One New Years Resolution You Will Want To Keep

Tonight as you raise that glass to toast the changing of the year, think about what you would like to do more of in 2017 or even into 2018. If travel tops the list, then start planning now. I have several clients right now who are already thinking ahead to summer 2018. And that's the way to do it if you want to travel for almost free.
It takes a while to rack up all those points/miles to take an entire family around the globe. But you can do it, if you put a plan in place early.

Here's the checklist:
1. Where do you want to go?
2. What airlines fly there? And who are their partners?
3. What credit cards offer bonuses for those airlines?
4. You may need to call the airline to confirm how many points you need to fly from A to B
5. Put a plan in place
6. Apply for the first card

For travel in summer 2018, you will want to book your flight by November of 2017. If you wait too much longer, the lowest fare economy award seats will be gone. And when you are traveling with a family of 4 or 5, snagging these low award fares are key.

Good luck and have a safe and happy New Year!

Hilton Sweet Spot

Everyone has their own wants and needs when they travel. But for me and my family, I look for hotels that are discounted, offer free breakfast, are centrally located and I can use points and miles.
Hampton Inns in the Hilton brand are a sweet spot for me. They offer breakfast included and are priced well.
They are considered a budget hotel, but I have always found them to be clean and more than adequate.
Hilton points on the other hand are crazy. They are worth about .4 cents each compared with Starwood points which are valued at 2.2 cents each.
So when you apply for a Hilton credit card, your bonus doesn't usually get you very much. Right now, Hilton has a no annual fee card with a bonus of 40,000 points and a minimum spend of $1,000. However, there is a sweet spot. Next summer, my family and I are heading to Eastern Europe specifically to Poland.
When I checked out hotel accomodations in Krakow and Warsaw, I found Hampton Inns in both cities for less than 10,000 points per night. Yes, 10,000 points per night. The actual price of the room was $54 per night. Pretty cheap.

But I have lots of Hilton points laying around and I need 2 rooms for our family of 5. So now you are talking $150 per night if I book the rooms directly with Hilton.
What is interesting is that a room for 2 people is offered at 5,000-10,000 per night, but a room for 3 with a pull out sofa is offered at 22,000 per night. You could also pay $27 and use only 2,000 points per night for the 2 person room.
Remember this includes breakfast so for a family of 5, it's a no brainer. Using just the minimum of Hilton points, 2 nights in Krakow and 2 nights in Warsaw, we used just 30,000 points for one room for 2 people valued at $300. You could probably add a bit more value since the stay includes breakfast.
So I opted to use points for the 2 person room and buy the 3 person room with my Barclay's card. The Barclay's card offers a 5% points back on travel plus a $500 bonus when you sign up. I'll show you how to redeem points on Barclay's in another post.

Selling Gift Cards For Cash

Now that the holidays are over, what do you do with all the gift cards from well meaning relatives that you don't really want. Here's an idea for you. Sell them online for cash. I recently received an Apple gift card for $300. Very nice gift and I am very appreciative. However, I already have a laptop, ipad mini and iphone. And I don't have a need for anything else. Cash though is always appreciated since we are planning a big trip for next summer.
So I sold the gift card through Cardpool.com online. When you call up the website, you can enter the amount on the gift card and the name of the store. Cardpool will instantly tell you how much they will pay for the card. You can choose to be paid by check or by Amazon gift card which nets you 6% more. I chose a check since I'm not a big Amazon shopper either.
By check, Cardpool said it would pay me $267. By Amazon gift card, Cardpool would have paid me $283.
I entered the gift card number and pin and Cardpool said it was accepted. I received a confirmation email and then a second email a few days later letting me know my check was in the mail. Woohoo!

Using your Barclays card for free travel

Sometimes it's hard to use points and miles for all the free tickets when you travel as a family. Perhaps you only have enough points or miles for 2 or 3 tickets or perhaps you want to fly on an airline that you don't have any points or miles with.
That happened to me 2 years ago, when my mother in law invited the family to join her on an all expense trip to Costa Rica. The only catch we had to pay to get to Costa Rica and we all had to fly on the same Delta flight.
Argh.
Delta is not an airline I usually fly. Since I can't stomach paying full price for an airline ticket, I had to figure out another way to get my family of 5 to Costa Rica. Airline tickets on this particular Delta flight were selling for about $600 per round trip. But I figured out if I charged the tickets to my Barclays Arrival Plus card I would get 1.5 free.
The 50,000 bonus plus 2,000 for minimum spend and the 10% bonus for redemption on travel was enough to get 1.5 tickets free. My husband did the same thing and got another 1.5 tickets free.
So essentially we paid for 2 tickets and got 3 tickets free. Not bad. Savings $1600.
I told my mother in law about the card and she applied and then used it to pay for the trip and saved thousands of dollars.
And bought me a pina colada on the beach!
This card is pretty easy to churn so we just applied for the card again and charged our property taxes to it to reach the minimum spend. Even though we paid $60 in fees to charge the taxes, it's worth it because we will use the bonus to pay for airline taxes and hotels for our summer vacation.  The redemption is now just 5%, but I think it is still worth it to cover airline taxes, trains, airbnb etc.
A big part of this game is strategy and how to use the tools. If you would like help planning your next big vacation to be almost free, let us know. We love to help!

How To Pay Less Airline Taxes

If you have been following my blog, you know I just booked 4.5 round trip flights with miles from Los Angeles to Europe for next summer. I paid about $30 per flight in taxes. I waited to book my husband's flight over because he wasn't exactly sure when he wanted to join us.
Now this week he decided on his date so I decided to try the same scheme to book his ticket.
I transferred 20,000 Starwood points to Singapore Airlines. SPG usually gives a bonus of 5,000 points for the move.
Then I transferred 3,000 American Express Reward Points to Singapore Airlines to top off the account. This gives me 28,000 Kris Flyer miles with Singapore Airlines. Now Singapore Airlines has the nicest customer service agents ever and they will let you book one way tickets. Here's the best part, they charge just 27,500 for one tickets from Los Angeles to Europe. If you book this same ticket on United, you would pay 30,000 points. Amazing.
So when I called last week, the agent had a flight from Los Angeles to Paris and a flight from Los Angeles to Heathrow, but nothing to Berlin.
So I figured I would just buy a cheap domestic flight from one of those cities to Berlin so my husband could join us.
Well, once the points moved to Kris Flyer which took a few days, the agent told me those flights were gone.
Oh no.
But the agent had seats available on Lufthansa through Frankfurt. That works. But he says the taxes are $363. What? That's not almost free family travel.
I ask him to look again at other airlines that may have lower taxes. He finds another flight that has a layover in London and then onto Berlin for just $150 in taxes. We book that one!
British Airways is traditionally high in taxes and apparently so is Lufthansa. Good to know.

Earn Extra Miles With Shopping Portals

If you still have more holiday shopping to do, you might want to use the portals with United, Alaska Airlines or American Airlines. For the next few days, they are offering bonus miles of up to 1,500 if you use the portal.
Spend $100, earn 500 bonus miles. Spend $200, earn 1,500 bonus miles. And you can double dip by using the right credit card.

Check it out:
1. Alaska Airlines  through Dec. 21st at 11:59pm EST
2. American Airlines through Dec. 20th at 11:59pm EST
3. United Airlines through Dec. 20th at 11:59pm EST

Bottom line, it's money you were going to spend anyway, so make the purchase a bit sweeter!

Southwest Companion Pass Prep

Now that we are getting close to the new year, you are probably starting to think about how you can earn a Southwest companion pass for the next two years. This is one of the best deals out there. If you can collect 110,000 Southwest miles in a calendar year, you earn a companion pass. That means anytime you fly, you can take a person with you for FREE. And the pass is good for the year you earn it and the next year. So if you earn it in January or February, that's almost 2 years of FREE companion travel.
I had the companion pass for the past 2 years and used it to fly my son to Washington DC to attend a family event with me, used it for my daughter and I to tour East Coast colleges and used it for a one day trip to San Francisco for my son and I. Great trips and saved us almost $1000 in air travel.
The easiest way to earn the companion pass is to apply for 2 Chase Southwest credit cards. They offer a personal and business card. You don't need a bona fide business to get the business card either.
If you are maxed out on Chase cards like me, you can buy a Marriott vacation package good for 110,000 Southwest points and a 7 day stay in a Marriott. It will cost you 270,000 Marriott points. You can earn these by opening a Starwood American Express card with a bonus of 25,000 points which you can transfer to Marriott for 1:3 or 75,000 points. So if you get the personal and business cards and spend the minimum spend for the bonus of $3,000, you will have 168,000 points. And if your spouse does the same thing, you will have enough points to purchase the vacation package.
If this is interesting to you, start now, but remember if the statement closes in 2016, those points post to this year and not 2017.

Jet Blue Holiday Deals

I'm not a big Jet Blue flyer, but they are offering deals for the holidays that I can't pass up. Everyday at 1pm EST, they will release a new deal. Deals like $20 flights! Wow! Here's the link. Be sure to check back daily until December 16th 2016. And let me know what kind of deal you get!

Get 3 FREE Nights At Wyndham Hotels

Barclays is offering the Wyndham credit card right now with a 45,000 bonus. That's good for 3 nights at most Wyndham hotels. Last summer, we used 30,000 Wyndham points for one night at the Wyndham Costa del Sol airport hotel in Lima.  We are a family of 5 and needed 2 rooms. The hotel included breakfast and we were just steps from the airport so it was easy to catch our early morning flight.
Then we used the remaining 15,000 points to stay a night at the Days Inn San Francisco at the beach. I stayed there with 4 kids and it included breakfast so it was a great value!
My husband and I just applied for this card again and if approved, we will have 90,000 points. We plan to use them to stay at the Ramada in Prague next summer. 2 rooms for 3 nights and includes breakfast. It's at least a  $650 value. Great deal!
Here are the details on the card:

• Earn 30,000 bonus points after 
  your first purchase. Plus, earn an 
  additional 15,000 bonus points after 
  you spend $2,000 on purchases within 
  the first 90 days of account opening.3
• Earn 5 points per $1 spent on eligible 
  purchases for every participating hotel 
  stay, Wyndham Vacation Rental North 
  America properties, and on-property 
  spend and maintenance fees at Wyndham 
  timeshare properties4
• Earn 2 points per $1 spent on eligible 
  gas, utility and grocery store purchases 
  (excluding Target® and Walmart®)4
• Earn 1 point per $1 spent on 
  purchases everywhere else (excluding 
  Wyndham timeshare downpayments)4
• Get PLATINUM! Automatically 
  receive a Wyndham Rewards 
  PLATINUM Membership and enjoy 
  these new perks5
• Earn 6,000 bonus points annually 
  after your account anniversary every year3
• No foreign transaction fees1
• $75 annual fee1

Buy $10 Starbucks, Get $10 FREE

Starbucks & Visa Checkout are once again teaming up to offer a very nice discount. I just did it and it worked! 

The Offer

Receive a $10 Starbucks® eGift when you reload $10+ in the Starbucks® app using Visa Checkout.

How It Works

1. Download the Starbucks app and create an account
2. Reload $10 to the Starbucks app with Visa Checkout
3. Receive your $10 eGift within 1 day

Key Terms

• Supplies are limited.
• Starbucks will give away a limited number of Bonus Loads to eligible customers between 11/29/16 and 12/22/16 while supplies last.
• To receive a Bonus Load, you must load your Starbucks® card in the Starbucks® app with $10+ using Visa Checkout as a payment method and meet the other eligibility requirements below.
• This offer is open to legal residents of the 50 United States and D.C. who have a valid Visa Checkout account.