Hi all and welcome to my 4th monthly Year Long Honeymoon post! If you’re new here, in January I announced that my husband, Andrew, and I are taking a Year Long Honeymoon. We got married in October 2021 and in June of this year we’re leaving for a 3.5 week road trip around the United States and then heading abroad for a year at the end of June. Read my original announcement post for our full itinerary.
April was quite the interesting month for me! Andrew and I were so excited because we had planned to visit Washington, D.C. and Boston in the middle of the month. I have a good friend in D.C. and Andrew has a good friend and some family in Boston. Welllll we made it to D.C. and had a great time, but the night before we were supposed to fly to Boston I tested positive for Covid so we had to change all of our plans!
April wasn’t all bad though, I finally got my 80,000 Citi Thank Point intro offer from my Citi Premier card and I found some amazing point redemption value there for our Year Long Honeymoon. I also didn’t lose any money on anything we had to cancel for Boston. I will walk you through that point redemption and, contracting covid while traveling, and more in this April update post.
Stay current on all our Year Long Honeymoon updates!
How I Got 55 Free Hotel Nights During My Year Long Honeymoon (and how you can too!)
Getting Covid While Traveling
Somehow I managed to evade Covid for two years but finally caught it this month. Andrew is still sneaking by without getting it even though he was with me the whole time Saturday when I’m 99% sure I got it through Wednesday morning when he flew home. We had been staying in an Airbnb in DC and were not able to extend our stay so I checked into a hotel by myself for several days and flew home when my quarantine period was over.
I think the main thing this experience taught me is really how invaluable refundable bookings are. I booked our Boston hotel through American Express Travel and they were so great with getting the entire hotel stay refunded even though according to the terms and conditions I should have paid for one night.
Our flights were also amazingly easy to cancel. I had booked our DC to Boston flights with Delta points and Andrew had booked our Boston to Chicago flights with United points. Booking flights with points typically has a much more forgiving cancellation policy. I was also thoroughly impressed with United’s last minute award availability as Andrew was able to book a flight later the same day for just 15,000 points.
Hopefully we’ll make it to Boston sometime soon, although it will have to wait until we return from our Year Long Honeymoon sometime in 2023.
My First Business Class Flight with Points
Ok guys, if you’re not a points and miles gal like me, strap in! If you are a points and miles fanatic you’ll totally get why I’m so excited! This is my first business class point redemption and it will be my first international business class flight ever! I’ve only flown first class in the US a few times, and never in a lay flat seat.
The business class flights I booked were on Turkish Airlines flying from Tbilisi, Georgia to Kathmandu, Nepal with a layover in Istanbul. I used points for both me and Andrew to be in business class for both legs of the flight. I also booked both of us economy tickets for our flight a few weeks earlier from Istanbul to Tbilisi. As this flight is pretty short, booking business was not worth it.
Earning the Points
I signed up for the Citi Premier credit card in January of this year when the welcome bonus was 80,000 points after spending $4,000 in 3 months. After I met the minimum spend in March I had to wait for the statement to close in April to get the bonus points. In addition to the 80,000 welcome bonus, earning more points is pretty easy with this card as groceries, restaurants, gas, flights and hotels all earn 3X points.
Redeeming the Points
I had already picked out this flight redemption so as soon as the points came in I transferred them to my Turkish Airlines account. You will need to create a Turkish Airlines account to check for award availability and to transfer your Citi points to.
The Turkish Airlines website is not the easiest to navigate and I actually had to call their reservation call center to book Andrew’s tickets because it wouldn’t let me use points to book someone else’s flights online. (Does it make me sound young if I say this is the first time I’ve ever booked a flight over the phone? haha) Definitely annoying but still worth it for (nearly) free flights!
Cent Per Point Calculation
Cent Per Point (CPP) is an important tool to use to make sure you stretch your credit card points and airlines miles as far as you can. The standard equation is cash value minus any cash paid, divided by the points used.
For my business class flights that turned out to be $1,519.60 if you purchased the flight with cash, minus $153.10 I paid in fees, divided by 27,500 points to equal 4.97 CPP. You then compare that CPP to the average CPP value for the type of points you use. You can look online at websites like Nerd Wallet or The Points Guy for their valuation of the points, which is currently about 1.5 CPP for Citi ThankYou points. 4.97 is way more than 1.5 so this is a great deal!
The economy flights I booked weren’t quite as lucrative but were still a good deal. $196 cash value – $38 in fees / 7,500 points = 2.11 CPP
Other New Travel Bookings
In the last few weeks I went a little booking crazy! I’ve actually booked almost all of our hotel/Airbnb stays through the end of August, and even a new booking in September. However everything I’ve booked is fully refundable until at least a week before the stay. To see the prices on stays I’ve booked in previous months be sure to check out my March and February update posts. New stays I’ve booked in April:
Austria – I booked our 3 night stay in Salzburg and 2 nights in Vienna, including a $30 ticket to Salzburg Festival. I was surprised by how expensive Salzburg was and the best deal for us ended up being a shared Airbnb for $83/night. In Vienna we’re staying at a Holiday Inn for $102/night.
Hungary – I booked 4 nights in a Budapest Airbnb for $62/night and 4 nights at the Crowne Plaza Budapest for 70,000 IHG points. The cash value for that stay is $540 so .77 CPP. IHG points are typically worth about .5 CPP so another decent point redemption for the month.
Germany – This was the September booking I made this month! I booked 3 nights at a Hilton hotel during Oktoberfest for $116/night. The hotel is about 2.5 miles from the festival grounds so I’m pretty happy with this price even though it’s way more than our other stays. I’ve seen private rooms in hostels for $400+ a night during Oktoberfest which is find absolutely crazy!
April Points & Miles Update
Updated Points Balance:
Kailyn American Express: 276,215 points worth ~ $3,314
Kailyn Chase Ultimate Rewards: 2,724 points + Andrew Chase 124,800 points worth ~ $1,913
Kailyn IHG: 78,370 points worth ~ $392
Kailyn Delta : 39,262 points + Andrew Delta: 20,800 points worth ~ $780
Kailyn United: 1,705 points + Andrew United: 50,600 points worth ~ $591
Kailyn American: 4,253 points + Andrew American: 63,500 points worth ~ $813
Kailyn Citi Thank You: 18,790 points worth ~ $282
Total Rewards Points Remaining: 681,504 redeemable for about $8,092
A decrease of 85,734 points and $837 from last month (but I used 70,000 points for the Turkish Airlines redemption and 70,000 for the Budapest IHG hotel, so I did quite well this month!)
Spending/Savings Tallies as of the End of the Month
So far in points I’ve spent:
- 106,000 IHG points on 8 hotel nights, worth $864 for an average of .82 cents per point (CPP)
- 70,000 Citi Thank You points transferred to Turkish airlines for 2 economy class and 2 business class flights worth $3,431 for an average of 4.36 CPP (I had to pay $382 in taxes and fees)
- 20,000 Delta points for us to fly from Warsaw to Amsterdam at 1.33 CPP
- 18,500 Amex points transferred to British Airways Avios for us to fly from London to Prague at 1.85 CPP
For a total savings of $4,521 using 214,500 points.
So far in cash I’ve spent:
- $1,221 on 5 flights for 2 people flights
- $470 on activities
- $1,162 on a 7 night cruise
- $3,825 on 56 nights in hotels and Airbnbs averaging about $68 a night for paid stays
For a total spend of $6,678. Our overall budget for the year is about $6,000 on flights and $44,000 for everything else. This brings our budget out to about $108 per day excluding flights. So far we’ve booked our stays for some of the most expensive countries we’re going to so I think we’re staying on track pretty well so far.
If you’ve made it this far, thank you for reading about my points obsession and my travel budget. You can take the girl of the accounting job but you can’t take the accounting out of the girl! I can’t wait to start sharing actual travel stories with you all!
I also can barely believe that when I publish the next Year Long Honeymoon update I wont have a job anymore! My last day at my current job will be May 12th! I’m heading to Hawaii the next day for a week in paradise, then I’ll have one week at home in Chicago to pack up our apartment before we leave for our 3.5 week road trip to Colorado, Utah and Arizona. Time is certainly flying!
Until next month,
Kailyn (Travels)
4 Comments
I am absolutely loving your honeymoon trail. I am sure there cannot be a better way to celebrate life than traveling with life partner. Traveling with points is always fulfilling and its good that you could get refunds which doesn’t happen normally these days.
Best luck
Himanshu
Amazing work with the travel points! Even more that you managed to find business class tickets – that is such a great deal!
I hope you feel better from covid soon (I head headaches for a month after I caught it – boo.) I wish you a full, speedy recovery!
I’m so sorry you got COVID in D.C. and it caused you to miss Boston! I love the point updates though and can’t believe how close your trip is! Congrats on your last day of work coming up so soon 🙂
This is such an informative post about travel points. It can really help to save a lot during one’s travels! And can’t agree more about refundable bookings!