We tried it: Using points and miles to book travel (without being experts) / 84

There’s no shortage of advice about the right way to use credit card points for travel. Transfer partners, sign-up bonuses, maximizing every redemption... it can start to feel like there’s a test you’re supposed to pass before you’re allowed to book a trip.

In this episode, we’re sharing a different perspective. We both recently used credit card points to book summer travel, and neither of us did it in the most optimized way. But instead of waiting until we knew every trick in the book, we used the points we had to save money on trips that mattered to us — and honestly, that felt like a win.

Today, we’re breaking down exactly what we booked, how many points we used, what those trips would have cost in cash, and why we ultimately chose simplicity over squeezing every last cent of value from our rewards. If you've ever wondered whether you're "doing points wrong," this episode is your reminder that sometimes, your financial goals matter more than perfect optimization.

✨ Episode Highlights ✨

• [00:00] Why we’re confessing our "imperfect" approach to using credit card points
• [02:50] Breaking down Cass’s last-minute trip to Toronto — flights, hotels, and how points covered nearly $2,000 in travel
• [07:15] Why Cassidy chose to redeem points through the Chase Travel portal, even though it's not the strategy most travel experts recommend
• [09:45] How Emily thought about buying a cross-country flight to Seattle while balancing other financial priorities
• [11:20] Using Google Flights, Points Path, and airline rewards programs to compare cash versus points
• [14:10] Why Emily intentionally ignored advice to pay cash and save points for later
• [15:20] How we earned our travel rewards through Chase, United, and Delta credit cards
• [17:00] What we’re still learning about transfer partners, airline loyalty, and maximizing points
• [18:00] Why the "best" redemption depends on your personal financial goals, not someone else's spreadsheet
• [19:10] Our biggest takeaway: using your points to reduce financial stress is a win, even if it isn't perfectly optimized

✨ Resources ✨

• Points & miles 101 with Ross Alcorn: Turn your credit card rewards into free travel / 52
• The freedom formula: How to travel, build a career, and save money with Caroline Lupini / 53
• Points Path 
• Google Flights

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hey girlies, we have a confession to make. Emily and I both use credit card points to book some summer travel, and neither of us optimized the points like all the credit card gurus say to do.

SPEAKER_00 0:10

We know how intimidating and overwhelming the points in miles world can be. And in full transparency, we both are still very much learning how it works. So we wanted to share what booking travel with points can look like, even if it isn't the most optimal use of those points. So today we're sharing the details of the trips we booked, how we used our points, what we would have spent without the points, and how we earned those points in the first place.

SPEAKER_01 0:34

And before we get started, we wanted to let you know about our weekly email newsletter that we send out. If you are not on our email list, we highly recommend going to the show notes now and adding yourself to the list. This newsletter is one of our favorite things that we put out every week. Not only does it announce our latest episode, but it also feels almost like a diary journal where Emily and I are talking about what we've been up to the past week, what like personal things we have going on, what books we're reading, what we're crafting, uh favorite resources that we've come across on the internet from the past week. Really just like what's going on in our lives. And so if you want to know us on a more personal level and get reminders when our next episodes drop, we highly recommend going to thefinance girlies.com/slash newsletter or using the link in the show notes to subscribe.

SPEAKER_00 1:27

Welcome to the Finance Girlies, a podcast for millennial and Gen Z women who are curious about money but have never quite felt at home in traditional finance spaces.

SPEAKER_01 1:36

We are Emily Backdorf and Cassidy Horton, podcast hosts, longtime friends, and finance writers for brands like AOL and Yahoo Finance.

SPEAKER_00 1:44

Rather than giving you prescriptive advice, we talk about money the way friends actually do. With stories, questions, and a lot of figuring it out in real time. So the ironic thing is we both originally felt a little embarrassed to talk about how we used our points out of fear of being judged. Uh, but let this be a reminder that just having points in the first place is a huge win, and how you spend them is totally up to you. So as we are proof of you don't have to try to maximize your points or save them up. Simply having them to use instead of spending cash is a win in and of itself.

SPEAKER_01 2:17

And while both of us hope to one day reach the rung of travelers who can spend 5,000 points on an international flight, we're just not there yet. And we think that that's okay. We are still very grateful that our points have allowed us to travel during times where we were saving up for other things. Like Emily is currently trying to save as much money as she possibly can for a down payment on a house. I've gone through seasons this year where I didn't have a lot of discretionary income. And so our credit card points allowed us to say yes to these trips without having to use our savings, interrupt our financial goals, or go into debt. Okay, so let's start with your trip that you went on in May. Give us the overview. So I booked a semi-last minute trip to go to Toronto for a few days in May, and this wasn't a season where I didn't have a lot of discretionary income, and I did have enough credit card points to cover everything that I was going to purchase. So I just decided to go that route. I've had these credit card points for well over a year, hadn't really touched them for anything. And so I was like, this is a trip I really want to go on, so I'm just gonna use them and it's totally fine. So I ended up buying two things with my points: a round trip flight and um a two-night stay in a hotel. And the two-night stay in a hotel ended up being very expensive because it was so last minute and there were events going on in Toronto at the time that I didn't know about, almost like if you just so happened to visit a city, like when a big concert was going on, like the prices for everything would be inflated. It kind of lined up in that way. But my round trip flight from the Minneapolis airport to the Toronto airport, I ended up using almost 62,000 points to book this round trip flight. And I will say that I got a free upgrade to first class going there, and I got a free upgrade to Delta Comfort coming back. And I think that's just because I'm like a silver medallion Sky Miles member with Delta, and so I like qualify for free upgrades and they're available. So I think that softened the blow a little bit of how many points I ended up having to use. But without the credit card points, that 62,000 point flight would have been $773 for the flight. That's an expensive flight. I know, yeah, surprisingly so. Which I my points had like a 1.25% value boost. So like it wasn't, it wasn't like six sixty thousand points equals six hundred dollars, you know. It ended up the actual I I used fewer points that way. But yeah, I found out this summer that uh short flights aren't always inexpensive because my flight to Michigan also kind of fell in that camp. It wasn't quite as expensive, but oddly enough, you know, you think shorter flights would definitely be cheaper, but not always. So the second thing that I spent points on was a two-night stay at a Delta Hotel by Marriott. And I did so for reference, I booked both my flight and my hotel directly through the Chase Travel Portal because that's where I have the points, and I I racked up most of these points using my Chase Business Inc. credit card, which I opened several years ago at this point, just like really haven't had a reason to use the points for anything. But I booked them all through the Chase portal, and my two nights stay in the Delta Marriott ended up being just shy of 79,000 points. And without those points, this hotel would have been almost twelve hundred dollars. Wow. I know, I know. Wow, yeah, and there was a big points boost, and I was truly like this was one of the most affordable hotels in the portal at the time because there was an event going on, and I booked it like just a few days before. But yeah, it it was crazy. Was it a hotel? It's techni yes, it was. It's technically, I think, categorized as a five-star hotel, but it this is my theory. This might make me sound bougie. We will see. But my theory has always been, and I think this Delta Marriott confirmed it, that whenever you are going to like a big national, like brand, like chain hotel, no matter how many stars it is, like they all kind of feel the same to an extent. And unless you're going to like a five-star boutique hotel or like a local thing, like I feel like that's whenever you get like the wow kind of experience. I would say that this hotel felt a lot like the hotel you and I stayed in when we went to FinCon this past September. So, like, picture which like that's a really nice hotel. And also, I don't feel like it you feel very like wooed and wowed and swept off your feet like you would think you would be if you were staying at a five-star hotel.

SPEAKER_00 6:54

But what I remember being like aghast at at that hotel, and it you're right, it it was nice, but there was not even free coffee in the lobby. Do you remember that? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:05

Same here.

SPEAKER_00 7:06

It's like you better be going to the Starbucks in the lobby. Yeah, I mean, c come on.

SPEAKER_01 7:10

Complimentary coffee.

SPEAKER_00 7:11

I feel like that is just a given.

SPEAKER_01 7:14

Guess not. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, I ended up spending just over 140,000 points in all for this trip, which if you are really good at optimizing miles and points, you might think that that is completely bananas. But I don't know. I was very grateful to not have to spend the almost $2,000 to go on this trip out of pocket, you know. So that meant more to me. And I feel like a wee little baby whenever it comes to maximizing my points value, but I do know how to like take advantage of sign-up bonuses and things like that. So I don't know. I'm counting my wins where I have them, hoping that one day I'll get better optimizing points, but also being okay with not being there currently.

SPEAKER_00 7:56

Yeah. And also, and this is the case for me too, as I'll explain in a minute, like you weren't just kind of randomly booking a trip, like you had a destination and you had dates that you wanted to be there. So you were kind of limited in that way. One follow-up question Do you still have points to use, or did you kind of like drain your stash?

SPEAKER_01 8:15

I still have some points. It's not many, like it might be 20,000 points at the most. So still something. But also I'm back to not really having a reason to use them. So hopefully they'll continue to accumulate just as I have expenses throughout the month and pay that off.

SPEAKER_00 8:32

So we have both heard the advice again and again. Don't book travel with points through the Chase portal.

SPEAKER_01 8:40

But that is what you did. Can you tell us why? I did that because I don't know how to do it any other way. And we even interviewed Ross Alcorn on our podcast, and he is like truly, truly a points and miles guru. So if you are interested in more advanced tips on on how to optimize your points and use them the most efficient way, go back and listen to that episode. But I knew when I needed to travel, didn't really have a lot of wiggle room with dates and things like that. And so I was like, you know what? I know how to use the Chase portal, and I wouldn't even know where to start looking up anything else, and I don't really want to look it up or research it. So this is what we're doing. And that was really the extent of my reasoning. Okay, good answer. Honest answer. Yeah, truly. So now to flip it back on you, you've already kind of said this. Like you had, I think, more wiggle room a little bit with your dates and things like that. You were going for a wedding, so I guess like not a ton of wiggle room. But do you want to walk us through what you use with points, what your trip is, all of that good stuff? Yes.

SPEAKER_00 9:45

So I'm going to Seattle later this summer for a wedding. When we got the invitation for this wedding, we immediately decided to make more of a trip out of it. I mean, if we're going all the way across the country, we figured let's just make this a trip. So we're we were planning to spend about a week. We have friends in Seattle, uh, so we have the wedding and then made camping reservations with our friends at Mount Rainier. So we had those dates set. We had a little bit of wiggle room around them, but yeah, kind of needed, we had just like a few days' buffer on either side, and we didn't want to well, two considerations. One, we're boarding our dog, and two, we're staying with those friends, so we didn't want to have to board our dog too long or have to encroach on our friend's space for too long. So we're tried to keep the whole trip to about a week. So that's kind of the background. So I started planning for this trip in terms of airfare. I started looking at tickets months ago, like probably early or mid-spring, just to kind of see what options there were. And I set up like a Google Flight alert, and things didn't change a whole lot in terms of price. So when I decided, okay, it's probably time to just get this travel booked, and this was uh the end of June, I first checked the Chase Travel portal to see if I could use any bonus point transfer deal. So that's I think the thing that we have learned about from a couple different experts on our podcast. So when you go into, we both use Chase Travel, when you log into your Chase Travel portal, there is an option to transfer points to different programs, I guess. So like I think one of the deals that I saw when I tried to do this was Virgin Atlantic, which I believe is in the same airline group as American. I could be wrong. But anyway, the available points, bonus point offers were unfortunately not helpful to me. So that didn't pan out for me, but I do feel proud of myself for checking that. Okay, so then I went back to Google Flights. I played around with a few different dates just to see what options there were. So I have an extension on my browser called Points Path, and how it works is when you search trip in Google Flights, it shows you the price in cash, and then it shows you the price in points, and it tells you which is the better deal. So, like use cash, use points. Funny enough, all of the flights I was considering points path was like, use cash. This these points are not a good deal. And so my husband and I talked about it. We were like, should we just save these points for something else? Ultimately, we decided we are trying to save for a house. We like we've been racking up points for a couple of years, haven't redeemed them. Like, are we just gonna keep pushing this off? Let's just use the points, save the money, and it'll feel really good to have this big cross-country trip cost, you know, very little. So I kind of settled on some flights, flight options using Google Flights. And what I did was instead of booking through the Chase portal, I went into my United account and looked up these different flights. When you log into your airline account, at least this is the case with United, it you know has my frequent flyer number. It knows like what credit card I have. And so it knows what like perks and benefits I guess you qualify for and how many points you have. So recently I've been pretty loyal to United. I have a credit card with them and I had quite a few points with them. So I searched these different flights. Again, kind of like points path, it shows you, you know, how much you can spend with points, how much you can spend with cash. And I don't think I chose the very cheapest options or, you know, for the lowest number of points, but I I definitely didn't choose the most expensive just to kind of balance like I don't want to have two layovers, but I also don't want to spend like a hundred thousand points. So what we settled on was um a round trip ticket for the two of us, one layover each way. On the way back, we do have a red eye, but that's kind of hard to avoid, I think, when you're flying from the west coast to the east coast. And we got those two tickets for 65,200 miles plus $22. So you you have to pay those taxes, I guess, out of pocket.

SPEAKER_01 14:12

That feels like a really good deal for a two.

SPEAKER_00 14:15

I think it's an okay deal. I mean, according to Points Path, it's not. Yeah. But but I'm I'm fine with it. And I do think I got a slight discount is the wrong word, but I think I got a slightly better deal because I do have that united card. You get an automatic like points boost, kind of like your Delta situation. I think these tickets would have cost around 750 round trip, so they weren't super expensive to begin with, even if we had booked them with cash. But I just checked like a week after booking these tickets as we were preparing for this episode, and those tickets were more like a thousand dollars, so I feel really great about saving that money. And then one more thing I I was considering when I was planning all of this, I had a hundred dollar united credit from getting stranded on the way to Mexico, as we've talked about in past episodes earlier this year. However, I couldn't figure out how to combine a travel credit with points. And I I Googled it and I and I'm not sure it's even possible. So I was unable to use that credit, but I kind of was like, well, I'll just use that on my next trip, and that'll be fine.

SPEAKER_01 15:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:20

So that is um kind of how it all broke down. How did you get most of these credit card points? Which credit card? So I have points through both United and Chase. I had, I think, I want to say around 80,000 points in each. And so I was like willing to spend kind of from either of those pots. And I also knew if I needed to, I could transfer Chase points to United. But I earned those United points from having a United card and using that to book previous flights, I think. All but maybe one flight I've taken in the last year have been on United, so I've been able to really rack those up. And it just happened to be the most convenient flight this time around, too. And it also gives us free checked bags, which will be handy because we'll need to bring camping supplies for that part of the trip. So yeah, I I never have been loyal to an airline until about a year ago. But I can see why it pays off.

SPEAKER_01 16:16

I feel the same way about Delta. I got my Delta credit card maybe two years ago now. And the more I use it, I mean the perks just keep getting better and better. So now I'm always inclined to look for a Delta flight first just because you get so many perks with it. Do you also have like Delta points and chase points? How does that work? I do. Yeah, I have both. And usually I like my delta points are kind of drained at the time, but typically I will look and see if I have enough points to cover it with my Delta Sky Miles, and then if I don't, I'll look with my chase travel. Yeah. So but I am curious after hearing you talk about yours, if there is a way to transfer Chase Travel points to Delta. I'll have to look into that. Yeah. I feel like that would have been a very easy thing for me to do when I was booking my trip that I just didn't even think to look into. You cannot.

SPEAKER_00 17:07

What you can do, I think because Chase and Delta are not like partners, like there are no Chase branded Delta cards. Yes, all of United cards, all of United's cards are Chase. But it says you can indirectly book flights by transferring your points one-to-one to a Sky Team Alliance partner like Virgin Atlantic. Virgin Atlantic is Sky. Yeah. Anyway, there's so much to learn about points and miles.

SPEAKER_01 17:32

I know. But I also feel like both of our situations are such a good reminder to kind of like turn inward and just choose whatever feels best for your personal situation. Like I remember maybe about a month or so, you were kind of like hemming and hawing about like this extension that I use is saying that it's better to use cash, but I don't really feel like I want to use cash and I don't know what to do. And ultimately you decided to use the points, and I think that feels like the right decision for you. And in my case, too, using the points so I didn't have to spend the cash felt like the ultimate goal for me. And so I think through both of our stories, like it's just a reminder to really think about your own situation. And if you have the money in your travel fund, you can pay cash for the trip and it doesn't really make a difference, then sure, like save those points and optimize them for later. But if you would feel stressed having to pay the cash to go on this trip versus using the points, like just use the points, and I think that's okay.

SPEAKER_00 18:28

Totally. I also think it depends on your like how you travel because we know a lot of people who have the flexibility, I think, and just the attitude where they're like, I will go plan a trip wherever I could find a good deal. And I think that's really cool, and I definitely want to experiment with that at some point. But that has not been the case for me since I started using credit card points. I've always had like very specific whether I'm traveling for a wedding or to see friends or family. I just that's just not reality for me right now. So this was a good reminder, like you said, like I'm just gonna use the points in a way that makes sense for my lifestyle at the moment. And saving me a bunch of money, and that is a win.

SPEAKER_01 19:15

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 19:16

And if you want to learn from some true travel experts, we will link to those episodes in the show notes. Love ya, bye. That's a wrap on another episode of the Finance Girlies podcast. Nothing in this episode is meant to be taken as financial advice.

SPEAKER_01 19:33

Please do your own research and talk to a professional if you need advice. If you like this episode, consider leaving a review. Better yet, send the show to a friend who might enjoy it too. Love ya, bye. Nailed it.