Hi Friends! Welcome to the first part of this blog series on Travel Hacking ! There are so many great blogs out there for researching Travel Hacking and different techniques to use but this series will focus on my journey, and tricks, from start to finish. Now I’m not one of the pros, with 20+ credit cards, but throughout the last couple years I’ve developed a really good system for earning points and redeeming them for vacations. My goal is to lay out this series as if you were just starting out and had never heard of the term travel hacking. It’s also set up to be a step-by-step guide so let me know if you have any questions in the comments below, I use a lot of math for explaining things and sometimes I forget that not everyone understands math the way I do.
One of my favorite things to do is travel, I have a list of over 100 places to see on my bucket list. But I’ve always struggled with how expensive it is to travel. Sometimes after I calculate the total cost of a trip I end up saying ‘eh, not worth it’. When I started traveling for work, right out of college, I got my very first credit card, an airline credit card, that I used to gain status and earn miles. Then I realized that I was earning all these points and these points could be redeemed for other airline flights. Once I figured out that I could fly for free, I was hooked and continued with that strategy when earning hotel points. Finally, in my research I came across the term travel hacking. Travel hacking is just a term for when you utilize reward points offered through credit cards in order to pay for vacations, activities, airline tickets etc. Rewards credit cards are constantly offering deals, giving you ‘bonus point’ after you spend a certain amount on the card. For example, ‘spend $3,000 in the first 3 months and receive 50,000 bonus miles/points’. In layman’s terms, travel hacking is just finding the credit cards who are offering goods ‘bonus point’s and taking advantage of these offer to get a shit ton of points, then using said points to pay for your vacations.
I travel for work and accumulate a lot of airlines and hotel points. So I had a basic understanding of using the points that I had accumulated but didn’t realize it was actually a ‘thing’ until I heard about the term ‘Travel Hacking’. Before I was just using one credit card to get points for my everyday purchases and was able to use points for maybe one flight, which I was already really excited about. Then I started googling and learned a bunch of different things, some things I was doing right and others I was doing wrong.
The first step to travel hacking is finding a couple really good rewards credit cards. In my opinion, these are credit cards that you should always have in your wallet to use on your everyday purchases. There are dozens of reward credit cards out there so I’ve gone ahead and done most of the research and consolidated my favorite ones.
When you’re first starting out I would recommend having 3 types of credit cards:
- Main Rewards Card
- This is the card that allows you to earn the most points on everyday purchases
- Typically, I see cards offering 2 points per every dollar you spend on travel (hotel, airfare, car rental) and dining, and 1 point on all other purchases.
- Typically, these include your bank credit cards, Chase, Citi, Bank of America etc.
- Hotel Card
- The main reason for this card is the perks you can get from the hotel chain for having their card.
- Higher status with the hotel chain
- Special offers and discounts (free points)
- Free upgrades
- Increased points when staying at that hotel
- 3 points for every dollar spent vs 2 points for every dollar spent.
- Airlines Card
- Like the hotel, the main reason for having this card is the perks you can get from the airline.
- Free checked back
- Faster boarding
- Upgrades
- Expedited customer service
- Priority line in TSA security
- You can also get more points when flying with this airline.
4 Things to Look for from all your credit cards:
- How many points am I getting on everyday purchases?
- What’s the bonus/startup points?
- Are foreign transaction fees waived?
- How easy is it to transfer/redeem my points?
My Favorite Rewards Card – Chase Sapphire Preferred
I chose this card based off their rewards points, both introductory and for daily purchases.
- Points for Everyday Purchases
- On everyday purchases, you get 1 point per dollar. However, you’ll earn 2 points on travel + dining.
- For this card dining includes fast food locations, supermarkets and restaurants.
- Travel includes hotels, airlines, rental cars and even Uber.
- The main thing to look for is how a company defines travel and dining. Some companies include travel to be only airline and hotel expenses, while others open it up to include rental cars, gas etc. The goal is to find a company who is very broad and includes multiple things in these categories because that’s more expenses that you can earn extra points for. From my research, the Chase Sapphire Preferred card expands this listing to more than others.
- Bonus/Startup Points
- Earn 50,000 points after spending $4,000 in first 3 months of opening the card
- The start up points is where you’ll accumulate most of your points. Earning points for everyday purchases is great and gives you a good place to start, but the real benefit from these cards is the startup points.
- Experts say that 40,000 points should equal to around $800 in rewards. If you’re like me and you put everything on your credit card, then spending $4,000 in 3 months is easy to do. Therefore you’re getting a free $800 worth of points for purchases you already make.
- No foreign transaction fees
- As a wanderluster, I always look for cards with no foreign transaction fees. This means that you wont be paying an extra fee when you buy something in a foreign country.
- Transfer and Redeem Points
- For the bank credit cards, I typically transfer my points for airline miles or hotel chains, but you can redeem points for gift cards and even book hotels and flights through Chase. However, I’ve found that that Chase requires more points for it’s flight than American Airlines does, so I typically transfer my points.
- Can transfer points (1:1) for the following, without a fee:
- United Airlines
- Includes their affiliated partners such as Air Canada, Lufthansa, Swiss, Austrian, Avianca, TACA, Thai, Singapore, ANA and Asiana
- Southwest Airlines
- Air France
- British Airways
- Includes their affiliated partners such as American Airlines, Cathay Pacific, LAN and Japan Airlines
- Korean Airlines
- Virgin Atlantic
- Singapore KrisFlyer
- Hyatt
- Marriott
- IHG Hotels
- Ritz Carlton
My Favorite Hotel Card – The Hyatt Credit Card
I chose this card because my company at the time had discounts with Hyatt and I ended up staying there a lot during my business trips. But really, whichever hotel chain you choose will have a similar credit card. Every hotel chain has a value that they put on their points. For Hyatt 1 point is valued at around 1.5 cents ($0.015). For hotels, this value is higher than most at 1 cent ($0.01) per point. I also prefer Hyatt because they do promotions every quarter where they will offer hotel rooms at discounted rates. This is something that I didn’t see with other hotel chains.
- Points on Everyday Purchases
- On everyday purchases you can earn 1 point for ever dollar spent on everyday purchases, 2 points for dining and 3 points on every dollar spent at Hyatt locations.
- I don’t use my hotel credit cad for everyday purchases, that’s what the Rewards card is for. The main point of the hotel credit card is the points you get for staying, and spending money, at that property. In this case, 3 points per dollar is very high, typically it’s only 2 points per dollar on travel .
- Bonus/Startup Points
- The startup points offered for Hyatt is what initially drove me to getting this card. Hyatt offers 2 nights free a any hotel (worldwide) after you spend $2,000 in the first three months. This is an amazing deal if you use your points correctly. Some of Hyatt’s most expensive hotels, Park Hyatt Paris for example, can be as high as $900 a night. So 2 nights free here would give you a rewards total of $1,800 which is extremely high. Above I mentioned that the Chase card gave you around $800 in start up points, so this more than double.
- You’ll also get one free night every year you have the card.
- There are no foreign transaction fees applied to this card.
- Redeeming Points
- I wouldn’t recommend transferring points with your hotel or airlines credit cards, typically the point to point ratio is very low and you’ll end up losing points in the process. What I do look for in hotel chains is how easy is it to use/redeem my points.
- With Hyatt, and most hotel chains, it’s very easy. There are no blackout dates and I can use my points at every location, even the all inclusive resorts (I’ve already booked my vacation for the all inclusive Jamaican resort in 2018).
- One of my favorite things about Hyatt is they give you the option to use point or point+cash. For example, I have the option to either book a room for 5,000 points or for 2,500 points + $100. This is great if I don’t want to use all my points on one room.
- One thing that’s a little annoying is that for some of the properties you need to call to book with points versus booking online. I’ve never had it take longer than 15 minutes on the phone but it is an additional hassle.
My semi-Favorite Airlines Card – AA Advantage Platinum Select
For the airline credit card, I recommend choosing whichever airline is close to you or has a hub in your city. I chose to travel with American Airlines because I live in Dallas, which is a hub for American Airlines. So flying with American is very easy, I can find flights to anywhere I want to go without having too many layovers or stops. It seemed only natural to get their credit card as airports were becoming more of a hassle, with baggage fees and security lines. The American Airlines credit card does give you a couple perks that make traveling more bearable.
- Points on Everyday Purchases
- On everyday purchases, you’ll get 1 point for every dollar that you spend and 2 points on flights. Similar for the hotel credit card, I don’t use this card for everyday purchases, I use it for the additional perks that American Airlines gives me just for having the card.
- First checked bag free
- 15% discount on in-flight purchases
- Expedited/priority boarding
- Status and upgrades
- Bonus/Startup Points
- The startup points for the American Airlines card is 60,000 miles after spending $3,000 in the first three months. This startup point amount changes every couple of months and ranges between 40,000 and 60,000. So if you go online and see that they are only offering a 40,000 point bonus, wait a couple months when the bonus points are 60,000 and get the card then.
- With airline credit cards miles are the same things as points. So this doesn’t mean you’ll get to travel 60,000 miles for free, it means you have 60,000 points that you can redeem for flights. Airlines just se the word miles instead of points to make it complicated.
- There are not foreign transaction fees with this card.
- Redeeming Points
- I will admit that redeeming airline miles always seems to be more difficult than redeeming hotel points. This is one of the reasons why I don’t use my airlines card for everyday purchases. There are a couple tricks that I’ve learned in order to redeem your miles effectively.
- Plan in advance. If I’m trying to book multiple airline flights for a tip, I book around 10 months in advance in order to get a good rate.
- Don’t fly on Friday and Sundays. This is when ticket costs are the most expensive. I typically shoot for Tuesdays and Wednesdays, sometimes Saturday depending on the destination.
- Instead of booking the party together try booking everyone separately. I’ve found that if I’m trying to find seats for 2 people, it’s sometimes cheaper to book each person individually versus in a group.
Regrets and Mistakes that I’ve made:
- The Disney Card
- Applying for the Disney card was a decision based off emotions and not math or facts. I have such a love for Disney I wanted to have their credit card and thought I’d be able to get some good perks with having the card.
- This was not the case, I was only earning 1% points on my purchases which I could then used to get 1% gift cards for Disney. To do the math, that means that every $100,000 I found, I would receive a $1,000 Disney gift card. To me, this is just a bad deal because if I would have spent $100,000 on my Chase Sapphire Card, I would have received more rewards points and would have been able to use them for more things.
- Using my American Airlines credit card on everyday purchases
- Before I had done any research, I was perfectly happy with just having one credit card and using that for all my purchases. Then I realized that with the airlines credit card I was only getting 1 point back for every dollar I spent on restaurants/food, instead of 2 points for every dollar that I would have earned if I had the Chase Sapphire Preferred. IDK about you but I eat out a lot and missed out on so many bonus points by not getting the Chase Sapphire Preferred card sooner.
- Having cards that gave me 1% cash back
- Don’t be afraid of annual fees!!!!!!
- One thing I did notice in my research is that most credit cards require a high/moderate credit score and have an annual fee. The annual fee use to scare me so I just got the $0 annual fee credit cards which offered a 1% cash back on your purchases. But, from my research I’ve found that the cards with annual fees allow you to accumulate points faster and you’ll get more bonus points.
I hope this post made sense and was informative! I’ll be posting more about travel hacking as I learn more, through research and experience, but my new goal is to never pay for another vacation!
