Thank you all for allowing me to step away from the Slack Group last week while on vacation. I got some much needed R&R and I’m ready to crush 2025 with you all.
Trip recap coming soon!
Today we have a very special guest post from Slack Member FabbPoints, who offers a unique perspective to this game, that I thought would be worth sharing with you all.
Below are his thoughts and words:
FabbPoints Guest Post
Hey all you Bums out there, pleasure to be writing this post for you all today! I’ve been lurking around the slack these past few months after joining the community trying to provide some info where I can and thought some folks might find it helpful for some information around how to spend your points once you’ve churned them. I’ve been in the points and miles space for almost a decade now (consulting world throws you in whether you like it or not) and know how hard it can be to sift through all the blogs, articles etc.
While the churning of points is one of the more enjoyable parts of points and miles, it is also straightforward at a high-level: use sign-up bonuses and card spend to earn points and miles. But when it comes to using those points, there are seemingly endless options, rabbit-holes, and workarounds that can frustrate people and lead them to abandoning the hobby altogether. Don’t let this be you! I’ve compiled a few tips that I hope will help you to pull the trigger on your next booking and get you the vacation of your dreams!
#1 Go in with a strategy
Earning points is fun, but sometimes you forget to actually think about the trip you want to take and if your points earning strategy matches that. I have been guilty of this many times. The Amex ALFA is amazing and everyone should be jumping on this opportunity. However, if the trip you want to take can only be booked through United (no Aeroplan option), then it probably makes more sense to try and optimize your spend on a Chase card bonus for a couple months instead.
Most people don’t think in terms of where can these points take me. They mainly think “How can I go xyz with these points?” Because of this, putting some time into thinking of ways to get to someplace and what the lodging options actually are will actually save you in the long run from having to scramble to acquire the right points.
#2 Flexibility is key
Flexibility is the most important thing when trying to use points and miles. The main reason people don’t get into the game or stay longer terms is because they are single-minded when it comes to travel. They only look in their home airport, at one of the airline programs that are on tv commercials, and don’t understand why they can’t fly from Tulsa to Bangkok nonstop on Southwest.
One of the easiest things you can do is understand what airlines fly to and from the location you want to go. The easiest way to do this is to google the airport you are looking to fly to, go to the Wikipedia page, and look at the airlines section for a table of all routes by airline. This is your goldmine. This will show you the options you have for the programs you could use and the cities you could fly. (Tip: Always book one-ways)
Sometimes you may have to fly from your local airport to somewhere on the east coast to get that award flight. Or you may need to sign up for a frequent flier program you have never used in your life. You may even need to book a less than ideal flight and monitor to see if any new deals come up (often happens very close to the departure date) that you can change to in order to get that dream flight. It can be a little extra work, but you will not be thinking about it once you are in lie-flat seats drinking champagne and eating filet.
#3 Become familiar with search tools
The number of award search tools have exploded over the past 3 years, which is both good and bad. Good in the sense it has never been easier to find award space. Bad in that because it has gotten easier, award space gets taken much faster than it did prior.
You need to familiarize yourself with these if you want to stay ahead in this game. Flight award tools are usually the difference in flying 10 hrs in economy with 3 stops, or a nonstop business class flight. My personal favorites are seats.aero and points.yeah. I have found using them complementary to each other is the way to go as no one site is perfect, but between the two, you should get a 95% view of what’s out there. That last 5% comes down to checking the program sites themselves and knowing some of the tips and tricks around cross-booking awards. There are also several services that allow you to create alerts for flight openings and deals. These are incredibly valuable the more flexible you are.
For hotels, there are a couple tools, such as rooms.aero. However, I find it way easier to just use the hotel site itself. The reason for this is I typically based my trips around the flight dates, not the hotel openings, since flights are harder to find. Therefore, I will look for book hotels that are open on those dates and I only need the hotel websites for that.
#4 Know your travel style
Knowing how you want to travel and use your points will make finding awards a lot easier since it will narrow your scope. For myself, I know that I want to use my points for business class on any international flight. That is how I want to travel and the idea of over 6 hrs in economy, especially overnight sounds like hell. Others might not care about this and see one business class flight as missing out on potentially 4-6 economy flights and more trips. It all depends on how you want to travel.
The reason knowing this makes finding awards easier is that it allows you to limit the data you need to sift through, as well as where to focus your time. There are more international economy seats available than business pretty much across all flights and airlines. So if this is what you are going to use to travel, then you can be a little more lax in how much you plan. However, if you want that business flight to Europe in the summer, then you need to know that so you can be on top of those bookings as soon as they become available.
#5 Don’t fixate on value
This might make some points and miles folks angry, but trying to get the absolute maximum value on a points redemption is a waste of time. I’m not saying to take any deal or blow your points on any flight or hotel. You should still have an idea of how much the lowest levels of an award you are trying to book should cost. However, some people will get so fixated on getting the best possible deal that they miss the whole point of why they are using the points in the first place.
Here is an example of what I am talking about: say you are trying to book a flight from Boston to Paris. You have two options, nonstop in business class for 50k points, or 20k points in economy with a stop in New York. Obviously, 20k points is less than 50k points, so one could argue that the 20k is a better deal since they could get two people to the same place with less than the cost of one for the first flight. And there are many people who do this and will criticize others for a “bad redemption”.
I’m telling you now, if you fixate on maximizing value, you will not enjoy either the hobby or the trip. Travel is about seeing the world, having once in a lifetime experience, and enjoying every aspect of the trip. I will pay extra points to make that experience quicker, convenient, and/or more luxurious every single time. Especially if you have a child, try explaining to your spouse why you are traveling for 20 hrs instead of 6 and see if they positively react when you tell them you saved 30k points.
#6 Just take the trip
This one is not miles related, but I urge you if you are on the fence of a booking and are only held up because you don’t know if the booking makes sense, if you could do better, etc., just press the reserve button. So many people overthink and lose sight of the overall goal of the hobby: to experience things across the world that they wouldn’t normally be able to. You will not regret spending the points and miles, I promise you. 5 years later when you are looking at pictures, you aren’t going to think about the extra 10k United points or how you accidentally transferred points to the wrong program. You're going to remember the people you talked to in the pup all night, the mountains you hiked the next day, and the taxi driver who wouldn’t stop talking. Just book the trip, you can earn more points once you get back.
Bonus Booking Walkthrough
I posted a deal I found looking at awards this week and wanted to do a quick walkthrough of how it came about so that folks can picture how to think through finding a booking.
Saw Instagram reel of Europe during Christmas. Got major FOMO and thought “I wonder if I could spend Christmas in Europe?”
Didn’t have a specific place I wanted to go, so I just hopped over to Seats.Aero to search for flights from the US to Europe the week of Christmas (if I had a particular city I wanted to go, I would check the airport wiki page and limit the search to those cities)
Since I wanted to be their on Christmas, I focused on flights before 12/24 and found the below options:
I don’t have any Alaska miles, but I know I can currently transfer my Amex points to Hawaiian, and then Hawaiian to Alaska 1:1. There are 4 seats available, so there is a seat for my wife and myself.
Let’s now see if I can get back. I want to stay at least 4-5 nights to enjoy the trip, but be back before New Year:
Great, looks like I have multiple options back on the 29th, I’m going to take the lowest point option since I am going to be positioning for these flights.
*Boston and DC are not my home airports, but have the best deal. I can easily take a quick flight from my home airport to and from both of these airports using points or cash, whichever is the better deal for the times)
Looks like my flights are taken care of, now let’s see the hotel options. I usually check Hyatt first and since I haven’t used any Chase points yet, this is the set of points I’d like to use. When I search for Hyatt hotels in Dublin, I get the following results:
18,000 points a night for a total of 90,000 points. Easy to transfer from Chase, so we are set!
All in all, 180,000 Amex points and 90,000 Hyatt points, plus maybe $200 USD in airline taxes will get me to and from Dublin (minus positioning if needed) with free accommodations. The cheapest business class flights from what I am seeing would total around $4000 each and the rooms would be about $1000 with taxes and fees. So that is $9000 of value that you are saving and can use to have a magical holiday in Europe
Hopefully folks find this helpful and I would love to keep doing these breakdowns if people are getting value from them. If anyone has specific awards they would like assistance with or need help with bookings, please reach out to me (@FAbbPoints) in the slack community!
Disclaimer: None of this is to be deemed legal or financial advice of any kind.
