Why ‘us’? This little blog is about family travel. Taking a child on a trip is one thing, regularly booking award trips for 4 or 6 or more passengers is a whole different ballgame.
Miles for more – Whether it’s more legroom, more trips or more passengers, family award travel takes a lot of miles!
We don’t have nearly enough experience to call ourselves experts at anything, but I think I can contribute to perhaps the biggest lack in the miles and points blogosphere: family award booking and routing help. I can’t imagine traveling without our boys and leaving them out of the experiences we have planned and have had over the past two years.
Taormina, Sicily, November 2013
The boys are 10 and 13 now and have been traveling all of their lives, but we could only occasionally afford to fly until we discovered this game in 2012. Before that, our travel budget went toward a trip every couple of years to Barbados where Bonnie grew up, and camping and road trips across the South and Southwest. Browsing and daydreaming about a trip to Europe on various websites (only $9500 for 4 passengers!) led to searches for discounted trips and then on to a miles and points blog. And then a hundred more, and I woke up to the fact that our trip to Europe was only a couple of pairs of AA cards away.
That was going to be it: 4 cards, the trip of a lifetime, simple and done. But there were a couple more cards that were too good to pass up, and at that point we might as well get enough miles for the next trip to Barbados. We waded into MS to meet a minimum spending requirement or two, learned to navigate Flyertalk, asked some stupid questions and took some not-so-good advice on our way to our current full-blown addiction to the miles and points game.
For now, the boys decide where we are going to go, and I work out the details. Next request: Morocco, and the Sahara Desert, the next time we can all get enough time off school and work. Or Bali, or wherever they hear about and decide they want to go between now and then.
Rocky Mountain National Park, June 2013. Because now that’s an easy, free, 2-day trip!
Some of my posts might be overwhelming to newbies or boring to experts. I guess that’s to be expected since we are somewhere in between. Please, don’t feel like you have to jump in at the level we are at. Most families probably shouldn’t! Nor that you have to stop at our level. But if there’s any way we can, we want to help you turn that dream trip that might never happen into your next vacation. Whether it’s Disney World or the other side of the world, with a little want-to, some planning and a big assist from some of our favorite financial institutions, you can get there for less than the cost of a road trip.
– Kenny Burrows. And Bonnie, Dean and Shaun Burrows
CONTACT
Email: miles4moreblog@gmail.com
Twitter: @KennyBSAT
Saverocity Forum: KennyBSAT