travel for free Archives

Every few months, I get this insane itch to travel somewhere new. We just got back from our trip to Couer D’Alene in June but the travel bug is strong. And with a toddler in tow and number two on the way, our list of ideal places to go is quite short.

This go-around, Mike and I decided we wanted a babymoon. Well, if you can call it that when you have a very active human being running around. We thought about leaving Casey behind with Lolo and Lola, but then we felt like, “This is going to be the last trip, just the three of us!”. It seems like a silly thought, considering he is only 14 months old. Our family of three era is so short-lived, so we decided to commemorate it by bringing him along. (Much to our potential regret later).

And wowee, we’ve done it again! We secured free flights for our family of three to Hawaii by travel hacking with credit cards. If you want to know how, this is the post for you.

Travel Hacking

I have written so many posts about travel hacking. In our 7 years of marriage, Mike and I have visited ten countries and countless places around the US for nearly FREE. We use credit card rewards points to book flights and sometimes hotels. For the sake of not being too repetitive, I am just going to list my previous posts on travel hacking here.

How to Get Free Flights for a Family of Three to Hawaii

Some people say travel-hacking isn’t worth it these days but I would like to push back on that. We still managed to get free flights for a family of three to Hawaii using travel hacking. The normal cost of these flights was $1,800 total for the family. I would consider that decent savings! And we did it by opening one credit card: American Express Gold Personal Credit Card . Right now as of July 2024, you can get an extra 30,000 rewards points by using my referral link for a whopping sign-up bonus of 90,000 rewards points. That is 50% MORE POINTS.

All you do for travel hacking is sign up for credit cards to receive their massive sign-up bonus. You have to hit a minimum spend within a particular timeline. In American Express Gold’s case, it is $6k in 3 months. If you think that’s difficult to do, maybe you’d want to check out my post: Ways to Meet Credit Card Minimum Spend to Earn Sign Up Bonus Faster Without Spending More Money. There are a lot of tricks you can use to get to such a big number. The important thing is to not miss the deadline. The sign-up bonus points is the only thing that makes opening new credit cards worth it. I particularly like American Express Gold because it gives 4x the points on groceries and dining out. That is the majority of the spending we do on a daily basis.

I just wanted to take a minute to share our number one travel hacking trick: We open credit cards before a planned large spend. For example, buying a new home, renovating a home, welcoming a baby into the family, going on another trip, or the holidays are all great times to open a credit card. You just put those big ticket items on there in order to reach your minimum spend quicker. Then you and your family of three can go to Hawaii!

We are so excited because we used one person’s Amex points to pay for our Hawaii trip. Next summer, we plan to use the other person’s Amex points to fly our family of four to Europe (babe flies for free). How does gamifying travel sound to you?