Earlier this week, we showed you the plethora of credit cards we’ve applied for over the past five years, and how many bonus miles and points we’ve earned for our small effort. Today I’m going to list all of our award redemptions, flights, hotels and all.
Ha-Ling Peak, Canmore
We haven’t paid for a flight since 2011 when we flew to Calgary and stayed in Canmore in the Rocky Mountains for a week. It shouldn’t surprise you that, even though we actually paid cash for our flight, we still didn’t pay for our hotel that week. It was a timeshare week that was gifted to us from a family member. Got to keep it frugal! Without the free accommodations, we probably wouldn’t have gone.
Andes, Peru
Just like earning miles, there is a method to the madness of spending them. You want to maximize their value. Different airlines are on different airline alliances, meaning you can use their miles on certain other airlines. So certain miles are better to redeem for some destinations than others. Airlines each have their own award charts showing how many miles it will take to fly to different regions. To make it even more complex, there are peak and off-peak awards, routing rules you can avoid or take advantage of, airlines that do or do not charge fuel surcharges depending on the points used… I won’t even start to get into it. There are entire blogs devoted just to redeeming awards. And even after so many flights, I think I’m only at an intermediate level of knowledge on all of it.
Don’t lean on the electric fance
The following flights are all for two tickets, except for the trip to Vienna and Skopje, Macedonia, which I made alone. The cash values I assign come directly from the airline’s website, so take that with a grain of salt. Probably you could find a cheaper version of the same flight if you searched around.
Flights
Flight | Airline, Class | Date | Points Used | Cash Value |
Albany to Aruba (RT) | Delta, Coach | Dec. 2012 | 120,000 | $1,108 |
JFK to Vancouver | Cathay Pacific, Coach | Oct. 2013 | 25,000 | $884 |
Vancouver to JFK | Cathay Pacific, Business | Oct. 2013 | 0 | $3,710 |
JFK to Switzerland | Air Berlin, Business | May 2014 | 100,000 | $3,703 |
Switzerland to JFK | Lufthansa, Business | May 2014 | 100,000 | $5,500 |
Albany to Tampa (RT) | Southwest, Coach | May 2014 | 51,360 | $900 |
Albany to Baltimore (RT) | Southwest, Coach | June 2014 | 20,316 | $408 |
Newark to Skopje & Vienna (RT) | Austrian, Coach | Aug. 2014 | 60,000 | $1,090 |
Albany to Orlando (RT) | Southwest, Coach | Oct. 2014 | 66,550 | $1,110 |
Albany to Fort Myers, FL (RT) | Southwest, Coach | Jan. 2015 | 42,456 | $744 |
JFK to Lima & Cusco (RT) | Avianca & United, Business | Mar. 2015 | 140,000 | $5,238 |
JFK to Tokyo (RT) | Japan Airlines, First | Oct. 2015 | 250,000 | $34,000 |
JFK to Chiang Mai, BKK to JFK | Cathay Pacific, Business | Jan. 2017 | 220,000 | $10,192 |
19 Round Trip Tickets | 1,195,682 | $68,587 |
(RT) = Round Trip
That’s basically ten vacations without having to pay for flights. We’ve spent nearly 1 million miles on flights at this point.
Tokyo Conrad
Free Hotel Nights
City | Hotel | Date | Nights | Points Used | Cash Value |
Times Square, New York | Intercontinental | May 2013 | 1 | 50,000 | $369 |
Clearwater Beach, FL | Hyatt Regency | May 2013 | 2 | 0 | $858 |
Toronto | Hilton | Aug. 2013 | 3 | 52,500 | $657 |
Vancouver Airport | Hampton Inn | Oct. 2013 | 1 | 8,000 | $80 |
Dusseldorf | Intercontinental | May 2014 | 1 | 0 | $260 |
Zurich | Hyatt | May 2014 | 2 | 0 | $1,808 |
Geneva | Intercontinental | May 2014 | 1 | 0 | $380 |
Baltimore | Candlewood Suites | June 2014 | 1 | 10,000 | $82 |
Orlando | Waldorf Astoria | Oct. 2014 | 2 | 0 | $538 |
Soho, New York | Four Points | Nov. 2014 | 1 | 12,000 | $460 |
Naples, FL | Hilton | Jan. 2015 | 2 | 60,000 | $538 |
Fort Myers, FL | Hilton Garden Inn | Jan. 2015 | 2 | 40,000 | $490 |
Fort Myers, FL | Hilton Garden Inn, Airport | Jan. 2015 | 1 | 30,000 | $219 |
Manhattan | Conrad | Oct. 2015 | 1 | 0 | $329 |
Osaka | Intercontinental | Oct. 2015 | 1 | 0 | $275 |
Tokyo | Conrad | Oct. 2015 | 1 | 0 | $680 |
Tokyo Bay | Intercontinental | Oct. 2015 | 1 | 0 | $280 |
Lake Placid, NY | Crowne Plaza | June 2016 | 2 | 0 | $340 |
26 Hotel Nights | 262,500 | $8,643 |
To be honest, some of those hotel stays were not completely free. The ones where no points were used were “free nights” we received in exchange for paying a credit card’s annual fee, for example the Chase Hyatt card which gave us 2 free nights for the $79 annual fee in the first year, or the IHG card which gives us a free night annually for $49.
In addition to the points-only stays, most of the hotel chains offer “Points + Cash” deals which can be an even better use of hotel points than using only points.
For example, for a 3 night stay in a Long Island Holiday Inn, we could either pay $170 a night or 15,000 points per night, or the Points + Cash deal, $70 plus 5,000 points. Do the math out and the Points + Cash deal is much better. Spending the 5,000 points would save you $100. Spending the extra 10,000 points for the points-only stay would only save an additional $70.
Geneva Intercontinental
Discounted Hotel Nights
Hotel | Date | Nights | Points Spent | Dollars Spent | Cash Value |
Westbury, Long Island, Holiday Inn | Sept. 2013 | 3 | 15,000 | $210 | $510 |
Geneva, Intercontinental | May 2014 | 1 | 25,000 | $70 | $380 |
Skopje, Macedonia, Holiday Inn | Aug. 2014 | 3 | 15,000 | $120 | $504 |
Vienna, Hilton | Sept. 2014 | 3 | 55,998 | $201 | $1,059 |
Tokyo Bay, Intercontinental | Oct. 2015 | 1 | 25,000 | $70 | $280 |
11 Hotel Nights | 135,998 | $671 | $2,733 |
Holiday Inn, Skopje, Macedonia
Miles & Points Balance
2,995,000 | Earned through credit card sign-on bonuses |
279,530 | Earned through other methods |
(1,594,180) | Spent so far |
1,680,350 | Remaining Balance |
What are those “other methods” we’ve used to earn miles? One is just normal credit card spending, then there are some weirder ones, like the times I opened up a bank account and an investment account for the bonus miles offers. Recently, there was an even weirder method for earning miles while I will be writing about on Monday.
Here’s another stat. The total Cash Value of miles and points spent above = $79,963
Using that as an average, our total balance remaining is worth $81,676 in travel! Clearly we have not been able to keep up with the amount of miles and points we’ve been earning, so we’ve got a lot of traveling left to do.