How We Saved Over $4,400 on Our Babymoon Using Credit Card Perks & Points
I never feel more motivated to maximize the benefits of my credit cards than I do shortly after the annual fees hit. Once I come down from my initial panic, I remind myself that I’ve reaped more benefits from credit cards each year than I’ve ever paid in annual fees. I’d like to help you do the same!
My husband and I just took a trip to Maui to celebrate a baby on the way that should have cost us $4,748. Instead, we flew from Dallas to Maui, rented a car, and spent 4 nights and 3.5 beautiful days on the island for a total out-of-pocket cost of $260!
(This excludes our food and activity costs, because we’re focused on the getting there and staying there pieces that are able to be covered by points.)
A word on credit card points
We wouldn’t have been able to book this trip so cheaply without a healthy bank of points. There are hundreds of credit cards on the market that allow you to rack them up, just pay attention to the number of points earned per dollar spent in different categories to maximize your point earning potential.
My favorite travel card is the Chase Sapphire Reserve. Why? Chase allows you to transfer points to a huge list of travel partners at a 1:1 rate, points have a high redemption value (1.5 cents each), and the card is loaded with travel perks like a free Priority Pass membership, an annual $300 travel credit, a credit for TSA Precheck or Global Entry every 4 years, and more.
Here’s how we used the benefits of the Chase Sapphire Reserve and the Chase Southwest Priority cards to save on this trip. The process is a bit layered, but it’s truly not that complicated!
Hotel Savings - $3,202
We transferred 100,000 Chase points to Hyatt to book a 4-night stay at the Hyatt Regency Maui. A great way to ensure you’re getting a fair return on your points is to compare costs during the booking process. For this trip I asked myself, “What would our hotel stay cost if I…”
Booked through Hyatt with cash
Booked through Chase with cash or points
Booked through Hyatt with points
(You can also check sites like Expedia or Kayak, but I book using one of the 3 options above most often.)
Cash Comparison
If we wanted to pay out-of-pocket for our resort stay, we had the option to pay $3,201 through the Hyatt website (left chart) or $3,372 through the Chase portal (right chart). In this scenario, we would have saved $171 by booking our stay with cash through Hyatt. Noted!
Point Comparison
If you reference the charts above, you can see Hyatt (right chart) only required 25,000 points per night for our desired dates which covers the room rate, taxes, and resort fees. It cost us 100,000 points total for 4 nights, and each point was valued at 13 cents each! Typically, they’re worth 1.7 cents each, so this was clearly a CRAZY good value.
Chase, on the other hand (left chart), requested 52,687 points per night at the same hotel that covered only the room rate and taxes. Resort fees had to be paid separately on site after our stay.
We were able to save 110,749 points and $211 by booking our stay with points transferred to Hyatt. The value of our point savings was $1,661, and we realized $3,202 in value from the points transferred. That is insane!
Quick note: Transferring your Chase points to hotels isn’t usually the best way to maximize the value of your points; however, Hyatt is the exception! Unlike other hotel chains, they have a relatively fixed point chart which means that the number of points required to book a room varies minimally between off, regular, and peak times. It’s also important to note that the number of points needed per night varies by hotel category.
TIP: If you have a healthy bank of points and have no intention of paying with cash, you can skip the cash comparisons and use this handy dandy valuation chart from The Points Guy to understand what points are worth before you get started. As a general rule, only book your hotel stay, flight, etc. with points if the value you’ll receive per point is greater than or equal to the average value stated in the linked point valuation chart.
If you need some evidence that I wasn’t making up numbers, here is a gallery of screenshots from both the Hyatt website and the Chase portal. Click to enlarge each.
Rental Car Savings - $300
We’ve now been to Maui twice, and I can confidently say that renting a car is the most optimal way to get around the island. While they do have rideshare services available, it’s worth the additional cost to have your own car if you want to vacation on your own schedule and see major sites like the Road to Hana, watch the sunrise at Haleakalā National Park, or eat at some of the most delicious restaurants on the island that are farther away from popular places to stay like Wailea.
The catch? It’s expensive!
For this trip, we used Expedia to find a great deal on a 4-day SUV rental. I would have been totally content paying this full price out of pocket, but my Chase Sapphire Reserve card said, “Hold my beer.”
The planning of our trip happened to sync with the annual renewal of my Reserve credit card. One of the best annual card benefits of this particular Chase product is the $300 travel credit that can be applied to flights, hotels, car rentals, cruises, train tickets, bus tickets, parking garages, and more.
The travel credit covered $300 of our rental car cost, knocking down the total cost of our 4-day car rental to $42.
Flight Savings - $988
Thanks to my Southwest Priority credit card and several recent trips, we had a fair number of Southwest points begging to be used. I’ll admit we were nervous to fly such a long distance on Southwest without any in seat entertainment available or a meal offered during the 6 hour leg, but it ended up being GREAT!
Had we purchased two round trip tickets from Dallas to Maui with cash, here’s what our cost breakdown would have been:
Instead, we opted to book our trip with a mix of points and cash. Here’s how we did it!
I had 65,336 points in my Rapid Rewards account, but I needed a total of 79,892 to book our two roundtrip tickets. I was short 14,556 points.
Southwest was running a promotion that offered 40% off points at the time of booking, so I opted to purchase the remaining 15,000. That purchase should have cost me $450, but I only paid $270 thanks to the promotion.
TIP: In general, purchasing points isn’t the most cost effective way to acquire them.
Southwest points are typically valued at 1.5 cents each, and I paid 1.8 cents each. Since I was short just a handful of points, I found it worth it in this case.
When you book Southwest flights using points, you’re still responsible for paying flight taxes. Those taxes cost us $22.40 for 2 round trip tickets. In total, we paid $292.40 — $270 (points) plus $22.40 (taxes).
A great annual perk of the Southwest Priority card is a $75 annual travel credit applied toward any qualifying travel purchase. Like my Reserve card, the annual renewal for this card coincided with our booking, so we were reimbursed $75 of our point purchase!
The total out of pocket cost for our 2 round trip flights from Dallas to Maui was $217. We saved $908!
While we’re on the topic of Southwest Priority card perks, we also took advantage of the free upgraded boardings offered on up to 4 flights per year. In case you didn’t know, Southwest doesn’t have assigned seating. At check-in you’re assigned a boarding position, and seats are first come, first serve. A1 - A15 are the most coveted positions and are usually reserved for those who book the most expensive fare, Business Select.
If there are available positions within the A1 - A15 group after everyone has checked in, they offer upgraded boarding positions for an additional cost of around $30 - $50 per passenger. We paid $40 each to upgrade to positions A8 and A9 in the hopes of scoring an exit row with extra foot room on the 6-hour leg from Las Vegas to Maui. It worked!
Thanks to the card benefits, $80 worth of upgraded boarding charges were reimbursed within 24 hours, and we enjoyed the extra leg space in the exit row on the long flight free of charge! This brought our total flight savings to $988.
In total, we saved $4,488 on our Maui vacation thanks to credit card points and annual benefits!