24. Getting Started with Points Travel: Making It Easy with Dr. Stephanie Jones

Welcome to Point Me to First Class, the only show for employed professionals, entrepreneurs, and business owners who are looking to optimize their higher-than-average expenses to travel the world. I'm your host, Devon Gimbel, and I believe that your expenses are your greatest untapped asset if you know how to leverage them. Ready to dive into the world of credit card points and miles so you can travel more, travel better, and travel often? Let's get started.

Devon: Welcome back to the podcast, everybody. Today, I am joined by Stephanie Jones. I think this is going to be a fantastic guest interview, especially for those of you who are a little bit earlier on in your points journey. Because I invited Stephanie here today to talk to us not only about a real trip that she recently booked and took using points, but also what it's like to be more in the beginning of the points travel hobby.

I think one of the things that I was telling Stephanie that I can sometimes lose a little bit of perspective on is what it's like to be in that first year or first two years of really learning about all of the amazing opportunities that points travel poses to people because I have been doing this for a long time.

So I'm just really excited to have someone here who is in a little bit of a different stage of their points journey than I am because I know that everything that she's going to share today is going to be interesting, fascinating, and I think incredibly useful to you regardless of whether or not you identify yourself as a points beginner or a points expert. So, Stephanie, welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much for joining me here today. I'm so glad that you're here.

Stephanie: Thank you, Devon, for having me. I'm so excited to be here. I can't wait. I'm so excited.

Devon: Well give us a little bit of an introduction first off just about who you are, where you are, what you do, whatever you think is going to be important or relevant for people to know about you before we dive into the details of your points journey.

Stephanie: Awesome. My name is Stephanie. I'm a physician and a mom of two girls. I have a lifelong absolute love of travel and have spent many, many years of my life being the trip planner for every group in my family. But have always done it on a budget or have always looked at how can I do the most travel for the least amount of money. 

So when I discovered you and your group, it opened this entire new world to me. I had never done anything with points. I had credit cards and always paid them off, but didn't even know that really credit card points was a currency. Just thought that airline status or hotel status or for people not in my demographic. They were full time travelers or workers, and just didn't even really think that it was something that could ever belong to me and my family. So discovering you and this whole world of travel hacking in only seven months has absolutely revolutionized my life and the way that we travel. I'm so excited.

Devon: Yeah, I think that's absolutely incredible to hear. I did not know that piece of your story where you said you've only been doing this for seven months. So take me back to seven months ago. Help me understand, did you have any points or rewards credit cards at all? Or were you truly starting from absolute scratch?

Stephanie: So I had signed up for the Chase Sapphire Reserve, just happenstance, and had been accumulating points, unbeknownst to me. Never gave any thought to any category spends. We had a Southwest card and Alaska card. So we accrued points on those and put all of our expenses on those pretty randomly. Occasionally would redeem an airline specific flight, but that was that was it. 

So then I found your group, and the whole concept of transfer partners and category spends and signup bonuses, all of these things that felt incredibly overwhelming. I remember joining the Facebook group that you have and seeing all the acronyms and SUV and AF and just thinking like what in the world is this whole overwhelming world?

I think someone in the group made the comment. Just like medical school was completely overwhelming in the beginning. Doing the line was completely overwhelming. You do something and you become accustomed to it. Then you can just do it in your sleep. It's amazing how quickly you can acclimate to this world of travel hacking. 

So I think, for other people in the beginning, it's the overwhelm that comes with the terms and the categories and all of these things prevents a lot of people from really getting into it, and they shut down, and it's just overwhelming. So I chose to just really focus on one airline, one hotel. I think listening to some of your other podcasts, I've heard some other elaborate trips and redemptions that honestly, for me, just feel like oh my word, that's so overwhelming. I don't know how I'd get there. 

I have friends that I talk to and they're like oh my goodness, that would be so overwhelming. I don't even know where to start. I've chosen Hyatt and Air France. Those two are easy transfer partners from Chase. That's a currency that I've learned and mastered pretty early and quickly. With that alone, it has just revolutionized what we were able to take in six months time of getting a couple signup bonuses using expenses that we already had. We were able to take this amazing trip.

Devon: Okay, I definitely want to hear all about this trip. But before we get there, there's so much that you said that I think is so relevant and so useful, especially for beginners. But truly, again, I don't care what stage of this hobby you're in. I think is so important to keep in mind. I think all of us can fall into overwhelm at some point.

I think when you're a beginner, absolutely. Seeing all these different terms that people are throwing around, hearing about people having more than one credit card, or having five credit cards, or 10 credit cards and thinking, oh my gosh. How am I going to manage all of those? Where do I even get started?

Or even if you've been in this hobby for a long time, I think the more you know, the more you can also get overwhelmed because you see there are so many different options and permutations of cards and currencies that you can have. But really what you mentioned about being focused, I think it's such an amazing antidote to overwhelm. I don't think that having a lot of options in and of itself is a terrible thing. I think it's a beautiful thing. 

But I do think that we don't know what to do with those options then it is incredibly easy to get overwhelmed. As you mentioned, just kind of shut yourself down. We all have so many other things that we can and have to pay attention to in our lives. If something that's supposed to be fun feels really overwhelming, then it makes sense that we just wouldn't even want to go there to begin with. 

But to really kind of anchor into that idea of just using focus as a way to stay out of overwhelm, I think is such a brilliant thing that all of us can apply to our lives. You said that the way that you focused initially was pick one hotel and pick one airline. When you picked Hyatt and Air France to focus on, what was the reason that you actually decided to use those to transfer partners as your first area of focus?

Stephanie: Well, the airline I chose because someone in the group mentioned oh, Flying Blue gives a 25% discount for kids, and travel with my two daughters and husband is just absolutely the top joy of my life. So I was attracted to thinking okay, this will help me even go farther with my points, getting a discount with kids.

My first point search just happened to come up with a really great redemption from Air France. So setting up a Flying Blue account, transferring my points, all of that was so seamless, the first time that I thought okay, this is something I can absolutely wrap my mind around. It's easy. I'm going to stick with that. For European trips, and it's absolutely an easy, easy way for my family and I to get pretty far for the currencies that we have.

Devon: Yeah, and I think knowing now what I know about just different airline transfer partners of the different currencies, I think that the one that you chose to focus on, I don't know if that was entirely luck, or if it was just coincidence, or you're truly just very brilliant. But I think you picked such a great airline to focus on in the beginning.

Because of all of the different airline transfer partners of the major transferable points currencies, they are not equal in terms of what I consider to be ease. Like ease of earning points that do transfer to a particular airline, or ease of searching for and finding available flights, or ease of actually booking flights with that airline once you actually have points in that currency. 

So kind of coming back to your original point about being focused and keeping things from being overwhelming. I think you, again, either coincidentally or deliberately, picked a really great transfer partner airline that I think makes so much sense because it's one of the airlines that I think is very easy to stay out of overwhelm when you choose to focus on using your points that way.

So that's one of the things that I think is just so great to highlight for people listening here is that especially if you are in the beginning, and you're just looking at all these different airline options of potential transfer partners, is to kind of get an idea. Ask around if you have friends who are in this hobby or join Facebook groups, join communities where people like us love to talk about these things and get a sense of what are the airlines that are actually a little bit easier to navigate, especially in the beginning?

So Air France Flying Blue program is one of my favorite ones. I think it's such a great program for anybody who's specifically looking to travel to Europe, but they have flights even beyond North America and Europe that are really fantastic. So I love, just personally, that you picked that as a first place to start. I think it's such a great airline program to get a lot of easy points wins in the beginning. 

But you also mentioned wanting to focus in terms of your kind of airline, or excuse me your hotel, on Hyatt, and I'm curious about how you chose to focus in on Hyatt as a place where you wanted to be able to earn points that you could use.

Stephanie: So I've told my friends who are thinking about getting into this and initially have that overwhelm the analogy, like you're saying with overwhelm, you know in Charlie Brown when sometimes the adults will be talking, and it's just muffled. It’s like wah, wah, wah. Honestly 95% of what happens in the Facebook group, or when I hear people talking about I transferred to Avios, and I'm going to use that to get British Airways to get this American Airlines. It's like three steps. It's complicated.

Or people will set up their IP address to be in Japan so that when the tickets are released, that they're early on, and I'm just like wow. I just hear wah, wah, wah. But Hyatt broke through that noise for me. Mainly honestly, and this is gonna sound silly, but I think that it ended up being brilliant. The benefit of hotel breakfast by reaching globalist status is something that absolutely I honed in on as like okay, that's a perk that would be so valuable for my family of four. I want to focus my attention on that.

Reading that the redemption points. The value of your chase to Hyatt points is so much higher than Marriott or some of these other transfer partners. It's easy. There's a calendar. They don't have dynamic pricing. You transfer immediately. I set up my World of Hyatt account. So all of those things broke through that muffled noise of overwhelm. I honed in on that as okay this is a benefit I want for my family. 

My two daughters are super picky eaters, but something about hotel breakfast and the freedom to just pick out their Nutella waffles from a line or get their own plate of fruit or whatever. It is like synonymous with royalty in our family. So that's what we focused on. That's where we chose to hone our hotel attention.

Devon: Yeah, well, I'm a huge Hyatt fan as well. I think as a mom traveling with her kids, for me, like nothing makes me want to tear my skin off more than when the kid orders like an $18 pancake and then refuses to eat. I have such an aversion to spending a lot of money on food that then gets completely rejected. So I completely agree for you. 

For those of you who are traveling, especially you're traveling with families, or it happens every once in a while that someone in your family makes a food choice that then they entirely reject. I think being able to take advantage of a benefit like a free breakfast, whether that comes from a hotel status or from a benefit on a specific credit card that you're holding. I think that can take the sting out of some of these travel related expenses so much.

So based on what you're telling me, knowing that you were focusing in on Hyatt and Air France initially, you mentioned that you came into kind of this world of points travel already having a few rewards credit cards. You already have the Chase Sapphire Reserve, which is a fantastic premium points travel card. You also to Southwest card and a Alaska credit card. But I have a feeling that since you're here, that's not the entire credit card portfolio that you stuck with, despite that being a great start. 

So once you had kind of made your first travel plan, maybe not even a specific trip itself, but you'd made the plan to focus in on Hyatt and Air France, which are both partners of Chase. How did you from there decide and build out were there other rewards cards you wanted to get? Which ones kind of fell on your radar screen? How did you choose what to do next?

Stephanie: So the concept of getting new cards for signup bonuses was not something that was on my radar. That's something that I learned pretty quickly. So my husband and I did what I call the P to Inc dance. We were hit with a pretty big tax bill earlier this year that was surprising for a number of reasons. 

One of the things that absolutely has been revolutionary for me about credit cards is I'm not spending anything that I wouldn't already be spending. But getting a reward for a cost that I have incurred absolutely takes the sting out of what would otherwise have been a really frustrating bill to have to pay. The details of that are irrelevant, but what's important about it is the way that we were able to leverage that. 

So knowing that Chase is a currency we wanted, I opened one of the Incs, paid part of the tax bill, and then referred my my husband to another Inc. Then we paid that off. We're able to with those two signup bonuses and the referral bonus that I got from referring to him, we were able to very rapidly amass a large amount of currencies in the Chase system that then we used to fund this trip that we just took. 

I think that one of the things that you've taught and do really well is showing that these expenses that would otherwise be big bummers, and it's still money that you have to pay. So I'm not going to totally gloss over that fact, but it's something that I owed anyway. But figuring out how to leverage that with a new currency that I'm not taxed on, that I can then go and redeem for luxury travel absolutely changes my mentality about so many other things.

We had an unexpected leak on my daughter's side of the house, and now have a massive construction expense that we were not anticipating. It's a bummer unquestionably. But I comfort myself by envisioning my husband and I drinking champagne on a business class trip to Japan every time that bill comes up. Whether it's a maladaptive coping technique or not, I don't care because I get a luxury trip out of it. So, anyway, figuring out how to leverage some of these normally incurred expenses and turn them into positives has just been totally life changing.

Devon: Yeah, I mean that's certainly become my perspective about my expenses as well. One thing that I do want to earmark for people listening because if this is the first episode that you've tuned into, or you have not happened to listen to all of the episodes that we have on the Point Me to First Class podcast. One of the things that I do want to make sure that we do intentionally point out is that the vast majority of our expenses are everyday expenses. Groceries, utilities, just buying the things that we need for our homes or for our families. 

Oftentimes, when we use our credit cards for those expenses, there is no additional fee or processing charge to be able to pay for those things with our credit cards, which to me is just a win-win game, right? This is, like you said, money that we're going to spend anyway. We've already budgeted for. Now we're getting the thing that we're buying, and we're also getting rewarded with points from putting that expense on a rewards credit card. 

For some of us, there are going to be additional expenses that come up in our lives that in order to put those expenses on a credit card, we will have to pay a processing fee or an additional fee in order to be able to pay that expense using a credit card. I wanted to bring that up because you did mention your tax payment, which is something that my family also does. We pay our quarterly estimated taxes on rewards credit cards in order to earn points.

I'm sorry to hear about this massive construction project that's coming up for you. But that's another very common category of expense where sometimes in order to be able to pay a contractor or a service provider using a rewards credit card, that sometimes they will ask you to split the credit card processing fee with them or for you to incur the processing fee in order for them to be able to accept that as a form of payment. 

So I don't want to gloss over that there are sometimes expenses that some of us choose to put on rewards credit cards to earn points that will incur for us an additional charge to be able to do that. That doesn't mean that that is going to be the right move for every single person on earth. 

I go into more detail about how to actually calculate what is the benefit that you could potentially get from the points that you earn for an expense where you do have to pay a processing fee or an extra charge. I go into much more detail on that on some of my earlier podcasts, I believe on whether or not you should pay taxes or consider paying taxes with your credit card. 

So I recommend for those of you who have not heard those podcast episodes yet to jump back in line after this one and check those out. Because that is going to be a decision that is very personal. Sounds like one that works great for me, works great for Stephanie, but may not work for all of you. 

But just this idea overall that the things that we're going to be spending money on that we can, on the back end of those, actually be earning this form of currency that we can use for something else. I agree. It's made me befriend my expenses a lot more. Before I was just like okay well, this is part of adulting, right? Like, we've gotta pay for certain things to run our lives. I'm going to do that. That's not a problem. 

But the fact that we can get what, to me, feels just like a wonderful bonus on top and turn that bonus into an actual trip that becomes an experience and memories for yourself and your family is really wonderful. So I'm dying to hear more about this trip that you ended up booking with your family. 

But I'm still trying to understand this timeline because you were living a very normal life seven months ago with your normal credit cards. Then you learn about the world of points travel. It sounds like very quickly get on board with this idea of signing up for additional credit cards that makes sense for you and your travel goals and priorities that match your being able to leverage some expenses. But how do you go from seven months ago learning about this world to booking a trip on points? That seems like an incredibly compressed timeframe for me. So help me understand like how did that happen?

Stephanie: Totally. So the trip, the timeline, the trip was all booked and paid for seven months from learning. So when I started, like I mentioned I had had a Chase Sapphire Reserve for a couple of years and had been accruing points unbeknownst to me. So I had enough currency at that point to buy my husband and I a one way ticket from JFK to Croatia, which is one of the things you talk about is just having flexibility of destination. 

He and I were already in the habit of what we call travel roulette planning where we'll just sit down one night. We have a time, and we'll just look around the world or around North America, wherever, and choose a place based on where we can get to for the cheapest. 

Croatia has been on our list for a while. It wasn't necessarily at the top, or we didn't set out to want to do that. But my sisters live in New York. We live in Washington State. So we wanted to visit them anyway. So we positioned ourselves to JFK. Obviously, Air France tickets out of JFK are going to be much more plentiful than they are out of Spokane, Washington, where I live. 

So we just looked for a bunch of destinations. I had enough currency, I just barely had enough at that time, to pay for business class tickets for my husband and I to go from JFK to Croatia. Then then we got hit with the tax bill, paid our taxes, and then used those points to book the Hyatt Hotel in New York several months later. So we started in October, and then by May of the next year had booked and paid for what was this absolute summer trip of a lifetime.

Devon: That sounds absolutely incredible. So here's the thing, everybody. Some of you, especially again, if this is kind of your entryway, your gateway into points travel. You may have already had rewards credit cards, just like Stephanie did. It's not uncommon for someone to have one really great points earning card without them even realizing that that was its function. 

So one of the things I always encourage people to do is take stock of what you have. Now you may be surprised that you're already carrying one or maybe even two rewards credit cards, and you already have points that can be used or can be put towards a trip. So that's always a really nice surprise to find out that you're actually not starting from scratch that you already have some points that you can work with. 

Then Stephanie, it sounds like you very deliberately then chose some additional Chase points earning cards so that you could build up specifically your Chase Ultimate Rewards points balances. You mentioned this idea of positioning. That's something that I really wanted to hear your experience about more. 

Because I think for so many people who don't happen to have a major international airport as their home airport or their local airport, this idea of first taking a positioning flight, essentially getting yourself from wherever your home is getting yourself position to a larger international airport, I think can, in and of itself, sound a little bit overwhelming or daunting. 

Can you talk to me a little bit more about just what your experience was with positioning? And any tips or recommendations that you might have for other people who, whether they're located in Spokane or another area of this country where their home airport is not a huge international hub. Kind of your thoughts about whether positioning is worth it and what you can do to make it a little bit easier.

Stephanie: Yeah, so like I mentioned, my sisters both live in New York City. It's absolutely one of my favorite places in the world. So any excuse to get to New York City, I will make it happen. But the thing that actually I didn't realize when I made the plans how advantageous it would be, but we also obviously started the process of acclimating to a new timezone by flying to New York, which is three hours ahead of where I am now in Spokane. Then we stayed the first night in New York.

I also had then started getting into the Hyatt system. So we stayed at a Hyatt Place and Chelsea for two days. Then my daughters actually stayed in New York with my sisters while my husband and I then hopped over to Europe and back. Then we ended up staying for a week on the other end, which again, helped with jetlag and with coming back since it was only six hours versus the nine where it would be here in Spokane. 

So I think that learning number one okay, wait a second. I can get two trips in one here. Even if it's just one night in New York, and a day to see my sisters or a day to go out to dinner in the West Village or whatever, I'll take it. It's a cost that I would fly out there anyway to do that. So booking anything positioning out of a place where I love. San Francisco is also one of my other favorite cities in the world. 

So the idea of positioning ourselves in San Francisco prior to a flight to Asia is now a way that I have looked at travel in a new light of okay, wait a second. You can tack on two trips in one. You get the bonus of flying out to see your sisters or flying to San Francisco or LA or any of these other major positioning coastal airports for me and my family that has changed the way that I look at awards travel, especially since I don't live at a big hub where there are a lot of these transfer partners.

Devon: Yeah, I think that's such a fantastic point to make because there are always benefits to doing things a certain way. I think the benefit of being able to live really close by a huge international airport is that you probably do have more options, especially when it comes to these long haul flights that you have access to using points. But being able to position somewhere has benefits of its own. Certainly, there are potential drawbacks, and I'm not going to gloss over those. That's, I think, why some people probably have a little bit of trepidation around this idea of positioning to begin with. 

But I do also really want to highlight this point you made because I think it's a fantastic one that positioning when you look at what the potential benefits of it are is that you can get two trips in one. You can visit a city either that you love or a city that you've never explored before, and you want to check out. Or like you said, the idea of being able to go somewhere, even if it's just for a day or two days before you take a long haul flight and letting your body do that little bit of acclamation to a new timezone. 

I'm telling you the older I get, and the more that jetlag just destroys me. I mean, really the idea of thinking oh well, I can ease my body into these time zone differences. I think that's an incredible benefit of being able to position initially. Especially post-pandemic, I feel like there have been so many more challenges with the reliability of air travel in general that I think building in some of these kind of travel buffers where you want to get yourself to a city, have a little bit of time there in case things change, in case flights get delayed. I think it's just all around there are some really great benefits to positioning. 

I think one of the biggest drawbacks, of course, is that it does take some extra time. So for people who are on a very constrained travel schedule, those are days that you're spending getting to an airport versus spending in your destination. So it may not work for every single trip. 

But for those of you who do have a little bit more flexibility, are able to take a little bit more than five or six days off at a time, especially if we're talking about long haul international traveling. Really consider the benefits of being able to position. Because I think, as Stephanie mentioned, it's more fun to get two trips than just one. So if you can do that, that's a really great thing.

Stephanie: Anything’s better than none trips. 

Devon: Absolutely. So at this point, okay you've booked you and your husband for this incredible flight to Croatia. You've already set yourselves up to get to New York, been able to take advantage of some of the relationships with Hyatt to be able to stay in hotels there, both on the front end and the back end. Tell me a little bit more about your actual flying experience once you did start that flight going from New York to Croatia. What was that like for you?

Stephanie: So I've always, always flown basic economy, like won't even pay for standard economy because why not? It's cheaper. So this absolutely potentially ruined us for life. But joy is not a crumb. So we flew out of JFK, like I mentioned, and I had read that you can show up early because the lounge, oh, lounge life is a totally new phenomenon in our lives as well that I didn't even know existed. 

I consider myself to be an educated woman in my fourth decade of life, and I don't know how lounges just bypassed me. Again, I just didn't think that that fit into the class of human that I am, which I'm totally wrong about. Anyway, so we got to JFK early. I'm the kind of person who my ideal timing is to walk through security and straight onto the plane. Stress my family out to the max. 

So when I voluntarily got us to the airport three hours early, he was blown away. So we went, checked in, got through security using our new Clear in TSA, which is another credit card benefit that we've leveraged, flew through security, and then got to the lounge. The food in the lounge was like, I mean, it's airport food, but it's such a different level of airport food. I had read that you could request your meal ahead of time so that once you got on the plane, you can just go straight to sleep because we took the red eye. 

So we got there early, had this delicious full service meal in the lounge. Then another thing that I learned from the group is you can get a facial before your flight. I say free, but it's not free. It's included. Anyway, my husband and I then got there early, signed up on the little iPad that's in the entryway at the JFK lounge, and got facials before our flight. I'm telling you, my husband too, he was like wow, this is absolutely life changing. 

Then we got on the plane, and we had champagne and we toasted. Then put our seats flat and slept and then woke up to croissants, and then you were in Croatia. Sorry, we laid over in Paris, but it was unbelievable. I woke up refreshed, and we slept the whole time. So the adjustment on the other end of it with the jetlag was very minimal. It was a flying experience that like I just didn't know existed. Now I know. I'm a little ruined.

Devon: I can relate to so much of what you're talking about. I think when you had initially kind of communicated with me about being on this podcast, you had referred to travel and the way that you were used to traveling as struggle vacationing. I think that I can relate to that in the sense that I also have been a lifelong lover of travel and for most of my life had the same exact approach. I call it by travel by any means necessary, which is what is the absolute cheapest way I can get where I'm going.

Because the point is the experience of the travel, not so much, at least at that point when I was young and didn't have joint pain, it wasn't so much about the journey itself being part of the destination. But from struggle vacationing to being able to enjoy a meal and a facial in a lounge pre-departure. Like you said, being able to lie flat on your way over to your destination so that you get there. 

You're not horribly jet lagged or just in a lot of pain from having to sit upright in a tiny little seat for whatever that entire journey is, nine, ten, 11 hours long I think is absolutely amazing. Especially when, as you have done, you do it using points. So your out of pocket cost is, at least in my experience, actually lower flying business class than what I used to pay when I was paying even for my bottom of the barrel economy class ticket, which I think is just another really magical thing about points travel.

Stephanie: Yeah, totally, absolutely manageable. I think so powerful because knowing that I'm using a currency that's not tapping into my travel budget when I get there, or it's not taking away. Before, spending money on a business class ticket would have meant I had to compromise on my lodging or compromise on our dining budget or something else would have had to give. 

But now having this other currency, it allows me to purchase this product that before I would have, even if I could afford it, I never would spend that money in cash because it would mean shuffling something else. So now being able to both have luxury accommodation and business class flights, not every time I travel, but you're selective about those things and you make those. 

My new goal is to take the trip of a lifetime annually. So that’s what I tell my family. We're going to do an annual trip of a lifetime. But anyway, I think that knowing that it's a currency that doesn't take away from something else that I want to spend our money on is something that's really revolutionary and wonderful.

Devon: I wholeheartedly agree. So you guys make it all the way over to Croatia. From there, did you end up using any points or any any of the benefits of any of your rewards credit cards in terms of arranging your accommodations once you were in Croatia? Or at that point, were you just happy to use your actual allocated travel budget to decide where you wanted to stay?

Stephanie: We did. We leveraged several travel benefits that before I didn't know. We used the status that you get with National rental car with our Chase Sapphire. So the rental car process was a breeze. Then we earned extra points for that and had car insurance through the card. We drove ourselves around in this darling little red Fiat on all the cobblestone roads and the tiny little pathway. So we use that.

We stayed in Korcula, an island off of the coast of Croatia for a night. I ended up booking through the Chase portal, and I paid cash through the Chase portal just to get more points. I had learned that this could sometimes be a snafu and to always follow up. So the first time I actually booked, I called the hotel, and they didn't have record of our reservation. Ended up canceling it through the Chase portal and doing it again. Just knowing that it was a possibility prevented me from showing up and not having it. I ended up booking that and having a lovely stay. 

Then the other currency that I've gotten into just barely is I do have one Amex card. So we use the Amex Fine Hotels and Resorts benefit at our hotel in Dubrovnik. Being upgraded in hotels is also something that I had never thought would happen to me. I would always look through Hotels.com. I thought that getting a 10th night free every 10 hotels was like an incredible benefit, and that was my hotel world. Obviously, no one gives upgrades to rooms booked through Expedia. That's not how that works. 

We got into this, we had booked a basic room in Dubrovnik. We got there, and they reached out ahead of time saying, “Thank you for traveling through Amex Fine Hotels and Resorts. Can we do anything for you?” And I said I'd love a room with a view. So they put us in this gorgeous ocean view huge suite by American standards, let alone European standards. They had truffles  and champagne as our welcome amenity. Again, like no one who books through Expedia is getting champagne and truffles as a welcome amenity.

Then the experience credit of $100 that you also get. So we had a couples massage, and, again, ended up paying out of pocket for like this incredible experience like $100. When before I wouldn't have booked that experience knowing what it would cost. 

While I ended up paying those things for cash, the benefit of upgrades and welcome amenities and experience credits and the free breakfast with a view over the ocean, all of these things I wouldn't have spent money on or wouldn't have had access to. I just leveraged the benefits of the existing parks that I have to turn a trip, that would have been a basic hey, I'm glad to be here. That's the treat into okay, I'm here but now I have a view. I have champagne. I have truffles.

Devon: I think that's such a great point about one of the amazing benefits of rewards cards. I mean obviously, so many of us focus on their actual points earning. I think that is very clearly a huge benefit of these cards, the welcome bonuses, the ability to earn increased bonus points on certain categories of spend, being really deliberate about the rewards cards that you choose, making sure that they are ones that are going to enable you to earn a lot of points in the areas that you tend to spend a lot of money in. 

But I think sometimes people don't realize that so many of the rewards cards options that are out there offer things in addition. So not only are there great points earning cards, but there are some really, really incredible perks and benefits that also come along with some of these rewards cards that when you have them as part of, I call it a credit card portfolio. But just your overall group of travel cards that you have really are able to touch on all these different aspects of your trip experience. 

So not just the amazing ability to book a fantastic flight using points or to book a hotel using points. But, as you mentioned, the benefit of the airport experience, being able to get TSA PreCheck, or Clear, or Global Entry so that you can move through airports a little bit easier and a little bit quicker, which I think all of us enjoy. Especially if you are traveling with other people who need a little bit of assistance, being able to do that in any way easier I think is an enormous benefit. 

Ability to get status. Like you mentioned, you used one of your cards to leverage the status for a rental car. Being able to apply that hotel credit through your American Express card so that not only were you eligible for a room upgrade, but you also got a credit towards an experience that maybe you wouldn't have really consider doing prior to that. 

I think that this is such an amazing point to make is that yes, earning points. Wonderful. I'm obviously obsessed with it. There are so many additional benefits that rewards credit cards also offer that when you are really great about taking advantage of them, as you were on this trip, they really impact your entire travel experience. I think that that's something that is really important for people to not overlook. 

So for those of you who already have rewards credit cards, I really recommend after this episode when you have a little bit of time, go ahead and make sure you understand what are some of the additional perks and benefits that your specific rewards credit cards offer. Because chances are there might be a benefit there that you weren't aware of that you can actually get a lot of value out of.

So don't think that these rewards cards are just for earning points. So many of them, especially the premium level rewards cards, also offer some really incredible perks on top of that. So don't sleep on those perks or benefits. You could be missing out on a lot.

Stephanie, I love hearing about the flight that you took, about this amazing hotel suite that you guys got upgraded to in Dubrovnik. Tell me a little bit more just about what were some of your favorite things to see or do in Croatia to give all of us a couple of ideas for those of us who are planning to take a trip like this in the future. What would you recommend other people check out if they ever make it all the way over there?

Devon: So I would definitely recommend renting a car and exploring the country. You can navigate with your GPS. That allowed us to just have the absolute freedom to explore and to stop and go and come and go as we please, which is our favorite way to travel. We stopped at Plitvice Lakes on the way from Zagreb out to the coast, which are these gorgeous crystal clear lakes and waterfalls and you can walk through those. 

Then we went to Split, spent the night in Split and stayed in a Hyatt Small Luxury hotel there in Diocletian’s Palace. We were also, I forgot to mention, we were also upgraded there from the annex property to the main property, a top floor looking out over the palace. So that was really special. 

My favorite thing that we did was we spent a night in Korcula, and we rented bikes, and we rode along the northern coast of the island to a secluded beach where we went swimming and actually broke my chain on the way back. So we stopped and had Aperol spritzes while we were waiting for someone to come and help fix the chain. The whole experience of moving through Croatia on our own was totally lovely, very doable. Very travel friendly. The people were amazing and accommodating. 

Then one of the most fun things that I think we did. So after we spent the night in Korcula, we drove down to Dubrovnik, checked into our hotel there. We did the thing that everybody does. You get up and you walk the city walls at sunrise and at sunset, which is absolutely stunning and gorgeous. Took the cable car up to the top of Dubrovnik and had dinner at the panorama restaurant up there at sunset, which was totally magical.

There were a bunch of little swimming places and cliffs that we wanted to explore. But we didn't really want to be with a group. We didn't want to be on one of those booze cruises. Didn't want to pay for our own luxury speedboat tour. So we got this tiny little, I found it on Viator tours, this tiny little boat that we were able to rent for ourselves for the day. We explored a bunch of the Elaphiti islands on our own. 

We threw out the anchor when we wanted to. We swam in the blue cave and the green caves and went cliff jumping on our own, and just had this very private, very romantic, very easy, beautiful trip that I would love to repeat again and again and again.

Devon: Well, the good news is that it sounds like what you learned from booking this trip that you are in an amazing position, like you said, to be able to take the trip of a lifetime annually. So I am so excited for you be able to do that every single year.

Curious if you happen to remember off the top of your head, just because I love hearing numbers, love having other people have a frame of reference for what might be possible for them. Do you happen to remember how many points you used in order to book those business class flights that you guys took from JFK to Croatia? The number of points that you needed to book any portion of the hotel stays that you used your points for?

Stephanie: Yes. So after we came back from Croatia, we ended up staying for a week at the Park Hyatt in New York City, which, again, is something that I never would have thought with rooms being $1,200 to $1,500 a night would have just thought that is never going to be in my budget. So we got those for 40,000 points a night. We were upgraded to a city view with two double beds. So five nights at the Park Hyatt in New York and two business class tickets to Croatia cost us 310,000 points. The cash value I've calculated of that have we paid out of pocket would have been about $15,000 or $16,000.

Devon: Yeah, it was an absolutely incredible redemption. Like you said, even for those of us who are not actually looking for our points to get us completely free travel where there is a certain amount of money that we're happy to budget and happy to spend annually on travel. To be able to use your points to get an additional $15,000 that you then don't actually have to pay out of pocket cash for, I think that really speaks to the power of a lot of these points currencies and why so many of us love using our points to travel. 

So thank you, Stephanie, so much. I feel like you gave us an absolute master class on all of the ways that you can truly leverage not even needing to have a bunch of different rewards credit cards. You have a small number of rewards credit cards, but in between being able to actually earn points with welcome bonuses, use points that you already had earned to book flights, to book hotel rooms. Then leveraging some of these non-points earning benefits of your credit cards for lounge access, for room upgrades at hotels, for you to be able to get status with your rental car. 

This has been, I think, so eye opening for me. I feel like you did more in seven months of learning about points than I did in probably the first three or four years that I knew about points. So thank you so much for coming on the podcast today. Just really showing everybody how much is possible. Again, this is not a race. Not everybody's journey has to look the same. If you don't book this type of trip your first year in points, nothing has gone wrong. But I think it's really lovely to hear real travel experiences from real people and to hear what was possible for them. 

Because, like you said, it really opens the door for so many of us to see that oh, the same exact thing might be in our future as well. That's, to me, one of my favorite things about hearing other people's stories with points and sharing them. So before we wrap up today, I just want to say, again, thank you so much for joining me. This was so much fun for me to hear your story and share it. 

I'm just curious if there's any one tip that you really want to make sure that you share with people or one thing that I didn't ask you about that you wanted to be sure to share with everyone that you think just might be helpful for them in their own points journey?

Stephanie: Yeah, first of all, I want to say thank you to you for opening up this whole world to me. It has been so fun. It has turned what was always a hobby to now a full fledged passion. So thank you. The thing that I would say or emphasize is I think you've you phrased it really perfectly the antidote to overwhelm this focus and getting into it can be completely overwhelming because it's a big world of things that are maybe haven't been accessible to people. 

So choosing to focus on one credit card or one currency, I think, is a really brilliant way to start and also could be the final destination. Like if you only want to use one credit card to accrue one kind of points to pay for three or four nights a year at a hotel, that is great. That can be the end. That doesn't mean that you're a failure or that you haven't gone as far as you want or whatever. But I think the antidote to overwhelm is focus. I am excited about the next part of my points earning and redeeming journey, but I'm also thrilled if this is as far as I get.

I have a feeling this is not as far as you get. But I absolutely agree with you that all we have to do is be really clear on what our personal priority is, our personal goal, and our personal values for using points. I think as long as you do that, it actually doesn't matter what anybody else is doing in the points world. 

So just another plug for being focused on what matters to you and starting where it makes sense to you and moving at the pace that works for you. I honestly don't think that you can go wrong in this world. So thank you, Stephanie, for being such a beautiful example of that. Thank you for coming on and sharing your story today. I so appreciated your being here with me.

Stephanie: Thank you for having me. I had a blast.

Thank you for joining me for this week's episode of Point Me to First Class. If you want more tips on turning your expenses into travel, visit pointmetofirstclass.com to learn more. See you next week.