Episode five oh three, Travel for almost Free, mastering credit card rewards with Amber Paul.
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.
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 maximize guilt free spending.
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.
Yeah, three young kids.
Yeah.
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 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 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 can have some really good travel this summer.
Yes, st it.
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 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.
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. So let's kick it to Amber.
Amber, Welcome to the Frugal Friends podcast. We are so excited to talk about this topic because everybody wants to travel more.
We do.
Thank you so much for having me. I also want to travel more, so I'm excited to share the love.
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.
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 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 with travel rewards points?
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. 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, 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 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, 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? 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, 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 that you're probably like, I don't know if I want to take my kids there.
That's that's all inclusive.
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.
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 him without him melting down?
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 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 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 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 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.
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.
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 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.
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.
Now.
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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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, I would say flexible dates and an award searching tool that searches multiple airlines simultaneously.
And then probably just the amount of time it would take to do the minimum spend on each card, right.
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 for the most part, I'm trying to look ahead about it year.
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 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?
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, 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, 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? 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 over if it wasn't what I saw on that toolbooking site. But I haven't seen that difference before.
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, 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 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, 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 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 about that that you might get burned.
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. 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.
Yeah, there is a bit to know about it when we're kind of you know, trans because yeah, it's worth it.
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.
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.
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 transfer versus points? Like what are the alternatives and when do they make sense?
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 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 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 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 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 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 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.
Broad So could you also do it to cover a cruise in that sense?
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 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 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.
And Undercover Tourists is a very reputable site. It's not one of those like shady roadside Disney dealers.
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 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?
And one more note on Disney. I know we don't love Marriott, but the Disney Swan and Dolphin is technically.
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 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.
How do you stay alerted on whether or not your card is offering one of those certificates for specific hotel?
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 think is valuable.
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?
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 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 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 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 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 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, 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.
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.
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, 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
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. And so that's another thing I really value about the Travel Freely app.
Yeah, that's cool.
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.
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 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, I'm going to I'm going to keep it for the priority and you.
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 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 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.
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 five twenty four rule.
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 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 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 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 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.
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.
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.
Do you know what we most definitely have time for and we can maximize the most.
It's so efficient.
Let's do it.
The Bill of the week.
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.
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.
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 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 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, 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.
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.
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.
Yep, the times they are a change in there isn't that how it goes?
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 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.
Okay, what's the most impressive travel strategy you've ever pulled off.
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.
People long, one way and what did it cover?
Mean? What?
Wow? How? Oh? Wait? Are you saying? Just it covered a one way flight for five people?
Yep? Total?
Nice?
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?
Correct?
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. So I got all of us there for eighty five thousand points and all of us back for another eighty five thousand points.
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.
It's true, you can. You can for me.
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 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 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 both got to go to Disney for four day four three.
That's amazing.
Yes, I love I love that pass.
That was a good one. We had a blast before COVID hit That was right.
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 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 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 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 those are my two favorites.
Love.
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.
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.
Second half that you weren't gonna be super impressed by my thing, but I was.
Nobody's nobody's ever called us out on the lightning round, Okay.
Amber, Okay, take you back.
You're the firm.
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 share where people can and find more from you if they want to learn more about these strategies.
Especially the specific cards you're recommending, like for these strategies.
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 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.
Yay, thanks so much, Amber, Thank you, thanks Amber.
That was fun.
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.
We'll see where do you think you'll go? I don't know.
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.
That would be fun.
Yeah.
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
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 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, 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 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 and make changes that will benefit your finances. Highly recommend this book. Thank you for the recommendation.
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. 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.
See you next time. Bye.
Frugal Friends is pretty used by Eric Sirianni.
Yeah, you all are making me think about even more types of credit cards.
That is definitely a way to say that.
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.
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.
I don't.
I don't.
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.
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.
Yeah, you got to open a new one. Yeah, I'm not sure. I might do Venture. Yeah, I might do Venture.
It is who I currently have and I have been happy.
Yeah, I have had Venture in the past, but it's been over four years. So I can get the bonus again.
Excellent.
Yeah, so we will. We will see.
Oh can I get Can I refer you to it? Oh?
Yeah, I'm gonna refer you please do Okay, wonderful, Let's.
Go get food.
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.
I think everybody gets a gets a bonus, and that's the tashion I do, and you do.
Yeah, specifically Jill for the venture.
Yeah. And if there's another card you're interested in, then go to GEN. Yeah.
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.
Email me Jill at Frugal friendspodcast dot com.
Or Jen at Frugal Friends podcast dot com. Let's all win together.
Let's win and travel together. Wo