We may receive a commission when you use our referral links. We truly appreciate your support!!
Hello everyone!! Welcome to our Beginners Guide to Free Travel. This beginners guide to free travel can help you learn the basics to travel to just about any part of the world. I want to discuss what travel hacking is and some common misconceptions about it. I want to show you how to earn free, or almost free travel and some common pitfalls you want to avoid.
BEGINNERS GUIDE TO FREE TRAVEL
What is travel hacking??? It is what can lead you to free, or almost free travel. You hear the term a lot on the internet, but what exactly does it mean? Travel hacking is simply leveraging your airline miles or hotel points for free, or almost free travel. It has allowed my wife and I to travel frequently and to some places that were out of reach financially. Travel hacking allows super exotic places, such as Bora Bora and the Maldives, to be within reach while working your normal 9-5.
Travel hacking doesn’t have to be used for far away places, but can be used for shorter, domestic trips as well.
For example, you can use it for visiting your family back home.
Or if you have a favorite vacation spot that you like going to every year, you can travel hack that.
There’s no right or wrong way to do it. You decide on how to leverage your points and miles!
The way it works is…. Airlines offer saver level award seats which cost you ‘X’ amount of miles, plus fees, for a one-way flight.
Hotels offer award nights for ‘X’ amount of points per night.
If you have enough miles or points, you can use them towards your next flight or hotel stay. Simple enough, right?
LOYALTY PROGRAMS
First off, you need to sign up for airline and hotel loyalty programs. They’re absolutely free, so there’s no harm in doing so. When you sign up for these accounts, they’ll provide you with an account number which you’ll then use to earn miles and points.
An example would be, let’s say you sign up for your FREE American Airlines AAdvantage account. Once you’re given your account number, you can apply that account number to all of your American Airlines paid flights, to start earning miles for those flights that you take.
The same thing applies to hotels. Let’s assume that you sign up for your FREE Marriott account. Once you have your Marriott account number, you can apply that account number to all of your Marriott paid stays to start earning Marriott points for those stays.
My favorite airline loyalty program is ANA because since my wife and I like to visit Europe and South America, ANA allows us to use very little points for round trip business class flights.
For hotels, I like Hilton because of their large worldwide presence, because of how easy it is to earn and use points, plus how easy it is to earn elite status for more perks during your hotel stays.
For those of you already involved with travel hacking, comment below on what your favorite airline and hotel loyalty program is and why!
SHOPPING PORTALS
Aside from paid flights and hotel stays, you can earn points and miles through shopping portals. What’s a shopping portal? It’s basically a website that lists participating stores that allow you to earn additional points and miles, just by clicking through their link. It’s kind of like Ebates, but for points and miles. Most major airlines have shopping portals. For hotels, Marriott, Hilton and Choice hotels have shopping portals.
So, for example, if you’re wanting to earn more United miles, you can shop through the United shopping portal, and click on the store that you’re wanting to shop from, make your purchase, and that’s it. It’s pretty easy!!
If I do any shopping online, I usually scope out Cashback Monitor first. This site will show me what the current payouts are for a certain store through different shopping portals. So, let’s say, I’m looking to buy something from Best Buy. First I’ll check out Cashback Monitor to see what each participating shopping portal is paying out per dollar on Best Buy. Then I decide which shopping portal to go through at that point.
Comment below on what shopping portals you like!
CREDIT CARD CHURNING
One of the most popular ways to earn a ton of points and miles is through credit card churning.
Whoah there!!!! Aren’t credit cards bad for your finances?
Credit cards aren’t bad, it’s the way that some people abuse them that’s bad. Many people spend way more than they should on credit cards, fall into debt, and are charged high interest rates. However, if you treat your credit card like your debit card, stick to your normal spending budget, and pay off your credit cards in full, then you won’t spend a dime in interest and you can take advantage of the points and miles you earn by using that credit card.
Many popular credit cards offer sign up bonuses with a large number of points or miles, after spending ‘X’ amount of dollars within a certain amount of time.
SIGN UP BONUSES AND CATEGORY BONUSES
An example of this is the Chase Sapphire Preferred card. They’re currently offering a 60K point bonus after you spend $4K within 3 months. Banks use this strategy in hopes of getting people to overspend, then later consumers have to pay large amounts of interest to the banks. But we’re smarter and more disciplined than that.
By spending within your means and sticking to your budget, you can easily meet the minimum spending requirements needed to earn the bonus and not get into any financial trouble. In a later article, we’ll discuss practical ways to reach the minimum spending requirements without breaking your budget.
Another nice thing about what these banks offer is category bonuses. If we consider the Chase Sapphire Preferred card, they offer 2 points per dollar when using your card for travel or dining purchases. For everything else, you earn 1 point per dollar.
Other cards offer category bonuses for groceries, gas, office supplies, advertising, etc. Pretty much all spending categories are covered by one card or another, so picking a card that matches your spending habits shouldn’t be too difficult.
I have 2 cards that I really like and use most often. First is the American Express EveryDay Preferred Card, which earns up to 4.5 points per dollar for groceries, up to 3 points per dollar for gas and up to 1.5 points per dollar for everything else. Second is the American Express Gold Card which earns 4 points per dollar for dining and 4 points per dollar for groceries. The points I earn with these cards are extremely valuable and have several useful airline transfer partners.
Comment down below on what your favorite credit card is and why!!
CONCLUSION
So if you’ve been putting off that dream trip to Hawaii because it’s too expensive, you should really consider hacking your trip to Hawaii. By leveraging your points and miles to eliminate the costs of your airfare and hotel stays, all you would really need to save money for is food, tours and souvenirs! I hope you found this Beginners Guide To Free Travel helpful and that you look forward to more content like this.
Don’t like to read? Check out our YouTube video!
