Free money is free money, and while I do understand the concept of one’s time being money, I’m not always so great at making sound decisions based on that concept. I thought I’d share a little bit of what I go through, because I’m also curious as to what other people do.
I do periodically post some of these “free money” deals, and I usually participate in some but not all of them. Now, I am not talking necessarily about the recent deals like 500 Marriott points for following them on Instagram (through June 21), or the 10,000 or 15,000 Hilton points for adding an authorized user (through July 30). To me, those seem more “no-brainer” type deals.
I’m more talking about things like the fact that I can’t seem to book a flight to New York City because I’m freaking out about getting the “best” deal because I don’t want to spend a few hundred / thousand points (even though I have more than a million miles and points)
Getting 1500 Amtrak points
So a few weeks ago, our family of 8 took a train trip out to Seattle. For 4 of us, we used 50,000 Amtrak points (transferred from Chase while you could still do that), and the other 4 of us, we used the $1200 in vouchers for complaining to Amtrak when our train last year was 13 hours late.
I was under the impression that I wouldn’t earn points for travel with a voucher, but….
I did.
So, since there were 4 of us on that reservation, my thoughts were that I should sign up the kids for Amtrak Guest Rewards, and then submit a missing points form to get the 1500 Amtrak points (times 3 I guess). But then once I start thinking about that, I think, man I should REFER them so they can get an extra 500 or so
And I keep going down that path (give a mouse a cookie style) and what it ends up with is that I have done…. exactly nothing 🙁
And then I wonder if it’s worth jumping through all these hoops for 1000 points, when they will probably end up expiring before I can use them.
Readers: What say you? What would you do? How many hoops would you jump through for 1000 points?
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Dan Miller travels with his wife and 6 (SIX!) children. He loves to help families travel for free / cheap, especially larger families. If you are looking for help, drop him an email at 
Today’s BBC website has this:
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-36567468
which is to say an official enquiry into additional surcharges to airline tickets (and BA is one of the worst offenders!).
Let’s see what happens…