I’m very excited to have successfully booked a round trip business class ticket to Europe this summer, for both my wife and I. It took a lot of time saving miles and points and a decent amount of research and creativity but we pulled it off! I wanted to share my story and the strategy behind it – just in case you too are interested in some first class travel!

The goal

It’s hopefully no secret that Mrs. Money Finance and I love to travel. We like to go on at least one big trip each year and a lot of that is obtainable thanks to my travelling job. I travel for work in healthcare IT, and am on the road about 50% of the time. Armed with points and a desire to travel, we set our sights on Europe, specifically on London in the UK for our trip this summer. Mrs. Money Finance expressed her goal of doing so in first class (or business class, depending on what the airlines call it). Always up for the challenge, I decided to start focusing my time, energy and points towards achieving that goal.

Setting a goal is the first step to achieving it. We had a destination in mind (London) and a method of travel (first/business class). Without setting a goal, you’re just accruing points for no purpose and without knowing where you want to go, you’re not spending the time researching and strategizing for how you’ll get there. If you know you want to travel, go ahead and set a goal for yourself, and then from there you can start working to make it happen.

The strategy

London, first class, that was our goal. Now that we had a purpose, we started researching how to make it happen. First, we took inventory of what we have. My wife and I both have the Delta Platinum American Express card and she had a nice balance thanks to the 70,000 sign-up bonus she got a year or so ago. I had a nice balance thanks to the flying through work that I do with Delta. All told, she had about 125,000 Skymiles and I had 110,000 Skymiles. So, I started doing research on Delta’s website. We generally knew the timeframe we wanted to go (June or July), given Mrs. Money’s summer vacation as a teacher. So, once a week for a few weeks, I would search on Delta’s website for award tickets to London. I also expanded my search to a few other cities (Dublin, Amsterdam, Paris), knowing that once we got over there we could easily take a train, boat or budget air flight for pretty cheap. The search was not super encouraging, we found that first class fares round trip were 150,000 Skymiles on up. I felt confident having searched for a few weeks that we wouldn’t find it cheaper than 150,000. So, back to the drawing board, there was no reasonable way that we both could earn 25,000 and 40,000 miles in the next few months.

I’m a big fan of travel rewards credit cards and have quite a few (for a complete list, see my article on what’s in my wallet). I signed up for the Chase Sapphire Reserve about a year ago, back when they were offering a 100,000 point sign-up. I took advantage, got 100,000 points and used the card somewhat frequently. At the time, I had a balance of about 110,000 Chase points. I started looking into what I could do with those points and found that they are partnered with United Airlines. So, I started looking into them and unfortunately same story. There was no way that we could afford 2 first class tickets. Wah-wah.

It was at this point that a fellow points enthusiast friend of mine pointed out that many I could do a one-way ticket on each. Perhaps the points needed for a one-way would be a lot cheaper than a round trip. Sure enough he was onto something! Doing more research, I found that one-way tickets on either required about 60,000-80,000 miles/points. I just might have enough!

Perfect, I was getting closer to achieving the goal. The next problem though was that my 110,000 Chase points wasn’t enough, I was going to need more like 120,000-140,000 United miles (Chase transfers to United 1:1). With a little more research, I found that Marriott is a transfer partner as well, and I have a lot of Marriott points thanks to my Marriott rewards credit card and the fact that I always stay at a Marriott when I travel. With a little more creativity, I found that I could move Starwood points (from Starwood hotels) to Marriott and with those points, I would have enough to move to United for 2 one-way first class tickets.

With a fair amount of research and creativity, I finally felt like I had enough points to pull it off!

The execution

I had finally honed in and figured out how I would achieve the goal of going first class to London. I would move points from my Chase card and my Marriott account into my United account and then use my Delta Skymiles from my Delta account. Finally ready, I put the plan into action and started the process of moving points. It was a bit tedious and took a day or two at each step but I moved some points starting from my American Express corporate card to Starwood then to Marriott, then to United and moved my Chase points to United. I then hopped onto United’s website, confirmed my points were there and booked the flight over to London. It ended up not being direct (which I didn’t expect as Atlanta isn’t a United hub) but on our layovers we’ll get lounge access thanks to the first class ticket.

After confirming my ticket, I then hopped over to Delta’s website and repeated the same process. Thanks to my research, I was able to save a few thousands Skymiles and a few hundred dollars on taxes by flying out of Dublin instead of London. Not the original plan but I figured it’d be another city we get to see!

So, for about $300 in taxes (taxes are just a part of life…sigh) we were able to book first class to Europe!! Woohoo.

A couple of tips to pass along:

• Set your goal. If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll certainly never get there.
• Do your research, and think out of the box! If I had just researched Delta flights our trip never would have happened. Explore other airlines, other cities, and other methods of travel to achieve your goal.
• Stay current on your points. A couple points from my corporate card and a couple of Starwood points thanks to a promotion I had signed up for put me over the top. How about you? Keeping records and accurate track of all my points allowed me to meet my goals.
• Stay somewhat flexible. We broadly knew the timeframe we wanted to go to Europe and were flexible which allowed us to select the dates with lower points requirements. We ended up flying on a somewhat indirect path (layovers in Toronto, Dublin and flying out of Dublin) but by being flexible, we were able to achieve our ultimate goal.

That’s my story! It feels incredible knowing that we succeeded and will be flying first class to and from London! Hopefully this story inspires you and gives you some insight and tips on how to make it happen for yourself!

What about you? Where’s your dream vacation and how are you saving to make it happen?

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