How to Travel to Hawaii on Points: A Beginner’s Guide with Points Talk

270_How to Start Using Points and Miles for Hawaii with Points Talk

[00:00:00] Travel Hawaii on Points

[00:00:00] Bryan Murphy: Coming up on Huai’s Best.

[00:00:02] Alex Payne: So I book my husband’s flight, my flight, and two of our kids with points, and then two of our other kids are listed as our companions. All we pay is the $5.60 each way for those kids.

[00:00:14] Bryan Murphy: If you’ve ever wondered how people are traveling to Hawaii on points, this is the episode for you, Alex and Jess from Points Talk explain exactly where to start and how to actually do it.

[00:00:26] Why This Episode

[00:00:26] Bryan Murphy: Aloha and welcome to Hawaii’s Best. I’m Brian Murphy, a Hawaii destination expert and your personal guide to planning a better Hawaii trip. Through practical tips, local voices, and stories from the islands, I’ll help you make the most of your time in Hawaii and stay connected between visits. Okay, full disclosure, I wanted to do this episode because I honestly have some questions.

[00:00:46] Bryan Murphy: I have a Hawaiian Airlines card. I’ve had it for years. I’ve used those miles, actually just used those miles recently for our trip to Oahu in January. So I’ve done a little bit of this. My brother-in-law, we’ve had conversations during family dinners about this. He’s kind of in the game quite a bit. So I’m still learning this.

[00:01:06] Bryan Murphy: I’ve always been a little hesitant because it seems overwhelming. I see people booking flights and hotels on points and I’m thinking, okay, am I missing something? And how many credit cards do you actually need to keep up and to like make this work? So today, I wanted to sit down and talk with Alex and Jess from Points Talk.

[00:01:25] Bryan Murphy: This is what they do. They’ve been doing this for over a decade. They both have taken their families to Hawaii on points and now they help others learn how to do it too, not just Hawaii, but really anywhere in the, in the world. So if you’re curious at all if you want to use points for a Hawaii trip, you know, where do you start?

[00:01:43] Bryan Murphy: How do you figure out which points you need, what card you need, and how do you game it all? How do you make this happen? And what does this look like when you’re booking for say like a family of four, five or six? How can you even make that happen? Because booking for two is one thing, but when you’re booking for a whole family, that’s a whole other strategy.

[00:02:01] Bryan Murphy: We get into that in this episode as well. The important part about this episode is that you don’t need to understand every program, every credit card offer to follow this conversation. We’re starting with the basic. Again, I’m still learning this and I’m asking beginner questions throughout this. So I do wanna mention that this is educational.

[00:02:21] Bryan Murphy: This is not personal financial advice. Alex and Jess clearly emphasize paying your cards off in full every month. So please keep your own finances in mind as you listen to this conversation. I’ve also put together a free beginner’s guide to help you get started. There’s a lot of details in this, so I’ll let you know how you can get that at the end of this episode.

[00:02:42] Bryan Murphy: So let’s go ahead. We’re gonna talk story with Alex and Jess from Point Stop.

[00:02:52] Points Basics and Safety

[00:02:52] Bryan Murphy: Where would somebody even start in like how to travel to Hawaii on points? To me, this, it still seems so overwhelming. Like where do you even start with that?

[00:03:00] Jess: So I think that the main thing is that no matter where you wanna travel to, the basics are gonna be the same. When it comes to points and miles, we do have a lot of experience with Hawaii.

[00:03:11] Jess: Alex travels to Hawaii like twice a year, it seems like recently on points. She is based in Salt Lake City. I’m in the Houston area. I have gone to Hawaii a handful of times on points now. I think a lot of people hear like, “Oh, we use credit card points and miles.” And they think, “Oh, I do that too,” because they have a Costco card or they have a United card and they’re putting all of their spend on that card.

[00:03:38] Jess: We like to call that the slow burn. Okay. Because yes, you are earning points. You’re eventually gonna rack up enough points and miles to, you know, take a free flight or two, but it’s just gonna take you a very long time to get to that point. And so I think the first thing to understand is like what we do is we are opening credit cards to leverage those welcome offers that come with the credit card.

[00:04:01] Jess: So you’ll see a c – it’s like open this card, spend X amount of money and you’ll get 75,000 miles or 100,000 points or 200,000 points. That’s what we’re doing. So we’re basically charging, treating those credit cards like a debit card, charging our everyday spend, dining out groceries, gas, medical expenses, just charging those to credit cards, paying them off every month on time and in full so you’re not paying interest on them and then racking up those points and miles.

[00:04:28] Alex Payne: And if you’re paying interest, you’re not getting nearly free travel. It totally defeats the purpose. So if you cannot, you know yourself, if you cannot pay your credit cards off each month, like I just set mine to autopay to pay the statement balance so I’m not paying any interest. If you can’t do that, it’s not worth getting into this hobby and getting yourself in a financial mess.

[00:04:47] Alex Payne: It’s just not worth it.

[00:04:49] Flexible Points Starter Cards

[00:04:49] Jess: If you get cards that have flexible points and miles, that’s one thing we like to really emphasize. So you could say, “I have a United card.” Okay, that’s, that’s good. But you could open something like the Chase Sapphire preferred card or the Chase Sapphire Reserve card that transfer to multiple partners.

[00:05:07] Jess: You can transfer your Chase points to United, but also to Southwest or to Hyatt or JetBlue. We like to make an analogy like your Chase Sapphire preferred card is like your wild card in UNO. You get all the different points and miles currencies and that just makes it that much easier to plan a trip because you’re not locked into one specific airline’s miles or hotels points.

[00:05:31] Jess: You can do a lot more with flexible points and miles.

[00:05:35] Bryan Murphy: So that Chase Sapphire, is that kind of like the unicorn card right now to have? Is that what you’d say or?

[00:05:41] Jess: That is our number one recommendation for beginners. Okay. Just because it has a lot of beginner friendly transfer partners. A lot of the other, like Capital One has a lot of international transfer partners, but like for someone who’s looking to go to Hawaii, something in the Chase sphere is probably a better option.

[00:06:02] Bryan Murphy: One of the things that feels overwhelming and maybe it’s just like do the spreadsheet or do the course or whatever and like figure it out because it feels like I’ll see some of your guys’ reels and it’s like all these credit cards. Like do you need multiple credit cards and how do you like make them all work together and keep track of all the points?

[00:06:21] Bryan Murphy: How does that all work?

[00:06:22] Plan Your Trip First

[00:06:22] Alex Payne: Well, when I first started, my goal when I got into this hobby was I want to go to Hawaii with… I just, it was just my husband and I. I started a little smaller and my plan was, okay, what, how are we gonna get there and where are we gonna stay? And I was very intentional about the cards that I opened to get me that exact trip.

[00:06:39] Alex Payne: So I knew we wanted to stay at the Grand Hyatt Kauai, which is a Hyatt property. And so I knew I needed to either open Hyatt cards or like Jess mentioned, the Chase Sapphire Reserve or preferred, those points can transfer to Hyatt. So I knew what points I needed and then I worked from there. I knew, okay, this is how many points at a night it costs to stay at this hotel.

[00:06:59] Alex Payne: How many Hyatt points do I need? And that made it so I wasn’t opening random cards and then trying to piece a trip together. It was – Gotcha. These are the exact cards I need and this is how I can do it. You’re gonna need more than one card if you want to, you know, especially if you’re taking a family, you’re gonna need more points.

[00:07:17] Alex Payne: But, you know, it just really depends on how big you wanna go. If you’re like, “Hey, we just wanna get our flights,” that’s amazing. If you’re like, “I wanna get our hotel too,” then you’re gonna need to open up more cards. But you can be very intentional about it, and I would recommend that to someone just starting out.

[00:07:33] Alex Payne: The nice thing about Hawaii, pretty much every, most of the domestic airlines fly there. There’s tons of airlines. There’s lots of different hotels on points. So that’s what makes it a repeatable destination on points, is you can be like, “Okay, we’re gonna go stay at a Hyatt this time. Okay, next time I’ll get some Marriott points.”

[00:07:50] Alex Payne: Or, you know, if you diversify the points you have, it makes it a little easier to keep going back.

[00:07:57] Bryan Murphy: For someone who’s listening, like right now, they have a trip planned to Hawaii a year away, what’s like the first thing they should be doing right now? Are they too late?

[00:08:06] Jess: I don’t think they’re too late. I do think what Alex pointed out as her, her strategy when she was getting started out, like, if you have a specific trip in mind, you know you wanna go to Hawaii, you know exactly which island you wanna stay on, start researching points option, like flight options from your home airport to that island.

[00:08:26] Jess: You know, see what options there even are. Once you see that, then you can kinda narrow down, okay, these are the airlines I need to focus on for earning points with those airlines. You could even do so, we call them dummy searches, but it’s basically like if you decided I’m gonna fly Southwest, you could go onto the Southwest website, do some practice searches, see what the points cost is looking like.

[00:08:47] Jess: You could look up the award calendar for September. Say you wanted to stay at the Hyatt Regency Maui, you could go onto the Hyatt website, you could pull up the points calendar, see how much those nights are going for for the nights you wanna stay there. And then like Alex said, you, now you know, okay, I need 100,000 points to stay four nights here, so these are the cards I’m gonna open to earn those points and be able to book it.

[00:09:10] Bryan Murphy: Gotcha. So I, I’m kinda picking up what you’re laying down a little bit, Jess. I’ve had the Hawaiian Airlines for years, miles, and like, okay, once a year, I, and I go three, four times a year, but like once a year, I can get my whole family there on, you know, points I’ve accumulated. But like, I feel like I’m playing the slow game.

[00:09:28] Southwest Companion Pass

[00:09:28] Bryan Murphy: Alex, for you, how do you strategize if you’re planning a trip with your family to Hawaii?

[00:09:34] Alex Payne: Last time we went, we did fly Hawaiian airlines there. We have a direct flight to Oahu from Salt Lake City, so that’s really nice. So we do do a bit of that, but I think what happens when you just stick with one airline, you are locked in with that.

[00:09:47] Alex Payne: So let’s say the flights are this price, like that’s your only option. Whereas if you have points with different programs, you can shop around a bit and be like, “Okay, Hawaiian’s charging me this much, but oh look, Southwest is charging me fewer points. I’m gonna book with Southwest this time.” So that’s when like having more cards just gives you more flexibility.

[00:10:06] Alex Payne: We’ve done, like I said, we’ve flown Hawaiian airlines there, but a lot of times we do Southwest Airlines. Southwest is unique because they have what’s called the Southwest Companion Pass, and you can earn that pass if you accumulate 135,000 Southwest points in one calendar year. So we typically earn this pass by opening up a personal card and a business card in the same year and completing that minimum spend and you can, you know, depending on what the offers are at the time, you can earn 135,000 points just from the two offers.

[00:10:38] Alex Payne: And then what that pass allows you to do is someone gets to fly free with you on all your flights. For the rest of the year, you earned it in all of the following year. Oh, wow. So in this case, my husband and I each have one of these. We book our flights. So I have four, we have four kids. So I book my husband’s flight, my flight, and two of our kids with points.

[00:10:56] Alex Payne: And then two of our other kids are listed as our companions, and we don’t, all we pay is the $5.60 each way for those kids. And so it stretches our points further and also works on cash tickets if someone didn’t have points or they don’t have enough points. So Southwest has actually been a really, really big one for us for going to and from Hawaii because with that companion pass, we’re able to get two tickets for free.

[00:11:22] Bryan Murphy: Whoo. Okay. So because I feel like I’ve kind of dabbled in it a little bit because I, I have a card, personal Hawaiian card, my wife has one, and then I have a business Hawaiian card, and then I did Alaska because I was able to get like points. So like, I feel like I’ve kind of almost fell dip my toes in it, but –

[00:11:39] Alex Payne: No, you’re doing great.

[00:11:41] Alex Payne: Okay, okay. The thing. Like when you start there, I mean, you’re doing more than the vast, vast majority of people. Really? Okay. So you’re doing great. Yeah.

[00:11:48] Bryan Murphy: Okay. One of the things, this is a, this is a direct question from my father-in-law, because you, you’ve mentioned companion fairs. Yeah. And, and I, I, I got kind of confused because I know Hawaiian does like a $100 off companion, but then Alaska has their own companion.

[00:12:03] Bryan Murphy: Are you familiar with Alaska’s Companion?

[00:12:05] Alex Payne: Yeah. The big difference with theirs is you cannot use it on a points ticket. So you have to – Oh,

[00:12:12] Bryan Murphy: okay.

[00:12:12] Alex Payne: Pay cash for a ticket, and then your companion flies. And it’s a one-time pass, whereas Southwest, you could fly every single day for the lifetime that you have that pass, so –

[00:12:23] Bryan Murphy: That’s crazy.

[00:12:24] Alex Payne: Let’s say you had it for a year and a half. You could fly for a year and a half, bring someone free-free with you every single time you fly. They do limit it to, you can change your companion three times. So you can name your companion, then you can change it three times. So you can have a total of four different companions during the life of your companion pass.

[00:12:44] Bryan Murphy: Okay. Okay.

[00:12:44] Jess: But you could literally fly 365 days a year with the Southwest Companion Pass, and you could use it every single time.

[00:12:51] Bryan Murphy: Wow.

[00:12:52] Player Two Referrals

[00:12:52] Alex Payne: If you diversify the points you have, it makes it a little easier to keep going back.

[00:12:57] Bryan Murphy: Oh, yeah. I have a Marriott card too.

[00:13:00] Alex Payne: There you go. Sitting there.

[00:13:01] Bryan Murphy: Goodness. It’s not enough points because I hardly use a card.

[00:13:04] Bryan Murphy: I try to figure out what to do and where to go.

[00:13:06] Jess: Yeah.

[00:13:06] Alex Payne: That’s when you open a new one because it’s the everyday spend is when you’re like, “Oh, man, I’m not earning that many points.” It’s one of those big signup bonuses are where you’ll really get, get the points.

[00:13:17] Jess: That’s when you refer your wife to the card, and then you get the referral points, and then she gets – Okay, wait a minute.

[00:13:23] Jess: The welcome offer points. ‘Cause if you already have the card open, you can refer her for it.

[00:13:28] Bryan Murphy: You just, like, just lob something out there so you can, like, kind of be a, an affiliate for your own deal, send it to your wife or your – Yeah. Significant other and stop it.

[00:13:37] Jess: Yes. We call this a player two, but – Okay. You know, a spouse, a partner, just a travel companion that they are really helpful when it comes to strategy because you can refer one another back and forth depending on the card you have.

[00:13:50] Jess: And then, you know, you earn the referral points, they earn the welcome offer, and it’s a great way to, like, really just amp up the amount you’re able to earn.

[00:13:59] Bryan Murphy: All right. Processing.

[00:14:00] Jess: And I will also say, I know you see, I know you said you get overwhelmed because you see, you know, the, the content we’re creating and we have, like, a million cards.

[00:14:08] Jess: I do wanna point out, I opened my first travel rewards card in 2015. I think Alex was just a year or two later. And so, we’ve been doing this for a decade, so don’t compare your chapter one to our chapter 10. You know, like, we’ve – Yeah. And this is our job, also.

[00:14:24] Bryan Murphy: Yeah. I can already hear, because I, it popped in my head.

[00:14:27] Bryan Murphy: Well, what about the $95 per year, you know, thing? And it’s like, well, what are you trading for that?

[00:14:33] Alex Payne: Exactly. Right. Okay. It’s like, you’re gonna get $1,000 worth of travel for a $95 fee. Right. And so you’re like, “Okay. I’m, I’m willing to pay $95 for someone to give me $1,000 in travel money.”

[00:14:45] Bryan Murphy: All right.

[00:14:46] Pinch Me Redemptions

[00:14:46] Bryan Murphy: We’re gonna take a little breath because I know we’ve been, like, we’re in the weeds of it all.

[00:14:49] Bryan Murphy: Uh, Jess, for you, and I’m thinking about, you know, people listening, like, “Okay, just hold on. Let me, let me process some of this.” For you, you’ve been to H- Hawaii a few times. Where has that one spot been where you, like, you got there, you’re like, “I can’t believe, like, I did this. Like, how did this happen?”

[00:15:06] Jess: Do you mean in Hawaii or just anywhere?

[00:15:07] Jess: No, no,

[00:15:08] Bryan Murphy: just anywhere, anywhere.

[00:15:09] Jess: So my husband and I went to Bora Bora on points, and we stayed in an Overwater villa at the Conrad Bora Bora on points. And I literally got our flights on points, and then I got our hotel stay at the Conrad Bora Bora on points. And I just remember sitting at my Overwater Villa and being like, “Oh my gosh, this is…”

[00:15:32] Jess: Like, I’m sitting in the middle of the ocean, you know, like – Yeah. In my own little villa, and I paid the taxes and fees. You know, that’s all I paid. That was pretty incredible. And then we also, my husband and I went to Italy, and we flew home on Emirates first class with points, which has a shower on board.

[00:15:54] Jess: And so, I literally took a shower… Aboard the plane and ate my caviar. And I was just like, I paid, I mean, I paid a couple hundred bucks in taxes for that flight. I didn’t grow up traveling. I didn’t fly for the first time till I was 18 years old. My family, we just didn’t have the money growing up to travel.

[00:16:14] Jess: We took road trips. That’s about it. And so, to be someone who flew Southwest Airlines from Houston to New Orleans as my very first flight ever at 18 years old, to going to Bora Bora and taking a shower on a plane for just the taxes and fees is pretty mind-blowing. And every day, I’m like, “Is this my life?

[00:16:33] Jess: Like, when am I gonna wake up?”

[00:16:35] Bryan Murphy: That’s crazy. Alex, what about you? I know a lot of trips to Hawaii, but, like, anywhere that kinda just, like, I can’t believe we did this.

[00:16:41] Alex Payne: Yeah. I mean, Hawaii is definitely one of them. That was our first trip on points with myself and my husband. And then the first time we took our kids to Hawaii, it was one of those things where it was like, oh, like, we don’t, you don’t take young kids to Hawaii.

[00:16:51] Alex Payne: Like, at least I didn’t. Like, that’s what rich people do. They can afford to take their young kids to Hawaii. And so when we did that, it was like, wow. I think our oldest was maybe nine or 10, and our youngest was, like, six months old. And so, they were pretty young, and that was, like, a pinch me type moment.

[00:17:08] Alex Payne: My first time flying business class, I flew Turkish Airlines to Istanbul, and then from there to Athens. And that was just an incredible experience. I remember being like, “Oh, man, I spent a lot of points on this. Like, maybe that was a bad idea.” I got on the plane, I was like, “This was not a bad, this was not a bad idea.”

[00:17:28] Alex Payne: And I can always earn more points. So those were, those were a couple of them. But yeah, there’s just, there’s so many after doing this for about 10 years now where sometimes you have to remind yourself, this isn’t normal… To go and fly to Europe and go stay in Santorini at an amazing hotel overlooking the Caldera.

[00:17:49] Alex Payne: Like, it’s a lot of pretty amazing pinch me moments.

[00:17:52] Jess: I will say I have a Hawaii pinch me moment. Okay. So the first time I ever went to Hawaii, it was in 2016, 2017, somewhere around there, we used points. And we stayed, we used Marriott Points to stay at Koloa Landing on Kauai. And I was going, I was walking to the, to the lobby to ask the front desk a question, and Viola Davis, the actress, walks through the door with her family.

[00:18:17] Jess: And my husband and I were watching How to Get Away with Murder at the time, like, really popular show, amazing actress. And I didn’t say anything to her because it’s like she was with her daughter. I didn’t, you know, they were on family vacation, but I ran back to our room and I was like, “We’re staying at the same resort as Viola Davis and we’re, we’re not paying any money.

[00:18:36] Jess: Like, this is crazy.” So he was, my husband was skeptical at first about the points and miles thing. Sure. And then once we started taking trips, he was like, “Okay, I’m down. Open whatever you gotta open. Get me some more credit cards.”

[00:18:49] Big Family Booking Strategies

[00:18:49] Bryan Murphy: You talked a lot about, like, family trips. How does this work if you’re booking four, five, six people?

[00:18:55] Bryan Murphy: Is it just multiplying the numbers or are there some strategies for traveling with a larger family?

[00:19:01] Alex Payne: Yeah. I mean, Jess likes to say it’s like following a recipe. You just gotta double your ingredients for – Oh,

[00:19:06] okay.

[00:19:07] Alex Payne: Okay. For a bigger recipe. But really, it’s just gonna take you more points to go with a family.

[00:19:13] Alex Payne: And the nice thing, uh, most hotels will accommodate four people. So you’re good. You should just be able to… One room should be plenty. It can get a little more tricky if you have more people. Yo might need two rooms, especially if, if you have older kids. One little trick that we do is we invite my parents to go with us, and then my parents will book a room on points, we’ll book a room on points.

[00:19:35] Alex Payne: I’ll put two of my kids on her reservation. So then there’s enough room for everybody. There you go. So that’s, that’s a nice little thing to be able to do. It really just comes down to, okay, how many people are you wanting to take? Do you need two rooms? Can you make one room work? And that’s where like a Southwest Companion Pass really comes in clutch too for a family to be able to get, you know, a kid or two covered with a companion pass is just huge.

[00:20:00] Jess: I have four kids, three step-kids, but four. There’s six of us total, and I took us to Kauai a couple years ago, and we flew Southwest with two companion passes. And then we had to get… My step-kids are older, and so we’re, we’re past the point of all sharing one room. We need at least two bathrooms. So I had to get us two rooms at the Grand Hyatt Kauai, which again, you know, it’s more points.

[00:20:24] Jess: It’s double the points that you’re gonna need for one room. Once your kids are old enough, they can start opening their own credit cards and contributing to the points balances also. So, you know, you have more people work to work with to earn the points. Like Alex, her oldest is 14, so she’s got, you know, another four years until he can s- start contributing to the points balances.

[00:20:46] Jess: But you do get to a point where they can, they can earn their keep, basically.

[00:20:50] Bryan Murphy: Okay. Yeah. As you were saying that, I was thinking I have a 16-year-old and like, okay, she’s only like a couple. And I made, uh, you know, there… I’ll put like a finan… There’s a financial disclaimer in all of this. I’ll put it at the beginning.

[00:21:01] Bryan Murphy: Yes. But like, when I was 18, like, I went out and bought a stereo at Circus City you know? Like, you know, I wasn’t traveling to borrow bar or anything like that. I, I think part of this, it’s responsibility and it’s not just willy-nilly, like, I’m just gonna go charge everything up and earn all these points.

[00:21:18] Bryan Murphy: And then, like, because you mentioned something, I think, Alex, I think you said this, you treat it like a debit card, you’re paying off, you’re not accruing interest.

[00:21:26] Alex Payne: Yeah. I mean, if you’re paying interest… And, and these cards do have high interest rates.

[00:21:30] Bryan Murphy: Right.

[00:21:31] Alex Payne: So you do not wanna be paying interest on them.

[00:21:33] Alex Payne: That’s how they, that’s how they make their money. They’re hoping that you… They’re hoping you do that. But the whole idea is we’re gonna be smarter than the system here, and we’re gonna make this be a benefit to us. And if you’re paying interest, you’re not getting nearly free travel. It totally defeats the purpose.

[00:21:46] Alex Payne: So if you cannot, you know yourself, if you cannot pay your credit cards off each month, like, I just set mine to auto-pay to pay the statement balance so I’m not paying any interest. If you can’t do that, it’s not worth getting into this hobby and s – getting yourself in a financial mess. It’s just not worth it.

[00:22:04] Beginner Mistakes and Fees

[00:22:04] Bryan Murphy: And doing in all this and coaching people, like, what are the biggest mistakes that you’ve seen beginners make when starting into this hobby?

[00:22:13] Jess: I think just opening cards willy-nilly, like Alex said, and not really having a plan. And seeing, like, like, okay, I live in Houston, right? So I’m in a United hub. We have, like, a pretty big Southwest presence here, but we have basically zero Delta presence, right?

[00:22:31] Jess: Alex is the opposite. She’s in Salt Lake City, that’s a Delta hub. So, you know, Delta could come out with this amazing offer, 200,000 points, but it doesn’t make sense for me to open that card because I don’t fly Delta. And so I think people see, “Oh, this card’s offering 100,000 points, or 200,000 points, or 300,000 points.

[00:22:50] Jess: I’m gonna get that card –

[00:22:51] Bryan Murphy: uh-huh.

[00:22:52] Jess: With no real plan for how they’re gonna use those points or miles.” And that’s why we really emphasize those cards that earn the flexible points and miles, because you do have so many options with those. Like, say I got the Sapphire Preferred, and my initial plan was to fly United to Hawaii, right?

[00:23:10] Jess: “Oh, I’m gonna transfer my points to United and fly that to Hawaii. “Well, then it comes time to book, and the flights are way more expensive than Southwest flights. I can just change my mind. I can say,” Okay, instead of transferring to United, I’m gonna transfer my points to Southwest, and I’m gonna fly Southwest to Hawaii.

[00:23:27] Jess: “So you just have that many more options with those. So I think opening cards, being afraid of annual fees, some of the very best cards out there have an annual fee, some have even a little bit of a very high annual fee, and I get that, you know, when you’re first starting out, you’re intimidated by those. I know I was intimidated by those, but I think, you know, do the math and say, like,” Yes, this card has a $300 annual fee, but I’m gonna get my entire family to Hawaii round trip by paying this $300, “which I’m assuming is gonna be less than paying for four flights to and from Hawaii, you know?

[00:24:02] Jess: And so don’t just see an annual fee and think,” Oh, nope, not getting it. “You know, you gotta kinda figure out the math on how much those points are really worth that you’re gonna earn from that card.

[00:24:13] Bryan Murphy: Okay.

[00:24:14] When to Book Award Flights

[00:24:14] Bryan Murphy: Alex, okay, I have, like, tons of, I guess they’re called Atmos points or Atmos miles now. You know, I got all the, my AI trackers watching flight prices or whatever.

[00:24:25] Bryan Murphy: Sometimes I see, you know, round trip is 35,000, which is pretty good for a Hawaiian flight. And then sometimes it drops and, like, it… Do you have, like… Are there any tips or hacks to, like, when to actually pull the trigger and book?

[00:24:40] Alex Payne: You know, I’m struggling that with… For myself, because we’re actually going to Hawaii for spring break, and those Southwest flights are insanely priced right now.

[00:24:48] Alex Payne: I keep waiting for them to drop. And Atmos is an option, and I’ve been looking at that, but they’re, like, 35,000 points one way, and I’m like, “That’s, that’s too much. I don’t wanna spend all of my points.” So I just, I just keep looking. I think 35,000 points round trip is a great price, and I would book that.

[00:25:06] Alex Payne: Like, the lowest we got that, got it for was 15,000 points one way. I know maybe yours are a little cheaper, um, being a little further west than I am, but I would be happy with that. And the nice thing, too, when you’re booking with points, if the price drops, it’s really easy to cancel and rebook your flights.

[00:25:24] Alex Payne: So if I see a good price flight on points, I just book it, and then if it changes, then I’m like, “Okay, great. I’m gonna cancel it, rebook it, and get those, that difference redeposited into my account.”

[00:25:38] Jess: Yeah, and Atmos makes it really easy to do that. I, I recently just did that on a flight that I had booked with Atmos.

[00:25:45] Resources and Wrap Up

[00:25:45] Bryan Murphy: So, if someone is like, “Okay, I’m in. I wanna, you know, do this and learn more,” what’s the best way for someone to do that with what you guys are doing?

[00:25:55] Jess: So, if you go to our website, it’s pointstalksquad.com, and we have a tab. We have, like, a little button the hand process says, start here, and it walks you through a roadmap of, like, everything you should do.

[00:26:08] Jess: So, it points you to, like, our beginner’s guide to points and miles, our podcast, our Instagram, our newsletter, all that good stuff, so that you can just dive right in and fall down the rabbit hole that is Points and Miles.

[00:26:24] Bryan Murphy: I remember, Alex, you reached out and you were launching this course at the time. Yes.

[00:26:30] Bryan Murphy: Now, you have multiple courses, it looks like.

[00:26:32] Alex Payne: Yeah. So, if you’re just getting started, we recommend our course, Points Talk Academy. And then, if you’re maybe a little more advanced, or you have a pretty good baseline knowledge, we have Points Talk Academy Next Level, or if you’re like, “Hey, I’m new here, but I’m ready to go all in,” you could get a bundle option and get both courses.

[00:26:51] Bryan Murphy: Holy moly. Okay. So much good info, and I appreciate both of you being so generous with not gatekeeping anything and just, like, this is… This is the way it is, so – Yeah. I mean, that’s… I think that’s super helpful for those listening. Anything else you would want someone to know before getting into starting?

[00:27:10] Alex Payne: It can be overwhelming, for sure. When you’re first learning about this, and your mind’s like, “Okay, there’s this, then this, and this.” You don’t need to know every single thing to get started. If you just wanna dip your toes in it, just get one credit card, learn how that one program works, maybe get some free flights, and it’s not, it’s not like a…

[00:27:28] Alex Payne: It’s a marathon, not a sprint. You don’t have to dive in 100% right away. Just start with one card, learn that one card, and then you can go at your own pace. You do not, like Jess said, you do not need to look at what we’re doing and be like, “This is how to do this successfully.” Sometimes people think to be successful at points of miles, it means I got every single piece of my trip on points, and that’s not the case at all.

[00:27:50] Alex Payne: If you’re going to Hawaii and you’re like, “Hey, we got two of our flights on points,” y – that is success. You got one flight. If you’re like, “Hey, we booked a hotel and we got three out of our five nights on points,” that’s success. So don’t measure, like, anything that’s saving you money in this hobby is, you’re doing it right.

[00:28:07] Jess: Yeah, our favorite phrase is, “You do you.” Not everyone wants to stay at the same places, not everyone wants to fly the same airlines, just do what works for you, and, you know, like Alex said, whatever you do is a success.

[00:28:21] Bryan Murphy: Right on. Alex and Jess, thank you so much for both coming on and sharing your wisdom, your passion, and what’s turned into hobbies.

[00:28:31] Bryan Murphy: Now this really cool platform that both of you and your mom have created. Thank you so much for coming on today.

[00:28:37] Alex Payne: Yeah,

[00:28:37] Jess: thanks for having us.

[00:28:39] Bryan Murphy: As I was re-listening to this episode, I think it’s very doable. So I put together a guide that helps you just get started with some of the resources that Alex and Jess talked about.

[00:28:49] Bryan Murphy: So you can grab that in the first link in the show notes below. One of the tips that Alex happened to mention about using points is first asking, “Where can I go?” And then approaching it backwards. So that gives you a little clearer picture on where to start and also thinking about what airlines fly closest to you, thinking about that if you’re thinking about points and with the, with specific airlines.

[00:29:12] Bryan Murphy: So it was a great conversation and I want to just encourage you to go check out Points Talk. Their website and podcast are also linked below in the show notes where you’ll find the free guide as well. So big Mahalo to both Alex and Jess for taking time coming on the podcast today. And if you want more episodes like this helping you plan your trip to Hawaii, be sure to hit follow if you’re listening on Apple Podcasts or on Spotify.

[00:29:36] Bryan Murphy: And what that does is the next episode I release, it goes right to your podcast app and it’s right there waiting for you as you continue to plan or just dream about Hawaii. Thanks so much for joining me on this episode again. And until next time, my friend, as always, live with Aloha.