✈️ Step by step: How to actually use your points + miles

Good morning ☀️ from Booked It On Points: A curated collection of travel tips and personal stories by me, Allie→ because you’re meant to experience meaningful travel no matter life’s constraints 👊🏽

Let’s dive in.

Here’s what’s on today—

📉 …seen a flight to Copenhagen for 9K points. Seriously, never. I could fly our family of 4 for 36k points? That seems too easy. Taxes and fees on this flight are $180 which isn’t the cheapest, but still values the points at 2.5 cents/miles which is a great deal! This flight is on Airfrance and includes a transfer bonus from if using Chase points of 40%, otherwise the flight is 12k points which is still fantastic!

✈︎ Points + Miles

TOP STORY: The Great Point Discovery

It’s the 🐘 in the room:

Credit card points + miles are too overwhelming and confusing to use.

Let’s simplify→

It’s a sunny Sunday morning and you’re sitting at your kitchen table, rifling through forgotten mail from the week before. All the sudden, you open your credit card statement. “Wow!” you exclaim, “I have so many points!”

With sadness, you also realize you have no idea how to use the points, so you either:

1) Forget about them for a year until the next time you’re motivated to figure it OR

2) You keep reading your trusted Booked It On Points newsletter to learn more ⬇️

The First Adventure: Transferring to Airline Partners

Stay with me here- your foundation to using your points is built on the airline partners available to you. “What’s that?” you ask. All travel credit cards team up with different airlines to help you use your points to fly. This means you can trade your CC points for their airline (or hotel) miles as currency.

How do you find these airline partners? Check out your credit card’s website. Log in to find a list of airlines that work with your card. For example- when I log into my account with one of my favorite low annual fee credit cards- this is what I see:

Most of the time, transferring these points will give you 2-4x higher value than using the points directly in the bank travel portal.

➡️ Take a look here where I give 5 simple steps on how to transfer points + book flights.

The Second Adventure: Using the Credit Card Travel Portal

I must fill you in on another way to redeem your points: the credit card travel portal.

The travel portal is like a magical website where you can search and book flights, hotels, rental cars and even use points to “cancel out” purchases on previous statements. Most of the uses in the portal will be 1:1 point/dollar ratio, which is often lower than transferring them out (like above) but there are a couple uses I’ve done in the portal that make it worth it:

1) Use it for budget airlines tickets- I bought tickets for a Ryan Air flight within Europe. I purchased the tickets in the portal because Ryan Air does not otherwise accept points from any major credit card. I was able to pay in points and for me, it was a good value.

2) Use it to cover the cost of food tour we took in Seoul, South Korea. While it wasn’t expensive, I simply clicked “Redeem” in my travel portal and clicked “Pay Yourself Back” then simply selected that purchase to “cancel out” with points. (I almost never recommend going this route, but if that’s how you value your points the most, then by all means…).

The Final Touch: Bonus Tips

A couple bonus tips from me to you:

1. Plan Ahead: When using points + miles, the earlier you book, the more options you’ll have.

2. Watch for Deals: Oftentimes, airlines offer special ‘transfer bonus’ promotions where you can use fewer points. Those are always listed in the travel portal.

3. Got Questions?: Don’t hesitate to hit reply and ask me!

Off to Adventure!

My hope for you is that you’ll take bits and pieces from here, use your credit card points, and find yourself on an amazing journey. Let me know where you’re off to and what redemption you’ve made to make it happen!

Why go on a boring, regular ol’ trip when you can do something really unique? Browse an accommodation that truly makes the trip worthwhile ⬇️

✈︎ Life Beyond The Grind

Only 64 days in the year left

There are 64 days left in the year.

We have a lot going on over here and we’re looking to make the most of these 63 days.

Gone are the days of waiting for your New Years Resolution.

Let’s shake it up. What can you do to make moves now so that when 1/1/2025 arrives, you’re already well on your way.

This past week, Geo and I spent a few days at the beach. It was meant to be a few days to do some “big idea” work to ring in the New Year.

But we almost immediately realized that waiting until 1/1/25 was wasteful of the NOW.

Why wait until the New Year to make it happen?! What if we do the things now and then reflect in January on how it went?

So, we launched a couple of ads, created some new lead magnet opportunities, made some crucial changes to optimize our reach, and sorted through some sponsor opportunities.

We also did some brainstorming on a project to give back over the holiday→ something I’ll be talking more about soon.

Earlier in the year, Geo took Matt McGarry’s course- “Write, Grow, Sell” about growing a newsletter. I’m lucky because I get to do all the creative writing and Geo does most of the ‘business’ stuff; like growth strategy.

My “big, audacious” goal (as Geo just said when I told him said goal) is for Booked It On Points to reach 3,000 readers by the end of the year. Currently, our community has over 1500 readers and that makes it a pretty big lift 🙌 

So, with that in mind- thank you, thank you, thank you, for all of your support!

Stay tuned next Tuesday where I’ll be sharing our overall October Earnings. I’ll also be spilling the tea in the next couple of week about a big change for our newsletter offering.

✈︎ Travel News

Nat Geo with the 2025 ‘Best Places to Travel’ list

You know I’m always here for a good clickable link and this one does not disappoint. I have to say, I feel like I’m seen because the #1 spot is my home away from home. #nailedit.

American Air calling out ‘gate lice’

Don’t get caught with the siren blaring at you. AA is testing a new method to catch anyone looking to board out of order. If your boarding pass is marked with Group 5, and you try to sneak in with Group 3- you’re referred to as “gate lice.” And you better believe AA is going to embarrass you for it with a siren. Shew, that’s harsh.

United and American with some exciting new routes

2025 is going to be the start of some very exciting new routes by both United and American Air, both looking to service new destinations for Spring and Summer breaks.

While American will add new nonstop service to Europe, with flights from Philadelphia (PHL) to Copenhagen, Denmark (CPH); Naples, Italy (NAP); and Nice, France (NCE). American will also launch new service between Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW) and Barcelona, Spain (BCN) and bring back flights between Chicago (ORD) and Venice, Italy (VCE), you can check out United’s new routes below.

✈︎ Poll

✈︎ Poll results

Last week: Looks like most like a combo of plans and free time, makes sense, everything in moderation.

Would you help me reach my goal? Send it to a friend → Booked It On Points

Thanks for being here and have a great Tuesday!

With gratitude,

Allie