I’m sold.

In January 2014 I got my first rewards credit card, the Chase Sapphire. From what I remember, I had to spend $3,000 in 3 months in order to receive 45,000 bonus points. Not bad. I got Lance a card on my account so that every purchase we made went toward earning rewards. With rent, groceries and gas, we easily made it.

Then in March Lance followed suit and got the Sapphire as well. We did the same thing and put me on his account in order to tackle the minimum spend quickly. Easy. By April we had accumulated 90,000 points.

And then we got greedy.

In April we both applied for and got the Chase United Explorer card, which had a smaller minimum spend requirement and but only earned us 35,000 points each. In May, we signed up for the Barclays USAirways card and boasted another 40,000 each.

By summer we had 240,000 points sitting in our online pockets.

If you’re new to air miles, you may be wondering what that even means. I will tell you, but first let me show you.

In spring 2014 we used miles to book one-way tickets to Europe. What was originally a $900+ flight was only $25 in fees and 60,000 in points.

In spring 2015 (last month!) we used miles to fly round-trip to Hawaii. What was a $500+ flight was only $11.20 in fees and 22,500 in points.

While I prefer to save our points for exciting oversea adventures, you don’t have to. We’ve also used them for shorter domestic trips, like heading home to AZ for the holidays or California for a quick getaway. In those cases, SouthWest is my best friend. In February I booked a round-trip flight to PHX for only 10,223! Oh yeah.

Anyway, that’s my open love letter to earning award mile points.