98. 2024 Year in Review: Points Earning Rundown with Dr. Sujatha Murali (Part 2)

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.

Welcome back to the podcast, everyone. Today we are picking up where we left off last week in our 2024 points recap, where Sujatha and I are opening our points wallets and travel plans and comparing how we used points last year and talk about what credit cards, points, currencies, and loyalty programs were the most valuable to us. Now, if you missed last week's episode, be sure to go back and check that out. That is where we broke down exactly what points we earned in 2024, including how many points we earned and how we did it.

This week, we're diving into the even more fun part. Now that you know how many points we earned last year, today you're gonna hear how we use those points, including what travel we booked, our favorite award booking programs, and the trips we have already planned for 2025, but haven't taken yet. One thing that I want to say up front is that how Sujatha and I individually and independently use our points are just two out of a billion examples of how points can be used. So please don't think that we are suggesting that anyone else should have the same travel goals as us or use points in an identical way. More than anything, please use today's episode as inspiration or just plain entertainment as we talk about our most memorable points travels over the last year, our highest value redemptions, and the points travel we have already booked for 2025.

So thank you all for joining us again today and thank you Sujatha for coming back to the show.

Dr. Sujatha: Thank you again for having me.

Devon: All right, Sujatha, this is the super fun part. Today, we're gonna talk about what trips we actually took in 2024? What are the trips that we have upcoming in 2025 that we use points and miles to book? But before we get into some of those details, I'd really like to just kind of take a step back and start from a high level view because I'm curious to hear from you when you approach award travel planning in general, kind of what are your general approaches? Are you someone who tries to book flights or hotels, saves, you know, the minute award calendars open up, do you plan more last minute travel? Do you follow the deals? Do you tend to have very specific destinations in mind for your trips?

Dr. Sujatha: Yeah. So I think this is a perfect question that kind of shows how award travel is very different depending on the phase of life you're in. So right now, my husband and I are both full-time docs. We have a fifth grader. So we are very much the definition of inflexible. The one thing you will see over and over when people are talking about unicorn redemptions is you've got to be flexible, you've got to be able to fly in two days. That is never, ever, ever going to be our reality, at least for the next 10 years. We know this, and we're absolutely fine with it. So we accommodate.

So because we are so completely tied to the elementary school, and then soon to be middle school schedule, luckily, these schedules come out a year or two in advance, and we are very much able to be forward planners. So we basically take three big trips a year. I think that's a very predictable paradigm for our family. We take a week at spring break, we take two weeks at summer, and we take one week or so, either Thanksgiving or Christmas, towards the end of the year. That varies a little bit. But we're basically talking four weeks a year for our big international trips. We definitely have a few many, many weekend trips here and there. A lot of that involves just driving up to LA or doing quick Southwest flights or something like that. Those are not going to be big, preemptively planning.

But those sort of three big trips a year, we tend to start planning about 18 months in advance, and they are booked at open. I spend a tremendous amount of my time in this points and miles world figuring out when business class seats open and when high-popularity hotels open their rooms. And I think that is something people don't talk about a lot is the huge amount of time commitment. Of course, people get lucky where they say they want to travel six months from now and two Qsuites opens up. Yes. And those are the people that are going to post. I don't do a lot of boring posts about the weeks and weeks it's taking me to figure out when JAL releases their seats to Tokyo. But that is the reality of this. I crazily find it fun. I think it's like putting a puzzle together. And frankly, at the end of the day, we end up getting what we want. And so that is the benefit of booking and planning in advance is that you're able to say, look, I want to go…

As an example, we are planning to go to Japan spring break of 26. And I know in March, April of this year, I am already gearing for the minute the seats in hotel rooms drop, I'm going to be booking for them. So what that means is I need my point stash really taken care of a year before these trips. I can't be relying on a signup bonus to come through to plan this because I'm going to lose those jowl seats. And frankly, we want to fly business to Japan. So that is kind of... the overall structure of how we plan trips. We are lucky to be able to do these big, big trips, planning them a good 18 months to two years in advance.

Devon: We are pretty similar to that. I have a husband who works what I would consider to be a fairly traditional job, traditional schedule. He's self-employed, he's a physician, and so he cannot very easily travel at the drop of a hat. We have to do a lot of planning in terms of accommodating his schedule, making sure it works for him, we have to be really deliberate about how often he takes time off and how much time, you know, at a time that he takes off. And that also very much like you coincides with the fact that we have two kids on a very traditional school schedule.

So they're in the same school, which is amazing because at least they have the same holiday schedule. But when we want to do family travel, it looks like traveling for a week during spring break when almost all the other, you know, schools in the area are also on spring break. It looks like traveling for one to up to two weeks, you know, winter break. And then we do try to take some sort of trip. Again, in the summer, we have flexibility around that, but that's really what our travel looks like, especially with my husband's schedule. Really three weeks is what he can accommodate, you know, reliably taking off for vacation a year. I'm always trying to nudge him beyond that and we're working on it. But, you know, the reality is for a lot of folks in very traditional jobs, it's not always possible to be able to travel, you know, seven, eight, nine weeks a year or to travel on sort of very kind of odd types of travel schedules, a lot of times we are looking at Saturday to Saturday travel.

And one of the things that has come up for us, well, I'll circle back to that question in just a second, but I think for me and the travel planning, especially when we're thinking about family travel planning, one of the things that I do try to do is very similar to you, which is have an idea as far in advance as possible about where do I think we might want to go when I know what the dates are that we're going to have available to us, because I do find that award availability is the best if you can grab it when it first opens up. That's true for, in my experience, award flights as well as kind of coveted hotel stays as well.

But one of the things that I have noticed as I've done more and more family travel planning is I do not believe in perfection in any aspect of life and certainly not in the world of points and miles. And I think that when it comes to points and miles, there's this delicate balance between kind of understanding the tremendous value that points can potentially have and also not feeling like you are handcuffed to “bad redemptions.”

And in the world of points and miles, I personally, it's not been my experience that I get to pick and get my choice of everything. I don't get to pick exactly where I'm going to go the exact dates I want nonstop flights for bargain basement points prices for four people. I mean, if that happens, it's amazing and I will take it, but I don't expect that. And I think one of the things that I've encountered and experienced the more I've done travel planning is really kind of making peace with the fact that on any given trip, I'm probably going to have to sacrifice or be flexible in one or more of those areas. This is kind of the first year that my kids have had some wonky vacations where I keep thinking they're supposed to be a week long and they end up having 11 days off.

So it's like a Thursday, Friday and an entire week or like, you know, two weeks off plus a Monday and Tuesday. And so we can play around a little bit in terms of our, you know, departure and return dates like it can be a Monday to Monday and that can sometimes work out. But for the most part, in my experience, we have not, I have not hit kind of a home run and checked every single box. And sometimes what that looks like is that even though I understand theoretical point opportunities that flights exist to fly from A to B for 50,000 miles, chances are I'm going to have to be willing and flexible to spend more than that if I want to get my preference on everything else. And so it's on the one side, I sort of accept that now as being true for at least my family and the way we travel.

And on the flip side, as someone who loves points and miles, teaches about points and miles, I still get a thrill and a dopamine rush when I have, you know, I calculate out my little cents per point redemption value for a given flight or hotel, and it's really high. And I think that it can be sometimes a little addicting to try to chase that tippy top redemption value. And so I'm just curious to hear from you. Do you calculate redemption values for your trips? If you do, how do you actually factor in that information? Does it even matter to you the redemption value that you're getting from your points?

Dr. Sujatha: That is a fabulous question. And great, great points there. So I look at redemptions as there are basically 4 factors that you have to take into account. And for each trip, I think you really have to figure out what you're willing to compromise on. So number one is route, right? So are you willing to position? Do you have a three-year-old that you really need a direct flight for? Are you willing to compromise on route? Number two is class of service. Is economy okay? Premium economy, business, what do you want to fly? Number three is really the price, right? You are, you know. How much are you willing to spend? Is this going to be your bargain basement trip? Or are you like, you know what, I've got a pretty good point stash. I am willing to sort of compromise on how much I'm willing to pay. And number four is obviously timing as far as when you can travel. Are your dates fixed? Or can you take off on Lufthansa first in 48 hours? 

So for us, because we are sort of predictably taking these 3 kind of big trips, we don't have a lot of flexibility on dates, right? Our daughter is off from this day to this day. She is incredibly unwilling to take days off from school. She really fights us on this. And so we really try not to pull her out of school. So we are not flexible on dates. We are not, I would say, super flexible on class of service. If we are sitting on a 10, 12-hour flight, the whole point of this whole game is to really be able to be in my flat seats. And so economy domestic is pretty much all we fly. Internationally, I think at this point of the game, we're just not really willing to do economy. We really want business class.

And then the route, we're in San Diego. We have a few good international flights. And one of the pieces of advice I give people is, especially if you're in these mid-tier, lower-tier airports, get to know your international flights. Because if you have a flight that you know the ins and outs to the second when those seats open, you can take that flight every single time. So anything that involves going across the Atlantic, we are taking San Diego to Heathrow. You know, we hate going to LAX. It's a massive hassle. And, you know, of course, for some redemptions, we're going to have to do it. It's not a big deal. But for the average redemption, we really try to fly outside of San Diego. We hate positioning. I mean, I know everyone's like, just position. It's not a big deal. It's a big deal. We check in. We got to pick up our luggage. It's a hassle. Plus, for us, positioning for a lot of flights, especially the things like the East Coast, is an extra day off work and it's going to have to be a day of pulling from school, and we are not willing to do that.

So what do we compromise on? We compromise on price. I mean, this is why I'm such a points hoarder because I want that cushion. That San Diego to Heathrow flight is routinely 100 to 120,000 points per seat one way. That is fine. The level of convenience that provides us, I am absolutely willing to pay that. And so we compromise on price for these big trips. And so this is different for every trip. There are some trips where we're just like, we've got to go do this thing, visiting my in-laws in Austin. We can fly around and if things are are delayed, it's no big deal. We're going to end up there at some point. But for trips that are very high-risk trips, we want as least... Less unpredictability as possible. And so for us, that means trying to fly direct and we pay a little bit more for that. We are lucky enough to have jobs that provide a little bit of a financial cushion for us to be able to support things with cash, if things go awry. And absolutely, I recognize that level of privilege because at the end of the day, if we are stuck in Japan, and we have, you know, I have 18 patients in the clinic the next day, and I can't get back, I could theoretically pay cash for these tickets and get back home. I know not everybody has the ability to do that. But you know, these are the things that we take into consideration.

Devon: I agree with everything that you said as we go through some of our individual redemptions. I think it is fun to highlight, you know, where did we get the highest redemption value from some of our points and also acknowledge what were just some of our best travel experience that may have nothing to do with the actual value that we got out of those points. And so without any further ado, I would love to hear from you of the 5.3 million points that you told us you earned on last week's episode in 2024. Take us into how many points you actually used to book things for travel either in 2024 or again, upcoming travel in 2025. Give us a broad overview. How many points did you use to book travel and kind of what do those trips look like?

Dr. Sujatha: Okay. So because we planned so far in advance and because I actually have not sort of been doing this hobby for decades at this point, like I said, I'm pretty much right at the two-year mark of really doing things in earnest. My 2024 redemptions look very different than what my 2025 five redemptions are going to look like, mainly because at 2023, we're still very much in points accruing mode, right? I had a few 100,000 points here and there, but a lot of our trips were cash. The one thing I will also mention here, which I think is very important, we very much use a combination of cash and points. In fact, the first completely on points as far as flights and hotels trip we're going to be taking is spring break of 25.

We love going on cruises and we love Adventures by Disney. Actually, we have been on seven or eight Adventures by Disney trips and we still book them because the level of sort of comfort of just set it and forget it for us as far as seeing exotic places without worrying about the minutia of traveling around is very much worth it. So we actually use a considerable amount of cash still actually for sort of our big trips. Once again, we're not going on these trips every month. It's basically two trips a year we'll pay a significant amount of cash for and the other trip will be mostly points. So for 2024, once again, booked in 2023, I'm going to start with hotels and then do flight. So for hotels, we spent about 700,000 points at hotels.

However, only 200,000 were Hyatt's simply because we had a very expensive, quite expensive Hilton stay this summer in Lake Como. And as everybody knows, Hilton points are, you know, those zeros add up when you're looking at Hilton numbers. So 200,000 at Hyatt's, and I think we spent about 20 to 30 nights at Hyatt's for a cash value of $7,000. So that was right around 4 cents per point, actually. For Hilton, I actually eked out 1.2 cents per point because Lake Como does not have a lot of points hotels, and we stayed at the Hilton in Lake Como. This was also probably my favorite redemption of the year. It was absolutely amazing.

So we spent 320,000 points on four nights, but that was $5,000 worth of travel for those four nights. So that was right around $1.1, $1.2 per point. So the 3 big trips for this year were Adventures by Disney. We went to Peru for spring break in April. Probably one of my favorite trips I've ever been on. So that was actually all a cash trip. My husband is a bit of a savant when it comes to finding business class flights for cash. And I don't know how he does it. But we found Delta 1 for $1,700 roundtrip per person to Lima. Absolutely. He somehow was on the site for the 10 minutes those flights were up. So we paid very little for live flat seats to Lima roundtrip from LAX. Obviously, the ABD trip was cash and there were no hotels because it was a tour package.

This summer, we did an Adriatic cruise on Norwegian, which we absolutely love. Norwegian is our favorite cruise line, we stay in the Haven, which is kind of like concierge level. So that was obviously all cash as well. However, we did use points for the business class VA flights to Europe. So we flew San Diego to Heathrow to Milan, spent 4 nights at Lake Como, and then got on the boat of the cruise ship in Venice. And we also ended up flying back one night back up to Milan at the end of the trip to see Taylor Swift. And that was actually a lot of points, which was great. And then we flew home on points as well. So for flights for 2024 flights, and this is all in, not just our big trips, but my little conference trips, 9,000 points here and there, we spent 549,000 points on flights. And once again, this also, we paid cash for our Peru flights for $21,000 worth of flights this year. So that was right around 3.7 cents per point.

For me, sense per point is much, much less important simply because I know I am compromising on price. I dream of the day where I get my thrifty traveler alert for some exotic location and I can just book it. That day is not here yet. And I basically just read those emails with an incredible amount of FOMO and jealousy. But that is more informational for me than practical. So I fully know that I am compromising on price for the vast majority of these trips. So I am 3.7 cents per flight, I'm thrilled, beyond thrilled for me. So we'll kind of compare that to 2025, which 90% is booked. The only thing that isn't booked is we're doing the Christmas markets in Europe next now over obviously Christmas, those flights will open up in about two weeks. So it's our usual standard BA flight, so I know approximately how much it costs.

So when I put everything together for 2025, spring break is London and Amsterdam, 100% on points. We're staying at the Ondas in Amsterdam, we're staying at the Hyatt Churchill in London. Once again, since I book it open, I am able to apply Sweet Upgrade Awards, which is absolutely great. But once you wait a little bit, it's very difficult to find those standard suites. Summer we are going to Africa, we are spending two weeks in Kenya and Tanzania, and then start off in Paris for a few days on our way home. Kenya and Tanzania cash, it's a lot. And you know, this is something we've wanted to do for a very long time. We're going with very good friends of ours and their family. But in Paris, I was like, look, I want Park Hyatt. That's it. How often do I get to go to Paris? But Park Hyatt in July is not easy, right?

So the minute this opened, I booked the standard room. I am waiting for their suites to open up, which hopefully one day they will. But another little trick about this, so these very, very aspirational, very popular hotels, they often just do not predictably release these suites because they're saving them for people who are perfectly willing to pay 3,000 euros a night for them. So I emailed the Park Hyatt. I said, look, for three people, I booked a standard room. I would very much like to keep this standard room. I do not want suite pricing emailed to me. How much would it cost to just move to a three-person room, keeping my standard room award. It's about 100 euro a night. It's nothing.

So even if the suite opens up... I'm sorry, even if the suite does not ever open up for me to use an SUA, we will end up paying about 300 extra euro to be in a three-person room per client for rooms that go around 2000 euro a night. So if you have an extra person, one or two people, especially for kids – I mean, a third person is a small human – e-mail the hotel and say, I want to keep this standard room because they'll try to send you prices for suites. If you say you're three or four people, I want to keep this room. How much is the nominal upgrade charge to be put in a three-person room or a four-person room? You will find that it is often incredibly, incredibly reasonable.

The Churchill we got an SUA for, so we're going to be there. That's spring break. Summer is Africa. We are flying business class on Air France from LAX to Nairobi. We then booked my favorite redemption of the year. So because we are going to Paris, and I will tell you how I booked this. Because we're going to Paris, for some reason that I did not put two and two together, we are flying from Nairobi to Paris on Bastille Day, which is a very difficult day to fly. It is a very expensive day. It's like trying to fly home on Memorial Day. All the Parisians have off. They've all been away that week or weekend, and they're all trying to get home to Paris. So there's a beautiful nonstop Air France flight from Nairobi to Paris. 8 hours, you land 7 in the morning. It's like 500,000 points per person. 

And because it's Bastille Day, I am not optimistic the price is going to drop. So I said, what are the other options here? Turkish had a few that left at 4 in the morning. I don't want to do that, right? So I finally was like, let me look at Emirates. So I look at Emirates. Points cost is not bad. Flying through Dubai. So Nairobi, Dubai, Paris. 100,000 points a person, fine. No problem. Fees. The fees. $1,200 per person. I said, absolutely not. So what I did was I used my business platinum and booked it through the Amex portal for 35% points back. The cash price, shockingly, was only $6,000 for 3 Emirates A380 tickets for that flight, that single flight. Well, 2 flights through Dubai. So I converted that to points. I spent about 600,000 points initially. So once again, important to know your business platinum will give you a 35% rebate. on points flights booked through the portal. You have to have those points though. So this is not a discount, this is a rebate. So those three seats on the Emirates, it's a 777 from Nairobi to Dubai, but the Dubai to Paris is an A380, which is the fancy one with the bar, you're upstairs, total flight I've been wanting to take forever.

So we spent about 600,000 points, but with the 35% rebate, I ended up getting about 200,000 points back. So three people, 400,000 points for that flight. The timings are fabulous. You leave Nairobi at like nine at night, get to Paris around 11am. So this is a fixed redemption, right? So I'm not getting 10 cents per point here. I'm getting about 1.6 cents per point, which I was thrilled to pay because I got exactly what I wanted. I got to fly on a sort of bucket list flight that I wanted to fly forever. We are definitely going to try to upgrade at the airport because we're going to have a little bit of room. So even if I think one of us can experience Emirates first, just for that seat, because the other one has to sit with the kid in business class. I don't think the kid can sit in first by yourself. But we're going to try to upgrade to Emirates first.

So out of everything next year, this is kind of... I am so looking forward. I was giddy. I booked this. And my husband is a bit of a stoic guy. He'll be like, Oh, that's great. But that's it. And I'm like, I want to talk about this more. Can we talk about this more? He's like, no, I got stuff to do. But I was very happy about that. So once again, look at the price. I had the points, I wanted this flight, and it was an absolutely perfect way to get to Paris. And then our third big trip is once again, actually Adventures by Disney. We are actually doing the Christmas markets with them on a river cruise up the Rhine, starting in Basel, ending in Amsterdam. I'm about to, just in about 10 days, book San Diego to Heathrow to Basel. And then on the way home, we are probably still going to do BA, Amsterdam, London, San Diego.

Now, we got very lucky about three months ago in that KLM actually is now starting an Amsterdam to San Diego flight direct. It starts in May of 2025, I believe. Right now, the prices are outrageous. It's also only three days a week right now. So I don't think that's going to be too much to pay. So I'll sort of open the Amsterdam Heathrow, San Diego. Once that flight opens in about early January, I'll sort of book those at open. One of the big advantages... with BA is that they guarantee four business class seats at open on their metal. And I know to the second when this opens and I nab them. And so this is, you know, the whole house kind of comes to a stop at $4.59 on that day. Everyone gathers around the computer and just makes sure I don't make a mistake with the dates or something. So I know to the second when that opens and those three seats are mine.

So we're able to just, you know, put it down on the books. It'll cost about 300,000 points, maybe a little bit over. Taxes and fees, look, part of the price of doing business. We're okay with it. We don't have to go to LAX. It will cost us $400 to get to LAX with a car service anyway. I'd much rather put it in for flying from San Diego. So those are our three big trips. So London, Amsterdam, and Spring Break, Africa over the summer on the Christmas markets. I'll have conferences and we'll do little trips. We always go see my in-laws in Austin at some point during the year. So those trips are very helpful for companion pass. So that is sort of a very important part of our overall strategy. So as far as you know, we talked about 524 a little bit in the last episode. It's going to be my turn this year to get companion pass.

So I know that, you know, that that is something in the back of my mind the whole year as far as Chase is concerned. Right now, I will be well below when it's time for me to apply. But it's going to be tough if another Freedom Unlimited uncapped offer comes along this year. But these are all the things that kind of go into play. So we have a pretty epic next year. Right now, my totals for next year are $53,000 worth of flights and $23,000 worth of hotels that are booked. And for flights, I used 1.7 million miles. And for hotels, I used so far so far 681,000 points.

Devon: Sounds like an absolute amazing use of points and miles. And I love also hearing again, just your unique perspective experience in terms of how you think about booking travel overall, sort of the aspect of using the cash budget that you're comfortable paying, then allocating your points and miles to what parts of that experience are going to have the biggest impact for you and especially to being based in San Diego for you to identify that those BA flights are kind of hands down things that just work the absolute best for you and your family right now and being happy to use your points and miles for those I think just really highlights again how individual and unique this entire hobby is.

So I am in general pretty similar to you as I mentioned in terms of tending to book especially our family travel as far in advance as possible. Now, the interesting thing for me, for us around 2024, is this is the first year where I feel like a lot of our plans completely collapsed in a way that I just have not experienced in prior years. And so I'll talk a little bit about what I thought 2024 was gonna look like for points travel, what it actually looked like, and then how points and miles have come into play for us for resuscitating our 2024 travel and then some of our 2025 travel.

So back on last year's recap episode, and I was having this conversation with Kelly and I was talking about what are the points and miles I had used in 2023 to book 2024 travel? What was I looking ahead towards? I mentioned that a lot of my travel does tend to be family travel around my kids' school breaks, but I also love to take one solo trip a year, which for me is really just all about trying specific airlines that I've never flown before or, you know, a specific airline product that I've really got my eyes on that I think it'd be really fun to use points and miles for.

So in 2023, that looked like doing basically a 48 hour turnaround to Tokyo because I really wanted to fly JAL first class one way and ANA business class on the way home. And I went a little more ambitious for my 2024 trip. I'm pretty sure I talked about planning this trip on last year's episode, but I actually took the trip this year. And this was all about, again, flying specific airlines with points and miles. And the two I really had my eye on was I wanted to try the first-class apartment on Etihad, which at the time that I flew it had only been operational, again, post-pandemic on the London Heathrow to Abu Dhabi route. So that was the only route that you could actually book on at that time. And I really, really wanted to try the Emirates Game Changer first-class suite, which again, at the time that I took that trip, was only on, I think, six aircraft. And all of the routes that that aircraft were flying at that time was between the hub in Dubai and then a couple of different European cities.

So I was trying to find what's the longest route I can get on with that aircraft. And then I kind of built a trip around that. So in January of 2024, I took this really incredible, I think it was like a five-day trip where I flew business class on Turkish Airlines, which I had never flown before. And so I flew business class on Turkish Airlines from Chicago to... Istanbul, and then to London Heathrow. And then I flew the Etihad first-class apartment from London to Abu Dhabi. I took a car from Abu Dhabi to Dubai. I spent, I think, one night in Dubai. And then I flew the Game Changer from Dubai to Brussels. I spent a night in Brussels and then I flew home from Brussels to Chicago. So that was literally just a five-day airplane adventure, which I fully acknowledge many, many people may never be interested in doing, but one of the things I love is just flying on airplanes and points and miles have given me the opportunity to take one trip like this a year. 

So I did that in January. So that was a trip that I had already booked in 2023. So I didn't actually use points in 2024 to book that trip. And then I had also booked our spring break for 2024. And we had decided to take our kids to Costa Rica. And we stayed at the Andes Papagayo, which is a Hyatt hotel down there. So we went down to Costa Rica for seven days. We booked economy flights on United, again, like not the most luxurious flying experience when you think about points and miles flying, you know, from Chicago down to Costa Rica in economy. But again, it was not that super long a flight. It was a nonstop flight. Cash prices were insane. And so we still booked with points, but it was a not insignificant amount of points. It was about 320,000 United miles for four roundtrip economy tickets. So again, this is not the type of redemption that I think it's gonna get a ton of like attention in the points and miles world, but it was practical and it was useful for us.

And so in terms of 2024 travel, I had also booked us to spend a week in Rome in July. So the four of us, and this was kind of my first, what felt to me ambitious points travel planning, not from a points perspective, but from a family perspective, just because of the ages that my kids were when I booked that trip, I wasn't entirely sure that they were gonna be able to kind of do an on foot European kind of exploration type of trip. But the beautiful thing about points and miles is that many of these programs do allow you to cancel either for a complete refund of your points and your fees or just for a nominal fee. And so it was worth it to me to book this trip for Rome for June of 2024.

And I had not yet booked our winter break plans when I did this recap episode, you know, at this time last year, cause the award calendars hadn't opened up. But I thought, okay, my 2024 travel is basically booked. We'll go somewhere for winter break. It'll be fine. And in terms of what actually happened, it looked very different. The second-half of 2024, what I expected. So I took my solo trip in January. We took our family trip to Costa Rica in March. And when we were in Costa Rica, the week we were there, it happened to be about 98 degrees and like 180% humidity. I mean, it was just like boiling hot, which was fine because we were there. They had a pool, they had a beach. That was no problem. But my kids completely decompensated physically. Like it just became clear that they would not be able to walk. You know, when I was looking forward to this potential June Rome trip, it just became so clear to me that I didn't think my kids were gonna be in a physical space in terms of just being able to trek around a European city in the summer for potentially hours on end.

And so when we were in Costa Rica, I was already starting to think, I'm not sure this Rome trip is gonna work out, which is disappointing because I would love to take this trip, really love for my kids to get outside of just North America, the Caribbean, Mexico, and other places they've currently explored. And so I was already thinking, I'm not sure they're gonna be able to do this trip. And then sort of what tipped me over to just outright canceling it was then we got home and Hyatt had made the announcement that they were separating from their SLH partnership, that all the SLH properties were leaving Hyatt, they were going over to Hilton. And I had had us booked at an SLH property for a week in Rome. And it happened to be about two weeks after Hyatt and SLH said beyond this point, none of these reservations are gonna be within the Hyatt system anymore. And so because of that, and also I just didn't think my kids were gonna have a great time. I was like, you know what? This was a little too ambitious for us at this time. That's okay. We can cancel this trip. We can make alternate plans. We'll have options to do all sorts of different things in the future.

So the first thing in 2024 that we canceled was our Rome trip. So that was a little bit disappointing, but you know, at the same time, great. We have points and miles. We can make a backup plan. And so this was really my first experience in doing what feels like last minute travel planning to me because usually we are booking, you know, 12 months, 13 months ahead of time. And so all of a sudden it was like, okay, well, what's available now? And you know, by the time you're looking at April planning for a June trip, especially if you want to go to Europe, especially in 2024 with Taylor Swift and the Olympics, it was like, I knew we were not going to go anywhere in Europe. And so kind of as a backup, we decided, well, let's, instead of taking a June trip, let's take an August trip before my kids go back to school. That would be a little bit easier in terms of just the demands we're putting on them.

And so we just pivoted and we decided, let's take a San Diego trip. I was born and raised in Southern California, but it had been many, many years since I had been back there. My kids have never been to Southern California. You know, there's the San Diego Zoo, there's Disneyland. There's the beach. We're like, what could possibly go wrong? You know, like, let's take our kids to San Diego for a week. And it was probably the single most disastrous vacation we've ever taken as a family. It is literally, in my 43 years on this planet, the only trip that, in retrospect, I can look back and say, I really wish we just had not gone on this trip. And there were so many reasons for that.

Apparently, I have the type of children who just don't like fun things. Like, basically, everything we took them to in San Diego, yeah, they hated. I mean, every little piece of it. Nope, nope, nope. We don't like any of this. Okay, that's fine. You know, like you can, you think being disgruntled as part of childhood, that's totally fine. But also I think one of the things that in all seriousness made it not an enjoyable trip for us is that my son was a little bit under the weather right before we left. And there was always that consideration of, should we go on this trip? Should we not go on this trip? But he was just a little congested and we thought we're in San Diego. I mean, the beauty of traveling domestically is that it's still the US healthcare system. You know, if we need to, whatever, you know, go to an urgent care center, call in a prescription. You know, we have access to do that and that was fine.

Well, lo and behold, what actually was happening was that he was having, you know, brewing pneumonia. And so when we were in San Diego, he was just really, really feeling very unwell. And that got progressively worse during our time there. And we finally, you know, it was only a seven day trip. And I think by day four, we were just kind of looking at each other, thinking the kids are not having a good time. My son especially was not feeling well. None of us had been sleeping because my son had been feeling so unwell. And we just kind of called it a loss and went home, you know, three days early, which we've never done before. And also a hundred percent the right decision. So glad we got home. We got my son taken care of, you know, he started doing amazingly better with some treatment, but it was sort of that combination of canceling a trip to Rome and thinking like, hey, let's resuscitate this. Let's do something fun instead. And it was just hands down the worst travel experience that we've ever had.

So that was kind of a loss. And then what I sort of realized kind of towards the end of the summer is even though I had my kids' school calendar and I knew they had a week off for Thanksgiving of this year, I didn't actually realize they had 11 days off for Thanksgiving. So they had the Thursday and Friday off school and then the whole week of Thanksgiving, which again, in the Chicago suburbs, the end of November, this is not the most delightful time to just be outdoors playing all the time. You can be snowing, you can be freezing. And my husband was working, you know, up until Thanksgiving day, because we usually take off Thanksgiving day morning. We drive to his parents' house and have a really nice family Thanksgiving. But I was sitting there thinking I've got my kids for six days before Thanksgiving. Like what in the world am I going to do? And so I was like, I will try my hand at last minute travel planning. Like let's just figure out where's theres a deal. Ideally someplace, you know, warm, sunny, hopefully I can fly there direct from Chicago, use points and miles. And so I was so proud of myself because I sort of, for me, last minute travel plan to trip for me and my two kids to go to the Hyatt Ziva Cap Cana property in the Dominican Republic, which is an all-inclusive property. It's supposed to be great for families. I thought, this will be a good experience for me. I've never flown alone with my children, and it's something that I really want to start doing to give us more opportunities to travel, you know, when maybe my husband's schedule doesn't align with ours completely.

So again, great use of miles, booked the Hyatt Ziva Cap Cana using points and miles, was able to book, you know, United flights direct from Chicago down to Dominican Republic. And we get on the airplane that the morning that we were flying down and it happened to be the first snow in Chicago of the year. And you know, Chicago is a place that gets snow. Chicago Airport is really, really experienced with snowy days. This, unless it's a blizzard, really doesn't tend to impact air travel that much through Chicago and it was not a blizzard, but I don't know. The stars aligned that day and again, it was just a total disaster. We end up sitting on this United flight. We board on time, which is great. We sit on this airplane for five and a half hours, you know, between not pushing back from the gate, having to sit in line for three hours to get de-iced, you know, having to sit in line for the runway right before we take off. The pilot times out and says, you have to return, you know, to the airport.

So long story short, my kids and I spent 10 hours at O'Hare going nowhere, um, right before Thanksgiving. And at that point they had done amazingly well. And also I didn't think they would continue to do well to wait for the plane to get recruited to then take a five and a half hour flight. And then the subsequent days flights, the direct flights, were already all completely fully booked. So there was no real easy opportunity to rebook. So we spent a day at O'Hare and then canceled that whole trip and came home. So that was a little bit disappointing. And all the meanwhile, the one trip I had not planned during 2023, which is really out of character for me, was our winter break. There was just, I don't know, I was just having a lot of trouble coming up with ideas about where to go. I kind of played around with the idea of, should we try to do Europe in December, but we had just canceled the European trip in June. I wasn't sure if my kids were going to handle it that much differently, you know, six months later. We have some go-to properties we love in Mexico, but it just didn't. Either a hotel had great availability, but the flights were just outrageously expensive or vice versa. There was nothing that just felt kind of easy to book. And so all of that to say that all the trips I've talked about so far were actually booked with points and miles in 2023.

So starting with our winter break of 2024 trip, this is where I actually started using my points and miles for kind of forward-looking travel. So, you know, given how much just kind of disappointing travel experiences that we had as a family in 2024 and the options that were still available for winter break travel, as I was still trying to put together this trip very late for me, you know, really end of summer of 2024, I booked what is probably the most ludicrous thing I could have done given all of our other travel experiences, but I just figured this is what's available, this is what we have points and miles for, I wanna go somewhere that's sunny and hot and let's just give it a shot.

Now I sort of feel like if it happens amazing, If we cancel it for whatever reason, the points and miles to go back in our account, try to do something the next year. So I have us currently booked to do our winter break in the Maldives, which is a very, very interesting trip to try to book for four people, especially as you mentioned, my preference is that if I'm gonna be flying for 40 hours, it's not going to be an economy. And so this was a really, really interesting trip to put together kind of all in, we're gonna be spending seven actual days in the Maldives, but there's like two days of travel, you know, on either end to get from where we live, you know, all the way over to the resort.

And so in terms of actual points allocation for this trip, I wanted to share this because I don't know if anybody else is thinking about doing a family trip to the Maldives. They want to know what am I actually looking at here in terms of points, costs, and how do you put this type of trip together? So we're doing seven nights at the park Hyatt there. So that's all on points. And I think this is probably one of the best deals you can book. I'm a huge fan of Hyatt's in general. I think especially their higher category properties could potentially offer so much tremendous value in terms of the redemption value because when you book a Hyatt Hotel using points, you have no out-of-pocket cash costs for the hotel stay itself. Of course, you're gonna be paying for your incidentals, your food and beverage and all of that, but the hotel stay itself, bookable totally with points.

And even though it's a very high category Hyatt, the standard rooms there, which are beachfront villas, so we're not talking about like a tiny little room with two twin beds. It's a villa, standalone villa. It's 35,000 points per night, which I personally think is a ridiculous steal from Christmas to New Year's when that room is going for $2,300 per night for seven nights, which I personally would not be interested in paying, but I think it's an absolute steal. So I booked us at the Park Hyatt. And then in terms of actually getting there and back, this comes back to your point about what are the priorities, right? Is the priority to pay as few points as possible? Is the priority to fly a certain class of service? Because we are traveling with our kids, we've never dragged them this long haul before. 

My priority was I want as few long haul flights as possible. And also, again, in terms of the timing, I think it'd be very challenging for us to take like a 12 a.m. flight somewhere or to have to get the kids up at 2 a.m. to get to an airport for a certain flight. And so I actually broke up this trip into two different bookings. And I think, you know, the traditional kind of ideology would be, how do I get from point A to point B all in one itinerary? But one of the things I love about points and miles is you can get really, really creative with itineraries. And so the way that I have us booked is that we're flying Lufthansa from Chicago to Frankfurt. So that's a nonstop flight, booked four of us on business class using Lufthansa Miles and More Miles. Love this program. They have amazing award availability, especially for multiple people in business class. Kids are discounted.

So for four people to fly one way from Chicago to Frankfurt, it's like 273,000 lift-ons of miles and more miles, which again, I think is great. Then talking about what I think is probably one of the biggest kind of announcements in the points and miles world this year, when Alaska and Hawaiian announced the merger, and then we had sort of this backdoor gateway open up between transferring Amex points to Alaska Airlines through Hawaiian Airlines, I transferred over a bunch of my Amex points, ultimately over to Alaska Airlines. And then it ended up booking us from Frankfurt direct to Mali, which is kind of the main international airport there in the Maldives, four of us business class on Condor airlines where we used our Alaska airlines miles for that. And that cost 480,000 Alaska miles for four of us actually round trip. So we're flying Frankfurt to Mali and then Mali back to Frankfurt.

And so that all in that trip to take four of us business class to the Maldives staying in the park I did for a week, that all in is about 1.3 million points. So it's a lot of points, right? I'm not pretending, I'm flying four of us, you know, business class to spend a week in the Maldives for 25,000 points, not at all. But I think in terms of, again, the value of that just based on the cost, if I was to book the same flights, you know, round trip on business class, if I was to book the same hotel, you know, out-of-pocket cash, that's like a $60,000 vacation, which to me feels honestly like a miracle that I can use points and miles. And overall, that whole trip is like a 4.6 cents per point valuation. And my kind of philosophy on points redemption is that especially when I am traveling with my family, I'm probably not going to be looking at those eight, nine, 10 cents per point redemption values. And that's totally fine.

My kind of floor is that I would like to be getting at least two cents per point for the majority of my redemptions. And obviously the higher I can get, I like that. It shows me I'm getting a lot of value out of my points, but I thought that that was completely worthy. Again, the question of, are we actually gonna get on these flights? Are they gonna depart? Are we going to get there? I have no idea because we're recording this prior to the actual trip. This episode on the podcast will air after I have taken this theoretical trip. So if this is actually a success, I will come back on and talk about what it really looked like to book and take this trip. But that's kind of the big thing that we have coming up this year that I'm really excited for. Because the truth is, and this happens sometimes, our year so far in family travel hasn't been amazing. It's been nice. It hasn't been great. And so I think it's nice to have something to look forward to.

And then again, for our kids' spring break next year, we have booked a week in Paris. And I was able to find some of those really, really great 50,000 point one-way business class flights from Chicago to Paris. But we had to do it, again, on a little bit of a shifted schedule. So ideally we would have gone Saturday to Saturday. All of those flights were pricing out at, you know, 150, 200,000 points per person one way. So we're actually doing a little bit of a shift in terms of not doing Saturday to Saturday. But again, we found a great deal on those flights. And you had mentioned the Park Hyatt in Paris. And this was one of the other things that I wanted to bring up is that we booked ourselves at the Park Hyatt, not because I felt like we had to stay at the Park Hyatt, but I did want to stay at a Hyatt. And there weren't other Hyatts right in that central Paris location that had room occupancy for four people.

And so I had tried to book us at the Hotel Deluve and I had called them and they basically said, no, like we just don't do that. Or the room configuration we would have had to have would have been multiple rooms or very, very expensive rooms. They don't take suite upgrade awards at that property, I don't think. And so that just kind of took it off the table for us. So I love a Park Hyatt, but I didn't feel married to like, oh, we have to stay there in Paris. It just happened that that was the best located property that we could be at, but they don't allow four people in any of their rooms or their standard suites, which I do think is very, very frustrating. And so we had to book two standard rooms. And so that came out for a week to essentially book, you know, two standard rooms for seven nights to accommodate our family of four. That cost 570,000 points.

But again, the cost of that otherwise in cash is so high that the redemption value is actually really good. So for our spring break trip, where we booked the flights entirely and the hotel entirely using points, that whole trip was about 922,000 points. Cash value of that redemption around $36,000. So again, that makes me really happy. I love Paris. We've never taken our kids. And I personally probably would not choose to spend $36,000 out of pocket on that exact trip. And then we will have hopefully a winter break trip next year because none of the award calendars opened up for that. We haven't booked that yet. But the other trip that I'm kind of toying around with, I had mentioned that once a year, I love to take a solo trip. That's really just what's an airplane I'm dying to fly or what is a points redemption that I just really want to book for the experience of it.

And so the thing that we have our eye on is I usually do this solo, but I think I'm going to do this with a friend this time. So a friend and I are looking specifically at flying Cathay Pacific first class and flying that from Hong Kong to JFK, which is a really long flight, which in first class is actually a really good thing. The worst experiences are when you actually don't want to get off an airplane because it's been so comfortable. So I'm actually really looking forward to this just epically long flight on Cathay Pacific first class. And so we booked that through Cathay itself for 160,000 miles one way for first class. But then to get ourselves over to Asia, I, as I mentioned, I think in the past episode, I've gotten really interested in the EVA Airlines program and some of their redemptions. They have amazing business class award availability, and they fly direct from Chicago to Taipei.

And so we're looking at EVA business class flights, which are around 80,000 EVA miles for one person, one way from Chicago to Taipei, and then potentially just hitting the ground in Taipei and Hong Kong for a day or two, and then coming back on Cathay Pacific first class. So that is a trip that is really, truly purely to have the airline experience, and of course Taipei and Hong Kong are phenomenal cities. You know, we will love our time there, but I'm excited about that flight just because I love trying new airline products and I haven't flown EVA or Cathay yet. So, all told, kind of look... looking at what have I used points for, you know, during 2024 to book travel, either that we took in 2024 or the travel I'm looking forward to in 2025. I used all in about 3.3 million points total for airlines, hotels, and booked about $166,000 worth in travel, which I think is pretty darn great.

Again, I know it's really fun to look at award redemptions that are like 19 cents per point in value. And the reality is for my travel, most of my trips don't look like that. But overall, for all the travel that I booked in 2024, that still came out to over 5 cents per point in redemption value, which for me personally, I am more than thrilled at. I feel like I'm getting so much value out of my points, you know, to be able to travel with my family, especially during really, really high demand travel times. You know, some of it's domestic. We are looking more and more at international travel for our kids. Now I feel like they're finally getting the age or I think they're going to be able to tolerate it. I'm just really looking forward to a lot of that travel.

So there's still some 2025 travel we haven't planned yet, but the stuff that's on the books, I think is really, really worth looking forward to. So I loved hearing how you have used your points and miles, kind of what you're doing with them, where it's the same, where it's different than how I'm approaching points and miles, but I just wanted to cover a few more things before we wrap up today. So I'm curious to hear from you, kind of, in terms of best redemptions, I like to hear what makes a redemption in your mind the best? And what has been your best redemption that you've made this year?

Dr. Sujatha: Um, I think this is a tough one, right? Because it's almost very trip dependent. I don't know if I have a strict criteria. I think it's a combination of something I've been wanting to try and it finally opened and I got it, number one. Number two, there is a very distinct thrill I get by quote-unquote gaming the system. I don't want to say gaming in a very particular way. I will sort of give you an example of what I mean by this. It sort of involves the Hilton Lake Como again. And I mentioned this at the conference. For me, I sort of book the same flights and the same things. I know when they open. So it's not like I'm really worried availability is going to be gone away. So I lose a little bit of thrill of that because the concreteness and the sort of bird in the hand aspect of that is sort of more important to me.

So once in a while, when I get this little thrill, it's actually really nice because I don't. I don't get it that often, but the Hilton Lake Como, basically, Lake Como does not have many points hotels at all. I think there's basically three. And we had just opened up Hilton Business Cards. We thought this was a great option for us. And this was July in Lake Como. I mean, one of the most popular times, they simply were not releasing standard point availability. Hilton is dynamic pricing. They will release all the rooms to points, but the points are like a million dollars a night. And it's not something you would ever consider. Standard room is about 80,000 points a night for this. We financed on four nights there. Once again, fixed dates, we had our flights. I mean, we were like ready to go. So I kind of had the thought, I'm a big, big, big proponent of emailing or calling the hotel beforehand. And just if it's nothing other than introducing yourself saying, I'm here with my kid, or it's my husband's birthday, and just trying to eke out a little bit. I think this falls under gaming the system.

There's a little bit of a pejorative connotation to that. But at the same time, I think there's a level of service that you get with that that you may not get otherwise. Anyway, so I emailed them saying, look, we're planning on coming for four days. It actually was my husband's birthday that month. So this trip was absolutely encompassing that. So I didn't lie about that. But I said, “What are the chances you could open up a standard room for me with standard availability for a room?" And they said, yes. They said, log in. This was a Saturday evening. I remember it so specifically. It said Monday morning, log in. You will see an 80-point-a-night room available for 4 days. Once you book it, we're going to shut it back down. And that's exactly what happened Monday morning.

I mean, this was in Lake Como. So the timing, it was sort of the middle of the night for me. I waited until about 6am in the morning to do it. But yeah, I logged into Hilton, 80 points a night for our 4 nights were open. I booked it, done, and I actually just checked for the sake of checking later that evening and it was back up to 400,000 points a night. So you never know what you're going to get. I mean, who is ever going to believe that a hotel is going to open up a room for you for 80,000 points when it's going for 500,000 points and €2,000 a night. But they were amazing. And that means a lot to me. That I will remember for a very long time.

And frankly, that will make me want to use their business. That will make me want to go back. The stay was outstanding. Beautiful hotel. Highly recommend it. Walking distance to everything. Beautiful rooftop pool. So absolutely, Lake Como being an incredibly difficult points redemption location, this meant a lot to me. And they really worked it out and they made us feel very special that they did this. So that to me was an amazing redemption. So that was a great price redemption.

Now, this Emirates A380 flight we're going to be taking this summer is a terrible points redemption. It's 1.6 cents per point. But you know what? I am so excited to try this. I'm so excited to fly this. The timings worked out great. My family's excited about it. So that was a great redemption for a completely different reason. The cost price was low. It was sort of our fourth priority for that trip, which is a little bit unusual for us. But this is why I accrue these 4 to 5 million points a year because this allows us the luxury to be particular. And it takes away that flexibility that everyone says is mandatory to play this game. It's not. I mean, absolutely, a little bit is, I'm not saying it's not.

So those two are really going to stand out in my mind. I mean, and they're very, very different redemptions, right? One is the cheapest, one is the most expensive, but they both kind of allowed us to do what we wanted to do, which is sort of the point of this whole thing. And I love your Maldives example. And I just cannot wait for you to actually take this trip. Or Devon and I tried to get together when she was here in San Diego. And I actually even offered we tried to see for some needed some antibiotics called in, but I think they just decided to call it a loss.

Devon: Well, we did. We tried that first. We called it antibiotics for him in San Diego, picked them up, started treating him and he still didn't get better. So at that point, yeah, we just gave up, but I did appreciate it, I did appreciate your help there. 

Dr. Sujatha: You did the right thing. You had some great hotels booked, which, uh.

Devon: We did. I didn't even talk about that. So I will just, let me give a quick recap of that. For anybody who is looking to do a Southern California trip, I mean, I think there's so many different points, you know, hotels that you can take advantage of there, but we specifically wanted to be in Southern California, in the San Diego area, not necessarily San Diego proper but kind of within driving distance of some of those major, you know, Southern California highlights.

And so we split our stay between two Hyatt properties. First, we stayed at the Seabird Ocean Resort and Spa in Oceanside. I think this is an amazing, I don't want to say underrated hotel. I just don't think that it gets a lot of attention and it absolutely should. It is right across the beach or right across the street from the ocean. It's a really updated, feels like a very, very new hotel. Again, especially if you have globalist status or you can get gifted a guest of honor stay from someone who does have globalist status within Hyatt. It's an amazing property to stay at. You can get free valet parking. With the globalist status, you can get free breakfast.

We booked ourselves into a standard room and used a suite upgrade award. And we had this beautiful one bedroom suite facing the ocean at two huge outdoor terraces. We were on the top floor. So we could sit outside on our little terraces and just look at the ocean. It was beautiful. It was a really, really wonderful place to stay for a few nights. And then we also used points to stay at the park Hyatt Aviara, which was supposed to be several nights. I think it turned into a one night stay by the time we just gave up and went home. But that was also a really, really lovely and beautiful property and a very different feel. You know, it's more removed from being on the coast. It's kind of a destination in and of itself, but we really enjoyed both of those properties.

But before we wrap up today, because I feel like we could talk about using points, all of the different things we've learned, all these different tips, honestly, for just hours and hours and hours. I don't want to keep taking time away from you, Sujatha. So we will wrap up this episode, but I'm just curious to hear from you now that you have looked back on a full year of points earning and points redeeming, and you look forward into 2025. Are there just any kind of last tips, tricks, pieces of advice that you want to share with folks today.

Dr. Sujatha: I think it is very, very easy to get caught up in what we actually see put out there on the internet and other groups and podcasts. You know, I often tell my patients who are doing a lot of internet reading that this is an incredibly sort of tailored experiences and things that you're seeing, you are just not seeing the overall picture of what the experience of probably the vast majority of us are, you know, we are everyone that we're at least talking to, or that sort of follows you, I think we're just we have full time jobs, we have full time kids and husbands, and, you know, things that are our lives. And, you know, you have to keep in mind that comparison is the thief of joy.

And I was telling Devon before we started, you know, I'm always in two minds about these yearly recaps, right? Because number one, of course, every one of us has these voyeuristic tendencies. Of course, we want to know what everyone else is doing and what their internal lives look like and money and points and things like that. But the other side of it is, this is Devon's full-time job, number one. And number two, this is sort of my three-quarters full-time job. The hours and hours that I spend doing this is because it is fun for me. It is fun and enjoyable. And my break, this is not the case for my husband, even though my husband is 100% involved in sort of the day-to-day. He does not want to talk about it. He does not want to listen to podcasts, doesn't want to read about it. And you have to figure out sort of what is the most important part of this that you want to take. That's number one.

Number two, and I cannot say this enough, we spend a lot of time talking about different credit cards and subs and spend and accruing these points, please learn the basics of redemption. If you search my name on the group, I have a little sort of redemptions cheat sheet that kind of just goes through sort of a few of the steps. Step number one is just signing up for loyalty programs. Half these programs, you can't even search for word flights without having a free loyalty account. And people miss this step. I mean, we're able to have discussions like this because we have spent a lot of time learning how to leverage these points. And knowing that a $695 fee for an Amex Platinum for a $250,000 sub is going to net us $20,000 in flights. So you're never going to see the value in this and never want to go further until you learn the redemption side of things. But once again, also, what we do every day is life or death. This is not. This is fun. And just enjoy your family and enjoy the trips. Yeah, that's about it for me.

Devon: Sujatha, thank you so much. I think everything you just said is completely spot on. I agree with all of it. And I think, you know, especially speaking to the point about when it comes to listening to stories about how other people earn, how other people use, I really cannot kind of overstate again how important it is to only use what's useful or interesting for you. And I agree. Please don't ever compare yourself to anybody else.

I think one of the best things to always keep your eyes on is looking at how far you've come in your own journey. Like what do you know today that you didn't know about points and miles six months ago or a year ago or, you know, 10 years ago? Because if you're listening to this podcast, chances are you know so much more about points and miles today than you did at some point in the past and I think that is really the only measuring stick that really, really matters is kind of where are you based on where you came from and looking at what you've been able to do with points and miles so far and I think that should always be celebrated.

So for those of you listening, thank you for joining us on this year's recap of points earning and points redeeming with Dr. Sujatha Murali. Sujatha, as always, thank you for your time, your expertise, your words of wisdom. I always learn from you, and I'm just so grateful that you joined me for this recap this year. Thank you so much.

Dr. Sujatha: Absolutely. My pleasure. This is the funnest three hours I've spent in quite some time. Thank you. I could do this for days.

Devon: Look out. I may be forcing you to do it again in the future.

Dr. Sujatha: Sounds good to me.

Devon: Have a great week, everybody. Thank you for joining us.

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.