion pass. Right now we have one,

00:41:58.800 | which means that it's buy three, get one free. But I know a lot of people really optimize every two years,

00:42:04.960 | finding a way to get companion pass, whether through signup bonus or spend or travel or a mix

00:42:10.240 | of all of them. And then they're basically buy two, get two free on all their domestic and international

00:42:16.320 | travel, but not over the ocean, at least yet. Maybe with this Iceland air partnership, who knows,

00:42:21.040 | but do you guys take advantage of companion passes, fares, tickets?

00:42:24.880 | Yes. So we have had a Southwest companion pass in our household for more than a decade already.

00:42:30.640 | So that's certainly our go to for domestic travel because of that. And like you said,

00:42:36.160 | we have long been in that situation now of three paid tickets and one free. And hopefully in the new

00:42:42.080 | year, we will rectify that and end up with two companion passes because the savings do add up

00:42:46.560 | in the Southwest companion passes, particularly easy to use. And even though Southwest has hit some bad

00:42:51.920 | press as of late because of some really negative changes that they've made overall, those who have

00:42:56.640 | Southwest credit cards have really made out pretty well and almost gotten a better experience in the

00:43:01.760 | long run, I think, or will in the long run than they did before. So for people that use those credit

00:43:07.600 | cards to earn the companion pass, I think actually the experience of flying Southwest is going to be

00:43:12.320 | as good, if not better. We'll still get free check bags for each of us and we'll get the ability to

00:43:17.600 | select seats. And so it'll really be, I think, a good experience overall for us, even with Southwest's

00:43:24.640 | quote unquote negative changes. So yeah, that's certainly our airline of choice domestically for

00:43:30.320 | the companion ticket. We have used companion tickets from some other airlines before, but none nearly as

00:43:36.320 | often because of course the Southwest companion pass is unlimited. Alaska offers a companion certificate for

00:43:41.840 | their card holders. If you're a newer card holder, you have to spend $6,000 a year in order to earn the

00:43:46.960 | companion certificate. So that one is perhaps a little bit more difficult. And at least as of now,

00:43:53.520 | it's mostly just valid on Alaska, Alaska and Hawaiian flights. So that one's not my favorite necessarily.

00:43:59.440 | We have also earned companion certificates through American airlines because a number of their credit cards

00:44:04.720 | offer a companion certificate after a certain amount of spend and the type of companion certificate depends

00:44:10.880 | on which credit card you're using. However, the American airlines companion certificates are a bit

00:44:15.520 | more restrictive, so they're not my favorites. I've written a post about it and we did actually save a lot

00:44:20.960 | of money using our companion certificates this year because we ended up in a situation where flights were

00:44:26.320 | really expensive and it was a, we had to be there kind of an event and we had a very tight schedule.

00:44:32.240 | So American was the best option and we were about to spend $3,600 on flights and instead we spent $1,600

00:44:40.080 | on the flights for the six passengers that we needed in that case. So those companion certificates saved

00:44:44.720 | us a lot of money in one go. And I did write a post about that so I can make sure you guys have a link to

00:44:49.280 | that as well. But Southwest is by far my favorite of the domestic companion certificate programs.

00:44:54.160 | We have a Delta one and it just seems like it's a hassle to use. All of them, it's like you book it,

00:45:00.560 | what happens if I cancel it? What happens if I change it? And Southwest, it's so easy. I want to

00:45:04.720 | make sure we talk about hotels. So I'm going to do some quick hits. Do you carry on bags or check bags?

00:45:09.200 | If it were me, we would be carry on only just for convenience, for getting in and out of the airport

00:45:15.520 | quickly without having to stand in any extra lines. But my wife will never be team carry on. And I've

00:45:20.880 | accepted that. I love her. And so I, I know I'm going to have to be team checked bag all the time.

00:45:26.800 | But the thing is people are, I find often a little extra traumatic about checking bags. We've traveled

00:45:31.920 | all over the world. I couldn't even tell you how many flights my first son, by the time he was two,

00:45:36.400 | had been on more than a hundred flights. And so he's seven now. And we flew a lot before we had kids too.

00:45:41.920 | And I've only once ever had a bag lost in all of that time. So by and large, we find that experience

00:45:48.000 | to be efficient and outside of the United States tends to be relatively quick in the US, for whatever

00:45:53.120 | reason, always takes forever to get checked bags. But when we fly to Europe or Asia, the check bags are

00:45:57.920 | often there when we get to baggage claim. So it really doesn't add that much time to the journey.

00:46:03.120 | I would prefer to be carry on only if we could, but it's never going to happen.

00:46:06.400 | We managed to do the first carry on only trip recently, but it was a three day trip

00:46:11.840 | to Mexico where you don't need a lot of stuff.

00:46:13.760 | So, oh, it doesn't matter. We took a two day trip to Milwaukee and we still had to check bags, Chris.

00:46:18.240 | But the one thing that's made it a little easy is we still have car seat age kids.

00:46:23.920 | So we've adopted the ride safer travel vests, which are basically for anyone that doesn't know,

00:46:29.120 | they look like harnesses that reroute the seatbelts. But I can usually get away with, I have a backpack

00:46:34.480 | and I can fit everything for me plus two quote unquote car seats in it. And so I can carry all

00:46:40.960 | the car seats and all my stuff on my back because these things collapse so small that it's just really

00:46:47.280 | easy. And if you're going out to dinner, it's kind of a pain to go to show up at a restaurant with two

00:46:52.160 | car seats or something. So this makes it really easy if you plan on taking public transit like

00:46:57.520 | Ubers and Lyfts and that kind of stuff. Yeah. We also have inflatable booster seats now. Our kids

00:47:01.680 | are maybe a little bit older than yours. And so we use these inflatable booster seats that we've been

00:47:06.400 | happy with that again, collapse down really small. I think the thing for any new parents out there to

00:47:10.720 | know is that smaller is better in general. Whatever types of gear you think you're going to need,

00:47:15.760 | find the most collapsible small version of it because whether you're traveling carry-on only

00:47:20.480 | or you're checking bags, you're going to run out of space. So you want those compact forms of baby care.

00:47:25.440 | And don't forget that everywhere in the world has children. And so sometimes I think when we first

00:47:30.960 | travel, we were like, well, we've got to make sure we have enough wipes or if they get sick,

00:47:34.720 | we've got to have the children's pain relief and that kind of stuff. And we were in France and we were

00:47:39.040 | like every day we walked by a store and we'd pick up some stuff and we'd be like, oh, there's a whole

00:47:43.280 | kids section here. You know, it seems so obvious in hindsight, but in the moment we were traveling as

00:47:48.800 | if we would never have access to diapers or wipes or things you need for kids. And now it's like most

00:47:54.880 | of the things bring what you don't want to have to leave for. Look, if you're going to a resort in the

00:47:58.880 | Maldives, yeah, you might want to bring some stuff because you're not going to find a car for, you know,

00:48:03.760 | down the street. But if you're going to a major city in Europe or Asia, a lot of the stuff you might need

00:48:09.520 | is probably pretty easy to get if you need more of it. And if you run into problems with kids,

00:48:13.840 | it's often not so difficult to solve. For instance, we arrived in France a couple of years ago and one

00:48:19.200 | of our sons immediately broke out in this crazy rash all over the place. Never seen anything like it

00:48:23.680 | before. Didn't know what was wrong. So we went to a pharmacy and the pharmacist kind of recognized what

00:48:29.440 | they thought we were going to need, whatever. I can't even remember what it was to tell you the truth,

00:48:32.880 | but we needed a prescription for it. And so they helped sign us up for an app to make a virtual

00:48:38.000 | visit appointment with a pediatrician in France who spoke plenty of English. She took a look at it,

00:48:43.120 | called in a prescription. We were able to get the medicine and everything was all set. It was really

00:48:47.120 | easy. Within a couple of hours, problem was solved. So a problem like that is solvable within a couple of

00:48:52.800 | hours with some technology these days. So those smaller things, like you said, wipes and kids'

00:48:57.360 | Tylenol or whatever else are typically really simple problems to solve in most places.

00:49:02.000 | This episode is brought to you by Daffy. I've talked before about how using a donor-advised fund

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00:50:27.120 | those who support us. Last one on flights. Delays are always my fear,

00:50:32.000 | right? And we're fortunate to live in a city with lots of direct flights. And so if we do have delays,

00:50:37.200 | it's not long layovers in kind of other places overnight. But you said your son's been on 100

00:50:41.920 | flights early. So how do you manage delays and irregular operations and whatnot with kids that might

00:50:48.880 | help others? The first thing I think to keep in mind is that everybody plans for problems that often

00:50:55.120 | don't happen. And so I always remind people that they call them irregular operations because they

00:50:59.520 | happen irregularly. It's not something that's going to happen all the time. And in fact, truth be told,

00:51:05.200 | we have been really fortunate. We've had very few major delays over the years. And I think maybe only

00:51:11.120 | once ever had a flight twice, maybe it was totally canceled and maybe three or four times, who knows.

00:51:15.840 | But generally speaking, those things don't happen as often as they feel like they do, because you only hear

00:51:21.440 | the stories from people who say, oh, man, this happened and that happened and the other thing

00:51:25.520 | happened. So I think the first thing is to not overly concern yourself with problems happening.

00:51:30.880 | I don't worry about that too much because those things are out of my control. When they do happen,

00:51:35.040 | though, it's handy to have a stash of miles and points to cover rebooking something if you need to.

00:51:40.320 | And so I take comfort in the fact that I know that we've stocked up plenty of miles and points,

00:51:45.520 | that if our flight gets canceled and we need to get somewhere right away, I have enough miles and

00:51:50.560 | points to probably fix that problem in most situations. It also helps if you have some elite

00:51:56.320 | status, whether it's with an airline or a hotel and then asking for what it is you need and asking for

00:52:01.360 | what it is you want. And I often find that the biggest mistake people make when they have some sort

00:52:06.000 | of a problem is not knowing what it is that they want. And so if you figure out that your flight is

00:52:11.120 | canceled and you need a new flight and you don't want that flight that leaves at 11:30 at night,

00:52:16.000 | you need to know, okay, well, when is the flight that you want to ask for? And so being prepared

00:52:20.560 | to do a little bit of research on your own and figure out what it is you want, I think is particularly

00:52:24.320 | helpful. And then having some small things on hand to keep the kids occupied. I mentioned we cut out

00:52:29.120 | screen time in the days before a flight, but we also usually have something that's new, like some little

00:52:34.160 | small toy packed away in our bag that is new. So that'll be exciting and keep the kids entertained for a bit.

00:52:39.440 | Something I've seen other parents do that we haven't actually used yet. We bought them and

00:52:42.800 | haven't actually had to pull them out yet. We're saving them for the day we get delayed are these

00:52:46.480 | silliest thing ever window clings. They're like little window cling sticker things that we saw

00:52:51.600 | another family with one day when we were delayed, their kid was at the window, just pulling these

00:52:55.680 | stickers off and putting them on the window and pulling them off and putting them on the window.

00:52:58.400 | And you'd be surprised how long that will entertain a small child. And it fits in a backpack,

00:53:02.400 | it fits in the laptop sleeve of my backpack. So I've got those window cling stickers there for the day when we

00:53:07.360 | have kids that are super bored and we're waiting to board a flight. So I haven't had to pull it out

00:53:11.360 | yet, thankfully. But having something like that on hand, I think can really turn things around pretty

00:53:16.400 | quickly. I know we've both done plenty of episodes on lounge access, but I think having lounge access with

00:53:23.120 | some number of guests, which is a common priority pass benefit, getting less common for the kind of

00:53:29.600 | lounges that are native to airlines and credit card programs, unless you spend, it seems like 75,000 is

00:53:35.440 | the magic number now. But I think that's another one that's been really helpful for us is just, oh,

00:53:39.600 | we've got two hours. Most airports have some place that you can go. Even if it's a four hour delay,

00:53:45.760 | you could walk to another terminal or something and just have a place to get snacks and occasionally a

00:53:50.960 | kid's play area, but not that often. I think that's absolutely true. I mean,

00:53:55.040 | we are almost always in the lounge. In fact, my four year old, every time we go to any airport,

00:54:00.160 | asks if there's a lounge. And so that is huge for families because you've got access to food and juice

00:54:06.480 | and drinks or whatever, whatever it is you're going to need for your kids is generally there. And

00:54:10.240 | oftentimes they do have children's play areas. So like you said, having a credit card that gives

00:54:14.720 | some sort of access for that is great. And we have one that offers unlimited guests. And so we're able to

00:54:20.800 | bring in as many guests as we need. And that can be really useful. In fact, just recently,

00:54:24.960 | we flew out of JFK for this trip that you mentioned at the beginning and JFK terminal one doesn't have

00:54:29.840 | clear. There's no way to cut the security line when you head in, except that there is this VIP one lounge

00:54:36.080 | that's part of priority pass that's on land side. It's before the security checkpoint and it isn't

00:54:42.000 | necessarily useful for the lounge itself. However, they have a private entrance to security and you skip the

00:54:47.600 | entire line and get right to the front of airport security. So we had eight people. And so I guested

00:54:52.880 | everybody in with me because I have a credit card that offers unlimited guests on that. And so we cut

00:54:57.600 | the whole security line. And that's the kind of hack that does really help improve the airport experience

00:55:02.960 | because skipping that line, that makes the whole thing way easier. One thing I think some people I've

00:55:07.600 | seen actually overlooked because they didn't realize it. So if you have kids, they can go through your clear,

00:55:13.200 | they can go through your pre, but they need their own global entry. And so I've seen a couple of

00:55:18.000 | parents walk through and usually they're nice about not leave and go wait through this long line, but

00:55:23.120 | they definitely let you know that it's not allowed. So getting global entry for your kids is something

00:55:27.760 | that we did. I'm guessing you probably did early on or maybe not, maybe not, but it's made coming back to

00:55:33.360 | the States quick. I haven't, but I'll mention two other things about that. Why is just the

00:55:37.520 | convenience factor because I don't live in a major city where it's easy to go do the interview process.

00:55:41.920 | But part of the reason I haven't is two pronged. First of all, most of the rest of the world is far

00:55:46.960 | more family friendly than the United States. So if you haven't traveled internationally with your kids,

00:55:51.360 | you'll be surprised that almost every international airport museum, whatever it is, you're going to go visit

00:55:57.600 | has a separate line for families. There's almost always a fast track for people traveling with kids in a stroller.

00:56:02.880 | And so we often cut to the front of lines. And so I don't have to worry about that going abroad. And of course,

00:56:08.080 | global entry is not going to help you with that either going abroad. It's when you come back to the United States,

00:56:12.320 | that global entry is useful. Instead, I've been using mobile passport for years. The mobile passport app is an app offered in the United States.

00:56:19.360 | And you just fill out the customs form in the app, essentially take a picture of everybody.

00:56:24.480 | And then there's usually a separate line for mobile passport entry when you get back to the U.S.

00:56:30.000 | And it isn't quite as fast as global entry. But I rarely have more than five people in front of me at customs coming back into the U.S.

00:56:37.200 | and the mobile passport line because that's been so useful. I haven't felt a need to go out and get global entry.

00:56:43.120 | But if I did, I would agree with Chris. I would certainly absolutely get it for the kids.

00:56:46.640 | And I will mention the mobile passport on our recent reentry to the United States didn't help us,

00:56:51.200 | because even though the app let us do the mobile entry information when we got to the customs area, they said they had no line for mobile passport that day.

00:56:59.120 | And we had to stand in line with everybody else. So that was certainly one day recently where I wished I had global entry.

00:57:03.760 | Well, I know you know this, Nick, but you can also do your interview on arrival the next time you leave the country.

00:57:09.280 | You could do it on arrival and you'll be OK. But we went on flights way longer than I thought.

00:57:13.520 | So let's see how we can get through hotels. And for the most part, hotels don't present the same

00:57:18.880 | challenges as flights and that you don't necessarily need to book one room per person.

00:57:23.200 | However, there are so many places where I have found you can't get a room for four people.

00:57:29.280 | In the U.S., it's this assumption that every hotel room holds four people.

00:57:32.960 | If you search in Europe and you search for a hotel and you don't add the kids to the search,

00:57:37.840 | you see lots of rooms and then you go add two kids. And now you're like, wait, why is every hotel

00:57:42.320 | have no more rooms? How are you doing this? So there's a few things on this topic that are

00:57:47.760 | important. Number one, you're right. Europe in particular, and also somewhat Asia, is very well

00:57:53.440 | known to be much more difficult for a family of four. Many rooms only accommodate three people. And in those

00:57:59.040 | cases, I'll come back to that in a second. However, there's a couple of other things you need to know

00:58:03.680 | about searching with kids. And one of them is that sometimes, even though if you do the search

00:58:09.360 | online for two adults and two kids, it'll say that rooms don't accommodate the four people. I think

00:58:14.080 | there's a lot of problems with how systems are coded because I have often been able to book for two and

00:58:18.960 | then reach out to the hotel and mention that we're bringing the kids and want to add them to the room.

00:58:23.280 | And sometimes there's been a fee to do that. And sometimes there's not been a fee. And in fact,

00:58:27.520 | I was going to make a booking with two adults and two kids. And online, it was showing a fee

00:58:31.280 | to add the two kids. And I was like, I don't really want to pay an extra fee. The kids were

00:58:35.040 | really young. So I did the two adults. And then I just called the hotel about adding the kids.

00:58:38.960 | And when I arrived and I was speaking with someone at the check-in desk, they said,

00:58:42.320 | oh yeah, we don't get that at all. That's the hotel chain just adds that fee online. And that

00:58:47.600 | money goes directly to the hotel chain, not the individual property. So we don't have a fee like that.

00:58:52.480 | That's just the chain collecting extra money. And so I was glad that in that case,

00:58:57.600 | I hadn't put the two extra kids in on the booking. Now, I wouldn't recommend just arriving without

00:59:02.480 | checking that out in advance to make sure that there's not going to be a fee for the kids or that

00:59:06.400 | you can accommodate four people. Because in some places, it's a matter of fire code where they just

00:59:10.960 | won't allow for occupancy of four people in the room. But in other places, like I said, the search

00:59:16.240 | tool might show an additional fee that the property itself doesn't actually charge. So it's worth

00:59:21.280 | reaching out to the hotel. Also, sometimes you might want to ask about an upgrade to a room that

00:59:25.840 | does accommodate four, because sometimes there'll be an upgrade available and sometimes

00:59:29.440 | there'll be a fee associated with that. But I've also had times where I've said,

00:59:32.800 | hey, I booked this room for two, but we actually have four. What would the cost be to upgrade to room

00:59:38.480 | X that accommodates four people? And more than once before I've had them come back with,

00:59:43.840 | we'll just give you that upgrade for free. We can move you into that room and that's no problem.

00:59:48.880 | So it's again, worth reaching out to ask. Now that's one technique. Second technique is that

00:59:54.320 | we sometimes have to book a second room. There's sometimes no way around that. Although with some

00:59:59.520 | programs, there's ways to do that at a discount. Hyatt offers what they call the family rate. Not all

01:00:04.240 | hotels participate, but some do. And those that do allow you to add a second room for half off 50% off the

01:00:10.960 | cash rate. And you can even book that first room with points and get half off the cash rate for the

01:00:15.840 | second room at hotels that participate in that. So I always reach out and ask if I'm in a situation where

01:00:20.960 | I would need the second room. Another technique with Hyatt specifically is that sometimes the standard room

01:00:27.280 | won't accommodate four people, but a suite might. And Hyatt is a program that offers the opportunity

01:00:32.880 | to earn suite upgrades after certain numbers of elite nights that you can either earn by staying at the

01:00:37.520 | hotel or spending on their credit card, or somebody who has one could gift one to you. So maybe you have

01:00:42.720 | a family member or a friend who travels a lot and earn some suite upgrades. They could give you one of

01:00:46.880 | those. They could transfer one to you. And so just recently for this trip in Greece, we booked a room

01:00:52.080 | that only accommodated up to three people, but I have a family of four. Then I applied a Hyatt suite

01:00:57.120 | upgrade to upgrade to a one bedroom suite. And the one bedroom suite does accommodate four people.

01:01:02.160 | So then I just reached out via Hyatt chat on their app and said, I'd like to add two kids to the

01:01:06.880 | reservation. And that was no problem. And then some programs offer the ability to book multiple

01:01:11.760 | different room types with points. So for instance, Choice Privileges, which in the US is mostly known for

01:01:16.400 | like comfort in and quality in abroad, though, they have some pretty nice ascend collection

01:01:20.720 | properties in parts of Europe. And at some of their properties, the cost of an award room is the same,

01:01:26.720 | whether you're booking a room that accommodates two people or a larger room that accommodates more

01:01:30.480 | people. We just had this in Rome where we booked a couple of rooms that accommodated three people each.

01:01:35.040 | And those rooms were more expensive at cash rates, but at points rates, they were the same price

01:01:40.800 | as a room that only accommodated two people. So sometimes it's worth looking at that as well. Certain

01:01:45.440 | programs do offer suites on points for sometimes reasonable prices. Marriott sometimes has reasonable

01:01:52.000 | upgrade instruments that you can use to potentially upgrade to a suite. We find suites really useful

01:01:56.400 | traveling with kids because the extra space is good for a lot of reasons, not only for sleeping at night,

01:02:00.640 | but also just to have some room to run around in the room where we're not bumping into each other. So

01:02:04.960 | those are some of the things that we've done. Of course, you could also try vacation rentals, Airbnb,

01:02:08.880 | things of that sort to accommodate multiple people. But also keep in mind that some of the major chains

01:02:13.600 | offer vacation rentals. Marriott offers homes and villas, but they also have vacation club properties.

01:02:18.320 | There's one near Disneyland Paris and it's a Marriott vacation club property. Sometimes cash rates are

01:02:24.400 | really reasonable. We stayed there a couple of years ago and it's all condos. It's all two level condos that

01:02:29.600 | easily accommodated a family. A couple of things. One, you mentioned all the suite upgrades on Hyatt,

01:02:34.640 | but you can also oftentimes just book them with points and you can book it either way. So I was

01:02:39.360 | in San Diego and a regular room was $300 a night. And then to convert a regular guest room to the

01:02:46.880 | hospitality suite was 9,000 extra points per night. And so sometimes you can book the room with points.

01:02:53.520 | Sometimes you can pay cash and upgrade. They have a lot of ways to guarantee a suite, which I find that

01:02:59.520 | almost every other hotel chain either doesn't allow or charges an extremely high amount of points or dollars

01:03:06.480 | to guarantee. And then I think Hilton is one where you can figure out connecting rooms in advance.

01:03:12.320 | I haven't actually done it, but I feel like they market at least that they allow you to do it.

01:03:16.880 | I don't know if you have experience.

01:03:18.240 | I haven't yet found a situation where it worked well, but they do market it as something. And so

01:03:23.360 | maybe you'll be more successful than I have been with it. It's worth taking a look at. But your point

01:03:27.760 | about Hyatt suites is a great one. We have a post about the best ways or the various ways to book

01:03:32.880 | suites with Hyatt, because as you mentioned, Chris, you know, there are a number of different ways to do

01:03:37.440 | it and which one is best will vary based on the situation. And then of course, which one is best for you

01:03:42.320 | will vary based on your points balance and what you have available to you. But Hyatt is clearly far

01:03:47.760 | and away the best for booking suites. So that one is definitely one to look at and learn about. Hilton

01:03:53.280 | also will let you book any room type with points. And so you could use points to book an upgraded room,

01:03:58.320 | usually a very poor value though. So that's not usually going to be your best way to do it with

01:04:02.880 | Hilton looking for connecting rooms probably makes a lot more sense than using your points to book a larger

01:04:07.920 | room. I know this is pretty common for people who use their points to book rooms in Bora Bora.

01:04:13.200 | You could book a standard room, email the hotel and ask the cash price to upgrade. And I know that the

01:04:19.440 | cash price or the points price for like an overwater bungalow is probably going to be a lot more than

01:04:26.560 | booking the standard room and asking for the upgrade price. And so especially if the hotel offers free

01:04:32.000 | cancellation, I'd say book a standard room, reach out. Can I upgrade the room? Can you

01:04:37.520 | accommodate more people and you might get a better deal that you just couldn't find online?

01:04:42.240 | Yeah. When you talk about reaching out, I usually Google for the name of the general manager of the

01:04:46.560 | hotel and most hotel chains have pretty predictable email formats. If you've ever emailed anyone from

01:04:51.680 | the chain before, you can probably go back and look at an old email might be firstname.lastname@marriott.com

01:04:57.520 | for instance, or whatever the case may be depending on the chain and property that you're looking at.

01:05:01.840 | And I usually will email the general manager in a case like that, not because I expect the general manager to

01:05:06.720 | handle it quite the opposite. I expect that they're going to pass it on to somebody else.

01:05:10.560 | But I also expect that when the general manager passes it along to someone and says,

01:05:14.880 | please handle this, that whoever receives that email from the boss is going to handle it because

01:05:19.120 | the boss sent it to them. I usually take that approach to make sure that it's going to get a

01:05:23.840 | response very likely and probably a good one. So that's the technique I do to reach out oftentimes

01:05:28.720 | and get ahold of somebody who I know is going to offer whatever the help is that I need. And that tends to

01:05:33.200 | ensure that I do. You can sometimes find the name of the general manager on a TripAdvisor reviews.

01:05:38.320 | A lot of hotels have all the reviews written. I'm sure they're not always written by the general

01:05:42.960 | manager, but that name is there also. One other thing that we haven't quite crossed the threshold to

01:05:48.720 | the right age for it yet. But we've been noticing is almost every hotel that's a resort has some kids

01:05:54.640 | clubs somewhere and many of them, but not all of them. The hotel we recently stayed at, the Viceroy in

01:06:00.320 | Cabo, it was quite expensive. But once kids are five, and my understanding is that there's an insurance

01:06:06.480 | reason that it's basically like the most insurance policies for hotels won't cover the kids club if kids

01:06:11.120 | are under five. But there's a kids club that is often free. Kids can go do activities, have fun.

01:06:16.160 | You have one kid of that age. And so that's just something I add to your list of searching. If you're

01:06:21.440 | comparing two properties and not sure, one of them might have a free kids club, one might not. And it's

01:06:26.800 | not always necessarily about having free time as a parent. Sometimes it's just about more fun activities

01:06:32.880 | for the kids. And so we haven't gotten to take advantage of it because we have no kids over five. But it's

01:06:38.080 | something that we're excited to check out. And I was surprised at how many properties, even like

01:06:43.840 | a Four Seasons has a kids club. You know, it's not always these all-inclusive Mexico resorts. It seems

01:06:49.120 | like the wide spectrum of hotels have kids clubs. You're absolutely right. You'd be really surprised

01:06:54.000 | at the wide range of places that have kids clubs and fun activities. And our kids are getting to the

01:06:58.400 | age now where they're enjoying that. They want to go play with other kids. And like you said, there's

01:07:02.400 | oftentimes creative activities and usually pretty good robust systems in terms of checking kids out and

01:07:07.520 | checking them in to the kids club so that you can be confident that the kids will be safe and have a

01:07:11.600 | good time. The other thing that's nice is some properties offer even above and beyond that. You

01:07:16.560 | know, we found one in Fiji, a small luxury hotel of the world property that's bookable with Hyatt

01:07:20.320 | points that provides an individual nanny for every kid under, I don't know, six or eight or something like

01:07:26.000 | that. Each kid gets a specific person to hang out with them and play with them at the pool and make

01:07:31.520 | crafts and whatever else. And I wouldn't necessarily need that, but it's pretty wild that that's just

01:07:36.960 | included with staying there. So like you said, I think that's something worth seeking out. Not

01:07:40.800 | necessarily that experience specifically, but it's worth taking a look and seeing what's available.

01:07:44.720 | You're absolutely right. That's a big resource. And it's not, as you said, something that's limited to

01:07:49.120 | all inclusive properties. Tons of hotels around the world these days offer something like that for kids.

01:07:53.600 | And on the vacation rentals, Airbnbs, Vacasa's, I know you guys have written a lot about using Wyndham

01:07:58.880 | points for Vacasa. So I've talked about in the past, I'll link to that. Any kind of tips or tricks for

01:08:05.360 | vacation rentals? I think everyone kind of knows what they are, but any way to make that experience better

01:08:10.000 | or cheaper? We generally don't prefer vacation rentals. I know a lot of people love them. We don't

01:08:16.000 | generally prefer them because when we're traveling, we don't want to have to deal with doing dishes and going to

01:08:19.840 | the grocery store and all of the things that we do when we're at home. We want to be able to skip that

01:08:24.000 | stuff in general. So we don't tend to prefer them. However, we have, as you said, written quite a bit

01:08:29.280 | about using Wyndham points for Vacasa vacation rentals because the value can be fantastic. In fact,

01:08:33.520 | I think I'm going to stay in one next week because we were looking to go somewhere where there just

01:08:37.360 | weren't very many hotel options. And I looked and I said, oh, look at that. There's actually a bunch of

01:08:41.120 | Vacasa vacation rentals and we can book them for a reasonable price through Wyndham. Wyndham also has a

01:08:45.680 | partnership with cottages.com. If you're going to the UK, you can get some terrific deals on

01:08:50.160 | vacation rentals through cottages.com using Wyndham points. And it's not obvious or intuitive. So you'll

01:08:54.960 | want to look for our post or a resource about how to book those. It's not something that you can just

01:08:59.520 | simply do online. There's a little bit of a process there, so it's worth looking into that. So those are

01:09:04.080 | good deals for booking them. And then of course, you know, if you're going to book an Airbnb, for instance,

01:09:08.800 | click through a shopping portal, like the British Airways portal, I think still offers

01:09:12.240 | three points per dollar for Airbnbs. And so you can kind of stack some savings there,

01:09:16.560 | find ways to get discounted gift cards for those. I just recently found out that if you book hotels

01:09:22.800 | through Hotel Tonight, which is an app for really originally for last minute hotel bookings, but

01:09:28.000 | nowadays I think it functions more like an online travel agency, you get 10% back in Airbnb credit if

01:09:33.840 | you connect your Airbnb account. So if you're someone who likes vacation rentals, but you stay in a bunch of

01:09:38.400 | hotels for work or something of that nature, you might want to look at that. I don't know whether

01:09:42.480 | prices will be equal. You'll have to shop around a little bit, but if they are earning 10% back in

01:09:46.960 | Airbnb credit might be something that's advantageous for you. But like I said, generally speaking,

01:09:52.000 | vacation rentals are not my area of expertise. It's not what we prefer.

01:09:54.720 | I think we can breeze quick through rental cars because there's just not that much to cover.

01:09:59.040 | We often are in cities traveling where we just rely on the travel car seat vests and public

01:10:04.800 | transportation. If we do rent a car, I think it helps to have some status where you can walk down an aisle

01:10:10.080 | and pick a better car. Any other thoughts around transportation when you're traveling with kids?

01:10:15.520 | Yeah. So a couple of quick tips for that. Number one is if you or a spouse works for a company or is

01:10:23.200 | affiliated with some sort of an organization that might have some travel deals, take a look at the

01:10:28.640 | codes that they offer and just get a sense for what they do. One of the things that can be super valuable

01:10:35.840 | is that Hertz, many times if you work for an organization that has some sort of a relationship

01:10:41.360 | with Hertz, the rental codes in many cases will take off the one-way fee. And so that can make

01:10:47.520 | it far cheaper if you're looking to do a one-way rental somewhere to book a one-way rental. You can

01:10:52.800 | save a lot of money that way. And we often do one-way rentals when we travel to a major airport because

01:10:59.120 | I live in a small area. And so I don't live near JFK or Newark airport. So instead, we'll do a one-way

01:11:04.800 | rental and drop it off at the airport. And so that's one way of making those significantly more affordable.

01:11:10.000 | Also, if you book with National and you are loyal to National, you'll earn free days periodically.

01:11:15.600 | And one thing that's nice with National is that those free days can be used on a one-way rental

01:11:20.560 | and it makes the one-way rental free. Sometimes there's a couple of dollars in the airport tax,

01:11:24.320 | but that could be a massive savings on a one-way rental. And I bring that up because even when you're

01:11:28.800 | traveling in different places abroad, there are plenty of situations where one-way rentals may come in

01:11:33.520 | handy. Autoslash.com is a great comparison tool to compare prices from different places and track your

01:11:38.640 | rental prices to see if a better price pops up for a particular rental. As you said,

01:11:43.440 | there aren't a ton of great ways to save on rentals, but those are a couple of things that

01:11:47.440 | we very frequently use. And like you said, having status, if you have a credit card that offers

01:11:52.320 | status, a number of them out there offer some level of status with Hertz, and then you can book a midsize

01:11:56.720 | car and pick from what's available in a particular area. So we'll often rent that midsize car and then

01:12:01.920 | pick an SUV when we get to the rental area. Same thing with National. And for many years,

01:12:06.880 | we were able to do that and pick up minivans when we got to the airport, though I'm finding that less

01:12:12.000 | and less common these days. So that doesn't work as well as it once did for me. It did work really

01:12:17.120 | well for us in Hawaii. We were able to snag a minivan booking something regular. Nice. I think

01:12:21.440 | we had a backup bigger car booked, you know, a few hours later at Hertz or something that we ended up

01:12:27.040 | canceling. But we had the backup just in case we couldn't get what we want. National is notorious for

01:12:32.000 | putting this banner up that's like, hey, if you really want to plan on getting a car that's big enough,

01:12:36.400 | you should book it because we might not have it. But they did. Yeah, well, and that's a great point,

01:12:40.640 | the backup thing that a lot of people might not consider. A lot of rental car companies offer a free

01:12:44.960 | cancellation or you book through like Priceline, for instance, you don't even enter your payment

01:12:48.640 | information. You pay when you pick it up. And so we have often done that. That's certainly something

01:12:53.360 | a lot of people probably don't consider doing, but you might want to. I said I'd come back to cruises.

01:12:57.360 | I know you've written a lot about it and some of the free cruise opportunities have dried up a bit.

01:13:02.880 | I'll link to the whole thing you've written on free cruises, assuming it's been updated

01:13:07.200 | for some of the changes. But how have cruises kind of changed the travel game for you guys?

01:13:12.320 | I was not interested in cruising at all. I've never had an interest in cruises. And as you said,

01:13:17.200 | that game has changed a bit. But what has changed us is the experience of cruising. It's not necessarily

01:13:24.080 | our preferred method of travel in general. However, what we have discovered is that it is fantastic for

01:13:31.360 | visiting Europe. We love a Mediterranean cruise because you can visit six or seven or eight or nine different

01:13:38.720 | places in Europe and only have to unpack one time. And with kids, that is huge. When we were young,

01:13:44.400 | before we had kids, we would kind of travel almost backpacker style, or even after we got out of that

01:13:49.760 | era of our lives, we still would be fine with hotel hopping or switching, spending a night or two in a

01:13:54.560 | city here and then flying somewhere else and spending a night or two. But when it's kids and you have to

01:13:58.800 | unpack and repack and move everything and get to the airport and keep everybody entertained, it's a lot

01:14:03.680 | harder to bounce around quickly like that. So a cruise in Europe is a fantastic way to see a bunch of

01:14:08.880 | places. And what I particularly enjoy is that the cruise then becomes like a place to stay and a

01:14:14.800 | place to eat dinner and breakfast that you know is going to be easy. You don't have to put a lot of

01:14:18.800 | effort into figuring out a place where everybody's going to get what they want to eat and figure out,

01:14:22.960 | okay, well, are we going to be located near the subway or near this or near that your lodging and your

01:14:27.360 | food for breakfast and dinner is done. So then you can just go and enjoy a place every day. And because

01:14:32.720 | the port stops tend to be pretty close in Europe, you're often getting almost all day 8am to 5 or 6 or

01:14:38.880 | 8 or 10pm, sometimes in a European city where you can go out, see the sites, make sure you get a great

01:14:44.560 | lunch and then get back to the boat to get to sleep. And so that's really been a game changer for us. I don't

01:14:49.840 | think we ever would have considered booking a cruise and certainly not at full cash prices until we got

01:14:56.080 | into the habit of doing this. We took one last year where we visited a number of cities in southern

01:15:00.640 | France and Spain that I never in a million years would have thought to plan a trip around going to,

01:15:05.840 | but now I would go back and go visit them because we found things that we liked and enjoyed and said,

01:15:10.000 | oh wow, this is a city I'd never heard of and certainly wouldn't consider booking a trip to before,

01:15:14.960 | but now maybe I would because it had a great this and a great that and a thing that I want to see

01:15:19.600 | that we didn't get to see. I enjoy that. I think that that plays into one of the things I love about

01:15:24.960 | miles and points is that I don't feel pressure to do everything and see everything in one shot.

01:15:30.080 | I feel like I can go and see some of a place, get a taste of a place. And if I'm interested in more,

01:15:34.560 | I can go back some other time to get more. And the cruise is perfect for that. It gives me a little

01:15:38.720 | taste of a bunch of places and then I can say, okay, well, I'd like to go back and see more of that

01:15:42.800 | place. And so I've really, really enjoyed that. There's a number of places that are now on our radar for

01:15:48.160 | trips next year and the year after that again, just never would have come to mind because I

01:15:52.560 | wouldn't have known they were out there. So I love it for that. And the kids enjoy it. There's plenty

01:15:57.520 | for the kids to do. There's a kids club. If you have a C day and in many cruise lines, there are a number

01:16:01.280 | of activities and things that appeal to the kids too. And that's nice. One tip I always give parents for

01:16:06.800 | travel. And this is part from a cruise. When we're traveling, we try to find a playground every two or three

01:16:11.600 | days because the kids need to let off some steam, get some energy out. It can give us a little break

01:16:16.160 | for a few minutes too. And it gives them a chance to play with local kids. Sometimes they, if we're

01:16:20.400 | traveling abroad, they may be playing with kids that don't speak a lot of English, but they find ways to

01:16:24.480 | communicate. So they get that experience and they get to have fun and laugh and all of those things

01:16:28.880 | that are important. So we try to build that into trips regardless. And on a cruise, it's really easy

01:16:33.680 | because the playground's right there. It's a part of the cruise. So certainly something that we've enjoyed.

01:16:38.400 | Yeah. When we actually looked at doing a European cruise this summer, it didn't happen. One of the

01:16:42.720 | things we didn't realize is, so a lot of the big cruise ships will stop at a port that's maybe

01:16:47.280 | sometimes 10, sometimes 30 minutes from town. And that was one of the things that turned us off of it

01:16:52.240 | because our daughter's napping and we didn't want to have to like take an Uber into town, then come back.

01:16:57.600 | But then we looked at some of these river cruises in Europe and the boats are smaller and they park

01:17:03.040 | literally right downtown in almost every major kind of port city. And it was like five minutes

01:17:08.720 | walking back to the boat. So if for some reason someone sees some of these cruises in the Mediterranean

01:17:14.160 | and thinks, oh, it's going to be tough if my kid's napping, the river cruises looked like they might

01:17:17.840 | actually make it incredibly easy. And some of them had really cool family rooms and all kinds of stuff.

01:17:22.960 | Yeah. Certainly a great way to see a bunch of places, no doubt.

01:17:25.760 | Yes. And places that were not on our radar as well. So that was really exciting.

01:17:29.920 | Generally, you talked about playgrounds. I want to close out. You say your top tip

01:17:34.160 | is always just plan one big thing a day. Why is that so important? And what other kind of broad

01:17:39.520 | family travel kind of tips and tricks do you have?

01:17:42.000 | One big thing a day is what I always tell people. So we try to plan one main activity, whether that's

01:17:46.880 | a museum or a children's museum, or we want to go see an ancient site or whatever it might be,

01:17:52.400 | depending on where we're going in the world. We try to plan one main thing a day. And there's a couple

01:17:56.640 | of reasons for that. But the biggest probably is because that makes it really easy to manage everybody's

01:18:02.560 | expectations. And nobody walks away upset or disappointed. If you try to pack too many activities into a day,

01:18:07.680 | either the kids are going to get impatient with it or the parents are going to get impatient with it,

01:18:12.320 | or you're going to be rushing and someone's going to drop something or something's going to go wrong

01:18:16.320 | and it's going to throw off plans. And more than one person is likely to end up being upset. Instead,

01:18:21.200 | we manage the expectations. We say, okay, today we're going to go see the Acropolis Museum. And that's

01:18:26.240 | the thing we're going to do today. And if we get that done and everybody's feeling good and we want to go do

01:18:30.560 | something else, great. But if not, we've accomplished the goal for the day and we'll get some ice cream

01:18:35.200 | afterwards and move on with the day. We like to do that. And it also kind of enforces a slower pace

01:18:40.080 | of travel, which is something that we had to get used to when we had kids, when we were young and it

01:18:44.240 | was just the two of us, then we could go see five or six things in a day and run thing to thing. That's

01:18:48.960 | much harder to do with kids. So I find that managing the expectations up front so the kids know, okay,

01:18:54.560 | we're going to do this. And then it's free. You know, we can go get some ice cream or go to a playground

01:18:59.680 | or whatever else they know what to expect. And I think that that helps them in setting the

01:19:04.640 | expectations and also avoids disappointment for us and saying, oh man, we really wanted to

01:19:08.640 | blah, blah, blah. And we couldn't do that today. I mentioned ice cream, ice cream solves a lot of

01:19:12.400 | problems. I'm not encouraging you to eat ice cream all day long. Okay. All right. Be healthy. I'm not

01:19:17.200 | trying to encourage unhealthy habits, but every now and then a treat can turn the day around. And I think

01:19:21.520 | that slower pace of travel in general is something that we really embraced. When we had kids,

01:19:26.560 | we try not to have the pressure to see everything and do everything because that's going to make

01:19:31.040 | the day more chaotic for them and increase the odds that they don't enjoy it. And I want them

01:19:36.080 | to enjoy exploring new places and things. I don't want it to seem tedious. I do want them to learn

01:19:42.080 | something. And so they know that we're going to go see a museum or we're going to go do something like

01:19:47.840 | that, but I don't want it to be so much that it becomes a dreadful thing for them. I mentioned before

01:19:51.920 | too, that a lot of places are very family friendly. And I just mentioned the Acropolis Museum off

01:19:56.320 | the top of my head because it's a place we recently went to. And this is one example, but we've run into

01:20:00.560 | this lots of other places. We arrived and there was an area for families and they gave away a little

01:20:05.680 | scavenger hunt type thing. And they were divided by age groups, depending on the ages of your kids.

01:20:09.600 | So my two kids had two totally different scavenger hunts to do, but it gave them things to look for

01:20:14.240 | in the museum. And that was huge. If we had just tried to wander around, if anybody's ever been

01:20:18.400 | to the Acropolis Museum, it's pretty big. There's a lot of stuff there. And of course,

01:20:21.760 | it's a lot of ancient artifacts that are not as interesting to a four-year-old as they would be

01:20:25.920 | to me. But if you can give that four-year-old a booklet of pictures and say, "Hey, find this

01:20:30.800 | sculpture of a dog," then that gives him a purpose. It gives him something to do. And then we get there

01:20:35.040 | and we can read about it and tell them about it. And prepping for a trip like that is something else

01:20:39.920 | that we take into consideration when we're planning and we try to lean into the things they're

01:20:43.680 | interested in, we were going to Greece. So before we went to Greece, we went looking for some books about

01:20:47.920 | Greek mythology that were written for kids, like kids' books about Greek mythology.

01:20:52.240 | And so we'd read those. So they already had names in mind, like Hercules and Zeus and this and that.

01:20:58.000 | And so when we were seeing statues and things related to some of those characters that we had

01:21:02.800 | read children's books about, they got excited because there were things that we'd been reading

01:21:06.080 | about night after night. And so we try to prep a little bit with that. And then along those same lines,

01:21:11.600 | when we went to a gift shop, we were looking for another children's book about this type of stuff.

01:21:16.160 | And the kids got excited about that. And again, I think that helps build some value in the trip

01:21:20.960 | for them and build some engagement from them. And then we also try to lean into their interests.

01:21:25.360 | They do an educational app, several of them, but one called ABC Mouse that they did for a long time

01:21:30.400 | had this unit on Sterling Castle that they would listen to again and again. And they kept asking,

01:21:34.560 | can we go to Sterling Castle? Can we go to Sterling Castle? And I'd never heard of Sterling Castle

01:21:38.320 | before they did this app. It happens to be in Scotland for anybody curious and not

01:21:42.320 | familiar with Sterling Castle. But at some point I said, you know what, we've got the miles,

01:21:45.920 | let's make that happen. Let's go to Sterling Castle because it's something they're interested in.

01:21:49.600 | We've got some other children's books that reference it and whatnot, so we can kind of

01:21:53.440 | lean into it and then get them excited about it in advance. And I think that that also helps build

01:21:58.400 | engagement with the kids and helps them take away something valuable from the trip.

01:22:01.760 | Yeah, I've heard so many people talk about as their kids are older, letting their kids kind of plan a

01:22:07.120 | trip or a day of the trip or part of the trip. And that's something that I think my kids under five

01:22:12.000 | are not ready for. When I look forward to travel with kids in the future, I'm excited to have them

01:22:17.760 | be more involved in the planning. I want to teach them the tools. I want to teach them the point stuff,

01:22:21.440 | but time will come.

01:22:22.400 | It will come, you know, and that's, we talk about the points and the miles and how we earn them. So my

01:22:27.360 | seven-year-old is pretty good at math and is interested and asks a lot of questions. And so

01:22:31.680 | he doesn't know all the ins and outs of this stuff yet, but I hope to build that knowledge so that he

01:22:36.880 | knows that we put effort into it and we have ways of thinking about it in order to try to make something

01:22:42.800 | possible. And really what I hope he gets out of it is the ability to problem solve, to say, okay, well,

01:22:47.520 | here's a problem. I want to go visit the entire world and I don't have an unlimited amount of money to do

01:22:52.320 | it. So how can I make that happen? How can I maximize my time? And so I hope he learns,

01:22:56.720 | if nothing else, the problem-solving aspect of how do I figure this out? Because it's not always

01:23:01.440 | the details that are important for the kids. It's more so the how to think than it is what to think.

01:23:06.000 | So hopefully he pulls some of that away.

01:23:08.080 | Are there any things that are not obvious that you guys travel with for kids? I'll give one example.

01:23:13.600 | I always bring a travel router, which is like a $20 thing. But the reason we do it is we have a baby

01:23:19.760 | monitor that connects to Wi-Fi and one, those hotel portal Wi-Fi's, there's no way to use it. And then

01:23:25.840 | two, sometimes there's no password and it only works with passworded Wi-Fi's. And then three, I guess,

01:23:31.440 | is another benefit. All the devices just automatically connect to it. So like you connect this one thing.

01:23:36.480 | I mean, obviously I could tell you, oh, bring snacks, bring this. But that's one thing,

01:23:40.560 | any kind of small, obscure things that you find, oh, wow, never leave home on a trip with kids without

01:23:45.200 | this. That's actually one that I really need to get in the habit of doing because I haven't done that.

01:23:48.880 | And that would come in useful for a lot of different things. But I think that the biggest tip for me is

01:23:53.680 | that you don't need most of what it is you think you need. So less is more in the sense that it's less

01:23:58.880 | stuff you're going to have to carry. As my kids have gotten a little bit older, if they want to bring

01:24:02.320 | things with them, they each have a backpack and they are in charge of packing their own backpack

01:24:07.280 | before the trip with anything that it is they want to bring. And I'm not carrying anything else. So

01:24:11.520 | they have to figure out what it is that they want now that they're seven and four. But in terms of

01:24:15.680 | stuff that we bring for them when they were very small, when they were less than two years old,

01:24:19.680 | we used to bring this high chair that clips to the table. There's a whole bunch of them. If you go on

01:24:24.000 | Amazon, you look for one of these travel high chair things and we would bring that with us everywhere.

01:24:28.080 | And that was super duper useful for us both a because sometimes you'd be in a situation where

01:24:32.960 | there wasn't a high chair available, whether that's a restaurant that just doesn't have one

01:24:36.560 | where you're in a hotel room and you're trying to feed your kid and they fold down pretty compact.

01:24:41.120 | And so they were easy enough for us to pack with us. So that was certainly one. And then

01:24:44.480 | I mentioned a collapsible stroller and that seems obvious. It doesn't seem out of the ordinary,

01:24:48.560 | but I can't tell you how useful it is to have a really compact one that folds up nicely. I know

01:24:53.920 | yo-yo is a very popular brand worldwide. Everybody knows a yo-yo. We actually use a less expensive one.

01:25:00.000 | GB pocket is the name of the brand. And it folds up just so small. People are constantly still amazed

01:25:05.200 | when they see me fold it. They're like, wow, I can't believe it folds that small. That's helpful,

01:25:09.120 | both a because it packs really easily in the car and then also fits in a backpack. And so we can carry

01:25:14.640 | it on as a carry on without having to check it underneath the plane or wait for it when you land and

01:25:19.760 | wait for it to get brought up. Totally agree. This is awesome. The thing I'm going to ask you

01:25:23.600 | to leave people with is are there a couple of places that you've just loved with kids that you're like,

01:25:27.680 | hey, you just talked about your Greece trip, but places that people might not have on their radar.

01:25:32.160 | Truth be told, I have found that I mentioned this before, but much of the world is very family friendly.

01:25:38.240 | And it's funny because this comes up sometimes with friends who are not miles and points travelers who

01:25:42.400 | have kids that finally take their first or second or third or fourth international trip. And they'll say to me,

01:25:47.600 | have you found that people are really good with kids overseas? And yeah, over and over again,

01:25:53.200 | we've been really impressed in general with how family friendly things are in many places outside

01:25:57.920 | of the United States. And that's not to say the U.S. is not family friendly, but it is even more family

01:26:02.960 | friendly when you get to much of the rest of the world. In terms of favorite places, our kids loved

01:26:08.480 | Japan and they keep asking to go back to Japan. Japan is so full of sensory stuff. There's so many lights

01:26:15.440 | and sounds and, you know, of course, games and the arcades, and it's a very intense place. But I think

01:26:20.960 | it really appeals, especially these days to the way that kids are just bombarded with input all the time.

01:26:25.760 | It appeals to them in that way. They loved Japan. They love the trains. They love the efficiency. We love

01:26:30.800 | how easy it is to get around and how polite everybody is, how organized things are, how safe everything

01:26:36.160 | feels. So that's a place that we've enjoyed with kids. But then we've also, I mean,

01:26:40.400 | we love the beach and going to Bora Bora is a fantastic place. I can't wait to go back to

01:26:45.200 | Bora Bora eventually here. And that was one of our favorite places with kids because we were able to

01:26:48.960 | book a hotel room right on the beach, literally sand out the door. And so that's really, really nice with

01:26:56.240 | kids to be able to walk out your hotel villa and have your toes in the sand right away. So that's certainly a

01:27:01.840 | place that we loved and would love to go back to. Probably harder for a lot of people to plan a trip there.

01:27:06.480 | But Europe in general, too. I mentioned Greece and the kids love Greece. We love Greece. We love the

01:27:11.680 | food in Greece. Our kids, I think, like fortunately so far, enjoy travel in very much the same way that

01:27:17.600 | we do. So I think that they have found that they've enjoyed almost all of the places that we've been to.

01:27:23.120 | So it's hard to pick a favorite. I like different places for different things. But I would say Japan

01:27:28.480 | with kids is more fun than you would even imagine that it's going to be. So I really like that.

01:27:33.680 | I don't know if that matches your experience or not. I have not done Japan with kids,

01:27:37.120 | but we've got it planned for next year. So I didn't tee up that answer, but it could have been a better

01:27:41.520 | one because it's on the horizon. We got a lot of content of yours that we're going to link in the

01:27:45.360 | show notes. Where can people find everything you're writing and the podcast you co-host?

01:27:49.680 | Sure. Well, frequentmiler.com is our blog, our site. And so you can go to frequentmiler.com and

01:27:54.560 | search right there. Or oftentimes if you're looking for information about a specific topic,

01:27:58.560 | if you just Google frequentmiler and the name of the topic that you're looking for,

01:28:02.320 | you'll find our resources. We've just got so much stuff out there that can be a quick way to find a

01:28:06.560 | lot of our resources. And we co-host frequentmiler on the air. So we have a couple of weekly episodes,

01:28:11.680 | a short 20 minute coffee break episode that drops every Tuesday. And then every Friday,

01:28:15.760 | we have a full length episode. That's more like an hour, hour and a half long.

01:28:19.040 | So that's frequentmiler on the air on whatever podcast platform you prefer.

01:28:22.560 | I'm a big fan. Tune in regularly. So Nick, thanks for being here. I think you've opened up

01:28:27.600 | travel with kids in a way that I hope a lot of people are inspired to not be so scared of.

01:28:33.040 | I think too often people think, "Oh, it's not going to work. We're never going to travel."

01:28:36.960 | And you are living proof that hundreds of flights is possible and you're still sane.

01:28:41.920 | For sure. Absolutely. And I hope people do take that away. That people think it has to be difficult

01:28:45.680 | or impossible once you have kids. And it doesn't. You need to maybe change your outlook on it a little bit,

01:28:50.160 | slow down and be happy with a slower pace of travel, plan things that the kids are going to enjoy.

01:28:54.960 | It might be different than when you traveled before kids, but it doesn't have to be over.

01:28:58.640 | Absolutely. We enjoy travel now as much as we ever have. It looks a little bit different than it used

01:29:02.800 | to, but not different in a bad way, just different in a different way. And so we love showing our kids

01:29:07.200 | the world and we feel so fortunate to have the opportunity to do that.

01:29:10.320 | I love it. Thank you so much for being here. This is awesome.

01:29:12.560 | Thank you very much. Always a blast.

How to Fly Your Entire Family in Business Class (With Points)

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