I love mileage and point collecting more and more everyday. While it is fun to jump through hoops to go after the latest offers to fill up our reward accounts, my favorite part is being able to turn around and use them to save our family hundreds or thousands of dollars.

Last year we were able to redeem a bounty of earned Continental and United miles to get not only our family of 4 to Hawaii with a multi-day stopover in LA for Disneyland, but also my in-laws. We will take the trip later this summer, and are still anxiously awaiting our departure.

I also want to clarify something though before I get into the heart of this post. When I tell people we are going to Hawaii/Disneyland for 2.5 week with our boys, they wonder if we are either insane, or how we were able to afford the trip without winning the lottery. I am assuming it is their trip envy kicking in. The reason we are going for so long is because of miles and points. It is because we have very few hard costs for the Hawaii trip. Miles have paid for our mainland flights, and points were used for all of hotel nights while in Oahu. We have already saved thousands of dollars using miles and points! That is money that can be used for all types of other things on vacation, let alone staying a couple of extra days.

In addition, a lot of the miles and points we earned were for free via promotions, credit card bonuses, or doing things we would do normally. We are a normal, middle-class income family and are not sitting on mountains of cash to be able to jettison all across the world. We are doing rewarding family vacations by smartly using miles and points.

I hear from people over and over again how difficult they think it is to redeem miles and points, most without even ever trying. Or if they did attempt to try, it was by simply calling up the airline and saying I want to leave on these days, can I redeem miles? More than likely the success ratio will be small.

Redemption of miles and points take a lot of patience and flexibility. Once I knew we had plenty of miles and points in our accounts to start looking at redeeming them for Hawaii, the process took a while to complete. Every day I would check Continental and United’s reward availability to see if any cheap redemption options showed up in the system.

The key was to check every airport within a several hour radius, and be flexible for what flight going could be paired with a return flight home. The only restrictions we had were 1) the trip had to occur during the summer, and 2) we wanted to go for around 2 weeks. I had our preference to leave out of our home airport in Cleveland (CLE), but I knew in reality we might not get it using miles.

Then that one day, availability in and out of Chicago opened up for reward using the lowest level award tickets available. We have driven back and forth to Chicago many times, and it’s an easy drive, so we instantly took advantage of finally finding a low-level redemption to Hawaii. We paid our $30 in ticketing fees and were on our way to land of hula and surfing.

Most people at that point would chalk up the success and move on to the next part of the trip. For the most part I did; however, I also knew driving back and forth to Chicago would take almost 6 hours each way and cost at least $150 in gas and tolls, let alone parking at the airport for 2.5 weeks. Plus after all that flying on the way back home, do we really want to sit in a vehicle for another 6 hours to get home? Not ideal with little ones, and all of us more than likely will be extremely exhausted.

So I continued to watch for reward availability in and out of Cleveland around the same days we already had booked. Everyday certain legs of the trip I could see slowly open up, but I could never piece together a full itinerary. Again, this is where patience, and flexibility came into play. Finally, this week, there is was staring back at me. Luckily, it was not a fiscal fast day, or I would have been struggling.

I was able to form a plan of super saver fares getting us back and forth to Hawaii, in and out of Cleveland, and still with our stop over in LA for Disneyland. This is another reason I love the flexibility in miles redemption. If I had purchased the tickets outright with cash, I would have been faced with probably $100+ change fee per ticket. By using miles, the key was that the change in itinerary cost us ZERO more miles! The only thing we had to pay was a $75/ticket change fee ($225 total). So now we have paid a total of $255 ($225 + $30 original fees) for our tickets to Hawaii.

Was it worth the extra cost?

ABSOLUTELY! The convenience alone was worth the extra $225. As I mentioned above, driving back and forth and parking would have easily set us back more than the change fees. I knew all this in advance, and that was also why I felt comfortable originally ticketing in and out of Chicago as I knew we could either 1) get to Chicago easily and affordably if needed, or 2) it was still cheap to switch the tickets around if availability opened up.

Now it is true that we now leave a day earlier than before on the way going to Los Angeles (LAX); we originally left on a Saturday afternoon, and now leave late Friday night. So we will need to get an extra night of hotel. Even with that cost factored in, we still felt extremely comfortable making the switch and it will save us a lot of time and convenience for the sake of the boys (and sleepy mom and dad).

So the overall thing I want to instill in everyone is to not expect a quick and easy reward ticketing process every time. Finding that dream vacation for free, or really cheap takes effort, like anything of value. I love the hunt and the planning process for large vacations, and when I can use miles and points to make it happen for my family for next to no cost, it is all the more rewarding. Save Money, Travel More.