The Deal Mommy Guide to collecting frequent flyer miles
I was helping a friend today plan her upcoming trip to China and while she was frantically taking notes, I realized it might be helpful to create an entry level guide to collecting and using frequent flyer miles. If you already know to use Air France’s search engine for Delta availability and that Asian programs allow family members to pool miles, fell free to skip this post. For really deep knowledge into the subject, I suggest The Points Guy blog, but for this exercise I’ll stick to the basics.
- You may have more miles than you think. Your first task should be to check all of the old frequent flyer cards you have lying around. If you have a Delta or Northwest, Congrats! Those points never expire. Northwest was purchased about three years ago by Delta, so you’ll need to go to delta.com to get your new Delta number. The others expire after 18 months of no account usage (not flight, just account usage), but many (USAir for example) can be re-instated for a nominal fee. Lonely Planet reports that $16 BILLION in miles go unused each year, so it’s worth the few minutes to track this stuff down.
- Know where you go before you start to collect miles. There are three alliances: Star Alliance (United, USAir), Skyteam (Delta), and OneWorld(American). Each partners with airlines throughout the world, but each also covers a specific region best. Dying to get to Central America? Star contains Copa, which is based in Panama City. Trying to get to France? Skyteam is your best bet. Consider where you travel and where you want to go before starting to collect miles. Wikipedia contains a good listing by airport departure of direct flights: just punch in the three letter code for the airport.
- Getting miles is easier than you think. Airlines give away miles like crazy, but most people don’t know where to look. There are two basic types of giveaways: shopping miles and travel miles. I’ll cover both in later posts, but will give the basics here.
- Find the credit card that tracks best to your travel patterns. Many credit cards give miles (and bonus miles when you sign up), but I like the Discover Escape card for Newbies as it pays 2 points a dollar spent and offers a 25k bonus for no minimum spending. (See link at the bottom of this post). I get into this card deeper in this post but for the time being the thing to know is that their points are convertible to many other programs or useable as your travel budget! If you do have a specific airline in mind and are ready to build in one program, I find that Chase tracks best to Star, Amex to Skyteam (with some exceptions), and if you’re a Oneworld traveler, you may want to check out Citibank’s credit cards.
- Charge EVERYTHING! I’m not recommending you get into debt, but most of your bills can earn you miles! Cable bill? Charge it! Cell phone bill? Charge that too! You may be amazed what bills you pay can be taken online. You are literally refusing free money by not doing this!
- Take as much of your purchases online as you can to get bonus points. Airlines all have shopping portals that give bonus miles if you buy through their portal. Before making any major purchase, check to see if your favorite airline or credit card will offer bonus miles.
- Register! Register? Yes, register. As I mentioned, airlines give away miles like crazy, but the hoops you have to jump through to find them can also be crazy. So, if you are planning a hotel stay, renting a car, or even re-financing your mortgage, be sure to check your airline’s frequent flyer program promo page to see what they have going on, and be sure to REGISTER for the promotion listed. I’ve gotten miles for answering trivia questions, for opening a bank account, for going to restaurants, and for many other things I would have done anyway. (Well, maybe not the trivia…)
With these basics, you’ll be flying in no time!
Please let me know your thoughts about this post, your successes (or failures) in getting FF miles, and any other topics you’d like to see covered!
Original publish date November 2, 2011
The Deal Mommy Guide to Car Rentals
This is one of a series of guides I’m putting together on traveling more with less. Others in the series include Frequent flyer miles, and Disney. In this post I’m going to cover in detail the steps I take to ensure I’m getting the best deal I can when renting a car. I’m writing this with a deal novice in mind, and using a cost/benefit analysis to help you determine how much energy to expend to save a few bucks versus going whole hog and wasting an hour on the net to save fifty cents. I value time even more than money!
Before deciding what steps (and how much time) I’m going to take to save, I ask myself two questions:
1. Do I have the ability to rent off-airport? If the answer is yes, I go directly to Enterprise Rent-A-Car. 9 times out of 10, any savings I am able to finagle at other sites are eaten up by in-avoidable airport concession fees. They also have frequent sales, especially on weekends.
If I have to go to the airport, I ask:
2.Is my rental less than three days OR do I have to have more than one driver OR is there a chance I’ll need to cancel? If the answer is yes, I go directly to Expedia. It has an easy to read matrix sorted by car type and total including taxes and a rewards program.
I ask the question about drivers because with my next steps, Hotwire and Priceline, in the past I’ve been hit with extra driver fees. Ditto with the cancellation as Hotwire and Priceline are final sale. If I’m reasonably happy with what I see, I’ll book the best deal and stop here.
If, however, the trip is longer than four days, my dates are firm, and I’m flex for only one driver, there’s a good chance I’ll do best with Hotwire or Priceline. Note what I DON’T DO: bother with coupon codes, Entertainment books, or other random “loyalty programs”. The reason is in my close to 100 car rentals, I very rarely find the trouble I went to to locate a code that happens to match my specific trip to generate any savings over the big boys’ negotiated rates, so I let them do the work! I also don’t go “no-name” with my car rentals. I just don’t think it’s worth the risk.
So, after going to Expedia and seeing the matrix for my dates, I’ll head on over to Hotwire. After viewing Hotwire’s rates (and assuming they’re at least 10% lower than the big boys…if they’re not, I’ll just take Expedia), I’ll go to Priceline.
I happen to have a trip coming up at the end of January, five days in Las Vegas that I can use as an example. I have to go to the airport, so Enterprise is out. Looking at Expedia, I see that I can get a midsize car for four days with Budget at $16 a day plus fees, making the total $109. Hotwire is quoting the same price: $109 total for a mid-size. Normally I would just stop here and book with Expedia, but for this exercise I gave Priceline a try.
Priceline has it’s own blog post, but I’ll outline basic strategy here:
I’ll select “name your own price”, and bid 25% (assuming I have more than a week) or 15% (if I have less than a week) under the Hotwire price. You can only re-bid once every three days, which is why I include that caveat. Make sure you add in $5 for the Priceline fees. There are sites out there that tell you recent winning bids (and even Priceline will tell you), but I find that 25% under the Hotwire price is a super deal so I don’t bother.
Priceline will often pop up a screen at this point that tells you that you have a very slim chance of winning and that you should raise your bid. Ignore it! Submit your bid, and you’ll get an answer immediately. If you win, you’re done! If you lose, don’t give up, re-bid! Just select the next larger car class, up your bid by 1.00 a day, and submit. You can repeat as many times as you like. Three days later you can do it again!
In my case, there was only a $20 difference between the Priceline bid and the Expedia price, so I just went with Expedia. In the past, there has been a great difference…last year in Orlando I got a full size car for 7 bucks a day!
Original publish date: Dec. 1, 2011
Want to know how I do it? Here are my top tips for family travel planning!
First off, I owe a HUGE thank you to Million Mile Secrets for including me in his interview series. To anyone who is new to my blog, welcome! I hope you find some helpful info and decide to stick around via email, Twitter, Facebook, RSS or Pinterest (see how to on the right).
I thought this would be a great opportunity to lay out some of my top tips for planning travel for families. Of course, the great tips about collecting miles still apply, but for families, I have found some tweaks that really have helped. I lay out more detail and examples on my blog daily, but wanted to have a recap handy for new readers.
Make a commitment to your family! Here’s what I mean: if you think travel is important, DO SOMETHING about it! Schools release their calendars at least a year in advance and employers PREFER employees that let them know far in advance about upcoming time off. By telling your family (and the world) that travel is IMPORTANT, you are setting an example. We include our kids in every step of the planning process from saving to destinations to watching videos about our destination. Our travel plans are also a great weapon against the Gimmies: “No, Deal Kid, you can’t have more Yu-Gi-Oh cards right now. We’re saving for our trip to Ireland!”
Think about the experience, not the destination. We think more about what we want to DO as opposed to where we want to go, especially when traveling with the kids. Everyone dreams about Paris, Rome, London, etc. and some things, like the Eiffel Tower, just can’t be duplicated no matter how hard Epcot tries. However, many other experiences are not as location specific as you might think.
For instance, I recently heard from a reader that wanted to go to “Rome and Venice”. I asked her why those two cities and she didn’t really have an answer besides “that’s where I’ve heard I should go”. Digging down from there, I asked what she wanted out of a trip to Italy and the answers were food, culture, and “la dolce vita”…all things that can be found in many other cities in Italy. I suggested Siena, Trieste, Sicily and many other towns that will both cost much less and give much more in terms of experience because they aren’t full of American tourists! Family Getaway has some amazing deals on Italian hotels and gives $50 credit with referral.
What if she wanted to see awesome Roman ruins? Well, I would have suggested Baelo Claudia, a perfectly preserved Roman town IN SPAIN.
Plan Early! This is a point upon which some bloggers disagree, but when you’re buying for four (or more), you need to strategize and it is more challenging to get four free tickets (for example) than one. Credit card bonuses take a few weeks to months to show up, and airlines release tickets 11 months before departure. I’ve already booked Spring Break 2013 and am now starting to work in next summer’s family trip to Ireland…follow my blog for details!
Open Jaws and Stopovers are your friends. A stopover is where you stay in a transit city before taking your next flight, an open jaw is where you fly to one city and depart from another. For instance, I used free stopovers allowed to visit Madrid and Paris for free en route to Tenerife last month.
Periodically re-check your reservations and be prepared to make changes if a better deal comes up. For instance, Marriott announced a promotion that gives you a night free after you stay at two separate properties. I had booked a Marriott property already, in downtown Madrid, for $80 net (after using 20% off Marriott gift cards purchased during the Daily Getaways promotion). So, I only needed one more stay to get the free night. The only Marriott on Tenerife is a Ritz-Carlton, that cost $247 a night. Luckily, with my AMEX Platinum’s Fine Hotels and Resorts program, at that Ritz-Carlton I got free breakfast, an upgrade, and $110 in room credit…and a FREE night I can use anytime in the next year!
Car rentals are notorious for going down closer to departure. I saved $46 on my car rental in two minutes by re-checking a month before departure!
Hedge! If you want to travel later and see a way to get some points or free stays cheaply now, DO IT! For instance, I spent less than $200 taking my kids to Amish country and got 92,000 Club Carlson points we used for 3 nights in a suite in Belfast. Little getaways throughout the year using promotions help top up my accounts so I have miles and points handy when the big trip comes up.
I’m always curious about how families get off the ground. Please share your family travel tips!
Original publish date July 20, 2012.
