Gunnar and Kyle kindly invite Thrifty Traveler Founder Jared Kamrowski on his own show! Jared shares his favorite flights, worst travel mistakes, looks back on the (almost) decade since starting Thrifty Traveler and what he’s seen change in 10 years of flight deals and points and miles. Plus, the guys laugh about Thrifty Traveler’s extremely humble beginnings (in Jared’s garage - literally) and Gunnar’s memorable job interview in 2021.
Gunnar and Kyle kindly invite Thrifty Traveler Founder Jared Kamrowski on his own show! Jared shares his favorite flights, worst travel mistakes, looks back on the (almost) decade since starting Thrifty Traveler and what he’s seen change in 10 years of flight deals and points and miles. Plus, the guys laugh about Thrifty Traveler’s extremely humble beginnings (in Jared’s garage - literally) and Gunnar’s memorable job interview in 2021.
Watch us on YouTube!
(0:00) Welcoming our founder and CEO Jared Kamrowski to the middle seat!
(0:52) Why would Jared let Gunnar and Kyle start a podcast?
(2:07) Something hot: The Best Flight of Jared’s Life - Emirates First Class
https://thriftytraveler.com/reviews/flights/emirates-game-changer-first-class/
(4:30) Something cold: Jared’s worst travel mistake ... on a group trip flying Ryanair
(7:20) A word from our sponsor – Thrifty Traveler Premium flight deal alerts!
https://thriftytraveler.com/premium/
(10:23) The Extra Mile: Reflecting on 10 years of Thrifty Traveler
https://thriftytraveler.com/news/thrifty-traveler-origin-story/
https://thriftytraveler.com/news/new-full-time-job-thrifty-traveler/
(29:00) Jared talks about the challenges and upsides of booking from smaller, regional airports
(34:20) Putting Jared on the spot and making him choose one redemption to resurrect
Produced by Gunnar Olson & Nick Serati
Edited by David Strutt
Show music: All That by Benjamin Tissot
Yo. I'm Gunnar Olson here with Thrifty Traveler executive editor Kyle Potter. But today, we have an extra special guest In the middle seat. Seat 42 B. It's TT founder and CEO, Jared Kamrowski.
Jared, welcome to your show. Thank you. This is all I get for my sponsorship. This is all you get. The very awkward middle seat.
If you're if you're not watching this on YouTube, you really need to be because it is, cramped quarters, not unlike a Spirit Airbus a three nineteen. We're we're having fun here at, TTHQ today. We are, we're here to talk to Jared about, what he's seen in the last ten years of Thrifty Traveler. And I bet you it he did not expect to be sitting middle seat between two guys that he hired ten years later. But there it is.
First, Jared, I do need to find something out from you. So you've been running this successful business for, like, ten years now. Your company survived a pandemic and evolves in this crazy ever changing world. So why are you willing to throw it all away by giving Kyle and I a podcast? You know, when you feel like you're cornered and you have no way out, what do you do?
You react. You react. Yeah. You give. Fight or flight.
I gave you guys this podcast. What a gift. Yeah. Yeah. Now, what what are you doing with it?
You made it to ten years. You're not gonna make it to eleven. I'm throwing it all away. But at least we're gonna have fun doing it. Here we go.
Good way to go. Yeah. Today on the last ever episode of the Thrifty Traveler podcast, we're gonna talk to Jared about Thrifty Traveler and everything he's seen in more than a decade of travel and points and miles. We're gonna talk about what he's done right and what he's done wrong, some of his, favorite deals over the years, and much more. So welcome to the Thrifty Traveler podcast.
So let's jump into something hot and something cold where we look into the good and the bad of travel. And because we're prerecording this episode, we're gonna shake things up. Kyle, start with something hot. We are breaking the fourth wall by telling everybody we're prerecording this episode. No.
Jared, tell us about the best flight of your life. The best flight of my life would be, I think, Emirates first class, not a specific routing. I got pretty lucky to, have flown Emirates First quite a few times, and I've had some incredible, incredible flights. Is it, you know, is it the seat in particular, you know, flying the game changer on their select number of triple sevens? Is it the service?
Is it the bottomless dom, the shower? I mean, there's there's so much you can listen. I'm sure there are elements of this where it just all combines into this massive unforgettable experience. But what stands out to you the most these years later? I think the the consistent service is probably one of the highlights that you can always count on.
Not always, but more often than not. Even when you're flying first class, you can't always count on really good service. But with Emirates, it seems like they really have, you know, just a great service offering. And the dom, the bottomless dom does help. It doesn't hurt.
No. You know, I think that's that's interesting because I think, you know, what draws people into, you know, this our weird little corner of the Internet is the fancy pictures of business class and first class suites with doors. But I think pretty quickly as you do this if you're lucky enough to do this more, you you figure out that what really different differentiates everything is the service. That really bad service can wreck even the most amazing seats in the world on a plane, and really good service can make a flight in a, you know, an old decade old plane with, you know, seats that bear barely recline lie flat. Unforgettable.
I couldn't agree more. Next time you book it, how would you like to do it? What's the best way to book Emirates f for you? Yeah. Booking Emirates f is tough right now.
It is. You know, it used to be, you know, with Alaska miles, you could book, you know, a hundred thousand Alaska miles, and you could go far. And now with the taxes and fees, it's incredibly difficult. So, you know, I'd probably say, you know, going to Europe on one of those fifth freedom routes Yeah. Would probably be the ticket.
Nice. Very good. Alright. Let's go the other way because points and miles award travel, it's a little glossy. A lot of Instagram people and fancy seats and and, you know, fancy people like you, Jared, fly in Emirates first class.
But travelers don't see that, it's often a comedy of errors for people like us too, and, people make mistakes along the way. Is there a mistake that jumps out at you from your years of of playing this game that still haunts you? I feel like anyone who has flown enough makes some colossal mistakes, and mine is particularly embarrassing. I flew Ryanair. I was in charge of, traveling with six other family members.
And But just you could you could hit pause there. That would be Flying Ryanair with six other family members. Experience. And then and then it was terrible. Yeah.
No. And, I was I think, you know, still a newbie. And, I made the colossal mistake of showing up to the airport without checking in, getting a boarding pass, doing any of the Ryanair recorded required things Yeah. Which cost me, I think, for six people to get checked in, get your boarding pass, I think it costs, like, $280. Wow.
And my family yeah. Actually, my my in laws looked at me with just disgust. So so so this is That's why I'm married. Our daughter and runs a travel company. Yeah.
But doesn't know anything. Yeah. Yeah. No. Great.
Things are going great. Nothing worse than when you're the the travel guy in a group and then you bungle something really bad on the trip and everyone is just thinking to themselves, like, man, you are the only person who is technically an expert at this and you just blew it. That's the worst feeling, traveling with a group. They just stare at you in disbelief. You were supposed to fix this.
You have you have either of you ever booked a flight for the wrong day? Like, after factoring in time changes or date changes crossing international date lines or the length of flight, just wound up booking it for a day too late? Me never, but I'm sure gunner has. Yeah. Definitely.
I definitely have. I always usually, I catch it within twenty four hour rule. But I've definitely done it several times. I just never screwed up by the date line, just, sloppiness, you know. I can see that based on your word.
Yeah. Thanks, boss. Appreciate you bringing me on. Give me a podcast. But, yeah, I've definitely done that.
Booking the wrong day. I also had a, a Qatar business class flight where they changed the date of the flight. It was taking off at, like, 10PM, and they moved it to 1AM. And it, they didn't reticket me until we got to the gate, and it was for my honeymoon. It was the very first business class flight that my wife ever took.
And we got to the front, and I was like, I swear you can just book it for this few points. And she thought I was scamming her the whole time. And then we got to the front desk, and they're like, we don't know what you're talking about. What are you doing here? And she was like, I can't believe it.
You blew our honeymoon with this award travel nonsense. And, yeah. She doesn't let me forget that one. But that was a they changed the date on me. I didn't book the wrong date.
So or so I say. You you you still screwed up, baby. There was just a there was a layer of complication behind that mistake. That's fair. This episode is brought to you by my personal favorite advertiser, us.
Let's talk a little bit about Thrifty Traveler Premium, guys. I might be biased. Gunnar, you might be biased. Jared, I'd wager you might be a little biased. A bit.
But I do truly believe it's the best flight deal service on the market. I just wanna talk about one of my personal favorite flight deals, because I just took it recently flying Qatar Q Suites from Cape Town to Doha. That's about a ten hour flight. And then Doha to Miami, another fifteen hours for 95,000 points, which I transferred from Amex and about $300 in fees. It's one of the best flight deals in the world.
Jared, what stands out to you about Thrifty Traveler Premium? Just pick a deal that comes to mind as one of the best that you've found or that our team has found. I think, you know, any of the first class deals that we've found, whether it's, you know, ITI departments, Emirates First Class, which I already said that I love, There's so many more. Like you said, guitar guitar first class. I think it's pretty obvious right now I have a first class obsession, and I'm feeling pretty bougie.
They're called first class problems. 50 traveler. Boujee traveler. Yeah. Well, just so we're clear, we also send cheap, domestic flight deals.
We sent one, you know, just a few weeks ago, $78 round trip to Chicago from airports all across the country. One of the best flight deals of 2024 was, a mistake fare from both Minneapolis and Chicago to Dublin for a hundred and $35 round trip. I still can't wrap my head around that one, and I think collectively, we probably heard from hundreds of people who booked that single flight deal. Yeah. I feel like there's, you know, the Thrifty Traveler Premium, there's so many different types of customers.
Whether you wanna be, you know, booking that hundred dollar mistake fare or you wanna be flying a business or first class product, you know, we've got it all covered. Yeah. Quick inbox check on Thrifty Traveler Premium right now. I'm seeing Cathay Pacific business class to Southeast Asia for 71,000 points each way. That's an incredible deal flying in the front of the plane.
Then we've got Prague under $489 round trip, a bunch of fares in the 4 hundreds and 3 hundreds there flying Icelandair with free Iceland stopovers on that one. And then we also have, the new Delta route from Atlanta to Marrakesh, and we found found that for $608 round trip or as low as 48,000 SkyMiles round trip. So pretty unbelievable deals in your inbox right now if you're a premium subscriber. I'm feeling the itch to book something. It's been while.
Always feeling pretty he's feeling You gotta go. You gotta give us, like, another thirty minutes here before you can you can quit on us. Alright, gang. Sign up today at thriftytraveler.com/premium. As a special treat, our podcast listeners can use the promo code t t pod for $20 off your first year of flight deal alerts.
That's thriftytraveler.com/premium. Enter the promo code t t pod, five letters, all one word for $20 off your first year. Alright. Let's do our featured topic this week, that we call the extra mile. We got a lot of questions for our boss here, and we're excited to hear.
So Thrifty Traveler is quickly approaching its tenth birthday. What was Jared Kamrowski like ten years ago? What was going on, and how did this all start? Yeah. Ten years ago, I was the guy who felt like he had a problem.
He was obsessed with points and miles. There were very few people that were doing this, and it was all I could think about. So I decided after years and years of prodding for my wife to, yeah, launch Thrifty Traveler. What what started you down that path of of getting kind of obsessed with this world and then turning that obsession into into your career? I mean, did you and did you make that transition pretty instantly of, you know, starting a company and then quickly realizing, oh, this is something that isn't just gonna be something I do on the side, but it's gonna be my work.
Yeah. No. It really started back, you know, probably 02/2009. I was living with, my cofounder, Nick Sarati, and we're we got into points and miles, and we're like, what is this all about? Yeah.
This is crazy. The amount of value, just how much it was kinda like the wild West. And again, when you tell outsiders about it, they would immediately be like, oh, you're doing something illegal. It still does feel like that. Just a few different but but it was a this this was a different different time.
You know, we're talking about more than a decade ago. Yes. Or almost a decade ago, I should say. Yeah. Yeah.
No. Fourteen, sixteen years ago. Yeah. Which is a crazy amount of time now looking back. And, that was, you know, probably, yeah, 02/2009, '2 thousand '10, I was like, you know, this is super cool.
And I think the thing that really drove me, you know, towards actually starting this business was the most the most amount of joy that I I got in my life was booking, you know, an amazing trip with points and miles because I had tons of student debt, and I was just starting out in the corporate world. And I had to, you know, I wanted to travel. I wanted to see things. And my wife had traveled, didn't have student debt, so I had to figure it out pretty quickly. She wasn't my wife yet.
She was my girlfriend. So I had to figure it out. Yeah. So before before you add Thrifty Traveler, who are you dumping all this information on? Was it just you and Nick firing it back and forth?
Were you just dumping it all in Erica's lap? Like, what where did this information go before you were able to get it out on thriftytraveler.com? I think when I knew that there was, like, a business angle is we would go to, like, parties or we'd go to weddings, and there would be, like, a circle around me talking about using points and miles. One person would know that I was into this, and then more people were like, oh, tell me more. Tell me more.
And I was like, there's clearly a big market for this, and people don't know anything about it yet. But, you know, again, I was still just getting started with my, you know, brand new job out of college. I wasn't ready yet, but, you know, it took a few more years, and I was able to, you know, secure the the don't domain name Thrifty Traveler. And then, you know, a lot of it, the rest is history. So let's talk about that last bit.
You know, you don't do a whole lot of writing these days. You're busy doing running running the company. But one of the stories that you did publish a few years ago was about that saga of securing the thrifty traveler domain. So walk us through how that went and how that came about. Because I I I think it's it's such a cool story, and it's a little peek behind the curtain of what we do.
Yeah. So about twelve years ago, I was like, this is what I have to do. I have to start some kind of a, you know, points and miles website or flight deal related, just cheap travel website. So I sat down, and I still have this spreadsheet. And I wrote down, like, 15 different name variations of what the website should be called.
Well, some of them some of them are awful, really, really awful, and I do not wanna repeat them. But one of them was thriftytraveler,uh,.com, and that was an existing domain. When I went to it, it had not been updated in many, many, many, many years. So I reached out to the owner of the website. It would have been 2013 ish.
And I was like, you know, doesn't look like you've updated the website. I tried to say it nicely. You know, would you ever be interested in selling? You know, this is my idea. And she said, you know, now this is gonna sound comical maybe to to many of you, but she was like, you know, I'd want I want $2,000.
And at that time, I was like, this is too rich for me. I can't do this. So I waited another year, and I reached out to her, and I told her, you know, would you consider a thousand dollars? And then she she folded. And, Mary Mary Van Meer is her name.
She passed away a few years ago, but she had run Thrifty Traveler for for a long time. In fact, she had a snail mail newsletter that we have a copy here in the office, that she sent out from her Florida house, where she retired to 20,000 different subscribers who paid $5 an issue. Again, this is printed. Yeah. Sent through the mail.
Different times, but that's still incredible. Yes. In the nineties, you know, in early two thousands, it's sent out. It's it is incredible. So we've what we've really done is taken the torch from her, digitized it, and, you know, kind of evolved and grew it.
I mean, I I I have read that newsletter. I've read, you know, the archive version of her site. Are the things that we talk about, like, the the nuts and bolts of redeeming Miles and some of that stuff different? Of course, they are. And everything looks a lot different.
But to me, it's it's crazy that the spirit of what we do is so eerily similar to exactly what Mary was doing in her printed newsletter, hand stuffing these issues out to 20,000 subscribers. It's pretty fun. It it is. And I'll share one last thing that I don't think I've told either of you guys. When we first started corresponding, Mary and I, she told me when I launched the site, I had her look at it.
And one of the things she told me, she's like, I don't see your smiling face, and I don't see your wife smiling face either. And, she's like, people wanna see you. They wanna trust you. And I think it's interesting, you know, now that we're doing this podcast, it's trying to get our team more and more in front of people. And I think that advice that I got from Mary, you know, over a decade ago is kind of why we're doing what we're doing now.
So it feels really good. And I'm excited to, yeah, get Thrifty Traveler and the whole team in front of more and more people. So was there a point where you thought that you might be onto something here with Thrifty Traveler? Yeah. You know, the first couple years of, you know, launching any new business, I mean, you don't make any money.
You lose a probably quite a bit of money, which was the same story for me. But I launched Thrifty Traveler Premium, our flight deal alert service in in 2017. And that was a huge kind of financial risk. Poured my heart and soul into it, launched it, and my wife and I happened to be staying at the Hyatt Solara, Cancun when when it launched, which seems appropriate. Yeah.
On points, of course, high points. And, like, the first day, like, 2,000 people signed up when all this money came in. And back then, we were only charging $20 per subscriber. And I just wanna let's pause and point out those 2,000 people, if they're still with us, are still paying $20 a year for Thrifty Traveler premium. Because one of the things that we do is there's a price lock for life.
Whatever price you join at, whatever the full subscription rate is at that time, that is the price that you pay until you decide to cancel. There are 2,000 subscribers maybe who are still paying $20 a year. 20 bucks. And if you have a time machine, if you get to head back there and then subscribe, you'd be saving yourself quite a bit of money. But we launched it.
It was, like, thousands of people were signing up, and I, like, looked at Eric, and I was like, this is actually gonna work. And she I don't think she was actually that surprised. She's like, I thought it was gonna work. And I was like, oh, wow. I married the right woman.
She has a lot more faith in me than I have in myself. So, yeah, that was definitely the point, the pivotal point where I was like, this is actually gonna be something where I can quit my full time, which I still was working full time, as a bank examiner for the federal government. And I knew that, yeah, in a few short months, this is gonna be a significant amount of, you know, money that I could quit my my full time job, which is obviously every business owner or entrepreneur stream. Do you remember any of the first couple of flight deals that you sent or that you found? They I think they've been passed around the office.
Oh, yeah. They look very rudimentary. They do. And, as with any type of art, the first, couple versions that come out are are pretty ugly. And, the format has improved dramatically.
But, yeah, it's, you know, the types of deals that came out, Man, no. I can't recall any specifically. I do remember that there was, there was an Emirates deal that came out and crashed the website right before we launched premium. Mhmm. And that was kind of what when I knew that we had to pivot and, you know, push hard into to flight deals.
And that's that's that's a piece that maybe a lot of people who are listening to this, certainly, you know, our premium subscribers may not realize is that, you know, Thrifty Traveler Premium Now, our flight deal service is our bread and butter and kind of what we're known for here. But that wasn't the original vision. The original vision of was thrifty traveler of just kind of, you know, leveraging points and miles to to travel for nearly free. And, of course, we still do plenty of that. But how has how has that vision changed since, you know, that Emirates deal crashed the website?
Yeah. Let's let's maybe let's go back to that. That would have been, that would have been Christmas of twenty fifteen. I posted, Emirates deal from The US departing from, like, I don't know what, five or six different gateways to Dubai. And it was, like, $500.
And it crashed the website for, like, three or four days. Which is what every business owner wants, to be clear. It's just horrifying. But now you look back on it, you're like, oh, that's great. That's cute.
You know, that's cute. You you didn't you didn't understand, you know, what you're getting yourself into. But that was, you know, when I, you know, I no one else worked for Thrifty Traveler back then. It was just me, and I was like, you know, this flight deal seems like this is where it's at. And that is where we started to pivot more from points and miles like you're talking about, Kyle, to flight deals because it's a broader audience.
And, I just you know, starting your own business entrepreneurship is never a straight road. It's always meandering, and you never know where it's gonna go, but you gotta lean into what's working. And flight deals were what was what worked. So we pivoted to flight deals. And then, ultimately, you know, we brought it back around to points and miles now as well as cash deals, which is kind of beautiful.
It's come, you know, full circle. How much do you think that the the pandemic has changed how people think about travel and therefore, how they think about flight deals and what they're willing to do and what their appetite for learning about points and miles is? I mean, you know, you talked about that circle of people around you at parties or weddings or whatever and just wanting to pick your brain. I feel like that circle is only getting bigger in my personal life and in my professional life too here. There's no question during the pandemic, quite a few things changed.
Points and miles went mainstream. Yeah. There's no circles anymore around me at weddings, because everybody knows about this stuff or is aware of it at least. It's not as, I don't know, secretive or seeming to other people. And I think that's where it's really shifted.
But at the same time, there's still plenty of opportunities out there, you know, for booking these amazing, you know, points and miles deals or finding that cash ticket like we were talking about. For someone who's maybe newer to points and miles and award travel, like, you know, I was one of those kind of jumped on during the pandemic people as well. And, things have changed a lot in five years, things that I thought would never change. You've seen it happening for a lot longer than that. What are some of the biggest shifts that you've seen, to kind of tell show people what it was like way back when you started in points and miles?
I think some of the biggest changes and let me just say, first off, people always say that, oh, this is the golden age of points and miles. Like, this won't last. You know, people were saying that in, you know, 2010, '20 '15, '20 '20, and here we are in, you know, 2025, that the music is gonna stop soon. But it just keeps going. The airlines need us, to remain profitable.
The banks love it as well. I I think the rules have changed significantly. Like, it used to be that you could apply for, like, 10, Alaska credit cards. And you could do that. I I don't remember exactly how you could do it, but you could do it.
Right. And there were just fewer rules. Again, it was really like the wild west. And I feel like the new the restrictions that have come on, you know, over the last decade have have obviously shifted the game. But again, there's always, you know, one door closes and another door opens.
Yeah. I think one of one of the best examples of that is how, you know, a lot of people cry about dynamic pricing, which can definitely hurt when you're looking at a SkyMiles Delta One fare for 500,000 miles or something. Worldwide. I mean, some of that stuff gets really nasty, but, you know, there's also so much opportunity in dynamic pricing. We've seen it with with Virgin's new model of of pricing their own seats and how cheap we saw those get, you know, 21,000 points each way.
And Right. There's, like, you know, we hear I hear a lot about how great points of miles used to be, before I got started. A lot of back in my days from old, old, old guys like you. Very old. I don't have much time left.
Yeah. But, you know, there's still so much opportunity out there. And and the fun part is that we're all in this every day searching for it together. So it's it's pretty cool to hear you talk about what it was like, over ten years and and what it's gonna be like in the future here. Other than this moment right now, sitting between the two of us in our in our makeshift studio in our office, What what memory or two stands out the most?
Whether it's just, you know, a trip that you took as a result of making this shift from the corporate world and having the freedom to travel more while making this your life or just something, you know, that happened in the evolution of what Thrifty Traveler does as a business? Like, what really jumps out at you as as highlights of the last ten years? I think one thing that I know both of you were a part of was we used to actually have our office we didn't have an office until a couple years ago, or several years ago. And we used to meet in, my wife, Eric and I's garage. And we used to meet in the yard in the summer.
Like, we're really like a garage start up. And the fact that, you know, both of you guys have, you know, come from, you know, a very, very small team to now, you know, we have 25 plus. We're moving into a a new office shortly. I feel like that feels like just incredible growth in a in a very short amount of time. So, I I do miss the the outdoor meetings, in front of in our old yeah.
Go ahead. Are are we gonna are we we about to tell the story of when Gunnar came for his final interview? Oh, absolutely. And he had to run the gauntlet? I'll I'll never forget that.
We it was I was interviewing during the pandemic, and, I remember getting the second interview. I interviewed with the leadership team and then I got a second interview and I was like, you're gonna meet the whole team. And it was it's gonna be in my front yard is what Jared sent me. And I was talking to my wife. I was like, is this weird?
Like, what's like, what's gonna happen here? And she was like, he just gave you the address to his house. I think you're gonna get the job. Did he tell you to bring your own lawn chair? Yeah.
You told me to bring my own lawn chair. You didn't. I didn't do that. Bring your own lawn chair. We'll provide the Kool Aid.
Yeah. So I, didn't follow the one interview instruction. Still got hired. Nailed it. But yeah, I sat in a lawn chair provided to me in a firing squad of the five members six members of the Thrifty Traveler team And, everyone's just robbing questions at me, and we're sitting out in the yard on a beautiful summer day in South Minneapolis.
But I'll never forget that. That was the funniest job interview I've ever been a part of. Yeah. I don't think you're gonna top that. No.
That's that's that's the peak. That's it. That was the peak for me. Well, Jared, thanks for talking about this stuff with us. It's fun to kinda look back and, you know, obviously, you've been doing this for for ten years.
You know, you talked about how, you know, how the how the rules have changed around credit cards. How do you think, you know, people's appetite for travel has changed, and how, like, people get the information about this? Because we're sitting here doing, you know, our third podcast. This is new to us. Podcasts certainly aren't new, but there are so many different ways that people are learning about these things for the first time and how much those rules are changing and, you know, what the new sweet spots are, all all of that stuff.
You know, as far as, like, the evolution of Thrifty Traveler, we're always gonna meet people where they're at. Yeah. You know, whether it's email still remains king for us for, you know, our flight deal alerts, our our new many newsletters that we have. But, yeah, I mean, we're gonna we're gonna follow the traffic. And, obviously, podcasts are are a piece of that, social, etcetera.
Alright. Here's to the next ten years then. To the next ten? Next next ten years and more front yard lawn chair interviews. We gotta bring those back.
Come on. Outdoor interviews forever. Listener question? Listener question. Alright.
We get this question all the time, from lots of different listeners, but I'm gonna make it my own here and ask it of Jared. So few travelers probably know that you got started in travel and award travel from Fargo, North Dakota. What advice do you have, and go to strategies, I guess, for traveling from smaller regional airports and still making the most out of your points and miles? Yeah. So for those of you guys who don't know, Fargo yeah.
North Dakota, the example here, smaller regional airports. I think Hector there has, I don't know, 10 ish gates, and I think they've been redoing their entire airport. But anyhow, yeah, it can be tough to find, you know, flight deals from smaller airports. You know, if you're at JFK or you're at LAX or you live in Dallas or Chicago or even here, you know, in Minneapolis, you know, flight deals happen more frequently than they do in some of these smaller cities. So what do you do?
There are cash deals, you know, especially in economy cabins out of every airport in The US, big and small. So that's the first thing. Like, that is it is and, of course, 30 traveler premium is the key to finding those because otherwise, it's a needle in a haystack. But beyond that, you know, if you're using your points and miles and you wanna fly in a business or first class cabin, big thing is positioning. You know, getting from an airport like, yeah, Fargo to, you know, Minneapolis, the closest nearby hub.
Or, you know, if you wanna go to the closest major hub from Fargo, which would be Chicago, you might have to book a flight, a separate flight to Minneapolis or Chicago, and then, you know, use your points and miles or or book a cheap, you know, business or first class flight from there. Obviously, there's some risk, and there's plenty of content to about that at thriftytraveler.com for booking positioning flights, but, you know, that's the key. That's how you can take advantage of some of these crazy insane deals. It's such a counterintuitive thing that's so second nature to the three of us and probably a lot of people listening to this is, oh, we'll just book two flights instead of one, and then you're gonna save a lot of money. But, you know, when you do the math of, you know, just searching from Fargo to Chicago and then Chicago to Rome, for example, I mean, if you were to just search, you know, Google flights or American Airlines or whatever from Fargo to Rome and have them build that connection for you instead, I mean, we're often talking $300 more, $700 more, 800.
At least, yes. Yeah. So the savings can be really incredible. Yeah. And that's a a good thing is I always do some comparison shopping.
You know, see what would it be to go from, yeah, Fargo to Rome versus Chicago to Rome or even, you know, Dallas to Rome. And I think you're gonna be shocked. I mean, yeah. I know we talk about positioning flights. It's the most normal thing in the world.
It's it's mental. It's a little mental, and like I said, not without some some risk of having two separate tickets. And if there's a delay or a cancellation, it can get complicated fast. But risk reward, You can obviously save a boatload, by doing this. And all three of us have done this many times, and it works.
Yeah. Have have either of you ever missed a flight by booking a positioning flight? No. I booked such aggressively long layovers, and that's why I pay for credit cards to give me lounge access. But I've never missed one to date.
Yes. Knock on wood. Me either as well. And I also am on the aggressive side of, you know, three to five hour probably buffer, which is can get a little painful, but Yeah. That lounge access, goes far.
When it comes Sorry. So knock on wood, I also have not missed one. I, however, have booked some incredibly foolish positioning flights, not least of which 45 in Miami. Oh my god. But I made it.
You made it. That's good. Would I tell our listeners to do that? Absolutely not. No.
Go on. Yeah. Don't listen to Kyle. No. Yeah.
I'm always Listen to Kyle. Don't be like Kyle. That's true. I do love, when it comes to smaller regional airports when, things work in reverse and they they get some special deals. We we get stuck with hub penalties here, especially in Minneapolis.
So it's always fun to see some of the regionals get some of the lower fares. I I just, a couple of my friends just booked Oktoberfest flights out of Rochester instead of Minneapolis. They're gonna take the shuttle down there to save, like, 30,000, 40 thousand sky miles each way. And they're, they did really well on the deal, and we'll see if they take that last flight from Minneapolis to Rochester or not. I won't blow up their spot.
But Yeah. That's a good example too. You know, if you if there's an airport, you know, within an hour of you, before you book your flight, you know, check. You know, it might not be the most convenient, but maybe you can save quite a bit. Because, yeah, I drove him down to Rochester, Minnesota too, which is what, an hour ish, a little bit over an hour, away to yeah.
I flew to Madrid twice on a Delta ticket many years ago. I have two kids now, and I would never do that. But back in the day, I had ultimate flexibility. And, yeah, if you can save $300, yeah, maybe it makes sense. That's awesome.
Just a lot of good creative. Yeah. Lot of good tips there. If you want your question answered on a next episode of the podcast, podcast at thriftytraveler.com. We'll try to get to your questions in the next episode.
And our last thing here, Kyle's gonna put Jared on the spot. Alright. You ready, boss? I'm ready. Alright.
If you could resurrect one award redemption from the last ten years, something that the airlines killed. I'm not talking a full award chart. I'm talking one specific redemption. You you hinted at something before, and I think that's yeah. That's gonna be it.
Yeah. And I believe it was. What so it's Alaska miles. Emirates' first redemption, I think it was a hundred thousand Alaska miles one way, but you could have a connection pass due by, for I don't remember exactly what, but it was not much more or it was the same. I cannot recall this.
Was the connection also in first? Yes. Woah. Yeah. Nice.
At least the way I remember it. Yeah. Yeah. And that was the ultimate just deal. You'd call into Alaska, you know, on their on their phone line back then before you could even do it online.
And did they have they they still do have amazing customer service. Mhmm. And it was just a delightful experience using your miles to book, you know, whatever, a $1,520,000 dollar ticket. And you're like, this should not exist. And yeah.
And I know yeah. You've already pointed out how old I'm getting, and a lot of my this travel was pre pandemic. But it was easy to book too. Yeah. Was it a hundred thousand miles and, what, taxes and fees?
Not even yeah. I don't even, like, think about it. You're booking it, and you're like and I'd get on, you know, flying, yeah, Emirates. You'd be like, how is this possible? How can you do this?
And this was the time when people were opening, like, five, six, or more Alaska credit cards getting I think it was even it was, like, a hundred thousand Alaska bonus. I can't remember or recall exactly what it was, but it was it added up quick. And yeah. I mean, that's I feel like for me, that was maybe, like, peak peak, points and miles. Fun while it lasted, but as you pointed out before, doors close, other doors open.
There's always gonna be some amazing redemption or some amazing flight deal around the corner. We just gotta wait to find it. And we're definitely gonna find it. Yeah. We definitely are.
Alright, everyone. Well, thank you for, listening to this special episode of the Thrifty Traveler podcast. It would mean a lot to us if you could rate and review us on your podcast platform of choice, and like and subscribe to Thrifty Traveler on YouTube. These shows are a lot more fun on YouTube. Go check us out over there, please.
It'll also help others find the show when you rate and review and send it around. You know someone that needs a vacation, send them this podcast. And if you have, feedback for us, just send me a note, podcast at thrifty traveler dot com. We would love to hear from you. Kyle, thank you as always.
And Jared, thanks for coming on your show. Thank you, guys. This episode was produced by our cofounder, Nick Serati, and your number one favorite podcast host, Gunnar Olson. It was edited by David Strutt. Our theme music is by Benjamin Tissot.