Daddy Travels Miles & Points

The other day, I mentioned that I helped my family score four FREE roundtrip tickets to the Philippines. My mom, brother, Jojit, sis-in-law, Susan, and my niece, Hailey, are in the Philippines living it up. Heck, I would too if I paid ZERO for my airfare. They easily avoided paying airfare tickets valued up to $8,000. To find out how, click here!

The year 2017 has been a great year of travel for my family. We started the year with:

1. Pre-Grammy Party in Beverly Hills – won a contest sponsored by TPG aka The Points Guy.
2. Iceland and Sweden February 2017 – we flew from LA to Iceland and paid $99 one way via WOW Air, and added Stockholm for $80, and returned back to LA for $199.
3. Spring Break 2017 (NYC, Niagara Falls, Toronto) – 11 days vacation, watched 11 Broadway shows (including Hamilton, Dear Evan Hansen – did not pay scalpers, took advantage of Amex concierge service)….all 11 nights of hotel FREE (including the Park Hyatt New York)
4. San Francisco June 2017 – 3 days in San Francisco, stayed in Union Square, no points used, won free HotelTonight credits from TPG’s contest
5. Kauai 4th of July 2017 – booked a very last minute vacation to Kauai for six  = 25K Chase UR + $11 (a total of 150K UR and $67.20 out of pocket). It’s the 2nd time we spent 4th of July in Hawaii (avg ticket price per person was $967 with British Airways via American.
6. Singapore and Malaysia in Sept/Oct 2017 – booked 2 unpublished airfares from Japan Airlines at $325 each
7. Las Vegas November 2017 – scored two free nights at the Palazzo, thanks to The Points Guy
8. San Francisco Thanksgiving 2017 – booked our trip via American Express Travel
9. Philippines Dec/Jan 2017 – booked 4 FREE roundtrip tickets for my mom, brother + 2 – ZERO out of pocket
10. East Coast Winter 2017 – before the year 2017 ends, here were are again about to embark on a new journey. 

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Since my family couldn’t make it to the Philippines this time due to a limited travel schedule, we still decided not to stay put. We thought about going back to Hawaii, but we decided in taking care of our unfinished business from our trip to NYC last Spring.

We wanted to bring the kids to Washington, DC but that didn’t happen last Spring. So we’re going to be doing all of that. A little bit of Philadelphia, then on to Washington DC as well.

It was already close to Thanksgiving when I finally decided to book our winter trip back East. Tickets weren’t exactly cheap either. At first, we planned on making our way back to NYC alone. If we booked and paid for tickets to NYC, that would’ve been over $1,000 per person, or $7,122 total….OUCH!!! That was just the airfare, and it’s flying economy.

If we used our points, it was even crazier to use points around this time of year….over 700,000 points from California to NYC. Heck no! 

I had to come up with a plan. Using points, I’d like to budget around 25,000 points per person using Chase Ultimate Rewards. Instead of flying roundtrip to NYC, I decided to split the trip. Fly into one state, and then fly out of NYC back to LA. And that’s what happened. After playing around with my variables, I booked 6 tickets from LA to PHL
(Philadelphia), and on the return, we will be flying out of LGA (La Guardia) in New York back to LA. Surprisingly, by booking with the Chase Travel Portal, I got a better value of receiving 1.5 cents per point. I had budgeted 150,000 points, and ended up using 144,798. and ZERO out of pocket. SCORE!!! Many thanks to the points we’ve earned. You can earn these same points by getting one of these points-earning credit cards – the Chase Sapphire Preferred or the Chase Sapphire Reserve. Both cards have distinct benefits that could help you with your future travels.

So there! I thought we’d be in the Philippines this time around….but no, we’re headed to the other PHIL…Philadelphia and on! The kids will get to experience and see new things as we make our way around the East Coast.

Here’s a link to my favorite travel credit cards. Click here.

For now, thanks for following the intro to this next adventure with DaddyTravels and his family. Ciao!