I love credit cards so much! v3.0 (see first page for add'l details)

[amcc]

Hey all. My kiddo woke me up way too early so I thought I’d use this time to (try to) catch up.

I haven’t been around much because I’ve been busy, but also so exhausted. The long weekend didn’t really help, despite staying local, what with spending time with the kiddo and trying (finally) to get our home in order for the new year. Is it still only January?

The churn goes on!

I finished my CS Platinum and Hilton Aspire MSRs way too quickly, and both SUBs posted promptly. I got a 15k MR/$2k MSR retention offer on my Gold, despite spending over $30k on its 4x categories last year. Not great, but not bad considering it’s a card I’m keeping anyway. I guess the takeaway is spend, but don’t spend too much on only the bonus categories? I’m taking the MSR on my Biz Platinum a little more slowly, and spending organically where it makes sense on the rest of my Amex cards to keep the pop ups away. Meanwhile, DW is on her way to building up her MR balance. She finished the MSR on her 45k MR Green and we used the Away credit to get a blush pink carry on for DD that she happily wheeled around on our trip to Hawaii. DW also finished up her 25k MR Biz Green and picked up the tiered 75k MR Biz Gold recently. DW also got the Hyatt card, and I plan to get my own sometime after I get back under 5/24. It’ll be a long couple of months until then.

On redemptions, I don’t know if it’s premature to say, but we bought DVC at Aulani — with points. We’re still doing the paperwork and the balance isn’t due for a few weeks, but yeah, we've got our DVC account and points and – it’s happening!

This is something DW and I had thought about for years, but the timing or budget never seemed right. Meanwhile, we’ve spent some part of our last four holidays at Aulani as well as an impromptu trip there last October, and too many thousands of dollars on Disney Gift Cards. And we’ll likely keep returning to Aulani as long as we continue to visit family in Hawaii. It just made sense. And it really is our happy place. We looked into resale, and we took a tour while at Aulani (and scored $150 in Disney Gift Cards), and in the end we felt more comfortable buying direct and adding on via resale later. And hey, we'll get a "blue card"! Although we’re probably getting a little more than half the value going direct vs. resale, being comfortable with the purchase was important, and we’ll get the 2019 UY points that we've noticed are [along with 2020 UY] often stripped from a lot of contracts on the resale market, and that gives us some time to find a resale contract that’ll work as an add-on. We just had to make the money work. So I’ve cashed out 1.2 million MR and 500k UR to fund our purchase, and we don’t have to worry about anything out of pocket or when we'll "break even." We’ll hit several MSRs with this purchase, and pay for it with cash from points. It’s a tidy circle.

I never thought about using credit card rewards to buy DVC, but then @hulagirl put the thought into my head. Thank you for the inception, @hulagirl.

And special thanks to @calypso726, @3 DD love princesses, @PolyRob, @speedyfishy, @wendow, @kmc8826, @striker1064, @vanjust14, @bernina, and anyone else I might’ve missed for all the encouragement and advice along the way.

I was looking at award space on United for next Christmas over the weekend, and wow dynamic pricing is really in effect. Last year, I was able to book saver award seats to HNL for 22.5k miles per person, each way. This year, economy saver awards are running 45k miles per person, each way. I think I’m going to have to try a different approach this year.

But hey, while I was clicking around United’s schedule, I noticed I could fly my family to Japan over Thanksgiving week for 35k miles per person, each way. So I’m going to! (I think we’re going to be in Japan while @ten6mom is still there!) It’s crazy to think United will fly us all the way to Japan for fewer miles than it would take to fly to Hawaii. But here we are. So a little past midnight, with my ladies asleep, I made a snap decision to forego our family tradition of spending Thanksgiving at Disneyland and taking the family to Tokyo instead. If we spend Thanksgiving Day at Tokyo Disneyland, that still counts right? Anyway, I booked our flights using United miles. Sadly, no lie flat seats for us. I’m flying a family of 3 and have a little redshirt who’s not in the game yet, so I need to budget our points and miles. I’ll be using my airline fee credits to bump us up to Economy+. I transferred some UR over to Hyatt and booked three nights at the Andaz Toranomon Hills for 30k/night. I used Hilton points, and booked three more nights at the Hilton Tokyo Bay for 80k/night. I need to math that last one out. Anyway, it’s an amazing feeling to have planned all this out in less than two hours, and very humbling to realize I have the points and miles to do all of this. I ran all this by DW in the morning, and she eagerly agreed it was a good change of pace. But before then, it was 2 a.m., and like my man Ted Mosby said,

Keep on churning on!

So many cool and exciting churning and purchasing things in one post! Congrats on the purchase! The 2am decision to go to Tokyo sounds like a winning decision, if you ask me. We should all be poking around airlines at 2am!

 

[AmyAnne]

Hey all. My kiddo woke me up way too early so I thought I’d use this time to (try to) catch up.

I haven’t been around much because I’ve been busy, but also so exhausted. The long weekend didn’t really help, despite staying local, what with spending time with the kiddo and trying (finally) to get our home in order for the new year. Is it still only January?

The churn goes on!

I finished my CS Platinum and Hilton Aspire MSRs way too quickly, and both SUBs posted promptly. I got a 15k MR/$2k MSR retention offer on my Gold, despite spending over $30k on its 4x categories last year. Not great, but not bad considering it’s a card I’m keeping anyway. I guess the takeaway is spend, but don’t spend too much on only the bonus categories? I’m taking the MSR on my Biz Platinum a little more slowly, and spending organically where it makes sense on the rest of my Amex cards to keep the pop ups away. Meanwhile, DW is on her way to building up her MR balance. She finished the MSR on her 45k MR Green and we used the Away credit to get a blush pink carry on for DD that she happily wheeled around on our trip to Hawaii. DW also finished up her 25k MR Biz Green and picked up the tiered 75k MR Biz Gold recently. DW also got the Hyatt card, and I plan to get my own sometime after I get back under 5/24. It’ll be a long couple of months until then.

On redemptions, I don’t know if it’s premature to say, but we bought DVC at Aulani — with points. We’re still doing the paperwork and the balance isn’t due for a few weeks, but yeah, we've got our DVC account and points and – it’s happening!

This is something DW and I had thought about for years, but the timing or budget never seemed right. Meanwhile, we’ve spent some part of our last four holidays at Aulani as well as an impromptu trip there last October, and too many thousands of dollars on Disney Gift Cards. And we’ll likely keep returning to Aulani as long as we continue to visit family in Hawaii. It just made sense. And it really is our happy place. We looked into resale, and we took a tour while at Aulani (and scored $150 in Disney Gift Cards), and in the end we felt more comfortable buying direct and adding on via resale later. And hey, we'll get a "blue card"! Although we’re probably getting a little more than half the value going direct vs. resale, being comfortable with the purchase was important, and we’ll get the 2019 UY points that we've noticed are [along with 2020 UY] often stripped from a lot of contracts on the resale market, and that gives us some time to find a resale contract that’ll work as an add-on. We just had to make the money work. So I’ve cashed out 1.2 million MR and 500k UR to fund our purchase, and we don’t have to worry about anything out of pocket or when we'll "break even." We’ll hit several MSRs with this purchase, and pay for it with cash from points. It’s a tidy circle.

I never thought about using credit card rewards to buy DVC, but then @hulagirl put the thought into my head. Thank you for the inception, @hulagirl.

And special thanks to @calypso726, @3 DD love princesses, @PolyRob, @speedyfishy, @wendow, @kmc8826, @striker1064, @vanjust14, @bernina, and anyone else I might’ve missed for all the encouragement and advice along the way.

I was looking at award space on United for next Christmas over the weekend, and wow dynamic pricing is really in effect. Last year, I was able to book saver award seats to HNL for 22.5k miles per person, each way. This year, economy saver awards are running 45k miles per person, each way. I think I’m going to have to try a different approach this year.

But hey, while I was clicking around United’s schedule, I noticed I could fly my family to Japan over Thanksgiving week for 35k miles per person, each way. So I’m going to! (I think we’re going to be in Japan while @ten6mom is still there!) It’s crazy to think United will fly us all the way to Japan for fewer miles than it would take to fly to Hawaii. But here we are. So a little past midnight, with my ladies asleep, I made a snap decision to forego our family tradition of spending Thanksgiving at Disneyland and taking the family to Tokyo instead. If we spend Thanksgiving Day at Tokyo Disneyland, that still counts right? Anyway, I booked our flights using United miles. Sadly, no lie flat seats for us. I’m flying a family of 3 and have a little redshirt who’s not in the game yet, so I need to budget our points and miles. I’ll be using my airline fee credits to bump us up to Economy+. I transferred some UR over to Hyatt and booked three nights at the Andaz Toranomon Hills for 30k/night. I used Hilton points, and booked three more nights at the Hilton Tokyo Bay for 80k/night. I need to math that last one out. Anyway, it’s an amazing feeling to have planned all this out in less than two hours, and very humbling to realize I have the points and miles to do all of this. I ran all this by DW in the morning, and she eagerly agreed it was a good change of pace. But before then, it was 2 a.m., and like my man Ted Mosby said,

Keep on churning on!

Congrats! I still think that someday I might be able to buy DVC--the closest I have gotten is a resale contract being taken back by Disney.

 

[Calfan]

Also, Lyft connects to the following for credits: Hilton, Delta, Samsung Rewards (which aren't that great) and Pei. Are there any others I may be missing (besides the obvious CSR)? When I request a ride it tells me I have a promo of $5 off 3 rides from Hilton, this may be an Aspire thing that I've ignored until now? I haven't looked yet. I'm totally not up to date on all the Lyft discounts, etc.

I didn't see anyone else respond to this yet, but you can also access Lyft through the Rakuten app and get 25 MR per ride.

New Staples offer on my Amex BBP...10% off up to $50 expires 6/30

Got this one too!

 

[palhockeymomof2]

Hey everybody! I've been reading this thread for a few days and decided to actually post and ask for some advice.

I am planning a trip for Nov 2021 for 4 of us. 2 adults and a will be 13 ds and 6 dd. We want to do at least 3 days at Universal studios, 2 at Disney and spend a day/night at the beach. We've never been to Universal but have been to Disney 3 times.

I have the Disney card with the annual fee and use it as our primary card, paying any bills possible and all of our regular spending. Chase's website shows I spent about $63,000 on my Disney card last year.

The only card I've opened in the last 2 years I believe is a store card at Big Lots.

I don't want to stop using my Disney card entirely, because I plan to use those rewards to pay for a large part of the Disney portion of our trip. I currently have $750ish in points on it.
I'm wondering what would be the best card (s) to help cover hotels and car rentals. We plan to stay at least one night on universal property to get the included express pass, but otherwise are open to off property.

I have a southwest card (the one with the $
69 fee) with very little points as we used them for our trip 2 years ago. We are planning to open one in hubby's name to get the bonus and help with flights.

Any suggestions? Thanks in advance!

Most of us here start with Chase cards since they have a 5/24 rule...and their UR points are very versatile...they can be used to book flight, hotels(universal too but not Disney), transferred to travel partners like SW or cashed out......sounds like you are 1/24...which is great

if you are interested in business cards The Chase Ink Preferred CIP has a 80k UR sign up bonus after spending $5 in the first 3 months....you could open one then send your husband a support link so you would receive an additional 20k URs and he gets the 80k bonus as well...after completing the spend on both cards you would have 190k URs...which equal $1,900 if you cashed them out.

for personal cards the Chase Sapphire Preferred CSP has the highest sign up bonus 60k URs after a $4k spend....you could also send a support link to your DH...earning $15k URs...after you both completed the spend you would have 143k URs....
There is also a Sapphire advanced strategy discussed in our private DISchurners group on reddit that you could do....just PM @SouthFayetteFan, @Lain or @Albort to join

 

[georgina]

We did DC years ago, we flew into Reagan. Took the Metro to Old Town Alexandria, stayed at the Embassy Suites right across the street from the station. It was a great choice. Then we took the metro everywhere, no rental car. It was super easy and convenient.

Love Alexandria! Planning to move to the general area in a year or so. When we stayed last summer, the metro out that way was shut down for construction, but our hotel gave us free water taxi passes. Took the water taxi to the new waterfront area which had free shuttle buses to the Nat'l mall.

 

[mmmears]

@Lain I'm impressed, as always. Excited for you and that late night trip you planned. I love it when things just fall together sometimes.

 

[mmmears]

Saw this on one of the FB groups I'm in and thought it might be helpful to some here.

View attachment 466924

Thank you so much for sharing. This is really helpful!

 

[gottalovepluto]

For those with Costco Executive memberships... discovered today only "primary cardholder" and "primary household member" receive the executive 2% back. Our business has had this costco executive membership for years with 3-4 cardholders on the membership at any given time, we had no idea that 2% Executive bonus wasn't being awarded to spend on cards #3 and #4. Been like this for years. Feel like an idiot, what a gotcha...

 

[Lain]

@Lain how did you do this with points? im intrigued gift cards?

No, DVC has to be purchased in “cash” (or financed). However, if you purchase directly from Disney (and are willing to pay their premium), you can pay with as many credit cards as you’d like to earn points, hit MSRs, etc. You still need to be able to pay off those credit cards though, and I cashed out enough MR and UR points to cover the purchase. Amex MR can be cashed out at 1.25 cpp via a Charles Schwab Platinum into a Schwab brokerage account. Chase UR can be cashed out at 1 cpp as a statement credit or into any bank account. (DVC annual maintenance fees can be paid with Disney Gift Cards.)

Of course, you can redeem or transfer MR and UR points through their travel portals or to airline and hotel partners for greater than 1-1.25 cpp redemption values, and I understand how some people may scoff at my use of 1.2 million MRs and 500k URs (all the lie flat seats and RTW trips I’d be giving up!). But we’ve been earning points faster than we can manage to spend them, and we didn’t have a pressing need for all these points in the next year. Meanwhile, we’ll likely continue to go back to Hawaii and need a place to stay year after year. So this makes sense for us. The game keeps getting tougher, and banks and their travel partners are likely to continue cracking down on churning and devaluing their currencies, or worse. Even after cashing out, we’re still sitting on a “comfortable” amount of points for our use in the next year or two, and I’ll keep earning points to bring those totals back up for whatever’s next.

 

[alryan]

Hey everybody! I've been reading this thread for a few days and decided to actually post and ask for some advice.

I am planning a trip for Nov 2021 for 4 of us. 2 adults and a will be 13 ds and 6 dd. We want to do at least 3 days at Universal studios, 2 at Disney and spend a day/night at the beach. We've never been to Universal but have been to Disney 3 times.

I have the Disney card with the annual fee and use it as our primary card, paying any bills possible and all of our regular spending. Chase's website shows I spent about $63,000 on my Disney card last year.

The only card I've opened in the last 2 years I believe is a store card at Big Lots.

I don't want to stop using my Disney card entirely, because I plan to use those rewards to pay for a large part of the Disney portion of our trip. I currently have $750ish in points on it.
I'm wondering what would be the best card (s) to help cover hotels and car rentals. We plan to stay at least one night on universal property to get the included express pass, but otherwise are open to off property.

I have a southwest card (the one with the $
69 fee) with very little points as we used them for our trip 2 years ago. We are planning to open one in hubby's name to get the bonus and help with flights.

Any suggestions? Thanks in advance!

Welcome!!! You are in the right place. With your trip not until 2021 you have plenty of time to rack up a ton of points. Depending how deep you want to get in this game, your 63k yearly organic spend could get you so much more value than the Disney. And with no cards for the past 24 months you have every option available to you. No cards for your husband either in the past 24? The other question before we recommend any cards would be if you would be open to business cards. Most of us here are able to get multiple business cards with selling on Ebay, tutoring, etc. We like to recommend Chase cards because you can't have 5 or more open cards in the past 24 months. If you do have a "business" the Chase Ink Preferred has a 80k bonus with a $5000 spend. Even if you cashed them out, they are worth 1 cent/point, so $800. So more than the Disney card earned you with 63k of spend. Chase cards earn Ultimate Rewards and they have many cards with sign up bonuses. You would not be able to book onsite Disney, but you could use them for onsite at Universal, off site Disney, and even Universal tickets. If you don't want to start with a business it sounds like SW cards would be good for you as well. You could have your DH sign up with a support link from your current card. The current offer is 75k. Trying to get the companion pass might also be a good option for you. If you join our group on Reddit you can get more information about that there.

 

[CaliforniaGirl09]

For all you parents out there whose kids are older and you're thinking about getting rid of toys... my inexpert and personal experience suggests that Legos are definitely a good bet. Really regretting the temper tantrum I had this summer where I took bins full to Salvation Army in a fit of rage instead of spending the time to to through and sort them. My older son also gave away probably 20 ships (mostly Star Wars) to his younger cousin. I'm sad he didn't want to keep them or go to the trouble of selling them but at least it's all in the family!

I did have a couple unopened boxes of assorted things and those are the ones I currently have listed and that seem to be garnering the most interest.

Oh, and also some random Disney things have sold (of course!)

So funny about the Legos. We are new empty nesters and did a huge downsize last year before selling our house. I literally got rid of 50+ pieces of furniture and 75% of our belongings. I did a combination of donation, consignment, auctions, eBay, craig's list, real real, etc., to get rid of things. Can you guess what had the best return? LEGOs!!! DD20 is a huge lego fan and we've always gotten her the big (i.e. expensive) lego kits for birthday/Christmas. She had things like Big Ben, the Tower of London, the Disney Castle, etc. We sold about 9-10 sets (with boxes) on Craigslist and I think averaged about 80-90% of retail value. A couple were more than we paid. Crazy! The only other items that came close were my handbags and shoes on Real Real, but they take a cut. The worst? I had three sets of expensive china that I could barely give away, LOL.

 

[NewbieMom]

Hey all. My kiddo woke me up way too early so I thought I’d use this time to (try to) catch up.

I haven’t been around much because I’ve been busy, but also so exhausted. The long weekend didn’t really help, despite staying local, what with spending time with the kiddo and trying (finally) to get our home in order for the new year. Is it still only January?

The churn goes on!

I finished my CS Platinum and Hilton Aspire MSRs way too quickly, and both SUBs posted promptly. I got a 15k MR/$2k MSR retention offer on my Gold, despite spending over $30k on its 4x categories last year. Not great, but not bad considering it’s a card I’m keeping anyway. I guess the takeaway is spend, but don’t spend too much on only the bonus categories? I’m taking the MSR on my Biz Platinum a little more slowly, and spending organically where it makes sense on the rest of my Amex cards to keep the pop ups away. Meanwhile, DW is on her way to building up her MR balance. She finished the MSR on her 45k MR Green and we used the Away credit to get a blush pink carry on for DD that she happily wheeled around on our trip to Hawaii. DW also finished up her 25k MR Biz Green and picked up the tiered 75k MR Biz Gold recently. DW also got the Hyatt card, and I plan to get my own sometime after I get back under 5/24. It’ll be a long couple of months until then.

On redemptions, I don’t know if it’s premature to say, but we bought DVC at Aulani — with points. We’re still doing the paperwork and the balance isn’t due for a few weeks, but yeah, we've got our DVC account and points and – it’s happening!

This is something DW and I had thought about for years, but the timing or budget never seemed right. Meanwhile, we’ve spent some part of our last four holidays at Aulani as well as an impromptu trip there last October, and too many thousands of dollars on Disney Gift Cards. And we’ll likely keep returning to Aulani as long as we continue to visit family in Hawaii. It just made sense. And it really is our happy place. We looked into resale, and we took a tour while at Aulani (and scored $150 in Disney Gift Cards), and in the end we felt more comfortable buying direct and adding on via resale later. And hey, we'll get a "blue card"! Although we’re probably getting a little more than half the value going direct vs. resale, being comfortable with the purchase was important, and we’ll get the 2019 UY points that we've noticed are [along with 2020 UY] often stripped from a lot of contracts on the resale market, and that gives us some time to find a resale contract that’ll work as an add-on. We just had to make the money work. So I’ve cashed out 1.2 million MR and 500k UR to fund our purchase, and we don’t have to worry about anything out of pocket or when we'll "break even." We’ll hit several MSRs with this purchase, and pay for it with cash from points. It’s a tidy circle.

I never thought about using credit card rewards to buy DVC, but then @hulagirl put the thought into my head. Thank you for the inception, @hulagirl.

And special thanks to @calypso726, @3 DD love princesses, @PolyRob, @speedyfishy, @wendow, @kmc8826, @striker1064, @vanjust14, @bernina, and anyone else I might’ve missed for all the encouragement and advice along the way.

I was looking at award space on United for next Christmas over the weekend, and wow dynamic pricing is really in effect. Last year, I was able to book saver award seats to HNL for 22.5k miles per person, each way. This year, economy saver awards are running 45k miles per person, each way. I think I’m going to have to try a different approach this year.

But hey, while I was clicking around United’s schedule, I noticed I could fly my family to Japan over Thanksgiving week for 35k miles per person, each way. So I’m going to! (I think we’re going to be in Japan while @ten6mom is still there!) It’s crazy to think United will fly us all the way to Japan for fewer miles than it would take to fly to Hawaii. But here we are. So a little past midnight, with my ladies asleep, I made a snap decision to forego our family tradition of spending Thanksgiving at Disneyland and taking the family to Tokyo instead. If we spend Thanksgiving Day at Tokyo Disneyland, that still counts right? Anyway, I booked our flights using United miles. Sadly, no lie flat seats for us. I’m flying a family of 3 and have a little redshirt who’s not in the game yet, so I need to budget our points and miles. I’ll be using my airline fee credits to bump us up to Economy+. I transferred some UR over to Hyatt and booked three nights at the Andaz Toranomon Hills for 30k/night. I used Hilton points, and booked three more nights at the Hilton Tokyo Bay for 80k/night. I need to math that last one out. Anyway, it’s an amazing feeling to have planned all this out in less than two hours, and very humbling to realize I have the points and miles to do all of this. I ran all this by DW in the morning, and she eagerly agreed it was a good change of pace. But before then, it was 2 a.m., and like my man Ted Mosby said,

Keep on churning on!

Congratulations!! Absolutely amazing!!

 

[wed100105]

@Lain congratulations! I would love to own DVC. I'm thinking DH would possibly get on board with a totally paid for purchase with points! Enjoy planning all of your trips. We love Aulani, too!

 

[pinkxray]

Does anyone have any $ saving tips for cruising on NCL?
I’d like to book a cruise for 2021 while they have $50 deposit.

Also looking for tips on booking a family of 5 on Ncl.Do they have balcony rooms available for 5 if I call?

 

[Lain]

@Lain congratulations! I would love to own DVC. I'm thinking DH would possibly get on board with a totally paid for purchase with points! Enjoy planning all of your trips. We love Aulani, too!

That's how I got DW on board, too. We've gone back and forth on buying DVC for years, even as it became increasingly apparent that buying at Aulani made sense for us; but the upfront cost was always a major barrier we couldn't justify. Meanwhile, the points cost kept climbing and rack rates kept going up every year. So when I pitched the idea of cashing out points for the purchase (thanks guys!), I could see the gears turning in DW's head and she agreed we'd look into it. Our points are our vacation stash, entirely separate from our household budget; so even though points have cash value, we can afford to splurge a little on a vacation "home." We looked at resale, and it really is a better value. But we took the tour, and DW just felt more comfortable dealing directly with Disney. And since this is a joint venture, I want whatever makes DW happy.

 

[LB002]

Hey all. My kiddo woke me up way too early so I thought I’d use this time to (try to) catch up.

I haven’t been around much because I’ve been busy, but also so exhausted. The long weekend didn’t really help, despite staying local, what with spending time with the kiddo and trying (finally) to get our home in order for the new year. Is it still only January?

The churn goes on!

I finished my CS Platinum and Hilton Aspire MSRs way too quickly, and both SUBs posted promptly. I got a 15k MR/$2k MSR retention offer on my Gold, despite spending over $30k on its 4x categories last year. Not great, but not bad considering it’s a card I’m keeping anyway. I guess the takeaway is spend, but don’t spend too much on only the bonus categories? I’m taking the MSR on my Biz Platinum a little more slowly, and spending organically where it makes sense on the rest of my Amex cards to keep the pop ups away. Meanwhile, DW is on her way to building up her MR balance. She finished the MSR on her 45k MR Green and we used the Away credit to get a blush pink carry on for DD that she happily wheeled around on our trip to Hawaii. DW also finished up her 25k MR Biz Green and picked up the tiered 75k MR Biz Gold recently. DW also got the Hyatt card, and I plan to get my own sometime after I get back under 5/24. It’ll be a long couple of months until then.

On redemptions, I don’t know if it’s premature to say, but we bought DVC at Aulani — with points. We’re still doing the paperwork and the balance isn’t due for a few weeks, but yeah, we've got our DVC account and points and – it’s happening!

This is something DW and I had thought about for years, but the timing or budget never seemed right. Meanwhile, we’ve spent some part of our last four holidays at Aulani as well as an impromptu trip there last October, and too many thousands of dollars on Disney Gift Cards. And we’ll likely keep returning to Aulani as long as we continue to visit family in Hawaii. It just made sense. And it really is our happy place. We looked into resale, and we took a tour while at Aulani (and scored $150 in Disney Gift Cards), and in the end we felt more comfortable buying direct and adding on via resale later. And hey, we'll get a "blue card"! Although we’re probably getting a little more than half the value going direct vs. resale, being comfortable with the purchase was important, and we’ll get the 2019 UY points that we've noticed are [along with 2020 UY] often stripped from a lot of contracts on the resale market, and that gives us some time to find a resale contract that’ll work as an add-on. We just had to make the money work. So I’ve cashed out 1.2 million MR and 500k UR to fund our purchase, and we don’t have to worry about anything out of pocket or when we'll "break even." We’ll hit several MSRs with this purchase, and pay for it with cash from points. It’s a tidy circle.

I never thought about using credit card rewards to buy DVC, but then @hulagirl put the thought into my head. Thank you for the inception, @hulagirl.

And special thanks to @calypso726, @3 DD love princesses, @PolyRob, @speedyfishy, @wendow, @kmc8826, @striker1064, @vanjust14, @bernina, and anyone else I might’ve missed for all the encouragement and advice along the way.

I was looking at award space on United for next Christmas over the weekend, and wow dynamic pricing is really in effect. Last year, I was able to book saver award seats to HNL for 22.5k miles per person, each way. This year, economy saver awards are running 45k miles per person, each way. I think I’m going to have to try a different approach this year.

But hey, while I was clicking around United’s schedule, I noticed I could fly my family to Japan over Thanksgiving week for 35k miles per person, each way. So I’m going to! (I think we’re going to be in Japan while @ten6mom is still there!) It’s crazy to think United will fly us all the way to Japan for fewer miles than it would take to fly to Hawaii. But here we are. So a little past midnight, with my ladies asleep, I made a snap decision to forego our family tradition of spending Thanksgiving at Disneyland and taking the family to Tokyo instead. If we spend Thanksgiving Day at Tokyo Disneyland, that still counts right? Anyway, I booked our flights using United miles. Sadly, no lie flat seats for us. I’m flying a family of 3 and have a little redshirt who’s not in the game yet, so I need to budget our points and miles. I’ll be using my airline fee credits to bump us up to Economy+. I transferred some UR over to Hyatt and booked three nights at the Andaz Toranomon Hills for 30k/night. I used Hilton points, and booked three more nights at the Hilton Tokyo Bay for 80k/night. I need to math that last one out. Anyway, it’s an amazing feeling to have planned all this out in less than two hours, and very humbling to realize I have the points and miles to do all of this. I ran all this by DW in the morning, and she eagerly agreed it was a good change of pace. But before then, it was 2 a.m., and like my man Ted Mosby said,

Keep on churning on!

That's lots of exciting news, congrats!!!

 

[magickingdomprincess]

@Lain Congrats and welcome home! We have a small BCV contract purchased eleven years ago and I've never regretted it! I did the opposite - bought resale then did a small add-on through Disney. Hoping we can make it to Aulani next year!

 

[LB002]

Does anyone have any $ saving tips for cruising on NCL?
I’d like to book a cruise for 2021 while they have $50 deposit.

Also looking for tips on booking a family of 5 on Ncl.Do they have balcony rooms available for 5 if I call?

I just booked NCL for August for my family of 4and.my best friend's family of 5. We have adjacent family ocean view state rooms that sleep 5. There didn't seem to be an option to have adjoining rooms (connected by a door) in this category. Another option is 2 adjoining 4-person state rooms - you get more space and 2 bathrooms that way. So e people also do a balcony/ocean view and an inside stateroom right across from eachother to cut costs.

There has been a lot of talk over the last 5 pages or so re: booking cruises through Chase, paying for all or some with URs. We personally paid cash for the cruise bc I depleted URs for other travel this year.

As for the $50 deposit, they've been running that promo since I started looking at cruises in September. Can't say when they will change it, but just saying!

 

[AmyAnne]

Another option is 2 adjoining 4-person state rooms - you get more space and 2 bathrooms that way. So e people also do a balcony/ocean view and an inside stateroom right across from eachother to cut costs.

This is what we have always done on cruises (fam of 6), although we have always done 2 inside staterooms. My point of view is that there are always plenty of places on the ship to see outside (usually where there is also coffee); I don't need my own private view. But I do need 2 bathrooms.

 

[wanderlust7]

Does anyone have any $ saving tips for cruising on NCL?
I’d like to book a cruise for 2021 while they have $50 deposit.

Also looking for tips on booking a family of 5 on Ncl.Do they have balcony rooms available for 5 if I call?

You can find a TA that gives about 10% discount or as OBC. Sometimes there are Amex offers. Not quite as often as for Carnival, but they work for buying OBC (unlike Carnival).