Our latest reader success story to Spain using points/miles comes from Meghan. Here it is in her words:

Our son is in a dual language program with Spanish.  We are trying to travel, at least once a year, to a Spanish-speaking country to help him build his real-life skills (especially since Mom & Dad aren’t Spanish speakers!).

 

Using Points and Miles for Free Travel

We have been dipping our toes in the points and miles sphere since 2018, but hadn’t done any big redemptions until 2021. We started with a Chase Sapphire Reserve (for Dad) and a Chase Sapphire Preferred (for Mom), as we knew that those were flexible points currencies. The signup bonuses on those cards were met but we didn’t have a great plan for their use…so they kinda sat there.

 

Right before all of us headed back to school in the summer of 2022, I saw that there was a 30% transfer bonus from Chase to British Airways. We ended up booking three roundtrip economy flights through BA flying on Iberia – Los Angeles to/from Madrid. Since there was a transfer bonus at the time, we only needed 99,000 miles to cover all three tickets. We paid for our hotels out of pocket, but just getting those flights saved us $6,000 – those round-trip direct economy seats were selling for $2,000 each!

 

Points and Miles Itinerary in Spain

We spent two weeks traveling around the country (mostly by train) and were able to visit Grenada, Barcelona, Montserrat, Valencia, Toledo & Madrid in that time. Each area of Spain offered completely different things to see, do, and experience. We did some classic tourist things, like visit La Sagrada Familia, but just as important were the little everyday experiences that we got to give our son in a new culture and environment.

One of his favorite memories from the trip was deciding he needed a haircut and getting to speak Spanish with a barber in Barcelona to get his first “fancy” haircut – streaks of blue included.

 

 

Both directions we were able to access lounges to rest and eat a quiet meal before the long plane ride thanks to the Priority Pass from my husband’s Chase Sapphire Reserve and my Capital One Venture X.

 

Future Points and Miles Plans

I can tell you our points won’t sit in our accounts for long anymore – we are now opening cards more regularly and booking more trips. Most recently, I opened the Chase Ink Business Preferred – we can’t meet the SUB at $15,000 spend as two teachers, so when it dropped to $8,000, we jumped on it!

 

We used to budget to travel once a year as a family, and now we’re planning to travel twice a year internationally and within the US a handful of times yearly. Discovering points & miles and how they can allow us to do more travel as a family has totally changed the game for us. We already have a trip to the Dominican Republic booked for New Year’s (we used UR to transfer to Hyatt and are staying at an all-inclusive Dreams) and to Greece & Turkey for Summer 2024 (we used Chase UR to purchase flights on Air France and Chase UR to stay at a Hyatt in Istanbul so far).

Congrats, Meghan, on using credit card points and miles for your reader success story to Spain! We love how travel is allowing you to create wonderful family memories!