A Travel Hacking/Bank Bonus Update

In January I wrote a post called My Weird Hobby: A Credit Card/Bank Bonus Earnings Report where I dished the dirt on my baby steps into the world of travel hacking.

The big question that I had before I started looking into travel hacking was: can I do better than a cash back credit card, and if so, HOW?????  

I planned to write an update next year, but since I just scored a big coup, I thought I would drop the deets in real time.  The biggest thing to know about me is that I am someone who is learning about travel hacking by doing travel hacking.  I am learning as I go, so what I am doing may or may not be "the best way".  The second biggest thing to know about me is that I am someone who is susceptible to decision fatigue.  I don't mind taking a bit of time to look up flights and crunch numbers, but I do mind taking a lot of time to do it.  I would rather make a "good enough" decision now than an optimal decision later.  This is the story about how I achieved those goals for a pricey trip that I have coming up.

TL;DR

I booked an $833 flight for points plus an $11 fee and a $356 hotel room with an annual free night certificate.  The MVPs of the story are the Chase Sapphire Preferred card and the World of Hyatt Rewards card.  I also earned another new checking account bonus for $300.

The Long Story About Booking the Flight

I'm going to California in May.  I haven't planned most of the trip, but I was at a point where I knew the dates that I wanted to fly and that I wanted to stay close to the SFO airport on the final night.  The internets said that prices right now are average, but they are expected to go up, so that pushed me into "lock this down sooner rather than later" territory.

When I was looking at flights, I found that my best bet was a direct flight from a major airport in my area to SFO on United.  Round trip cost: $833.  Points cost: 61,700 points plus a fee of $11.

There are two schools of thought in the travel hacking world.  One is the snobby route where you get as much value for your precious points as possible.  Nothing less than a round the world flight in first class for 20,000 points will do.  The other school is that the person who spends their points the fastest wins.  There is no guarantee that travel hacking will be as good of a deal in the future, and the time value of money means that it is better to use points now rather than to wait years and years for a theoretical round-the-world-for-20k-points ship to come in.

Travel hackers care A LOT about the CPP (cents per point) value, so here ya go:

CPP = (cost of ticket-fees)/points*100

CPP = (833-11)/61,700*100 

My ticket was 1.33 cents per point.

The benchmarks are:

• When I google "what is a good travel hacking CPP?", the AI answer is 1.5 cents, so my redemption is less than that.
• Chase Ultimate Rewards points are worth 1.25 cents each in the Chase Travel Portal, so I did better than that.
• There are lots of snarky Reddit posts out there that say that anything over 1.0 cents is better than the cash redemption price so go for it. 
  

At this point my travel ambitions are pretty low key.  I'm into road trips and Airbnbs, not international flights and five star hotels.  It is uncertain whether I will ever run into a Big Money travel opportunity, but it is certain that by booking the trip with points the impact on my wallet was $11 instead of $833.

A seasoned travel hacker would also point out that there might have been a better points deal for the exact same fight booked through a United partner instead of with United directly.  I am not a seasoned travel hacker, and I had spent a bit of time already finding the flight and crunching numbers.  I didn't feel like doing more research and more number crunching.  I had an expensive thing that I wanted to do and I had the points to cover it.  Plus I wanted to dip my toes in the "pay for this with points" waters.  Reader, I booked that flight with points.

So how do you transfer points from Chase to United?  I can only speak for myself - I googled it!  I won't repeat the steps because websites change, and I believe that your best bet is to do what I did and ask Google.  It was a couple of mouse clicks.

The Chase website makes a big deal about how transferring points to partners can take time.  They say it can take up to seven days but in most cases it takes 24 hours.  Kyria commented on my first travel hacking post that her transfers were always instant.  So who is right, Chase or Kyria?

Kyria!  My transfer was instant.  I am very happy about this, but I am also prepared to have a transfer take longer in the future.

The Long Story About Booking the Hotel

I don't know yet exactly where I will be staying in California other than the Bay Area, but I do know that my return flight is pretty early.  I don't want the last leg of the trip to be spent getting up at who-knows-what-o'clock.  I want to do what I did in Florida and stay near the airport at a hotel with shuttle service so that I can just roll out of bed and get on a plane.

As you might expect, there are tons of hotels near the SFO airport, and many of them are on the pricey side.  My first thought was Hyatt because I have the Hyatt credit card and boatloads of Hyatt points.

Sure enough, Hyatt has two SFO hotels with shuttle service.  One is out of my price range, and the other is what they call a category 4 hotel which was $356 a night.  That's also out of my price range - I mean that's a good price for when we go to Chicago to see family, but this is a night on my own for purposes of convenience.  I'm not saying that I would never spend that much, just that I am reluctant to unless there is a good reason.

As it turns out I didn't need to find a reason because my lah-di-dah fancy Hyatt card includes one free night each year at their category 1-4 properties.  That means that the cost is zero dollars and zero points.  On top of that, the certificate is "use it or lose it" because it is only valid for one year.  I had been looking for options of what to do with the free night, and I was finding a lot of $120-$150 nights but those were for trips where I'd rather stay in an Airbnb, so it felt like a weak sauce way to use a free night.  Not paying $356 is a much better fit!

I wasn't sure how to claim the free night on the website with my laptop, but I could see easily how to redeem it in the app with my phone.  The specific steps are: google it. 

What Else is New?

Not much.  My top financial priority is maxing out my 401k ASAP, so my take home pay is practically nothing right now.  That's slowed down my hobby of getting new checking account bonuses, but I did manage to nab one that paid out in January, and I just started working on another one that I can meet the minimum deposits on with the minimal pay that I will have for the next month.  The future of my new account bonuses depends on how long I continue to work [which is totally up in the air at this point...I'm walking a line between quitting in May and seeing if I can improve the job and find a way to do my travel.  Stay tuned and if I ever get to a place where I can think straight I will tell you about it].

Getting the Chase Freedom Unlimited card so that I get a minimum of 1.5 Chase points per dollar instead of 1 point per dollar has been a nice boost to my Chase point stash.

I Don't Have Time to Read Your Rambling, Can You Give Me a Spreadsheet?

Yep!  Here is my haul at the end of 2024 after 2.25 years:

Here is my take so far this year: 

• Chase Sapphire detail: $50 annual hotel credit redeemed in February plus $833 redeemed for flight minus $11 fee = $872 redeemed
• Hyatt detail: free night certificate redeemed to cover a $356 hotel stay 

Here is the cumulative haul from the beginning:

• Chase Sapphire deets: 85k points valued at 1.25 cents per point
• Hyatt deets: I scored a boatload of points on the FL trip - I have 62,000 points, I assume that I will redeem them for 10,000 points per night for a $120 room = 62,000/10,000=6.2 nights * $120 per night = $744
• Amtrak deets: no change from before, 40k points valued at 2.67 cents per point
• Chase Freedom Unlimited: zero points because I transfer them to the Chase Sapphire each month but wow that little no-fee card is sure carrying its weight.

Give Me A Grand Conclusion to Wrap It Up

Travel hacking...it won't solve the world's problems but it continues to be a fun hobby depending on your definition of fun.  I feel pretty smug about my haul.  

I have my eyes on two more trips with expensive plane tickets this year, and I know that I can cover one of them entirely with points.  After that I'll have to fork out cash like a normie until I build up more points, but I should be able to score a free plane ride each year.

More importantly, I'm looking forward to California!!!  It's not where you go, it's the people who you go to see and the things that you do.  But that's a story for Future Me to tell you later.

Got any good travel/credit card/money hacking stories to share? Fun things that Future You will be telling me about?