Sickness has run through the household, starting with the kid (who likely brought it home from the petri dish that is called high school), to Gene and then to Stephanie (me). This sickness brings with it a sore throat and a nasty cough and has just generally made each of us feel crappy. I am thankful that we all seemed to get this bug consecutively rather than concurrently (although Gene is still not 100%) so that there is always someone to pick up the slack around the house. The kid even made dinner the other night! Fried rice, of course. The kid makes some mean fried rice.
In case you were wondering about the division of labor on this blog, I am the primary writer and Gene is the idea guy. Gene has lots of great ideas about what this blog post should be this week. But this bug has affected my ability to think clearly and do the heavy lift of taking a blank page and filling it with words that others will find both useful and entertaining. I just can’t right now.
So today’s post will be short. We did want to tell you about a travel hack that is getting Gene to Chicago for a mostly free trip. I have a conference to go to in Chicago in July and I suggested that Gene go with me. He can explore during the day (or work, depending on the workload situation) and we can hang out together in the evenings.
But I knew I wanted to try to maximize our travel points as much as possible. Before I started booking anything, I verified with work that I could use my personal credit card to get the points and have them reimburse me for my travel expenses. Once they gave the go-ahead, I started searching for hotels in the area that were walkable to the conference and had free breakfast (We. Love. Free. Breakfast). I also snagged a hotel chain recommendation from someone at the company who travels to Chicago a lot so I wouldn’t be booking anything sketchy.
I found the perfect hotel and used Capital One Travel to book it. Using the Capital One travel portal and our Capital One Venture X card to book the hotel gave me 10x points on that booking (there was also a coupon available for $50 off accommodations in Chicago – you’re welcome, work!). I will be at the conference for 4 nights, and Chicago hotels are not cheap. Even though I chose a mid-price option, the cost was up there.
In the end, I was rewarded with 13,000 travel miles to use, the equivalent of $130. I already had $150 in travel rewards banked up from our regular spending on that card for household expenses (see this blog post about how we use our travel rewards card for EVERYTHING), so with the hotel booking miles I had $280 to spend on airfare for Gene. I found a flight for $287, making our out-of-pocket cost for the flight a whopping 7 bucks!
We’ll say it again, if you aren’t using a travel rewards card, start now! Your future self will thank you!
Okay, I’m off to drink more fluids and take some more medicine.
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