This post is super hard for me to stomach because I can’t even believe that I convinced myself to do this. It goes against everything that I believe, and honestly I’m still not sure if I made the right decision. (Deep breath…) I got the Chase Sapphire Reserve, even thought I’m ineligible to receive that 50,000 bonus.
One thing that I’ve learned from earning and using points is that Chase Ultimate Rewards points are wonderful and go a long way when booking your vacation, but they are not always the best option. Depending on where and when you’re going, sometimes the best option could be transfer Chase points or to even not use points and spend the money.
I just completed my two night stay at the Park Hyatt in Buenos Aires and it was spectacular, I’ve never stayed at a more luxurious hotel with so much culture and history!
One thing that I pride myself on is my ability to plan out vacations. This includes everything from where we’re going and how are we going to get there, to where we eat and what activities we do. Everyone is different and the most important thing is to make your vacation specific and perfect for you, it doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks as long as you have fun! We like to have everything planned out, to the minute, when we leave for a trip. Things can always change and we’re pretty flexible, but we like going in with a plan.
On my Instagram this week, I mentioned that I was finally ready to start booking our Canada trip for this October and it’s probably one of the most expense trips that we’ve gone on so it’s pretty intimidating. That being said, I’m really excited to finally start using all the points I’ve been accumulating over the past year. Now the, hands-down, best way to earn points is from the start up bonuses and most of our points came from the bonuses provided from the Chase INK and Chase Sapphire Preferred. But, I also earned around 50,000 points from everyday purchases this past year. Don’t be fooled, I definitely did NOT spend $50,000 to earn those points. One HUGE plus to utilizing the Chase Ultimate Rewards platform is the ‘Shop Through Chase’ points that are available. At the end of the day, 1 point for everyday purchases and 2 points on travel and dining are only okay options when trying to earn points. But, in my opinion, you’d have to save up for forever in order to earn enough points for a ‘free’ vacation. If you’ve run out of bonus points to earn then utilizing Shop Through Chase is a great alternative.
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.
Hi Friends! Welcome to my first blog post on Travel Hacking Success Stories ! This is a continuation of my Travel Hacking Blog Series where I talk about how I use reward points to pay for my vacations. This will be a second section of the Travel Hacking Blog Series where I share my success stories and how I used points and credit cards on specific vacations.