How we started traveling for free!

Welcome to my intro on travel hacking!

I am nowhere near a professional travel hacker, but I have had some shining moments that have resulted in some truly amazing travel experiences.

Jeremy and I dove right in when we were introduced to travel hacking from a friend!

What is travel hacking?

Most simply put, it’s using credit card rewards or airline miles to pay for travel instead of the money out of your pocket. And when you know what you are doing, boy can you really go places!

Any travel hacker will suggest the Chase Sapphire as numero UNO!

My first credit card was Chase Sapphire card, my second was Chase Freedom, and my third was Chase United.

The Chase Sapphire Card is currently offering a 60,000 sign up bonus after you spend $4,000 on purchases in the first 3 months from account opening—that’s $750 toward travel when you redeem through Chase Ultimate Rewards^®.

Jeremy applied for all of the same cards in addition to Chase Ink Plus for his business.

Our first round gave us 190,000 Chase Ultimate Reward points and 100,000 United Miles. We were on our way!

Where, oh where would we go?

The world had opened up for us!

A lot of experienced travel bloggers suggest having a travel destination in mind and accruing points that target that destination. Sound advice, but I just wanted to build up a small bank of points first, then decide.

I felt pretty established having roughly 300,000 airline miles…money in my pocket $$$

Our first free/mileage paid trip was to New York. Jeremy had never been there. Christmas time in NYC is a magical experience. Santa Con is a crazy experience! There are literally thousands of Santa’s roaming NY!

Hungry for more hacks, I followed some great travel bloggers.

Mommy Points
Travel is Free
Million Mile Secrets
The Points Guy

Barely in, but feeling pretty confident about my hacking skills, we qualified for Southwest Companion Pass. We earned our first companion pass in February 2015 and within two months of applying for the cards!

The first place we went on our Southwest Companion Pass was to Louisiana to see Tab Benoit, one of our favorite Blue’s musicians.

I like to refer to myself as a “points hobbyist”. In 2014, I attended a conference called Frequent Traveler University in Dallas. I learned a TON about the world of points and upgrades. Visit https://ftuniversity.com/ for more information!

We’ve had a TON of fun with points and awards. Here are just a few….

Our first summer with the Southwest Companion pass, we selected our summer vacation based on where Southwest flies. We looked at the flight map and decided to go to Puerto Rico.

One of the most memorable trips Jeremy and I have taken!