Josh & Elise’s Cabo Blogo

Elise has taken care of our flights to and from Cabo San Lucas. John played the part of best friend and transfered some of his American Airlines miles so Elise’s ticket was “free” (we owe John a minimal credit card processing fee). We still have to buy my ticket.

I haven’t the time or inclination to sit down and wrap my brain around the whole frequent flyer program. I guess because when I was researching credit cards I thought that earning miles and redeeming them would be a fairly simple process. We started paying bills and and making necessary purchases on a Chase Travel Rewards MasterCard. I don’t like to read fine print (my wife handles that) so I signed up for this credit card assuming that miles earned could be applied to any airline ticket purchase.

$1 = 1 mile.

So in my assuming I assumed that if we were going to buy a ticket to Cabo San Lucas and we had 5,000 miles, we could apply those miles to the purchase of a ticket. That just seems logical in my mind. According to my wall map, Cabo is just under 1,000 miles from Austin, TX if we take into account that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. If we also take into account American credit card debt statistics:

The total U.S. credit card debt in the first quarter of 2002 was approximately $60 billion. The average credit card interest rate is around 18.9%.

Approximately half of all credit card holders pay only their minimum monthly requirements. There are a total of 1.2 billion credit and retail cards in North America. The average American household is solicited seven times a year by credit card companies.

Total consumer credit: $1.7 trillion.
Credit card debt carried by the average American: $8,562.
Total finance charges Americans paid in 2001: $50 billion.
Percent of U.S. households deemed credit worthy by the lending industry: 78%.
Number of credit card holders who declared bankruptcy last year: 1.3 million.
[From: Ask Yahoo!]

The average American family pays $1,000 in credit card interest annually. Why shouldn’t the banks and airlines pass some of that earned interest on to me, the guy who pays his balance?

If Cabo is 2,000 miles round trip, times that times two people is 4,000 miles - shouldn’t I be getting paid by Chase to take my trip to Cabo?

I’ll leave it up to my wife to figure out the Travel Rewards mumbo jumbo and read all the fine print. In the meantime I’ll quietly rack up 700 million Travel Rewards over time so I can be entitled to an extra bag of peanuts the next time we fly to Des Moines to see the in-laws for Christmas.

So, with the help of John (who travels often for work) we get one free ticket. We’ll buy my ticket tonight. As of right now, taxes included, a single seat to Cabo from Austin, stopping in Dallas, is $609.

Next on our agenda is acquire certified copies of our birth certificates. Note: in 2006 passports will be required to travel to Mexico.

Our trip to Cabo San Lucas is starting to come together. I’ve been in touch with Elaine to lock down the availability of her time share.

Here are the dates that we’re looking at as of today (pending time share availability):

July 15-22
July 22-29
Sept 16-23

We’ll wait a few days to find out what dates are available and book our flight accordingly. We recently started using our Chase Travel Rewards MasterCards so at least one airline ticket will be free.

My boss and I had our monthly financial meeting this afternoon. I told him that Elise and I are planning a trip to Cabo and will need a couple weeks off. He became really excited for us. In February he and his wife spent two weeks in St. Maarten. They’re very tropically-traveled. He gave me some pointers on deep sea fishing and offered to help me reserve a boat and captain.

It’s a great feeling when your boss gets excited about your vacation and wants to help you plan it!