It's gonna be May!
Hey Reader, happy May! |
Summer is around the corner!I don't know about you, but I have summer travel on my mind! It's starting to warm up here in California... like up to 90 degrees already. Yikes. Thankfully we're expecting a bit of a cooldown next week. But with this warmer weather comes all things summer travel! Hopefully you already have your travel plans worked out. It's a little late to open cards for summer at this point. But it's never too late to start thinking about what's next. Even if you don't have points available for this summer, you can definitely start thinking about next spring and summer, and figure out what cards you need to get you there. Keep reading for the latest offers, plus I'll let you know what travel planning we've been up to recently. The latest offers!There are a few great offers right now that I don't want you to miss out on. First, the Citi AAdvantage Platinum Select World Elite Mastercard (say that 5 times fast!). This elevated offer ends VERY SOON, so if you're interested, you will want to apply ASAP. You will earn 75,000 American Airlines miles when you spend $3500 in the first four months. The annual fee is waived for the first year, then it's $99 after that. American has this super helpful award map tool that can help you find award flights from your home airport to anywhere in the world.
Next, and probably more important, is what us travel hackers like to call the "best beginner card". This is Chase's Sapphire Preferred card. While I will always recommend this card, it's even more exciting because it currently has an elevated offer! You will earn 80,000 points after spending $4000 in the first three months. This is 20,000 more than normal! The annual fee is $95, which is well worth it because of the value this card has. What is that value? Transferring points to travel partners! Chase really shines with its travel partners (United, Southwest, Hyatt, IHG, and more), and this card allows you to transfer your Chase Points, called Ultimate Rewards, to those partners. Check out this article that explains more about this great card! You can also learn more about Chase Ultimate Rewards here.
Finally, if you have a small business or side hustle, you likely qualify for a business card. If so, the offer on the IHG Rewards Premier Business Card just went up! We're big fans of IHG because their Holiday Inn Express brand has tons of locations and includes free breakfast, which is great for our big family. The new elevated bonus will give you 165,000 points when you spend $3000 in the first three months. We used these exact points to take a two week road trip across the US from California to Tennessee and back. Except for a few nights at an AirBnb in Knoxville, we stayed at Holiday Inn Expresses the whole time, and one sign-up bonus covered all of it! If you're not sure if you qualify for a business card check out this article. If you think you do but you aren't sure how to apply, check out this article.
Our recent travel plansAll of our planning has been focused on our upcoming end-of-summer trip to Europe. We'll be there for three weeks and are using points to cover our flights, most of our lodging, and about half of our train rides. Most recently, we finished booking each of our trains. We have four different train rides during our trip.
In total, the trains cost about $1000. We erased half of the cost using miles from our Venture X card. I would have loved to cover the whole thing, but we ran out of miles. Womp womp. Such is life. I'm super thrilled that we were able to erase half of the cost. I wanted to share a website that was super helpful as I was planning train travel in Europe. It's call The Man in Seat 61. It is a gold mine of information! You can plug in your starting and ending points and find out all of your options for booking, plus tons of tips. Definitely bookmark it if you're planning any train travel! The focus is on Europe, but there are worldwide destinations as well. I hope you've had a great April and are looking forward to a fresh month full of new opportunities and adventure! Have a great day, Jenna
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