The last time we visited Maui was in the summer of August 2014. From a family travel perspective, we have since had our fair share of worldly travels with lots of visits to New York City, to Italy (Milan, Florence, Venice, Pisa, Lake Como), Paris, Kauai, London, Budapest, and Prague. Nancy also spent over two weeks in Manila and Bangkok. I had a very busy travel season with my old job which required me to travel multiple times to the East Coast.
That all ceased since I started a new job early in 2016. In many ways, the slowdown in travel all worked out. Many of you know that I lost my Dad back in April. He was diagnosed with Stage 4 lung cancer. The cancer was discovered very late, and we lost him in mid-April. His passing happened so suddenly and it truly made many of us realize the need to live life to the fullest and share many of those best moments with your loved ones.
We love to travel, but we all know that traveling ain't cheap especially when I have to factor in a total of 6 travelers in my family (2 adults and 4 kids). For years, whenever we planned a vacation, we would choose the latter part of August (that's when the airfare prices typically start to go down). There were a couple of times when we also drove to the Bay Area, and flew from San Francisco since it was cheaper to fly from there to go to Hawaii.
But that all changed in 2014. I started to learn about racking up points, not just from my own travels, but from earning them via credit card sign up bonuses. We've since had amazing trips to Europe (twice) - Milan, Venice, Florence, Lake Como, Pisa, Paris, London, Budapest, Prague. We've also managed to take advantage of points to Kauai and New York City.
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New York City - Central Park, June 2014
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| Big Ben - London, Fall 2015 |
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| The Tower Bridge - London, Fall 2015 |
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| Budapest - the Hungarian Parliament Building. Fall 2015 |
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| Overlooking Prague, Czech Republic, Fall 2015 |
My points earning strategies were featured last year in the The Points Guy's Reader Success Story section of his blog.
When Nancy and I went to Europe back in the fall, our flights from LA to London, London to Budapest, and Prague back to LA only set us back by only $349 - that's the total amount for both of us that we paid on airfare. What about our hotel stays? For 2 weeks, we stayed in 4-star and 5-star hotels, for how much? All for FREE. How? All due to the points and miles we earned by strategically using the right credit card that gave us biggest bonus bang for our buck. Had we paid for our flights and hotel, easily it would've been over $7,000, yet we only paid $349. You can read the details by clicking the link above when I was featured by The Points Guy.
Three months before our Europe trip, we also took the entire family to Kauai and we partly used points. For our party of six, I got 4 FREE tickets from LA to Kauai (roundtrip), and only paid $44 total.
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| Princeville, Kauai - Summer 2015 |
Daddy, we can't go to Europe
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| Cheering Ethan during his Freshman Football Season 2015 |
We Need a Plan B
Kids, where do you want to go?
So the search began to get award seats for New York and beyond. It was not easy. Why? Since I was not going to pay for the trip, finding an award trip, a last-minute trip is not always that easy. These were my roadblocks:- Travelers in my party - 6 (2 adults, 4 kids)
- Timeframe - travel before and after the 4th of July holiday (high season)
- Destination choices from LA - NYC, DC, Philly, Boston, Costa Rica, Cancun (as you can see, we were open to go just about anywhere)
- Points budget - no more than 25K/person roundtrip or a total of 150K points. Why? I made sure I have enough points remaining for other trips planned later in the summer or fall.
Every destination I chose did not work out, they were either unavailable or the points were going to cost so much more per person. I checked United Airlines, American Airlines, British Airways, Singapore Air, Korean Air, Delta, Jet Blue, Southwest - made multiple calls inquiring about award tickets but to no avail.
The only thing that worked out, ironically since the available dates were for around the 4th of July holiday, was an award with British Airways (via American Airlines) from LAX to Maui. It was the only destination and airline award that allowed us to travel at 25,000 points per person. 
To be honest, I didn't grab the Maui trip right away. We kinda sat on it. We were really hoping to go somewhere else other than Hawaii. It was our last resort. We've been going to Hawaii yearly, and wanted to change it up. But none of our other destination choices were available. After 3 days of putting Maui aside, we made a decision that our last-minute summer vacation would be Maui. For the six of us, I used 150,000 Ultimate Rewards points and did a quick transfer from my Chase account to British Airways and got our six American Airline tickets for $67.20 total, yes $67.20 for six of us, roundtrip tickets from LA to Maui. 
If we paid for the flights in cash, it would've been $4,464!!!
A buddy of mine joked around, "you had to 'settle' for a vacation in Maui!" That's exactly what happened. We wanted to take the kids to somewhere new for a change, but it just didn't work out. The odds were against us. A trip back East will just have to wait. Maybe in the Spring. But in retrospect, c'mon now!!! It's Maui!!! Maui!!! Maui!!! Aloha!!!
We had to make it work where all of us could go on vacation together. We grabbed the opportunity, we were flexible enough, and now, we're on the verge of returning back to Maui. It was evident that as our kids grow older, and they find themselves involved with more extra curricular activities, that planning a trip could take an act of Congress. So for now, we can say that we've at least gone to Hawaii in the summer of 2016 with all 4 kids.
Thanks for following our journey.
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