Redeeming Points and Miles for Max Value (and What Not To Do!)

00:00:00.000 | put in a little bit of effort and you could be flying first class for next to nothing.

00:00:04.160 | And that is a pretty fantastic feeling.

00:00:07.040 | Why do you like points?

00:00:09.640 | They make travel possible in ways that cash doesn't always make practical.

00:00:15.600 | Then you feel like you're not paying for it.

00:00:17.280 | Getting the champagne and the caviar and the onboard chef or the shower.

00:00:21.040 | It certainly feels pretty incredible.

00:00:22.640 | I spend less money, but I get far more vacations and far more comfortable experiences.

00:00:29.280 | Of course, you have to know about transferring the points and booking it,

00:00:32.160 | but all of those things are very learnable.

00:00:34.240 | We're going to walk you through that entire process.

00:00:36.080 | Yeah, absolutely.

00:00:36.880 | You'll have plenty of opportunities to travel around the world using monopoly money to pay

00:00:41.520 | for the ticket because you're like, "Oh, I don't want to bother with this."

00:00:44.560 | Then you may be giving up $1,000 in value.

00:00:47.840 | And with a little bit of effort, look at that, you saved yourself 80% of the points.

00:00:52.160 | So I often tell people that if you want to travel more, you need one of three things in abundance.

00:00:57.200 | So the first thing, obvious money.

00:00:58.640 | If you've got millions and millions of dollars, easy to travel.

00:01:00.640 | Number two is millions and millions of miles and points.

00:01:03.520 | Those two things are difficult for most people to get more of.

00:01:06.560 | The third thing that influences your ability to travel more is...

00:01:10.400 | Nick, thanks for being here.

00:01:12.720 | Happy to be here.

00:01:13.920 | I'm excited.

00:01:14.560 | Yeah, I am really excited for this conversation.

00:01:18.320 | I've had a bunch of times in the past in the show where we've talked about

00:01:22.320 | different ways to redeem points, get the most value.

00:01:24.720 | But I wanted to do an end-to-end.

00:01:27.280 | And I was talking with Greg, who is your partner on the Frequent Miler on the Air podcast.

00:01:31.840 | And he was like, "Get Nick on. Nick is the pro."

00:01:34.400 | So this is going to be fun.

00:01:36.400 | I'm glad.

00:01:37.520 | I'm glad he said that.

00:01:38.240 | I'll make sure to send that check in the mail.

00:01:40.720 | Greg, it's out there, right?

00:01:41.680 | If you're listening.

00:01:42.720 | Of course you're listening.

00:01:43.600 | Yeah.

00:01:44.100 | So I guess the thing I want to start us with is the premise of a conversation

00:01:50.240 | about redeeming your points and getting the most value out of them when you're traveling

00:01:53.680 | is that points even make sense.

00:01:56.000 | So why do you like points?

00:01:58.720 | Why aren't you sitting there collecting cash back?

00:02:00.880 | Yeah, that's a good question.

00:02:02.560 | I really think there's kind of like two different pieces to this.

00:02:06.080 | So the first piece is that they make travel possible in ways that cash doesn't always

00:02:14.160 | make practical.

00:02:15.040 | So I can almost guarantee that anybody who's not focusing right now on earning miles and

00:02:19.920 | points could be traveling more or more comfortably or both if they're learning to maximize miles

00:02:25.840 | and points.

00:02:26.320 | So that's definitely a big piece of it.

00:02:28.160 | The other big piece of it for me is that it's kind of a psychological thing.

00:02:31.680 | I think we all like getting a deal, right?

00:02:33.360 | Like stores have clearance sales and Black Friday sales and flash sales because they

00:02:38.960 | know that we get excited about saving something, right?

00:02:41.360 | And so if you've ever had that experience that high, getting 10 or 20 or 30 or 50% off

00:02:45.680 | on a pair of shoes or a TV or whatever, then you know what that feels like.

00:02:49.120 | And the thing with miles and points is that that discount is often significantly higher.

00:02:54.160 | So we're looking at saving 60 or 70 or sometimes like, believe it or not, 90% or more.

00:02:59.280 | Often the cash price is something.

00:03:01.600 | And so that takes things that are just impossible and brings them within reach.

00:03:05.440 | Last year, I took my family of four to Europe three times and we flew in business class

00:03:09.840 | both ways.

00:03:10.480 | And that's something that I wouldn't have the cash to be able to do.

00:03:14.160 | And even if I focused on cash back, I couldn't possibly earn enough cash back to be able

00:03:18.640 | to make that happen.

00:03:19.680 | But miles and points create these opportunities for far outsized value.

00:03:23.600 | And that's exciting and fun.

00:03:25.760 | When you get on a plane and you know that you paid 90% less than somebody else on that

00:03:29.600 | plane, there's an exciting element of that.

00:03:31.440 | But it also gives me the opportunity to show my family the world and to go places and do

00:03:35.520 | things that I thought I would only see in books.

00:03:37.680 | Yeah.

00:03:40.560 | So I agree with everything you said.

00:03:42.400 | This is why I love this.

00:03:44.960 | I thought before we jump into actually how to make sure you're getting the most value,

00:03:50.240 | we'd kind of rewind and talk about how do you not get the most value?

00:03:53.920 | So I'll share what my quick research led me to.

00:03:58.720 | I'm curious if there's anything I'm missing.

00:04:00.800 | But when I think about people saying, "How do you make sure you get the most out of your

00:04:03.600 | points?"

00:04:04.000 | I'm like, "Well, let's make sure you're not getting the least."

00:04:06.000 | Letting your points expire, obviously, maybe the worst.

00:04:08.400 | You know, but...

00:04:10.640 | True.

00:04:10.960 | Using them for gift cards, maybe the second worst.

00:04:14.400 | Are there any other, like, just terrible ways to use your points to redeem them for the

00:04:19.680 | least value?

00:04:20.400 | Shopping on Amazon is one that comes to mind because it frequently offers low value for

00:04:26.640 | your points.

00:04:27.120 | And that's where, you know, when you mentioned gift cards and things like that, they typically

00:04:30.640 | offer very low value for the points.

00:04:32.320 | And when you asked before, you know, "Why care about points and miles rather than cash

00:04:35.920 | back?"

00:04:36.480 | Well, that comes into play here.

00:04:38.080 | Because if you're going to redeem your points at less than one cent per point in value,

00:04:42.880 | then maybe it would have been smarter to just focus on cash back and use your cash back

00:04:47.440 | to buy whatever stuff you want.

00:04:49.680 | So if you're redeeming your points at very low value like that, it obviously just nerfs

00:04:54.000 | your potential outsize or your potential for outsize redemptions.

00:04:57.680 | So yeah, I mean, gift cards tend to be among the worst.

00:05:00.160 | Or shopping online, redeeming points that way.

00:05:03.280 | Redeeming for a statement credit varies in quality from one type of mile or point to

00:05:08.000 | another in terms of how much you can get.

00:05:09.840 | But typically, you're capped at about a penny a point at most, which is not a value that

00:05:14.560 | I would normally accept from my points and miles.

00:05:17.760 | Now, I say that and I recognize there are some people that are the financial independence

00:05:21.520 | retire early crowd.

00:05:22.720 | And for some of that crowd, I think that redeeming for statement credits might make some sense.

00:05:27.360 | Or at least if you're focused on saving 10 or 15 cents per gallon on your gas or how

00:05:32.400 | much you're paying per square of toilet paper, then you may want to also focus on, OK, well,

00:05:37.040 | how can I earn outsize value for my miles and points?

00:05:39.920 | Or how can I at least earn cash back that could well eclipse whatever it is I'm saving

00:05:44.880 | on other things?

00:05:45.680 | Because one or two new credit card bonuses a year, even if you're only redeeming at one

00:05:50.080 | cent per point, will probably defeat or outperform, I should say, your efforts in a lot of other

00:05:57.520 | areas because the points can be worth so much.

00:06:00.880 | Then you also have redeeming points and miles for travel through your credit card portal,

00:06:05.360 | and that typically looks a little bit better than a statement credit, but it doesn't necessarily

00:06:09.680 | perform better.

00:06:10.640 | And what I mean by that is a lot of times card issuers or some card issuers at least

00:06:14.880 | will offer opportunities to get, like, let's say, 25 percent more for your points when

00:06:18.640 | you redeem points for travel through their travel portal.

00:06:21.440 | And that looks and sounds good, but there's some opportunity cost involved there where

00:06:25.760 | you're not necessarily getting the 25 percent more that you think you are.

00:06:29.440 | So, you know, for instance, if it's that 25 percent, you might think, OK, well, I'm getting

00:06:33.200 | 1.25 cents per point in value out of my points.

00:06:36.000 | But you're giving some things up because if you're booking through your credit card

00:06:39.200 | portal, you're losing the opportunity, for instance, to earn hotel points from the chain.

00:06:43.120 | Normally, you know, if you book a Marriott, then you can earn Marriott points when you

00:06:47.200 | stay.

00:06:47.760 | However, if you've booked through your credit card portal, you're not going to earn those

00:06:51.520 | Marriott points.

00:06:52.240 | If you book directly through Marriott, you will get those points.

00:06:55.600 | And most hotel chains offer a rebate somewhere in the range of like 8 to 20 percent, depending

00:07:00.800 | on your status and the card you use and things like that.

00:07:03.440 | But but at any rate, you're giving up that, let's call it 10 percent to keep the math

00:07:07.440 | simple right there.

00:07:08.560 | And oftentimes you could be clicking through a shopping portal to book that hotel and

00:07:12.560 | potentially earning another five or 10 percent back.

00:07:15.120 | And then if you have something like a AAA membership or some other type of coupon code

00:07:19.440 | that you might be able to use directly with the hotel chain, you might be able to reduce

00:07:23.280 | that price even further to the point where if you're redeeming points, you might actually

00:07:28.320 | be getting worse than one cent per point in value.

00:07:31.040 | You might have been better off cashing out at one cent a point and booking that hotel

00:07:34.800 | directly using some of those various stacking methods.

00:07:37.760 | So I don't necessarily love booking travel through the credit card portal, although there

00:07:41.520 | are times when it makes sense.

00:07:42.640 | And I think it makes more sense for flights in general than for hotels.

00:07:45.360 | And sometimes if you're booking a boutique hotel where you wouldn't have access to a

00:07:49.680 | better price otherwise, there are times when that can make sense.

00:07:52.800 | But generally speaking, I find the opportunities to get outsized value to be in transferring

00:07:57.280 | your points to the various credit card transfer programs.

00:07:59.600 | I agree.

00:08:02.720 | I want to come back to the flight side of the travel portal, because two things are

00:08:06.720 | interesting.

00:08:07.200 | One, I believe American just announced that you are not going to earn points or loyalty

00:08:13.360 | points or anything from flights that you don't book on their website, or I believe through

00:08:18.480 | some kind of corporate travel portals.

00:08:20.720 | So it could be the case by the end of the year, even who knows that similar to booking

00:08:27.200 | hotels in a travel portal, you might not earn frequent flyer miles on airlines or status

00:08:31.840 | if you book on these portals.

00:08:33.040 | I'm not sure if that's going to be the case.

00:08:35.520 | I'm curious what you think.

00:08:36.800 | But that's one aspect of flights that I think could potentially throw another wrinkle here.

00:08:42.560 | Yeah, it definitely might.

00:08:44.640 | I think this is one of those things that's still developing, and we're going to have

00:08:47.680 | to see how it all shakes out, because I think American's intention is to force any portals

00:08:54.080 | or any types of travel agencies to follow their rules and presumably to give them opportunities

00:09:01.360 | to earn more or price the flights higher when you're booking through someone else rather

00:09:06.240 | than directly through American.

00:09:07.440 | I don't know exactly what their goal is, but I think I get the sense that they're going

00:09:11.440 | to have a system to approve various travel agencies.

00:09:14.560 | And so maybe the credit card companies will jump through whatever hoops they need to for

00:09:18.240 | people to earn miles.

00:09:19.280 | It's hard to say.

00:09:20.320 | I think it's kind of a short sighted system, to be honest with you, because commissions

00:09:24.240 | on airline tickets are so low that I can't imagine they can squeeze all that much more

00:09:29.280 | out of this.

00:09:29.680 | It seemed kind of silly to me, but you're right.

00:09:31.760 | I mean, if other airlines follow suit on that and it becomes the case that you can't earn

00:09:35.520 | frequent flyer miles and elite status when you're booking through your credit card portal,

00:09:38.960 | that will more or less to me destroy the value of booking through a credit card portal in

00:09:43.200 | the vast majority of situations.

00:09:44.880 | Yep.

00:09:47.120 | The only two things I'll flag also just considerations for the portal, because if you have a Chase

00:09:51.680 | Sapphire Reserve card and you're like 1.5 cents, that can seem pretty compelling.

00:09:56.720 | One is when things go wrong, you're often having to deal with the travel portal.

00:10:03.360 | And so I've told a couple of stories about this in the past, but I had a flight and a

00:10:07.120 | friend was on the same flight.

00:10:08.320 | We wanted to cancel and take a different one.

00:10:10.320 | I booked with the airline.

00:10:11.840 | So I went to the desk and said, "Hey, the flight's delayed six hours.

00:10:14.400 | Can you cancel it?"

00:10:15.360 | He had to call Amex Travel.

00:10:17.120 | He was still on the phone with Amex Travel while we were taking off on the other flight.

00:10:21.200 | And so that's one.

00:10:23.440 | Same thing is sometimes true with hotel chains.

00:10:25.600 | And then also the pricing.

00:10:27.200 | I would say, like you mentioned, you might have access to other deals, but there might

00:10:30.800 | just be different pricing.

00:10:31.840 | So I would say always, if you're looking to book on the portal, thinking you're getting

00:10:35.840 | that 1.25 or 1.5 cents of extra added value, make sure you go somewhere else and look at

00:10:41.520 | the price.

00:10:42.160 | And I can't remember which blog post, but I'll link to it in the show notes.

00:10:46.560 | Someone went out and said, "Looked at all these flights on all these different portals."

00:10:49.600 | It might have been your guises.

00:10:50.720 | And in some cases, the flights in the portal are actually a little cheaper, especially

00:10:55.360 | for some international flights, often in business.

00:10:57.920 | And in some cases, they were much more expensive.

00:11:00.560 | So if you're going to pay a premium to book in the portal, it's also obviously not as

00:11:05.120 | good of a deal as you think.

00:11:06.080 | Yeah, absolutely.

00:11:07.760 | And I mean, on the flip side, there are times when booking through the portal will be beneficial.

00:11:11.920 | I mean, there are times, Amex has programs, for instance, with some airlines where you

00:11:15.520 | may actually get a better deal booking through their credit card portal.

00:11:18.480 | But those times are more few and far between.

00:11:20.640 | And like you said, you got to shop around.

00:11:22.240 | You got to make sure that you know that you're getting a good deal because you aren't always.

00:11:26.560 | And that affects the value you're getting.

00:11:28.160 | So all of a sudden, that 1.5 cents might not be 1.5 cents, it might be 1.35 cents, or

00:11:32.720 | maybe it's 1.15 cents, or you have to kind of shop around and figure that out.

00:11:36.720 | And again, like I said, I typically find the opportunities to get far more value than that

00:11:42.000 | with the various airline and hotel programs to be so abundant that it's rare for me to

00:11:49.520 | find a situation where I would like to book travel through the credit card portal.

00:11:53.120 | And like you said, I mean, those risks of irregular operations are an issue.

00:11:56.560 | I try not to make too many of my decisions about travel booking based on irregular operations

00:12:00.720 | because they happen irregularly.

00:12:02.560 | And generally speaking, I don't have those problems happen.

00:12:06.720 | But when they do, you're right, it's a headache and nobody wants a headache.

00:12:10.320 | Or at least you'd like to have less of a headache if you can.

00:12:12.960 | And booking directly through the travel provider makes a lot of sense for that.

00:12:16.320 | Okay, so I think we established a bunch of the ways that you can use your points for

00:12:20.800 | some value.

00:12:22.480 | I guess the only one we forgot is if you have the Schwab platinum card,

00:12:26.000 | you can transfer your points at 1.1 cents to your Schwab brokerage account.

00:12:30.240 | So I guess there's something slightly better than one.

00:12:33.200 | But I think the goal here is to talk about how you can do slightly more,

00:12:36.880 | if not a lot more than one.

00:12:38.960 | And so the premise is transferring your points.

00:12:43.280 | And we've talked about this a lot in the show.

00:12:45.840 | But I think maybe just to kind of wet people's palate,

00:12:49.120 | maybe we can give some examples.

00:12:50.800 | I have a couple, I don't know if you do, of a booking where the value of your points just

00:12:56.880 | far exceeded the one, one and a half cents of value.

00:13:00.160 | Well, sure, I'd love to hear about what you've done.

00:13:01.840 | Go ahead, tell us.

00:13:02.560 | Yeah, so the two examples that I have were kind of a practical one,

00:13:08.160 | and then just kind of an extreme one.

00:13:09.760 | So the practical one is, we live in San Francisco.

00:13:12.560 | And I think one of the most amazing beach vacation destinations you can get to in one

00:13:18.960 | flight is Tahiti.

00:13:20.000 | And it's notoriously expensive.

00:13:22.320 | And so I was looking for my wife and I, we've now been to Bora Bora a couple times.

00:13:27.840 | And the most recent time round-trip tickets in business class were $5,500 from San Francisco

00:13:34.000 | to Papiete, which sounds about right.

00:13:37.360 | It doesn't seem like a good amount of money to pay for an eight-hour flight.

00:13:41.280 | But that's what it was.

00:13:43.680 | And so no surprise if you want to book it in the portal.

00:13:46.960 | It was about 550,000 points at Amex.

00:13:49.520 | At Chase, I could have gotten one and a half cents per point.

00:13:52.960 | So it was about 365,000 points.

00:13:56.560 | But I went to United's website and I was like, "Wow, I could book it for 145,000 points."

00:14:02.000 | And so if you thought I could transfer those Chase points to United,

00:14:05.600 | I was getting twice as much value out of the point.

00:14:08.080 | So it ended up being about 3.8 cents per point.

00:14:10.560 | And that's where I think a lot of people would stop.

00:14:13.360 | And that's where I'd encourage people to think, "Well, maybe you could take this one step

00:14:16.560 | further."

00:14:16.960 | And a few weeks ago, I had Greg on the show and we talked about award tools.

00:14:22.080 | And one of the things we talked about was all these airlines have different partners.

00:14:25.920 | And so I didn't just stop at United.

00:14:28.000 | I said, "Well, if United has a good price,

00:14:30.160 | maybe I can book that through a partner of United for even less."

00:14:33.680 | And the flight on Aeroplan through Air Canada's program was only 110,000 miles.

00:14:38.720 | And so that's 5 cents per point.

00:14:41.600 | So if you figure booking in the Amex portal would have been about 5 times as expensive.

00:14:46.960 | And so I ended up getting 5 cents per point on that trip.

00:14:49.920 | And I just felt great sitting in that seat knowing that I was getting a deal

00:14:55.520 | and everyone else was probably paying full fare.

00:14:57.520 | That's a fantastic example because people who are newer to the partner redemptions,

00:15:02.560 | the people that typically just look at the credit card portal,

00:15:06.640 | I've often heard from people who've said, "Well, I've looked and Amex tells me it's

00:15:12.400 | going to be a million points for us to go here or go there."

00:15:16.000 | And the thing of it is that, like you said, if you just look through the credit card portal,

00:15:20.480 | you're just going to see prices based on the cash price of the tickets.

00:15:24.640 | Whereas most airline loyalty programs, most frequent flyer programs,

00:15:29.360 | have prices based on regions or distances that remain the same.

00:15:34.000 | And they're totally divorced from the cash price in most cases where it doesn't matter

00:15:38.960 | if the flight is more or less, the award price is the award price if you find award availability.

00:15:45.040 | And so it can make a huge, huge difference like that.

00:15:48.000 | And so I think that's a fantastic example showing that, yeah, I mean, you can get

00:15:51.360 | a much, much, much better deal than what you see if you only scratch the surface.

00:15:55.200 | You do have to dig a little bit deeper to find that because, of course,

00:15:57.760 | you had to know which partners to search and know where to search for those awards.

00:16:02.160 | And then, of course, you have to know about transferring the points and booking it.

00:16:05.600 | But all of those things are very learnable.

00:16:07.680 | And with a little bit of effort, look at that.

00:16:09.360 | I mean, you saved yourself.

00:16:11.120 | Gosh, I mean, what is that?

00:16:12.320 | 80% of the points, essentially, per passenger.

00:16:15.360 | Exactly. Yeah.

00:16:15.920 | Yeah.

00:16:16.800 | Yeah.

00:16:17.040 | And the goal of this episode is we're going to walk you through that entire process.

00:16:21.360 | I'll give the other examples a bit more extreme because I didn't take this flight.

00:16:25.280 | But if you wanted to book a flight from Houston to Abu Dhabi...

00:16:28.640 | And this might have changed now with some of these recent devaluations.

00:16:32.560 | But if you wanted to fly first class on Etihad, that fare was about $18,000,

00:16:38.720 | which meant on Amex, you're going to pay about 1.8 million points.

00:16:42.480 | And on Chase, if you have a Sapphire Reserve, by the way, if you just

00:16:45.920 | have to pay on your card, it might be the same 1.8 million points.

00:16:49.600 | But it was a shy 1.2 million points, which is still a massive number of points.

00:16:55.280 | Right.

00:16:56.400 | But on Air Canada, at the time, when I looked,

00:16:58.800 | it was 130,000 miles for that exact same flight on Etihad.

00:17:03.120 | So that was $0.14 per point.

00:17:05.280 | So 14 times more value than you get in the portal.

00:17:08.320 | And I was doing the math in my head.

00:17:09.840 | I was like, "Wow, if I had an Amex Platinum card, and I'm buying a flight,

00:17:13.920 | and I'm getting $0.05 or $0.05 per dollar,

00:17:16.880 | and I can make those points worth $0.14, right?

00:17:20.080 | I'm getting 70% cash back."

00:17:22.160 | And this is where you have to slow down a little in this process and say,

00:17:24.960 | "Yes, that's true."

00:17:26.240 | If you were otherwise going to spend $18,000 on a first class ticket to Abu Dhabi,

00:17:30.960 | which is certainly not true.

00:17:33.280 | But like you said earlier, it feels good to get a deal.

00:17:36.400 | It does. It does.

00:17:37.840 | And while I think it gets murky in figuring out, "Okay, was that $0.14 per point?"

00:17:43.680 | Because you and I probably wouldn't have paid the $18,000 for that flight.

00:17:47.600 | And so maybe it's not worth $18,000 to us,

00:17:51.360 | but it's certainly worth more to me than flying Economy.

00:17:54.080 | And so if I can fly in that first class seat and have the good champagne and the caviar

00:18:00.320 | and the experience that goes along with all of that,

00:18:03.280 | then suddenly the flight becomes part of the trip.

00:18:05.440 | And like you said, you get the excitement of knowing that you've made a great redemption.

00:18:09.360 | And again, the savings are incredible.

00:18:12.000 | There are some people that save up millions of miles and points

00:18:14.480 | over years and years and years of using their credit card.

00:18:16.960 | And I just hate to see somebody waste those 1.8 million points on something

00:18:22.080 | that you could have gotten for literally 10% of that cost

00:18:25.280 | by just knowing which partnerships to look for and which things.

00:18:28.800 | So yeah, I think those are great examples.

00:18:30.480 | And I think there are also smaller examples, if you think smaller,

00:18:34.160 | where you can still get well outsized value for your miles and points

00:18:37.680 | by learning how to maximize programs.

00:18:39.920 | Those flights are the flashy, fun ones that I enjoy redeeming for.

00:18:43.520 | But even in a more practical sense, if you look at last minute flights,

00:18:47.040 | you have some sort of a family emergency that comes up.

00:18:49.600 | Often, flights at the last minute are exorbitantly expensive.

00:18:52.880 | And those are great opportunities to use miles and points.

00:18:55.360 | I've done that for family members a number of times before,

00:18:57.360 | where a family emergency came up and I was able to use a nominal number of miles to me

00:19:02.560 | to book a flight for a family member that was prohibitively expensive.

00:19:05.360 | So I think there's a lot of opportunities there.

00:19:07.520 | And those are definitely fantastic examples.

00:19:10.080 | So you need to learn how to do that,

00:19:12.240 | how to take advantage of those foreign airline partnerships, I think.

00:19:15.360 | I think that's the key.

00:19:16.800 | And it does take some time and some effort to learn.

00:19:19.360 | But I think that the return on investment is well worth it.

00:19:22.400 | And before we jump in, my one question is to someone listening who's like,

00:19:27.520 | OK, you know, last minute, you cherry picked two trips.

00:19:31.280 | Like, is this really going to be that hard?

00:19:33.600 | Like, can I really get value out of this?

00:19:36.320 | Or is this all going to be me looking and looking and finding nothing?

00:19:40.480 | What do you say to that person?

00:19:42.000 | You know, I think that like anything else,

00:19:44.640 | you get the value out for the effort that you put into it.

00:19:47.920 | And so does it require some effort in terms of learning how to do this stuff?

00:19:52.320 | Yeah, you know, of course it does.

00:19:53.760 | But is the juice worth the squeeze?

00:19:55.840 | Well, yeah, it absolutely is.

00:19:57.760 | I mean, we travel like this all the time.

00:19:59.440 | My family travels very frequently.

00:20:01.360 | I do find awards.

00:20:02.480 | It does require a slightly different perspective in terms of how you look at booking travel.

00:20:06.240 | And we'll talk about flexibilities and things a little bit later on and how to find those things.

00:20:11.200 | But I mean, you put in a little bit of effort

00:20:13.680 | and you could be flying first class for next to nothing.

00:20:16.480 | And that is a pretty fantastic feeling.

00:20:19.200 | You know, with a modicum of effort, you can save yourself tons and tons of money.

00:20:23.280 | Or what I often tell people is I spend less money than most people I know on vacation,

00:20:29.040 | but I get far more vacations and far more comfortable experiences

00:20:34.320 | because you do have plenty of those opportunities to travel around the world

00:20:38.400 | and feel like you're not paying for it, to be honest.

00:20:40.560 | I mean, you'll pay your award taxes and fees.

00:20:43.360 | But when you're using Monopoly money to pay for the ticket

00:20:45.920 | and you're still getting the champagne and the caviar

00:20:48.480 | and the onboard chef or the shower or whatever it might be,

00:20:51.680 | it certainly feels pretty incredible.

00:20:53.680 | Are there any people listening who you'd say, you know what?

00:20:56.560 | If you're X, Y or Z, maybe this isn't for you.

00:20:59.760 | And maybe you're not going to be able to get this value.

00:21:01.760 | Yeah, I mean, if you're the type of person that doesn't enjoy gamifying things,

00:21:07.280 | you know, if you're somebody who wants to just get online and you have a trip in mind,

00:21:11.920 | you want to go to Paris for the 4th of July.

00:21:14.400 | And you just want to get that out of the way

00:21:16.240 | because you hate the planning part and the booking part.

00:21:18.560 | And you just want to book it and, you know, use your car to be done with it.

00:21:22.000 | And like that person exists.

00:21:24.000 | I know it does plenty of people in my family and my friend circle live in that world.

00:21:28.000 | And that's what they would prefer to do.

00:21:30.080 | And so, you know, if you don't want to have to put some time into it,

00:21:33.440 | and if you have very limited flexibility,

00:21:36.080 | then it may be a difficult world to get into.

00:21:38.560 | Although I'll caveat that with saying that

00:21:41.120 | you might think that your flexibility is limited,

00:21:43.280 | but not realize how you can be more flexible.

00:21:46.240 | And so I think that if you're willing to be open-minded

00:21:49.280 | in terms of how you look at trip planning,

00:21:51.280 | if you're willing to change some of your habits,

00:21:53.760 | then I think you're going to find that this world is actually pretty good

00:21:57.120 | for the vast majority of people.

00:21:58.960 | I mean, we have lots of people.

00:22:00.160 | I'm always surprised at the number of medical professionals,

00:22:02.320 | for instance, that are involved in this world.

00:22:04.000 | Anytime I go to a conference,

00:22:05.120 | I meet lots of doctors who do this because they have that type of brain,

00:22:09.920 | that wired brain to maximize things and, you know, to exceed expectations.

00:22:14.560 | And so they want to maximize miles and points.

00:22:16.960 | But of course, you know, if you work in that type of field,

00:22:19.360 | your schedule is a lot more rigid.

00:22:20.880 | So you have a lot less flexibility in terms of when you can travel

00:22:23.840 | and how long and which days.

00:22:25.680 | And yet many of them are still able to find ways to maximize this world.

00:22:29.120 | So I think that, you know, there are certain roadblocks where you could say,

00:22:33.360 | oh, you know what, this isn't going to work for me because X, Y, Z.

00:22:36.720 | But I think actually it's pretty good for most people,

00:22:39.440 | unless you just really don't want to be bothered

00:22:41.920 | with the booking and planning process for your trips.

00:22:45.440 | And, you know, in which case maybe travel just isn't for you.

00:22:47.520 | And there are certainly some people that don't enjoy traveling.

00:22:50.160 | And so if you don't enjoy traveling,

00:22:51.840 | then miles and points aren't going to excite you.

00:22:54.160 | Then you may want to focus on those cashback redemptions

00:22:56.720 | that we talked about before.

00:22:57.600 | Yeah. So maybe very briefly,

00:23:01.280 | let's mechanically talk about when we say transferring points,

00:23:04.720 | what we mean, how it works,

00:23:06.400 | and then we'll jump into how to start planning that trip.

00:23:08.480 | Sure. So each of the major credit card companies,

00:23:13.680 | issuers have their own native currencies.

00:23:16.400 | So for example, American Express has membership rewards points,

00:23:19.760 | or Capital One has their Capital One points,

00:23:21.920 | or Capital One miles, rather.

00:23:23.440 | Citi has thank you points.

00:23:24.560 | Chase has their ultimate rewards points.

00:23:26.560 | And so those in-house sort of monopoly money currencies

00:23:30.240 | all have a variety of different uses.

00:23:32.160 | So let's start with with Amex.

00:23:33.840 | Amex has, I think off the top of my head,

00:23:35.920 | I didn't actually look it up.

00:23:36.880 | I think about 14 different airline transfer partners,

00:23:39.520 | if I remember correctly, a couple of hotel transfer partners.

00:23:42.320 | And so they have a bunch of different foreign airline programs

00:23:45.680 | and you can transfer your Amex membership rewards points

00:23:49.040 | to any of those various airline programs

00:23:51.360 | and then use those airline programs to book tickets.

00:23:54.320 | So Amex, for instance, partners with Delta,

00:23:56.960 | and surely most people are familiar with Delta.

00:23:59.040 | You could transfer your Amex membership rewards points to Delta

00:24:02.560 | and then book a Delta award flight

00:24:04.480 | through your Delta account using your Delta miles.

00:24:06.640 | Now, you probably won't want to do that

00:24:07.840 | because Delta will probably charge you a billion miles for the flight.

00:24:10.560 | You're not necessarily going to make out better.

00:24:12.720 | It's not going to be one of those examples

00:24:14.880 | that you gave before in terms of getting great value

00:24:17.920 | out of your miles and points.

00:24:19.120 | But luckily, Amex has a lot of other good transfer partners

00:24:22.800 | where you can get fantastic value.

00:24:24.880 | In fact, you could transfer to Virgin Atlantic, for instance,

00:24:27.680 | which is one of Amex's many transfer partners.

00:24:30.160 | And in some cases, book Delta flights for far fewer miles

00:24:34.240 | than what Delta would charge for the same exact flight.

00:24:36.640 | You know, you gave some great examples before.

00:24:38.240 | And Business Class to Europe is one where

00:24:40.320 | sometimes I'll see Business Class tickets to Europe

00:24:43.200 | where Delta is charging two or almost 300,000 miles one way,

00:24:47.840 | where those flights at times are available through Virgin Atlantic,

00:24:50.720 | the same Delta flight for 50,000 Virgin Atlantic miles.

00:24:54.240 | And so you can transfer your membership rewards points

00:24:57.600 | to your Virgin Atlantic account.

00:24:58.880 | You'll have to link up your Virgin Atlantic account.

00:25:01.120 | So this requires step one, I suppose,

00:25:03.280 | signing up for a frequent flyer account with Virgin Atlantic,

00:25:06.080 | free, easy to do on their website,

00:25:08.000 | then connecting that to your Amex account

00:25:10.000 | within your Amex membership rewards account.

00:25:11.840 | You can connect various loyalty programs.

00:25:14.000 | So you can connect your Virgin Atlantic account

00:25:15.920 | with your account number.

00:25:17.360 | And then it's just a matter of clicking a button

00:25:19.280 | and telling them how many points you want to transfer

00:25:21.120 | to your Virgin Atlantic account.

00:25:22.640 | And most programs transfer instantly

00:25:25.200 | from the various credit card programs

00:25:26.720 | with just a couple of exceptions.

00:25:28.400 | So as soon as you click through, the miles are there,

00:25:31.520 | and then you could use them to book your ticket

00:25:33.360 | through that airline program.

00:25:34.480 | Yeah, I think one thing that I often hear from people

00:25:38.080 | who are a little bit new to the transferring world is,

00:25:40.720 | you know, they look at the transfer partners

00:25:42.560 | and they say, "Well, you know, I have an Amex.

00:25:44.720 | I got a million Amex points,

00:25:46.400 | but I always fly United.

00:25:47.680 | And so this isn't going to work."

00:25:49.040 | And I say, "Well, hold on.

00:25:50.480 | I think you got to remember

00:25:52.000 | both the list of transfer partners

00:25:54.080 | and the way these airline alliances

00:25:55.760 | and partnerships work."

00:25:56.960 | And so you use that Delta example, which was great.

00:25:59.360 | You know, you say, "I'm a Delta flyer.

00:26:00.800 | I only want to fly Delta."

00:26:02.400 | Well, a couple of caveats.

00:26:03.440 | One, most of the times when you're flying on points and miles,

00:26:06.240 | you're not going to earn points anyways.

00:26:08.320 | So whether you book a Delta flight with your points

00:26:10.880 | or you book a United flight,

00:26:12.320 | you're not going to earn your Delta miles

00:26:13.840 | and your Delta status anyways.

00:26:15.200 | So maybe you shouldn't worry about it.

00:26:17.200 | But also, you know,

00:26:18.560 | you mentioned Delta and Virgin Atlantic,

00:26:20.240 | but also Air France, KLM,

00:26:22.000 | they're a partner of Delta.

00:26:23.360 | And so even if you look at the transfer partners

00:26:25.920 | that your credit card company has,

00:26:27.840 | and I'll take Capital One as an example,

00:26:30.000 | I don't think Capital One has any of the major US airlines,

00:26:33.840 | you know, Delta, United, American,

00:26:36.400 | but they do have a partner in every single alliance

00:26:39.440 | that includes Delta, American, and United.

00:26:42.400 | And so it's possible from Capital One

00:26:44.880 | to transfer your points to, I believe, British Airways

00:26:48.720 | and probably Aeroplan,

00:26:50.480 | but I'm going off memory and I could be wrong here,

00:26:52.960 | and Air France.

00:26:55.040 | So you can get to alliances that might let you book

00:26:58.800 | the United, the Delta, or the American flight

00:27:00.720 | without actually being able to transfer them.

00:27:02.560 | Yeah, and so we should probably back up a step

00:27:04.960 | and talk a little bit about airline alliances.

00:27:07.280 | So, you know, you may or may not be aware

00:27:09.840 | that most major world airlines

00:27:12.080 | have partnerships with other airlines,

00:27:13.840 | and many of them belong to a major worldwide alliance

00:27:17.360 | of airlines.

00:27:18.320 | And so I'll take United as an example.

00:27:20.160 | They belong to the Star Alliance.

00:27:21.600 | So there's, I think, 27 or 29

00:27:23.760 | different Star Alliance airlines.

00:27:25.440 | And the reason that airlines created these partnerships

00:27:27.520 | in the first place is,

00:27:28.400 | let's say you lived in Palm Springs

00:27:30.560 | and you really want to go to a Greek island.

00:27:33.840 | Well, United doesn't fly from Palm Springs

00:27:36.240 | to an island in Greece.

00:27:37.360 | They don't fly to Greece at all from Palm Springs.

00:27:39.280 | In fact, I'm not even sure,

00:27:40.560 | they probably fly to Greece from somewhere,

00:27:42.240 | but I don't even think they do probably

00:27:43.760 | from California at all.

00:27:45.360 | So they can't get you there,

00:27:47.520 | but they still want to sell you a ticket

00:27:49.520 | if you're in Palm Springs.

00:27:51.120 | And so they'll sell you a ticket to fly United

00:27:53.760 | from Palm Springs to Los Angeles

00:27:55.440 | and Lufthansa from Los Angeles to Frankfurt

00:27:58.160 | and AGN from Frankfurt to Athens

00:28:00.480 | and on to whatever island.

00:28:01.600 | And so airlines created these partnerships

00:28:03.920 | to be able to do that,

00:28:04.720 | to connect their programs to do that.

00:28:06.320 | And the nice side effect of that for us

00:28:09.200 | is that you can use miles from one airline

00:28:11.600 | to fly any of the airlines in their alliance.

00:28:14.000 | So if you want to fly in United,

00:28:15.680 | you could use your United mileage plus miles,

00:28:17.520 | but you could also use miles

00:28:18.720 | from any airline in the Star Alliance.

00:28:20.640 | You could use Air Canada Aeroplan,

00:28:22.320 | as you mentioned before.

00:28:23.600 | You could use Avianca Life Miles.

00:28:25.600 | You could use Turkish Miles and Smiles.

00:28:27.760 | And so there's tons of different ones.

00:28:29.600 | And of course,

00:28:30.480 | all the major airline transferable currencies

00:28:32.640 | transfer to a variety of these transfer partners.

00:28:34.960 | And it's worth learning about that

00:28:37.200 | because of the examples

00:28:38.160 | like the one you gave before Chris,

00:28:39.600 | where the price can vary dramatically.

00:28:42.720 | I just flew to Hawaii recently

00:28:44.960 | and from Newark to Honolulu,

00:28:47.680 | United would have charged 25,000 miles

00:28:50.000 | for that flight if I booked through United,

00:28:52.080 | but I didn't want to book through United

00:28:53.760 | because I didn't want to pay that many miles.

00:28:55.200 | If I had booked through Singapore Airlines,

00:28:56.960 | I think it would have been about 20,000 miles

00:28:58.640 | these days they charge,

00:29:00.000 | but I didn't want to pay that many either.

00:29:01.520 | Aeroplan would have been 22,500 from New York,

00:29:04.560 | but I booked it through Turkish Miles and Smiles,

00:29:06.480 | one of their partners,

00:29:07.280 | which now charges 10,000 miles for that.

00:29:09.760 | Less than half what United charges

00:29:11.840 | for the same exact United flight.

00:29:13.760 | And the thing is,

00:29:14.240 | you have all of those options available to you.

00:29:16.320 | And when you have a transferable currency,

00:29:18.080 | like Amex membership rewards points

00:29:20.160 | or chase ultimate rewards points

00:29:22.080 | or Capital One miles,

00:29:23.520 | you've got just this plethora of different options.

00:29:25.760 | And so then it becomes a matter of figuring out,

00:29:27.840 | okay, well, you know,

00:29:28.560 | which airlines partner with which other airlines.

00:29:30.880 | And so that's where I say

00:29:32.000 | there is some time investment involved

00:29:33.680 | in determining which are going to match up

00:29:36.400 | with your needs and what's available.

00:29:38.240 | But oftentimes you'll find

00:29:39.600 | that the best deals are available

00:29:41.040 | with those foreign airline programs.

00:29:42.800 | And it makes sense.

00:29:43.520 | They want to collect revenue

00:29:45.200 | from American customers.

00:29:46.880 | The major airlines earn a lot of money

00:29:49.440 | by selling miles to the banks.

00:29:51.200 | And so all these foreign airline programs

00:29:52.880 | want to get in on that too.

00:29:54.000 | And it makes sense then

00:29:55.200 | that they would frequently offer better pricing

00:29:57.600 | than the U.S. based airlines

00:29:58.880 | because they have less access to U.S. customers.

00:30:01.680 | So it really pays to learn about those partnerships

00:30:05.280 | and figure out that, okay, yeah,

00:30:06.560 | I can use my Air France miles

00:30:08.560 | to fly on Virgin Atlantic,

00:30:09.920 | or I can use my Virgin Atlantic miles

00:30:11.600 | to fly on Delta or my Avianca Life miles

00:30:13.920 | to fly on United.

00:30:15.280 | And initially that seems overwhelming,

00:30:17.200 | I think, for somebody who's new to this.

00:30:18.560 | They're like, whoa,

00:30:19.280 | you just named like six different airlines

00:30:21.040 | and maybe you don't even know

00:30:22.320 | all of those airlines,

00:30:23.760 | haven't heard of some of them perhaps.

00:30:25.680 | And so it seems a little overwhelming

00:30:27.440 | in the beginning,

00:30:28.160 | but that's where, you know,

00:30:29.440 | there's a variety of different award search tools

00:30:31.200 | that can help you find those things.

00:30:33.040 | So, you know, these days,

00:30:34.880 | I think it's a little bit easier actually

00:30:36.400 | for a beginner to get into it

00:30:37.920 | because there's so many different tools on the market

00:30:39.600 | to help you figure out how those things work.

00:30:41.760 | - Yeah.

00:30:43.040 | And Greg, your co-host came on the show a few weeks ago

00:30:47.200 | and we did an entire episode on that

00:30:49.040 | and intentionally recorded that episode first

00:30:51.760 | so that if anyone's listening to this and says,

00:30:54.000 | oh, how do I use these tools?

00:30:55.920 | We didn't want to say,

00:30:56.960 | well, now that we've gotten you excited to book an award,

00:30:59.280 | wait three weeks to find out how to use the tools.

00:31:01.360 | So you can go back and listen to that.

00:31:02.880 | Maybe you already listened to it.

00:31:04.400 | Maybe you want to watch it on YouTube

00:31:05.760 | where I did some screen sharing

00:31:07.120 | so you can see how the tools work.

00:31:08.400 | And so that episode exists.

00:31:11.040 | So we're not going to cover today

00:31:13.040 | how to actually search for the flights using the tools.

00:31:16.720 | And we're not going to cover, you know,

00:31:18.480 | how to make sure that if you find it,

00:31:20.080 | like you did from New York to Honolulu,

00:31:22.720 | how do you figure out who's the best price?

00:31:24.480 | Because that's what the tools are going to do.

00:31:26.000 | Greg and I talked a lot about that.

00:31:27.840 | But what we are going to talk about

00:31:29.120 | is kind of the way you think about this.

00:31:31.120 | And I think the only other thing

00:31:32.720 | to kind of make sure you understand

00:31:34.480 | before we go forward

00:31:36.080 | is just because an airline has a seat

00:31:39.760 | doesn't necessarily mean you can book it

00:31:42.000 | with miles at a reasonable price.

00:31:44.400 | And so there used to be a distinction

00:31:46.320 | of like Saver and Standard

00:31:48.000 | and Saver was kind of released to partners.

00:31:50.880 | But how do you think about that world today?

00:31:52.880 | Well, things have changed quite a bit,

00:31:55.840 | at least on the United States front

00:32:00.160 | in terms of how the U.S.-based airlines operate,

00:32:03.200 | because the major U.S. airlines,

00:32:05.760 | and I'm talking about American, Delta, United here,

00:32:08.160 | have kind of changed their model from that,

00:32:11.200 | where nowadays they price their flights dynamically.

00:32:14.720 | And so you don't know in advance

00:32:17.040 | how much to expect to have to pay exactly.

00:32:19.520 | And obviously, this is a game for the airlines

00:32:21.200 | to figure out, OK, well,

00:32:22.720 | how many seats do we think

00:32:23.840 | we're going to sell on this flight?

00:32:25.200 | And so obviously, if they think

00:32:26.880 | they're not going to sell out the entire flight,

00:32:28.640 | then they're going to make some more seats available

00:32:30.320 | at lower redemption rates.

00:32:31.920 | And if it's a peak time, a peak destination,

00:32:35.040 | then they're going to make fewer seats

00:32:36.800 | or maybe no seats available

00:32:38.480 | at the cheapest redemption levels.

00:32:40.240 | So there is some challenge, I think,

00:32:43.200 | in determining what's going to work

00:32:45.360 | in terms of your schedule

00:32:46.880 | and where that pricing is going to be,

00:32:49.280 | because it does vary and not all seats are available.

00:32:52.800 | Now, a number of programs like American

00:32:55.040 | and Delta and United will make most seats

00:32:57.120 | available with miles,

00:32:58.160 | but they'll charge you a lot for those last seats.

00:33:01.280 | And so it pays to have a little bit of flexibility.

00:33:04.880 | And, you know, flexibility is one of those things

00:33:07.920 | that so I often tell people

00:33:10.240 | that if you want to travel more,

00:33:11.680 | you need one of three things in abundance.

00:33:13.840 | And the more you have of that one thing,

00:33:16.240 | the easier it is to travel more.

00:33:17.760 | And if you have more of more

00:33:19.520 | than one of these three things,

00:33:20.960 | then it becomes easier yet.

00:33:22.320 | And so the first thing, obvious money, right?

00:33:24.240 | If you've got millions and millions of dollars,

00:33:25.520 | easy to travel.

00:33:26.160 | You just pay for the flights you want

00:33:27.440 | whenever you want to travel, right?

00:33:28.960 | So that's number one.

00:33:30.000 | Number two is millions

00:33:31.680 | and millions of miles and points.

00:33:32.720 | If you've got an infinite number of miles and points,

00:33:34.240 | well, you can pay whatever number of miles and points

00:33:36.160 | it is for that last seat on the plane

00:33:38.240 | or through your credit card portal

00:33:39.600 | and not have to worry about it.

00:33:40.720 | Those two things are difficult

00:33:42.800 | for most people to get more of.

00:33:44.560 | The third thing that influences your ability

00:33:47.920 | to travel more is flexibility.

00:33:49.440 | And so, for instance,

00:33:51.040 | if you're retired or you travel,

00:33:52.560 | we work remotely rather,

00:33:54.640 | and you can travel and work while you travel,

00:33:56.800 | then you've got infinite possibilities, right?

00:33:58.880 | You can travel whenever you want.

00:34:00.160 | And so that is nice if you've got it,

00:34:03.840 | but most people don't have that much flexibility.

00:34:06.080 | And so you might think, well,

00:34:07.200 | I don't have any flexibility.

00:34:08.320 | I got to travel when the kids are out of school,

00:34:10.400 | or I have to travel when I bid my vacation

00:34:12.160 | a year in advance, so I'm not flexible.

00:34:14.400 | But I think it just requires looking

00:34:16.160 | at your travel booking process

00:34:17.920 | a little bit differently than you have in the past.

00:34:20.000 | Most people decide, okay, well, this year,

00:34:21.600 | I'm going to go to Disney World

00:34:23.440 | or I'm going to go skiing in Colorado,

00:34:25.280 | or I'm going to go to Paris.

00:34:26.880 | And they say, okay, well,

00:34:28.080 | 4th of July, I'm off that week.

00:34:29.440 | I'm going to go to Paris that week.

00:34:31.040 | And they look at prices and book a ticket

00:34:33.440 | and hotels and everything else.

00:34:34.880 | And that's the normal way to book travel.

00:34:36.640 | But I often tell people that

00:34:38.960 | if you can have destination flexibility,

00:34:41.120 | that can actually have a huge impact

00:34:44.160 | on your ability to use miles

00:34:45.840 | and points to your advantage.

00:34:47.680 | And destination flexibility requires

00:34:49.600 | a seismic shift in the way that you plan travel,

00:34:51.600 | but it also has an incredibly outsized effect.

00:34:54.240 | So for instance,

00:34:55.440 | I look at travel a lot differently.

00:34:57.200 | I say, well, you know,

00:34:58.240 | there's a lot of places in Europe

00:34:59.360 | I'd like to visit.

00:35:00.080 | I love Paris.

00:35:00.800 | I'd be happy to go back to Paris.

00:35:02.480 | But there's also a couple of Greek islands

00:35:04.320 | that I haven't seen before

00:35:05.440 | that I would like to get to.

00:35:06.320 | And I always like to get to Italy.

00:35:08.240 | And so I'd be open to going to Europe

00:35:10.480 | just about any time.

00:35:11.680 | I also love the beach.

00:35:13.120 | So a tropical destination is always nice for me.

00:35:15.680 | And I don't really like to ski,

00:35:17.040 | but let's pretend that I like to ski.

00:35:18.640 | And so like, I want to ski

00:35:19.680 | and people like to ski,

00:35:20.720 | like to ski in new areas,

00:35:22.320 | new mountains, new places, right?

00:35:23.840 | So rather than saying,

00:35:25.360 | I'm going to go to Paris,

00:35:26.480 | I'm going to go to Aruba,

00:35:27.760 | I'm going to go skiing in Colorado.

00:35:29.200 | I say, those are all things

00:35:30.800 | that I would like to do.

00:35:32.160 | And so if I see a great opportunity

00:35:34.400 | for any of those things,

00:35:35.680 | I'm going to jump on that opportunity.

00:35:37.360 | And so I'll just keep searching

00:35:39.120 | and looking at various options

00:35:40.560 | and I'll say, oh, well, here, look,

00:35:42.080 | I found a great price to Dublin

00:35:43.600 | and I can get to Paris from Dublin

00:35:45.200 | for 20 or $30 on a cheap,

00:35:47.280 | you know, European airline carrier.

00:35:48.800 | But I got a great flatbed seat

00:35:50.400 | from San Francisco to Dublin.

00:35:52.000 | And that isn't something

00:35:53.360 | that's easy to find.

00:35:54.560 | So if I'm open and flexible

00:35:56.400 | with my destination,

00:35:57.360 | then I'll pick that

00:35:58.080 | and I'll let the destination

00:35:59.200 | kind of pick me.

00:35:59.840 | And so I'll be open

00:36:01.360 | to a variety of different places

00:36:03.280 | and see, OK, well, what deal pops up?

00:36:05.200 | Because the deal always

00:36:06.320 | pops up eventually.

00:36:07.760 | And, you know, maybe this year

00:36:09.040 | I'll go to Europe

00:36:10.640 | or maybe I'll see a great deal

00:36:12.320 | on a beach vacation to Aruba

00:36:14.320 | or maybe I'll see, oh, wow,

00:36:16.240 | there's four seats available

00:36:17.920 | on a flight to Santiago, Chile,

00:36:19.600 | and they have mountains there.

00:36:20.800 | And our summertime is their winter.

00:36:22.480 | So I can go skiing in July.

00:36:24.000 | And so I'll be open

00:36:25.760 | to destinations like that.

00:36:27.600 | And then that opens up a lot more

00:36:29.360 | because then you have

00:36:30.480 | a lot more opportunities

00:36:31.520 | to find safer seats

00:36:32.640 | instead of saying, OK,

00:36:34.000 | I'm just going to go here

00:36:35.120 | during this week.

00:36:36.000 | If you're like, I'm going to travel

00:36:37.200 | during this time period,

00:36:38.880 | but I'm kind of open to where I go,

00:36:40.880 | then it opens your possibilities

00:36:42.240 | to get massively outsized

00:36:43.440 | value out of your points.

00:36:44.400 | And, you know, Paris

00:36:45.120 | is always going to be there.

00:36:45.920 | So maybe I'll get there this year.

00:36:47.280 | Maybe it'll be next year.

00:36:48.160 | Maybe it'll be the year after.

00:36:49.200 | I'm sure eventually

00:36:50.000 | I'll run into a situation

00:36:51.440 | where that'll work out.

00:36:52.320 | But there's a whole world

00:36:53.520 | full of other destinations also.

00:36:55.360 | And I'm going to let the destination

00:36:56.800 | that becomes available,

00:36:57.680 | that fits my schedule,

00:36:58.720 | that provides an awesome deal,

00:37:00.240 | dictate where it is that I go this year.

00:37:01.840 | Or I guess one thing

00:37:04.560 | that I'm realizing now is.

00:37:05.840 | We have a little bit more

00:37:07.840 | flexibility in our time, right?

00:37:09.440 | We're both self-employed this year.

00:37:11.200 | Who knows how long that'll last?

00:37:12.880 | And so we can really crank up

00:37:14.960 | the flexibility on the time.

00:37:16.720 | And I think if you can do that,

00:37:18.720 | maybe you don't even have to be

00:37:20.000 | as flexible on the destination.

00:37:21.360 | Like there are a couple

00:37:22.720 | vectors of flexibility.

00:37:24.080 | And so I think the third one is flexible

00:37:28.080 | about how far before you leave,

00:37:29.920 | you know where you're going.

00:37:30.960 | And I've found sometimes

00:37:33.200 | if you have your heart set

00:37:34.240 | to go on Paris and to Paris

00:37:35.840 | in the summer with three people,

00:37:37.760 | you know, if you're flexible enough

00:37:39.680 | that you won't know when you're going

00:37:41.360 | until a couple days before,

00:37:43.920 | you could probably really increase

00:37:45.280 | your likelihood you could do that.

00:37:46.880 | I'm not going to recommend that path.

00:37:48.960 | You know, we'll get to like booking

00:37:50.640 | something and changing it later.

00:37:52.080 | But flexibility not

00:37:53.760 | just comes in destination.

00:37:55.200 | It could come in time of year.

00:37:56.560 | It could come in how far out you plan.

00:37:58.880 | And so all those things kind of play

00:38:01.680 | play to the whole situation.

00:38:02.880 | Yeah, I mean, I think that's a great point

00:38:05.360 | because the way you plan travel

00:38:08.240 | also absolutely has a lot of effect on

00:38:11.200 | what's going to be available to you.

00:38:12.640 | You know, when are you going to

00:38:13.920 | how far in advance

00:38:14.720 | do you need to plan this out?

00:38:16.320 | Because I think that your example there

00:38:18.320 | was a great one in the sense

00:38:19.520 | that you're right so that, you know,

00:38:21.360 | you talk about the best times

00:38:22.480 | to book award travel, right?

00:38:23.760 | And for I think for most people,

00:38:26.320 | probably one of the best times,

00:38:28.320 | if not the best time,

00:38:29.360 | is really far in advance.

00:38:30.880 | So airlines tend to release

00:38:32.560 | their schedule about a year in advance.

00:38:34.160 | And when they first

00:38:34.880 | release their schedule,

00:38:36.320 | there's generally speaking,

00:38:37.920 | and this is a broad statement,

00:38:39.040 | so it's not always going to be the case.

00:38:40.320 | But generally speaking,

00:38:41.200 | more of a chance

00:38:41.920 | that you're going to find

00:38:43.040 | those best price,

00:38:44.400 | saver awards availability

00:38:46.240 | close to when they release the schedule.

00:38:48.160 | And that varies, like I said,

00:38:49.200 | from airline to airline.

00:38:50.160 | There are some airlines that guarantee

00:38:51.520 | that they're going to release

00:38:52.400 | X number of seats

00:38:53.200 | when they open the schedule.

00:38:54.480 | And then other airlines

00:38:55.520 | that are less predictable like that.

00:38:57.200 | So it does vary some,

00:38:58.720 | but that tends to be

00:38:59.840 | one of the easier times

00:39:01.440 | to find seats to go somewhere.

00:39:03.280 | So you do have to then consider, OK,

00:39:05.280 | well, I have to plan

00:39:06.160 | pretty far in advance for that.

00:39:07.520 | A second best,

00:39:08.960 | not necessarily the second best,

00:39:10.720 | but another best time to book

00:39:13.680 | is like you said,

00:39:14.480 | sort of at the last minute.

00:39:15.760 | If I want to go to Europe,

00:39:16.960 | booking a flight tomorrow

00:39:18.960 | is probably going to be easier

00:39:21.040 | than booking a flight

00:39:21.920 | three or four months from now,

00:39:22.960 | believe it or not,

00:39:24.000 | because tomorrow the airlines know,

00:39:26.640 | well, we're only going to sell

00:39:27.520 | so many seats on that flight

00:39:29.120 | that's taking off tomorrow

00:39:30.320 | between now and then.

00:39:31.680 | And so they're more likely

00:39:33.120 | in the weeks and days

00:39:34.160 | before departure

00:39:34.960 | to open up some seats.

00:39:36.400 | So being flexible in that way

00:39:38.080 | certainly can make a huge influence

00:39:40.160 | and may give you the best options

00:39:42.400 | to book a trip.

00:39:43.040 | But it's not the most practical

00:39:44.080 | for most people.

00:39:44.800 | Most people can't just wait

00:39:45.840 | until a couple of days before

00:39:47.040 | to find out where

00:39:48.160 | and when they're going.

00:39:49.200 | So most of us are going to have

00:39:50.800 | to either plan far in advance

00:39:52.480 | or search pretty often.

00:39:54.480 | And, you know,

00:39:55.120 | that's another thing that I do.

00:39:56.560 | I'm frequently looking

00:39:57.840 | for award flights.

00:39:58.560 | If I'm in line at the grocery store,

00:40:00.080 | I'm usually scrolling

00:40:01.280 | through award flights

00:40:02.240 | and availability

00:40:03.280 | and looking for trips

00:40:04.480 | that we can take

00:40:05.120 | or ways we can improve trips

00:40:06.480 | that we have booked.

00:40:07.280 | Yeah, yeah.

00:40:08.800 | When Greg and I were talking,

00:40:09.840 | we broke it into flight search tools

00:40:11.760 | and flight discovery tools.

00:40:13.120 | And I think the advent

00:40:14.480 | of these flight discovery tools

00:40:16.160 | is going to be really great

00:40:17.120 | for people who could say,

00:40:19.040 | you know, every few days,

00:40:20.160 | I'm just going to check

00:40:20.880 | where four people can go to

00:40:22.480 | that's warm in July.

00:40:24.720 | And, you know,

00:40:25.920 | this stuff changes so much

00:40:27.440 | that, you know,

00:40:29.040 | saying you check today

00:40:30.320 | and you didn't find anything

00:40:31.680 | does not mean that vacation

00:40:33.040 | in three months is off the table.

00:40:34.400 | That's a really important point.

00:40:37.280 | And one that really is worth

00:40:40.000 | repeating, I think,

00:40:40.880 | because award availability

00:40:42.880 | changes all the time.

00:40:43.840 | And that can be one

00:40:44.640 | of the most frustrating things.

00:40:45.840 | When you asked earlier about

00:40:47.200 | who is this not good for?

00:40:48.560 | And I said, well, it's

00:40:49.360 | I think I mentioned that it's

00:40:51.920 | perhaps not good for somebody

00:40:53.200 | who doesn't have patience,

00:40:54.320 | because you need

00:40:55.280 | some amount of patience for this,

00:40:57.200 | because exactly what you said is so true.

00:41:00.080 | I could search for an award

00:41:01.440 | flight today and tomorrow

00:41:03.120 | and the day after

00:41:03.840 | and see absolutely nothing.

00:41:05.440 | And then all of a sudden,

00:41:06.320 | a few hours later,

00:41:07.200 | search again and see

00:41:08.160 | that the floodgates have opened

00:41:09.360 | and there's tons of available seats.

00:41:11.120 | It can change at any moment.

00:41:12.320 | We don't know in advance

00:41:13.520 | when that's going to

00:41:14.320 | change all the time.

00:41:15.520 | And so you do have to be

00:41:17.120 | somewhat persistent and willing

00:41:18.960 | to wait it out and say, OK, well,

00:41:20.800 | I'm going to keep searching

00:41:21.840 | and look for something.

00:41:22.880 | And then also the other piece of it.

00:41:24.800 | And, you know, you mentioned

00:41:26.080 | talking about flexibility

00:41:27.840 | is that many award flights

00:41:29.760 | are changeable or cancelable.

00:41:31.520 | And depending on who you book through,

00:41:32.720 | the cost of that or lack of cost

00:41:35.840 | is going to vary from one to another.

00:41:37.760 | But being open to booking

00:41:39.680 | something that's not perfect,

00:41:41.040 | but is good,

00:41:42.160 | is also going to be another

00:41:43.600 | another major piece

00:41:44.640 | of your trip planning

00:41:45.600 | that's going to require,

00:41:46.400 | again, a shift from the way

00:41:47.520 | that most people

00:41:48.480 | look at planning travel,

00:41:49.600 | because most people

00:41:50.320 | just book a flight and that's it.

00:41:51.520 | They've paid for it.

00:41:52.240 | They can't get their money back.

00:41:53.600 | And so they're locked into it.

00:41:55.040 | Whereas when you're

00:41:55.680 | booking award travel,

00:41:57.040 | if I see something

00:41:57.760 | that looks pretty good,

00:41:59.280 | I'll jump on it and book it,

00:42:00.560 | knowing that later on

00:42:01.840 | I can continue to search.

00:42:03.120 | And if I find something better,

00:42:04.160 | I can cancel the first option

00:42:05.920 | and switch to the better option.

00:42:08.000 | And so, yeah, I think that

00:42:09.680 | that is something that you

00:42:11.120 | it helps to have

00:42:12.160 | that kind of flexibility

00:42:13.200 | and to look at booking travel

00:42:15.600 | in that flexible way.

00:42:16.720 | We've talked before on our show

00:42:18.480 | about finding impossible awards.

00:42:20.320 | And that's one of the tips

00:42:21.680 | and one of the key things

00:42:22.800 | that you really do need to be willing

00:42:25.040 | to continue searching

00:42:26.160 | and to book something

00:42:26.880 | that's maybe not perfect

00:42:28.160 | and work on improving it.

00:42:29.360 | Yeah, I mean, you said

00:42:31.120 | you talked about it.

00:42:32.000 | It's actually an episode.

00:42:33.120 | So I will link to the

00:42:34.080 | Finding Impossible Awards

00:42:35.440 | episode in the show notes.

00:42:36.560 | And the only thing I'll remind people

00:42:38.720 | that we didn't actually say

00:42:40.240 | is that when you transfer your points

00:42:42.000 | from any of these bank programs

00:42:43.680 | to an airline,

00:42:44.880 | you cannot transfer them back.

00:42:46.640 | Maybe in some rare case

00:42:48.960 | that there was a glitch,

00:42:49.840 | but I would say 99.999% of the time

00:42:53.040 | you're not going to.

00:42:54.240 | So look, if you transfer them

00:42:56.400 | to a program that is kind of

00:42:58.400 | pretty generally available

00:43:00.000 | for lots of things like Air France,

00:43:02.160 | KLM, where I feel like

00:43:03.600 | you'll probably be able to use them

00:43:04.960 | if something better comes up, great.

00:43:06.960 | But the risk being,

00:43:09.040 | I talked a few weeks ago

00:43:10.320 | about some devaluations

00:43:11.760 | and, you know,

00:43:12.560 | if you had transferred your points

00:43:13.760 | to Turkish Miles and Smiles,

00:43:15.600 | found a better deal

00:43:16.880 | and left all your Turkish Miles

00:43:18.480 | there for the future,

00:43:19.360 | that Turkish program,

00:43:21.520 | yes, those Hawaii routes are still there.

00:43:23.520 | So maybe you'll just have

00:43:24.640 | a lot of Hawaii trips in your future.

00:43:26.480 | But a lot of their international

00:43:28.480 | business class flights

00:43:30.080 | got much more expensive.

00:43:31.600 | So yes, you can cancel

00:43:33.760 | flights last minute and rebook,

00:43:35.360 | especially if you do it

00:43:37.360 | within the program.

00:43:38.720 | You know, you'll be you'll be fine

00:43:40.240 | because you're using those points again.

00:43:41.760 | But don't forget that

00:43:42.880 | if you transfer a bunch of points

00:43:44.480 | to an airline, cancel,

00:43:46.240 | get your points back,

00:43:47.520 | book on another program,

00:43:49.120 | you might not be able

00:43:49.840 | to use those points.

00:43:50.800 | Right, right, right.

00:43:52.960 | And I think that one of

00:43:54.160 | the biggest misconceptions

00:43:55.760 | among people that aren't

00:43:57.360 | wildly familiar with this world

00:43:58.960 | is that I think oftentimes

00:44:00.880 | people say, well, how do I transfer

00:44:02.160 | my United Miles to Air Canada

00:44:04.080 | or my Air Canada Miles to United?

00:44:05.760 | And you don't do that

00:44:06.800 | with the partnerships.

00:44:08.320 | You'll use your United Miles

00:44:09.680 | to book perhaps an Air Canada flight

00:44:12.160 | or use your Air Canada Miles

00:44:13.440 | to book a United flight.

00:44:14.880 | But you can't actually move the miles

00:44:17.200 | from one airline program to another.

00:44:18.960 | Once they're in that one airline program,

00:44:20.720 | like I said, they're stuck.

00:44:21.520 | That's it. They're there.

00:44:22.800 | And, you know, whether that's good

00:44:24.400 | or bad news for you is going to vary.

00:44:26.000 | But you can't.

00:44:26.880 | It's a one way street.

00:44:27.680 | You can't move them back.

00:44:28.880 | So generally speaking,

00:44:30.320 | I prefer to work with programs where,

00:44:32.400 | A, I know that I use them frequently.

00:44:34.480 | B, they don't have a high risk

00:44:37.120 | of devaluing soon.

00:44:38.560 | Although I say that

00:44:39.520 | and we never really know

00:44:40.960 | when a devaluation is coming.

00:44:42.480 | So you don't know when that value

00:44:44.640 | proposition is going to change.

00:44:46.320 | So there is some level of gamble in that.

00:44:48.400 | But again, if you find an award,

00:44:50.800 | that's good, that you're happy with,

00:44:52.560 | even if it's not the perfect one,

00:44:53.920 | then, you know, well,

00:44:54.560 | you've got a good award booked.

00:44:55.760 | And so that hopefully will hold up

00:44:58.160 | or, you know, in many cases,

00:44:59.600 | it'll work out OK for you.

00:45:00.960 | So but very good point

00:45:03.360 | that it is a one way street.

00:45:05.120 | And so you can't

00:45:06.080 | get that flexibility back.

00:45:07.360 | And the value of transferable points

00:45:09.600 | is really in the flexibility

00:45:11.040 | to transfer to various

00:45:12.080 | different programs.

00:45:12.880 | We've talked about the various

00:45:14.240 | transferable programs in our show

00:45:15.680 | lots of times before, too.

00:45:16.880 | And which which is the best

00:45:18.240 | transferable points program

00:45:19.600 | was episode 243.

00:45:20.960 | And that's not a topic

00:45:22.720 | that's easy to

00:45:23.760 | come up with a universal answer.

00:45:27.440 | But we've talked about the the power

00:45:29.680 | of transferable currency as many times

00:45:31.440 | and the power is the flexibility.

00:45:32.800 | Once you transfer to

00:45:33.600 | an individual airline program,

00:45:35.040 | you do give that up

00:45:36.320 | and you give it up in exchange

00:45:37.520 | for hopefully a great award.

00:45:38.880 | But you do give up the flexibility.

00:45:40.800 | Yeah, and the only other thing

00:45:42.880 | I just thought of is we talked

00:45:44.000 | about the best times to book, right?

00:45:45.440 | You could book right

00:45:46.240 | when the award calendar comes out.

00:45:47.600 | You can book last minute.

00:45:48.640 | If you're flexible, you can book any time

00:45:50.960 | because things are always changing.

00:45:52.640 | The one time I will remind

00:45:54.880 | people to consider is

00:45:56.400 | from time to time, various card programs

00:45:58.880 | offer these transfer bonuses.

00:46:00.400 | And so, you know, for for example,

00:46:02.640 | I think right now there's one to Avianca.

00:46:05.760 | There's one to Air France,

00:46:07.040 | depending on which credit card

00:46:08.240 | program you have.

00:46:09.200 | By the time we record and publish this,

00:46:11.200 | it might not be there.

00:46:12.000 | But in general, if you're keeping

00:46:14.000 | an eye on those things,

00:46:15.040 | and I know you guys post

00:46:16.160 | about them on your website,

00:46:17.200 | I send them out of my newsletter.

00:46:18.560 | That's a great time

00:46:19.920 | to start looking, right?

00:46:21.120 | You know, it doesn't mean

00:46:22.240 | you're going to find the trip

00:46:23.440 | and I wouldn't transfer

00:46:24.560 | unless you have something planned.

00:46:26.000 | But if all of a sudden you see,

00:46:27.280 | wow, I have a lot of chase points

00:46:29.360 | and I can get 30% more

00:46:30.640 | of them going to Air France.

00:46:32.320 | Might as well see if there's a vacation.

00:46:33.840 | We want to book for the family

00:46:35.520 | on Air France.

00:46:36.240 | And if you find it,

00:46:37.360 | what better time than

00:46:38.400 | when your miles go 30% further?

00:46:40.080 | Yeah, absolutely.

00:46:41.440 | Transfer bonuses are huge

00:46:42.560 | and they offer opportunities

00:46:44.240 | to get even more outsized value.

00:46:45.760 | I mean, you know,

00:46:46.400 | you gave great examples before

00:46:47.760 | where it's not uncommon in this world

00:46:50.080 | to get three or four or five

00:46:52.400 | or maybe 10 cents per point in value,

00:46:54.480 | depending on on how you determine

00:46:56.160 | that versus the cash prices.

00:46:57.520 | And yeah, if you can get 25 or 30

00:47:00.160 | or 40% more or whatever

00:47:01.680 | the case may be

00:47:02.400 | with the transfer bonus,

00:47:03.360 | then you absolutely want

00:47:04.640 | to take advantage of that.

00:47:05.920 | If like you said,

00:47:07.200 | if you found the trip

00:47:09.040 | that you want to book,

00:47:09.840 | but it's a great time to look.

00:47:11.040 | It does always make me look.

00:47:12.720 | I mean, that's certainly part

00:47:14.160 | of the the impetus

00:47:15.520 | behind offering those

00:47:16.400 | is to get us to look.

00:47:17.280 | And sure enough, I do,

00:47:18.560 | because I want to see

00:47:19.920 | if I can make my points

00:47:21.040 | and miles go a little bit further.

00:47:22.800 | It's all part of that.

00:47:23.680 | Getting a great deal.

00:47:24.960 | And oftentimes some of those programs,

00:47:26.640 | like you mentioned, Air France,

00:47:27.760 | Avianca Life Miles,

00:47:28.960 | they frequently offer

00:47:30.400 | some of the best deals

00:47:31.440 | in award travel at their full prices.

00:47:33.920 | So if you're able

00:47:34.480 | to get a transfer bonus

00:47:35.680 | and you found a trip

00:47:37.360 | that you want to book,

00:47:38.160 | then you can get

00:47:38.640 | a really incredible deal.

00:47:39.680 | Yeah.

00:47:41.220 | Let's talk a little bit

00:47:43.120 | about the practical ways

00:47:44.800 | that you're doing

00:47:45.360 | some of these searching

00:47:46.640 | things like positioning flights

00:47:48.480 | or just finding

00:47:49.520 | one particular leg first.

00:47:51.040 | How do you actually structure a trip?

00:47:52.960 | You know, you mentioned

00:47:54.000 | I'm always looking.

00:47:54.960 | What exactly are you looking for?

00:47:57.200 | Yeah, that's a great question,

00:47:59.440 | because this is also a big change

00:48:01.600 | from the way people

00:48:02.240 | that don't use points and miles

00:48:03.760 | look at booking travel.

00:48:05.920 | And so for me, I tend to like

00:48:08.000 | to use my miles and points

00:48:09.200 | to fly in business class

00:48:10.400 | because it's comfortable

00:48:11.920 | on international business class routes,

00:48:13.600 | long haul international

00:48:14.480 | business class routes.

00:48:15.360 | We're talking about

00:48:16.000 | usually a flatbed seat

00:48:17.440 | so I can get a full night's sleep,

00:48:19.120 | a good meal and arrive

00:48:20.960 | rested and comfortable

00:48:21.920 | and ready to hit the ground running.

00:48:23.120 | And then that's become

00:48:24.080 | super valuable to me.

00:48:25.120 | That's something that I never

00:48:26.000 | would have paid for

00:48:26.880 | before I started

00:48:28.800 | using miles and points.

00:48:30.080 | But once I started using them,

00:48:31.600 | it's something that

00:48:32.160 | I've gotten so used to

00:48:33.520 | that I have a hard time

00:48:34.880 | letting that go,

00:48:35.680 | because it's great to be able

00:48:37.040 | to not waste that first day

00:48:38.880 | recovering from jet lag.

00:48:40.560 | And so because that's

00:48:42.320 | what matters to me,

00:48:43.280 | getting that good night's

00:48:44.240 | sleep and a good meal

00:48:45.440 | and having that comfortable

00:48:46.640 | travel experience.

00:48:47.920 | I start with finding

00:48:49.680 | that long haul flight.

00:48:51.200 | So I'm located in upstate

00:48:53.280 | New York in a small town

00:48:54.480 | because I'm drivable

00:48:56.160 | to New York City.

00:48:57.120 | I'll start with looking

00:48:58.240 | at flights from New York City

00:48:59.600 | and I'll say, OK, well,

00:49:00.640 | let me look at flights

00:49:02.240 | from New York City to London

00:49:04.000 | or to Paris or wherever it is

00:49:05.840 | that I'm looking to find.

00:49:07.200 | And let me see if I can find

00:49:08.400 | that long haul flight first.

00:49:10.560 | And if I found that, well, great.

00:49:12.960 | Then if I need a connector

00:49:14.240 | from my home airport

00:49:15.680 | to get to New York City,

00:49:16.960 | then I can look at

00:49:18.080 | booking that either

00:49:19.120 | separately or in conjunction.

00:49:20.640 | But I definitely start

00:49:21.920 | with the long haul flights first.

00:49:23.360 | And another sort of similar,

00:49:26.480 | but different example

00:49:27.280 | is if I'm looking to go to Asia,

00:49:29.040 | I will look at flights from Chicago

00:49:31.360 | and flights from San Francisco

00:49:33.120 | because there are far more airlines

00:49:35.200 | that serve Asia from those places

00:49:37.520 | than well, or at least

00:49:38.640 | there are airlines that serve

00:49:40.400 | Asia from those places.

00:49:41.440 | And there are not airlines

00:49:42.480 | that serve Asia

00:49:43.200 | from my home airport.

00:49:44.560 | So I'll look for the long

00:49:45.680 | haul flights first.

00:49:46.880 | And so if I find a good

00:49:48.240 | long haul flight,

00:49:49.520 | then I'll say, OK,

00:49:50.400 | well, which airline alliance is that?

00:49:52.880 | And so if it's a Star Alliance airline,

00:49:55.520 | let's say I want to go to Tokyo

00:49:56.560 | and I find a great flight

00:49:57.440 | from Chicago to Tokyo.

00:49:59.360 | I don't live in Chicago.

00:50:00.400 | I live in upstate New York,

00:50:01.600 | but I'm one flight away from Chicago.

00:50:03.440 | I can fly United

00:50:04.960 | from Albany to Chicago.

00:50:07.360 | And because United is also

00:50:09.200 | on the Star Alliance,

00:50:10.240 | then I might be able to get

00:50:11.520 | that entire trip booked together.

00:50:13.600 | But what I don't want to do

00:50:14.800 | is start by searching from Albany,

00:50:16.800 | because then if that short,

00:50:18.960 | you know, two hour flight

00:50:19.920 | from Albany to Chicago

00:50:21.280 | is not available as an award,

00:50:23.280 | I'm not going to see

00:50:24.160 | that long haul flight

00:50:25.200 | that I really care about

00:50:26.240 | from Chicago to Tokyo,

00:50:27.600 | simply because that one

00:50:29.840 | small leg is not available.

00:50:32.080 | And flights from Albany to Chicago

00:50:33.600 | are not terribly expensive.

00:50:35.200 | So I'll sometimes look at

00:50:36.480 | piecing things together.

00:50:37.840 | And so I'll find that long haul

00:50:39.520 | flight from Chicago to Tokyo,

00:50:41.760 | and maybe I'll book that

00:50:43.760 | and then book a separate

00:50:44.640 | positioning flight to get

00:50:45.680 | from Albany to Chicago.

00:50:46.880 | And that opens up my options,

00:50:48.400 | because now I can use miles

00:50:49.760 | and fly whichever carrier

00:50:51.040 | it is that offers the best deal

00:50:52.720 | to get from Albany to Chicago.

00:50:54.240 | I could fly United

00:50:55.280 | or American Airlines or Southwest

00:50:57.680 | or all the various options

00:50:59.760 | I have available to me

00:51:01.200 | to book a positioning flight.

00:51:02.640 | And so we talk about

00:51:03.680 | positioning flights a lot

00:51:05.040 | because I will look at award

00:51:07.040 | flights from a variety of airports.

00:51:08.640 | Like I said, I live in upstate New York.

00:51:10.080 | I can drive to the New York

00:51:11.120 | City airports.

00:51:12.160 | I can get to Boston by taking a train.

00:51:14.720 | I can take a one hour flight

00:51:15.920 | to get to Washington, D.C.

00:51:17.440 | So I'll look at award

00:51:18.560 | availability from all of

00:51:19.760 | those cities very often.

00:51:21.760 | And like I said, if I'm

00:51:22.480 | looking to get to Asia,

00:51:23.280 | I'll also look at award

00:51:24.400 | availability from the West Coast,

00:51:26.160 | because the most important

00:51:27.280 | piece to me is getting

00:51:28.640 | that long haul flight.

00:51:29.760 | So I will usually look

00:51:32.000 | for those individually first.

00:51:34.480 | Then I'll look and see, OK,

00:51:36.000 | well, is there one single

00:51:37.600 | award from my home airport

00:51:38.880 | on that date?

00:51:39.920 | Because I need to find the dates

00:51:41.440 | that have the best price awards

00:51:43.200 | for the long haul flights first.

00:51:45.120 | And then we'll see if we can

00:51:46.400 | add in that positioning flight

00:51:48.080 | or if I have to book

00:51:48.880 | the positioning flight separately.

00:51:50.800 | And so if I have to book

00:51:52.160 | the positioning flight separately,

00:51:53.440 | then I'll look at, OK,

00:51:54.240 | what are my options for booking that?

00:51:56.080 | And many of the U.S.

00:51:57.440 | based programs offer

00:51:58.400 | free cancellations these days.

00:52:00.000 | So sometimes I'll book

00:52:00.960 | two positioning flights.

00:52:02.000 | So if I have that Chicago

00:52:03.040 | to Tokyo flight, I want to

00:52:04.080 | make sure I get there for that.

00:52:05.520 | So I might book a flight

00:52:06.640 | from Albany to Chicago

00:52:08.000 | on both United

00:52:09.280 | and American Airlines.

00:52:10.400 | So that way, if my United

00:52:11.360 | flight gets canceled,

00:52:12.560 | I'll have an American

00:52:13.440 | Airlines flight as a backup

00:52:15.280 | and I could always cancel

00:52:16.480 | one of them later if I've got miles

00:52:18.320 | in all the various programs.

00:52:19.600 | But I definitely start

00:52:20.480 | with the long hauls first,

00:52:21.520 | because those tend to be

00:52:22.880 | the hardest flights to find.

00:52:24.480 | And especially when you're

00:52:25.440 | looking at partner awards,

00:52:26.800 | those flights are the ones

00:52:29.040 | that you'll need to have

00:52:30.800 | availability on to start with.

00:52:33.520 | If you want to be able

00:52:34.240 | to piece together anything better.

00:52:36.240 | Now, there are some exceptions.

00:52:37.600 | There are some programs

00:52:38.640 | that will only price awards

00:52:41.840 | when you have a connection

00:52:42.880 | at the cheapest levels.

00:52:45.040 | And that's a little weird.

00:52:46.160 | American Airlines

00:52:46.960 | frequently does that,

00:52:48.000 | where if you start

00:52:49.040 | from New York to Paris,

00:52:50.960 | you may see an exorbitant

00:52:52.160 | number of American Airlines

00:52:53.440 | miles for that flight.

00:52:54.720 | But if you start

00:52:56.080 | in Florence, South Carolina,

00:52:58.400 | you may find a great deal

00:53:00.000 | on that flight that includes

00:53:01.760 | the New York to Paris lag.

00:53:03.360 | It's really weird like that.

00:53:04.720 | It's in fact,

00:53:05.440 | that's a real life example.

00:53:06.560 | I booked that a few days ago

00:53:07.840 | for a family member,

00:53:09.120 | and it was way cheaper

00:53:10.800 | to book it starting in Florence

00:53:12.480 | than it was to book

00:53:13.520 | it starting in New York.

00:53:14.480 | And originally I started

00:53:15.600 | looking from New York and thought,

00:53:16.720 | well, I can get them

00:53:17.360 | from Florence to New York

00:53:18.800 | separately if I have to.

00:53:20.160 | But I mean, kind of need

00:53:21.280 | to be able to be flexible

00:53:22.720 | and search both of those things.

00:53:24.720 | But again, I focus

00:53:25.840 | on the longest flights

00:53:26.720 | because those are

00:53:27.200 | the most important to me.

00:53:28.400 | And then I kind of go

00:53:29.440 | backwards from there

00:53:30.480 | and finding, OK,

00:53:31.520 | how will I get to that gateway

00:53:33.440 | from where I am?

00:53:34.480 | Can it be the same award

00:53:35.600 | or does it need to be

00:53:36.320 | a separate one?

00:53:36.960 | And, you know,

00:53:38.800 | I know if you were to book

00:53:40.240 | a American flight

00:53:41.840 | to get to Chicago

00:53:42.960 | and you had a United flight

00:53:43.920 | to Tokyo and that American

00:53:45.120 | flight's four hours late

00:53:46.240 | and you miss your flight to Tokyo,

00:53:48.000 | United doesn't care

00:53:49.280 | that your American

00:53:50.240 | flight was was late.

00:53:51.280 | Now, will they maybe try

00:53:52.880 | to accommodate you if they can?

00:53:54.640 | Yes, but not nearly

00:53:56.480 | as much as they would

00:53:57.360 | if you had booked

00:53:58.000 | it all through on United.

00:53:59.200 | Any advice to people

00:54:01.440 | when they're booking those flights

00:54:02.960 | to make sure that they don't end up

00:54:04.560 | in a situation like that?

00:54:05.680 | Yeah, that is a good point.

00:54:07.680 | And if you're able to book

00:54:08.880 | as a single award, that's great.

00:54:10.400 | So if you were able to find

00:54:12.240 | a United flight from Albany

00:54:14.240 | to Chicago that then lines up

00:54:15.840 | with a Star Alliance flight

00:54:17.120 | on ANA from Chicago to Japan,

00:54:19.680 | then that's ideal,

00:54:21.920 | because then if it's all

00:54:23.520 | booked as one ticket,

00:54:24.960 | then if your United flight

00:54:26.160 | is four hours late,

00:54:27.120 | United is going to accommodate

00:54:29.040 | you in one way or another.

00:54:30.080 | They'll get you on another flight

00:54:31.600 | to Tokyo.

00:54:32.640 | So you will be OK

00:54:34.320 | in that situation.

00:54:35.120 | But the scenario that you mentioned,

00:54:36.480 | where if you book

00:54:37.040 | a totally separate ticket

00:54:38.240 | on an airline,

00:54:39.120 | it's not a partner.

00:54:40.000 | Yeah, you're going to have

00:54:41.200 | a problem in that case.

00:54:42.640 | And so when I'm looking

00:54:43.920 | at positioning,

00:54:45.120 | I tend to be pretty conservative

00:54:47.200 | and I look at positioning

00:54:48.480 | the day before.

00:54:49.360 | And so if I have a really valuable award

00:54:52.160 | to me flying from Chicago

00:54:53.520 | to Tokyo on ANA,

00:54:54.720 | I will probably look at positioning

00:54:56.960 | the night before and staying

00:54:58.080 | in an airport hotel in Chicago.

00:54:59.680 | That way, if everything goes wrong,

00:55:01.600 | I can find another way

00:55:03.040 | to get to Chicago.

00:55:04.080 | And I find that that can be

00:55:05.280 | a good use of free night

00:55:06.640 | certificates that come

00:55:07.600 | with various hotel credit cards

00:55:09.200 | because those free night certificates

00:55:11.280 | that you get every year

00:55:12.160 | are usually limited

00:55:14.160 | in terms of how many points per night

00:55:16.080 | they can be used for.

00:55:17.040 | And so I'll frequently look at those

00:55:19.040 | as a great way to book an airport hotel,

00:55:21.520 | you know, for to get to that airport

00:55:24.560 | the night before on a positioning flight.

00:55:26.880 | Like we said, though,

00:55:27.920 | if you have the ability

00:55:28.880 | to book on an alliance airline

00:55:30.800 | and an airline in the same alliance

00:55:32.320 | as your long haul flight,

00:55:33.600 | that would be your first option,

00:55:35.360 | your best option.

00:55:36.640 | And leaving yourself plenty of time

00:55:38.960 | is obviously also a good tip.

00:55:42.000 | If you don't want

00:55:42.560 | to leave the day before,

00:55:43.600 | you can't do that.

00:55:44.720 | At least leave yourself

00:55:46.000 | plenty of wiggle room

00:55:47.360 | so that there's something else

00:55:48.480 | you can book if you need

00:55:49.600 | to drop back 10 yards and punt.

00:55:51.520 | And again, that's very different

00:55:53.200 | than people that don't

00:55:53.920 | book a word travel.

00:55:54.800 | You have to have the confidence

00:55:56.320 | and flexibility that you know

00:55:58.160 | you'll be able to book something else

00:55:59.600 | and the flexibility

00:56:00.720 | to change if you need to.

00:56:02.000 | But but we often talk

00:56:04.080 | about positioning flights

00:56:05.520 | and how to book those

00:56:06.720 | and how to consider

00:56:08.080 | the flexibility of them.

00:56:09.200 | I the way I gave the example

00:56:10.720 | is probably a poor one

00:56:12.000 | where I said, you know,

00:56:13.120 | book a United flight

00:56:14.000 | and an American Airlines

00:56:14.880 | flight as a backup.

00:56:15.600 | Maybe I'd book that

00:56:16.320 | American Airlines flight

00:56:17.360 | first thing in the morning

00:56:18.240 | and a United flight

00:56:19.120 | as a backup later on.

00:56:20.080 | So if my American flight

00:56:21.440 | ended up delayed by four hours,

00:56:22.960 | I could cancel that hop

00:56:24.080 | on the United flight

00:56:25.520 | because they partner

00:56:26.400 | with the example

00:56:27.600 | I gave out of Chicago.

00:56:28.720 | But that's certainly

00:56:30.320 | a good consideration

00:56:31.360 | when you're considering

00:56:32.240 | how you want to book

00:56:33.520 | your positioning flights.

00:56:34.640 | And how does this

00:56:36.960 | entire process change

00:56:38.240 | for someone who maybe

00:56:40.320 | doesn't care about business class,

00:56:41.840 | wants to take more trips

00:56:43.120 | and flies economy or

00:56:44.720 | or where does premium

00:56:45.680 | economy fit in here?

00:56:46.880 | How do you think about

00:56:47.520 | the various classes

00:56:48.720 | and how it might affect

00:56:49.760 | redeeming your points?

00:56:51.520 | Yeah, that's a really good question

00:56:54.400 | because economy class awards.

00:56:56.640 | So when I when I got

00:56:57.600 | into this world of miles

00:56:58.800 | and points and I was new to it

00:56:59.920 | before I actually

00:57:01.200 | redeem miles and points at all,

00:57:02.640 | I never even knew

00:57:04.560 | that flatbed seats

00:57:05.520 | existed on an airplane.

00:57:06.640 | My wife and I traveled

00:57:08.160 | by the shoestring kind of budget

00:57:10.800 | and did a lot of backpacking

00:57:12.800 | style things and just went

00:57:14.640 | wherever the cheapest

00:57:15.520 | airfares would take us.

00:57:17.040 | And so I long, long,

00:57:19.600 | long traveled in economy class

00:57:21.440 | and appreciate

00:57:22.320 | the desire to travel more.

00:57:24.240 | And when I got into this,

00:57:25.200 | initially, I thought it was crazy

00:57:27.040 | that people redeemed miles

00:57:28.080 | and points for business

00:57:28.960 | in first class because

00:57:29.840 | the front end of the plane

00:57:30.720 | gets there the same time

00:57:31.600 | as the back end of the plane.

00:57:33.200 | So it doesn't make that

00:57:34.240 | much of a difference.

00:57:35.120 | I thought anyway,

00:57:36.640 | over time, I realized

00:57:38.240 | that the difference in pricing

00:57:39.680 | between economy class awards

00:57:41.200 | and business class awards

00:57:42.560 | is far less than the difference

00:57:44.640 | in pricing with cash.

00:57:46.320 | And so over time,

00:57:47.600 | it became apparent to me

00:57:48.720 | that it just made more sense

00:57:49.840 | to book business class flights

00:57:51.200 | because the cost difference

00:57:52.640 | was not that big.

00:57:53.760 | And there are a lot of ways

00:57:54.800 | to earn more miles and points.

00:57:56.320 | So I didn't necessarily

00:57:58.880 | have to sacrifice traveling

00:58:00.400 | as much as it was

00:58:01.200 | that I wanted to.

00:58:02.000 | And my initial thought

00:58:02.960 | was exactly what you said,

00:58:04.080 | that I'd like to just travel

00:58:05.520 | as much as I can

00:58:06.480 | rather than focusing on comfort.

00:58:08.800 | So I'll say that

00:58:10.720 | that certainly is something

00:58:11.760 | that I've changed on over time.

00:58:13.360 | And when it comes to redeeming

00:58:14.560 | flights in economy class,

00:58:16.160 | there are situations

00:58:17.120 | where it can be a phenomenal value,

00:58:18.640 | particularly if you're located

00:58:21.280 | in a small airport,

00:58:22.240 | not a major airport hub,

00:58:23.760 | and/or you're traveling

00:58:24.880 | at a peak time.

00:58:25.520 | There are times where

00:58:26.240 | you can get incredible value

00:58:27.760 | out of your miles and points.

00:58:29.040 | There are other times, though,

00:58:30.080 | where it doesn't present

00:58:31.200 | fantastic value,

00:58:32.240 | especially as compared

00:58:33.600 | to booking through

00:58:34.320 | credit card portals.

00:58:35.280 | I frequently run into

00:58:37.200 | situations where I say,

00:58:38.160 | well, using my chase points

00:58:39.760 | at one and a half cents per point,

00:58:41.200 | I could actually probably pay

00:58:42.400 | a little bit less

00:58:43.440 | than the cost of an award ticket.

00:58:44.640 | I was just looking at an award

00:58:45.760 | last night where that was the case.

00:58:46.960 | And I said, well,

00:58:47.440 | maybe I'm better off

00:58:48.240 | using my points

00:58:49.200 | at one and a half cents per point

00:58:50.640 | than booking an economy class flight.

00:58:53.040 | So you'll have to look at that

00:58:54.960 | and shop around in the same way

00:58:56.400 | that we talked about before.

00:58:57.680 | That said, there are plenty

00:58:58.720 | of good economy class sweet spots.

00:59:00.640 | And premium economy

00:59:01.760 | is something that

00:59:02.960 | I think hasn't been

00:59:03.840 | written about very much

00:59:05.200 | and explored very much comparatively,

00:59:07.440 | because until recently,

00:59:09.440 | a lot of airline programs

00:59:10.800 | didn't have an award chart

00:59:12.240 | for premium economy tickets.

00:59:14.400 | It was something that

00:59:15.040 | not all airlines offered.

00:59:16.480 | And they still probably

00:59:17.920 | don't all offer

00:59:18.960 | a premium economy experience.

00:59:20.400 | And there's huge variance

00:59:21.760 | in what that means

00:59:22.720 | from one airline to another.

00:59:24.000 | But it's becoming

00:59:25.600 | more and more prevalent.

00:59:26.880 | And I think that premium economy

00:59:28.320 | is actually a sweet spot

00:59:29.920 | that doesn't get

00:59:30.960 | talked about enough,

00:59:31.840 | because in many cases,

00:59:33.520 | the experience of flying

00:59:34.480 | premium economy is very similar

00:59:35.920 | to what a first class flight

00:59:37.600 | within the United States is.

00:59:39.280 | So it's significantly

00:59:40.160 | more comfortable

00:59:40.880 | than a regular economy class flight.

00:59:42.800 | And with many programs,

00:59:44.080 | premium economy doesn't cost

00:59:45.600 | much more than an economy class flight.

00:59:47.520 | And I think the level of comfort

00:59:48.960 | it probably provides

00:59:50.160 | exceeds the difference in price.

00:59:52.560 | And so I think that's

00:59:53.200 | something worth considering.

00:59:54.800 | And, you know, again,

00:59:55.680 | when I go back to the fact

00:59:56.560 | that I started this out,

00:59:58.800 | anticipating that I would

01:00:00.160 | only fly an economy class,

01:00:01.680 | actually.

01:00:02.400 | And over time,

01:00:03.040 | I came to realize,

01:00:03.680 | well, you know,

01:00:04.320 | the additional outside value

01:00:06.000 | I get out of flying

01:00:06.800 | more comfortably

01:00:07.760 | is worth it to me

01:00:08.640 | to redeem more points.

01:00:09.920 | And so you may find

01:00:11.600 | that same thing

01:00:12.240 | to be true with premium economy.

01:00:13.760 | And in economy class,

01:00:15.440 | I think the thing to consider

01:00:17.360 | is it really, really pays

01:00:19.920 | to know your various

01:00:20.880 | partner programs,

01:00:21.920 | because the U.S.

01:00:22.960 | based programs in general

01:00:24.240 | do not have the best

01:00:25.680 | economy class pricing

01:00:26.720 | for international awards.

01:00:28.240 | Now, domestically,

01:00:29.040 | sometimes those U.S.

01:00:30.000 | based programs

01:00:30.560 | are your only option

01:00:31.440 | for booking economy class awards,

01:00:32.960 | depending on whether

01:00:34.000 | they release availability

01:00:35.120 | to partners or not.

01:00:36.160 | But internationally,

01:00:37.280 | it's almost always

01:00:38.480 | going to be the case

01:00:39.200 | that you're going to pay

01:00:39.920 | far fewer miles

01:00:41.120 | with the right transfer

01:00:42.400 | partner programs

01:00:43.280 | in economy class, especially.

01:00:45.200 | So you'll want to learn

01:00:46.560 | about those things

01:00:47.440 | and look at sales.

01:00:48.320 | Air France, KLM, Flying Blue,

01:00:49.840 | for instance,

01:00:50.720 | frequently offers promo awards

01:00:52.640 | every month.

01:00:53.120 | They offer promo rewards.

01:00:54.800 | And very often

01:00:56.400 | there are awards on sale

01:00:57.760 | from U.S. cities

01:00:59.120 | in economy class at great prices.

01:01:01.040 | I mean, we're talking 10, 12,

01:01:03.120 | 15000 miles one way to Europe,

01:01:05.200 | plus the taxes and fees,

01:01:07.120 | which can be an amazing value,

01:01:08.640 | depending on where you're starting

01:01:09.920 | and when you're looking to travel.

01:01:11.200 | But it does vary.

01:01:12.240 | And so you do have to

01:01:13.520 | frequently compare

01:01:14.480 | against cash prices,

01:01:15.760 | whereas the cash price

01:01:16.960 | of a business class ticket

01:01:17.920 | is almost always

01:01:18.640 | going to be many multiples.

01:01:20.080 | The in terms of the

01:01:22.160 | number of cents per point

01:01:23.120 | you're going to get out

01:01:23.600 | of your points compared

01:01:24.800 | to the cost of the award ticket,

01:01:26.560 | at least when we're

01:01:27.040 | talking about saver awards

01:01:28.320 | with economy class,

01:01:29.120 | that's just not always true.

01:01:30.160 | So you have to compare

01:01:31.760 | and see what your best option is.

01:01:33.200 | Yeah, make sure it's a good deal.

01:01:35.360 | But I will say I've seen

01:01:36.560 | a lot of availability in economy

01:01:38.640 | that is sometimes easier

01:01:40.000 | to find than business.

01:01:41.040 | Now, I have a great point.

01:01:43.760 | It's a little bit of a catch question,

01:01:45.440 | because I know they answer

01:01:46.560 | to some extent,

01:01:47.360 | but to someone listening that says,

01:01:48.800 | Nick, this all sounds great,

01:01:50.560 | but I have kids.

01:01:51.600 | Like, how does that

01:01:52.400 | change the whole thing?

01:01:53.360 | What do you?

01:01:54.480 | Yeah, you know,

01:01:54.960 | and that is something

01:01:56.800 | that I have direct experience with,

01:01:58.160 | because my wife and I started

01:01:59.760 | this travel game without kids.

01:02:02.160 | And so our very first

01:02:03.840 | award flight together

01:02:05.280 | was a first class award.

01:02:06.880 | We had never flown in business class,

01:02:08.640 | even forget about first class.

01:02:10.240 | And and that hooked us into this game.

01:02:12.960 | And and so we played the game

01:02:14.320 | pretty hard for a few years,

01:02:16.560 | traveling around just the two of us.

01:02:18.080 | And then, yeah, the game changed

01:02:19.280 | a lot when we had first one kid.

01:02:21.360 | And now we have to have a six year old

01:02:22.880 | and a three year old.

01:02:23.680 | And it is a lot different.

01:02:24.800 | In fact, on our frequent

01:02:26.000 | mile around the air show,

01:02:27.120 | we've talked about points

01:02:28.160 | for family travel episode 174.

01:02:30.160 | We did an entire episode

01:02:31.520 | on the best programs

01:02:32.480 | for lap infant tickets

01:02:34.240 | and your best options

01:02:35.520 | when you're traveling with family.

01:02:37.280 | It definitely changes the game a lot

01:02:38.720 | in the sense that you need more seats.

01:02:40.080 | And the point you made about

01:02:41.440 | economy class being easier

01:02:43.120 | to find multiple seats

01:02:44.400 | is a very relevant one

01:02:45.680 | for family travelers.

01:02:46.960 | I think if you're looking to travel

01:02:48.480 | with three or four or five people,

01:02:51.040 | then finding award

01:02:51.920 | availability in economy

01:02:53.200 | or premium economy

01:02:54.480 | is generally far easier

01:02:56.080 | than finding availability

01:02:57.360 | in business class.

01:02:58.560 | And so that's

01:03:00.000 | one of those times where, yeah,

01:03:01.200 | if you want to travel with a group,

01:03:02.800 | then traveling economy class

01:03:04.160 | might make more sense

01:03:05.200 | because it will give you

01:03:06.240 | many more options,

01:03:07.360 | a lot more availability

01:03:08.880 | in order to book multiple people.

01:03:11.120 | But then there are also programs

01:03:12.640 | that are particularly good

01:03:14.160 | for releasing multiple seats.

01:03:16.400 | And this is where

01:03:17.120 | the flexibility comes in.

01:03:18.480 | And this makes a big difference

01:03:20.320 | in how I book travel.

01:03:21.360 | These days, the flexibility

01:03:22.640 | that I mentioned before

01:03:23.920 | is more important now

01:03:25.280 | because I'm looking for

01:03:26.160 | three or four seats

01:03:27.120 | or I'm looking for

01:03:27.920 | four seats these days.

01:03:29.200 | And so obviously

01:03:30.640 | being flexible is important.

01:03:31.680 | And also finding more ways

01:03:33.040 | to maximize your miles

01:03:34.080 | and points is important, too,

01:03:36.240 | because now those tickets cost me,

01:03:38.640 | you know, the cost of four tickets.

01:03:40.800 | You know, when I was a little kid,

01:03:42.160 | my uncle told me that marriage

01:03:43.520 | meant that a 50 cent hot dog

01:03:44.880 | would cost me a dollar

01:03:45.760 | because I'd have to buy

01:03:46.560 | one for her, too.

01:03:47.840 | And and that means

01:03:50.240 | it means it's two dollars.

01:03:51.760 | It's two dollars now.

01:03:52.800 | Yeah, exactly.

01:03:53.520 | And, you know, the prices

01:03:54.320 | have gone up a bit

01:03:54.960 | since he taught me that.

01:03:55.920 | So so, yeah, it definitely requires

01:03:58.400 | earning more miles and points,

01:03:59.760 | and it requires

01:04:00.480 | a bit more flexibility

01:04:01.920 | in terms of deciding

01:04:03.200 | where and when you're going to travel.

01:04:04.720 | It also influences, you know,

01:04:06.720 | which flights are

01:04:07.440 | going to be acceptable for you.

01:04:08.560 | When it was just my wife and I,

01:04:10.160 | if I had to make

01:04:10.960 | a couple of connections

01:04:12.320 | and take a couple of,

01:04:13.600 | you know, weird time to flights,

01:04:15.040 | that was no big deal.

01:04:16.160 | With kids, it's a little bit harder

01:04:17.600 | and direct flights are

01:04:18.640 | more valuable to me now

01:04:20.000 | than they were in the past.

01:04:21.520 | And so you do have to consider

01:04:23.840 | which are going to be

01:04:24.480 | your best options for those things.

01:04:26.320 | But it is doable.

01:04:27.680 | You know, here I am

01:04:28.880 | with a family of four

01:04:29.920 | and we travel very frequently.

01:04:31.680 | We travel quite a bit each year.

01:04:34.320 | And this year, in fact,

01:04:35.680 | we've got lots of trips planned

01:04:37.360 | and we do find availability for four.

01:04:39.600 | But it requires

01:04:40.720 | that constant searching

01:04:41.840 | and more of that flexibility

01:04:43.440 | that we talked about

01:04:44.400 | in terms of

01:04:45.360 | when you're willing to travel,

01:04:46.640 | how far in advance you plan,

01:04:47.920 | how much planning you do.

01:04:48.960 | I mean, it does require

01:04:50.000 | me to search more often.

01:04:51.600 | And sometimes I'll get lucky

01:04:52.720 | and hit the jackpot

01:04:53.760 | on the first search.

01:04:54.560 | But oftentimes

01:04:55.680 | I'll have to search quite a bit.

01:04:56.880 | And that's also

01:04:59.520 | another piece of this

01:05:00.720 | is where flexibility

01:05:01.920 | becomes super important to me

01:05:03.600 | because not all programs

01:05:04.720 | are created equally

01:05:05.520 | on a flexibility standpoint.

01:05:06.880 | Most of the major U.S.

01:05:08.000 | airline programs, American,

01:05:09.760 | United, Delta, Southwest,

01:05:11.440 | allow free cancellations,

01:05:13.200 | whereas some

01:05:14.080 | international programs

01:05:15.040 | like Avianca Life Miles,

01:05:16.320 | for instance,

01:05:16.800 | will charge you $200

01:05:17.920 | a person to cancel a ticket.

01:05:19.680 | And I didn't really think

01:05:21.440 | much about that at all

01:05:23.120 | for many years.

01:05:24.080 | But then last year

01:05:25.840 | we had a trip booked to Fiji

01:05:27.200 | and we're literally

01:05:28.240 | in the rental car

01:05:29.520 | on the way to the airport

01:05:31.040 | when my six year old,

01:05:32.240 | who had seemed low energy

01:05:33.600 | for the last couple of days,

01:05:34.720 | but insisted he felt OK,

01:05:36.480 | let us know that he definitely

01:05:37.680 | didn't feel OK.

01:05:38.880 | And and, you know,

01:05:40.880 | he got sick in the car

01:05:42.000 | and we said, OK, well,

01:05:42.880 | now we have to cancel

01:05:44.000 | this entire trip to Fiji

01:05:45.200 | that we had planned.

01:05:45.920 | And thankfully,

01:05:46.800 | we had booked it all

01:05:47.520 | with flexible miles and points

01:05:48.800 | where we were able to cancel it

01:05:50.160 | without paying any fees.

01:05:51.760 | And so I consider

01:05:53.040 | that type of stuff more now

01:05:55.120 | than I did when it was just me

01:05:56.960 | or just my wife and I.

01:05:58.400 | Those things are important to me.

01:06:00.720 | So you've got to consider that,

01:06:02.240 | I think, when you're booking

01:06:03.680 | and look into, OK, well,

01:06:05.200 | which program is going to offer

01:06:06.560 | me a low cancellation fee

01:06:08.080 | or no cancellation fee

01:06:09.920 | because kids get sick all the time.

01:06:11.440 | I don't know when

01:06:12.160 | that's going to happen,

01:06:13.520 | when I'm going to have

01:06:14.160 | to change plans.

01:06:14.960 | So that's a consideration.

01:06:16.160 | And there's a lot

01:06:16.560 | of other considerations.

01:06:17.360 | I mentioned lap infant tickets

01:06:18.640 | and the cost of adding a lap

01:06:20.240 | infant to an award ticket

01:06:21.920 | can just vary tremendously

01:06:23.440 | from next to nothing

01:06:24.640 | to a thousand dollars or more,

01:06:26.480 | depending on which program

01:06:27.600 | you book through.

01:06:28.400 | So knowing the best program

01:06:29.840 | for that, if you're going

01:06:30.720 | to travel with a lap infant,

01:06:32.480 | it can make a huge difference in cost.

01:06:34.560 | Yeah, I definitely recommend

01:06:36.640 | if you have a lap infant

01:06:37.760 | to go listen to that episode.

01:06:38.960 | We had one experience doing this

01:06:40.720 | and the award tools.

01:06:42.320 | I actually think there's one

01:06:43.440 | one award tool

01:06:44.240 | that maybe does this now,

01:06:45.280 | but in general,

01:06:46.320 | they're not going

01:06:46.800 | to tell you these things.

01:06:47.840 | And so I remember,

01:06:49.600 | you know, because some

01:06:51.040 | of the airlines say,

01:06:52.080 | oh, it's just 10% more

01:06:53.360 | miles for a lap infant.

01:06:54.400 | And some say, no,

01:06:55.200 | you've got to buy the lap infant

01:06:56.880 | at, you know, a fraction

01:06:58.320 | of the, you know,

01:06:59.280 | the retail cash price

01:07:00.720 | of that business class seat.

01:07:02.240 | And so we were looking

01:07:03.200 | to book a flight

01:07:04.080 | that we could have booked

01:07:05.040 | through three or four

01:07:05.840 | different programs.

01:07:07.120 | And it turns out

01:07:08.880 | that the one that was

01:07:09.600 | the cheapest number of miles

01:07:11.280 | would have cost us a thousand dollars.

01:07:13.440 | But the one that was 10%

01:07:15.040 | more miles cost us a hundred dollars.

01:07:17.360 | And so for us,

01:07:18.640 | had we had we used

01:07:19.760 | the cheapest miles program,

01:07:21.360 | the total cost

01:07:22.240 | would have been higher.

01:07:23.040 | Now, this is a small thing.

01:07:24.240 | It only matters to people

01:07:25.280 | traveling with small kids.

01:07:26.560 | And I will point out

01:07:28.000 | as we learned that

01:07:29.520 | relying on the bassinet on a flight,

01:07:32.320 | which many flights have,

01:07:33.440 | if you're flying,

01:07:34.880 | doesn't necessarily mean

01:07:37.040 | your child will fit

01:07:37.840 | in the bassinet.

01:07:38.640 | So you may think

01:07:40.880 | you're getting a great deal,

01:07:41.840 | but the size of bassinets

01:07:43.280 | varied very widely.

01:07:44.560 | And our daughter was actually

01:07:46.560 | age wise, fine for the bassinet,

01:07:48.720 | not size wise.

01:07:49.840 | She did not fit.

01:07:50.640 | Yeah, but backing up

01:07:53.920 | to people wanting

01:07:54.800 | these kind of aspirational

01:07:56.080 | business class awards.

01:07:57.280 | I want to make sure

01:07:59.120 | they don't feel

01:07:59.920 | too much doom and gloom

01:08:01.520 | if they're flexible.

01:08:02.560 | Do you think a family of four can,

01:08:04.560 | you know, with

01:08:05.280 | enough points and miles

01:08:06.880 | find great redemptions

01:08:08.160 | to travel internationally

01:08:09.600 | in business class?

01:08:10.400 | Yeah, they absolutely can.

01:08:12.800 | I mean, like I said,

01:08:13.920 | we do it pretty frequently.

01:08:14.800 | I went to Europe

01:08:15.440 | three times last year.

01:08:16.720 | This year, we're going to Europe

01:08:18.000 | and Africa for about a month.

01:08:19.440 | And all of our long haul flights

01:08:21.040 | are in business class

01:08:21.920 | and flatbed seats.

01:08:22.880 | And we do that quite a bit every year.

01:08:26.240 | We take a few trips like that.

01:08:27.840 | It's definitely doable.

01:08:29.120 | It's just a matter of finding

01:08:30.640 | which awards are available.

01:08:32.000 | And also, you know, you mentioned

01:08:33.600 | we mentioned lap infant tickets,

01:08:35.280 | but also some programs offer

01:08:36.960 | more advantageous pricing

01:08:39.440 | for children's tickets.

01:08:41.040 | Air France KLM Flying Blue

01:08:42.480 | is a good example where

01:08:43.680 | children between age two and 11

01:08:45.520 | pay 25% less than adult fares.

01:08:48.880 | So and we're talking

01:08:49.760 | about the number of miles

01:08:50.880 | they charge 25% fewer miles

01:08:53.440 | for a child ticket

01:08:54.480 | than an adult ticket.

01:08:55.520 | And so Air France KLM Flying Blue,

01:08:57.440 | for instance, to from the United States

01:08:59.360 | to Europe at this point,

01:09:00.640 | charges from 50,000 miles

01:09:02.800 | one way for an adult ticket.

01:09:05.040 | But you'll pay 12,500 miles

01:09:07.920 | less than that.

01:09:08.560 | So you'll pay less than 40,000 miles

01:09:10.720 | for a ticket for a child.

01:09:12.320 | And so knowing that

01:09:14.480 | and knowing that, OK,

01:09:15.360 | well, there is an opportunity

01:09:16.400 | where I might be able to get

01:09:17.520 | a particularly solid deal.

01:09:19.600 | That's helpful because,

01:09:21.360 | like you said before,

01:09:22.320 | you may look and say, OK,

01:09:23.520 | well, this award looks

01:09:24.400 | cheaper than that award.

01:09:25.600 | If you don't know that

01:09:26.480 | you could save on the children's tickets

01:09:28.560 | by using the right program.

01:09:30.400 | So that's where it pays to kind

01:09:31.840 | of know your programs a bit

01:09:33.120 | and also know which programs

01:09:35.280 | are more likely to release more seats.

01:09:37.200 | Air France KLM is a good example

01:09:38.880 | where they frequently have

01:09:40.080 | a lot of seats available

01:09:41.200 | when they have seats available.

01:09:42.800 | JetBlue is one that

01:09:44.400 | tends to internationally

01:09:46.080 | have several seats available.

01:09:47.520 | If they're going to have business

01:09:48.400 | class seats available anyway,

01:09:50.000 | they tend to have

01:09:51.200 | a number of seats available.

01:09:52.320 | Now, booking them through JetBlue

01:09:53.600 | is not the best deal.

01:09:54.720 | You'd want to book those

01:09:56.160 | through Qatar Avios.

01:09:58.240 | And that'll be your best option

01:10:00.320 | for that particular program.

01:10:01.920 | But again, those types of knowledge

01:10:03.760 | of those types of partnerships

01:10:05.440 | and which ones are going to have that

01:10:07.440 | is going to be helpful.

01:10:08.640 | And again, the flexibility

01:10:10.160 | is going to be a huge piece of that, too.

01:10:12.000 | But it definitely is doable.

01:10:13.520 | Like I said, we do it very frequently.

01:10:15.280 | We've done a lot of times.

01:10:16.240 | And in fact, I find

01:10:18.240 | and this is kind of going back

01:10:19.520 | to the business class thing,

01:10:20.560 | but I find that it's far easier

01:10:22.480 | to travel with children

01:10:24.400 | in business class than it was when

01:10:26.800 | we primarily traveled in economy class

01:10:28.880 | because it gives you some more space

01:10:30.000 | to move around.

01:10:30.720 | It gives the flatbed seat

01:10:32.800 | where the kid can fall asleep

01:10:34.240 | and not be laying all over you.

01:10:35.600 | So that makes the trip

01:10:37.600 | far easier also on us.

01:10:40.240 | So that's something that we consider

01:10:42.240 | when we're booking our trips.

01:10:43.520 | We did just recently take that long flight

01:10:45.200 | to Honolulu from Newark.

01:10:46.800 | There was 10 hours in economy class.

01:10:48.720 | And we said, well, it's a good reminder

01:10:50.240 | why we collect lots of miles and points

01:10:52.080 | so that we can frequently travel

01:10:53.760 | more comfortably than that

01:10:55.040 | when we're on long flights like those,

01:10:56.960 | because it definitely makes

01:10:58.400 | a huge difference in the experience.

01:11:00.160 | But there are a number

01:11:00.880 | of other programs, too,

01:11:01.680 | that very frequently

01:11:02.560 | offer multiple seats.

01:11:03.520 | British Airways often does,

01:11:05.280 | though they're known for high surcharges.

01:11:07.360 | If you depart countries in Europe

01:11:09.280 | other than the United Kingdom,

01:11:10.800 | then the surcharges are typically

01:11:12.560 | pretty reasonable.

01:11:13.360 | Booking through American Airlines

01:11:14.800 | or booking through Alaska Airlines,

01:11:16.560 | and they often have enough seats

01:11:18.640 | for a family of four, at least.

01:11:20.080 | Finnair frequently has availability

01:11:22.960 | for a number of passengers.

01:11:25.120 | Now, this stuff is going to ebb and flow.

01:11:26.640 | So those examples I gave today,

01:11:28.400 | tomorrow, maybe you won't

01:11:29.360 | find anything at all.

01:11:30.800 | But there are numerous airline programs

01:11:32.960 | that do release multiple seats.

01:11:34.560 | The US based programs in general

01:11:36.480 | are not as good about that

01:11:38.480 | as many of the various foreign airlines,

01:11:40.480 | though that's not always bad news

01:11:42.000 | because the flight experience

01:11:43.520 | on a lot of foreign airlines

01:11:44.880 | is frequently a little bit better

01:11:46.720 | than the US based airlines.

01:11:48.800 | And I said that, but there are tools

01:11:50.080 | you could use to find multiple seats on,

01:11:52.240 | for instance, United.

01:11:53.200 | United releases a lot of availability

01:11:55.520 | relatively close in

01:11:56.640 | and some of their flights to Europe.

01:11:58.240 | I we've more than once flown United

01:12:00.480 | between the United States and Europe

01:12:02.080 | and found four seats and,

01:12:03.440 | you know, in a premium cabin with them.

01:12:05.120 | So it's doable.

01:12:06.480 | It varies, though.

01:12:07.600 | If you want to fly Emirates first class

01:12:09.200 | and have a shower on the plane,

01:12:10.400 | you're not going to find

01:12:11.200 | seats for a family of four.

01:12:13.680 | You're going to have to probably book

01:12:15.280 | business class and hope that

01:12:16.480 | maybe you can upgrade a person or two.

01:12:18.880 | But there are limitations like that

01:12:21.120 | where you won't necessarily be able to book

01:12:22.800 | some of the splashiest flights,

01:12:24.480 | but there's plenty of good,

01:12:25.600 | comfortable experiences out there.

01:12:26.960 | Yep, and to that United example,

01:12:30.320 | I think it's a great reminder.

01:12:31.840 | You could book the economy flight

01:12:34.960 | and then keep checking.

01:12:36.240 | And if the business class flight

01:12:38.400 | opens up in the last two weeks,

01:12:40.160 | transfer a few more chase points to United

01:12:42.560 | or whatever airline you booked it through

01:12:45.120 | and then, you know,

01:12:46.400 | rebook that award in business class.

01:12:48.800 | And so a couple of notes.

01:12:50.320 | One, I always like to book

01:12:52.400 | unless the airline requires it

01:12:54.400 | a one way award or two one way awards.

01:12:57.040 | And the only caveats for me,

01:12:58.480 | and I'm curious if you have any,

01:12:59.840 | are I don't like to do it

01:13:01.360 | if the carrier requires it.

01:13:03.280 | So like ANA has a lot of round trip awards.

01:13:05.760 | And then I don't like to do it

01:13:07.280 | if the cancellation fees are kind of per ticket

01:13:10.320 | and they're high.

01:13:10.960 | Then if you had a round trip,

01:13:12.880 | it might be on Avianca $200 to cancel.

01:13:15.760 | But if you had two one ways,

01:13:16.800 | it might be $400.

01:13:17.760 | But I find that cancelling something online

01:13:21.360 | and rebooking it is so much easier

01:13:23.600 | if you booked a one way

01:13:24.720 | than if you're trying to cancel

01:13:25.840 | one leg of a round trip for a lot of airlines,

01:13:28.480 | especially some of the international ones.

01:13:30.160 | Yeah, that's a great point.

01:13:31.920 | Actually, this goes back to

01:13:33.360 | some of the flexibility that we talked about.

01:13:35.360 | It's not actually flexibility,

01:13:36.560 | but it's kind of a flexibility

01:13:37.680 | in the way you think about booking trips.

01:13:39.680 | Because yeah, almost all of our trips

01:13:41.680 | are booked as separate one ways.

01:13:42.960 | And not only are they booked as separate one ways,

01:13:45.040 | but a departure from the way

01:13:46.160 | most people plan trips is that

01:13:47.920 | I'll just book one direction

01:13:49.360 | because I see four seats.

01:13:50.880 | And that's something that if you have a family,

01:13:52.880 | if you're traveling with a family,

01:13:54.240 | you have to jump on it when you see availability

01:13:56.720 | and not wait until you find

01:13:58.960 | all of the seats you need

01:14:00.000 | in both directions necessarily.

01:14:01.920 | If you see a great deal

01:14:03.760 | for your family in one direction,

01:14:05.360 | you got to book that

01:14:06.480 | and then continue to look

01:14:07.440 | for the other direction later on.

01:14:09.360 | And so I definitely do that very frequently

01:14:12.560 | because it's hard to find multiple seats.

01:14:14.720 | If you're traveling as a family,

01:14:15.840 | as we typically are,

01:14:17.040 | it's hard to find four seats

01:14:18.560 | on the exact dates you need

01:14:20.720 | in both directions at one time.

01:14:22.880 | You're going to probably need to book

01:14:24.480 | the one that you see today

01:14:26.080 | and then just start looking

01:14:27.360 | for the other direction day after day.

01:14:29.520 | And if you book things

01:14:30.480 | that are flexible and cancelable,

01:14:32.240 | then at least you have the opportunity

01:14:33.760 | to get those miles and points back

01:14:35.040 | if it doesn't work out.

01:14:36.000 | But I find that more often than not,

01:14:37.360 | if you're persistent with it,

01:14:38.720 | you can find those things.

01:14:40.080 | So that's, I think,

01:14:41.840 | something you really want to consider

01:14:43.600 | when you're booking.

01:14:44.400 | I always book separate one ways.

01:14:46.720 | You made a good point that programs

01:14:48.560 | that charge high cancellation fees per ticket,

01:14:50.960 | you may want to think differently,

01:14:52.240 | but also think about perhaps in some cases,

01:14:54.720 | like Air Canada Aeroplane, for instance,

01:14:56.640 | will offer flexible tickets for more miles.

01:14:59.120 | And so you may pay more miles up front

01:15:02.400 | for the ability to cancel

01:15:04.560 | or change for free later on.

01:15:06.000 | And so that can be a technique

01:15:08.480 | that's worth using.

01:15:09.840 | If you find something that you say,

01:15:11.040 | oh, this isn't necessarily perfect

01:15:13.280 | or there's economy class availability,

01:15:14.880 | but not business class availability.

01:15:16.560 | Let me book the flexible economy class award.

01:15:19.040 | And then if I find business class

01:15:20.960 | availability opens up, oh, great.

01:15:22.800 | Then I can change to that.

01:15:23.920 | Like you said, transfer a few more miles.

01:15:25.600 | If I need to, I do that very frequently

01:15:27.680 | with Air Canada Aeroplane specifically

01:15:29.760 | because they have so many

01:15:31.040 | different airline partners.

01:15:32.640 | They have more airline partners

01:15:33.840 | than any airline program in the world.

01:15:35.840 | So even if I don't find

01:15:37.440 | that perfect award up front,

01:15:38.880 | I know there's a decent chance

01:15:40.160 | that I'll find it later on.

01:15:41.520 | And even if I can't find

01:15:43.680 | the best pricing immediately,

01:15:45.280 | I'll know I'll probably be able

01:15:46.560 | to find it eventually if I look.

01:15:48.000 | So I'll lock in something that kind of works

01:15:50.160 | and then look as we get closer to change it.

01:15:52.560 | And we mentioned that award availability

01:15:54.320 | close in is often better.

01:15:55.680 | And so you'll see opportunities often

01:15:57.920 | within a few days or weeks of travel

01:16:00.080 | to be able to get that premium cabin award

01:16:03.280 | if that's what you're after.

01:16:04.160 | Yeah.

01:16:05.440 | And this is especially true

01:16:06.560 | if you're trying to book an award, right?

01:16:08.000 | As the calendar releases

01:16:09.200 | and you're going for two weeks,

01:16:10.640 | the calendar is not going

01:16:11.440 | to release for both dates.

01:16:12.640 | So book one, wait two weeks

01:16:14.560 | till they release it.

01:16:15.360 | One hack that I recently learned

01:16:17.920 | that I haven't thought about

01:16:18.960 | how it would apply to awards,

01:16:20.240 | but it definitely applies

01:16:21.280 | to traveling with children

01:16:22.880 | is a friend of mine said, look,

01:16:24.160 | we were always looking for business class,

01:16:26.080 | but it's sometimes hard

01:16:27.440 | and it's super expensive.

01:16:28.720 | And they probably play more

01:16:30.480 | in the cash world than the points world.

01:16:33.280 | But they said the cost

01:16:34.960 | of four business class tickets,

01:16:36.480 | whether it's points or miles,

01:16:38.160 | is way more than the cost

01:16:39.520 | of six economy tickets.

01:16:41.280 | And so they often book six tickets.

01:16:44.560 | And depending on the airline,

01:16:46.400 | you may or may not be able

01:16:47.280 | to book a ticket without a person.

01:16:48.880 | But, and I don't think

01:16:51.920 | this is crossing any lines

01:16:54.400 | or ethical issues,

01:16:55.600 | but you can book a second extra seat

01:16:58.400 | for passengers of size

01:16:59.840 | and for a musical instrument.

01:17:02.400 | There are reasons.

01:17:03.440 | So I don't think you could just book one

01:17:04.960 | for a fake person who's not going to board.

01:17:07.440 | But what they do is they book,

01:17:09.120 | oftentimes on a flight

01:17:10.320 | where there's three and three,

01:17:11.760 | they book all six.

01:17:13.280 | And so they couldn't find

01:17:14.880 | the business class availability

01:17:16.240 | or it was way too expensive,

01:17:17.760 | but they book six seats in economy.

01:17:19.680 | And then the kids can lie down.

01:17:21.600 | It's a little bit more space to move around.

01:17:23.840 | And so oftentimes I can tell you

01:17:26.640 | that finding six economy seats

01:17:28.400 | on some flights might be difficult,

01:17:30.640 | but it might be easier than finding

01:17:32.080 | four business class seats

01:17:33.280 | on that same flight.

01:17:34.160 | Oh yeah, no, that is a very good hack.

01:17:36.800 | And like you said, I think you're fine.

01:17:38.480 | You can book an extra seat.

01:17:39.680 | That's a legitimate thing that people do.

01:17:41.840 | And yeah, that would be a far

01:17:44.000 | more economical way to do it.

01:17:45.680 | And, you know, that's a great example

01:17:48.000 | of thinking outside the box

01:17:49.360 | a little bit to give a similar,

01:17:51.360 | but different hack that I've used

01:17:53.680 | with my family is with Southwest,

01:17:55.600 | because Southwest offers the ability to,

01:17:58.240 | if you book a one to get away plus fare,

01:18:00.240 | which I know Southwest,

01:18:01.360 | we're talking about domestic flights.

01:18:02.400 | We're not talking about business class here.

01:18:03.680 | We're just talking about economy class.

01:18:05.280 | But if you book a one and get away plus fare,

01:18:07.520 | you can do a same day change

01:18:08.720 | to a different flight.

01:18:09.600 | And so what I'll frequently do

01:18:12.000 | is book the cheapest flight that day,

01:18:14.800 | looking to change at midnight

01:18:16.240 | on the day of travel,

01:18:17.200 | when I can make a free change

01:18:18.880 | to the more desirable time or flight.

01:18:22.720 | And so I once in a while

01:18:24.800 | have booked four seats for somebody else

01:18:27.200 | that may or may not make the trip

01:18:28.320 | on the flight that I actually want,

01:18:29.680 | because if they cancel after midnight,

01:18:32.160 | then I can take those four seats

01:18:33.360 | when I do a same day switch.

01:18:34.480 | So I've been known,

01:18:37.600 | Justin Bieber has been on a couple

01:18:38.960 | of Southwest reservations before

01:18:40.640 | that he hasn't flown.

01:18:42.240 | But, you know, that's like you said,

01:18:45.680 | thinking outside the box a little bit

01:18:47.040 | as to how you might be able

01:18:48.160 | to accomplish those things is great.

01:18:49.440 | I love the six seats in economy class,

01:18:51.600 | because that really would make

01:18:52.880 | a big difference.

01:18:53.600 | And you're right.

01:18:54.160 | In some cases,

01:18:54.880 | that will be far cheaper

01:18:56.320 | than booking business class awards.

01:18:57.920 | So that's a that's a smart hack.

01:18:59.600 | Yeah.

01:19:00.800 | And by the way,

01:19:01.600 | if you do it on Southwest,

01:19:02.880 | or I believe Alaska,

01:19:04.640 | if you book on Alaska

01:19:06.320 | or Southwest, I believe,

01:19:08.080 | and you book an extra seat

01:19:10.080 | and the flight isn't full,

01:19:12.160 | you can reach out and they'll refund you

01:19:14.080 | on those extra seats

01:19:15.040 | on Southwest and Alaska.

01:19:16.240 | So you're traveling with kids

01:19:18.080 | and you're like,

01:19:18.640 | "Wow, this flight isn't that full."

01:19:20.240 | Book an extra seat

01:19:21.360 | and then you can get a refund.

01:19:22.480 | So you actually get

01:19:23.200 | two extra seats for free.

01:19:24.800 | So great option.

01:19:26.480 | Fantastic option.

01:19:27.840 | If you're trying to find a kid hack.

01:19:29.760 | Obviously, there's no business class

01:19:30.960 | in Southwest anyway.

01:19:31.840 | So that's not your option.

01:19:33.280 | Right.

01:19:34.320 | So I guess I have two wrap ups.

01:19:36.880 | One, when you're doing all this,

01:19:38.800 | what advice do you have for people

01:19:40.320 | on when is it a good use of points?

01:19:42.640 | Is there a target value

01:19:44.320 | you're trying to convert cash

01:19:45.520 | to points or how do you think about that?

01:19:47.360 | Well, there's two different pieces to that.

01:19:50.160 | First of all, yes.

01:19:51.040 | I mean, I want to generally

01:19:53.040 | get a good value for my points

01:19:54.560 | if I'm going to invest my time

01:19:56.240 | and effort into earning miles and points,

01:19:58.240 | then I want to make sure

01:19:59.120 | that I'm getting a good return on that.

01:20:01.040 | And you have to consider

01:20:02.080 | that it could be earning cash back.

01:20:03.760 | And so I want to make sure

01:20:05.040 | that my award redemptions

01:20:07.120 | are exceeding the value

01:20:08.560 | I could have gotten

01:20:09.280 | if I just used a credit card

01:20:11.040 | to earn cash back.

01:20:12.320 | So I generally want to redeem my points

01:20:15.040 | at a value of at least two cents per point.

01:20:17.440 | Now, figuring that out

01:20:19.040 | is a little bit murky,

01:20:20.160 | because as we said before,

01:20:21.600 | you know, if you're booking

01:20:22.320 | that first class flight on Etihad

01:20:24.240 | from Houston to Abu Dhabi,

01:20:25.520 | it's difficult to determine

01:20:28.080 | how much that's exactly worth,

01:20:30.480 | because it's worth more

01:20:31.440 | than the cost of an economy class ticket.

01:20:33.200 | But it's probably not worth

01:20:34.240 | the $18,000 to me.

01:20:36.080 | So there's a little bit

01:20:36.800 | of murky math involved in that.

01:20:38.400 | But I generally want to make sure

01:20:39.520 | that I am getting at least

01:20:40.880 | two cents per point in value,

01:20:42.240 | because I could have easily used

01:20:43.680 | a two percent cash back card

01:20:45.680 | instead of using whatever

01:20:46.880 | credit card program

01:20:48.960 | I had used initially.

01:20:50.800 | So that's part of it for me.

01:20:52.880 | But the other part of it for me

01:20:55.040 | is that I also consider

01:20:57.200 | the ease or difficulty

01:20:58.640 | of replenishing the points.

01:21:00.320 | And so, you know,

01:21:01.440 | if it's a type of point

01:21:03.120 | that is very easy to earn more of,

01:21:06.320 | and that's most types of miles

01:21:08.480 | and points, to be honest,

01:21:09.840 | then I'm at least slightly

01:21:12.720 | less stringent in terms

01:21:14.320 | of how I redeem them.

01:21:15.920 | I'm a maximizer, so I like to get

01:21:17.440 | the best possible value that I can.

01:21:19.680 | But I also know that

01:21:21.600 | there's lots of ways to earn

01:21:23.200 | lots and lots of miles and points.

01:21:24.560 | I mean, every year,

01:21:25.600 | my wife and I earn

01:21:26.560 | millions of miles and points

01:21:28.160 | through new credit card

01:21:29.520 | welcome offers and referral bonuses

01:21:31.920 | and category bonuses

01:21:33.280 | and strategic spending

01:21:34.400 | in order to increase our rewards

01:21:36.960 | and buying and reselling things,

01:21:38.800 | you know, buy things and resell them

01:21:40.240 | in order to earn a small profit

01:21:41.920 | and earn lots of miles and points.

01:21:43.920 | So I don't only consider

01:21:46.240 | the target cents per point.

01:21:48.000 | I also try to target

01:21:50.000 | lots and lots of low hanging fruit

01:21:52.080 | in terms of new welcome bonuses.

01:21:54.320 | But I like to get

01:21:55.200 | as much value as possible.

01:21:56.560 | And the one thing I don't like to do

01:21:58.400 | is to redeem my points

01:21:59.520 | for very low value

01:22:00.640 | when I know I'm going to often

01:22:02.480 | be able to redeem them for more.

01:22:03.840 | And here's what I mean by that.

01:22:05.120 | People that are very much

01:22:07.600 | into award travel often love Hyatt.

01:22:09.600 | Hyatt is a hotel chain

01:22:11.600 | and they offer a great award chart.

01:22:13.520 | Most other hotel programs

01:22:15.040 | don't have an award

01:22:15.840 | chart at all anymore.

01:22:17.040 | Hyatt has a very reasonably

01:22:18.400 | priced award chart,

01:22:19.440 | many incredible properties.

01:22:21.120 | If you're looking to stay

01:22:21.920 | at very high end places,

01:22:23.440 | you can stay at

01:22:24.000 | some incredible properties

01:22:25.200 | for very reasonable award rates.

01:22:26.800 | And by the same token,

01:22:28.560 | if you're looking to stay

01:22:29.920 | in very inexpensive properties

01:22:31.920 | from an award perspective

01:22:33.040 | at the low end of their award chart,

01:22:34.640 | they have amazing deals there as well.

01:22:36.880 | And so I know that I'll

01:22:38.400 | almost always come into

01:22:40.320 | lots of situations where I'll get

01:22:42.080 | better than two cents per point

01:22:43.760 | out of my chase points

01:22:44.720 | by transferring to Hyatt.

01:22:46.480 | So I don't really want

01:22:48.000 | to redeem my chase points

01:22:49.280 | at any less value than that.

01:22:50.800 | And that's, in fact,

01:22:51.520 | why I don't often consider

01:22:53.680 | using their travel portal

01:22:54.880 | at one and a half cents per point,

01:22:56.240 | because every year

01:22:57.280 | I come into so many situations

01:22:59.440 | where Hyatt can give me

01:23:00.800 | more value than that,

01:23:02.240 | that I don't really want

01:23:03.360 | to accept less value

01:23:05.040 | for my chase points.

01:23:06.160 | So I tend to focus

01:23:08.320 | those mostly on Hyatt,

01:23:09.600 | which also, by the way,

01:23:10.960 | is great for family travelers,

01:23:12.400 | because Hyatt not only does

01:23:14.640 | do they have good award

01:23:15.920 | pricing for their hotels,

01:23:17.200 | but they also offer the ability

01:23:19.040 | in many cases to book a suite

01:23:20.800 | with your points

01:23:21.600 | and sometimes a premium suite.

01:23:23.040 | And as a family traveler,

01:23:24.480 | that's huge to me,

01:23:25.520 | because if I can lock in a suite

01:23:27.360 | at the time of booking,

01:23:28.720 | then I know I'm going

01:23:29.520 | to have the space we need.

01:23:30.720 | It's so nice to have

01:23:31.760 | a separate room and a door

01:23:33.040 | to be able to close

01:23:34.400 | in order to separate space

01:23:35.680 | from parents and kids.

01:23:36.960 | So I tend to to spend time

01:23:39.840 | thinking about those types of things

01:23:41.680 | when I'm considering

01:23:43.040 | how many cents per point.

01:23:44.080 | And I also, again, have to compare

01:23:46.560 | against cash prices

01:23:47.600 | for reasonable options.

01:23:49.120 | So when I say two cents per point,

01:23:50.800 | I'll say, OK, well,

01:23:51.600 | what is my next best option?

01:23:54.240 | Would I book this?

01:23:55.360 | Sorry, I'm not necessarily

01:23:56.720 | comparing against only

01:23:58.080 | the cheapest possible flight,

01:23:59.440 | because if it's a flight

01:24:00.240 | that I wouldn't have booked

01:24:01.280 | because it's awful timing

01:24:02.960 | or a bunch of stops,

01:24:03.840 | and that's maybe not

01:24:04.560 | the best comparison point for me.

01:24:06.560 | And similarly, you have

01:24:07.920 | to consider the flexibility.

01:24:09.040 | You know, when it comes

01:24:09.600 | to hotels, for instance,

01:24:11.360 | I rarely ever consider booking

01:24:13.040 | a nonrefundable cash rate.

01:24:15.040 | And when I use hotel points,

01:24:16.640 | I get the flexibility

01:24:17.520 | of being able to cancel up

01:24:18.560 | until a couple of days

01:24:19.760 | before the stay.

01:24:20.960 | And I value that.

01:24:22.000 | So I'm more likely to compare

01:24:23.760 | against those other flexible rates.

01:24:26.000 | So I'll consider that

01:24:27.040 | both with flight awards

01:24:28.000 | and hotel awards.

01:24:28.960 | But yeah, I mean,

01:24:29.600 | I don't want to redeem

01:24:30.480 | for less than two cents per point.

01:24:32.080 | And I tend to like to redeem

01:24:33.760 | for three or four cents or more.

01:24:35.920 | And that's usually pretty easy,

01:24:37.920 | particularly if you're redeeming

01:24:39.200 | for premium cabins,

01:24:40.320 | because those premium cabin flights

01:24:42.640 | do often yield a fantastic value

01:24:44.480 | versus the cash price.

01:24:45.440 | What about you?

01:24:45.920 | I mean, do you have a target?

01:24:47.120 | You have like a minimum

01:24:48.080 | at two and a half cents

01:24:48.960 | or what do you have?

01:24:50.240 | No, I've typically said to

01:24:52.080 | that that's been my threshold.

01:24:54.320 | Also, I may did a little presentation

01:24:56.080 | for a wealth management firm

01:24:57.520 | that was like, can you teach us

01:24:58.560 | about points and miles?

01:24:59.440 | And I said over to over

01:25:01.200 | or equal to two cents,

01:25:02.400 | like you feel good.

01:25:03.360 | The only caveat I'll put on there

01:25:05.840 | is that there are people

01:25:06.880 | that have played this game

01:25:07.840 | and some of them are listening now

01:25:09.440 | and have emailed me and said,

01:25:10.480 | gosh, I've accumulated millions

01:25:11.760 | and millions of points.

01:25:12.560 | Just got laid off from my job.

01:25:14.720 | I found this great redemption,

01:25:16.240 | but I can't get the two cents.

01:25:17.680 | But cash is tight.

01:25:19.760 | Go on the trip.

01:25:20.480 | At the end of the day,

01:25:22.560 | I think the points are here

01:25:25.280 | to allow you to

01:25:26.320 | have incredible experiences.

01:25:27.840 | And so can you find ways

01:25:30.480 | to get more value?

01:25:31.440 | Yes.

01:25:32.240 | But I would rather you use the points

01:25:34.640 | than end up in a situation

01:25:36.080 | like maybe I have,

01:25:37.200 | that I've probably hoarded my points,

01:25:39.840 | focused a little bit too much

01:25:41.120 | on the optimizing

01:25:42.480 | and not as much on going.

01:25:44.400 | And so I did this great episode

01:25:46.640 | with Bill Perkins,

01:25:48.480 | who wrote this book called Die With Zero.

01:25:50.720 | And most people listening

01:25:52.640 | have probably heard it.

01:25:53.360 | I think it's the most popular episode

01:25:54.640 | we've ever done.

01:25:55.520 | And I was explaining

01:25:56.400 | this trip I wanted to take.

01:25:57.920 | And I was like, yeah,

01:25:58.560 | but I don't know

01:25:58.880 | if I can get a good deal.

01:25:59.680 | He goes, you're optimizing

01:26:01.920 | for the deal.

01:26:02.560 | You're not optimizing for the trip.

01:26:04.320 | And you should be optimizing

01:26:05.920 | if it's important for your family

01:26:07.120 | to go on a trip together this year.

01:26:08.960 | Maybe it's more points.

01:26:10.320 | Use the more points.

01:26:11.360 | Maybe it's not a good deal,

01:26:12.720 | but optimize for taking the trip.

01:26:14.320 | And so I think

01:26:15.360 | if you have enough resources

01:26:16.720 | that it's we're going to take the trip.

01:26:18.240 | It's just do I do points or cash this time?

01:26:20.400 | Maybe you can hold a higher bar.

01:26:23.120 | But if you don't have that luxury

01:26:25.200 | for the trip at hand,

01:26:27.200 | optimize for taking the trip,

01:26:28.640 | optimize for enjoying the moment.

01:26:31.040 | Go back and listen to that episode

01:26:32.400 | if you need some encouragement

01:26:33.520 | with a little stronger language.

01:26:35.040 | Forewarned.

01:26:37.040 | It has an explicit reminder

01:26:38.800 | at the beginning.

01:26:39.440 | But Bill really knocked it into me.

01:26:41.280 | And funny enough,

01:26:42.400 | about 3 days after that episode,

01:26:44.400 | my wife and I booked a trip

01:26:45.600 | that wasn't as optimal as normal.

01:26:47.360 | But we took a trip with 4 to Europe.

01:26:50.080 | We found roundtrip tickets

01:26:51.920 | in business class for 4 people both ways.

01:26:54.800 | So it all worked out.

01:26:56.240 | Yeah, I think that's a really good point.

01:26:58.640 | And it goes back to what we talked about

01:27:01.760 | a little bit about flexibility,

01:27:03.600 | because there's also this analysis paralysis

01:27:06.080 | that you can get into and say,

01:27:07.280 | "Oh, well, am I getting the best deal?

01:27:09.040 | And which deal could I get

01:27:09.920 | that's a little bit better?"

01:27:10.880 | And then I think newcomers

01:27:12.240 | often have a fear that,

01:27:13.600 | "Oh, are people going to judge me

01:27:15.120 | because I didn't get a great deal?

01:27:16.720 | I didn't get the best deal."

01:27:18.160 | Or they may feel nervous

01:27:19.520 | about talking about it.

01:27:20.400 | And I'll say, "No, no, no.

01:27:21.200 | I mean, if you're using your miles and points,

01:27:23.680 | enjoy that joy of free.

01:27:25.280 | Enjoy that ability to take a trip

01:27:27.600 | that you wouldn't have otherwise.

01:27:29.040 | There's no shame in that.

01:27:30.560 | And not every redemption

01:27:31.840 | is going to be the absolute optimized,

01:27:34.000 | most perfect redemption.

01:27:35.600 | But you're probably more likely

01:27:37.200 | to remember that trip than you are

01:27:38.880 | the fact that you got 1.8 cents in value

01:27:41.680 | versus 2.3 cents in value out of the points.

01:27:44.560 | So I totally agree with that.

01:27:46.240 | And I think if you've got millions

01:27:47.360 | and millions of points,

01:27:48.160 | and there are certainly lots of people

01:27:49.600 | that'll use a credit card for years and years,

01:27:51.840 | maybe for their business

01:27:53.120 | and accumulate these huge piles of points.

01:27:55.520 | And the points aren't going to grow in value.

01:27:57.680 | They aren't going to appreciate it all.

01:27:59.600 | The programs, in fact,

01:28:00.960 | will more likely devalue than increase in value.

01:28:04.320 | So you want to put those points

01:28:05.520 | to use sooner rather than later.

01:28:07.280 | And yeah, when I've built up a huge chunk

01:28:10.000 | of points in a particular program,

01:28:11.680 | I've been much more likely to accept less value

01:28:13.840 | because I do want to use those

01:28:15.760 | and keep my cash that I can invest

01:28:17.760 | and can appreciate and grow over time

01:28:20.320 | rather than spending the cash

01:28:22.320 | and holding the points,

01:28:23.120 | hoping that I'll get the perfect redemption someday.

01:28:25.120 | So that's a really good point.

01:28:26.080 | I don't want to use them

01:28:27.120 | towards really low value

01:28:29.040 | and kind of waste the time and effort

01:28:31.520 | I had put into earning them.

01:28:32.720 | But you're right.

01:28:33.280 | I also don't want to sit on a massive pile of points

01:28:36.720 | that I'm not using and either not travel

01:28:38.720 | or use my money rather than use my points.

01:28:40.880 | Yeah. Okay. I keep saying we got to wrap

01:28:44.080 | because we've been here for so long,

01:28:44.960 | but there's two last things.

01:28:46.160 | One is we talked about flights this whole time.

01:28:49.520 | We said, here are some ways not to redeem points.

01:28:51.600 | Transfer partners are the ways to do it.

01:28:53.120 | Flights, flights, flights.

01:28:54.400 | Spent about two minutes on Hyatt.

01:28:56.320 | I know that almost every transferable currency

01:28:59.280 | has a partner, at least one in the hotel groups.

01:29:02.320 | Do you ever consider those as good ways

01:29:05.120 | to use points other than Hyatt,

01:29:06.720 | where I think we've kind of

01:29:07.840 | clearly established good value?

01:29:09.760 | I don't often look at transferring transferable currencies

01:29:15.120 | to hotel points.

01:29:16.720 | And that's because hotel points,

01:29:19.040 | well, two reasons.

01:29:19.920 | Number one, hotel points in general

01:29:21.600 | are worth far less than airline points

01:29:23.440 | from a cash perspective.

01:29:25.120 | The programs just have it set up that way

01:29:27.120 | where most hotel points

01:29:29.840 | are worth less than a penny per point.

01:29:31.680 | Now, in some cases,

01:29:32.720 | you can get multiple points when you transfer.

01:29:34.640 | It varies from one transferable points program to another.

01:29:38.240 | Like for instance,

01:29:39.200 | if you're transferring your Amex points to Hilton,

01:29:41.040 | it's not one-to-one.

01:29:41.760 | You get more points when you transfer to Hilton

01:29:43.920 | and there's frequently transfer bonuses.

01:29:45.760 | There are times when it can be reasonable enough.

01:29:48.480 | And particularly if Amex is offering a transfer bonus

01:29:51.040 | to Hilton, that's one time

01:29:52.720 | where you can get a reasonable enough value

01:29:55.040 | out of your points.

01:29:56.320 | But you have to consider

01:29:57.360 | that many of the hotel programs

01:29:58.880 | sell their points pretty cheaply.

01:30:00.320 | Hilton is an example that they almost always

01:30:03.120 | have their points on sale for half a cent each.

01:30:05.520 | So if you're transferring

01:30:06.480 | your Amex membership rewards points to Hilton

01:30:08.480 | and you're getting two Hilton points

01:30:09.760 | for every one Amex membership reward point,

01:30:12.160 | that's not a great deal

01:30:13.440 | because you could have used your pennies

01:30:15.360 | and bought those two points also.

01:30:17.360 | So it's not as good of a redemption

01:30:19.600 | when they offer the right transfer bonus,

01:30:21.360 | then it can become a reasonable redemption,

01:30:24.320 | but it's not one that I typically look at.

01:30:26.080 | And the same can be said for Marriott and IHG.

01:30:28.560 | They frequently sell their points

01:30:29.920 | for less than a penny a point.

01:30:31.440 | So if I really wanted those points

01:30:33.120 | and I hadn't earned those points

01:30:36.320 | from the hotel programs,

01:30:37.840 | then I might consider cashing out my points

01:30:39.760 | at one cent per point and buying points

01:30:41.840 | and end up with more points

01:30:43.360 | than I would by transferring.

01:30:44.720 | And Chase to IHG is a great example of this.

01:30:46.880 | If you transferred your Chase points to IHG

01:30:50.160 | for every one Chase point,

01:30:51.680 | you're going to get one IHG point.

01:30:53.680 | Whereas instead,

01:30:54.800 | if you cashed out your Chase points,

01:30:56.480 | every one Chase point will give you a penny

01:30:58.400 | and you can pretty frequently buy

01:31:00.400 | two IHG points for that one penny

01:31:02.480 | and end up with far more points.

01:31:03.360 | - And when you say cash out,

01:31:04.480 | you mean just the statement credit

01:31:06.080 | or something like that?

01:31:06.880 | - Yeah, exactly, exactly.

01:31:09.040 | Which isn't a redemption

01:31:10.000 | that I typically consider doing.

01:31:12.000 | But again, if I were really in need of IHG points

01:31:14.560 | because they're frequently on sale

01:31:15.760 | for half a cent each,

01:31:16.960 | then I would consider cashing out Chase points

01:31:19.440 | for a statement credit

01:31:20.480 | and buying the IHG points I needed.

01:31:22.800 | Now, all that said,

01:31:23.920 | each of the various hotel programs

01:31:25.520 | have their own credit cards

01:31:26.640 | and often those credit cards

01:31:28.000 | offer good welcome bonuses.

01:31:30.080 | And often with these hotel programs,

01:31:32.400 | they have more than one credit card

01:31:33.760 | and you might be able to get

01:31:35.040 | more than one of those credit cards.

01:31:36.800 | So we certainly do use hotel points,

01:31:39.760 | but our hotel points in general

01:31:41.920 | are earned via welcome bonuses

01:31:43.840 | from the various chain credit cards.

01:31:46.160 | Hyatt is the one example

01:31:48.800 | or the one exception rather,

01:31:50.480 | where I will transfer my transferable points

01:31:52.880 | to a hotel program.

01:31:54.160 | Now, all that said,

01:31:55.680 | again, there are situations

01:31:57.360 | where you may have a great redemption

01:31:58.960 | and maybe you have almost enough points,

01:32:00.560 | but not quite enough points

01:32:02.000 | to redeem for the hotel award you want.

01:32:03.760 | And then it really might make sense

01:32:05.520 | to transfer over.

01:32:06.400 | If you need a few thousand more,

01:32:08.000 | 10,000, 20, whatever it might be

01:32:09.600 | for a really valuable hotel stay,

01:32:11.840 | then yeah, by all means transfer over,

01:32:13.680 | top off and get that booked

01:32:16.400 | because that can yield enough value

01:32:19.360 | to make it worthwhile.

01:32:20.560 | I just generally wouldn't consider

01:32:22.240 | transferring a large chunk

01:32:23.760 | of my transferable points

01:32:24.880 | to a hotel program.

01:32:25.760 | Yep. Now my last thing is

01:32:28.480 | if someone listed this whole thing and said,

01:32:29.920 | "I really wish I could get this two,

01:32:32.240 | three, four, five cents of value,

01:32:33.840 | but it just sounds like so much work.

01:32:35.120 | I don't have that much work."

01:32:36.080 | I wanna make sure people understand

01:32:38.480 | the alternative isn't just,

01:32:39.840 | "Okay, great, redeem it in the portal

01:32:41.520 | or a statement credit."

01:32:42.640 | There are people out there.

01:32:43.920 | I don't know if you guys have any

01:32:46.000 | at Frequent Miler,

01:32:46.640 | but there are people you can pay

01:32:47.840 | to just do all of this for you,

01:32:49.280 | award booking services.

01:32:51.280 | And so if someone's listening and thinking,

01:32:53.520 | "Gosh, I got a million points."

01:32:55.280 | The difference between getting two cents

01:32:57.440 | and one cent is like $100,000, right?

01:33:00.560 | Like, or maybe $10,000.

01:33:02.560 | Sorry, sorry, $10,000.

01:33:04.160 | But still, I mean, a $10,000 difference

01:33:06.400 | is worth paying somebody a few bucks.

01:33:07.920 | $10,000. Yeah, yeah.

01:33:09.040 | And so for a few hundred dollars,

01:33:10.880 | usually per person,

01:33:12.560 | so 150, $200 a person,

01:33:14.720 | you can say, "Hey, we wanna take

01:33:15.840 | a trip as a family.

01:33:16.720 | We've got four people.

01:33:17.600 | We want a five business class.

01:33:19.200 | We're willing to go anywhere

01:33:20.240 | in Europe in July."

01:33:21.280 | Someone else will go

01:33:22.960 | and do all this searching for you

01:33:24.400 | and come back and say,

01:33:26.240 | "Here's an optimal way to do it."

01:33:28.080 | Usually you put about $25 deposit per person.

01:33:31.440 | So you're not even spending the full amount

01:33:33.600 | to do the searching, just the deposit.

01:33:35.600 | And so I'll just flag to anyone listening,

01:33:38.000 | we'll link to a few in the show notes

01:33:39.680 | that are options.

01:33:41.520 | I don't know if you have any favorites

01:33:42.720 | that you've used before

01:33:44.000 | or referred people to,

01:33:45.120 | but that is an option

01:33:47.760 | where if spending $200 a person

01:33:50.880 | for four people, so $800,

01:33:52.560 | is the difference between getting $20,000

01:33:55.440 | or $10,000 of value from your points.

01:33:57.840 | By all means, I think anyone listening

01:33:59.360 | can do the math to say

01:34:00.480 | that was a good ROI.

01:34:01.760 | Yeah, no, for sure.

01:34:04.160 | I don't have a lot of firsthand experience

01:34:06.480 | with award booking services

01:34:07.760 | because when I got into this,

01:34:09.200 | I taught myself how to do it

01:34:10.800 | and learned how to do it

01:34:12.240 | and enjoyed doing it,

01:34:13.600 | which I think is a big key

01:34:15.120 | because not everybody enjoys

01:34:16.480 | the hunting and the searching.

01:34:18.080 | I enjoy the thrill of the hunt,

01:34:19.280 | but not everybody does.

01:34:20.560 | And if you don't have

01:34:21.600 | a lot of extra time to do it,

01:34:22.720 | then I think an award booking service

01:34:24.560 | fills a really important need.

01:34:26.080 | And I think your point

01:34:27.440 | that the amount of savings

01:34:29.680 | you can have in the sense

01:34:30.640 | that if you redeem your points

01:34:31.920 | just through the credit card portal,

01:34:33.440 | because you're like,

01:34:33.920 | "Oh, I don't want to bother with this."

01:34:35.440 | Then you may be giving up,

01:34:36.960 | that example is a great one,

01:34:39.040 | $10,000 in value

01:34:40.400 | that you could have

01:34:41.920 | for just paying somebody

01:34:42.880 | a couple hundred bucks a person

01:34:44.480 | to book it for you.

01:34:45.360 | We don't offer award booking services

01:34:47.440 | at Frequent Miler,

01:34:48.400 | but there are lots

01:34:49.280 | of different ones out there,

01:34:50.240 | like you said,

01:34:50.720 | and you may be familiar

01:34:52.080 | and have a good list of them.

01:34:52.640 | Yeah, I'll find a couple.

01:34:53.600 | I'll link to them in the show notes.

01:34:54.880 | Definitely.

01:34:56.160 | But I will also send you back

01:34:57.760 | to the episode I did with Greg

01:34:59.440 | because the award tools

01:35:00.960 | have come so far.

01:35:02.240 | A lot of these discovery tools

01:35:03.840 | have made it so easy

01:35:04.960 | to kind of get inspired

01:35:06.480 | that I think maybe 3 years ago,

01:35:09.120 | it would have been a lot more work.

01:35:10.560 | It's like search every route,

01:35:11.840 | every date.

01:35:12.640 | That's gotten a lot better.

01:35:13.680 | So it might seem like a lot of work.

01:35:15.520 | And if you go back

01:35:16.320 | and listen to that episode with Greg,

01:35:17.520 | you might realize,

01:35:18.800 | "Actually, I could do

01:35:19.440 | some of this searching

01:35:20.160 | on my own pretty quickly."

01:35:21.440 | So this has been amazing.

01:35:23.200 | If someone listening today

01:35:24.480 | has not been inspired

01:35:26.080 | to get good value

01:35:27.200 | out of their points,

01:35:27.920 | maybe made some changes

01:35:28.880 | to how they're thinking

01:35:29.600 | about planning,

01:35:30.480 | I would be surprised.

01:35:31.600 | You mentioned a lot of episodes,

01:35:34.080 | but Nick, where can people find

01:35:35.520 | the stuff you're writing,

01:35:36.560 | the shows you're hosting?

01:35:38.960 | Frequentmiler.com is our blog.

01:35:41.440 | But if you're looking

01:35:42.000 | for our podcast,

01:35:42.800 | that's Frequent Miler On The Air.

01:35:44.160 | You can find that

01:35:44.720 | on all your various

01:35:46.000 | podcast platforms,

01:35:46.880 | wherever your favorite

01:35:47.840 | podcast platform is.

01:35:49.120 | Of course, we're on YouTube as well.

01:35:50.880 | And you can find our

01:35:52.080 | Frequent Miler Insiders

01:35:53.200 | Facebook group

01:35:53.840 | where people frequently

01:35:54.880 | ask questions about this stuff.

01:35:56.160 | You asked about award booking

01:35:58.320 | and people frequently will say,

01:35:59.440 | "Hey, I'm looking at this.

01:36:00.320 | Is this a good option?

01:36:01.520 | Is there a better option?"

01:36:02.480 | And people help each other

01:36:03.680 | in our Frequent Miler group as well.

01:36:05.120 | But all those episodes

01:36:06.000 | that we've talked about,

01:36:06.880 | you can find us

01:36:07.440 | on Frequent Miler On The Air

01:36:08.480 | on all your favorite

01:36:09.120 | podcast platforms.

01:36:10.080 | Yep.

01:36:11.280 | Whatever you're listening to now,

01:36:12.560 | highly recommend.

01:36:14.000 | Thank you so much for being here, Nick.

01:36:15.360 | Thank you very much.

01:36:16.880 | It was a lot of fun.

01:36:17.920 | Really enjoyed being here.

01:36:18.880 | I appreciate the chance to sit down

01:36:20.480 | and talk miles and points with you.

01:36:21.680 | Anytime.

01:36:23.360 | And when you started talking

01:36:24.640 | about how easy it was

01:36:25.920 | for you to earn a lot more points,

01:36:27.280 | I'm like, "Hmm, I got an idea

01:36:28.560 | for another conversation."

01:36:29.760 | So we'll see how

01:36:31.040 | we can make that happen.

Redeeming Points and Miles for Max Value (and What Not To Do!)

Chapters