Blog Post #8 – Travel Hacking – Pt. 1 – Beginners

Travel Hacking – Pt. 1 Beginners

Have you ever wanted to go on a really nice vacation but always thought that it’s way too expensive? Let’s introduce Travel Hacking, which allows you to travel for nearly free! The Travel Freely app/website is a great place to start your education on the topic as well as stay updated on new offers, keep track of cards, and see success stories of Travel Hacking.

To begin, Travel Hacking is simply using credit card points to reduce your costs of travel. Some people get very advanced in this but I’m going to keep it simple for beginners like me. 

How to Get Points

Credit Card points are earned through using your credit card for daily purchases. This takes a long time to rack up points, but by leveraging Credit Card welcome bonuses you can gain large amounts of points toward travel! Through normal spending you may earn about 2,000-3,000 points per month but the Welcome Bonus can earn you 60,000-150,000 points!

Before you start signing up for a hundred cards, it’s important to know how much you spend per month. That is why I started my blogs with fundamentals of money! By knowing how much you spend per month you will know what cards you can earn the Welcome Bonus. It is not worth putting yourself in debt to gain credit card points. I’ll say it again but underlined, It is not worth putting yourself in debt to gain credit card points. 

To earn the bonus you may have to spend $3,000-4,000 in 3 months. For beginners, this could be a lot of money and you may not even spend that much. But for the bonus, you have to pay off the balance. Just by spending that much on the card will not earn you the bonus. I’ll say it again but underlined, you have to pay off the balance. This is why having a solid personal finance foundation is so important and why it rewards the people that do it right.

How To Start & What Cards

Once you know how much money you spend and will see what cards you can qualify for to get the sign up bonus, it is time to choose your first card. You local bank is probably not the best option if you’re going into Travel Hacking but a few that are:

• Chase
• American Express (AMEX)
• Capital One
• Airline Cards
• Hotel Cards

Chase and AMEX are the top two that offer the biggest bonuses and offer the most multipliers by normal spending like restaurants, fuel, and groceries.  One of the best cards for beginners is the Chase Sapphire Preferred which offers 60,000 points as a Welcome Bonus if you spend $4,000 in 3 months. This would equal about $900 dollars! This is why the signup bonuses are so important to the Travel Hacking Strategy. Business Cards have higher signup bonuses but they require a higher minimum spend such as $6,000-15,000 in 3 months. This would only make sense if you know how much you’re spending, or have a business that spends that much money in a month.
If you want to learn more, I’ll be posting future blogs on this topic as I go deeper into it myself. I currently have 7 cards in my first year which I am using to help fund my real estate flip on 0% APR in the first year. Two great podcasts that cover this topic are The Travel Hacking Mom Show, and All The Hacks. Get educated, track your finances, and get started!