In late 2019, my husband and I opened our first rewards credit card with a simple goal in mind: to travel more. We hoped it would enable us to take 1-2 trips a year, and we were giddy to see if those hopes would be realized with supplemental points. We waded into this hobby slowly in order to get our bearings and make sure we could remain responsible with this addition to our finances (ie. pay the cards off each month, avoid interest, not spend just for the sake of earning rewards, etc.).
Years later, earning rewards and planning our travel has become a sort of part-time job for me. And spoiler: it has given us so much more than just 1-2 trips a year. Since we began, we have visited bucket list places like Washington DC, NYC, Hawaii, Colorado, Costa Rica, California, Miami, Key West, Chicago, New England, and more. We already have a full year of travel over the course of this year, as well, where we'll be visiting places we weren't sure we ever would.
As the number of trips we take in a year has increased, the amount of money we save for travel has increased, as well. We have taken a lot of flights for a mere $5 per person and stayed in even more hotels for $0, but we are still very mindful of our spending while we are on each trip and it would be dishonest to say that all of these trips we've taken have been free. Yes, some of them have cost us a lot less than others, but intentional savings is still a huge part of our strategy. There are plenty of costs associated with travel other than just accomodations and transportation, and we must be able to afford them on top of the things we use our hard-earned points for.
Even so, points and miles have opened doors that we could not have walked through otherwise..png)
Q: I thought you were debt free?
My answer:
We pay off our cards each month, we have no credit card debt, and we have paid zero interest since we started in 2019. We became consumer debt free in August of 2018, and we work hard to keep it that way.
Q: Doesn't it hurt your credit score?
We both have credit scores in the 800s. We have learned that responsible credit card sign ups, regular usage, and on-time and in-full payments have actually increased our credit scores since we started.
We are very organized with our cards, and that is an overflow of being very organized with our finances. We use various apps to keep us aware and accountable, and we track every card and trip in a spreadsheet that I update regularly. My opinion is that if you are not organized in this hobby, it can easily hurt you.
Q: How are you able to get so much value from your points?
My answer:
We rarely use the travel portal or cash out points, and instead we primarily transfer our points to each bank's travel partners. We transfer the bulk of our points to Hyatt and Marriott for hotel stays, and to Southwest, Virgin Atlantic, and Flying Blue for flights. We have found that we are able to afford significantly more travel when we transfer our points this way.
This list is a glimpse of cards we have personally received value from, but there are a lot more to choose from. Another honorable mention is the Capital One Venture card, but we no longer have this card (we will likely have it again the future, but it is not one that we currently have opened). If you know someone who has this card, be sure to ask them for a referral if you decide it's a good fit for you.
The final piece of advice I will give here is this:
The points and miles game is a marathon, not a sprint.
We have opened a lot of cards over the years to travel to some really amazing places, yes. But pacing matters. We started in 2019, and we are fairly predictable in waiting at least 90 days to open new cards. One reason for this is that we want to establish and maintain a good relationship with the banks that approve us for cards. This, also, helps us 1) not spend more than we otherwise would just to meet a minimum spend requirement and 2) keep an excellent credit score.
Another piece of this is that it typically takes us a year to earn the points we need to book travel for the following year, so we are typically operating on a two-year timeline for the majority of trips we take. So much goes on behind the scenes to make travel like this possible for us, and I never want to be misleading with the highlights I post about the trips we take. The first half of that two-year timeline is the earning of points for each trip, and the second half is saving the money we will spend while on it.
Simply put: the worst thing you could do is compare your beginning to our well-established rhythms and get overwhelmed; and the best thing you could do is be inspired to start and decide if it's sustainable (and worth it) for you. And as with anything else related to personal finance, everything about credit cards and points and miles is personal. My way will likely not be your way, and that's okay.
These three things were helpful for us to determine if this was good for us to continue:
1) Knowing what our comfort level to open and pay off credit cards was,
2) Knowing what our willingness and ability to pay annual fees and save for additional travel expenses was, and
3) Being sure that we actually value traveling enough to make it worth the effort.
Points and miles have added so much joy to our lives, and I hope we are blessed with many more years of earning and redeeming them. As long as we stay responsible and organized while dreaming of adventure, I think we'll stay on this path for as long as we are able to!
Click here to see a glimpse into what they have helped us see and do in recent years.
