How we saved over $20,000 in free travel and Stay. 20K in free travel. Are you serious? Over the last five years we have saved over 20K dollars in free travel and stay. We love free travel and we use a primary airline credit card to build up free miles. Currently we have enough miles banked for at least another year worth of free travel for four members. Let me explain. Below are my travel bookings for 12 months March 2017 to March 2018.
Travel 1 – Chicago to LA.
No. of Passengers – 4
Total cost – $ 11.2 per passenger (Taxes and other fee)
Points used – 135 K ( 4th passenger did not even pay miles due to companion pass)
Travel 2 – Chicago to Orlando –
No. of Passengers – 4
Total cost – $ 11.2 per passenger (Taxes and other fee)
Points used– 95 K ( 4th passenger did not even pay miles due to companion pass)
Travel 3 – International – Chicago to Costa Rica
No. of Passengers – 4
Total cost – $ 60 per passenger (Taxes and other fee)
Points used– 68 K ( 4th passenger did not even pay miles due to companion pass)
Travel 4 – Chicago to Nashville
No. of Passengers – 4
Total cost – $ 11.2 per passenger (Taxes and other fee)
Points used – 51 K ( 4th passenger did not even pay miles due to companion pass)
Just in 12 months- 4 return tickets to LA, 4 return tickets to Orlando, 4 return tickets to Nashville and 4 return tickets to Costa Rica. Very conservatively this would have costed us $ 7000. Multiply that for the last five years and I am not even adding the free hotel rooms. I estimate that it is much more than the $20K estimate mentioned in this post. Sweet!
We love credit cards. Using them has provided us with all of these free trips and with more to come. This is also known in the travel world as Travel hacking.
What is travel hacking?
Travel hacking is broad term used for cutting the cost of travel but originally came from gaining airline and hotel mileage points through signing and usage of credit cards. If you live in the US there are infinite opportunities to acquire miles by signing on to a myriad of credit cards. Word of caution – This has to be planned and you have to be disciplined so that the card balances are paid on full every month.
Over the years, we have targeted travel rewards programs based on where we wanted to travel next. We used a airline credit card as our main spender and then we added a bunch of hotel and other cards.
Or the last five years we have encased over 600,000 mileage points for free travel. Currently we have six active cards with points balance as shown:
Chase Ultimate Saphire – 90,000 points
2 Southwest cards – 250,000 points
2 IHG cards – 180,000 points
Hilton Amex card – 90,000 points
This should pretty much give us free hotel and travel at least for the next two years.
Credit Card promotions
By far the most efficient way to get a ton of miles points quickly is through credit card promotions. Banks wants you to sign up for their credit cards and they incentivitise you to sign up through various offers. Once you sign up they mandate a minimum spend during the first fe months in order to make you eligible for the freebies.
Essentially they are hoping that at a percentage of subscribers will not be disciplines and pay the bank a lot of money in interests and late fee over the next few years. Be aware of this trap and do not sign up if you cannot be disciplined.
If free mileage or travel card hacking is sometimes you want to take advantage of , I request you to start slowly , add up a few cards before you expand your collection. There is a lot of information available on the web on travel hacking, so I will spare the details here.
I do get questions on impact on credit score by applying for many credit cards . I have not seen any impact on my credit score and franky I intend to be debt free in a few years and not take on any more debt, so I dont even care. For more ideas on how to plan for travel as a lifestyle read – How much do I need to retire?
Happy free travels, Happy free Meandering