Our family of 8 just got back from a week in California visiting family and seeing the sights. Â California (especially the Bay Area!) is a fairly expensive place to stay, so I thought it would be instructive to see what the costs were for our family’s trip. Â We were there for 6 1/2 days – flew out Wednesday morning; flew back Tuesday night. Â Now we are pretty frugal folks in general, but it’s also awesome to see how using miles and points can make a HUGE difference in helping families to be able to travel.
The big 3 costs (flights, hotel, rental car)
- Airfare – we used 176,000 Delta Skymiles to fly CVG-LAX-SMF; SFO-CVG (that’s an open jaw) for the 8 of us. Â We did have to pay the government taxes of $89.60 roundtrip ($5.60 per person per leg)
- Hotel – We stayed at 2 different hotels.
- The first one was the Residence Inn Sacramento Airport Natomas for 4 nights
- Then we stayed 2 nights at the Staybridge Suites San Francisco Airport. Â This time we were again upgraded but they charged us $34.16. Â Originally I thought it would be $30 / night but they only ended up charging $30 total (plus I assume tax)
- $197.47 for 6 days of a rental car. Â Of course, this is times 2 for our family, so $394.94. Â We ended up using Barclay Arrival miles to offset that. Â 39,494 Arrival miles, but then we got 5% back (1974), so net 37,520Â Arrival miles.
- Gas – we ended up having to fill up each car just once – total of $71.23
- Tolls – $10 to cross into San Francisco ($5 times 2 cars). Â I am totally the type of person that would drive an hour out of my way to avoid tolls but… I got overruled :-). Â Though I guess technically my sister paid these tolls so maybe it shouldn’t count.
I didn’t check the cash costs of the hotel and airfare when we booked them, but I’d estimate the plane tickets would be about ~$380 / ticket (especially since we had fairly fixed dates during spring break). Â The Sacramento hotel runs about $180 / night and the San Francisco one (for the 2BR room we stayed at) was about $300 / night on the weekends and $400 / night on the weekdays. Â The 1BR we had for one weekend night runs about $280.
So the miles we used for airfare, hotel and rental cars saved us cash expenses of nearly $5000!
Food costs
- $149.29 was our initial grocery store run when we got to California. Â This is fairly comparable to our weekly grocery bill at home so you could certainly argue against counting it if you wanted, but I’ll keep it in here for completeness
- $6.98 for ice cream sandwiches
- $16.13 at In-n-Out burger (for 3 of us)
- $9.45 for some fudge in Old Sacramento while on our Urban Adventure Quest
- $30.74 for snacks (Safeway)
- $52.00 for lunch at Luigi’s Pizzeria at Pier 39 (ripoff alert!)
We certainly saved quite a bit on food costs by picking hotels that offered full kitchens, free breakfast and also getting 2 nights of free dinner at hotels.  We only ate out once and a half (the half being me taking my sons out to In N Out) out of the 20 or so meals that we were on vacation.  The rest of the time we either had meals at the hotel or cooked lunches / dinners
[The complete beginner’s guide to cooking in a hotel room]
Entertainment and Miscellaneous
We spent a lot of time just hanging out with my sister and her kids, but did do a few things while we were out. Â Again, we’re naturally frugal people, so we didn’t spend a ton on entertainment anyways. Â The fact that I got comped a ticket to the Urban Adventure Quest helped with our entertainment budget as well.
- Parking at CVGÂ airport for our flight out – 7 days at $5 / day – total of $35
- Parking in downtown Sacramento for the Urban Adventure Quest – $8.50
- Laundry – $0 (we did laundry at my sister’s house) [SEE ALSO: 4 laundry hacks for when you’re traveling]
- 7 BART tickets from San Bruno to downtown – $60.20. Â In hindsight, I should have just driven in and paid for parking as I bet that would have been cheaper.
- $10 in quarters at Musee Mecanique at Fisherman’s Wharf
Total costs for a week in California
First let’s look at the miles and points that we spent.
- 176,000 Delta Skymiles
- 45,000 Marriott points + 1 free night certificate
- 40,000 IHG points + 2 free night certificates
- 37,520 Barclay Arrival miles
It’s certainly not “free” since there is a cost and a value to those miles, but this is certainly very instructive on the value of using miles and points.
Our total cash outlay – $583.28.  I was actually a little bummed by this as I was hoping to keep it under $500 but I GUESS this is still pretty good 🙂
Do you have any stories of how miles and points have saved you “real” cash expenses on a family trip? Share them in the comments
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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 
How did you get all of those Delta sky miles? And how long did it take you to get them?
I got them some from the Delta credit card and some I transferred over from American Express.
I can’t wait until my crew of three teenagers can start getting bonuses on their cards. Of course, we always pay the balances off monthly, and will encourage them to only charge if they can do the same. I appreciate this kind of post as we can only afford to travel more often if we spend very little.
Yes! My oldest is nearly 17 so I’m getting there!!! 🙂
Sounds like a god awful vacation. live a little you cheap ass fuck.
While I understand that people that leave rude, anonymous comments typically never come back, I would be interested to know what we should have done on our vacation to make it meet your standards?
Good attitude Dan. That is how people behave when they are jealous and have a low level of education.
To unknown person; when you have the courage to open your mind you will understand more about life and humanity.
Thanks for the backup John!
I love this post. I have a family of 7 so this is so motivating. I love that you can do this for big families too.
What a huge savings. I only just started hacking and only for airline miles.
Love In N Out but there are quite a number of really good places to eat there. I have actually done SF for cheaper than that but I have a sister I could stay with for free that fed us so our only cost was gas and entertainment.
Sisters that feed you for free are good to have! I was just happy my sister let me do laundry at her place 🙂
So if I understand all this correctly it will take a while to accumulate all these points. I spend between $2,000 and $3,000 a month on my credit card. I have just used my points for airline tickets. So I would change to a card that offers say 50,000 points to sign up. Once I get that I go to another card and do the same? Can I then combine all my points for say one airline, one motel, and get a Barday point one going?
Cathy – that’s the basic idea. And generally you can not combine your points together, but some of the banks (Amex, Chase, Citi) do allow you to transfer your miles to a variety of programs. And of course if you have a spouse or trusted adult that also has good credit, you can often combine household miles and points. But another strategy would be to get an airline card, a hotel card, meet the minimum spend on both of those and use that for a fun vacation!
To the unknown person who made the unkind comment above, this is the type of vacation my family thoroughly enjoys. As we are saving for college, the trips can only happen if we are frugal. We probably have more fun than many who spend a lot more on a trip, knowing it’s not putting our budget out of whack. Thanks to PointsWithaCrew advice, my family of five has been to the Yucatan, to Maui 4x, Kauaii, Italy, Seattle, San Francisco, New York, and Paris this summer. We maybe could’ve afforded two of those trips without this advice. Unknown/unkind person: you need a different hobby. Thanks to Dan Miller for keeping it real.
Love all the advice on your site! Absolutely loved the segment on Sunday Morning! So my question is, once you get the initial sign up bonus for a card and use it do you keep the card and pay the annual fee that many of these cards have? I understand keeping the cards that have no annual fee but what about the ones with a steep fee?
I pay the annual fees on very few cards – I’ve even wrote a post on this a couple of months ago – 4 cards I pay the annual fee on. As for canceling a credit card, you might like this post – Is it bad to cancel a credit card?