I entered the wonderful world of travel hacking and after one year I earned over $5,000 in free travel!
Hawaii, Orlando, Atlanta, Chicago... great places right? What if I told you I have traveled to those places and more with some or all of my trip being free? Yes FREE! I am talking free hotels, free flights... FREE!
In summary, I earned 11 free nights in Hilton hotels and just over 8 plane tickets in one year of travel hacking! That's just over $5,000 in free travel!
How'd I do it? By Travel hacking! Travel hacking is an art; it's where you take credit card miles/ points and use those miles or points to book travel instead of money. It sounds like some sort of sorcery or complicated trick that pulls the wool over the eyes of credit card companies but that's not the case. Credit card companies offer amazing promotional offers for signing up for their credit cards and they want you to use the points earned toward their product (hotels, airlines etc...).
I started travel hacking in December 2016 and I started with a Frontier Airlines Mastercard that offered a very lucrative promotional offer of 40,000 miles for any [first] purchase. I could buy a candy bar and boom, 40,000 miles! That's enough for 2 round trip tickets from Cincinnati to Denver!
By year's end, between my husband and I, signed up for 5 travel hacking credit cards (which sounds scary, I am aware). It was a risk but definitely one that paid off! We each have a Hilton Honors American Express and a Gold Delta Skymiles American Express along with one Frontier Airlines Mastercard. We use these cards to our monthly bills, large purchases and travel. It took a little bit of moving things around and changing the way we spent money....oh and there's that discipline thing ( to make sure you pay your balance off every month). Despite the minor changes we had to make, our first year paid off HUGE! Keep in mind, this is all FREE travel with points and miles earned by normal everyday spending and monthly bills. I did not purchase unnecessary items to rack up points, that's dangerous! Paying interest on credit card balances doesn't make this free now does it?
In my first year of travel hacking, I've earned:
Hotels
1 night stay at LondonHouse Chicago, Curio Collection by Hilton
1 night stay at Hampton Inn & Suites by Hilton Atlanta Perimeter Dunwoody
1 night stay at Hampton Inn & Suites by Hilton Atlanta Perimeter Dunwoody ( Yes, I stayed twice...Nice hotel!)
6 Nights at DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Alana - Waikiki Beach
1 night at Hampton Inn & Suites Destin-Sandestin Area
1 night at HILTON LOS ANGELES AIRPORT
Flights
2 one way tickets from Cincinnati to Orlando on Frontier Airlines
2 one way tickets from Louisville, KY to Honolulu on Delta Airlines
2 one way tickets from Honolulu to Los Angeles on Delta Airlines
2 one way tickets from Los Angeles to Louisville, KY on Delta Airlines
Partial Redemption saving $107.00 on a one way flight from Melborne, FL to Louisville, KY on Delta Airlines
In summary, I earned 11 free nights in Hilton hotels and just over 8 plane tickets in one year of travel hacking! That's just over $5,000 in free travel!
If that doesn't spark your interest, I don't know what will! Year one of travel hacking was a huge success! I can't wait to see if I can keep up this momentum in year two!
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