Hi there,

I've never booked a flight with FF miles before, so please bear with me

My fiance and I are planning a trip to Hawaii for our honeymoon. Currently most flights seem to be around $800 per person, and with FF miles, it would come out to 80,000 to 90,000 miles.

I currently have 60,000 miles, but just applied for the Chase Continental CC that would give me an additional 50,000 miles, so I would have more than enough to book the flight.

So my questions are..

1. The additional miles might not be posted to my account for about a month. Would it be too late to use them by that point? I don't know if the airlines open up more flights later on - seems like we are planning this plenty of time ahead, but the options to use miles on are not very good at the moment. (This might be more of a Continental-specific question, as that's where I have miles, but I'm posting this in the general forum since I imagine this applies everywhere).

2. Is there some sort of 'golden ratio' to determine if cash or miles are a better option? i.e. if the flights overall will be about $1700, is it smart to use 80,000 miles?

Thanks!