Go Somewhere: Volume 12

Happy Friday friends.

My LinkedIn DMs are filling up with your questions.

I’ve taken calls with readers/followers almost every day this past week.

And I love it.

I’m here to help as many people as possible, travel as cheaply as possible, as often as possible.

Let’s get down to business.

Watch me save $184 on a hotel.

I get it. The travel points stuff is cool. But confusing.

“Can you just show me exactly how to do it?”

Sure.

Here’s a video of me transferring Chase points to Hyatt to book a room.

Chase is a 1:1 transfer partner with Hyatt. It couldn’t be easier to do this!

Now, here’s a video of me booking the room on Hyatt’s website. The standard rate for the room is $334, I got it for 15,000 points, or 2.23 cents per point.

That’s almost double the value I’d get if I’d booked through the Chase travel portal.

This is the easiest thing ever - and I saved SO much money.

This is travel hacking.

My *Spirit(ed)* rant.

Spirit isn’t so bad. In fact, it can be pretty great.

I’m fed up with people saying, “Ugh, I would never fly Spirit.”

Let’s break down an example trip. 

Let’s fly Columbus (my home) to Fort Lauderdale in January.

I just found ROUNDTRIP nonstop flights for $58 on Spirit. In January.

The next cheapest option is Delta (everyone’s favorite for some reason) for $287 round trip with a high-stress 38-minute layover in Atlanta.

Yes, Spirit checked bags are expensive. Up to $100 RT.

But in this scenario, you could get 2 checked bags and it’d still be cheaper than Delta, and much faster.

Delta gives you a free carry-on, but you pay $60 RT for a checked bag on this flight.

“But there’s no legroom on Spirit. I hate it.”

On this Spirit flight, you’ll get 28 inches of legroom.

With Delta, you get 31 inches of legroom.

Are you willing to spend over $200 more on a flight to get a carry-on, a Sprite, and a credit card’s length of extra legroom?

Turns out, many people are. People HATE Spirit. And I don’t get it.

Let’s take it to the next level.

Spirit does have a points program. It’s not amazing. But if you want to fly Spirit a lot, it could be worth it.

You can work your way to earning Elite status with Spirit which gives you free seat selection, free checked bag/carry on, free drink, etc…

You’re not gonna believe this.

I found flights in February from Columbus to Los Angeles, direct, for, get this, 9,000 points round trip. 

That is impossible with any other airline.

You can sign up for a Spirit credit card, earn 50k points after spending just $1k, and you could fly a family of 5 roundtrip from the Midwest to LA.

Convinced yet?

Tell me why you hate Spirit. I’d love to debate you on this.

A plane is a plane.

The simplest hack ever I can’t not share.

Last tip for today.

Some of you read about how I was able to get $950 flights from Miami to Bonaire for only 20k points.

Absolutely insane deal.

Well, I needed to get to Miami to get on those flights.

And guess who I’m flying….

SPIRIT!

But, this isn’t about Spirit.

I saw a promotion with Capital One where you could get a $350 bonus if you opened a new checking account with them and did two paycheck deposits of $250 or more.

I set this up, deposited the $250 twice, and got a $350 bonus!

The bonus more than covered my flights to Miami, and the other ~$550 is forced savings I plan to use for food, transportation, and activities on our trip.

This is travel hacking. 

You find a way to make it work.

Hey. Share this with your friends. They need it.