On this, the last day of 2024, it’s time to take stock of my year in award travel. My goal with this post is to be totally transparent about how I, a normal person, went from zero to $60,000 in travel in the space of less than a year. Here are all the cards we opened, the bonuses we earned, and the points we burned.

Earning

I have opened eight credit cards since I started down this path in March. Five of these are business cards and three are personal. 

• Chase Ink Business Preferred: My first travel card! Got this for the generous welcome bonus and the ability to transfer points to partners
• American Express Gold: Got this to get access to Rakuten, as well as the 4x multiplier on groceries
• Capital One Venture X: Got this for lounge access and to receive Capital One miles gifted from a family member
• Chase Sapphire Preferred: Got this to get the 48 month clock started before I can get this welcome bonus again
• American Express Business Gold: Had to put a new HVAC unit in my rental property, so I took advantage of this expense to meet a minimum spend requirement that would normally be out of reach
• Chase Ink Business Preferred: Got this for the unbelievable 120,000 point welcome offer (with a 40,000 point referral bonus! What is life?)
• Chase Southwest Performance Business: Got this as the first card in the 3 card/2 companion pass strategy
• Barclays Hawaiian Airlines Business: Got this when I realized how useful Alaska miles are for booking short haul American Airlines flights (and that the window to get this card is closing, as Alaska and Hawaiian are merging)

This puts me at 3/24 going into 2025. (If you’re not familiar with the Chase 5/24 rule, Chase will only issue new cards to customers who have opened fewer than five personal credit cards in the last 24 months. Because earning Chase points is one of my top priorities for next year, staying under 5/24 is important to me.) My credit score remains above 800, so this goes to show that you can play this game without detriment to your credit.

Player 2 opened six cards this year:

• Chase Sapphire Preferred: His daily driver
• Chase Ink Business Preferred: Got this for the 100K welcome bonus
• Chase Ink Business Cash: Got this one primarily to unlock the 5x earning rate at office supply stores. Office supply stores sometimes sell $200 Visa and Mastercard gift cards with no activation fee, which enables us, essentially, to make any spending for transactions under $200 into a 5x category.
• Barclays JetBlue Business: We use JetBlue miles a lot, and I hate transferring from either Chase or Amex to get them, so this just made sense. Because cardholders get a 10% rebate on award bookings, we may hang onto it. 
• Capital One Venture: We jumped on this one when they were offering 75,000 miles and a $300 travel credit as a sign-up bonus
• Chase Southwest Premier Business: Card two in our three-card companion pass strategy 

This puts Player 2 at 2/24 going into the new year.

Together, we paid $2,078 in annual fees, though many of these cards come with credits that offset these annual fees. I also leverage gift card reselling to convert some of these credits to cash back in my pocket.

Burning

We redeemed a total of 1,433,444 points this year. 567,000 points went to Hyatt for hotel stays with a cash value of $13,432. We paid $0 out of pocket for these stays; at some properties, we’ll need to pay for parking, but one of the reasons for my undying love of the Hyatt loyalty program is that you can redeem points for hotel stays that are truly free. 

We redeemed 866,444 points for $45,504 worth of flights, for which we paid $3,093.66 out of pocket in taxes and fees. As I’ve written elsewhere, we started 2024 by booking a single domestic family trip that cost us $2,000 just in airfare, so although $3,000 is a lot of money, we’ve stepped up our travel game significantly. 

	Points Redeemed	Out of Pocket Cost	Cash Price
Flights	866,444	$3,093.66	$45,504
Hotels	567,000	$0	$13,432
Totals	1,433,444	$3,093.66	$58,936

In 2024, points and miles took us to:

• New Orleans to see Taylor Swift
• Dallas to attend a points and miles conference
• New York to see a Broadway show
• Boston to see family
• Fort Lauderdale to see family and celebrate our anniversary

In 2025, we are looking forward to visiting

• Fort Lauderdale (twice!)
• Paris
• Miraval Wellness Resort and Spa in Austin
• San Diego
• Washington, DC
• Lisbon
• Barcelona
• Amsterdam
• Isle of Palms

We have four international business class flight segments booked, as well as two domestic first class segments, and 20 free hotel nights.

…and all of that is just in the first eight months of the year! We don’t currently have anything booked beyond August of 2025.

If we do the math here, between credit card annual fees and airline taxes and fees, we’ve booked about $60,000 worth of travel for about $5,000 out of pocket. 

Goals for 2025

1. Finish earning our two Southwest Companion Passes.  P2 needs to open a Southwest personal card, which will put him at 3/24 also.

2. Earn more Chase points for Hyatt redemptions. I have many ways to earn points for nearly free flights, but transferring Chase points to Hyatt is the only way I want to book hotel stays. For this reason, I prioritize earning Ultimate Rewards over all other points currencies. There are rumors of a premium Chase business card coming in March, so I may hold off on any more Chase card applications until then. 

3. Get Player 2 into the Amex ecosystem. This would enable us to double-dip on the profitable bank bonuses offered periodically through Rakuten.

4. Book trips to London, Hawaii, Costa Rica…or wherever the deals might take us! These destinations are on my wish list, but if other great opportunities arise, we’re open to them.  

Takeaways from My First Year in Points and Miles

This year in review demonstrates that anyone in possession of good credit and a sound financial foundation (read: you pay your credit cards off, in full and on time, every month) can start traveling for nearly free! Chase Ultimate Rewards is probably the easiest program to learn, and it’s totally possible to book a short trip–flights and a night or two in a Hyatt–with a single sign-up bonus.

Looking at my track record for this year, it’s also clear that award travel is not totally free. Instead, it winds up being about 90% off. As I’ve written, it’s difficult to do this calculus sometimes, because on the one hand, we wouldn’t ever pay the cash price for some of the business class flights we’ve booked, but on the other hand, we wouldn’t be taking the trip if we had to fly economy. 

Ultimately, points and miles are making it possible for us to travel a heckuva lot more, and a heckuva lot better, than we ever have before. For that, I’m grateful, and I’m looking forward to even more earning and burning in 2025.