Booking Flights with Points and All Things Award Travel

#89: Award travel pro Tiffany Funk joins Chris to talk about booking flights with miles, the advantages of having travel flexibility, the ins and outs of transferring points, ways to put your points and miles to good use, and the best sites/tools for booking award travel.

Tiffany Funk (@tebfunk) is the co-founder and president of point.me, a one-stop tool for maximizing points and miles. She's also the Executive Director for the premium travel site One Mile at a Time. Having visited over 80 countries and written more than 300 travel blog posts, Tiffany is one of the world’s top experts on airline award travel and loves sharing her passion with travelers on frequent flyer programs, earning and redeeming miles, and maximizing points.

Partner Deals

Inside Tracker: $200 + 34% off personalized wellness & nutrition plans backed by science

Daffy: Free $25 to give to the charity of your choice

DeleteMe: 20% off removing your personal info from the web

Vuori: 20% off the most comfortable performance apparel I've ever worn

Point.me: First month for $1 with code HACKS

Selected Links From The Episode

Connect with Tiffany Funk: Twitter | Website | LinkedIn

One Mile at a time

point.me (first month for $1 with code HACKS)

Expert Flyer

FlightsFrom

Google Flights

Loyalty Programs

Full Show Notes

Introduction to Tiffany Funk (00:00)

Award flights vs. redeeming points for cash back (01:31)

General guideline to aim for when redeeming points through loyalty programs as opposed to a credit card portal (03:47)

Determining the best value of your points (05:44)

Tips for using points to purchase multiple tickets (09:12)

Transferring points: where to start (15:18)

Flexible points (20:46)

The sweet spot for when to book a trip (25:01)

The best use of points when you have flexibility (26:55)

Things you can do with miles that you can’t do with money (27:58)

Advantages of having a destination, itinerary, or dates that are flexible (29:19)

Amazing trips with better availability for someone with points (33:30)

Using points on airlines vs. hotels (39:06)

Why technology has made it difficult for people to use points for flights, and what to expect in the future (43:32)

The secret to point.me’s success (45:33)

How point.me works (51:09)

How to save money on your first month of point.me membership (53:46)

Chris’s airline search advice (55:04)

Listener suggestion: find flights using FlightsFrom.com (56:08)

Tiffany’s tool recommendations for reward travel (58:12)

Married segment itineraries (59:47)

How to get a good sense of how much a trip may cost (1:01:35)

Hacks to reach your mileage goals (1:03:30)

Chris addresses the issue of the difficulty in combining points for a trip and provides tips for getting around certain obstacles (1:06:26)

Tiffany Shares Her Opinion on the Best Use of Your Points (1:11:59)

How can point.me teach users to build better reward travel booking skills? (1:13:11)

Tiffany’s Travel Recommendations (1:15:27)

Partners

InsideTracker

InsideTracker provides a personalized plan to improve your metabolism, reduce stress, improve sleep, and optimize your health for the long haul. It's created by leading scientists in aging, genetics, and biometrics. They analyze your blood, DNA, and fitness tracking data to identify where you’re optimized—and where you’re not. With InsideTracker you’ll get a daily Action Plan with personalized guidance on the right exercise, nutrition, and supplementation for your body.

For a limited time, you can get $200 off the Ultimate Plan and 34% off at allthehacks.com/insidetracker

Daffy

Daffy is a not-for-profit community built around a new modern way to give, with a mission to help people be more generous, more often. Daffy makes it so much easier to put money aside for charity. You can make your tax deductible contributions all at once. Or you can set aside a little each week or month. Then anytime in the future, you can give to more than one and a half million charities, schools, and faith-based organizations in a matter of seconds.

So you can separate the decision to give (and get your tax deduction) from deciding exactly which organization you want to support and when. My favorite part is that you can invest your contributions to your Daffy account so they can grow tax-free to let you have even more impact in the future. To start giving today and get your free $25 to give to the charity of your choice, go to allthehacks.com/daffy

DeleteMe

DeleteMe is a simple subscription, privacy service for reducing unwanted personal information exposed on the public Web. They’ll remove your cell phone #, address, email, family members and more from hundreds of data broker websites and then continuously scan for new data that shows up and get that removed as well. On average DeleteMe finds and removes over 2,000 pieces of data for a customer in their first two years.

Get 20% off a plan for you or your entire family at allthehacks.com/deleteme

Vuori

Vuori is a new and fresh perspective on performance apparel. Perfect if you are sick and tired of traditional, old workout gear. Everything is designed to work out in, but doesn’t look or feel like it. The product is incredibly versatile and can be used for just about any activity like running, training, swimming, yoga; but also great for lounging or weekend errands.

To get the most comfortable and versatile clothing on the planet with 20% off your first purchase (plus free shipping on any US order over $75 and free returns) visit allthehacks.com/vuori

Connect with All the Hacks

All the Hacks: Newsletter | Website | Facebook | Email

Chris Hutchins: Twitter | Instagram | Website | LinkedIn

The content on this page is accurate as of the posting date; however, some of our partner offers may have expired.

Editor’s Note: Opinions expressed here are the author's alone, not those of any bank, credit card issuer, hotel, airline, or other entity. This content has not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by any of the entities included within the post.