In terms of point redemption, it’s been a pretty busy four months for the PFD household, with our accounts diminished by over 500,000 points and miles. I’m going to go through what we spent our points on–not for the sake of bragging but to show what this hobby can do for a family.
AIR TRAVEL: 10 INTERNATIONAL TICKETS / 325,000 POINTS
We had another kid last fall and with the three other young ‘uns we already have, we don’t have much of an appetite for big trips right now. So why not bring the world to our door? My wife is from Nicaragua, and she has siblings there she doesn’t get to see as often as she likes. So in April we cashed in 150,000 Avios to bring her brother and his family for a visit, and this week we cashed in 175,000 Avios to bring her sister and her sister’s family up here.
That’s a total of 10 international tickets–all coach, of course. Nobody will enjoy a first class lounge, but my wife gets to hang out with her siblings, my kids get to hang out with their cousins and practice their Spanish, and the relatives get a rare chance to travel abroad. I didn’t have to use any fancy booking tricks, either (though I almost had to with the second trip); they were both straightforward Avios redemptions. The Avios came from a combination of British Airways credit card miles, Amex MR points, and Ultimate Reward points.
HOTELS: 20 NIGHTS / 220,000 POINTS
I recently wrote about our trip to Atlanta–12 nights’ worth of suites for only 60,000 Hyatt points, a tremendous value. Besides that we had three rooms for a night in Columbia, SC during my brother-in-law’s visit (84,000 Club Carlson points left over from a promo a couple of years ago), a couple of nights in Miami for my brother-in-law’s family (16,000 Hyatt points courtesy of Ultimate Rewards), and next week we’ve got three rooms for a night in Asheville, NC (60,000 Priority Club points earned from a sign-up bonus and promos) for our families.
By my standards, half a million is a pretty high burn rate for four months. But then, the next big trip on the horizon for us is a trip to Nicaragua in about a year and a half, so we won’t be burning too many more points in the immediate future. And we’ve enabled a lot of memories and connections that would have been a lot more difficult if not for points and miles.
And that, my friends, is how we’re traveling and why. Have a great weekend!
Love the blue collar coach approach.
Not very different than most of us. I’ve used most of “my” points on family members. The points give us a unique opportunity to get together more frequently. I struggle to use my Avios points to the Caribbean for a family of 3-5.
Thanks for sharing! I am always interested in what people value in terms of miles/points.
Good job. Glad to see your accumulation work be rewarded.
Who would you recommend to put together a points trip for multiple destinations and various reward partners?
I think that Gary (View From The Wing) and Scott (Hack My Trip) run award-booking services. Have you tried posting on the Saverocity forums yet? A lot of smart folks there.
No flat beds? No massages in the lounge? No Mercedes ride to the plane? No ugly duckies to give to the kids? No champagne? No caviar? Come on, are we expected to be wowed with miles burning like this?
Just kidding…
Nice job by the way…I am on pace to burn 1 million in 2014
Nice use of points!
I would love more details on the 22 nights. I have not seen much on none luxury hotel redemptions. We need two rooms to fit our family or something like the Hyatt Place set up (which really works well for us, except we could really use two bathrooms).
My approach is, get two cheap (in terms of points) hotel rooms–brand’s not important. Hyatt Category 1 is awesome in this regard given that URs aren’t too hard to come by. IHG pointbreaks are good as well, though the choices haven’t been great recently. A couple of years ago we did two rooms for a week at a Radisson near Disney. 9K points / night, though that one has since gone to 28K/night. Relatively high-value low-tier redemptions are my Maldives.
Ha, I would actually love to do a flatbed to Europe at some point, but it’s just not high on my priority list.
Oh, and Dia pointed out yesterday that the Lufthansa ducks are available on ebay.
Nice post about real world usage of points and miles.
Frankly, I’ve grown quite tired of others’ posts about luxe travel, burning huge amounts of points and miles for amenities of little value to me. Fancy brand name toiletries in hotel bathrooms, airline amenity kits, booze and reheated food on planes. Sometimes I shake my head in wonderment about what others find important … despite their occasional disclaimers of first world problems. Please…
I think there are a lot of people out there who can “suffer” through a coach flight and stay in a decent, clean and comfortable hotel and save their points/miles for more frequent travel rather than burning a lot of miles and points for high end travel.
I wonder how much $$ value these trips translate to… 🙂 This is a hobby with huge benefit!
I’d estimate around $10,000.
I fondly remember those multi-zero Turkish lira. About 11 years ago I was basically commuting to Istanbul, Turkey from the US for work, approximately once a month. At the time, I don’t think 500K lira was worth even 50 cents. But it was kinda cool to have a wallet full of 20, 10, 5, and 1 million lira notes. I used to keep a couple of the 1 million notes and give them to my nieces and nephews so they could be millionaires, LOL. In the late 2000s, they removed 6 zeros from the currency so it is back to normal denominations. Incidentally, if anyone has considered traveling to Turkey, the current exchange rate is pretty outstanding right now (over 2 lira for 1 USD) which is far better than I’ve seen it since 2002. Istanbul is one of my favorite cities in Europe and there are many western chain hotels on the European side. Most of these hotels will price their rates in Euros (converted to a lira-equivalent at checkout), but lira is used everywhere else. Thus, you might do well with an award stay since your dollar will go far outside the hotel. Istanbul is one of my favorite cities in Europe since it has many historical sights, great cultural atmosphere, world-class restaurants, and an overall good vibe. You need not fear for your safety – even though the population is predominantly Muslim, most Turks are adamant about the separation of church and state. I don’t recall ever encountering anti-Americanism in Turkey and I was traveling there frequently during the time of the highly unpopular second war against Iraq.
Thanks Erik! It’s always nice when somebody can comment intelligently on the obscure pics I dig up. 🙂