Hello! So the last little bit, Sarah and I have been to a
lot of new places. Let me start by saying that while growing up, we didn't
vacation much. Okay, we never went on vacation. It can be expensive and my
parents needed to work a lot. In fact, besides driving my brother to the Provo
MTC from Seattle, our last family vacation was driving to Nauvoo in 1989. Mom
made sandwiches in the car, we got the brick and the horseshoe, and we avoided
driving through Kansas (ask my dad).
I like beaches. A lot. Even rocky ones. (Nice, France)
Traveling to new places is really exciting to me. Probably,
because I feel like I have so much I haven’t seen and I especially love
beaches. But…travel can be expensive. Even small trips made a sizable dent in
my accounts. A few years ago, while in graduate school, I was traveling more to
conferences and I got excited about how many miles I was earning with United
Airlines, Alaska Airlines, and Hilton Hotels. 18 months ago, I found some blogs
and started learning more about how to travel to all corners of the earth, in
style, for a fraction of the cash cost published by travel providers.
We recently took a two week trip to Europe. It was a blast!
Sarah has already talked about the places we visited. But just so you know, she
picked where in Europe we went the first week and I picked the second week’s
destinations. I really wanted to go to the French Riviera and Barcelona. So
using the miles and points guidance I got from the blogs, I made it happen. I’m
going to write more about How We Paid for Hotels in Europe in a future
post. But this is how I bought our flights:
First time on Lufthansa (Boston Airport)
Outbound Flights
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Boston
(BOS) to Frankfurt (FRA)
Frankfurt
(FRA) to Paris (CDG)
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Lufthansa
Lufthansa
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“Open Jaw” Return Flights
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Barcelona
(BCN) to Frankfurt (FRA)
Frankfurt
(FRA) to Boston (BOS)
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Lufthansa
Lufthansa
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“Stopover” in Boston
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Boston
(BOS) to San Francisco (SFO)
San
Francisco (SFO) to Kahului, Maui (OGG)
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United
United
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Cash Price
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$3,140.81
per person
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United MileagePlus Miles Price
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62,500
miles per person + $128.30 taxes and fuel surcharges. (Note: price to Europe was
60,000 miles, adding Maui was another 2,500 miles)
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So the trip cost us 125,000 United miles. That would take a
ton of time and cost if we were to earn miles simply by sitting in the seat
flying. However, there are tons of other ways to earn MileagePlus miles. Here
is how we got the miles we needed for each ticket:
Thomas’ Ticket (62,500 Miles)
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35,000
United Miles
27,500 United Miles
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United
MileagePlus Explorer Credit Card (35,000 Mile Sign-Up Bonus after spending
$1,000 in the first 3 months)
Transferred
from Chase Ultimate Rewards Points (Partner Transfer)
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Sarah’s Ticket (62,500 Miles)
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28,000
United Miles
34,500 United Miles
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Mileage
Plus miles earned from flying on United Airlines 2011-2013
Transferred
from Chase Ultimate Rewards Points (Partner Transfer)
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Nice. Nice is Nice.
How in the world did we get 62,000 Chase Ultimate Rewards Points?
40,000 UR
Points
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Chase
Sapphire Preferred Credit Card (40,000 Points Sign-Up Bonus after spending
$2,500 in the first 6 months)
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7,000 UR
Points
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Chase
Freedom and Sapphire Preferred Bonus Category spending (1 to 4 bonus points
per dollar)
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15,000 UR
Points
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Normal
spending on Chase Freedom and Chase Sapphire Preferred at 1 point per dollar.
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My Chase UR points could be redeemed for 1 cent each
(or $630), but by redeeming for international travel I got much more for each
of those points. If you have a Chase Sapphire Preferred or Chase Ink Card, you can transfer UR points from any Chase card to select airlines, hotels, and train company loyalty programs--United Airlines included.
As a side note, we also purchased a flight from London (LGW)
to Nice (NCE) on British Airways for $159 per person after taxes. The cost was
pretty low so it made more sense to book these tickets with cash. So all
totaled we got all 7 of our flight segments worth $6,600 on “the street” for an
out-of-pocket cost of about $580. Awesome deal!
So that’s how we got to Europe and back (and a one-way to
Maui)! I hope you enjoyed reading my first post about my travel hobby. More to
come…
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