Putting credit cards to work.

My wife and I try to do one new travel location a year. This year, we picked Denver, Co. We timed the trip around seeing a Detroit Tigers game. We departed on June 30 and returned on July 4^th. Here is how it played out.

We flew Southwest non stop for 28,000 Rapid Rewards points. My wife likes to get early boarding so we used 2 upgraded boarding vouchers we had via a Chase southwest card. We also used my companion fare so we both flew for the 28,000 miles. The flight would have cost $425 per person and that was booking way back in February. The month before we left the flight would have been $600 apiece.  Upgraded boarding costs $50 per person. If you get the upgraded boarding you can usually ( but not always) get the exit row seat that has no seat in front of it. I would happily pay $50 for that seat.

We booked 2 night at Hyatt House by the airport and 2 nights at Holiday Inn near Coors Field. We got a great deal on Hyatt, using 8,000 Hyatt points for each night. The rooms go for $450 a night so that is like 5.5 cents per Hyatt point. The Holiday Inn was about $270 a night and we got it for 41,000 and 43,000 IHG points, so about 0.6 cents per point.

We used Autoslash for the car rental and paid $220 for 4 days, which is pretty cheap for Denver. My chase sapphire reserve gives us primary rental car insurance, which is $25 – $30 a day. I won’t count this in the calculation

So, just purchasing the air and hotel, it would have cost about $850 for airfare plus $100 for upgraded boarding. Hotel would have been about $1450 plus tax. We aren’t sure if we have to pay parking ( $30 per night). So, instead of $2400 we just used up some points and miles.

I wanted to give a concrete example of how credit cards can greatly reduce travel costs. There are some annual fees involved so even reducing this by $200 or so, it was a great deal.

If you are interested in splitting a referral bonus for credit cards, please email me at [email protected].