Flying business class is cheaper than you think

hello from the miles Queen I just got back from our trip to Europe uh there were four people on the airplane my husband and I and two of our kids all of us flew Business Class A United Airlines Amsterdam to San Francisco and guess how much we paid we paid 346 dollars for all of us and of course part of this trip was covered with Miles and this is what we're gonna talk about today but before we start please do not forget to like this video all of my friends are like Marina tell me how you keep flying business class and paying 20 per flight 100 per flight this is going to be my full tutorial everything I know in collecting miles and I've been obsessed with miles for years now and this is one of the reason I've changed several banks in the past because I was looking for the credit card that would maximize my earnings in terms of miles and just a quick note if you're a business owner and you're still paying for your flights you have to watch this video up to the very end because this has to stop now my first business class flight happened in 2018 this is basically when I realized I want to fly business all the time because we fly transatlantic probably three times a year now and now we have two kids so if I didn't have miles we would have paid sixteen thousand dollars per trip twenty thousand dollars per trip depending on where we're going the first time we flew business class happened in 2018 and this is one of the things you could try potentially uh it's not the best way to fly business but you could try you have to know about this thing so this is called upgrading at the counter so you come to the airport uh you register for your flight and you ask at the register are there any upgrades sometimes they would tell you you have to ask uh when you're at the gate sometimes they tell you you have to ask on the airplane for example Emirates will let you upgrade on the airplane but the thing is normally it's not a really good deal so for example if you fly Turkish Airlines the upgrade would cost pretty much the same as you would have paid for business class so it doesn't make sense Emirates still the same thing I wanted to upgrade from business to first class uh last year and they told me the upgrade cost six thousand dollars and I'm like nah thank you but Lufthansa sometimes lets you pay maybe an extra 900 to fly in the business cabin compare this to 700 economy class again okay the numbers that I mentioned here vary by a lot depending on destination time of your flight how far in advance you're purchasing the ticket but I just want you to feel the difference economy flight say San Francisco to Frankfurt seven hundred dollars business class four thousand dollars five thousand dollars but if you upgrade at the counter you might end up paying one thousand seven hundred dollars in total for business class but there is always a catch right sometimes business class is fully booked and you're left out this is why I refer to verses my flight in Miles anyways when we first flew business class in 2018 I documented my journey I was oh my God it made so much difference because I arrived at the destination having slept for eight hours well fed well rested barely had jet lag because the journey was so smooth and I told myself Marina from now on transatlantic flight business class I don't care how you do it you try to make more money you try different things but you have to fly business and this is how I started learning about miles about collecting miles and by the way I'm mostly focusing on more expensive flights uh in this video meaning transatlantic flights meaning flights from San Francisco to New York so something where business class really makes a difference so I started learning about collecting miles before I go ahead and tell you everything about collecting and earning miles I just want to address some comments I got on my video where I shared that we paid 16 for my business class flight with my kids people who are calling this tax evasion now I am not a CPA please consult a professional but what my CPA told me is that when you use miles earned on your credit card even if it's your business's credit card those miles you can use them for your personal trips you can use them for your business trips doesn't matter they are not taxed but if you are getting a new card from a bank and a lot of banks do that they tell you get a new card spend one thousand dollars in the next 30 days and you will get 80 000 miles as a gift now that gift is taxable the bank will probably send you a 10.99 so you'll have to report it and go through the whole process it's just you know and I'm talking about the US and again please consult your CPA uh do not quote me on this but this is what my CPA told me so this is not tax evasion because people went crazy in the comment section I know in some countries this might be tax evasion but in the US you should be fine but again consult a professional some people also complained that you either have to be a millionaire or own a huge business to be able to collect so many miles I will say you have to have certain type of expenses but by no means you have to be a millionaire or spend millions of dollars you have to have the right credit card and you have to know how to spend your miles wisely and I'm going to give you an example let's pretend that you just got a credit card from a certain bank and they gave you 80 000 miles for free and you were able to get 30 000 Miles by spending money on certain categories that got you miles and you end up with 100 10 000 miles the bank will give you several options on how to spend those miles and you know I'm gonna show you my screen I'm gonna show you my bank we're gonna move to a new mic so the sale will be slightly different so here we go 36 000 miles is what I have left after a trip from Amsterdam to San Francisco and see what happens here they offer me to redeem those miles um into a gift card which basically means that for 100 miles or points what they call them in in the system I will get one dollar all right that's that's one of the options now other things you could do is book a hotel okay let's see what they offer now if you try to book through their portal suddenly your miles or points are worth more basically for 36 000 I will get around 450 bucks which means that now one dollar is worth 80 miles which is 20 cheaper great but it's still not how you use your miles they're gonna give you a lot of different options how to spend your miles but all of these options are not worth it all right here we go so we're gonna look for a flight from Amsterdam to San Francisco let's do you know 726 one adult book with Miles very important so you see the prices right here um 126 000 miles for an on-stop flight plus 84 dollars now the price depends on how busy the flight is how far in advance you book uh on the season because in August we flew the same route but for 88 000 miles per trip now if you look at 153 126 you can actually do