A Quick Trip to NYC Using Miles & Points

Getting away for a quick trip these days is much easier, and way cheaper, when you can pay for your flights and hotel using miles and points!

The only money you then need is for spending, which thanks to collecting miles and points makes travelling occur much more often.

Take for instance a weekend trip we recently planned to New York City.

Our trip for 2, (yes, a little parent getaway), would've cost approx. $547.60 CDN for roundtrip flights from Detroit DTW, to Newark EWR.

Instead, we used 34,880 Aeroplan points, even redeeming Aeroplan points for the fees that are normally changed (which I don't always recommend, as your points are then only valued at 1 cent per point (cpp) when you do this), but we didn't want to incur much, if any money out of our pockets to book this trip, so we paid for our fees with points this time.

For our hotel booking, since we have a bunch of Marriott points that we just earned;

• 75K from the welcome bonus we received for our recently opened Marriott Bonvoy® Business American Express®* Card,

• 15K for referring someone to apply for an American Express Marriott Bonvoy credit card (yes, you can refer American Express credit cards to people, and are rewarded points for it), and lastly.

• 35,014 points for paying my income taxes with my Marriott Bonvoy Business American Express card.

We had almost enough to book a nice hotel for 3 nights, using points.

Quick side note, the reason I used my credit card to be pay my income taxes, was to hit the minimum spend of $6,000 that I needed so that I could get the welcome bonus that was being offered for the Marriott Bonvoy Business American Express card I had recently gotten.

To pay your income taxes using a credit card, just go to PaySimply, which allows you to pay all types of bills, from property taxes, to income taxes, to rent, using a credit card, for a small fee of 2.5%. This in my mind is worth it, as I'll redeem points I earn for a much higher return then that.

Anyways, with the amount of Marriott Bonvoy points we had just accumulated, and with our 1 year anniversary having just come up for our American Express Marriott Bonvoy credit card, which meant that we get our Annual Free Night Award Certificate, we could easily book 3 nights at a nice hotel in NYC, with no money out of pocket!

This is why I had said that the American Express Marriott Bonvoy credit cards are our 2nd favourite credit cards.

With this Free Night Award Certificate, we booked 3 nights in New York City, redeeming points for the other 2 nights (see below breakdown), again meaning, no money out of our pockets (other then $10.50 USD in fees).

Cash value for these 3 nights would've been $1818.00 CDN!

By using miles and points to book our flights and hotel, we just saved ourselves $2365.60 CDN!

What do you think about that!?

PS. How can you accumulate the 138,880 points needed for this trip?

Get an American Express Cobalt (THE BEST CREDITCARD)!

American Express Membership Reward (MR) points transfer to Aeroplan points at 1:1 ratio.

For the 38,880 needed for flights, you could buy groceries and use the American Express Cobalt credit card, which if you spent just $2K a month on groceries, at 5x the points on grocery spend, it would take you 4 months to accumulate enough points.

American Express Membership Reward (MR) points transfer to Marriott Bonvoy at 5:6 ratio.

For the 104k Marriott Bonvoy points you need for a hotel, you would need to collect 86,666 American Express Membership Reward (MR) points, which would take about 5 months, if you spent $2k a month on groceries.

Then, by this time next year, you could have enough points for a weekend trip to NYC, for FREE!

Mind you, you could easily collect this amount points much faster, as you probably spend more on groceries a month, and you can also collect points for your other daily spending!