Using Points, Miles & Credit Card Bonuses to Travel Better for Less | Special Guest: Joseph Petrovic
Justin Vacula of the Hurdy Gurdy Travel Podcast re-releases and remasters a past conversation with Joseph Petrovic of Award Travel 101 about using points, miles, credit card rewards, transferable currencies, bank bonuses, and loyalty programs to travel at low cost.
Recorded again for release in October of 2026, the conversation explores how Joseph got started in points and miles around 2017–2018, how he got his wife involved in the hobby, and why Facebook groups, conferences, meetups, and networking can help beginners learn faster.
Justin and Joseph discuss the fundamentals of responsible credit card rewards strategy, including paying balances in full, avoiding interest, maximizing category bonuses, and understanding how to use flexible points.
They also discuss airline transfer partners such as Air Canada Aeroplan and Avianca LifeMiles, along with the trade-offs between cashback rewards, award travel, elite status, hotel certificates, and other loyalty benefits.
Joseph shares several real-world redemption examples, including earning and using the Southwest Companion Pass, flying United Polaris with his son, getting strong value from a Hilton free night certificate, and planning aspirational travel with his father using premium-cabin awards and a business checking account bonus.
The conversation also covers bank bonuses, gift card strategies, credit card signup offers, the real costs behind travel, why banks offer lucrative rewards, and how to evaluate whether a redemption actually makes sense.
For beginners, Joseph encourages people to start learning, accept that mistakes will happen, and join communities like Award Travel 101 rather than waiting until they understand every detail.
Timestamps
00:00 Podcast Theme Song
00:32 Intro
01:14 Player Two Buy-In
03:08 Dave Ramsey vs Points and Miles
05:17 Networking And Points Communities
10:24 Better Travel With Points
12:32 Offers, Gift Cards, And Bank Bonuses
16:10 Discounted, not Free Travel
20:07 Why Banks Offer Bonuses
23:28 Elite Status Strategy And Math
27:46 Aspirational Trips And Upgrades
30:13 Cards, Plans, And Beginner Advice
34:37 Where To Find Joseph
35:28 Outro And Support Links
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Rough Transcript:
Travel at low cost with points and miles. Credit card rewards bring the smiles. Many adventures, tales to be told. Make and save money, the world will unfold
Fight the war on happiness, pick up the gold. Hurdy Gurdy Travel Podcast breaks the mold
Hello everyone, Justin Vacula here recording October 19th, 2026. It was great to see some of you listeners in Chicago for the Chicago Points Travel Festival. I got sick, so sorry if I missed you at the event. I was hoping to record a brand new episode tonight, but instead of that, I’m going to release and remaster an old episode with Joseph Petrovic from Award Travel [00:01:00] 101.
We recorded a few years ago, and today I’m re-releasing the episode.
Thank you for coming on the show, Joseph Petrovic from Award Travel 101. Hey, Justin. Thanks for having me. All right, we met in Lake Tahoe, and now we’re here today to chat some more about all of our favorite things, miles and points Absolutely. It’s a fun time talking about miles and points, and I’m glad to be able to share those thoughts here with you and your listeners because my wife is tired of hearing them.
A reluctant player two, an active player two? What is it? Yeah she goes along. It wasn’t always that way. She was very concerned about when I first started getting into this, but it was something that she’s eventually learned to yield her Social Security number to me and- Nice
and lets me do what I want from there. Very good, ’cause I know some listeners have reached out and they’ve said, “Oh, I got into this hobby. It’s hard to get [00:02:00] someone else in the game a player two,” whether it’s a significant other or a friend. Some people just don’t wanna play ball. So what do you think pushed it over the edge that she was more willing to sign up for cards and yield that glorious Social Security number?
She wanted to travel more, and we had embraced a lot of what you discussed is living the frugal life, living within our means. And she said, “Hey, I’d really like to get out and do more.” We hadn’t gone anywhere.
We bought a house when the economy was crashing down and everything was falling apart. I quit a job. I started and went full time in my business, which was a part-time business, and we did nothing but save and pay bills. So we stayed home. We didn’t go on any trips.
And she saw, of course the power of social media, getting people to wanna do things that other people are doing, and she saw her friends going on trips, said, “Hey, I’d really like to do that more.” And I started investigating ways to make that [00:03:00] happen, and credit card rewards happened to be the thing that I stumbled upon and really kinda took off from there.
Ah, interesting. Our good friend Dave Ramsey said it’s nearly impossible to use airline miles how have you done that? How have you used those airline miles to travel? I’ve used them a lot of ways and, Yes, he does not like your airline miles.
I come from a Dave Ramsey household and my parents were Dave Ramsey people before Dave Ramsey even existed. Oh. And they were very much pay cash, and they did have credit cards. My dad actually had an American Express Gold card way back when I was young.
Got rid of those cards, and he said, “Hey, why would I keep this card around when you can get a Discover card that gives you cash back with no annual fee?” He did not fully embrace the Ramsey strategies of not carrying credit cards. They did do a couple of no annual fee cards where there was some cash back.
But it wasn’t something that they liked to carry balances. They paid everything off in [00:04:00] full. Yep. And they weren’t really big about using them, actually. So my mom to this day, she carries a few credit cards, but she’s very nervous about putting anything on them or spending anything on them And eventually they found Dave Ramsey
but for those of us who can manage our finances a little bit better and put a little bit of strategy into what we do, we can certainly obtain a lot more value and be able to maybe even up-gauge your life by taking advantage of some of these reward bonuses that are out there and these multipliers for category bonuses.
And those were all things that’s taken me years and years of learning how to better do. It’s a constant learning environment, and you’ve gotta constantly be changing and adjusting to the way that these programs adjust.
Yeah, and that’s okay. Even if you’re not all in and doing everything, I think it’s still a significant [00:05:00] accomplishment to be able to use miles and points and even cash out points or get cash back. We’re just shifting spend to different cards, getting big welcome bonuses, getting benefits, paying our balances in full, and reaping the rewards.
That took a long time for me to understand. I’ve heard you mention that you started going into it and started researching and really going into it in 2018, and that was about the same time that I became serious about it.
Finally in 2017, I said, I’m seeing what other people are doing. I’m reading blogs. There’s gotta be a better way to do this.” And that is actually when my social media growth really became a lot more evident because that’s when I started joining groups.
I started following blogs and Facebook groups and that’s really where it all took off for me.
Yeah, the power of networking, the power of just reading what other people are doing, learning, trying to carve out your own niche if that’s a thing, and I think there are [00:06:00] many ways to succeed in this game.
I talk about gambling and miles and points, for instance, and not all people have online casinos or maybe they don’t want to do the gambling, but they’re able to succeed in other ways, whether it’s business reimbursed spending, whether it’s maybe dental work, auto insurance payments, other organic spend, or maybe they take on a little bit more of the advanced plays like reselling, gift card plays.
There’s not just one way to succeed.
Within the miles and points space and the travel and loyalty space, there are a million ways you can approach things. I jumped into this in 2018 like what you were talking about there, and started networking and I attended four conferences that year, and that’s really where the rubber hit the road.
And once I started meeting people who were doing this as well and I could talk to them and have them explain what exactly they were doing, it wasn’t just me reading something on paper anymore, it [00:07:00] was me mimicking them or, figuring out, “Hey, how did you do this?” Or, “How can I do this a little bit better?”
And, maybe they had a trick that they knew that I didn’t.
The very first Facebook group I joined as I was beginning to get into this space was the Award Travel 101 Facebook community, and I joined that because the person who had started it, he happened to be one of my favorite writers for a site that many people are familiar with today.
It’s not so much a miles and points space as it once was, but The Points Guy was where Richard Kerr, who started the Award Travel 101 Facebook community, he did a lot of Writing for them, and I just found that a lot of the stuff that he wrote spoke to me. Gib from God Save The Points. A lot of what he wrote spoke to me, and I got to meet these people at my very first conference, tied to some of the stuff that you do today, is, was Zorkfest. I went to Zorkfest in 2018, met Richard, met Gib, and met a [00:08:00] lot of people who are legacy road warriors and travel miles and points people.
And that’s really when I actually got into flexible point currencies as well, because before that, my start was airline miles and while, it wasn’t just one airline mile that Dave Ramsey likes to talk about. I did get into some Southwest points. I did get a companion pass. Those were things that I learned about prior to any of these travel and miles and points and Facebook groups and things like that.
I got a companion pass in 2016 when I learned that you could get two credit cards. You could get a consumer and a business card. I did that well before I really got serious about this. I started in the Cleveland area what I consider my home airport is Cleveland Hopkins International, and United was phasing down.
United miles were important to me too, but there are different ways to book United and that took me a while to learn that, hey, there’s a lot of different partners out there that are part of that [00:09:00] Star Alliance membership and you could use Aeroplan, you could use LifeMiles.
There are a billion different transferable currencies that can be used to book things that most of us just don’t think of when we’re really getting started into this space.
Yes, and you’re almost probably never using a card to get a airline mile. After you got the sign-up bonus on the card, you’re very likely using Chase cards that multiply transactions.
Maybe, oh, you get 3X on travel, you’re getting 5X in certain rotating categories on some cards with Chase, so you’re able to optimize your spend. And even if you’re only getting 5X back that’s better than getting 0X back using cash and debit in almost all cases. Plus the protections. Think about the- Yeah
the loss of if somebody goes and hacks your debit card. I don’t want that money taken out of my account and held until somebody determines that, [00:10:00] oh yeah, it really was a hack and if we decide it was a hack then we’ll return it. Why would I wanna be on the hook for that?
Using a credit card just has that protection. I never have to worry about it. Yes, whereas if you have to dispute some fraudulent activities on credit cards, you’re not floating that money, and the process is usually a lot easier to go through rather than something that’s in your checking account. Yes, the protections are nice, and a lot of benefits as this doesn’t only allow us to travel at low cost, but it often allows us to travel with better accommodations, whether it’s better seats in flights, better hotel rooms, free meals.
I think that was one of the things that most impressed me about having different rewards and miles and points. Yes, I’ve heard acquaintances I’ve told about the hobby, but they didn’t want to do it. They’re slumming it up, taking 6:00 AM Spirit flights, taking red-eyes they don’t wanna take, and, oh, our stay at the Red Roof Inn was terrible, or they try [00:11:00] to spend the least amount of money on travels while I’m staying at Hiltons, Hyatts, nicer hotels usually, and taking flights with major carriers, having a better class of service, often with seat upgrades, often afternoon flights that I take rather than really early ones.
So it’s definitely been a better quality of travel, and having more options is always nice, too, with the backup flights or even just being able to look and say, “Okay, do I want to take Delta? Do I want to take United? Who do I wanna take on this?” Because I have the options to do that, and the travel experience is much better because of that.
Maybe I’m going to give up a little bit of the least cost. Maybe I’m not gonna take the 6,500 American mile one, and I’m gonna take the, 10,000 Aeroplan one because even though it’s a little bit more expensive, I can use that to fly United nonstop.
So all of these different things that you can look at, and you can say, maybe I’m gonna give up even the 10,000 Aeroplan and do 15,000 [00:12:00] United miles because I don’t know if I’m going to take that flight after all.”
Yeah, it’s a really good way to be, and since we’re adding new credit cards, since we’re continuing to spend on existing credit cards, the points and miles are just going to keep coming, and it’s to a point where some people, like myself, are taking a hybrid approach, and they’re cashing out some points as statement credits in some cases, and then transferring others to travel partners.
So you have a lot of options, especially people in the hobby who might be working full time or because of certain family obligations, they’re not able to travel as much as they want. So even if you want to go toward a higher cash back approach and less travel, you have a lot of options in the hobby for spend that you’re already doing anyway, getting these big bonuses, getting these benefits, getting these statement credits, even some small things like Amex and Chase offers, as I had something that was, I believe, $40 back on a $200 transaction at Lowe’s.
And Lowe’s selling various gift cards that was a very easy [00:13:00] $40 bonus for taking maybe a two to five-minute detour as there was a Lowe’s right next to an Acme Supermarket that I was going to anyway. And I actually had four of those offers on my cards, and I used all four of them. Nice. So it was a, a $40 savings times four cards which is not something that you can typically do with Amex.
Especially for people that are working jobs, maybe making something like 10, 15, $20 an hour, we could see, okay if it’s gonna take maybe 5 to 10 minutes to do this deal to make $40, the hourly payoff on that is really high, so I’m more than happy to take a slight detour.
I’m not going to be driving 15 minutes out of the way to save a dollar or two, but if I can take a slight detour, go to a store that’s next to another store I was going to anyway, then that’s a great return on my time.
Maybe it’s more of a, a bigger detour, but it’s worth several hundred dollars and it takes you an hour, how much would you have to work to [00:14:00] earn that back?
Yeah. That’s something that you have to consider, and it’s always something that I’ve considered in nearly everything I’ve done within the miles and points space. If I was doing a gift card run back in the day when we were a lot happier about being able to use gift cards around here.
They’ve since shut most of the gift card plays down in my area. The war on happiness strikes again. It continues here, yeah. But back when I’d do that I’d consider how many points am I going to earn? How much time is this going to take?
This is taking away from money that I could be earning. This is taking away from time I could be spending with my family. Is this going to be returning something significant enough to make it worth my time to do? Because you can always do all these things.
I was a couponer, and I was looking for coupon stacks to save money on my groceries. And I started realizing that- That’s not going to ever give me enough to do the things that I wanna do relative to, my end [00:15:00] goals, and my end goals were to get out and do more and see more and experience more.
And a credit card, one credit card bonus can save me way more than I’m ever gonna save with all these coupon stacks through grocery store shopping. And I had some exchanges with couponers in the past and I said, look, you can still do the couponing things, but why don’t you sign up for a new credit card?
You’re making these purchases, you’re getting reimbursed in grocery rewards, so why not just do all of the above?” Or even something like bank bonuses. I do a lot of checking account bonuses where banks, for listeners who aren’t aware, usually have something like, “We’ll give you $400 if you move a direct deposit of $500 or more over to this new account,” that I’m more than happy to move a direct deposit that was maybe five minutes to fill out an application maybe.
And then the changing of the direct deposit is an effortless task that maybe takes a minute, and it’s just keeping track of the opening date of the account and not having any service charges usually. Maybe five to 10 minutes, 15 maybe, worth of [00:16:00] effort, AKA work, whatever you wanna call it, for $400. A really good payoff in my world.
It’s amazing that you can put many of these things together . A lot of people who get started in this and they start getting excited, they wanna call it free travel. It’s not free travel.
It’s not free miles and points. There’s always some kind of work and effort that goes into putting these things together. It’s a way to minimize and reduce costs. And even if you have your miles and points, without cashing them out or doing some bank bonuses, there are still cash pieces to your travel.
I did a, a trip with my son, and my son’s on the spectrum. He’s a high-functioning child who, he struggles with changes, but he’s almost 17 years old. And I took him on a trip to California because I was looking to use up some points and certificates and things that were going to be expiring before this year ended and said, “How can I make the [00:17:00] most and do a really fun weekend?”
I did some incredible lie-flat seats on United did one of their Polaris, their true Polaris 787-10 brand new plane. We did all those fun things, but there’s still costs even outside of that. You have to eat. Some entertainment. You do different things.
And I think that’s one of the things that really Struck me as how much of a game changer it can be when you have these different things available to you because it reduces your cost so much. If you did a $400 bank bonus you’re sitting on something that I think my entire cost for the trip, it was something that would’ve retailed 5, $6,000 with the hotels that we stayed at and the flights that we took.
But we ended up spending around that 4 to $500 and a bank bonus basically would’ve covered that- Yeah … entire amount. Yeah, that’s great. People outside of the hobby, they talk, “Oh, travel’s expensive. Oh, this is a once in a lifetime trip. Oh, travel’s only for rich people.” But I [00:18:00] think we’ve transcended that as I’m not a rich person
I’m living a very comfortable lifestyle, and I’m pretty happy with life. And even if I can make something like 100,000 a year, but then you’re getting a lot of maybe free stuff that’s taking out of stuff that you’d spend anyway and having a good quality of life, that’s a really good life in my book.
I’m a really happy person. I’m content with my status, and I’m looking to do more and scale up even further. So it’s really engaging being in this hobby, seeing the benefits of the travel has really been life-changing for sure. Yeah, I think when you can start seeing some of that and realize that it can reduce your cost of living.
As I started doing this and as I started scaling and picking up more cards and picking up more rewards and learning how to do some of these things better, I started paying my bills faster because now I wasn’t spending as much money on travel.
So you think about how much you would’ve had to work to replace the money that you were spending before.
We weren’t flying first class. [00:19:00] We were flying Frontier Airlines but we were just doing lots of three, four, five-day trips and, a couple summer vacations and things like that. We were still doing everything as budget-friendly as possible. But now starting to use miles and points, now I’m not paying for all these flights.
I’m not paying for all these hotels. I did cash out quite a bit of points back in 2021, 2022 to pay for vacation rentals because hotels don’t always work for my family. It’s hard to get a three-bedroom suite, for the kind of cost that you can get a vacation rental for.
These rewards kept me from having to dip into my savings, allowed me to pay off my house.
We’d just paid off our house, and I had planned to pay for all the renovations, and, pandemic hit, my income stopped, and I had to take a loan. Still pay for all that stuff, but because of credit card rewards again, I was still able to do all my travel, I just didn’t [00:20:00] have to pay out of pocket, so to speak.
I was paying for credit card annual fees instead of the travel itself. Yeah real life-changing stuff, and some skeptics, some people new to this information I’ve heard, “Oh, it sounds too good to be true. Oh, why would the banks give you all this?” So why does this stuff really exist?
Why do you think the banks give out these big offers and the miles and points earnings continue? Obviously, they know they have to draw people in, and the bigger the bonus, the more eyes it’s going to get, the bigger it’s going to circles, it’s going to reach to. You’re gonna have all the mainstream media. You have huge media circles that were never involved in credit cards before that are now there.
To the general public, I don’t know who they’re really going after. I’ve heard you mention this before, but it’s absolutely true, is that somebody has to lose, and they’re counting on somebody not being able to pay the bill in full and collect interest. They’re counting on those swipe fees.
[00:21:00] They’re counting on getting you as the customer and getting you to invest with their banking system. They want you as a customer, and so they’re gonna do everything they can. They might lose money on the card. We’ve heard many times these big bonus cards, the Chase Sapphire Reserve, the 100,000 point, that was the biggest loser Chase ever had.
They have high spend, high credit, people who pay off their bills. They lose money on that card every single year, yet they keep doing it. Why? Because they get swipe fees, they get people signing up for mortgages. Somebody is paying them enough to get into their cycle, into their ecosystem.
And so they’re still making money But we can take some of that back. Yeah. Is it so much different than grocery stores? Like this week at Giant Pennsylvania stores, they’re giving out free Tofurkies and other holiday items with 400 Choice reward points. So I went in, I got an Amazon gift card and that gave me 400 points to get the Tofurky.
Now, they’re probably losing money on that [00:22:00] transaction, but you know that other people are going to be buying random groceries just to get those points, or they’re going to be buying extra things, or they’re maybe buying lottery tickets on the way out, or different things at customer service. Who knows?
But they’re doing these loss leader promotions, that they’re losing money on one element, but in other elements they’re going to be winning. So what I tell people is take advantage of deals and promotions. Be a smart consumer. Take advantage of what you can in the system.
I haven’t done this in years now with the advent of online shopping, I remember getting up at 3:30 one morning for a Black Friday Target deal. Why is it okay that they’re able to lose money on something like that, but a bank can’t?
The bank’s not always winning. There are certain things they lose at. On average they’re going to win, but there are certain things they’re going to lose on, and our goal is to take advantage of the ones that we can get the most on.
What else am I gonna do, just sit by and complain [00:23:00] about society sucks and not take advantage of some of these lucrative deals?
If everybody turned, stopped using credit cards, if everybody started watching every single penny, then yeah, we’d be talking about a whole different system, but that’s not what we’re looking at. We still have to live our best life and our best life doesn’t mean that we have to go over and be abundant, it’s not something where you say, “Hey I’ve got a Honda budget, but I’m gonna drive a Ferrari.” No. You still live your life like you would normally, but you just use your opportunities where these bonuses exist Even if I’m not working on a bonus, which is, not very often where I’m not working on some kind of bonus, I’m putting that spend on something where it’s going to help me towards status with a chain.
Maybe I’m only earning 1X with American or Hyatt, but it’s helping me towards earning status or re-qualifying for status so that I can get suite upgrades or free breakfasts or things like that. I’m always looking at [00:24:00] how can I continue to win for me and my family, and what that might look like for me is probably gonna be different than it is for you, and it’s gonna be different than it is for, any other listener.
There are 100 different ways to play this. Now it’s looking for the bigger offers that are out there rather than just the any old credit union around the corner credit card. I’m going now LOL 24s. I’ve had many of the Chase cards.
So for those who might not know that expression, once you’re finished with Chase, then you’re not really concerned about Chase cards some of these other banks that people don’t talk about as much.
So once you’re finished with the bigger hitter cards, there’s still a lot to do, of course, but it’s a little bit harder and I’m not necessarily getting like 750 to $1,000 value from sign-up bonuses
yeah, there’s been all kinds of crazy bonuses. You go to Walmart or maybe it’s Costco or some of these things and they’re giving away free coolers. It makes me chuckle every time I see that and I’m thinking, “Huh.” We just got 150,000 Amex [00:25:00] membership rewards off of a Business Gold application.
Do I want 150,000- Yep … membership rewards or do I want a Costco cooler? Or sometimes a bucket. I’ve seen a bucket before. Yeah, no, that’s not interesting.
You mentioned the American Express Gold card at grocery stores earning 4X.
I sometimes will forfeit the 4X for 6X at Hilton because I’m looking to get to that 15,000 mark and get the free night award certificate.
America loves math. And the 6X- … is less than 4X for anyone who’s not familiar. The 6X is worth far less than the 4X from the American Express Gold.
If you just did it on an everyday basis without a transfer bonus, 4X on the Amex Gold is like 8X Hilton points. But taking a sacrifice and taking just 6X on the Surpass and working your way to that free night award certificate could be far more valuable. Yeah, maybe an extra 2 or 3% on [00:26:00] that spend, depending on how you’re redeeming that certificate, yep.
So the 6X being, like, 3% maybe, and then an extra 2% for five looks pretty good. Or at a higher level, if you’re doing a lot of volume and buying gift cards and prepaid cards and other creative things like that, then you’re going to hit capacities and hit limits, so you’re just gonna need new cards to use.
I like those high spend goals for my situation.
If you spend your $15,000 on it, if you did it all at grocery stores, you’re earning 6X along the way, so y- you could probably earn a pretty nice hotel stay out of that spend.
But if you’re looking at the free night award certificate, all of the places I’ve used this the place that I stayed at with my son our final night in Santa Monica, the hotel was the Oceana in Santa Monica.
It’s a LXR Hilton property. A very small hotel. Maybe 50 rooms and suites, and the average daily over there is well [00:27:00] over $1,000 per night. I’ve stayed there several times, and it’s, been anywhere between 1,100 and $1,500 for a free night award certificate. I’m not saying that means that’s what it’s worth, because everybody has their own idea of what something is valued at and worth.
But anybody paying, cash off the street. That was a, $1,100 night that I got.
I’m having fun and I’m making money. I think that’s quite nice as many people have hobbies that cost a lot of money, and here we’re having fun, we’re making money, we’re meeting new people, we’re chatting today, we’re going to different events, and we’re going on trips we’d probably never pay cash for in many cases, or at least we wouldn’t be traveling as often, so I think a lot of ways to win through the hobby.
Absolutely. I just did an aspirational trip with my father, and we’ve been talking for years and years that we were gonna go back to the land of my last name, which as you’re saying is Petrovic, and that’s the way it came over to [00:28:00] this country, but back from Slovenia and Croatia from where it came, it was Petrovic.
I flew a whole bunch of planes that most people will never, ever get to experience in their life. I flew the Emirates A380 in first class. I flew Lufthansa on a 747 in first class. I flew some American airlines. I flew Delta in their first class, and I flew all these different things that would’ve cost a crap ton.
I tallied it up at the cash rates at the time that I booked it was, like, $55,000, and that’s something that, just is absolutely ridiculous. Nobody in their right mind is going to pay for that kind of stuff. So how do you really put what that’s worth?
I was able to do it and do something that my dad and I would have never paid for, but using different miles and points. You talk about a checking account bonus, what paid for our Emirates first class upgrades, ’cause we actually booked business class, and I got the first class [00:29:00] upgrade while I was sitting in the lounge waiting- Oh, nice
to board the plane because they still had some seats available, and I went and said something to them. But American Express had a 60,000-point business checking account bonus, and that’s what paid for our upgrades. We went from business to first. We got to both do showers on the, the A380.
Unlimited amount of food and back of the plane business class bar. That is the kind of thing that only wealthy people get to do, and miles and points bring the level to a place where an everyday person like me, you, anybody who wants to play this game to some degree it doesn’t even have to be an advanced, it can be a moderate beginner to even intermediate level can do.
It levels the playing field. Yeah, for sure. We’re able to transcend the usual ideas about travel and class and money, and look at many different ways of spending, how we’re [00:30:00] using our money, where we’re purchasing, what we’re doing, what we’re investing, and a lot of this hobby has really opened my eyes to many different things, that’s for sure.
A lot of fun experiences, memories, and a lot more to look forward to. Do you have any trips coming up in 2024? We’re recording here in November of 2023, so just a few more weeks of 2023.
I have a lot of different things planned, so I’m not sure what all we’re going to take.
My dad and I are doing a cruise through the Adriatic and Mediterranean, we’re gonna cruise throughout different parts of Croatia, Greece, and Italy, and then end up back in Rome.
We’ll do a couple days in Rome, fly back home, and again, it, it’s not quite as over the top as my trip this past year was, but we got business class. I had points that I’ve transferred from Virgin Atlantic and as well as British Airways.
I did transfer bonuses back in early 2022 when they had 40% transfer [00:31:00] bonuses to these partners, and I said, “I know I’m going to use these at some point.” I had an abundance of points, so it wasn’t like I was putting myself in any harm’s way of not being able to book something I want.
I had more than enough to be able to move some into these programs, and now that these awards became available, I have business class for both of us both ways.
I have some discount codes that I use for the rental cars when I’m traveling, and with our family, we like to stay on the move and have that available to us.
So any kind of way to save, that’s what I’m about. All right. Very good. And any upcoming credit cards that you’ll be applying for in early 2024 or maybe even to round out the year?
We’re looking at another Ink or two. I’m sitting on the 5/24 fence, so I have to check when I’m able to dip back under, see if I can get an Ink.
My wife should be eligible. Wanna make sure that I get another Ink before I wrap up the year. That’ll be card number 14 for us this year. 2 [00:32:00] million total point bonuses from all of these things. Oh, nice. And Ink, for listeners, if you could explain that.
Yeah, sure. The Ink is a Chase business card that earns Ultimate Rewards to transfer to Hyatt or Southwest or Air Canada. Some of those are the programs that people like to use their Ultimate Rewards for. If you get their Ink Preferred, it’s 100,000 point bonus, whereas the two fee-free cards, the Unlimited and the Ink Cash cards, both have 90,000 point bonuses right now, worth at least $900.
Yes, and even if you cashed out, that’s a significant bonus, but most listeners will probably be using those points for travel and get even more value, maybe 1,250 or more on a signup bonus like that.
And any advice, any words for people just getting started in the hobby, considering starting?
Do it. Just do it. Get in the game. It, get in it. It’s something, there’s so many people who wanna play [00:33:00] down. It’s if you make the, this mistake or do that, you’ve probably made mistakes. I know I’ve certainly made- Yeah … my share of mistakes.
I made a mistake by not adding my family’s passports, and I lost out on the ability to book an award, ’cause I didn’t have that information in a place that I should’ve had it.
Get into it, make the mistakes and join the communities. Join, the meetups. Meet up at Justin’s meetups and talk to people because it’s those kind of things where you say, “Hey, share,” and it’s the exchange of ideas. The exchanges are where you’re going to learn from.
You’re gonna get better, you’re gonna start learning and it’s just gonna make your life so much easier when you have somebody to exchange those ideas with, rather than just sitting there and sulking on your own that you can never get it and you can never find any redemption for your airline mile.
And yes, we have been doing monthly meetings in Willow Grove, Pennsylvania with the group Greater Philadelphia Travel, so that’s been nice. We met at Zorkfest. There’s gonna be another Zorkfest event in Las [00:34:00] Vegas. Z-O-R-K-F-E-S-T, so maybe I’ll see you there once again. Absolutely. All right.
Any closing thoughts?
The bulk of people wanna help you, see you succeed, and see you do better, and I think just getting active and participating that’s always been my approach, and that’s kinda how I got to where I am today.
Yeah, some people might get intimidated thinking they have to sign up for tons of accounts to start, but I usually say just one credit card, maybe a checking account to go with it, see where it goes, and if it works well for you, then get more into it.
Go further down the rabbit hole. Absolutely.
If you could share how people can find you online, your communities, and what you’re doing. Sure. I work for the AwardWallet service, which tracks your miles and points, and under AwardWallet, I’m the social media and community manager for their online Facebook communities, the Award Travel 101 Facebook communities.
We’re there [00:35:00] 24/7. We have over 100,000 members who love to travel the world for less. And then we have the Award Travel 101 podcast, which can be found on any of the platforms that this fine podcast can be found on as well.
We have news updates, our travels, things that we’re doing, things that we’re finding, meetups, whatever’s going on in the space, that’s what we’re covering. All right. Very good. Thanks for joining me today. Thanks, Justin. Take care. Safe travels. Thanks for listening, and stay tuned for future episodes.
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Supporting me on SubscribeStar will give you special perks, including a custom podcast episode, questions answered by upcoming guests, and monthly private one-on-one conversations delving into more advanced topics I don’t openly discuss at length in podcast episodes. [00:36:00] Visit meetup.com/PhillyMilesAndPoints to learn about monthly Greater Philadelphia travel credit miles and points meetups I host in Willow Grove, Pennsylvania.
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