Hi all - I'm new to the credit card game and would really appreciate your input and help. I'm erring on the side of giving perhaps too much info.
I'll start with the info from post #2:
Last 24 month approvals:
10/20 GOLDMAN SACHS apple card (for me but not my wife)
07/22 CHASE freedom unlimited (for both my wife and me)
Older existing cards:
Target red card (my wife's only)
Marriott Bonvoy Amex (was the old SPG Amex, converted to $95/yr Bonvoy)
PNC cashbuilder visa (pays flat 1.75% cash back no points)
Amazon store card (Synchrony bank - mine)
*Monthly total cc spend approximately $6000 though quite variable (groceries about $800/mo, restaurants about $800/mo, gas about $200/mo, internet $100/mo, auto insurance $100/mo)
*Full balance paid monthly, no interest or late fees
*Chicago area airports (ORD, MDW)
*No Frequent Flyer preference
*Southwest does service both airports
*Slight preference for Marriott rewards program but we're flexible
*About 474,000 Marriott Bonvoy points and about 23,000 chase UR points including the sign-on bonus
*Primary goal now: family trip to Hawaii (airfare) within next 2-3 years
*Travel
wife, me, + 4 kids (ages 14, 12, nearly 8, nearly 8)
A bit more info: we are in the process of buying a 300 point DVC contract. Given that the contract is fairly loaded we'll have over 500 points at our disposal.
That made my wheels turn. One of these years, if we keep the right balance of use and banking, we can get about a week in a 2br at Aulani, a very exciting prospect to me!
Because buying this DVC contract is going to pull a lot of cash out of us, I'm trying to figure out how to make a trip to Hawaii happen on points.
I have done some preliminary searching for award travel from Chicago to Hawaii and found availability difficult unless going through United's program. But in that case, the cost is 45k points/economy ticket.
As noted above, we have over 470k Bonvoy points. Even if we converted our Bonvoy to Mileage Plus, we would come up well short of 6 economy tickets (420k Bonvoy = 175k Mileage Plus. But 270k Mileage Plus is needed for 6 x 45k tickets). I also suspect this is poor use of Bonvoy points (?).
I'd love to hear feedback. Is it always very hard to get saver award travel to Hawaii from Chicago and hence should I abandon the idea of landing 6 such tickets? Any other strategies to consider? I'm open to gaming cards as needed as long as I don't mess up our credit (both my wife and I are over 800).
Timing-wise we'd travel during school holiday weeks, which are roughly June 10-Aug 15 for summer, last week of March for spring, and the weeks of Dec 25-Jan 1 and Jan 1-Jan 8.