✈️ In Free Fall: Life After Quitting

Good morning ☀️ from Booked It On Points: A curated collection to keep you traveling for less money and more know how 👊🏽

Let’s dive in.

Here’s what’s on today—

It’s time to STOP using Honey and Credit Karma

Forget Honey, Credit Karma, and Apple Pay. Kudos is the all-in-one browser extension that's revolutionizing online shopping. Maximize rewards at 3M+ stores, discover red-hot credit card deals, and enjoy lightning-fast one-click checkouts. It's like a personal trainer for your wallet, pumping up savings on desktop and iPhone. Why settle for less when Kudos can skyrocket your rewards? Sign up now with code "EARN" to get $20 back on your first eligible purchase. Your wallet won't just thank you—it'll throw you a party.

Download Now—It’s Free!

📉 It’s a new month which means another Flying Blue Promo has arrived. This month Flying Blue (the loyalty program fro AirFrance/KLM) is offering TONS of one-way flights to Europe from several major US airlines for as low as 15k pts.

Pro tip→ Check out this 20% transfer bonus from our Capital One friends this month 😍 This means for every Capital One 1,000 miles you transfer you get 1,200 Flying Blue Miles*. From this low annual fee card, to my favorite travel perks card- there is a card for anyone looking to take advantage of free travel.

✈︎ Points + Miles

TOP STORY: Family life version→ travel doesn’t have to be expensive or exclusionary

Here’s the truth of it all, we could never afford to travel like we do if we didn’t use points + miles to cut our costs on airfare and hotels. By using miles we can even “erase” travel costs in our statements with our Capital One cards with one simple move→

Here you can see I have 54,154 miles in my account currently and if I click “cover travel purchases” a list of all the purchases itemized as “travel” from my last statement will appear with the designated point amount needed to cover it. By simply selecting any of those previous purchases, I “erase” the charge at a 1:1 value.

Now, that’s one way to use points + miles, but I almost never use this feature. It is a great way to cover an air bnb or boutique hotels/airlines that aren’t transfer partners. It can also be used to cover things like in country excursions on a cruise or train rides etc. However, I almost always use the “convert rewards” feature instead and transfer these points to airline and hotel partners, gaining thousands of dollars of value. This is especially important when booking for a family as you need your points + miles to stretch as far as possible.

Travel with a family costs more, no matter the currency. I have to use more points to get my family on a trip than if it were just myself or travel with my husband but that doesn’t stop us because we want to travel more, travel better and travel for less.

Two key travel costs are 1) airfare and 2) hotel. Here are my thoughts when booking travel for my family:

1) ✈️ Airfare: Let’s be realistic, more people = more points. I almost ALWAYS plan a trip based off of the airfare deals I find rather than already have a destination in mind. I do this by using Google Flights anywhere feature to look at all the routes around the world to inspire where we want to go based on cost. From here, I begin searching on points + miles search engines.

Another way I always begin travel prep is by looking up any current points transfer bonus’ (like the one featured in today’s ✈︎ Flight Deal section). In fact, this is exactly what we did when we flew to France/England earlier this year using points + miles saving us 24k in points.

Pro tips→

a) It may feel counterintuitive but when using points + miles I always search and book my flights one-way rather than round trip. This gives the best options with the most flexibility.

b) We use KLM/AirFrance often when booking flights to Europe because of it’s family friendly feature: did you know KLM/AirFrance give a 20% discount on all award seats for kids?! That’s HUGE savings!

2) 🏨 Hotels are not all made equal. There are several family friendly hotels out there that are bookable using points! IHG Staybridge Suites, Hyatt Place and the Marriott Residence Inn can be very affordable when transferring points + miles, so look here first. PLUS they come with free breakfast and often offer a pull out sofa sleeping 4-6 people.

This prime location hotel only costs 9k in points in San Diego, California. It’s one of thousands of examples of ways to make vacationing as a family affordable rather than exclusionary. For us, it’s how we travel like we do and will be able to continue year after year.

I’d love to know, do you look at prices for flights and airfare and think it’s just not an option? I know I do and that’s why I’ve done everything I can to learn how to leverage credit card points + miles to keep making travel happen in our family.

✈︎ Our Authentic Living

Come along for the ride, it’s bound to get hairy

I know we’re friends here, but if we aren’t on Insta, you may not have seen our latest post. Spoiler alert→ we’ve officially entered into the “free fall” state of our life plan. NBD.

So what if we’re in our 40s, looking out at the rest of our peers who are working to secure their future financial success, spending evenings heading up carpool, and weekends booked with back to back sports games in timbuktu?

Talk about pressure, sheesh.

It’s just not for us, for now. Instead, we’ll keep reminding ourselves that there are different strokes for different folks. Yea, I like that.

Our current situation→ we’ve both quit our jobs, we’re working to build a business,and we’re prepping for a couple more MAJOR overhauls. Hell, what could go wrong?!

And we’re pulling back the curtain to it all. All of the worries, the hopes, the finances, the down and dirty. It’s not going to be a straight line, it’s 1 step forward and 3 steps backwards.

So here we go, navigating a lot of shaky ground to lay out our own path. We have lots of plans, including travel, kids, some side hustles and putting ourselves out there. I hope you’ll keep reading, following, and subscribing, because your support means everything and well, I think you’ll be quite entertained if nothing else.

✈︎ Poll

That’s enough vulnerability for one day, I’m exhausted.

Thanks for being here and have a great Tuesday!

Allie