✈️ Get The Most Value From Your Points + Miles By Doing This

A guide to transferring your points + miles to airlines and hotels

Oh look, it’s Tuesday! Activate those positive Travel Tuesday vibes and let’s newsletter:

✈️ Points and Miles + Transfer partners = Infinity, it’s math.

😎 Pro Tips: How to get TONS of value from your points + miles.

Quick and annoying editing note: I always link the suggested cards by saying “this card” and add the link because we are not allowed to write the name of specific cards. Silly grown ups, making silly rules is all that is-and now you’re in the know!

Flights: The Big Apple to Colorful Colorado- for only 11k points and $5 in airline taxes/fees- you are practically making money by taking this flight! Grab your hiking poles and get some fresh mountain air this summer 🥾⛺🏞️

Beantown to Lisbon, Portugal business class—> lie flat seats and champs 🥂! Only 50,000 points to fly over the Atlantic in business class is a HUGE deal. By opening up this card, or this card, or this card—> you could recline back and relax for quite a magical experience!

📺 In-Flight Entertainment

I’ve got my bags packed, I’m moving, indefinitely. Where? Why? To the country ranked happiest in the world! For the seventh year in a row, these peeps got something figured out.

Another take-away 2 new entries jumped into the top 20 this year: Costa Rica and Kuwait 👏🏽 while us here in the U S of A, fell in ranking 🤦🏾. I blame it on TikToc and Spirit airlines. Paying $16.99 for wifi to check TikToc on a Spirit flight is absolutely crushing our happiness score.

🎯 Travel Tip

Best Friends Forever 💛💛

Transfer partners are the best friends of our points + miles. They show up at the front door with the ultimate gift: eager to open their arms and receive your hard earned points into their loyalty programs to use as currency. That’s right, the miles you earn from big bank credit cards ie: Amex, Capital One, Citi and Chase can be transferred to their respective transfer partners to book any airline or hotel brands within their network and this is where the magic happens 🪄

📖 Storytime:

This is how Sally Suburban and Norma Normal may think to use their points:

👇

Step 1) Earn points + miles from opening a travel credit card by spending on their usual goodies —> groceries, bills, kids junk etc.(I would suggest this travel credit card) Already have that one? Here is a list of top travel credit cards that I know are also super great options to earn points!

Step 2) Use those points + miles to book travel or redeem for cash in your credit card portal.

Hint: 🛑 NOOOOOO!! 🛑 

Its like the friend who shows up to the party with no food. Sally and Norma just take the tater-tots (all of them). We want friends that only take a few tater-tots. (This leaves you with more tater tots, which increases your happiness → take that TikToc 🥳)

Instead, be this savvy traveler:

Step 1)  Earn points + miles from opening a travel credit card by spending on their usual goodies —> groceries, bills, kids junk etc.(I would suggest this travel credit card) Already have that one? Here is a list of top travel credit cards that I know are also super great options to earn points!

Step 2) Transfer them to any of their best friends (transfer partners) and the value of your points soar! * For example, if I want to book Grand Hyatt Cyprus and I do it via my Travel Portal, it will cost me 25k points/night. However, if I transfer those points over to my Hyatt loyalty program, I will book the same stay for 12-15k points/night from the Hyatt itself 🤯. Points from this card or this card are great options to transfer for FREE Hyatt stays all over the world!

Making money while I save money

Pro tip:

  • Match up the points earned from your credit card with their besties using my matchmaker transfer partner PDF

  • Some of the most transferable points come from these cards to ensure you don’t have to be married to one airline or hotel. My favorite all time MVP of points come from this card!

  • Be flexy with your destinations and dates, it always yields the best results when booking redemption flights/hotel stays.

Real 🌎 Example

📶 Step by Step Plan on how to Transfer Points to Partners

  1. Educated and fine looking Booked It on Points reader grabs this card.

  2. Next, you find a flight from LAX to Amsterdam on JetBlue.com.

  3. The clutch move (👝)- transfer your points from your credit card bank straight into your JetBlue loyalty account (free to sign up) and enjoy all the perks and smirks 🚀 !

  4. Finally, using the transferred points, book the flight directly on JetBlue.com and victory is yours!

This week we introduced best friends, next week we take the next step to ‘more than just friends’ status 😉

PSA: Don’t be that person who didn’t read the news about the mandatory real ID. This requirement takes effect 1 year from now 📣! Seriously, if you don’t have a passport, don’t show up to any airport for any flight- international OR domestic without your new ID. You will be turned away and that puts a real damper in plans.

📘Read: Wondering which airports to (hopefully) avoid? Travel, both domestic and international, has been on the rise each year since the pandemic. With it comes crowds and extra lines at the airport, so if you are scooting through these spots, give yourself extra time.

🧒🏽Travel with kids- Adventuring with kids look quite different than an adults only trip, am I right?! While we LOVE bringing our kids along to see the world, it does require some different methods of planning. This is a fantastic tool filled with resources to utilize while traveling with kids! 

Be Prepared: As more travelers are making their way to the airport for summer trips, save time and stress by reserving your spot in the airport parking garage.

💡 Trivia:

Head here if you are looking to learn a new language. Which country is the most linguistically diverse?

Answer is at the bottom of the email

Hint: A visual clue this week- (from left to right) local tribe, the country on a map and a landscape shot.

Trivia answer: Papua New Guinea : With a population under 8 million people, there are over 800 languages spoken. Some of these dialects are spoken by less than a hundred people.