How my family saved over $1,300 on a trip to Florida using credit card points and miles

Personal Finance Insider writes about products, strategies, and tips to help you make smart decisions with your money. We may receive a small commission from our partners, like American Express, but our reporting and recommendations are always independent and objective. Terms apply to offers listed on this page.

Read our editorial standards. Using credit card rewards, our family took a trip to Florida for a fraction of what it would have cost. We used Delta miles and Citi ThankYou points to cover our airfare and rental card expenses.

Mixing and matching rewards programs made it easy to secure tickets together on the same plane. Read Insider’s guide to the best travel rewards credit cards . Get the latest tips you need to manage your money — delivered to you biweekly.

Loading Something is loading. Email address By clicking ‘Sign up’, you agree to receive marketing emails from Insider as well as other partner offers and accept our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy . Although 2020 didn’t prevent us completely from traveling, it did put a damper on our plans, as it did for many.

Our family took a trip to Hawaii in early March before the pandemic took off and then went to Salt Lake City in October to visit friends for a long weekend. We are very grateful for the travel we did manage, but bummed about trips that were canceled or postponed. My husband and I had a trip for his work to Cabo planned and a five-year anniversary trip we wanted to take, but both of those trips were nixed.

Now that 2021 is in full swing we have started remaking travel plans and have been taking full advantage of the credit card travel points we had unused from 2020. How we used Delta miles and Citi points for a family trip I got my first Citi credit card , the Citi Premier® Card, last year. At the time, it had a different welcome bonus, but right now it currently offers 80,000 bonus ThankYou® Points after you spend $4,000 in purchases within the first 3 months of account opening.

I hadn’t used Citi’s travel platform before but was excited to check it out and use it to book a trip for our family. Citi points are worth, on average, 1. 6 cents apiece according to Insider’s points and miles valuations .

However, when you redeem them for paid travel through the Citi Travel Portal, they’re worth a flat 1 cent each. At the end of 2020, my husband and I decided we wanted to take our girls and my mother to Florida to escape the cold Minnesota winter. At first, we considered going in December, but with the pandemic still in full swing, we decided to wait.

A month and a half later, after two weeks of below-zero temperatures in Minnesota, we were ready to book. We decided a few weeks before leaving to purchase flights to Fort Lauderdale by using both Citi ThankYou points and my husband’s Delta SkyMiles. Mixing and matching rewards saved us nearly $1,100 To book flights for my mom and myself, I redeemed about 45,000 Citi ThankYou points for Delta flights through the Citi Travel Portal.

My husband and I are Delta SkyMiles members and we each have a Delta SkyMiles credit card , giving us a free checked bag on Delta flights — even if we don’t use the card to pay for the ticket. The free checked bag is also valid for up to eight companions on the same reservation, so we tend to fly Delta as much as we can. We also knew Delta was still blocking the middle seat .

This is nice not only for COVID-19 precautions but also because our youngest is under the age of 2 and can still fly free on my lap. With the middle seat open she was able to sit in her own seat free of charge the entire trip. Between my Citi ThankYou points and my husband’s Delta miles, we were able to get all four Delta Main Cabin (economy) tickets nearly free.

My husband has the Delta SkyMiles® Platinum American Express Card and had plenty of Delta miles banked up, so he booked his and my daughter’s ticket using 41,000 miles (plus about $23 in taxes). Insider values Delta miles at 1. 1 cents each on average, but in this case, we did slightly better — spending 41,000 miles for two tickets that would have cost $513 (before taxes) works out to about 1.

25 cents per mile. Although trying to book the same trip on two different platforms can be a bit of a headache, it is certainly doable and worth it if you’re using points. For my and my mom’s ticket I had to log in to my Citi ThankYou account by phone, and we signed into my husband’s computer to book his and our oldest’s tickets on Delta’s website at the same time.

This way we were able to match up the flight numbers and choose seats all in the same row. We were able to search for the days we wanted to fly to Fort Lauderdale on the Delta site and chose Delta as our preferred airline through the Citi ThankYou platform. The flights we purchased were roughly $268 per person, so by using points and miles we saved around $1,072 total on flights.

We used points to save over $300 on our car rental After booking the flights I still had Citi ThankYou points to use, so we decided to apply them toward a car rental. We knew we would need a larger vehicle to fit the five of us, including two car seats, and were able to secure a Chevy Equinox for roughly 31,000 Citi ThankYou points. This would have cost us easily over $300 out of pocket! With the airfare and car rental covered, we only had to book accommodations, which we did through Airbnb.

We were able to find a two-bedroom condo with a heated pool within walking distance to the beach, restaurants, and a coffee shop. Using credit card rewards , both through Citi ThankYou and Delta SkyMiles, allowed us to take a family vacation for a fraction of the price we would have paid without these perks. I was hesitant originally to open a Citi credit card to earn flexible points because I wasn’t familiar with their platform and didn’t know how complicated it would be to redeem the rewards.

I’m very glad I decided to go for it as it allowed our family to take a lovely five-night, six-day vacation in southeastern Florida that was still within our budget. Katie Oelker is a financial coach, personal finance writer, and podcaster. When not working, she enjoys spending time with her family, practicing yoga, and planning her family’s next adventure.

Katie Oelker Katie Oelker is a financial coach, personal finance writer, and podcaster. When not working, she enjoys spending time with her family, practicing yoga, and planning her family’s next adventure. You can find her at KatieOelker.

com and on Instagram at @katieoelker . Read more Read less More Credit Card Coverage The best credit cards for average or fair credit The best cash-back cards to open in 2022 The best rewards credit cards of June 2022 The best starter credit cards Chase Freedom Unlimited® Review Citi® Double Cash Review.