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Helping you and your family save money on your vacations to Disney and beyond

Hoarding Miles

This post was meant to be written shortly after the Alaska Air Emirates devaluation, but life got in the way. After Alaska suddenly made the miles and points world collectively flip out about the Emirates devaluations, I saw a lot of sentiment that people who had been burned for hoarding Alaska miles were suckers and got their just desserts.

Fair enough. Miles and points only lose value, and if you hold on for too long you’re just setting yourself up for a disaster. But let’s be honest, if you’re good enough at finding award space even 400,000 Alaska miles in your account aren’t a disaster, you might just have to fly economy or something crazy like that.

But I digress.

What this post is mainly about is the fact that I hoard miles actively and I am perfectly okay with that strategy. I don’t think I overly hoard, but I am sitting on six figure balances of UR, MR, AS, AA, TYP, SPG, Hilton, and IHG points. In the case of AA I’m sitting on over half a million and I didn’t even attempt to book anything before the devaluation. Blasphemy, right?

My travel goals

People are welcome to call me an idiot for sitting on such high balances, but it’s a risk I’m willing to take. For the next year and change, when our family flies internationally we will be paying for three seats and have a lap infant. Or, if my son turns out to be particularly mobile, we might be paying for four seats.

While we could survive 16 hours in economy to Asia, I’d prefer to do that in business class. Four seats round trip in business class using AA miles = my entire AA balance. If I wasn’t hoarding miles that wouldn’t be an option.

Now an important thing to consider here is how much I paid for these miles. As the bulk of them were the result of credit card sign up bonuses, my out of pocket costs were not that great (if you want to get into a debate with me about opportunity and the like you are welcome to but I’ll likely just fall asleep).

While I agree in principle with Free-quent Flyer that points don’t care what you paid for them, *I* care what I paid for my points. If I earned them cheaply and can leverage them for business class I am going to do that to make travel easier for my family. My kids can slum it in economy when they’re older.

For domestic flights, we are flying coach on fixed value points for the most part, so all of our bases are covered. That affords me the freedom to hold onto higher balances in airline programs without worrying about it affecting our overall travel plans. I budgeted the AA devaluation into our travel planning (otherwise I’d be sitting on 100K less).

Hoarding flexible points

Another reason I’m comfortable with hoarding points is that outside of the aforementioned AA motherload, my points are flexible. I can use UR for Hyatt, United, or even Southwest in a pinch. Thank You Points are mostly being used to book cash tickets, but I can transfer them to partners if I need to.

This mitigates my risk. If and when the entire system comes crashing down, it will be bit by bit. Even if bad news hits month after month I can “cash out” quickly enough. Sure, I might not get as much value as redeeming in business class, but I still won’t be losing money (well, unless something disastrous happens). At certain price points standard awards will even make sense.

Or I could split the way I buy tickets – put the four of us on the same flight but two of us at saver prices and two of us at standard prices. Having a hoard of miles offers me that flexibility. If I don’t have enough then we can’t make the trip.

Leveraging flexible loyalty

Why hold six figure balances in multiple programs? Because I’m not loyal to one. This summer we are flying to Scotland on Delta and coming back on United. We’ve flown to Asia on Star Alliance and returned on OneWorld. Loyalty is a trap for people like me who only travel for leisure. Heck, even free loyalty sometimes feels like a trap!

I am not foolish enough to think that I can get four tickets round trip using one type of miles and points currency. I need to have balances spread across multiple programs to ensure that we have the flexibility to book trips when we want to. I generally want to have enough miles in programs to book three one way business class seats to Europe. Then if I need to scale up I should be able to get the miles relatively quickly.

Economy prices haven’t really changed

The final reason I’m not too worried about hoarding my miles? Economy prices haven’t really changed. If all of a sudden every single airline devalued and business class prices went through the roof, the economy award tickets will still be there. Availability in economy is better, the prices are better, so if I have to, I can turn 2 future international trips into 6.

So yes, hoarding miles and points is dumb, but if you get stuck holding them there are still ways to use them. It’s not the end of the world to fly economy.

I certainly have a bit of remorse for all the AS miles I have that I was hoping to use on Emirates, but that remorse is outweighed by the fact that I can fly my entire family to Seattle to visit the Puget Sound instead. It’s all a matter of perspective.

Don’t be afraid to use your miles

While I’ve spent most of this post explaining and defending my “hoarding” of miles (you’ve probably gathered that I don’t really think I am excessively guilty of hoarding), I will offer one caveat.

When I first started in this game, I was suckered in by the “drink champagne at 35,000 feet” all the time credit card selling blogosphere. And you know what, I really enjoy drinking champagne at 35,000 feet.

But I’m not going to hold onto miles blindly in the hopes of drinking that champagne like I used to. I’m flying down to Orlando for FT4RL next week where I’ll be presenting about miles and points strategies for growing families.

In the past, I would have paid cash for that ticket to “save” miles for future aspirational trips. I don’t do that anymore. Instead, I spend miles whenever I can and worry about the consequences later.

Perhaps that sounds contradictory to my “saving” miles for my family’s trips. I guess it is. To me, however, the difference is this: I used to save miles so that *I* could be comfortable when I was flying. But nobody who flies business class with two kids is going to be enjoying the champagne that much. That’s not why I am aiming to go in J.

Instead, I’m saving the miles in the hopes of booking a trip that will be most comfortable for my family. So yeah, there’s probably a contradiction in there, but like I said, we’ll fly economy if we have to.

Final Thoughts

When the next devaluation hits, people are probably going to call me stupid for holding onto too many miles. And for many people, it IS stupid to hold on to too many miles. Still, I’ve calculated the risks and these are risks that I’m willing to take. All my points could be burned by this time next year (in fact I hope they are). My only point is that I  have devised a strategy that works for myself and my family and am planning on sticking to you. What about you? Do you hoard strategically, or just for the sake of hoarding? Or am I just offering up self justification for my hoarding? 🙂

I think I’ll just go to sleep now…

 

Do people make a commission on buy mile promotions?

Update: Turns out the internet had answers to my questions before I even asked them! Check out this post by Dia in February and comments by Oliver2002 on this FT thread.

One of the things that has always annoyed me about the miles and points blog world is the incessant pushing of buy or share miles promotions. I actually think it bugs me more than credit card promotion because I personally find signing up for credit card bonuses to be a way better return on my investment than buying miles (though I have done both).

I really got to thinking after the Alaska Air Emirates devaluation last week. If you were paying attention, some time in mid February Alaska did a 40% bonus on mile purchases and quite a few people advertised that. Then of course last Thursday happened and a lot of people were stuck with a lot of miles. Alaska has at least said that anyone who bought miles in the month of March can return them, but this all still happened.

After the devaluation some people were of course complaining that Alaska was aggressively selling miles while planning this devaluation. It felt like a bait and switch. But nobody (that I know of at least) wrote a post apologizing for writing posts linking to Alaska’s mileage sale. Or even a “man I thought buying Alaska miles was a decent deal at the time but boy was I wrong” kind of post.

And what about those links? I remember really appreciating Matt’s post a couple years ago about the usage of pretty links to hide affiliate links. I learned a lot about what to look for and how to figure out if someone was possibly profiting off selling me something. If you haven’t read it or are fuzzy on the particulars I suggest you go back and take a look.

What I hadn’t realized before a few months ago is that points.com, the site you buy the Alaska miles through, has an affiliate program. You can read about it here.

Now, the details are a bit fuzzy on that page (you’re supposed to contact them for more info) and I have no hard proof that the way it works is “people buy miles through your link and you make money”. I thought it would say that, but instead under “commissionable miles” it says “Earn commission when customers join or complete a swap transaction of their miles or points into another program on Points.com”. So maybe they don’t earn commissions when people buy miles through their links.

But the fact is, if you search for them, you’ll find that some of the big sites “buy Alaska miles” links are pretty links. They generally read something like blognamesomethingelse/Alaskapoints or the like. So what’s the deal, do they earn a commission when we buy miles through their links? I’ve never seen a direct disclosure like I do with credit cards. Why not?

I took a look at five big sites, typing their names into Google along with “buy Alaska miles”. I found that two of the sites didn’t seem to have points.com affiliate links (for Alaska at least) as far as I could tell, while the other three did. Out of those three, one of them had a generic affiliate disclosure. For the other two, no disclosures in the buy miles posts, just the post about the buy miles promotion along with pretty links.

If people were earning money off others clicking their links and buying miles…I dunno. That doesn’t sit well with me. If I had personally bought miles and then gotten stung by the devaluation and THEN found out whoever’s link I clicked made them money; I’d probably want an apology.

Anyway, nobody cares what I think, but I say if you have a link that is going to make you money, disclose it. I don’t really have much of a problem with the “credit card pimping” that goes on out there, and I put that in quotes because I wouldn’t even call it that. For many bloggers their blog is their business and part of their business model is credit card sales. I see blogs as being news aggregators and never expect them to be objective, and I just default to assuming I am being sold a bill of goods.

But if you’re making money from some link on your blog, I wish you’d at least disclose that. Then I can use that knowledge to discern just how biased the information you are giving me is.

Businesses have every right to run their businesses however they want. But if the business practice is shady, I have every right to take my business elsewhere.

Daring to Disney: Things I wished I knew before I went to Disney

For someone who hadn’t been to Disney in a long time, the trip seemed daunting. So much has changed since I was a kid and of course I wasn’t planning the trips then. People fill literal books with all the things there are to know about Disney. Over the course of our week in Disney, I picked up some things that I thought might have been useful to know or better understand before I went. What better way to end this mega trip report than to share what you need to know before visiting Disney World? This is by no means an exhaustive list, but it’s my list. I’d love to hear what others wished they had known before they went to Disney, so drop some tips in the comments if you have them!

1) If you’re not using magic bands, your ticket cards are linked to your name

When I received my ticket cards in the mail, they looked like this.

Disney
The letter we received had no easy way to figure out whose ticket was whose

So you’ll understand that I thought any card could be used for any person in my party. You assign tickets to people on My Disney Experience, but since there was no clear indication on the letter whose card was whose, I figured as long as I sorted out who got the 7 day and 6 day passes it wouldn’t matter.

Turns out it does matter. We found out towards the end of our trip that I had been using my wife’s ticket and vice versa the whole week. This caused us some hassle that isn’t worth going into, but this is something I wish I had known beforehand. I couldn’t find anything online about how to find whose ticket is whose but I think you can call Disney and give them the card numbers and they can tell you. Obviously if you have magic bands this won’t be a problem. That leads me to the second thing I had no idea about before I got to Disney.

2) Your ticket is matched with your fingerprint at park entrances

I did quite a bit of research before we went, so I’d say this is the one and only obvious thing that really caught me by surprise. Tickets are matched to people’s fingerprints! When you enter, you tap your ticket or magic band against an RFID reader and then you put your index finger in a fingerprint reader. This is double checked every time you enter the park so you can’t borrow your mom’s ticket to park hop one day or anything like that (not that I tried :P).

Disney says they aren’t storing your fingerprint information, apparently they convert your fingerprint into a unique digital number that is linked to your ticket. Which…sure sounds like they are storing your fingerprint information, at least for the duration of your visit! (If they can convert from your print => number how hard can it be to go the opposite direction, even if they don’t have the tech for it yet they could probably work that up really quickly if they wanted to I’m guessing).

Also, if you have a “bad” fingerprint, like my wife, be prepared to have your ID checked from time to time. She was ultimately taught the tip to rub her fingerprint on her jeans before the check, which worked out most of the time.

3) You can upgrade your ticket as long as you have at least one day left on the ticket

This ID stuff really matters because you can upgrade your ticket at any time you’d like, applying the value of the old ticket to the cost of the new one. That means if you have a day left on a three day ticket you can upgrade that to a seven day ticket with park hopper or even an annual pass as long as you haven’t swiped in on your last day. This can be very useful when you come to big realizations such as “Hmm an annual pass is better value than my 7 day park hopper.“

Now I’m not sure how upgrading tickets will work if you bought a ticket under the old prices, but at the very least you can apply the cash value of your old ticket to any upgrades to new prices. Disney expert Haley said that traditionally Disney has honored old prices when upgrading old tickets but YMMV.

4) Baby Care Centers can be very useful

If you’re traveling with infants or toddlers, Disney’s dedicated Baby Care Centers can be a lifesaver. Whether you forgot supplies, need a place to change a diaper and nurse, or just need some peace and quiet, the Baby Care Centers are there for you. They are also conveniently located next to the First Aid Centers which I’ve also heard great things about. There is one Baby Care Center located in each park, so make sure you know where it is before you get there!

Disney
Make sure you know where the Baby Care Center in your park is

5) You can get a pin at Guest Relations for special occassions

If you’re celebrating anything: honeymoon, birthday, anniversary, first time visit, you name it, you can get a special pin at Guest Relations (the ticket booth). These pins cue cast members into the fact that you’re celebrating and they are generally nicer to you (and they’re already pretty nice). Plus, you get to take it home as a keepsake yada yada yada. Maybe not so special for a 30 year old, but you bet it’s something that a 3 year old would cherish.

6) If someone in your party has an annual pass you can skip the Memory Maker

I haven’t confirmed this, but I’m pretty sure this would work. If you have an annual pass you get free access to photopass photos linked to your account. The difference between that and Memory Maker (Disney’s ~$170 catch all photo service) is that Memory Maker allows you to add all your family and friends’ photos. As an aside, for a good debate on the merits of Memory Maker Leslie has a nice post.

Disney
You should be able to add these to anyone’s account

Anyway, if someone in your party has an annual pass, just make sure you grab the Photopass tickets from each photographer you get tickets from. Then you can add those Photopass IDs to the annual passholder’s account and you should be able to download all those photos. I didn’t find anything against this in the terms and conditions or anywhere so it should work just fine.

7) Row #s in the parking lot are unique, regardless of lot name

This might only work for more number oriented people, but it saved me a ton of headaches once I figured it out. While each parking lot is divided up into sections (Scar, Hook, Aladdin, etc.), if you have trouble remembering the name of your section just remember the number of your row. All row numbers are unique and as long as you know that you can find your car.

This is probably one of those things that only applies to me, but once I figured that out I never had trouble figuring out my car. It also got Jess and I to stop arguing whether we were in Scar or Hook or wherever – the lot is so enormous I got easily confused. What can I say, I’m a simpleton. Regardless, Row # is all you need!

Bonus: Some rider switch tickets are good for longer than one day

If that’s the case (I didn’t get enough evidence but I feel like it is), you can store them up and have one magical day without your kids!

Final Thoughts

I learned a ton on the trip to Disney and had lots of fun. My daughter and I are ready to go back ASAP, just gotta wait for the right time to trick mom into going! 🙂 Hopefully this series is helpful for anyone trying to prep a trip. If not, I hope it at least made you want to go to WDW!

Other Posts in this Series

Flights, Hotel, and Car

Making Disney Dining Reservations

Saving Money on Disney Tickets

Using Touring Plans (the non-touring plan parts)

Optimizing a visit using Touring Plans’ touring plans

Saving money by staying off site

When a Disney annual pass makes sense

Touring Epcot attractions with a toddler

Touring Animal Kingdom with a toddler

One perfect day at the Magic Kingdom

Dining Reviews

Tips for parents of toddlers and infants

Things I wished I knew before I went to Disney

 

 

 

What’s your blindspot?

On Episode 25 of the Saverocity Observation Deck, I went on a little rant about how Delta gets so much crap even though they release a lot more award space than they are given credit for, especially from the East Coast to Europe. Meanwhile everyone keeps talking about American Airlines as if they are the best program for this game (I understand there is going to be a push due to the devalution but still).

I’ll admit, six months ago I was all about AA as well. In fact I had moved to AA miles being my principal source of investment. But I’ve realized with all the criticism (much of it deserved) that is directed at Delta, it had become a major blindspot in my strategy. I got to the point where I didn’t even check Delta award space anymore.

When I was talking about the award space on the podcast, Trevor or Joe said (paraphrased) “yeah but it probably costs a ton.” Except using United miles to Europe only costs less if you are flying on United metal in business class, and it costs more if you’re flying on partners. The coach price is the same. After AA’s devaluation in two weeks, AA will only be 5K cheaper in business, same in coach.

But Delta has a bad rep, so lots of people in this game ignore it. Which works out great for myself and others in the know, of course. (At this point I realize nobody’s going to listen so I’m not afraid of “killing” anything).

This got me thinking about blindspots in general. To me, a blindspot is something that you ignore due to bias or preconception, usually to your detriment. Delta award space was a major blindspot for me while I was listening to “conventional wisdom”, until I looked for myself and found otherwise.

Another blindspot I have is low cost carriers, or even an airline like Southwest. I have never flown on Southwest (crazy, right?) and when I’m booking travel I often am searching for prices using OTAs and forget to even check prices on Southwest’s website. I hadn’t flown a flight on Jetblue for five years until our recent trip from Aruba, mostly because I’d been busy chasing premium cabin space.

To give one last example, a blindspot that often rears its ugly head for me is cash back. I often forget the value that can be had in just earning cold hard cash back, especially as my family is shifting to more and more domestic economy travel.

The great thing about having kids is that they blow up your entire life – they create fundamental changes in your priorities not only in life but also in travel. This has really helped to reveal my blindspots and make me reconsider my overall strategy.

But you don’t have to have kids to identify your blindspots. You probably already know what some of them are, those programs or strategies that you ignore because you don’t have the energy to be bothered or that just seem too confusing for you. Or maybe you don’t, because you’re so fixated on one or two things that you haven’t been able to identify them.

Everyone has blindspots. The most successful people in this game (not me) and probably in life (also probably not me) are those who are constantly evolving to ameliorate and eliminate those blindspots.

So I encourage you to spend a few minutes this week: what’s your blindspot?

Making sure the Hyatt Diamond deal doesn’t get the best of me

For about six hours, it was possible to match almost any hotel chain status to Hyatt Diamond. Ironically, the PR move was one of the many things that has ended up costing Hyatt some loyal customers (I first remember Dia writing she was done in December and Julian just wrote about it this week). I totally understand Diamond members who earned status via hard work being frustrated about that, but this post isn’t for you.

This post is for all of us who glommed onto Hyatt Diamond the “easy way”. I’ve been realizing that having Diamond status has been subtly and not so subtly affecting the way I plan my travel. That has got to stop, otherwise this win-win situation is going to turn into a win-lose situation, with me as the loser! Here are some of the ways status has been affecting the way I plan my travel, maybe some of you can relate.

None of these effects are bad in and of themselves, but it’s important for me to process them so they don’t end up costing me more money in the long run!

It affects my choice of destination

Hyatt has a fairly small footprint compared to say Hilton or Marriott. What I’ve found whenever I’ve had Diamond status (this is the second time) is I subconsciously limit my destinations when I am sitting on the status. This happens by either a) eliminating a destination due to no Hyatts or b) considering one because there IS a Hyatt (Mallorca anyone? Though in my defense on that one we were supposed to go there before we found out it overlapped with our son’s due date. GOOD JOB, SON!)

Apparently this is what the Isle of Skye looks like. But there aren't any Hyatt properties there!
Apparently this is what the Isle of Skye looks like. But there aren’t any Hyatt properties there!

This is really stupid in this instance because I have Hilton Diamond status as well for the next year. So I shouldn’t be limiting my destinations, but those confirmed suite upgrades sway my subconscious quite a bit. Sure, there’s a good chance I can score a suite at a Hilton, but there is no way for me to know before I get there.

Luckily, my wife won’t stand for going to a place just for a hotel (or just to fly on an A380), so that helps balance things out. This summer we are going to Scotland, land of zero Hyatts, and I’m just going to make do. Which leads me to my second point.

The allure of suite upgrades can cause me to ignore more family convenient options

In Scotland, since no Hyatts exist, I booked us a nice house and a nice apartment to stay in. These places feature kitchens, double baths, lawns – aka things you would never get from a hotel.

Contrast that with our upcoming trip to Aruba. I really, really wanted to redeem a Diamond suite upgrade, so I convinced myself that it would be better to stay at the Hyatt Regency than finding an apartment. This was easy to do.

  • Oh hey, since we’re Diamond we get free breakfast, money saved (and unlike the Devil’s Advocate, breakfast is pretty important to us even though I don’t care for it – must. feed. toddler.)
  • The hotel is on the beach so it’s going to be way more convenient. An apartment further inland might prevent us from going to the beach as much. Plus it has pools!
  • It will be easier to have the resources of a hotel at our fingertips rather than figure everything out ourselves

Now, those are all valid points, and I don’t regret booking the Hyatt Regency Aruba at all. Still, I barely looked at any other options, and when that happens, it’s definitely something for me to internally keep an eye on.

I can sometimes fool myself into spending more money

Here is the biggest kicker for me. It is lovely to enjoy suites if you are paying the cost of a regular room. But it’s very easy for me to convince myself to toss in an extra $50 to stay at a Hyatt and confirm a DSU as opposed to staying at another hotel. Plus I might not just be passing on a cheaper hotel, I might be passing on a cheaper and more conveniently located hotel!

This suite at the Andaz 5th Ave was pretty sweet but did it cost too much?
This suite at the Andaz 5th Ave was pretty sweet but did it cost too much?

Take London, for example. We are spending a few days there before hitting Scotland and I am going to book a refundable room and confirm a DSU. But the refundable rate is 440 quid – over $600! Now, I’m not going to pay that (I’m going to wait to see if cash and points open up but want to “hold” the suite), but I am tempted to. Again, it’s easy to justify – I’m saving a ton of money in Scotland lodging so have extra left over to splurge in London. Very dangerous thinking.

So it’s important for me to set my lodging budget ($350/night for a suite as I said in a previous post) and stick to it. If not, I just have to let it go…probably…okay yes I should let it go. Temptationnnn!

It affects my Ultimate Reward usage  

Before we had kids, this wouldn’t have mattered that much. Spend some UR points to redeem cash and points or free nights at Hyatt and we still had plenty left over. But in 16 short months I will be forced to pay for four tickets. If I need to use Ultimate Rewards for those I’ll need pretty healthy balances.

So I’m using Ultimate Rewards for Hyatt more and more while at the same time Chase is 5/24ing everything and earning UR is getting harder and harder. Is staying in a suite for three nights worth having to pay cash for one of my broodlings to fly to Asia? Tough one. I can earn quite a few UR but the number isn’t unlimited, so I need to weigh all those things on balance.

Final Thoughts

As always in these “Joe thinks aloud” posts, I’m just processing how having Hyatt Diamond status has been affecting my travel planning lately. I don’t think any of these effects are bad in and of themselves; they are just things I am trying to stay aware of. If I know I’m paying extra but my wife and I are okay with it, then fine. I just don’t want to be fooled into bad decisions by the allure of suites and executive lounges. When he said it at the time, I disagreed, but I now know for sure FQF was right: giving out Diamond status was a great move for Hyatt’s bottom line. Hopefully I can keep it a win-win situation, instead of turning into the biggest loser.