Where did those WISH cards come from? (making frequent flyer points and my credit card work for me)

When I posted Extra money for little effort, GoGoGoanna asked how I came to have $1900 in WISH cards for my challenge.  A very good question, and here's how.

Our family loves to travel. I think it has something to do with living on the world's biggest island combined with my need to explore what's on the other side of the horizon. Having the funds and the time to travel is one of our biggest motivators in life.  

Wanting both enough money and time to make our trips happen has led us to become increasingly frugal with our time, energy and money in areas of life we are not so passionate about. GuitarMan is happy anywhere in the world as long as the two ladies he loves are with him and he gets to indulge his passion for music along the way. We've been travelling with TootToot within Australia and around the world since she was 15 months old.

The $1900 of WISH cards for my challenge were obtained from Qantas when I redeemed frequent flyer points , but this could just as easily be another major airline or via a credit card reward scheme.  You have to be very disciplined about your credit card use though and I certainly wouldn't recommend getting a credit card just to try this out. If you are fundamentally opposed to credit cards then this probably isn't for you.

Earning Frequent Flyer Points

1. All three of us are frequent flyers with multiple airline programs. Any travel booking for flights, hotels etc will give us miles with one airline or another. We redeem these miles for hotel stays, vouchers etc.  Of the points we redeemed, 47,538 were earned on one overseas trip last year.
2. Qantas frequent flyer accounts allow you to transfer points between family members once every 12 months.
3. I have a credit card which is linked to our Qantas frequent flyer account.  I pay for everything using the credit card. I park the money in our mortgage offset account and then transfer the money when the bill is due.  When I wasn't so disciplined about credit card debt, I would transfer the money each day.
4. I have no annual fee on the credit card as it is part of our home loan package.  The annual fee for my package is more than saved by having no transaction fees for banking plus a considerable reduction on the variable interest rate for investments.
5. I have paid for renovations, a car, plus deposits on land and an investment property using my credit card.  Most businesses are happy for you to do this in a number of smaller payments over a few days as long as they know what you're doing.  We are just about to build an investment property and will use the same strategy again.
6. If we're considering any purchases, going to dinner, concert tickets we will see if the item or service is offered by a Qantas partner and accrue points that way plus on my credit card.  We'll only use the partner if the price is right.  Woolworths Everyday Rewards card is probably the partner most people would use.  The WISH card challenge is in fact giving me frequent flyer points as I use them up thanks to my Everyday Rewards Card.
7. I don't ever fall in the trap of spending to accrue extra points and pretty much ignore 'bonus point' specials or weekends unless I was planning to buy that item/spend that weekend anyway.  The promotion of 'bonus points' has become a major strategy for both major supermarket chains in Australia and the benefits are generally not for the consumer.

Redeeming Points

Planning our spending and maximising the points we can get from multiple sources has really ramped up how quickly we can accrue points. The next step was working out how best to spend them.

1. Experience has taught me that redeeming points for flights isn't effective as you have to pay the fees and charges associated with the flight. For example a return trip from Melbourne to Los Angeles on special costs $1100 buying via the web.  If you redeem frequent flyer points you'll have to pay taxes of $455 plus redeem 96,000 frequent flyer points.  The cost for the non-tax part of the flight is equivalent to 148 points per $1. 
2. Unless you plan your trip twelve months in advance, you are stuck with the flights that nobody really wants. I usually don't want them either as they involve multiple connections or I can't travel on the dates I want.
3. Redeeming points for WISH gift cards, you can get a $500 gift card for 72,500 frequent flyer points.  This is a cost of 145 points per $1. When you use your WISH cards you can also use your Woolies Everyday Rewards card to accrue further frequent flyer points.  Transferring Guitarman and TootToot's points to my account gave me a total of 275,500 points to spend on $1900 worth of WISH cards.
4. You can also redeem for vouchers from specialist retailers at a slightly better rate of 135 points per $1. This wasn't an option that was good for us as we generally don't shop at those retailers anyway, so why start now?

Isn't it interesting that flights give the worst redemption return?