Last month we took a trip to visit family back in North Dakota to celebrate my mom’s 70th birthday. I had great fun planning and executing the fabulous (if I do say so myself) party!
As I planned our air travel, I realized that given our travel dates, both my husband and I had enough Delta award travel miles to get “free” tickets. For a grand total of $56 each, we enjoyed a 4,000 mile round trip and a week with family. We each paid a $10 processing fee for the tickets, plus $23 each for one checked bag each way. (I am all in favor of checked baggage unless you can truly use a carry on.)
Some time after I had made the reservations, my husband questioned whether we should have saved those miles. My college economics professor’s voice echoed in my head, “A dollar in hand today is always better than a dollar tomorrow.”
Using that philosophy, I believe we made the right choice because it kept dollars in our hands today. In the current market, those tickets run between $600 and $700 each.
Additionally, as I checked travel dates before booking, the number of miles I needed to use per ticket, vary based on our travel dates. In our case, because we traveled mid-week, both ways, we used only 32,500 miles, instead of 50,000, for each ticket. That left us with a good start in our award travel miles toward the next trip!
