Two families, one obsession: Flying the world using points
- Guest Writer
- 9 hours ago
- 5 min read
In our fourth guest post, today's post has been kindly written by Beta and Nat from Fly Smart Club. They're two best friends from Brazil who use points to see their families more frequently, and take the odd holiday too!
We're exceedingly happy with the response from you all to our guest writers. If you'd like to guest write, simply DM us on Instagram or email sam@pointswellmade.co.uk with an idea, and we will make it work!
Hey! We are Beta & Nat from Fly Smart Club, two friends running two very different families, here to show you the reality of being a travel-loving family in the UK, even with the "monster" that's called the school holidays!
Travelling as a family with points is not always easy; availability can be really hard to find, especially during those peak dates. But if you are willing to learn a bit about this universe of points and miles, it can also be very rewarding…
Of course, this is just our personal perspective, but it has already allowed us to cross off some of our bucket list destinations!
We know a lot of you already have the points but have no idea where to start, or might think you don't have enough to book for your whole family. The truth is, we rarely have the full amount either. That's where perks like a companion voucher or a cabin upgrade voucher become one of the biggest advantages for families. And because our households spend more, hitting the threshold to earn them is actually easier.
For both of us, the main reason we started learning about points and miles in the UK is simple: we are both Brazilian, and we wanted to travel more and show the world to our kids. More importantly, we wanted to take them to Brazil at least once a year, so they can spend time with their grandparents and great-grandparents while they're still here.
And we'd love to tell you how we do it.
Two Families, Two Very Different Trips
Everything starts with a strategy. And as families, we normally need to plan waaaay ahead, because of availability.
For us, it all begins with where we want to go the following year. We set our goals and from there we know where we need to start accumulating the points. And to make this easier to understand, let us bring some examples here:
Nat’s Plan: Fortaleza
One of Nat's trips next year will be to Fortaleza (Northeast of Brazil!). She'll fly Iberia from Madrid direct to Fortaleza in Ceará. (If you've never been to the northeast of Brazil, it's as beautiful as the Caribbean and the food is exceptional. Just saying!)
For London to Madrid, she'll try cash first. BA and Iberia run 8+ flights a day on that route and you can pay as little as £49pp. But if cash prices are too high, the alternative is booking with Avios on BA.
Using those dates on Google Flights, it shows Iberia as the cheapest option anyway, and a flight with the same conditions as the Avios booking comes to £2,912. Even if you don't have the full amount of Avios needed, you'd pay just 35,200 Avios plus £1,526.80, versus the £2,912 cash fare. That's a saving of 47.6%. Because her travel will be in October 2027, we wanted to show you off-peak dates and compare with cash prices on the same dates.
And remember, if those Avios came from your everyday spending, they didn't cost you a thing.
Here’s how it breaks down across all the combinations (savings = £2,912 − cash portion):
Avios | Cash | Total Saved |
200,000 | £486.80 | £2,425.20 |
149,600 | £886.80 | £2,025.20 |
114,400 | £1,126.80 | £1,785.20 |
88,000 | £1,206.80 | £1,705.20 |
61,600 | £1,326.80 | £1,585.20 |
35,200 | £1,526.80 | £1,385.20 |
If you have a companion voucher, the savings are even bigger. With this strategy, remember that BA doesn't fly directly to Fortaleza, so Iberia is your only option here.
When she travels in October 2027, it's off-peak on the Iberia calendar (as Iberia doesn't charge peak pricing for UK half terms), and because it's a fixed price, we can search any low-season date to see how many points she will need and plan from there.
Beta’s Plan: Curaçao
And Beta's idea is to take her family to Curaçao (all because Nat went there and can't stop talking about it!).
The Flights
For the flights, she will be using Virgin Points to fly KLM… because, believe it or not, it's cheaper than using Flying Blue points.
Beta has the Virgin Atlantic Reward+ Card and buys most of her groceries at Tesco to convert all of her Clubcard points to Virgin Points!
The flight should cost 12,000 points per person + taxes each leg in economy, or 48,500 points per person + taxes each leg in business if she can find availability closer to departure (with dynamic pricing, we need to keep looking until we find a good deal).
So if everything goes well, she will be taking her family to Curaçao next year, paying much less than anyone booking the same trip with cash!
The Hotel
For the hotel, she is once more using points, this time the Wyndham Rewards program to pay for the Kunuku Resort in Curaçao , and yes, of course is an all-inclusive.
During the best offers to buy points, we can get between 80-100% bonus and each point works out at around $0.72, so if you consider that she will buy and get 80% bonus points, she will be paying around $1,742, which is approximately £1,300 for the entire stay (16 nights in this example)!
As you can see, we don't have the same strategy and that just proves this is not a one-size-fits-all… every family is different, everyone has their own bucket list and we can all make it happen.
It’s Not Just About the Flights
Another side of this whole process is the credit cards… we both hold an Amex Platinum because we truly believe that it is the best card to have if you do travel as a family….
The perks are genuinely incredible, and here is the part Nat doesn't think gets talked about enough. She has a SEN son. The lounges, the room upgrades, the late check-out, the early check-in, for her family, that isn't luxury. It's the difference between an actual holiday and just literally burning their money and everyone coming back even more tired than before! A quiet space at the airport instead of a crowded gate. Not having to rush out of a hotel room at 10am. All of that, without having to rely on people’s goodwill, is 1000% worth it. And it all works because we invested in learning about points and miles.
Different people will have different needs when it comes to credit cards, and you can find a lot of amazing content about all the credit cards you can have in the UK here on their blog.
This is also part of the strategy we spoke about earlier, depending on your plans, one card will be better than another for that specific trip. So before getting crazy and just ordering credit cards to earn any old points, you need to know where you want to go first!
We know that using points to travel, especially as a family, is a very haaaard job, but if you are willing to learn and execute the strategies it can be truly rewarding!
Beta and Nat, Fly Smart Club
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Great tips! Thanks!