And introducing Point Miser

Growing up, I love watching the animated Rudolph The Rednosed Reindeer series at Christmas time. My favorite was The Year Without a Santa Claus. The Miser brothers, eternal bickering, and their awesome song!

It’s been a cold and snowy winter in Minnesota since Christmas. I’ve been lucky enough to get out for work and hit some warmer climates. But my poor wife has had to bear it all first hand. She (we) wants to get away and find some sun filled beach to bask in the heat.

We did some looking, talking to friends, and even consulted a travel agent. This raised an interesting choice.

We were looking at an all inclusive resort stay package that would be $1300 without airfare, and $2300 with airfare. Looking at our options of providing our own air coverage, it would be either $1200 or 96,000 miles. Digging into the $1000 air that we’d get from the travel agent, we discovered that it was the same flights!

So here’s how we figured it out. Buying the airfare on our own for $1200 was immediately ruled out. But $1000 or 96,000 miles, which way to go?

Basic math tells us that we’re looking at a return of about 1.04 penny per point. Looking back at last year, I was seeing two to three times that return!

For this trip, I’ll pay the $1000 and earn more miles (and MQMs), and save those miles for another trip where I can get more value.