I haven’t paid for a flight in over 5 years. That was before I was introduced to the world of travel hacking. When I travel for work, of course my flights are paid for. When I travel for leisure, I use miles and points to pay for my flights.
Some of these miles I have accumulated through flying for work. Other miles I have obtained on my own through credit card sign up bonuses. For instance, Miami (my hometown) is an American Airlines hub. As a result, I have one of the American Airlines (AA) credit cards that gives me a free checked bag every time I fly on AA. I earned the sign-up bonus on this card which was 70,000 miles after spending $3000 in 3 months.
I pay off all of my credit cards each month, thus I only recommend this if you are able to do the same. With the AA miles I have collected, I have been able to book one-way flights in the USA for 12.5k miles each way. I also used them to fly on my last international trip to Australia in business class. Sometimes while on assignment I need to get home for the holidays or a special occasion, in which I am responsible for the cost of that flight. In this case I will use my AA miles.
Even through applying for credit cards just to earn sign up bonuses, my credit score remains above 800. Besides credit cards, I also accumulate miles through shopping portals. By doing my usual online shopping, I can earn extra bonus points by going through the right portal. I recommend using www.cashbackmonitor.com to see which portal is offering the most points at any given time. For example, if I need to make a $100 purchase at Macy’s, I can often find a portal offering 10 points per dollar spent. That’s an extra 1000 points just for doing my usual shopping.
I sometimes laugh at the fact that I used to pay $1000+ for a roundtrip flight to Europe in economy. Now the most I will pay is probably ~$100 in fees to fly roundtrip in business class to Europe on miles. What are you waiting for? Stop wasting your money on travel, and start collecting miles and points! Don’t forget to check out the “Traveling Credit Cards” section to see which credit cards I recommend at this time.
