Points to burn

09/30/2021

How to book a United flight with amex points!

Let me give you an example. We wanted to visit Napa next month. United wanted 30k points round trip to SFO, but lifemiles is a amex trace partner and also a star alliance partner. Aka you can book united flights with lifemiles! It costs 25k lifemiles regular price, but right now you can get a 15% transfer bonus from amex and a 15% bonus from lifemiles, bringing the total point bonus to 32%. So that 25k flight now costs you 19k points instead of 30k booked thru from United for the exact same flight.

Moral of the story- if you have a trip planned and you'll need to fly with United, compare the rates and if it's a better deal thru lifemiles, transfer those amex points TODAY!

02/02/2021

Any Disneyworld lovers?! I'd like to share how we just saved (and earned) by booking our stay with the Art of Animation resort inside Disneyworld.

1) Once we decided where we wanted to stay, I did a quick Tripadvisor search to see if there were any third party companies that offered the property. Hotels.com offered the same price as booking direct with Disney, and they have stay 10 nights get one free, so decided to roll with them.
2) Ran down to office depot for $2,000 worth of gift cards (5x = 10,000 points!) And paid cash for the $30 remaining balance.
3) hit up cashbackmonitor .com for best cash back/points rates. Giving assistant is offering 4%, so there's another $80
4) So, we could've been normal and booked with Disney, but instead we made 10,000 points and saved $80.

Not an amazing savings, but better than nothin.

If you're looking to travel soon and would like some help, feel free to reach out!

01/29/2021

Have a Amex Platinum and Chase Freedom card, and looking for the easiest “free” 7,500 chase UR points ever? Follow these steps:

1) Look in your Amex offers for Motley Fool spend $99, get $99 back. Activate it.

2) Go through your chase account to “Shop with Chase”, and search for Motley Fool (if you’re having trouble locating let me know!)

3) Click on the annual $99 offer, and completely payment with your Amex platinum.

You now have free financial advice for a year, and 7,500 chase points. (If you have the sapphire reserve, that’s worth $112.50!)

12/21/2020

Why we decided to open the Chase Hyatt credit card to spend NYE on a suite balcony overlooking Lake Austin and the Austin Skyline.
Largely due to covid, Hyatt is currently running several unprecedented offers that can be stacked for some impressive point returns, but I’m going to focus on what I believe to be the most important and fortuitous.
The Chase Hyatt is currently offering, in addition to an already impressive 50k point signup bonus, 10 qualifying nights toward elite loyalty status in 2021 (and good until March 2023). Hyatt normally requires 60 night stays in one year to qualify for their most elite status, Globalist. They recently announced that will be cut in half for 2021, to 30. So, by opening the Hyatt card, we’re almost halfway there already. Then, they’re also offering double night credits any night between Jan 1-Feb 28th. So, that means by opening the Hyatt card and staying 10 nights during the first two months of 2021, you can enjoy free room upgrades with any paid or points stay to the best room available (yes, including standard suites!), free hot cooked breakfast for up to 4 people, free parking, 2pm checkout, amongst other benefits.
If you’re considering pursuing Globalist as well, I’d love to hear your plans!

11/23/2020

Have you checked your Amex platinum card signup bonus offer in the last couple weeks? Many people are receiving 100-125k offers, the best ever seen for this card. If you’d like to hang out in some of the best airport lounges in the country (for free), $200 in annual airline fee credits, and more perks to count, I’d check it out if I were you! Link in comments

11/13/2020

Do the cleaning fees, service fees, and taxes that Airbnb/VRBO tack on often times make you sick to your stomach? Me too!

One easy trick I've learned is to do my searching on Airbnb, then take a few key words from the property listing and doing a quick google search. Often times that same property is listed on numerous sites, and local, smaller companies often times have much lower associated fees.

Here's one example of a cottage I was checking out in Breck for February. I could pay almost $2k for 4 nights on Airbnb, or save almost $400 by booking with a local company for the exact same product.

11/11/2020

Hyatt is full of offers lately! Their Miraval properties are BOGO when booked with points (amazing deal!) through the end of the year, and now 22% off what looks like most every property they own. Anyone taking advantage of this deal? You’ve got until April 2021 to take advantage

10/20/2020

Now that travel is finally picking back up, we can get back to searching for deals!

Did you know Allegiant now flies from Hobby, and is running specials from $29 each way to 6 different destinations across the US? Asheville has been on my bucket list 😬

10/19/2020

The world is slowly, but steadily, beginning to travel again. And that’s good for everyone

U.S. travel numbers just surpassed a critical threshold. More than 1 million travelers were recorded on Sunday, the first time in seven months.

03/18/2020

Chase Ink Preferred increased signup bonus offer to 100k points! This is the highest I've ever seen the bonus for this particular card, and just because you may not own a business does not mean you necessarily would not qualify for a Chase business card. If you've ever sold anything on Ebay, babysit, sell goods online, or have a side hustle, you may qualify! https://creditcards.chase.com/a1/InkBusinessPreferred/controlA?CELL=6RRW&jp_cmp=cc/Ink+Preferred_Brand_Exact_Ink+Preferred_SEM_US_NA_Standard_NA/sea/p17374906122/General+-+Chase+Ink+Preferred&ds_rl=1238399&ds_rl=1238417&ds_rl=1268784&gclid=Cj0KCQjw6sHzBRCbARIsAF8FMpUP5Yw1i_pCCdjRi6HRquvH1wjT9uc09xcXl3qcGWqtGOJzmlO6QBwaAt5OEALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds

03/12/2020

How the tone on the Coronavirus can change in a matter of a couple weeks. No travel from Europe to US for the next 30 days 😱

President Donald Trump will address the nation Wednesday evening at 9 p.m. ET in the Oval Office as he confronts a spiraling global public health crisis.

03/10/2020

Big news to announce! Today our first blog post was posted to our brand new website! Please check it out and let me know your thoughts! (But please be kind since I am a total noob at this whole blogging thing 😁)

March 4, 2020March 10, 2020Blog Back at the beginning of 2019, (actually during our Mediterranean cruise through Europe), Erin and I learned some very exciting news- we’re going to become parents! So, after a few months of planning, Erin asked me to plan the all-important “Babymoon” (our last ...