Later this summer, I’ll be taking some vacation time from work to go on a week long trip to the Midwest to visit some relatives and attend a nearby airshow.
I always start my airline ticket hunt at sites the aggregate ticket prices from various airlines like Travelocity, Kayak.com, or Orbitz. You can usually buy the actual ticket for a few dollars less from the airline’s own website, but I like to be able to compare many airlines at once and get a general idea what sort of price I’m looking at. When I searched my ideal airports and dates on Travelocity, I found that the ticket I wanted would be $190 including taxes and fees.
That flight would be with American Airlines. Lately I’ve been getting regular emails from American Airlines about how I’m only a few hundred frequent flier miles away from being able to redeem them for a ticket. I pulled up their frequent flier booking site and found that I would be able to get on the exact same flight I found on Travelocity for 25,000 miles. I had 24,542 miles (saved up over my entire life, I’ve never been able to redeem them for anything before).
I put a hold on that ticket which would leave it available to me for five days. Then I looked up the cost to buy the 458 miles I still needed. The minimum they allow you to buy is 1,000 miles and they charge tax and a $30 processing fee. “Processing fee” scared me at first. It cost me $59.56 to buy the miles I needed and I had to pay another $5 TSA fee even when booking my ticket with frequent flier miles. Total it cost me $64.56 to buy my ticket with frequent flier miles versus $190 to buy it without which saved me $125.44.
I spent some time debating if it was worth it to use the frequent flier miles now and pay the processing fee or if it was better to buy the regular ticket but in the end, I decided it was better to save that $125.44 right now.
I decided it’s best to take advantage of a discount I could use right now rather than saving it for later because who knows if I’ll have another opportunity to use it. The airline could go out of business, the frequent flier program could come to an end, I might not be flying anywhere again any time soon, or next time I do fly somewhere American Airlines might not be my best option for the trip. The money I saved now is much more flexible in terms of what I can use it for in the unpredictable future.
Any discount or coupon you can use on something you would be buying now anyway is best used now rather than saved for later. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.
Featured in Festival of Frugality.
Shared in Buddy’s Friday, Frugal Friday.
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{ 6 comments }
My little family lived in Ohio for five years and all of our family lived in either California or Washington State. So we made frequent trips across the country and I found that I could always get cheaper better tickets on the airline websites.
.-= Danielle´s last blog ..Cross-Blog Conversation with Melitsa Avila =-.
Great idea on buying the miles you need. I had no idea it would be that inexpensive. Have a great trip!
I felt that you could have not used the miles. Here’s why?
1. If you have been using Citi’s AA card, you would have earned 1 mile for every dollar that you spend. (plus off course you probably earned some of those miles when you flew previously with AA).
2. If it cost 25,000 miles to get a ticket, redeeming 25,000 miles for a $250 ticket would be equal to you earning a 1% rebate.
3. But you chose to use 25,000 miles for a $190 airline ticket, you are effectively getting less than 1%. Plus you actually had to pay for the remaining miles that you did not have enough.
4. You did save money now, but you would have saved more if your next flight had cost say $299.
FWIW
Mr Credit Card
i don’t really care to get another credit card just for airline miles. i already have amex clear and amazon visa which both give me 1% back in other ways. and considering that this is the first time i’ve flown american in several years, it doesn’t make sense to wait several years more to have another chance to use the miles.
OK – fair enough since you do not have a dedicated airline credit card. In this case, you did the right thing then.
Mr CC
Sometimes it is difficult to decide what to do but I think you made the right choice. I had some coupons to be redemed at Woolworths but held onto them to use later and guess what. Woolies went belly up in the UK and went bankrupt. I wish I had just the one bird in my hand.
Margaret
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