Hey friends,
Welcome to the first edition of Pete and Perry’s newsletter, where we’ll share our stories from the road along with our best tips for your own travels.
We’ve been on the road for over six weeks. It doesn’t feel that long, even though we got off to a challenging start.
The good news is that as of the time of this writing, we are happy, healthy, and eating our weight in Thai food.
The bad news?
Well… we’ll cover our misadventures in Vietnam in a separate newsletter.
Anyways – let’s flashback allll the way to the beginning and get caught up! This week: how we managed to get business class flights on a backpacker budget and how you can, too.
Perry’s Travel Diary
How we got here (literally, not figuratively)
The how: booking flights halfway around the world using miles
The only way we can travel for a full year is by following a strict budget. Flights can destroy any budget, even if you’re a Google Flights mastermind.
Enter: credit card points. I’ve been a credit card points and miles enthusiast for… well, as long as I’ve been able to apply for credit… and this trip was a perfect chance to cash in.
We ended up redeeming a total of 345,000 miles and $191.54 in taxes and fees for two round-trip tickets (172,500 and $95.77 per person) from our regional airport that included:
- Economy class from our local regional airport to DEN
- Economy class DEN – LAX
- United Polaris Business Class (read: fancy schmancy lie-flat seats) from LAX – NRT (Tokyo)
- Economy class from NRT – Hanoi, Vietnam
Our tickets also include our return flights (3 segments), which we’ll write about after we take them.
And finally, when you book a round-trip points ticket through United, you can take advantage of the Excursionist Perk to add an additional flight segment within your region of travel. In between our round-trip flights, we added one-way, business class flights from Bali, Indonesia to Singapore in Singapore Airlines’ business class.
That’s a total of 8 flight segments, including three in business class, and 3+ days spent surfing through free airport lounges along the way.
Finding flights does take some time. I first used United’s website to search for one-way flights to multiple different cities in Southeast Asia to find Saver award space. The city didn’t matter – I just needed to get into the region.
After noting possible dates and cities, I then searched for return flight availability using the same method. Once I knew which days had options available, I paired them all together and booked.
(United no longer has a fixed reward chart, but international Saver flights are usually priced between 70,000 and 90,000 miles one-way. Non-Saver flights can exceed 200,000 miles one-way, which is silly.)
It took several weeks of searching for me to finally book my itinerary. If you’re more decisive and the availability is there, you can find your flights in an evening.
So… how do you end up with 345,000 points? We used a combination of Perry’s United Miles earned from butt-in-seat flying, miles earned from the United MileagePlus Explorer card, and a miles transfer from Chase Ultimate Rewards, including miles earned from our two Chase Sapphire cards.
By far the fastest way to earn these miles is through the bonuses given when you sign up for the cards and meet the minimum spending requirements. As of today, the signup bonuses alone would earn you 180,000 miles, enough to cover just over half of this redemption.
Chase offers several other credit cards that can bolster your points balance if you need more. Spouses can each sign up for their own accounts, doubling their bonus earnings.
And you may not even need that many points. I discovered while researching my flight options that Al-Nippon Airways (ANA) offers an incredible around-the-world points redemption, allowing you to craft an itinerary for as little as 63,000 points per person in business class. This is a steal compared to the cost of regular round-trip tickets.
(An around-the-world redemption didn’t work for us. We want to backtrack and return to the USA at several points over the next year, which would interrupt an around-the-world ticket. You also need either ANA or American Express Membership Rewards points, which we didn’t have at the time.)
One other big tip for your flights: While most of the best flight deals – both in cash and points – can be found out of the major flight hubs (LAX, SFO, EWR, etc.), it is always worth checking the price out of your regional airport. We were able to fly from our home city for the same price as our closest hub, saving us 2+ hours of drive time and the fun of airport parking.
The what: how did those flights go?
Was all that points finagling worth it?
After a chaotic morning that included final packing, house prep, slicing my finger open while panic-pulling weeds, and a last-minute, unplanned Walmart trip to exchange a defective GoPro (note to self: acquire all electronics at least one month in advance of a trip), we took a taxi to the airport and tried to breathe during our flight to Denver.
The short story: We caught our breath and yes, the flights were amazing.
The long story: I documented every detail of our flights on my Instagram ! Check out my saved story, “First Flights.”
One detail not shared on Instagram: Because we had an overnight layover, we stayed at the Holiday Inn LAX using a free night certificate from the IHG Platinum Rewards card. This hotel included a free airport shuttle. It was a clean, basic, and comfortable room – way better than the airport floor.
And then we made it to our first stop: Hanoi!
Travel Tip of the Week
Since we’re talking about credit cards….
My first travel diary turned into an unexpected advertisement for a few credit cards, but they can really be a fantastic source of benefits while you travel.
We used the following credit cards and their rewards for our Southeast Asia flight redemptions:
- IHG Rewards Premier
- United MileagePlus Explorer Card
- Chase Sapphire Reserve
- Chase Sapphire Preferred
- Note: You’ll want to pick either the Reserve or the Preferred, as one single person cannot get the sign-up bonus for both cards. You can, however, have one spouse with each card and earn both bonuses that way. Pete has the Preferred and I have the Reserve.
You’ll want to sign up for one card at a time to ensure you can meet the spending requirements and manage the impact on your credit score. I try to go six months between card signups, but you can sign up faster if you have strong credit.
If you use any of the links above, we will receive a friends-and-family referral bonus in the form of points or miles from the card issuer. There’s no charge to you for doing so!
And while I hope this goes without saying, please only open credit card accounts that you can pay off in full each month. Travel rewards do not justify paying credit card interest. If you struggle with credit card debt, consider earning points through these shopping portals and dining programs instead.
Next time: our travel stories from Hanoi, Vietnam! Stay tuned.
If you enjoyed this newsletter, we’d love it if you would share us with your friends.
Until next time,
Pete and Perry
*Pete, upon reading this, stated: “Hunting season is the ONLY holiday in Wyoming. The others are just excuses to give gifts and eat food, invented by the Hallmark card company!” Ba humbug.