Business class seemed out of reach for my family of 4 — until we found an easier way to find the right deals

• We wanted to use points to get business-class seats for our family of four, but felt overwhelmed.
• To help, we used a tool to find deals that work with our credit-card points and our family's needs.
• Ultimately, it helped us find four business-class and four economy-plus seats that worked for us.

Two years ago, when my family of four flew from Dallas to Scotland via London, our young children barely slept on the 10-hour economy flight, leading to meltdowns and frustration.

So, when we planned our trip to Europe earlier this year, my husband and I wanted to do anything we could to avoid this travel chaos. Ideally, that meant booking upgraded seats to make our long flights more comfortable.

Our main goal was business class, but we couldn't justify spending over $10,000 on upgrades, so we planned to use credit-card points. We had a lot to work with because we use primarily use just one Capital One card to earn points on everything we spend.

Unfortunately, finding flights that worked with our schedule, points, and family wasn't so easy. For one, credit-card travel portals usually don't show every flight available with points. Airlines also limit the number of tickets available for points, making it difficult to find deals that work for a group.

After spending hours opening dozens of tabs across different travel websites and scrolling through all sorts of deals, we decided to see if an online search tool might help.

We had luck using a search tool to set travel alerts and find the right deal

There are several different search engines and tools out there that help people find the best ways to optimize their credit-card points, whether they're booking hotels or flights.

My husband did some research online, and we ended up trying PointsYeah to find upgraded flights that worked for us.

On this searchable tool, we were able to enter details like how much we wanted to spend and with which carrier, the specific dates we wanted to travel, and our departure and arrival cities.

From there, when flights that met our criteria appeared, we could receive an alert via email.

PointsYeah's free version felt quite robust, especially for real-time searches, but we upgraded to a yearly plan for about $120 because it allowed us to set up to 32 point alerts, versus only four with the free version.

We used the extra alerts to search by country rather than just by a specific airport, which gave us more flexibility and proved extremely useful.

Departure city can be a major factor in international-flight prices, so we kept ours open to anywhere in the US. We were OK with booking separate tickets to travel from Denver to the official starting point of the international leg of our trip, provided the price was right.

We also kept our arrival airport flexible between Krakow and Warsaw, and looked for specific ticket types (preferably business, but we were open to premium economy) for four people.

After a few weeks and point transfers, our upgraded tickets were ready to go

Within a few days of setting up our alerts, we found our return flights. It was a bit strange booking the return first, but the deal was too good to pass up.

It took us several more weeks to find an outbound flight we liked, and that meant sorting through alerts daily. Eventually, we found a points deal that we were happy with, and the alerts helped us act quickly.

Once we decided to move forward with a flight, the process became a little more complex. After PointsYeah found me an option I liked, that process was in my hands.

For this step, I had to visit each airline's website — in this case, KLM for a flight operated by Air France, and Air Canada for a flight operated by SWISS — set up an account, transfer our points from Capital One, and then purchase through the airline.

I've found it can be tricky to convert credit-card points to miles on different airlines, so this part wasn't my favorite. Notably, some competitors, like Points.me, offer concierge services that will transfer points and book flights for you for an added fee (about $200 a person).

The best flight deal we found from the United States to Poland had us flying from Chicago to Warsaw through Paris. To reach our international starting point, we bought separate tickets from our home airport in Denver to Chicago for $217.40 per person.

From Chicago, we secured premium-economy seats on Air France for 75,500 points per adult and 56,625 points per child, plus $249.30 per person in fees.

Though premium economy wasn't what we were hoping for, the extra legroom was well worth it. We even had enough room to place inflatable footrests in front of the kids after takeoff, letting them stretch out and sleep.

On our return flight, we flew out of Zurich in business class on Swiss Air to Washington Dulles and connected to Denver, costing us 70,000 points per person and $165 in additional fees. We could lie completely flat, and we had plenty of legroom and access to a larger bathroom, which was very helpful with young kids.

Now that I've successfully used points for upgraded seats, I can't wait to do it again

For our family of four, the outbound leg of our trip cost $1,866.80 and 264,250 points, and the inbound leg cost $660 and 280,000 points, for a total of $2,526.80 and 544,250 points.

Had we purchased upgraded premium economy and business-class seats for cash on similar flights, it would have cost over $17,000 — an expense we definitely could not justify.

Ultimately, we loved getting to skip the overwhelming, time-consuming process of sifting through page after page of points deals across different airlines. Being able to explore all our options in one spot and set alerts to only be notified of what works for us was really helpful.

Although parts of the process were more complicated than we expected — we still had to transfer points and book our own tickets — PointsYeah helped us snag upgraded flights for our family that actually worked with our budget.

The best tool for you will depend on your needs and preferences, but it's nice to know services like this exist, and we'll absolutely be using them again.

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