Have you ever sat in a work meeting and afterwards questioned the wisdom of one of your suggestions?
If so, I’d like to join your club.
I’ve been helping write on Frequent Miler for the last 1.5 years and we met up last month for a weekend of meetings. During that weekend, I made a suggestion for what I thought would be a fun challenge – Greg, Nick and I would each get 40,000 points of a different transferable points currency and we’d have to travel as far as we could around the world.
Greg and Nick were both on board with my suggestion, so this fall we’re doing 40K To Far Away.
What Are Transferable Points
There are a number of different transferable points out there, but we’re concentrating on the three main ones – Chase Ultimate Rewards, American Express Membership Rewards and Citi ThankYou points.
These are points you can earn on some of their credit cards, many of which offer a signup bonus of 50,000-80,000 points. You don’t earn these points on all their cards though. For example, Chase issues Southwest credit cards, so you only earn Southwest Rapid Rewards miles with those cards. If you have a Chase Ink Business Preferred or Sapphire Reserve card though, you’ll be earning Ultimate Rewards.
Similarly, American Express offers a range of cards, some with partners and some of their own. They issue Delta credit cards and with those cards you’ll only earn Delta SkyMiles. If you have an Amex Gold or Platinum card though, you’ll be earning Membership Rewards.
What Can You Do With Transferable Currencies?
With all three of these transferable currencies, you can use them in a number of different ways. You can use them to book travel, redeem them for goods or gift cards, etc. In most cases, redeeming for goods or gift cards doesn’t provide good value. Using the points for travel can be good value, although it not only depends on which points currency you have, but also which specific credit card you have.
For example, you can redeem Chase Ultimate Rewards for 1.5cpp (cents per point) if you have the Chase Sapphire Reserve card, but only for 1.25cpp if you have the Chase Sapphire Preferred card.
The reason these are known as transferable currencies is because the best value for the points tends to come from transferring them to travel partners. Ultimate Rewards, Membership Rewards and ThankYou have their own set of transfer partners.
You can transfer Ultimate Rewards to United, Southwest, Hyatt and more. Membership Rewards can be transferred to Delta, Air Canada, Hilton and more. ThankYou points can be transferred to Avianca, Qantas, JetBlue and more.
How Will 40K To Far Away Work?
Greg will get 40,000 Ultimate Rewards points to play with, Nick will get 40,000 ThankYou points and I’ll get 40,000 Membership Rewards. We can use those points however we see fit, although in most cases we’ll get the best value by transferring them to one or more different airlines.
Seeing as we’ll each have different transferable currencies, we’ll have access to different airline loyalty programs. Airlines have different requirements when redeeming awards, so they have different sweet spots. United has something called the Excursionist Perk where you can book an additional flight for free (there’s more to it than that, but that’s the gist of it). You can book flights with Avios for as few as 4,500 miles. Flying Blue (the program for Air France and KLM) has a sale each month called Promo Rewards where you can book award flights that use 25-50% fewer miles than normal.
The Cash Component
While discussing the idea of 40K To Far Away, we realized that we’d need some kind of cash allowance. When redeeming miles for flights, you still have to pay taxes and other fees and surcharges. These can be as low as $5.60 for a one-way flight in the US, but can add up to hundreds of bucks for flights overseas.
For example, a flight from Norfolk VA to Newark NJ can be had for 10,000 MileagePlus miles + $5.60 on United.
Subsequently flying from Newark to London on Virgin Atlantic would also only cost 10,000 Flying Club miles. That’s incredibly good value miles-wise considering you’d be crossing the Atlantic, but there are also fees of $89.20. (n.b. Flying in the other direction is even more expensive as the UK’s Air Passenger Duty is added which almost triples the cash component)
In addition to money for taxes and fees, we’d need money for food, drink, lodging, etc. Seeing as we’d be using 40,000 points, we decided $400 would be a good cash amount to go along with it. The Chase Ink Business Preferred credit card comes with an 80,000 point signup bonus. You can use 40,000 points to pay off a $400 bill on your credit card, leaving you with 40,000 points. That means one credit card signup bonus would allow you to do what we’re up to.
Why Am I Questioning The Wisdom Of My Suggestion?
I’m really excited about this adventure and think it’ll be a lot of fun, so you might be wondering why I’m questioning the wisdom of my suggestion.
There are two reasons.
One’s called Greg. The other’s called Nick.
Greg and Nick are both supremely more well-versed with airline loyalty programs. They know most (or all) of the sweet spots, routing rules, etc., so they’ll have a much better idea of how to maximize their miles.
Me? Not so much. I try to learn and retain as much information about airline programs as possible, but I don’t put too much focus on it. Shae and I don’t fly all that much, so it simply doesn’t make sense to spend significant amounts of time learning the ins and outs of airline programs. Seeing as we’re on a 5 year, 50 state road trip and live in hotels and Airbnbs, I pay far more attention to making the most of our hotel points.
I’m therefore at a significant disadvantage when compared to Greg and Nick’s knowledge. That means I need to play to my strengths.
What Do I Have Planned?
I’ve spent a fair bit of time the past week or two looking at my options and have a couple of different strategies in mind. I’m wary of sharing my ideas seeing as none of us have anything booked yet, so I don’t want them to know what I have planned.
I figured that one of my strengths would be my ability to endure longer (or more) Economy flights than them. Greg and Nick frequently use miles to travel in business class, so they might be dissuaded from traveling too far – or for too long – in Economy. Having said that, they’re both very competitive, so I can’t count on them not enduring long Economy flights too much.
One of my original thoughts was to take advantage of cheap buses in Europe. For example, I could travel the 738 (flying) miles from Madrid, Spain to Milan, Italy by bus for only €8.99 ($10.25).
You might notice a huge downside with that option though – the journey would take more than 22 hours! Spending almost an entire day sitting on a bus doesn’t strike me as fun, no matter how cheap the ride is. Especially when you consider that for only ~$10 more, I could fly that route in less than 2.5 hours. Now, some might prefer 22 hours on a bus to 2 hours on Ryanair, but not me!
So I’ve told you what I don’t have planned, but I’m afraid I can’t share at the moment what I do have planned. The two strategies I have in mind so far probably aren’t what you might expect, so I look forward to sharing more in the future.
When Is 40K To Far Away Happening?
Greg, Nick and I will be meeting up in a large city this fall and will set off from the same place. We’ll announce closer to the time where and when that’ll be.
How Long Will This Challenge Last?
Good question! It basically depends on how long and how far we can travel with 40,000 miles and $400. All three of us have commitments about 2.5 weeks after our departure date, so we’ll need to be back in the US by then. Other than that though, the sky’s budget’s the limit.
How Can I Follow Along?
We’ll hopefully have Wi-Fi at various points in our journey, so all three of us will be sharing updates when we can while on the adventure.
I’ll hopefully be writing blog posts here on No Home Just Roam as I go, while we’ll no doubt have updates over on Frequent Miler. You can also follow along on social media:
No Home Just Roam
- Facebook page
- Facebook group (where you’ll get more behind-the-scenes stuff from both 40K To Far Away and our 50 state road trip)
- YouTube
Frequent Miler
You can also read Greg’s announcement about 40K To Far Away here. That has more information about the challenge, along with the limited rules we’ve come up with. Nick’s also written a post sharing what he’s not going to be doing.
Questions & Suggestions
Is there anything you’d like to know about the adventure or have any ideas or suggestions for any of us? Let us know in the comments below.
Terri Clark says
Very cool idea! I’d be looking at any bonus transfers going on or possibly Delta flash sales? Of course in economy. Avios are a good idea. Maybe staying in hostels? If you had access to a camper/van you could sleep in that. Will be looking forward to following this challenge!
stephen says
Yep, there are a few transfer bonuses right now, so I’m trying to see if any will be worth it. There’s a Delta award sale to South America right now (Bogota being the main location) which offers great value. The problem is finding something reasonably priced in miles or cash from Bogota to somewhere else in the world.
As for accommodation costs, I have something in mind for how I’ll do that and stay within budget. I have to keep all my plans secret at the moment though, so I can’t share that for now!