Hello! My name is Jacob and I am the Points Travel Buddy. I want to help you understand what travel hacking is and how you can use it to travel around the world! There are many different kinds of travel hacking, but in its most basic form you open travel credit cards in order to meet the sign up bonuses. The bonuses earn you points that you can redeem for amazing trips that will cost next to nothing! Now if you are like me I was very hesitant at first. I thought credit cards were bad, credit cards will put you in debt, or they can be bad for your credit. I was very wrong. I was the guy that used his debit card and cash for everything. I tried to make purchases only when I had the cash or funds to cover them. After learning about travel hacking I realized every time you use your debit card or cash you are literally throwing away free money! My own stubbornness and fears of credit cards kept me away from travel hacking. I wish I knew what I know now about 5 years sooner. We could have saved so much money and went on so many more trips! I want to teach you what I have learned about travel hacking as well as share our journey and trips we take on points. Feel free along the way if you ever have any questions or want to share your trips feel free to message, email, or contact us on any social media! We are here to help! To start this hobby you should have a credit score around 700 minimum and not be paying any interest on any current credit or revolving accounts.
Rule #1 Stop using your debit cards and cash. Run all your everyday purchases through your new travel credit card.
Rule #2 Do not make any extra purchases you weren't already going to make. Treat your credit card like it is your debit card or cash. Only make planned purchases that you have the funds in your bank account to cover.
Rule #3 This is the most important rule. Pay your statement balance off in full each month. When you do this you will never pay a cent in interest.
Rule #4 Stay away from any store cards or branded airline/hotel cards at first. You want to focus on premium travel cards like Chase Sapphire Preferred or Capital One Venture X that offer more flexible redemptions. You will read later why being strategic with card selection is very important.
Rule #5 Always try to think about a purchase before you make it and try to see if there is a way you can earn more than 1x your points on purchases. Never settle for 1x points. Many cards I will mention have great earning categories. For example on the current cards we have - 2x on everything for Capital One Venture X, 5x on flights in the capital one portal,10x on hotels and rental cars in the capital on portal. 3x for dining on the Chase Sapphire Preferred, 5x for travel in the Chase portal. 5x for gas and the rotating categories on Chase Freedom Flex. 1.5x everything on the Chase Freedom Unlimited. 4x for dining and groceries on the Amex Gold, 5x for booking directly with airlines on the Amex Platinum, etc.
Rule #6 In terms of credit do not open too many credit cards too quickly. Also do not close your cards for at least a calendar year. Opening credit cards too frequently or closing them can negatively impact your credit score. Try to wait at least 30-90 days between credit card applications and keep your accounts open as long as you can! The banks want to see long and healthy credit history where you always make your payments on time! When used responsibility cards will help your credit score increase.
If you follow the above rules you will never pay any interest or dig yourself in a hole of credit card debt. Travel hacking is probably not the best for anyone that has struggled with credit card debt in the past. You have to make sure you remain in control and stick to purchases you were already going to make. Things like gas, grocery's, dining out, travel, car insurance, cell phone bill, private health insurance, annual or property taxes, and even some utility bills can all be paid for with your credit card. Now we get into the cards themselves and where you should start. I would recommend starting with a Chase Sapphire Preferred. This is a very beginner friendly card. It was the first card my wife and I both had. Currently you can earn 60k chase points for spending $4,000 in your first 3 months. At first I was overwhelmed by that number. $4,000 sounds like a lot of money right? Look at your budget I guarantee between all the everyday purchases you make over the course of 3 months it totals to much more than $4,000. Another option is when you have a big expense coming up. This is actually what got me started. I had a friend on Facebook always posting his travels to the Maldives, Greece, Europe, and more. One day I finally asked him how he was traveling so much and he introduced me to the world of travel hacking. I had to put a new roof on my house at the time which I already had the money set aside to do. I opened the CSP (Chase Sapphire Preferred) card as he suggested with his link, and I paid for the roof with my card. I paid the balance in full as soon as it was due with the cash I had saved. I immediately hit my spending bonus and had 60k chase points to use. Fast forward a few weeks later, I referred my wife for her own CSP card. Referring your friends and family is another way to earn points. I will have links on all my social medias and throughout this blog. I would really appreciate if you use them!
I earned 15k chase points for referring my wife. We paid our annual taxes with her card with money we already had set aside. The she earned her 60k bonus right away. In no time at all we had 135k+ chase points! That easy. Since then we have opened up 3 more credit cards, and I will get into those later. Now you might ask what are these points worth? CSP points are valued at 1.25 cents per point. If you see anyone say CPP in the travel hacking world it means cents per point. We use this when expressing the value of our points. So if you do the math the current sign up bonus for the CSP is at least $750 worth of travel. But it gets better. The points are only worth 1.25 cents per point when redeemed in the Chase Travel Portal. BUT, You have the option to transfer the points out to travel partners and you can redeem at way more than 1.25 CPP.
Rule #7 ALWAYS TRANSFER OUT YOUR POINTS. Never settle for using them in your cards travel portal!
If you want maximum value you need to transfer your points. You would not believe how many people I talk to that already own some of these cards mentioned and had absolutely no idea you could transfer your points to different transfer partners! Some partner redemptions can have value from 2-7 CPP or more. That would make your 60k points worth $4,200 at a 7 CPP redemption! Chase transfer partners for points include Southwest, United, Virgin Atlantic, Aer Lingus, Air Canada, British Airways, Emirates, Iberia, Jet Blue, Singapore Airlines, IHG Hotels, Marriott Bonvoy Hotels, and Hyatt Hotels. Most points transfer at a 1:1 ratio. Sometimes they even offer transfer bonuses like 25% or 40% more points for certain partners periodically. For example on a 25% transfer bonus if you transferred 10,000 chase points it would become 12,500 points in the partners system after the bonus. This is what makes the bank travel cards so valuable. Cards like Chase, Capital One, Citi, and Amex all have their own transfer partners. They are not like a hotel or airline branded card where your points or miles are only good for that one hotel or airline. You also don't have the ability to transfer points out of those systems most the time and your points usually have a fixed value of 1 cent per point. Which is honestly equal to that of a 1% cash back card, which as travelers we don't recommend using cash back cards. We want to earn the flexible points that can be redeemed for way more than 1% value. Certain branded cards like Marriott have very low point values. Their points are only worth .07 CPP. That's not even a whole penny per point! Most of their rooms cost 60,000 points a night. You have to be careful when you see offers like a Marriott card for 100,000 points bonus. It sounds great at first and 100,000 points sounds like a lot, but in reality it probably wont even get you 2 nights in a Marriott hotel. The banks cards give you much more flexibility and value for redemption. Hyatt is one of the best values for Chase Ultimate Reward Points. My first redemption was for 2 nights at a Hyatt on Long Island, NY for 19,000 Chase Points ($1000 cash value), and I have also booked 3 nights in a Hyatt on Waikiki Beach, Honolulu for 32,000 Chase Points ($1000 cash value). Later I will get deeper into the value and CPP of those redemptions in another post. You can get crazy or keep it simple. Some people like to just have one card but some people have over 20. Just know that each credit company has different rules on how often or how many cards you can open. There is no set limit except Chase will only let you open 5 credit cards every 24 months. We call this the 5/24 rule. Any credit cards you have opened in the last 24 months count towards this. This is where the strategy comes in and you have to prioritize what cards you want to open. Some people like to work their way through the Chase cards first before moving to other brands of cards. We currently have 7 credit cards between my wife and I. We plan to get many more. So far for 2022 I've booked us a trip to the Dominican Republic (spent $3k of money we had set aside to meet a minimum spend and get the ball rolling), Paris (69,000 points and $470 in taxes and fees. Cash price of the tickets were $4800 = 6.3 cents per point value), and Hawaii (30k points and $22 in fees. Cash price of tickets $1800 = 6 cents per point value). Without these cards I would have never been able to afford these trips. A simple strategy is save money for a trip, open a new travel card, pay for the trip with the travel card to reach or help reach a minimum spend, then pay it off in full with the cash you already had saved. Now once you hit your bonus you will have those 60-120k points depending on the card bonus, and now you can use those points for your next trip. Rinse and repeat. Its honestly like having a Buy One Get One Trip Free coupon for life! We haven't even got into the other benefits of some of these premium cards including trip delay insurance, lost baggage insurance, rental car insurance, airport lounge access, and more. Across this blog and our social media pages I will try to share our journey and teach you along the way. I want to spread the word and show everyone they can reach their travel goals with the help of these cards. If you would like to get started I would definitely start with the CSP! All you have to do is open the card and start racking up points. The vacations will follow! There is much much more to Travel Hacking this is just the tip of the iceberg. I will continue to update this page with tips and tricks and the benefits of specific cards and sign up offers. Please reach out if you have any questions and thank you for taking the time to read our blog! Please let me know if you decide to sign up for a travel card we would love to know which card you picked!
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