$95 total (all fees) for DTW -> LHR, DUB->DTW
$240 total for hotels (including $160 for a hotel in Oban that I couldn't find a points hotel for)
~$200 for Glasgow -> Belfast flight
When I travel for work I tend to stay 1-2weeks in a hotel that has, luckily, coincided with various hotel promotions like Hiltons 2x points per stay earlier this year and, more recently, Hyatts 3,000 bonus points for a 3+ night stay.
We funnel as much spending as possible through our CCs for the points and pay them off every month as well. I am not shy about leveraging our good credit scores for sign up offers. 40,000 US air miles after 1 purchase and no annual fee? Sign me up! 50,000 United miles after $1k spending in 3 months? Done. I've kept close track of our credit score and over the past 2 years of doing this both our scores have gone up.
Now - we do sacrifice cash back to do this but, since we love to travel and put the points to good use, this is more beneficial to us than cash back would be.
For example:
-The flight cost $1k in spending on a United card and $3k in spending on a Chase card. This got us more than enough points to make tickets for our Transatlantic flights free - we just have to pay the fees associated with the tickets.
A cash back card at 5% would have gotten us $200. Transatlantic flights are a tad more than that
-In London we will be staying the night at the County Hall hotel. Amazing location and would have cost ~$325 a night for the night we are staying. Instead I spent $3000 on a Marriott card and got the night there for free as well as one in Aberdeen and Heathrow (Some of heathrow was completed with business stays at a marriott in nashville). So, if all $3000 would have gone on a card earning 5% back on
everything I would have gotten $150. I chose to get three free hotel nights that would have cost us somewhere around $600.*
(Granted we probably wouldn't have stayed at the County Hall so the real cost would be about $400 and a bit of location inconvenience during our trip)
blowing out my HHonors balance before the devalued chart went into effect.
Similar story - I'm using my HHonors points for a lot of our stay in England and Scotland at places like the Caledonian before those go up in price. Had been working towards the Maldives but with the change that kinda went out the window.