✈️ The secret way to book vacation rentals with points

Estimated read time: 4 minutes and 43 seconds

Good morning from beautiful Malmö, Sweden! If you haven’t heard of it, it’s basically the cooler younger brother of Copenhagen, which is just a short bridge away… Don’t tell the Danes, but I think it’s better… 👀

Anyway, today is packed with three epic travel hacking tips, so let’s get into that sweet content, shall we?

• 🚨 LAST CALL - the best credit card offer is ending soon

• 🏠 The secret way to book vacation rentals with points

• 🏃🏼‍♂️ Mike on the Move: I canceled another trip (😭)

🚨 LAST CALL - the best credit card offer is ending soon

I know this is probably news to most of you since we definitely haven’t told you about it a thousand times, but right now, we are seeing one of the best-ever welcome offers on what is unanimously agreed to be the single best credit card to grace our universe.

But I have terrible news for you… the offer on the [[ chase-sapphire-preferred-card.name ]] is ending soon. VERY soon… like, one or two days soon.

Since we’ve already told you about so many ways that you can turn this into THOUSANDS of dollars worth of free travel, I’ll just link to some of those pieces for you to check out.

• Deep dive article

• How to get fancy with the [[ chase-sapphire-preferred-card.casual-card-name ]]

• Why the [[ chase-sapphire-preferred-card.casual-card-name ]] (and offer) are so valuable

And if you’ve been following our friends Kara and Nate around on the Instagram, you’ve probably seen them hanging out on a private(ish) island recently (super jealous, by the way).

They’ll be publishing a video about their experience this weekend, but you may be interested to hear that you can actually book that exact same island using points from the [[ chase-sapphire-preferred-card.casual-card-name ]] (and transferring them to Hyatt).

As you can see, this hotel costs $3,000 per night... but you could book it with the points you earn from a credit card. 🤯

So if you aren’t excited by this point, we need to have a little chat so I can knock some sense into you…

And if you have no clue what I’m talking about, this video will reveal all: 👇

🏠 The secret way to book vacation rentals with points

Alright… I’m going to say something I never thought I’d say…

Ready?

I think I’m REALLY excited about earning Wyndham points…

Think I’m crazy? I get it. And you’re probably right. But at least hear me out.

Wyndham has some decent value for its points, plus the occasional promotion.

But there is a SECRET sweet spot that turns Wyndham points into some of the most valuable out there.

I’m talking about Vacasa Vacation Rentals.

If you haven’t heard of this company before, It’s basically like Airbnb. The main difference is that the homes are nice.

…Oh, and you can book them with Wyndham points for EXCELLENT value.

Here’s how it works:

• Rentals cost 15,000 points per night per room

• Example: A one-bedroom rental will cost 15,000 points per night, while a two-bedroom rental will cost 30,000 points per night

• If you own a Wyndham credit card, you’ll get a 10% discount

• Bookings are freely cancelable up to 30 days prior to check-in, otherwise, you must forfeit your points if you cancel

So yeah. 15,000 points per night is a solid deal, considering a one-bedroom vacation rental can fit quite a few people given the extra space compared to a hotel room.

Let me give you a quick example of how sweet this is.

This rental in Lake Tahoe runs for a cool $351 per night, before taxes and fees. All in all, this rental would cost $2,031 for a four-night stay. 

That’s a lot of money…

As you can see, this property is listed as a one-bedroom. That means that instead of $2,031, you could simply use 60,000 Wyndham points.

If you own a Wyndham credit card, however, you’d only be paying 54,000 points total, which makes this an even better deal.

When you use points for a stay, you aren’t liable for any taxes or fees. The points cover everything.

In this scenario, you’d be getting a value of 3.3 cents per point. For reference, Wyndham points are generally worth just over one cent per point on a good day…

The best part about this proposition is that you can transfer points from multiple banks to Wyndham, including from the [[ citi-strata-premier-card.name ]] and the [[ capital-one-venture-x-rewards-credit-card.name ]].

These properties aren’t bookable with points online, but you can do it in just a few minutes by calling Wyndham’s dedicated phone number:

1-800-441-1034

Overall, this gives us all a HUGE reason to get excited about Wyndham. So next time I share one of their promos with you, don’t write it off entirely - you might be able to milk it for a nice vacation rental or two.

🏃🏼‍♂️ Mike on the Move: I canceled another trip (😭)

I have some good news and some bad news.

The good news is that I’m on the move again (yay).

The bad news is that I just canceled my trip to Greenland, which I was supposed to be heading off on in just a few short days. I’m definitely sad, as this was something I was looking forward to for a long, long time.

But for reasons I won’t get into here, it unfortunately had to get the boot.

Around six months ago, I paid about $420 for this entire round-trip flight from Copenhagen to Nuuk via Kangerlussuaq with Air Greenland (on their sexy new Airbus A330-800neo, no less).

The reason I booked this so far off was that the ticket normally costs well over a thousand dollars. Not knowing if I’d even end up taking it, I took my chance to book the flight and ended up building this lovely trip around it.

Unfortunately, the only way to get the ticket at this insanely low price was to book a non-flexible, non-changeable, non-refundable ticket…

So you may be feeling bad for me knowing that I just lost $420 from canceling this non-refundable flight… but you’d be wrong to feel that way.

That’s because I actually only lost $120 and received the remaining $287 back as a refund…

Now you’re probably thinking,

Well, I’m going to tell you how it happened - because it’s a rule you should know about.

And no, my credit card insurance couldn’t help me out on this one…

You see, when you buy a flight, the cost is broken up into two main buckets: airfare and taxes/fees.

When you cancel a ticket, even if it’s completely non-refundable, you are still entitled to receive the taxes of your ticket back as a refund. Period.

Most of the time, the taxes account for a relatively small portion of your ticket.

But sometimes, flights be weird, y’all.

For example, with my ticket, the VAST majority of the ticket was comprised of taxes, while only just over $100 was the actual airfare.

It may have been because the flight was in a weird place with high taxes (Greenland), or it may have been some sort of error fare.

I don’t know, I don’t make the rules - I just manipulate them to my liking.

So the moral of the story is this: If you book an inflexible ticket with an airline and end up needing to cancel, always know that you can at least get some of it back in your pocket.

It may not be much, but it’s a nice small win… and sometimes, it can even be a pretty big win.

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That’s gonna do it for today, my friends. Although I’m bummed not to be going to Greenland this week, I’m definitely stoked to get some extra time here in Sweden, one of the most beautiful places in the world.

It’s a good reminder of how lucky I am to get to travel this much in the first place, even though things don’t always go according to plan.

Take care, and I look forward to seeing your beautiful faces (or email addresses) tomorrow morning. ❤️

55.6050° N, 13.0038° E