Tonight my DH spent about 3 hours trying to book our Christmas vacation. We decided to try and use our mileage on United. Typically our schedules are not flexible enough to use mileage. But this time since we're going on vacation ourselves without visiting family, we decided to go whenever was available.
This trip is DH's 30th birthday. But we're trying to cheap out and use our mileage plans and CC rebates to pay for the trip. As of right now we're going to Vancouver/Whistler. The biggest expense will definitely be our snowboarding tickets @ $60/day.
To use our mileage it will cost 25k miles for a roundtrip ticket on United. According to flight groups online, to get the best deal for your mileage it should be calculated at 2 cents/mile. So our tickets should be at least $500/each to make it worthwhile. Currently tickets for this trip would cost about $500 including taxes. So while not the best deal possible, a reasonable return. It however will cost us $45/per person to use the miles.
Though we managed to use 25k miles I found that it difficult to use them. There are so many limitations and it took so long book. I wonder if it was worth the trouble?
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4 comments:
How much do you both earn per hour? That's how much money it cost you to book the trip. Your time is valuable.
You have just added another reason why chasing rewards, bonus points, miles yada, yada, yada is just not cost effective anymore (like it used to be).
I don't waste my time anymore (and time is the most valuable commodity) using coupons, rebates, what-have-you. It's just not worth it anymore. Pay cash, choose where you want to go and just go (of course looking for the best deals).
I am starting to think that as well. I've decided that using coupons are okay if I'm going to buy the item anyway. Or if it's a large purchase like the sofa and a $100 coupon.
But I kept trying coupon shopping but I haven't found enough savings to really justify doing it.
We don't chase miles, hence why we have so many. This is our first and only trip we've used it. Typically we don't have enough time off or flexibility to allow so we just pay a good rate and go home. Also we typically never go on vacation alone, this is our SECOND vacation without family.
We only had our first vacation alone as our honeymoon. Otherwise we've gone to visit family or we've had family along. So our "together" time has always been cut short.
Last year we did japan with my parents. And China before then with DH's family. So now we get time alone. Sigh. It might be nice.
Our miles are expiring from lack of usage.
You will need 25,000 miles per ticket for a total of 50,000 miles. Do you have enough miles?
Barb1954
We each have 75k miles on United, another 25k on American, and DH has 120k on Alaska. Sigh. We don't use miles enough, we usually just pay.
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