April 18, 2025 • 51 mins
We all have that endless bucket list of places to see, experiences to have, and memories to make. But how do you make those travel dreams happen when you're limited by time and resources? In this episode, Jen, Jill, and Amber Paul are here to guide you through the steps to turn those vacation dreams into reality without letting your credit take a hit.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Episode five oh three, Travel for almost Free, mastering credit
card rewards with Amber Paul.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Welcome to the Frugal Friends podcast, where you'll learn to
save money, embrace simplicity, and live a life here your
hosts Jen and Jill.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
Welcome to Frugal Friends podcast. My name is Jen, my
name is Jill, and today we are talking about credit
card rewards points because so many of you want to
save money on travel. It's one of the things that
you spend on without guilt. But we want to save
as much as possible on that spending so you can
(00:47):
maximize guilt free spending.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
And Amber is a great person to ask about this.
Not only is she super expert on how to maximize
and be the most efficient with credit card rewards, he
also has three children, so she's doing the whole travel
thing with a family.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
Yeah, three young kids.
Speaker 4 (01:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
So this is applicable whether you are single or you
are a family looking to travel on points. But first,
this episode is brought to you by your travel sinking Fund.
Even if you are using points for your flight and hotels,
you're still going to be spending more money on food
(01:28):
and other snacks and maybe souvenirs. Maybe you're forced to
get your kids something because you walked into a store
accidentally and they won't leave screaming without the thing. You're
just gonna spend more money than you think you are.
So you need to have a travel sinking fund, and
we recommend you have it at a high yield savings
(01:49):
account like ciit Rgal Friends Podcast dot com, slash C.
Opening one there doesn't just get you a currently four
percent APU why, but it also supports the show at
no cost to you. So again, Frugal Friends Podcast dot com,
slash c get your travel sinking fun together so you
(02:11):
can have some really good travel this summer.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
Yes, st it.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
So if you love traveling, then we have a lot
of episodes for you. How to travel full time on
a budget is episode three twelve. How to Save Money
on travel is episode two fifty. But I think this
is probably the best episode we've done on saving money
on travels, definitely my favorite. We haven't done a travel
(02:39):
rewards episode in a really long time, and Amber is
definitely the one to do it with. So she's a
former teacher now she teaches people online how to travel
with their families for less money. You know where is
Amber on Points on Instagram. Let's get into the episode.
Speaker 3 (02:59):
Yeah, I will say that she is not able to
talk about specific credit cards, and really a lot of
the recommendations do change. So we'll talk about where you
can find more information on some of those specific cards
that she does recommend, kind of through links in the
show notes and that kind of a thing. But just
a little caveat there about the conversation, but still super helpful.
(03:22):
So let's kick it to Amber.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
Amber, Welcome to the Frugal Friends podcast. We are so
excited to talk about this topic because everybody wants to
travel more.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
We do.
Speaker 4 (03:36):
Thank you so much for having me. I also want
to travel more, so I'm excited to share the love.
Speaker 3 (03:41):
I just love traveling and I've got some specific questions
like how to do it better. So I'm so glad
you're here.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
And yeah, we want to get past, like you know,
the definition of travel rewards points and we all know
what they can do for us, and so I would
love to kind of use this opportunity to advantage and
hopefully to the advantage of whoever's listening. I want to
take my family of four, two adults, two children on
(04:08):
a vacation using travel rewards points. I'm in an advantage
because I already have some already, But like where should
I start? Like, yeah, how do you pick your vacations
(04:29):
with travel rewards points?
Speaker 4 (04:31):
It's a good question. I would say. First of all,
if kids are involved, congratulations, you made a good choice
to only have two of them, because when you are
outside of the US, it becomes almost impossible to book
more than two kids and two adults in one room.
You then have to transition into having two rooms typically.
(04:53):
I know here in the US typically you can kind
of like sneak someone in right and it's not a
big deal, but in other countries it it can kind
of be an issue. So what I recommend, whether you're
a smaller family or a larger family, if we're talking
about places within the US, you want to earn flexible
points that can be transferred to travel partners. And then
once you've earned those points, you have so many options,
(05:17):
and the ones that I think are most helpful, especially
for families, are the travel partners being Southwest Airlines and Hyatt. So,
first of all, Southwest Airlines is awesome whether you're paying
cash or whether you are paying points, And this is
why you can book a flight and maybe you're booking
(05:37):
it at the absolute peak time, but then you might
see a Southwest cell and you might think, oh, well, ah,
I should have waited and booked my flight. But just
by going onto where you have your existing reservation, you
can click where it says change and you can actually
get points back or money back. And so I think
lots of the times, or oftentimes I should say, we think, oh,
(05:59):
I'm not going to book this flight now, because what
if Wednesday night at ten pm is the best time
to book And obviously those are all missed. But Southwest
you can always get points or cash back no matter what,
no matter what the cell is, and so that is
a huge sweet spot. And so what I did from
there is I definitely just look where does Southwest fly?
(06:20):
And Southwest flies over the majority of the US, including
Hawaii and also to Mexico, Caribbean. We've gone to Belieze,
We've gone to Puerto Rico, and so there are definitely
options to fly Southwest for so anyways, what I would
do is, first of all, find somewhere that Southwest flies,
(06:41):
and then second, I typically when using points, choose to
stay in Hyatt hotels. And the reason why I say
this is because Hyatt you can typically find a room
from anywhere between five thousand points a night to maybe
like forty thousand points to night, and forty thousand points
a night would be extremely bougie like to the point
(07:01):
that you're probably like, I don't know if I want
to take my kids there.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
That's that's all inclusive.
Speaker 4 (07:06):
Yes, exactly. And so for the most part, if I
just know that one of my favorite banks has that
travel those two travel partners, I would try to earn
those points, and then I would transfer those points to
those travel partners that get me maximum reward.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
Okay, so I have a two year old and a
five year old. What's the longest not longest flight, but
like the two year old, I'm worried about taking on
a flight, and I live in Florida, So like, how
far I have about I think one hundred and thirty
thousand southwest one hundred and eighty I'm one hundred and
eighty thousand southwest points. What's the furthest I can take
(07:48):
him without him melting down?
Speaker 4 (07:50):
What's for this? You can handle it because the flight
is only gonna last for so long, right, and you're
never gonna see those people again, I will say, okay,
so stay ocasion. That's true. Great options in Florida. You've
got the Highatt Regency Grand Cyprus, which is probably quite
close to you, and you can book that starting at
twelve thousand points a night. And then Higatt place to
(08:11):
Panama City is on the beach and you can book
those for about twenty three thousand points a night. Now,
in terms of flights, I live in Texas, grew up
in Georgia, so I can get to King Kun in
about a two hour flight and that is no big deal.
That is a quick flight. And so we stayed at
the Hyatt Mayacoba, the on Das Mayacoba for twenty seven
(08:35):
thousand points a night. Now, how long can you can
you take your child on a flight? We recently took
our kids overnight to Europe last summer. We went to Amsterdam, London,
in Paris, and this summer we are doing another European trip.
And here's the thing, Like I mentioned, you're never going
to see these people on the flight again. But kids
(08:55):
are resilient and kids can do hard things, and so
I think the question is as parents, can we handle
it and are we willing to? Because it's it's not easy, right,
Like you might have a kid that refuses to sleep
all night long. For me, I have found for my
two year old who's now no longer too. But if
(09:15):
I bring a car seat on a flight, game changer,
game changer because the kid will sleep just like they
would sleep in a car, which for me fortunately works.
And so I would definitely say kids can handle long flights.
The question is can you handle a long flight? And
you can do it? That's so true.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
Maybe I can. But yeah, my two year old doesn't
sleep through the night when we travel, but we do
love the Hyatt Grand Cypress. We stay there once a
year at least, and it's just because it's a short drive.
But I want to do a flying one. So you've
given me some things to think about.
Speaker 3 (09:58):
Amber. We see so much I feel on social media
and maybe even hearing about it on podcasts of people
just going on wild vacations and sometimes super elaborate, super
high end get in the first class flights. All this
stuff on like relatively minimal points, and I don't know
(10:19):
how much I believe them or not, But if someone
does want to maximize their rewards and really do it
as efficiently as possible. What do you think the card
strategy should be and how long could someone anticipate it
takes for them to be able to potentially like cover
an entire trip lodging and airfare.
Speaker 4 (10:44):
That's such a great question. So right now, there's an
offer on a credit card. It's the it's the Capitol
one Venture Rewards Card, and it currently has an elevated offer,
but the standard offer is that you can earn seventy
five thousand points by sign up for this one credit
card and spending four thousand dollars in three months.
Speaker 3 (11:03):
Now.
Speaker 4 (11:03):
Capital one Venture and Venture x cards are awesome because
they have really good travel partners, especially international travel partners.
And so in terms of seeing people book these bougie
first class flights and thinking like, oh okay, well, how
can I really make this happen? I would say you
want to be keyed into a few things. So first
(11:24):
is you want to be aware of travel partners and
so Capital one has a travel partner which is Air
France Kalem. It's technically called the Flying Blue partnership, but
both of those flights fall into that partnership. And so
what I would do if I wanted to do that
and I actually have done that for this upcoming summer.
Is you would take your points and you would go
(11:46):
to you guys have heard of Google flights, and I
know that most people have heard of Google flights. There
are websites that do the same exact thing, but they
search the points that you might already have on hand.
So I personally like searching a website. It's completely free.
You do have to create a log in, but everything
else is free. It's called a ward tool, like a
(12:09):
screwdriver award tool dot com. And what you would do
is you would, like I said, you log in and
you put your beginning airport and then you put your destination.
And it's actually really awesome. And this isn't sponsored, though
it should be. You can search four days at a time,
and so I love that because the key to finding
those really awesome maximized deals are having flexible travel times, right,
(12:33):
like if you want to go on Christmas Eve and
come back on New Year's Eve, like, that's probably not
gonna give you great pointstills. But anyways, I love searching
from this website, and there's lots of others that I
use as well. But it will, it will, it will
scan all of the different airlines for you, I should
say almost all. So I personally living in the US
(12:57):
might think to look at United and Delta, but I
probably wouldn't think to search Air France and Air France
and Iberia and Quantity. You know, there's like so many
airlines that I don't naturally look at, and I don't
want to look at them, right, I don't want to
create user names and accounts for all of these different airlines,
and so that's where I would start. I would start
by going to a ward tool dot com or point
(13:19):
dot me or there's many, and I would search my
destination and I would see what it spits out and
then whatever it spits out. So if it's telling me
that I need forty thousand points to fly first class
from this destination to hear, then I know, okay, I
probably want to open up a card that will earn
me these types of flexible points. And so that's where
(13:41):
I would I would definitely start is by seeing what
is my ideal destination, what airlines travel there, and then
from that I have this guide that I can share
if needed, But it shows all of the different travel
partners side by side. Because different banks have different travel partners,
and some of them over lap. So the four major
(14:02):
banks that are out there all have a travel partner
which I just mentioned, and it's the Flying Blue Alliance.
So maybe I have some points in Capital One, and
then I have some other points stranded in another bank.
I can send all of those to Flying Blue and
book those flights abroad. So to answer your question more specifically,
(14:23):
I would say flexible dates and an award searching tool
that searches multiple airlines simultaneously.
Speaker 1 (14:30):
And then probably just the amount of time it would
take to do the minimum spend on each card, right.
Speaker 4 (14:36):
Yeah, absolutely, And so you want to do this a
little bit in advance. I typically, and I think you
guys asked me this question before and I probably skipped it,
but I typically am working on earning points for maybe
nine months out to a year out. Sometimes I'm kind
of scrambled and I'm like, I need a little bit
more points to add on this last hotel night. But
(14:57):
for the most part, I'm trying to look ahead about
it year.
Speaker 3 (15:03):
Yeah. And then do you ever run into times when
you choose to make the transfer to one of these
travel rewards partners and then the points aren't what you thought,
or the flight is costing more points than maybe what
it was showing ahead of time, Like how much timing
(15:27):
of this do we need to do? Because I also
know a lot of times once you transfer those points,
there's no getting it back. They now entirely reside with
whoever that travel partner is, whether it's an airline or
a hotel. So what have you seen with that?
Speaker 4 (15:42):
Yeah, you're absolutely correct. So what I do is I
start on one of these award searching tools like award
tool dot com, and I find the flights. And so
maybe it says that I can get flights to Europe
for twenty thousand points from my home airport, which is Austin,
and I definitely can find twenty thousand points to Europe
from Austin. And so what I do then is I say, oh,
(16:04):
this is awesome, and then I go to the actual account,
you know, to Airfrance dot com or whatever the travel
partner is, and I make sure that not only is
that flight available, but is it available for five people,
which is the amount of people in my family. And
so once I have I have it there and it's
like in my car and I'm ready to buy it,
(16:26):
then I go into my bank and I transfer my
points from my bank to air France, and then I
book the flight. Now, typically when you go to check out,
and I'm sure this is what you're talking about, when
you go to transfer your points, it's say it says
this may take up to forty eight hours to transfer
the points, and then you're thinking, oh my gosh, what
if this sells out before I can book my flights?
(16:47):
And typically it is instant. Typically it's if you go
up and you refresh it, you'll probably lose everything and
have to start over booking the flight right, but it'll
be there, and then it is typically instant. I have
seen it in one situation booking an international flight where
it did take twenty four hours, But for the most part,
it is instant, and I just wouldn't transfer the points
(17:08):
over if it wasn't what I saw on that toolbooking site.
But I haven't seen that difference before.
Speaker 3 (17:14):
Sure. I got burned one time on a hotel Marriott specifically,
I'm just going to call them out where I was
able to transfer points from my credit card to Marriott,
and it was at a time where it even said
if you transfer you'll get three times the points. So oh, yeah,
(17:37):
that's great, my points will be worth three times the
amount if I transfer them to Marriott. But I'm like, okay,
but I need to look into how much are these
points worth? Well, without having points through Marriott already, I
could not see how much I could book a room
for in points. It only told me the monetary amount
(17:59):
of the room. So then I did a deep, deep dive.
I spent way too much time on this trying to
figure out what the value of a point to dollar
is within Barriott. The information that I got seemed to
indicate I forget what it was at this point, but
whatever it indicated at the time made sense that Okay,
(18:22):
if this is true, then these points are going to
be worth X amount of dollars. And I don't know
if I just was reading the information wrong or it
wasn't the same information as you know, what they were
talking about. But I finally made the transfer and it
was not able to get me even one full night's day,
whereas if it had stayed with the credit card, I
(18:44):
could have gotten two nights on those same amount of points,
not even with the three times. So all that to say,
and I think there's even It's why you're recommending, like
Hyatt as one of the better hotels, but it is
worth knowing and being sure about how many points will
this cost me? And if the website's not being transparent
(19:05):
about that that you might get burned.
Speaker 4 (19:08):
Yeah, and yeah, and I think that's one of the
things that you kind of just learn as you you know,
as as you're earning the points and figuring out that that, yeah,
you can typically get the same level Hyatt hotel. I'd
say maybe a fifteen thousand point Hyatt Hotel would cost
me like forty to fifty thousand points in Marriott or Hilton.
(19:30):
And so really learning what those sweet spots are truly
can save you so many points when you go to
transfer those points. And yeah, it sounds like there was
definitely something going on that you experienced, but in term
of a bummer, but are hopefully that can help people
going forward as well.
Speaker 3 (19:47):
Yeah, there is a bit to know about it when
we're kind of you know, trans because yeah, it's worth it.
Speaker 4 (19:53):
Which might have been one of the places you were
comparing and you're looking at Marriot booking on points versus
in the portal, Yeah, it might be similar, but if
you are looking at travel partners that get really great rewards,
like I mentioned Southwest, Hyatt Air France Virgin Atlantic is
another really great one. If you are looking at those,
you can often get way more value by transferring partners.
(20:15):
By transferring to those partners than you would booking in
a portal, even if you're getting like one point twenty
five points per dollar or cents per dollar, I guess
I should say yeah, poor point.
Speaker 1 (20:28):
Okay, So now that we're talking about where to book travel,
does it ever make sense to uh so you recommend
transferring it to the partner. Does it ever make sense
to to book something like outside of a hotel like
a like an Airbnb, or to do like a cash
(20:50):
transfer versus points? Like what are the alternatives and when
do they make sense?
Speaker 4 (20:56):
Yes? Great question. So in terms of knowing when to
transfer your points versus not, it is going to kind
of depend on the redemption. So for instance, as I mentioned,
I have a family of five, and so if I
wanted to book a hotel room in Europe, I am
(21:17):
a two hotel room family. The maximum occupancy in most
European hotels is two maybe three, and so there's no
way I can get around booking two rooms So if
I say the hotel room that I want is twenty
thousand points to night, well I need two rooms, so
that's forty thousand points to night. However, it might be
a better deal for me to book an airbnb, right
(21:39):
because the cash value of forty thousand points, let's just
very vaguely say maybe forty thousand points equals four hundred bucks, right,
that's kind of how on average it equals out. Well,
if I can find an Airbnb that would cost me
less than four hundred dollars a night, which I surely
(22:02):
in most places can, it would be more beneficial for
me to use that Capital one venture card that I
talked about earlier. And there is something that you can
do when you earn points through Capital one. You can
go back and you can basically reimburse yourself for a charge.
And so maybe instead of booking one night at a
(22:23):
hotel for forty thousand points, maybe I can book three
or four nights through an Airbnb for four hundred bucks.
And I know that this is a little bit difficult
to do the transition in your head, especially if you're
newer to this, but basically, if I have forty thousand
points through Capital one, I can go through and I
can reimburse myself for four hundred or let's say I'm
(22:47):
doing the math in my head wrong, but I can
go through and I can reimburse myself for that charge.
And so that is something that's huge for families when
they're booking, when they're when they're booking, especially internationally. And
I don't know about you guys, but anyone that has kids,
it's not super likely that they really enjoy staying in
(23:10):
a hotel, and so just having the option to go
through and book maybe on Capitol one or through another way,
but you can definitely use your points to cover those
Airbnb charges, which can be huge, especially a.
Speaker 1 (23:28):
Broad So could you also do it to cover a
cruise in that sense?
Speaker 4 (23:35):
Absolutely. So that I need to mention is that if
you have the Venture Awards card or the Venture x,
you need to book the cruise or you need to
book the airbnb on that credit card, right, So that's
key number one. There's also actually a workaround for Disney
where if you want to do the same thing with
Disney tickets, which are obviously insanely expensive, if you book
(24:00):
those tickets through a travel agent, and I know that
sounds cumbersome, but really you're just going to a website
like get Away Today or Undercover Tourist and you book
the Disney tickets on that website, then it will code
as travel. And I should mention that the Capital one
Rewards cards they you can use those points to reimburse
(24:25):
yourself for anything that codes as travel. And so that's
why I would be able to go through and pay
myself back for an Airbnb or for a cruise, or
for Disney tickets if they code as travel, which if
you buy them directly through Disney, they code as entertainment.
And that's why I'm making a big deal about booking
it through a travel agent.
Speaker 1 (24:45):
And Undercover Tourists is a very reputable site. It's not
one of those like shady roadside Disney dealers.
Speaker 4 (24:51):
Totally, absolutely, And lots of times we think of travel agent, Oh,
you got to find a person and they're making plans
for you and all this stuff, and it's really, you know,
it's twenty twenty five. You can just go online and
buy your tickets to their website and so yes, so
if you prefer to travel, you know, cruising or Airbnb,
or maybe you want to do a Disney type situation.
There are different cards that you can use to make
(25:13):
travel work for you, and I think that's what's so
valuable is you you can travel whether you're traveling solo
or with your person or as a family, there are
ways that you can travel affordably. And that's what I love,
because we all want to spend the money on food
and not on accommodations. Am I ready?
Speaker 1 (25:31):
And one more note on Disney. I know we don't
love Marriott, but the Disney Swan and Dolphin is technically.
Speaker 4 (25:39):
A Marriat it is, and I just stayed there a
lot in January. Yeah, occasionally there will be a really
great offer where you can get fifty thousand points certificates
on those cards, and that is the best time to
capitalize on those because those hotels, the Swan and the
(26:00):
Dolphin typically go for about fifty thousand points a night,
sometimes a little bit more, sometimes a little bit less,
and that is what you want to watch out for.
Speaker 3 (26:11):
How do you stay alerted on whether or not your
card is offering one of those certificates for specific hotel?
Speaker 4 (26:18):
Great question, I mean, unfortunately, you can probably join like
eight thousand different mailing lists for all of these different
credit cards. I email all of the you know, my
Instagram community. I definitely email them whenever there's a really
great card offer that comes out. I don't spam them,
but if it's worth going for, I will definitely send
out an email. And that's one of them that I
(26:39):
think is valuable.
Speaker 3 (26:41):
Would you recommend that people have multiple travel rewards credit
cards at a time? Like? Is that the strategy here
to be able to maximize this?
Speaker 4 (26:51):
That is the strategy. Yeah. So my husband and I
eleven years ago started opening up credit cards to travel
on points. And I was a teacher and he was
a student, and so we you know, learned about this
kind of thing and we thought, oh, maybe we can
do this. So there are some rules. There's a rule
called the five twenty four rule, which means you can
(27:11):
only open up five personal credit cards in twenty four months.
And some banks go by this and some don't. But
so what we have done is we have just strategically
figured out that maybe my husband opens up a card
and I say this meaning and I want you to
know that we have never spent a cent in interest,
and I do not recommend this to anyone that maybe
(27:31):
is in debt. But in terms of signing up for
a credit card, you you probably have seen it on
the TV where it's like, oh, if you sign for
this credit card, we'll give you x amount of points
by spending four thousand dollars in three months. And we
have just used this in a way where we are
using our credit cards like a debit card. One we
set up auto pay. We budget just like we typically
(27:54):
budget using you know, different apps that we have, and
then we buy things. We buy gas and groceries and
all of the things. And so yeah, we do have
a few different credit cards that we use, and typically
at the year mark, when the fee comes up, the
annual fee comes up, we take a step back and
(28:15):
we think, okay, is there a benefit to keeping this
card for another year. Now. Some cards might give you
a free nights s day every year on the anniversary.
So maybe I'm getting a free night at a Marriott
or at Hilton or at an property. And I don't
know about you, but I typically cannot book a hotel
room for less than one hundred bucks a night, and
(28:36):
so paying an annual fee of one hundred dollars a
night might be worth it for me to keep some
of these cards year after year, and others I might
think this has no longer serving me, so I'm going
to cancel this card at the year mark. And so definitely,
every year we reassess what cards we want to hang
onto and which ones we don't think benefit us any longer,
(28:58):
and we kind of go from there. So do we
have multiple travel rewards earning cards? Absolutely we do, but
some of them it's kind of like you're getting a
cube on because ye know, the Anal free Knight or whatever.
Speaker 5 (29:12):
The the yeah work is when we get to the
point of having multiple credit cards, what would you say
is the strategy for kind of keeping track of them,
not getting confused, making sure that we are maximizing all
the offerings.
Speaker 4 (29:29):
I use an app called travel Freely. I have a
link to it on my website. If I'm kind of
going through lots of things where you're like, ah, what
is she saying? But I use the travel Freely app
and this is what I love about it. One it's free.
Two it sent so I don't have to give it
any bank information, right. I value that. So you're probably thinking, Okay, well,
(29:51):
how do I put my credit cards in? And so basically,
when you sign up for a new credit card. You
go from like a drop down menu and you click
this is the one I got, and then it populates
all the info and so then it'll send me a
reminder for when my annual fee is coming up. I
think it gives me like a forty five day warning
and then a ten day warning, so that I can
have it on the radar that I might want to
close this card or reassess if I want to keep
(30:12):
it open, and so that's something that I love. And
then it also will remind me, you know, I mentioned
these welcome offers that you can receive by spending a
certain amount of money and then you get a big
chunk of points, and so it kind of just keeps
it straight for me. So it tells me the date
that I need to earn that I need to spend
the money by to earn that huge chunk of points.
(30:34):
And so that's another thing I really value about the
Travel Freely app.
Speaker 3 (30:38):
Yeah, that's cool.
Speaker 4 (30:40):
So that's how I keep it all organized. And I
should also mention there's a tab ways a tab for
my husband and for myself.
Speaker 1 (30:47):
That's awesome. I just paid a annual fee, which I
am typically vary against but I realized my Global Entry
is up at the end of the year and I
need to renew that, and this particular card offers a
(31:08):
global Entry credit and global Entry includes TSA pre check,
which is actually what I use it mostly for. So yeah,
and it actually was a little bit more than what
I would have paid for the update, but it also
gets me free like priority boarding. So I was like, okay,
(31:32):
I'm going to I'm going to keep it for the
priority and you.
Speaker 4 (31:36):
Might keep it for one more year, but your pre
check or your global Entry my last year year, right,
and so right, that lasts for five one more year.
But yeah, yes, absolutely. There are some credit cards too
where if you have them, maybe you'll get So the
IHG program it allows you to have the fourth night
free when you're booking on points, and then the Marriott
and Hilton programs both allow you to have the fifth
(31:59):
night free when you're booking points, and so there are
often benefits to just be in a cardholder in general.
And sometimes it's just free breakfast, you know. And so
it's definitely something that we reassess at the year mark
and say, okay, is this serving us? And if not, no,
we're not going to pay a fee on a card
that isn't benefiting us anymore. And then for us, because
(32:19):
we have been doing this for eleven years, sometimes we think, okay,
but do I want to open this card again in
the future, because some cards you can receive a welcome
off for every two years, so every twenty four months,
and some cards are every four years, So it just depends.
Did I say twenty eight months, twenty four months, twenty.
Speaker 1 (32:37):
Four Yeah, you're right, okay, agreat So that card that
I mentioned, that's a business card. Last question, not a question,
but it's a business card and it's not necessarily connected
to the business of frugal friends, and talk about how
you rationalize adding those because those don't count towards the
(32:59):
five twenty four rule.
Speaker 4 (33:02):
Yeah, so most people don't know. I mean, it sounds
like your following is pretty up on things. So you
guys might know, but many people don't know that. You
probably own a business and you don't know it, and
you can probably qualify for a business card. So first
and foremost business cards have huge welcome offers and they
(33:23):
benefit us greatly because you can get a huge chunk
of points, and they also don't count against that rule.
That I mentioned earlier, which is the five twenty four rule.
You can have five personal cards in twenty four months. Right,
And so with that said, so many times we think, oh, well,
I'm not a dentist. I don't have a dentist office,
so I don't have a legit business. But if you
(33:44):
sell clothes on marketplace, if you sell some furniture once
or twice a year, if you tutor, if you teach
piano lessons, if you take you if you do photography,
you know, whatever your side hustle is, you can likely
qualify to get a business card. And how do I
justify this? It's not a justification, you know, I definitely
(34:06):
recommend that you. I mean, if you don't have a business,
you shouldn't open a business card, right, But so many
of us do have something going on on the side,
which I mean, I heard a your last episode. I
was just listening to you. You're thinking about selling an
instant pot. And you know, if you are selling things
consistently throughout your house, you own a business. You are
reselling items, and so you might not have an EI
(34:30):
in or an LLC, and you don't need one because
you can apply for a business card as a sole
proprietor using your social Security number, and so that's something
that I definitely recommend you do if you do have
some sort of a side hustle, and if you don't
have a side hustle, well to day is the day
to start one, because you can get really great rewards
from that.
Speaker 1 (34:50):
And you don't need a profit because so many of
the businesses that you think turn a profit are not
turning a profit, so neither.
Speaker 4 (34:58):
Yeah, you have a tournament property, it is not making
a profit, so thanks for rubbing that in. But we
definitely have business cards for it.
Speaker 3 (35:06):
Do you know what we most definitely have time for
and we can maximize the most.
Speaker 1 (35:14):
It's so efficient.
Speaker 4 (35:16):
Let's do it.
Speaker 1 (35:17):
The Bill of the week.
Speaker 6 (35:29):
That's right, it's time for the best minute of your
entire week. Maybe a baby was born and his name
is William. Maybe you paid off your mortgage, maybe your
car died and you're happy to not have to pay
that bill anymore. That's bills, Buffalo bills, Bill Clon.
Speaker 1 (35:46):
This is the Bill of the Week Amber. Every week
we invite our listeners and our guests to share with
us their favorite bill for the week, and we would
love to hear yours today.
Speaker 4 (35:59):
Let's do it. Okay, So this is actually a win
that I've been going for for a long time. Remember
when we were kids and like the only options we
had to watch on TV was like Scooby Doo marathons
and TLC marathons. Me too. Anyways, so I've been bugging
my husband about canceling some of our streaming services. And
I know that this is nothing exciting, but basically, we
(36:20):
sign up for a streaming service. It's called Sling TV.
We get it every year during college football season. Well,
a couple of years ago, we stopped canceling it on
the not college football season, and I just thought, why
are we paying eighty dollars a month for this stupid thing?
Like why can't our kids just be bored and watch
(36:40):
one streaming service instead of having options of so many?
And so we made a list of the ones we
wanted to cancel, of the ones that I wanted to cancel,
and we actually canceled Sling finally, and we've got two
more on the docket for coming up next. The problem
is I have some credit cards that give us some
of these streaming services for free, and so even though
I still want to get rid of more. I'm like, oh,
(37:02):
but it's free. But anyways, so we just saved eighty
dollars a month starting like three days ago because we
are no longer paying for Sling because it is not
college football season.
Speaker 1 (37:13):
Sorry Sling. If you were thinking about sponsoring the shows us, sorry,
that's awesome, that's legit. The streaming services are adding up
so hard.
Speaker 4 (37:29):
I know we all just canceled DirecTV and all the
things ten years ago to save money, and now they
all cost more than if we just kept paying for
the one thing.
Speaker 1 (37:38):
Yep, the times they are a change in there isn't
that how it goes?
Speaker 3 (37:43):
We too try and keep just one streaming service at
a time, but sometimes it just gets out of hand
and I got to take inventory again. And yeahlice and
dice and be willing to do that. Thanks so much
for sharing that bill. If you all listening have a
bill that you want to share, it it has to
do with letting the kids be bored, or bills you
(38:03):
don't mind paying, or how much you love being named
Bill frugal friendspodcast dot com, slash bill, leave it for us,
and now it's time for gridening round pew.
Speaker 1 (38:19):
Okay, what's the most impressive travel strategy you've ever pulled off.
Speaker 4 (38:26):
I would say eighty five thousand points, whole family of
five to Europe each way. I've done it get going
there once, coming back once, and I've got it planned
again for the summer. Eighty five thousand points, five.
Speaker 3 (38:42):
People long, one way and what did it cover?
Speaker 4 (38:44):
Mean? What?
Speaker 3 (38:46):
Wow? How? Oh? Wait? Are you saying? Just it covered
a one way flight for five people?
Speaker 4 (38:51):
Yep? Total?
Speaker 3 (38:52):
Nice?
Speaker 4 (38:53):
So kids through Flying Blue are twenty five percent off.
So that means all of my kids' flights were fifteen
thousand points and our flights were twenty thousand points. So
that was amazing cool. So DI cover lodging or your
return flight?
Speaker 3 (39:09):
Correct?
Speaker 4 (39:09):
Correct, So it was the same coming back. But I
mean truly eighty five thousand points. The cash value of
that is eight hundred and fifty bucks. And so could
I get even one round trip flight to Europe for
eight hundred and fifty bucks? That's probably all I could do, right,
Like on a deal, I could probably find a round
trip flight to Europe for eight hundred and fifty bucks.
(39:31):
So I got all of us there for eighty five
thousand points and all of us back for another eighty
five thousand points.
Speaker 3 (39:37):
So maybe saying you know what, though, you don't have
to come back, and that's the decision we can all make.
We could just go and stay on vacation.
Speaker 4 (39:48):
It's true, you can. You can for me.
Speaker 3 (39:53):
This isn't necessarily related to credit cards, but it was
a strategy that I was and still a little proud
of when Eric and I lived in our RV and
we came down to live for a couple of months
in Florida. In our RV, we claimed residents at jenn
and Travis's house, which was true because it's where we
(40:15):
parked for many months, and so we were like, oh,
it'd be great to get a Florida resident Disney pass.
Oh yeah, But in order to claim residency, there's a
couple of different mailings that you would need to bring in,
whether it's like a utility bill or a bank statement.
So we decided to open up a checking account at
(40:37):
a bank that was currently offering a welcome bonus, like
a monetary welcome bonus, And the bonus that they offered
happened to be the exact amount that it costs to
get both of Yeah, both my husband and I a
four day Disney resident like Florida resident pass, so we
(40:57):
both got to go to Disney for four day four three.
Speaker 4 (41:02):
That's amazing.
Speaker 1 (41:04):
Yes, I love I love that pass.
Speaker 3 (41:08):
That was a good one. We had a blast before
COVID hit That was right.
Speaker 1 (41:13):
That was literally March twenty twenty. Yeah for us, I
would say we did four days at an all inclusive
resort in king kuon flights were on points. The all
(41:35):
inclusive resort was on Points, and that was We only
did that one once, but that was my favorite. Oh
and we stayed at the Park Hyatt in Oh my gosh,
somewhere in Colorado. It was a beautiful is the best
hotel I've ever stayed at. And I was pregnant and
(41:59):
my husband went skiing because it was literally on the mountain,
and I stayed inside because I was too big to ski. Well,
I because the doctor said it was unsafe at that
point in my pregnancy, not that you can be too
big to ski. And I took a bubble bath and
they had an espresso in the room and that was
(42:20):
the first time I'd ever had an espresso. It was magical.
I love that place. I'd love to go back, and
it was what was it March, so it was like
there was still snow, but it was like not frigid
during the day warming up. It was just perfect. And
(42:44):
those are my two favorites.
Speaker 3 (42:46):
Love.
Speaker 4 (42:46):
That's guys. I feel like you were underwhelmed with mine,
and I feel like I need to tell you that
we were in Europe for a whole month with these,
you know, eighty five thousand point of flights, and I
only paid one thousand dollars in accommodation because I use
points for all my hotel rooms as well. But I
don't know how fast this lightning round is going to go,
and I think it out so.
Speaker 1 (43:09):
It's kind of it's uh, we call it a lightning round,
but it's not fast, okay, And I think that's supposed
to be funny. We've just always called it a lightning round,
but it has never been fast.
Speaker 4 (43:22):
Second half that you weren't gonna be super impressed by
my thing, but I was.
Speaker 1 (43:26):
Nobody's nobody's ever called us out on the lightning round, Okay.
Speaker 4 (43:32):
Amber, Okay, take you back.
Speaker 1 (43:34):
You're the firm.
Speaker 3 (43:35):
Never was underwhelmed, but now I am absolutely overwhelmed. I
think it's amazing. Of course, of course, Amber, you were
able to make the most sounds so fun. What a
cool thing to do with your family. Well, thank you
for sharing all of your tips and tricks. Can you
(43:58):
share where people can and find more from you if
they want to learn more about these strategies.
Speaker 1 (44:04):
Especially the specific cards you're recommending, like for these strategies.
Speaker 4 (44:09):
Definitely you can find And I kind of want to
apologize because I told these ladies, but I am not
allowed to mention many cards by name here and I'd
never want to sound like clickbaity, but that's just how
it is due some affiliate rules. So anyways, you can
find me at Amber on Points on Instagram or you
can find me at amber on Points dot com and
I would love to see you there. And definitely I
(44:30):
know lots of us because you guys are so well
versed in all things frugal, which is definitely traveling on Points.
If you have any questions, feel free to send me
a DM.
Speaker 1 (44:39):
Yay, thanks so much, Amber, Thank you, thanks Amber.
Speaker 4 (44:44):
That was fun.
Speaker 1 (44:48):
That was so great. I am excited to travel with
my kids, and then I'm like punted back to reality
of what it's actually like traveling with kids, and I'm like,
I don't know if I want to do it too much,
but I think I think we will maybe try to
do something this year.
Speaker 3 (45:07):
We'll see where do you think you'll go? I don't know.
Speaker 1 (45:10):
Travis wants the kids to see snow, and we have
the Companion Pass for Southwest through the end of the year,
so I'm thinking after Christmas before New Year trip cool,
maybe to find some snow.
Speaker 3 (45:24):
That would be fun.
Speaker 4 (45:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (45:26):
Yeah, I learned a lot in this episode, like a
couple of key takeaways, one being that award tool, yes,
that she told us about. I did not know about.
That's so as often as I travel, so I did
since recording, I looked up kind of a little bit
(45:46):
about that, and super helpful. It will tell you certainly
the flights from where you want to go to the
desk you know, from where you're going from two, and
then how much those flights would cost points, but also
where you'd have to transfer from, like the partners, the
credit card that you would need to have, who you
(46:08):
would need to transfer it to in order to get
that flight. So it's kind of like a done for
you explanation, and the user interface is nearly exactly like
Google Flights. So yeah, super super helpful. I'm excited to
actually try it out for my next flight booking. Yeah, well,
(46:28):
thank you all so much for listening. We really appreciate
you being here spending time with us. We also really
appreciate the kinder reviews that you've been leaving for us
about our book. Many of you have been loving and
purchasing by what you Love Without Going Broke. Like Jerlyn
M who said helpful book for achieving your financial goals
five stars, this book provides a helpful and realistic way
(46:51):
of achieving your financial goals. The authors lay out actionable
steps that focus on how you can align your spending
with your values instead of trying to set up a
restrictive budget that will inevitably fail. This book offers a
variety of exercises to help you think about why you
spend money. It also offers simple action steps at the
end of each chapter to help you adjust your spending
(47:14):
and make changes that will benefit your finances. Highly recommend
this book. Thank you for the recommendation.
Speaker 1 (47:20):
Jaralus, Absolutely, yeah, thank you so much for reading it.
If you have not checked out by what you Love
Without Going Broke, head to buy whatolovebook dot com. You
can order it there. You can also see. If your
library doesn't have it, we have instructions on that page
for requesting it from your library. And if you have
read it, please leave a review on Amazon or Goodreads.
(47:43):
It really does help the book spread the message further
and wider. And leave a review for the podcast as
well on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. That too helps us
spread this message further and wider.
Speaker 3 (47:55):
See you next time. Bye.
Speaker 1 (47:58):
Frugal Friends is pretty used by Eric Sirianni.
Speaker 3 (48:12):
Yeah, you all are making me think about even more
types of credit cards.
Speaker 4 (48:20):
That is definitely a way to say that.
Speaker 1 (48:27):
So I have healthcare sharing, So for two of my
medical bills from November, I have been sent a check.
Hopefully the third one they just sent straight to it
because that's the big one. But I think what I'm
going to do is open a new card to pay
those medical bills, to get a welcome bonus.
Speaker 3 (48:49):
Oh nice, and then pay it with the money that
you just got. Yeah. That's always my scary thing about
paying medical bills with a credit card that you're supposed
to be re first for is making sure that you've
got the money, right, I already have to be able
to pay it off. Yeah, I didn't.
Speaker 4 (49:06):
I don't.
Speaker 3 (49:07):
I don't.
Speaker 1 (49:08):
I don't pay medical bills until I have the money
or I can really negotiate it down. I'm not in
a rush to pay medical bills. They no longer go
to your credit score. I don't really need a high
credit score right now anyway. But trying to spend as
little as possible on those medical stays.
Speaker 3 (49:30):
Yeah, agreed, that's great. Get the bonus, get a ton
of points. That's that's the thing, the amount of time
in between being able to get the welcome bonuses, Like
it's just a couple months though, No, I mean if
you've already had the card in the past.
Speaker 1 (49:48):
Yeah, you got to open a new one. Yeah, I'm
not sure. I might do Venture. Yeah, I might do Venture.
Speaker 3 (49:55):
It is who I currently have and I have been happy.
Speaker 1 (49:57):
Yeah, I have had Venture in the past, but it's
been over four years. So I can get the bonus again.
Speaker 3 (50:02):
Excellent.
Speaker 1 (50:03):
Yeah, so we will. We will see.
Speaker 3 (50:06):
Oh can I get Can I refer you to it? Oh?
Speaker 5 (50:09):
Yeah, I'm gonna refer you please do Okay, wonderful, Let's.
Speaker 3 (50:14):
Go get food.
Speaker 1 (50:15):
Yeah, if you're listening and you need a referral code
for ah Venture for for a number of cards, that
we're alluded to in this episode. Send us an email.
Speaker 3 (50:29):
I think everybody gets a gets a bonus, and that's
the tashion I do, and you do.
Speaker 1 (50:34):
Yeah, specifically Jill for the venture.
Speaker 3 (50:37):
Yeah. And if there's another card you're interested in, then
go to GEN. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (50:42):
I have a lot of cards from the other email.
I guess we're not allowed to say what they are now. No,
we can't for legal reasons. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (50:51):
Email me Jill at Frugal friendspodcast dot com.
Speaker 1 (50:54):
Or Jen at Frugal Friends podcast dot com. Let's all
win together.
Speaker 3 (50:59):
Let's win and travel together. Wo
Episode five oh three, Travel for almost Free, mastering credit
card rewards with Amber Paul.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Welcome to the Frugal Friends podcast, where you'll learn to
save money, embrace simplicity, and live a life here your
hosts Jen and Jill.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
Welcome to Frugal Friends podcast. My name is Jen, my
name is Jill, and today we are talking about credit
card rewards points because so many of you want to
save money on travel. It's one of the things that
you spend on without guilt. But we want to save
as much as possible on that spending so you can
(00:47):
maximize guilt free spending.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
And Amber is a great person to ask about this.
Not only is she super expert on how to maximize
and be the most efficient with credit card rewards, he
also has three children, so she's doing the whole travel
thing with a family.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
Yeah, three young kids.
Speaker 4 (01:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
So this is applicable whether you are single or you
are a family looking to travel on points. But first,
this episode is brought to you by your travel sinking Fund.
Even if you are using points for your flight and hotels,
you're still going to be spending more money on food
(01:28):
and other snacks and maybe souvenirs. Maybe you're forced to
get your kids something because you walked into a store
accidentally and they won't leave screaming without the thing. You're
just gonna spend more money than you think you are.
So you need to have a travel sinking fund, and
we recommend you have it at a high yield savings
(01:49):
account like ciit Rgal Friends Podcast dot com, slash C.
Opening one there doesn't just get you a currently four
percent APU why, but it also supports the show at
no cost to you. So again, Frugal Friends Podcast dot com,
slash c get your travel sinking fun together so you
(02:11):
can have some really good travel this summer.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
Yes, st it.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
So if you love traveling, then we have a lot
of episodes for you. How to travel full time on
a budget is episode three twelve. How to Save Money
on travel is episode two fifty. But I think this
is probably the best episode we've done on saving money
on travels, definitely my favorite. We haven't done a travel
(02:39):
rewards episode in a really long time, and Amber is
definitely the one to do it with. So she's a
former teacher now she teaches people online how to travel
with their families for less money. You know where is
Amber on Points on Instagram. Let's get into the episode.
Speaker 3 (02:59):
Yeah, I will say that she is not able to
talk about specific credit cards, and really a lot of
the recommendations do change. So we'll talk about where you
can find more information on some of those specific cards
that she does recommend, kind of through links in the
show notes and that kind of a thing. But just
a little caveat there about the conversation, but still super helpful.
(03:22):
So let's kick it to Amber.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
Amber, Welcome to the Frugal Friends podcast. We are so
excited to talk about this topic because everybody wants to
travel more.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
We do.
Speaker 4 (03:36):
Thank you so much for having me. I also want
to travel more, so I'm excited to share the love.
Speaker 3 (03:41):
I just love traveling and I've got some specific questions
like how to do it better. So I'm so glad
you're here.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
And yeah, we want to get past, like you know,
the definition of travel rewards points and we all know
what they can do for us, and so I would
love to kind of use this opportunity to advantage and
hopefully to the advantage of whoever's listening. I want to
take my family of four, two adults, two children on
(04:08):
a vacation using travel rewards points. I'm in an advantage
because I already have some already, But like where should
I start? Like, yeah, how do you pick your vacations
(04:29):
with travel rewards points?
Speaker 4 (04:31):
It's a good question. I would say. First of all,
if kids are involved, congratulations, you made a good choice
to only have two of them, because when you are
outside of the US, it becomes almost impossible to book
more than two kids and two adults in one room.
You then have to transition into having two rooms typically.
(04:53):
I know here in the US typically you can kind
of like sneak someone in right and it's not a
big deal, but in other countries it it can kind
of be an issue. So what I recommend, whether you're
a smaller family or a larger family, if we're talking
about places within the US, you want to earn flexible
points that can be transferred to travel partners. And then
once you've earned those points, you have so many options,
(05:17):
and the ones that I think are most helpful, especially
for families, are the travel partners being Southwest Airlines and Hyatt. So,
first of all, Southwest Airlines is awesome whether you're paying
cash or whether you are paying points, And this is
why you can book a flight and maybe you're booking
(05:37):
it at the absolute peak time, but then you might
see a Southwest cell and you might think, oh, well, ah,
I should have waited and booked my flight. But just
by going onto where you have your existing reservation, you
can click where it says change and you can actually
get points back or money back. And so I think
lots of the times, or oftentimes I should say, we think, oh,
(05:59):
I'm not going to book this flight now, because what
if Wednesday night at ten pm is the best time
to book And obviously those are all missed. But Southwest
you can always get points or cash back no matter what,
no matter what the cell is, and so that is
a huge sweet spot. And so what I did from
there is I definitely just look where does Southwest fly?
(06:20):
And Southwest flies over the majority of the US, including
Hawaii and also to Mexico, Caribbean. We've gone to Belieze,
We've gone to Puerto Rico, and so there are definitely
options to fly Southwest for so anyways, what I would
do is, first of all, find somewhere that Southwest flies,
(06:41):
and then second, I typically when using points, choose to
stay in Hyatt hotels. And the reason why I say
this is because Hyatt you can typically find a room
from anywhere between five thousand points a night to maybe
like forty thousand points to night, and forty thousand points
a night would be extremely bougie like to the point
(07:01):
that you're probably like, I don't know if I want
to take my kids there.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
That's that's all inclusive.
Speaker 4 (07:06):
Yes, exactly. And so for the most part, if I
just know that one of my favorite banks has that
travel those two travel partners, I would try to earn
those points, and then I would transfer those points to
those travel partners that get me maximum reward.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
Okay, so I have a two year old and a
five year old. What's the longest not longest flight, but
like the two year old, I'm worried about taking on
a flight, and I live in Florida, So like, how
far I have about I think one hundred and thirty
thousand southwest one hundred and eighty I'm one hundred and
eighty thousand southwest points. What's the furthest I can take
(07:48):
him without him melting down?
Speaker 4 (07:50):
What's for this? You can handle it because the flight
is only gonna last for so long, right, and you're
never gonna see those people again, I will say, okay,
so stay ocasion. That's true. Great options in Florida. You've
got the Highatt Regency Grand Cyprus, which is probably quite
close to you, and you can book that starting at
twelve thousand points a night. And then Higatt place to
(08:11):
Panama City is on the beach and you can book
those for about twenty three thousand points a night. Now,
in terms of flights, I live in Texas, grew up
in Georgia, so I can get to King Kun in
about a two hour flight and that is no big deal.
That is a quick flight. And so we stayed at
the Hyatt Mayacoba, the on Das Mayacoba for twenty seven
(08:35):
thousand points a night. Now, how long can you can
you take your child on a flight? We recently took
our kids overnight to Europe last summer. We went to Amsterdam, London,
in Paris, and this summer we are doing another European trip.
And here's the thing, Like I mentioned, you're never going
to see these people on the flight again. But kids
(08:55):
are resilient and kids can do hard things, and so
I think the question is as parents, can we handle
it and are we willing to? Because it's it's not easy, right,
Like you might have a kid that refuses to sleep
all night long. For me, I have found for my
two year old who's now no longer too. But if
(09:15):
I bring a car seat on a flight, game changer,
game changer because the kid will sleep just like they
would sleep in a car, which for me fortunately works.
And so I would definitely say kids can handle long flights.
The question is can you handle a long flight? And
you can do it? That's so true.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
Maybe I can. But yeah, my two year old doesn't
sleep through the night when we travel, but we do
love the Hyatt Grand Cypress. We stay there once a
year at least, and it's just because it's a short drive.
But I want to do a flying one. So you've
given me some things to think about.
Speaker 3 (09:58):
Amber. We see so much I feel on social media
and maybe even hearing about it on podcasts of people
just going on wild vacations and sometimes super elaborate, super
high end get in the first class flights. All this
stuff on like relatively minimal points, and I don't know
(10:19):
how much I believe them or not, But if someone
does want to maximize their rewards and really do it
as efficiently as possible. What do you think the card
strategy should be and how long could someone anticipate it
takes for them to be able to potentially like cover
an entire trip lodging and airfare.
Speaker 4 (10:44):
That's such a great question. So right now, there's an
offer on a credit card. It's the it's the Capitol
one Venture Rewards Card, and it currently has an elevated offer,
but the standard offer is that you can earn seventy
five thousand points by sign up for this one credit
card and spending four thousand dollars in three months.
Speaker 3 (11:03):
Now.
Speaker 4 (11:03):
Capital one Venture and Venture x cards are awesome because
they have really good travel partners, especially international travel partners.
And so in terms of seeing people book these bougie
first class flights and thinking like, oh okay, well, how
can I really make this happen? I would say you
want to be keyed into a few things. So first
(11:24):
is you want to be aware of travel partners and
so Capital one has a travel partner which is Air
France Kalem. It's technically called the Flying Blue partnership, but
both of those flights fall into that partnership. And so
what I would do if I wanted to do that
and I actually have done that for this upcoming summer.
Is you would take your points and you would go
(11:46):
to you guys have heard of Google flights, and I
know that most people have heard of Google flights. There
are websites that do the same exact thing, but they
search the points that you might already have on hand.
So I personally like searching a website. It's completely free.
You do have to create a log in, but everything
else is free. It's called a ward tool, like a
(12:09):
screwdriver award tool dot com. And what you would do
is you would, like I said, you log in and
you put your beginning airport and then you put your destination.
And it's actually really awesome. And this isn't sponsored, though
it should be. You can search four days at a time,
and so I love that because the key to finding
those really awesome maximized deals are having flexible travel times, right,
(12:33):
like if you want to go on Christmas Eve and
come back on New Year's Eve, like, that's probably not
gonna give you great pointstills. But anyways, I love searching
from this website, and there's lots of others that I
use as well. But it will, it will, it will
scan all of the different airlines for you, I should
say almost all. So I personally living in the US
(12:57):
might think to look at United and Delta, but I
probably wouldn't think to search Air France and Air France
and Iberia and Quantity. You know, there's like so many
airlines that I don't naturally look at, and I don't
want to look at them, right, I don't want to
create user names and accounts for all of these different airlines,
and so that's where I would start. I would start
by going to a ward tool dot com or point
(13:19):
dot me or there's many, and I would search my
destination and I would see what it spits out and
then whatever it spits out. So if it's telling me
that I need forty thousand points to fly first class
from this destination to hear, then I know, okay, I
probably want to open up a card that will earn
me these types of flexible points. And so that's where
(13:41):
I would I would definitely start is by seeing what
is my ideal destination, what airlines travel there, and then
from that I have this guide that I can share
if needed, But it shows all of the different travel
partners side by side. Because different banks have different travel partners,
and some of them over lap. So the four major
(14:02):
banks that are out there all have a travel partner
which I just mentioned, and it's the Flying Blue Alliance.
So maybe I have some points in Capital One, and
then I have some other points stranded in another bank.
I can send all of those to Flying Blue and
book those flights abroad. So to answer your question more specifically,
(14:23):
I would say flexible dates and an award searching tool
that searches multiple airlines simultaneously.
Speaker 1 (14:30):
And then probably just the amount of time it would
take to do the minimum spend on each card, right.
Speaker 4 (14:36):
Yeah, absolutely, And so you want to do this a
little bit in advance. I typically, and I think you
guys asked me this question before and I probably skipped it,
but I typically am working on earning points for maybe
nine months out to a year out. Sometimes I'm kind
of scrambled and I'm like, I need a little bit
more points to add on this last hotel night. But
(14:57):
for the most part, I'm trying to look ahead about
it year.
Speaker 3 (15:03):
Yeah. And then do you ever run into times when
you choose to make the transfer to one of these
travel rewards partners and then the points aren't what you thought,
or the flight is costing more points than maybe what
it was showing ahead of time, Like how much timing
(15:27):
of this do we need to do? Because I also
know a lot of times once you transfer those points,
there's no getting it back. They now entirely reside with
whoever that travel partner is, whether it's an airline or
a hotel. So what have you seen with that?
Speaker 4 (15:42):
Yeah, you're absolutely correct. So what I do is I
start on one of these award searching tools like award
tool dot com, and I find the flights. And so
maybe it says that I can get flights to Europe
for twenty thousand points from my home airport, which is Austin,
and I definitely can find twenty thousand points to Europe
from Austin. And so what I do then is I say, oh,
(16:04):
this is awesome, and then I go to the actual account,
you know, to Airfrance dot com or whatever the travel
partner is, and I make sure that not only is
that flight available, but is it available for five people,
which is the amount of people in my family. And
so once I have I have it there and it's
like in my car and I'm ready to buy it,
(16:26):
then I go into my bank and I transfer my
points from my bank to air France, and then I
book the flight. Now, typically when you go to check out,
and I'm sure this is what you're talking about, when
you go to transfer your points, it's say it says
this may take up to forty eight hours to transfer
the points, and then you're thinking, oh my gosh, what
if this sells out before I can book my flights?
(16:47):
And typically it is instant. Typically it's if you go
up and you refresh it, you'll probably lose everything and
have to start over booking the flight right, but it'll
be there, and then it is typically instant. I have
seen it in one situation booking an international flight where
it did take twenty four hours, But for the most part,
it is instant, and I just wouldn't transfer the points
(17:08):
over if it wasn't what I saw on that toolbooking site.
But I haven't seen that difference before.
Speaker 3 (17:14):
Sure. I got burned one time on a hotel Marriott specifically,
I'm just going to call them out where I was
able to transfer points from my credit card to Marriott,
and it was at a time where it even said
if you transfer you'll get three times the points. So oh, yeah,
(17:37):
that's great, my points will be worth three times the
amount if I transfer them to Marriott. But I'm like, okay,
but I need to look into how much are these
points worth? Well, without having points through Marriott already, I
could not see how much I could book a room
for in points. It only told me the monetary amount
(17:59):
of the room. So then I did a deep, deep dive.
I spent way too much time on this trying to
figure out what the value of a point to dollar
is within Barriott. The information that I got seemed to
indicate I forget what it was at this point, but
whatever it indicated at the time made sense that Okay,
(18:22):
if this is true, then these points are going to
be worth X amount of dollars. And I don't know
if I just was reading the information wrong or it
wasn't the same information as you know, what they were
talking about. But I finally made the transfer and it
was not able to get me even one full night's day,
whereas if it had stayed with the credit card, I
(18:44):
could have gotten two nights on those same amount of points,
not even with the three times. So all that to say,
and I think there's even It's why you're recommending, like
Hyatt as one of the better hotels, but it is
worth knowing and being sure about how many points will
this cost me? And if the website's not being transparent
(19:05):
about that that you might get burned.
Speaker 4 (19:08):
Yeah, and yeah, and I think that's one of the
things that you kind of just learn as you you know,
as as you're earning the points and figuring out that that, yeah,
you can typically get the same level Hyatt hotel. I'd
say maybe a fifteen thousand point Hyatt Hotel would cost
me like forty to fifty thousand points in Marriott or Hilton.
(19:30):
And so really learning what those sweet spots are truly
can save you so many points when you go to
transfer those points. And yeah, it sounds like there was
definitely something going on that you experienced, but in term
of a bummer, but are hopefully that can help people
going forward as well.
Speaker 3 (19:47):
Yeah, there is a bit to know about it when
we're kind of you know, trans because yeah, it's worth it.
Speaker 4 (19:53):
Which might have been one of the places you were
comparing and you're looking at Marriot booking on points versus
in the portal, Yeah, it might be similar, but if
you are looking at travel partners that get really great rewards,
like I mentioned Southwest, Hyatt Air France Virgin Atlantic is
another really great one. If you are looking at those,
you can often get way more value by transferring partners.
(20:15):
By transferring to those partners than you would booking in
a portal, even if you're getting like one point twenty
five points per dollar or cents per dollar, I guess
I should say yeah, poor point.
Speaker 1 (20:28):
Okay, So now that we're talking about where to book travel,
does it ever make sense to uh so you recommend
transferring it to the partner. Does it ever make sense
to to book something like outside of a hotel like
a like an Airbnb, or to do like a cash
(20:50):
transfer versus points? Like what are the alternatives and when
do they make sense?
Speaker 4 (20:56):
Yes? Great question. So in terms of knowing when to
transfer your points versus not, it is going to kind
of depend on the redemption. So for instance, as I mentioned,
I have a family of five, and so if I
wanted to book a hotel room in Europe, I am
(21:17):
a two hotel room family. The maximum occupancy in most
European hotels is two maybe three, and so there's no
way I can get around booking two rooms So if
I say the hotel room that I want is twenty
thousand points to night, well I need two rooms, so
that's forty thousand points to night. However, it might be
a better deal for me to book an airbnb, right
(21:39):
because the cash value of forty thousand points, let's just
very vaguely say maybe forty thousand points equals four hundred bucks, right,
that's kind of how on average it equals out. Well,
if I can find an Airbnb that would cost me
less than four hundred dollars a night, which I surely
(22:02):
in most places can, it would be more beneficial for
me to use that Capital one venture card that I
talked about earlier. And there is something that you can
do when you earn points through Capital one. You can
go back and you can basically reimburse yourself for a charge.
And so maybe instead of booking one night at a
(22:23):
hotel for forty thousand points, maybe I can book three
or four nights through an Airbnb for four hundred bucks.
And I know that this is a little bit difficult
to do the transition in your head, especially if you're
newer to this, but basically, if I have forty thousand
points through Capital one, I can go through and I
can reimburse myself for four hundred or let's say I'm
(22:47):
doing the math in my head wrong, but I can
go through and I can reimburse myself for that charge.
And so that is something that's huge for families when
they're booking, when they're when they're booking, especially internationally. And
I don't know about you guys, but anyone that has kids,
it's not super likely that they really enjoy staying in
(23:10):
a hotel, and so just having the option to go
through and book maybe on Capitol one or through another way,
but you can definitely use your points to cover those
Airbnb charges, which can be huge, especially a.
Speaker 1 (23:28):
Broad So could you also do it to cover a
cruise in that sense?
Speaker 4 (23:35):
Absolutely. So that I need to mention is that if
you have the Venture Awards card or the Venture x,
you need to book the cruise or you need to
book the airbnb on that credit card, right, So that's
key number one. There's also actually a workaround for Disney
where if you want to do the same thing with
Disney tickets, which are obviously insanely expensive, if you book
(24:00):
those tickets through a travel agent, and I know that
sounds cumbersome, but really you're just going to a website
like get Away Today or Undercover Tourist and you book
the Disney tickets on that website, then it will code
as travel. And I should mention that the Capital one
Rewards cards they you can use those points to reimburse
(24:25):
yourself for anything that codes as travel. And so that's
why I would be able to go through and pay
myself back for an Airbnb or for a cruise, or
for Disney tickets if they code as travel, which if
you buy them directly through Disney, they code as entertainment.
And that's why I'm making a big deal about booking
it through a travel agent.
Speaker 1 (24:45):
And Undercover Tourists is a very reputable site. It's not
one of those like shady roadside Disney dealers.
Speaker 4 (24:51):
Totally, absolutely, And lots of times we think of travel agent, Oh,
you got to find a person and they're making plans
for you and all this stuff, and it's really, you know,
it's twenty twenty five. You can just go online and
buy your tickets to their website and so yes, so
if you prefer to travel, you know, cruising or Airbnb,
or maybe you want to do a Disney type situation.
There are different cards that you can use to make
(25:13):
travel work for you, and I think that's what's so
valuable is you you can travel whether you're traveling solo
or with your person or as a family, there are
ways that you can travel affordably. And that's what I love,
because we all want to spend the money on food
and not on accommodations. Am I ready?
Speaker 1 (25:31):
And one more note on Disney. I know we don't
love Marriott, but the Disney Swan and Dolphin is technically.
Speaker 4 (25:39):
A Marriat it is, and I just stayed there a
lot in January. Yeah, occasionally there will be a really
great offer where you can get fifty thousand points certificates
on those cards, and that is the best time to
capitalize on those because those hotels, the Swan and the
(26:00):
Dolphin typically go for about fifty thousand points a night,
sometimes a little bit more, sometimes a little bit less,
and that is what you want to watch out for.
Speaker 3 (26:11):
How do you stay alerted on whether or not your
card is offering one of those certificates for specific hotel?
Speaker 4 (26:18):
Great question, I mean, unfortunately, you can probably join like
eight thousand different mailing lists for all of these different
credit cards. I email all of the you know, my
Instagram community. I definitely email them whenever there's a really
great card offer that comes out. I don't spam them,
but if it's worth going for, I will definitely send
out an email. And that's one of them that I
(26:39):
think is valuable.
Speaker 3 (26:41):
Would you recommend that people have multiple travel rewards credit
cards at a time? Like? Is that the strategy here
to be able to maximize this?
Speaker 4 (26:51):
That is the strategy. Yeah. So my husband and I
eleven years ago started opening up credit cards to travel
on points. And I was a teacher and he was
a student, and so we you know, learned about this
kind of thing and we thought, oh, maybe we can
do this. So there are some rules. There's a rule
called the five twenty four rule, which means you can
(27:11):
only open up five personal credit cards in twenty four months.
And some banks go by this and some don't. But
so what we have done is we have just strategically
figured out that maybe my husband opens up a card
and I say this meaning and I want you to
know that we have never spent a cent in interest,
and I do not recommend this to anyone that maybe
(27:31):
is in debt. But in terms of signing up for
a credit card, you you probably have seen it on
the TV where it's like, oh, if you sign for
this credit card, we'll give you x amount of points
by spending four thousand dollars in three months. And we
have just used this in a way where we are
using our credit cards like a debit card. One we
set up auto pay. We budget just like we typically
(27:54):
budget using you know, different apps that we have, and
then we buy things. We buy gas and groceries and
all of the things. And so yeah, we do have
a few different credit cards that we use, and typically
at the year mark, when the fee comes up, the
annual fee comes up, we take a step back and
(28:15):
we think, okay, is there a benefit to keeping this
card for another year. Now. Some cards might give you
a free nights s day every year on the anniversary.
So maybe I'm getting a free night at a Marriott
or at Hilton or at an property. And I don't
know about you, but I typically cannot book a hotel
room for less than one hundred bucks a night, and
(28:36):
so paying an annual fee of one hundred dollars a
night might be worth it for me to keep some
of these cards year after year, and others I might
think this has no longer serving me, so I'm going
to cancel this card at the year mark. And so definitely,
every year we reassess what cards we want to hang
onto and which ones we don't think benefit us any longer,
(28:58):
and we kind of go from there. So do we
have multiple travel rewards earning cards? Absolutely we do, but
some of them it's kind of like you're getting a
cube on because ye know, the Anal free Knight or whatever.
Speaker 5 (29:12):
The the yeah work is when we get to the
point of having multiple credit cards, what would you say
is the strategy for kind of keeping track of them,
not getting confused, making sure that we are maximizing all
the offerings.
Speaker 4 (29:29):
I use an app called travel Freely. I have a
link to it on my website. If I'm kind of
going through lots of things where you're like, ah, what
is she saying? But I use the travel Freely app
and this is what I love about it. One it's free.
Two it sent so I don't have to give it
any bank information, right. I value that. So you're probably thinking, Okay, well,
(29:51):
how do I put my credit cards in? And so basically,
when you sign up for a new credit card. You
go from like a drop down menu and you click
this is the one I got, and then it populates
all the info and so then it'll send me a
reminder for when my annual fee is coming up. I
think it gives me like a forty five day warning
and then a ten day warning, so that I can
have it on the radar that I might want to
close this card or reassess if I want to keep
(30:12):
it open, and so that's something that I love. And
then it also will remind me, you know, I mentioned
these welcome offers that you can receive by spending a
certain amount of money and then you get a big
chunk of points, and so it kind of just keeps
it straight for me. So it tells me the date
that I need to earn that I need to spend
the money by to earn that huge chunk of points.
(30:34):
And so that's another thing I really value about the
Travel Freely app.
Speaker 3 (30:38):
Yeah, that's cool.
Speaker 4 (30:40):
So that's how I keep it all organized. And I
should also mention there's a tab ways a tab for
my husband and for myself.
Speaker 1 (30:47):
That's awesome. I just paid a annual fee, which I
am typically vary against but I realized my Global Entry
is up at the end of the year and I
need to renew that, and this particular card offers a
(31:08):
global Entry credit and global Entry includes TSA pre check,
which is actually what I use it mostly for. So yeah,
and it actually was a little bit more than what
I would have paid for the update, but it also
gets me free like priority boarding. So I was like, okay,
(31:32):
I'm going to I'm going to keep it for the
priority and you.
Speaker 4 (31:36):
Might keep it for one more year, but your pre
check or your global Entry my last year year, right,
and so right, that lasts for five one more year.
But yeah, yes, absolutely. There are some credit cards too
where if you have them, maybe you'll get So the
IHG program it allows you to have the fourth night
free when you're booking on points, and then the Marriott
and Hilton programs both allow you to have the fifth
(31:59):
night free when you're booking points, and so there are
often benefits to just be in a cardholder in general.
And sometimes it's just free breakfast, you know. And so
it's definitely something that we reassess at the year mark
and say, okay, is this serving us? And if not, no,
we're not going to pay a fee on a card
that isn't benefiting us anymore. And then for us, because
(32:19):
we have been doing this for eleven years, sometimes we think, okay,
but do I want to open this card again in
the future, because some cards you can receive a welcome
off for every two years, so every twenty four months,
and some cards are every four years, So it just depends.
Did I say twenty eight months, twenty four months, twenty.
Speaker 1 (32:37):
Four Yeah, you're right, okay, agreat So that card that
I mentioned, that's a business card. Last question, not a question,
but it's a business card and it's not necessarily connected
to the business of frugal friends, and talk about how
you rationalize adding those because those don't count towards the
(32:59):
five twenty four rule.
Speaker 4 (33:02):
Yeah, so most people don't know. I mean, it sounds
like your following is pretty up on things. So you
guys might know, but many people don't know that. You
probably own a business and you don't know it, and
you can probably qualify for a business card. So first
and foremost business cards have huge welcome offers and they
(33:23):
benefit us greatly because you can get a huge chunk
of points, and they also don't count against that rule.
That I mentioned earlier, which is the five twenty four rule.
You can have five personal cards in twenty four months. Right,
And so with that said, so many times we think, oh, well,
I'm not a dentist. I don't have a dentist office,
so I don't have a legit business. But if you
(33:44):
sell clothes on marketplace, if you sell some furniture once
or twice a year, if you tutor, if you teach
piano lessons, if you take you if you do photography,
you know, whatever your side hustle is, you can likely
qualify to get a business card. And how do I
justify this? It's not a justification, you know, I definitely
(34:06):
recommend that you. I mean, if you don't have a business,
you shouldn't open a business card, right, But so many
of us do have something going on on the side,
which I mean, I heard a your last episode. I
was just listening to you. You're thinking about selling an
instant pot. And you know, if you are selling things
consistently throughout your house, you own a business. You are
reselling items, and so you might not have an EI
(34:30):
in or an LLC, and you don't need one because
you can apply for a business card as a sole
proprietor using your social Security number, and so that's something
that I definitely recommend you do if you do have
some sort of a side hustle, and if you don't
have a side hustle, well to day is the day
to start one, because you can get really great rewards
from that.
Speaker 1 (34:50):
And you don't need a profit because so many of
the businesses that you think turn a profit are not
turning a profit, so neither.
Speaker 4 (34:58):
Yeah, you have a tournament property, it is not making
a profit, so thanks for rubbing that in. But we
definitely have business cards for it.
Speaker 3 (35:06):
Do you know what we most definitely have time for
and we can maximize the most.
Speaker 1 (35:14):
It's so efficient.
Speaker 4 (35:16):
Let's do it.
Speaker 1 (35:17):
The Bill of the week.
Speaker 6 (35:29):
That's right, it's time for the best minute of your
entire week. Maybe a baby was born and his name
is William. Maybe you paid off your mortgage, maybe your
car died and you're happy to not have to pay
that bill anymore. That's bills, Buffalo bills, Bill Clon.
Speaker 1 (35:46):
This is the Bill of the Week Amber. Every week
we invite our listeners and our guests to share with
us their favorite bill for the week, and we would
love to hear yours today.
Speaker 4 (35:59):
Let's do it. Okay, So this is actually a win
that I've been going for for a long time. Remember
when we were kids and like the only options we
had to watch on TV was like Scooby Doo marathons
and TLC marathons. Me too. Anyways, so I've been bugging
my husband about canceling some of our streaming services. And
I know that this is nothing exciting, but basically, we
(36:20):
sign up for a streaming service. It's called Sling TV.
We get it every year during college football season. Well,
a couple of years ago, we stopped canceling it on
the not college football season, and I just thought, why
are we paying eighty dollars a month for this stupid thing?
Like why can't our kids just be bored and watch
(36:40):
one streaming service instead of having options of so many?
And so we made a list of the ones we
wanted to cancel, of the ones that I wanted to cancel,
and we actually canceled Sling finally, and we've got two
more on the docket for coming up next. The problem
is I have some credit cards that give us some
of these streaming services for free, and so even though
I still want to get rid of more. I'm like, oh,
(37:02):
but it's free. But anyways, so we just saved eighty
dollars a month starting like three days ago because we
are no longer paying for Sling because it is not
college football season.
Speaker 1 (37:13):
Sorry Sling. If you were thinking about sponsoring the shows us, sorry,
that's awesome, that's legit. The streaming services are adding up
so hard.
Speaker 4 (37:29):
I know we all just canceled DirecTV and all the
things ten years ago to save money, and now they
all cost more than if we just kept paying for
the one thing.
Speaker 1 (37:38):
Yep, the times they are a change in there isn't
that how it goes?
Speaker 3 (37:43):
We too try and keep just one streaming service at
a time, but sometimes it just gets out of hand
and I got to take inventory again. And yeahlice and
dice and be willing to do that. Thanks so much
for sharing that bill. If you all listening have a
bill that you want to share, it it has to
do with letting the kids be bored, or bills you
(38:03):
don't mind paying, or how much you love being named
Bill frugal friendspodcast dot com, slash bill, leave it for us,
and now it's time for gridening round pew.
Speaker 1 (38:19):
Okay, what's the most impressive travel strategy you've ever pulled off.
Speaker 4 (38:26):
I would say eighty five thousand points, whole family of
five to Europe each way. I've done it get going
there once, coming back once, and I've got it planned
again for the summer. Eighty five thousand points, five.
Speaker 3 (38:42):
People long, one way and what did it cover?
Speaker 4 (38:44):
Mean? What?
Speaker 3 (38:46):
Wow? How? Oh? Wait? Are you saying? Just it covered
a one way flight for five people?
Speaker 4 (38:51):
Yep? Total?
Speaker 3 (38:52):
Nice?
Speaker 4 (38:53):
So kids through Flying Blue are twenty five percent off.
So that means all of my kids' flights were fifteen
thousand points and our flights were twenty thousand points. So
that was amazing cool. So DI cover lodging or your
return flight?
Speaker 3 (39:09):
Correct?
Speaker 4 (39:09):
Correct, So it was the same coming back. But I
mean truly eighty five thousand points. The cash value of
that is eight hundred and fifty bucks. And so could
I get even one round trip flight to Europe for
eight hundred and fifty bucks? That's probably all I could do, right,
Like on a deal, I could probably find a round
trip flight to Europe for eight hundred and fifty bucks.
(39:31):
So I got all of us there for eighty five
thousand points and all of us back for another eighty
five thousand points.
Speaker 3 (39:37):
So maybe saying you know what, though, you don't have
to come back, and that's the decision we can all make.
We could just go and stay on vacation.
Speaker 4 (39:48):
It's true, you can. You can for me.
Speaker 3 (39:53):
This isn't necessarily related to credit cards, but it was
a strategy that I was and still a little proud
of when Eric and I lived in our RV and
we came down to live for a couple of months
in Florida. In our RV, we claimed residents at jenn
and Travis's house, which was true because it's where we
(40:15):
parked for many months, and so we were like, oh,
it'd be great to get a Florida resident Disney pass.
Oh yeah, But in order to claim residency, there's a
couple of different mailings that you would need to bring in,
whether it's like a utility bill or a bank statement.
So we decided to open up a checking account at
(40:37):
a bank that was currently offering a welcome bonus, like
a monetary welcome bonus, And the bonus that they offered
happened to be the exact amount that it costs to
get both of Yeah, both my husband and I a
four day Disney resident like Florida resident pass, so we
(40:57):
both got to go to Disney for four day four three.
Speaker 4 (41:02):
That's amazing.
Speaker 1 (41:04):
Yes, I love I love that pass.
Speaker 3 (41:08):
That was a good one. We had a blast before
COVID hit That was right.
Speaker 1 (41:13):
That was literally March twenty twenty. Yeah for us, I
would say we did four days at an all inclusive
resort in king kuon flights were on points. The all
(41:35):
inclusive resort was on Points, and that was We only
did that one once, but that was my favorite. Oh
and we stayed at the Park Hyatt in Oh my gosh,
somewhere in Colorado. It was a beautiful is the best
hotel I've ever stayed at. And I was pregnant and
(41:59):
my husband went skiing because it was literally on the mountain,
and I stayed inside because I was too big to ski. Well,
I because the doctor said it was unsafe at that
point in my pregnancy, not that you can be too
big to ski. And I took a bubble bath and
they had an espresso in the room and that was
(42:20):
the first time I'd ever had an espresso. It was magical.
I love that place. I'd love to go back, and
it was what was it March, so it was like
there was still snow, but it was like not frigid
during the day warming up. It was just perfect. And
(42:44):
those are my two favorites.
Speaker 3 (42:46):
Love.
Speaker 4 (42:46):
That's guys. I feel like you were underwhelmed with mine,
and I feel like I need to tell you that
we were in Europe for a whole month with these,
you know, eighty five thousand point of flights, and I
only paid one thousand dollars in accommodation because I use
points for all my hotel rooms as well. But I
don't know how fast this lightning round is going to go,
and I think it out so.
Speaker 1 (43:09):
It's kind of it's uh, we call it a lightning round,
but it's not fast, okay, And I think that's supposed
to be funny. We've just always called it a lightning round,
but it has never been fast.
Speaker 4 (43:22):
Second half that you weren't gonna be super impressed by
my thing, but I was.
Speaker 1 (43:26):
Nobody's nobody's ever called us out on the lightning round, Okay.
Speaker 4 (43:32):
Amber, Okay, take you back.
Speaker 1 (43:34):
You're the firm.
Speaker 3 (43:35):
Never was underwhelmed, but now I am absolutely overwhelmed. I
think it's amazing. Of course, of course, Amber, you were
able to make the most sounds so fun. What a
cool thing to do with your family. Well, thank you
for sharing all of your tips and tricks. Can you
(43:58):
share where people can and find more from you if
they want to learn more about these strategies.
Speaker 1 (44:04):
Especially the specific cards you're recommending, like for these strategies.
Speaker 4 (44:09):
Definitely you can find And I kind of want to
apologize because I told these ladies, but I am not
allowed to mention many cards by name here and I'd
never want to sound like clickbaity, but that's just how
it is due some affiliate rules. So anyways, you can
find me at Amber on Points on Instagram or you
can find me at amber on Points dot com and
I would love to see you there. And definitely I
(44:30):
know lots of us because you guys are so well
versed in all things frugal, which is definitely traveling on Points.
If you have any questions, feel free to send me
a DM.
Speaker 1 (44:39):
Yay, thanks so much, Amber, Thank you, thanks Amber.
Speaker 4 (44:44):
That was fun.
Speaker 1 (44:48):
That was so great. I am excited to travel with
my kids, and then I'm like punted back to reality
of what it's actually like traveling with kids, and I'm like,
I don't know if I want to do it too much,
but I think I think we will maybe try to
do something this year.
Speaker 3 (45:07):
We'll see where do you think you'll go? I don't know.
Speaker 1 (45:10):
Travis wants the kids to see snow, and we have
the Companion Pass for Southwest through the end of the year,
so I'm thinking after Christmas before New Year trip cool,
maybe to find some snow.
Speaker 3 (45:24):
That would be fun.
Speaker 4 (45:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (45:26):
Yeah, I learned a lot in this episode, like a
couple of key takeaways, one being that award tool, yes,
that she told us about. I did not know about.
That's so as often as I travel, so I did
since recording, I looked up kind of a little bit
(45:46):
about that, and super helpful. It will tell you certainly
the flights from where you want to go to the
desk you know, from where you're going from two, and
then how much those flights would cost points, but also
where you'd have to transfer from, like the partners, the
credit card that you would need to have, who you
(46:08):
would need to transfer it to in order to get
that flight. So it's kind of like a done for
you explanation, and the user interface is nearly exactly like
Google Flights. So yeah, super super helpful. I'm excited to
actually try it out for my next flight booking. Yeah, well,
(46:28):
thank you all so much for listening. We really appreciate
you being here spending time with us. We also really
appreciate the kinder reviews that you've been leaving for us
about our book. Many of you have been loving and
purchasing by what you Love Without Going Broke. Like Jerlyn
M who said helpful book for achieving your financial goals
five stars, this book provides a helpful and realistic way
(46:51):
of achieving your financial goals. The authors lay out actionable
steps that focus on how you can align your spending
with your values instead of trying to set up a
restrictive budget that will inevitably fail. This book offers a
variety of exercises to help you think about why you
spend money. It also offers simple action steps at the
end of each chapter to help you adjust your spending
(47:14):
and make changes that will benefit your finances. Highly recommend
this book. Thank you for the recommendation.
Speaker 1 (47:20):
Jaralus, Absolutely, yeah, thank you so much for reading it.
If you have not checked out by what you Love
Without Going Broke, head to buy whatolovebook dot com. You
can order it there. You can also see. If your
library doesn't have it, we have instructions on that page
for requesting it from your library. And if you have
read it, please leave a review on Amazon or Goodreads.
(47:43):
It really does help the book spread the message further
and wider. And leave a review for the podcast as
well on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. That too helps us
spread this message further and wider.
Speaker 3 (47:55):
See you next time. Bye.
Speaker 1 (47:58):
Frugal Friends is pretty used by Eric Sirianni.
Speaker 3 (48:12):
Yeah, you all are making me think about even more
types of credit cards.
Speaker 4 (48:20):
That is definitely a way to say that.
Speaker 1 (48:27):
So I have healthcare sharing, So for two of my
medical bills from November, I have been sent a check.
Hopefully the third one they just sent straight to it
because that's the big one. But I think what I'm
going to do is open a new card to pay
those medical bills, to get a welcome bonus.
Speaker 3 (48:49):
Oh nice, and then pay it with the money that
you just got. Yeah. That's always my scary thing about
paying medical bills with a credit card that you're supposed
to be re first for is making sure that you've
got the money, right, I already have to be able
to pay it off. Yeah, I didn't.
Speaker 4 (49:06):
I don't.
Speaker 3 (49:07):
I don't.
Speaker 1 (49:08):
I don't pay medical bills until I have the money
or I can really negotiate it down. I'm not in
a rush to pay medical bills. They no longer go
to your credit score. I don't really need a high
credit score right now anyway. But trying to spend as
little as possible on those medical stays.
Speaker 3 (49:30):
Yeah, agreed, that's great. Get the bonus, get a ton
of points. That's that's the thing, the amount of time
in between being able to get the welcome bonuses, Like
it's just a couple months though, No, I mean if
you've already had the card in the past.
Speaker 1 (49:48):
Yeah, you got to open a new one. Yeah, I'm
not sure. I might do Venture. Yeah, I might do Venture.
Speaker 3 (49:55):
It is who I currently have and I have been happy.
Speaker 1 (49:57):
Yeah, I have had Venture in the past, but it's
been over four years. So I can get the bonus again.
Speaker 3 (50:02):
Excellent.
Speaker 1 (50:03):
Yeah, so we will. We will see.
Speaker 3 (50:06):
Oh can I get Can I refer you to it? Oh?
Speaker 5 (50:09):
Yeah, I'm gonna refer you please do Okay, wonderful, Let's.
Speaker 3 (50:14):
Go get food.
Speaker 1 (50:15):
Yeah, if you're listening and you need a referral code
for ah Venture for for a number of cards, that
we're alluded to in this episode. Send us an email.
Speaker 3 (50:29):
I think everybody gets a gets a bonus, and that's
the tashion I do, and you do.
Speaker 1 (50:34):
Yeah, specifically Jill for the venture.
Speaker 3 (50:37):
Yeah. And if there's another card you're interested in, then
go to GEN. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (50:42):
I have a lot of cards from the other email.
I guess we're not allowed to say what they are now. No,
we can't for legal reasons. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (50:51):
Email me Jill at Frugal friendspodcast dot com.
Speaker 1 (50:54):
Or Jen at Frugal Friends podcast dot com. Let's all
win together.
Speaker 3 (50:59):
Let's win and travel together. Wo
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