Cycling in Paris (photo credit)
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“You guys are going to Europe for 4 months?! That sounds wonderful, but… isn’t Europe expensive?”
“How are you going to work the higher cost of European travel into your budget?”
“Will you have to miss out on some amazing European restaurants and eat more peanut butter and jelly?”
Since sharing our big 2016 travel plans a few months ago, various forms of these questions have been sent our way.
I prefer strategic lifestyle design to tactical spending plans like a budget. We aren’t going to limit our European gastronomic experiences with an artificial spending ceiling. (Thank you United States Congress for the inspiration!)
Certainly Europe will cost more than budget destinations like Thailand or Guatemala. So how will we pay for it?
The short answer is: I don’t really intend to.
Free Flights
First things first, we have to get to Europe from Asia. That is a 14 hour direct flight to a regional European hub, plus connections.
Since sharing 14 hours in a confined space with an energetic 1 year old isn’t high on our bucket list, we decided to maximize roaming room. Business class, baby! (Apologies in advance to those on our flight.)
Alas, business class flights for two, plus lap carry infant (10% of adult fare), were more than $5,500. One way!
Fortunately we knew this day was coming, and had been accumulating airline miles since even before we left the working world (just another asset class in our portfolio.)
By signing up for an airline credit card (with signup bonus), flying a few times, and using the rewards card as our daily spender for a short while, we were able to accumulate 180,000 frequent flier miles.
Instead of $5,500, we paid the reduced fare of $200.08 ($28.54 for each of the adult tickets, plus $143 for our son.) Technically not free, but I’m not complaining.
Free Hotels
Over the past 6 months we’ve added several new credit cards to our financial arsenal. Every hotel program has their own credit card: Starwood, Hyatt, Hilton, Marriott, IHG… and they offer generous signup bonuses.
In addition, several credit card companies have a travel points system, also with generous signup bonuses.
One of main go to cards is the Chase Sapphire Preferred which offers a healthy signup bonus but also earns 2x points on travel and dining, which we are doing a lot of anyway. You can compare this against other travel rewards cards HERE.
These points can be transferred to specific hotel programs. As one example, Chase Ultimate Rewards points can be transferred to Hyatt Gold Passport, IHG Rewards Club, and Marriott Rewards.
As a result of getting a few credit cards and using them regularly, we have accumulated:
- 185,000 Starwood Points
- 130,000 Ultimate Rewards Points
- 122,000 IHG Rewards Club Points
- 75,000 Hilton Honors Points
- 60,000 Hyatt Gold Passport Points + 2 Free Nights
This is enough for at least 30 free nights. Plus we’ll continue to accumulate points as we use these cards throughout Europe.
To get maximum advantage from this treasure trove, we’ll use points in the most expensive cities: London, Paris, Rome… With average hotel prices of $150+ per night, hotel points will save us $4,500 (At least. The Points Guy estimates these points are worth $8,692.)
Efficient Spending
While a month of free hotels is a nice start, there are still 3 months of housing to pay for.
A large portion of these nights will be via Airbnb (see full summary of our Airbnb stays), many of which have price reductions for weekly or monthly stays. We’ll take advantage of this by staying 7 nights in most places rather than 6. (Haven’t tried Airbnb yet? Get up to $35 off your first stay.)
For non-Reward nights at the big hotel chains (Starwood, Hyatt, etc…) we book directly and use their Rewards credit card to maximize points & value.
In other cases, we’ve become fond of the “Stay 10 nights, earn 1 night free
” program from hotels.com, an indirect 10% discount. Thanks to our recent travels, we have ~$200 in credit banked. (If you haven’t yet booked with hotels.com, they offer up to $50 off your fist stay. Email me for details.)
And of course we pay hotels.com with a Travel Rewards credit card, which leads to more free nights.
New: With the Capital One Venture Rewards card earn 5X miles on hotels and rental cars booked through Capital One Travel, where you’ll get Capital One’s best prices on thousands of trip options. Compare this to other hotel rewards cards HERE.
Geographic Arbitrage
Free flights and a month of free hotels is a pretty solid foundation for a trip to Europe.
There are two other variables we can control to our advantage: timing and pre-Europe spending.
Timing
We still have 60 years of travel ahead of us, so when we explore Europe makes no discernible difference.
To allow our portfolio to grow even further, we’ve continued to live beneath our means by traveling in lower cost of living countries. This eased the mental transition from saving to spending, while guaranteeing our retirement is robust, regardless of the economy.
But thanks to the rising US dollar, prices have dropped 20% in recent years. 20% off! As one example, our first week in an Airbnb apartment in the center of Lisbon, Portugal costs roughly the same as our hotel in Penang, Malaysia.
Why not use this phase of the world economic cycle to our advantage?
So off to Europe we go.
Pre-Europe Spending
Over the past 5 months, we slowly wandered through Thailand and Malaysia. Overall, our spending was ridiculously low for some high quality living. As an example, for 2 month in Chiang Mai we spent less than $400/month for an awesome apartment with rooftop pool.
With 5 months of extra low expenses behind us (or more accurately, 3.5 years of low expenses), how will 4 months of enjoying croissants and cappuccinos on the terraces of old stone buildings impact our average monthly expenses?
Not much. That is the beauty of geographic arbitrage.
Final Thoughts
By signing up for travel rewards cards with generous signup bonuses and using them for most/all of our daily spending, we have accumulated at least $10,000 worth of free flights and hotels. These will be used to reduce the cost of the most expensive hotels and business class flights to approximately zero.
Through geographic arbitrage, our low cost of living in Thailand and Malaysia has increased our cash available to spend in Europe. Our average monthly expenses will still be reasonable, even after enjoying all of Europe’s culinary delights.
Hopefully this answers the questions about how we intend to continue to live well in Europe with minimal budget impact, while offering some ideas for others to do the same.
Have you used credit card rewards to fund your own travels?
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Getting Started with Free Travel
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Using the right card for different types of spend means you earn free travel even faster! And they also have their own signup bonuses!
And all of these points can be transferred to numerous hotel and airline programs!
Learn more about these cards HERE.
Hey GCC,
We are doing almost the same thing as you right now. We’re traveling for nine months around Australia, NZ, SE Asia, China, Korea, and Japan. We are using approximately 300K airline miles and $500 in rebates from our Citi Prestige card, which takes our spending on airfare down to $1,500 or so, including short regional flights where it makes more sense to pay outright instead of wasting miles. For hotels, we have some points, but were not as aggressive as you and your wife in accumulating points. We took advantage of an SPG promo to stay twice and get two free nights. Have about 150k hotel points spread out across SPG and IHG. We figured we would be happy as long as the average cost was less than what rent cost back home. We can do that pretty well even just on AirBNB.
We are splurging a bit on food though. I tend to let myself go more when traveling, but we haven’t even been traveling two weeks yet. I’m sure we will tighten that up soon! :)
Take care and safe travels!
We splurge on food too. It’s nice.
Sounds like it was done mostly with sign-up bonuses on credit cards. Good job GCC!
How does that work when you’re in Asia? When you sign up for a credit card…don’t they ship it to your ‘home’ address? Or, was all this done before you guys went to Asia?
Our legal address is in Seattle, and all of our mail is sent there.
Has anyone out there found an efficient way to handle this?
While traveling last year we changed our address (as we broke our apt lease) to a family member’s who helped us out by collecting and sorting mail… felt kind of bad for burdening someone with the task of looking for an occasional bill, and in a few instances mailing things across the world. Now that we have our own place, i’m not sure what we’ll do on our next long term trip. We get so much mail (although much is junk) that I’m worried about the box filling up!
Traveling Mailbox.
edit: I’ve written about our experience using this service. We love it!
You could do a whole post on that! That’s amazing! I’d never heard of that. I’m in the process of selling my house and moving out of state (from MN to NC)–but might not have an address for a while (we might stay in hotels or at an Airbnb for a while until we find our new place). I never found this service when researching what to do about not having an address. This also solves much of the problem of paper clutter we have as well.
I’ve recently started using this service, and will write a post about it once we have some 1st hand experience with it.
Awesome! I look forward to hearing about your experience with it when you are ready.
you can fill out and give your mail carrier a ‘Stop’ form and they will hold your mail during specified dates. Though I’d sorta be nervous about anything over a week or so. After I returned from a 10 day trip, they promptly delivered a box of mail. About 90% was mine, but I also received a lot of other people’s mail!
We have been doing it for many years. We generally apply for 3 to 4 cards per year to earn 150k miles each. Our next trip is to Hawaii. Free airfare for 2 plus lap infant and 4 nights hotelch. We have to pay an additional 3 nights in cash. We strategize when it is worth it to use miles/points and/or when to pay cash. Enjoy your trip!
Nicely done! We do the same, making sure that we get good value for the points. Sometimes it is better to pay cash and save the points for future use.
Our 2nd honeymoon was to Hawaii, and we used the companion ticket on the Alaska Airlines cc to get 2 1st Class tickets for ~$500 (I think.) Then we used SPG points to stay at the Westin on the beach. Good times.
What do you do about the yearly fees? A lot of those points cards charge $99+/year for the “privilege”. Or maybe that’s just in Canada?
I feel privileged to pay $99 to get $500 or more worth of benefits. I wouldn’t pay $99 to get $99 worth of benefits though.
edit: I’ve calculated the ROI on paying credit card fees. They can be fantastic!
I’ve wondered that same thing. I understand the initial ROI by leveraging sign up bonuses but don’t the annual fees inevitabley catch up and negate the signing bonuses after say 5years. Does that mean you routinely cancel and reapply through new carriers?
Don’t keep a card if it no longer is giving you good ROI. Do the math.
Yes, I routinely cancel cards and move on to new ones.
Edit: I’ve calculated the annual fee ROI on several of our credit cards.
Does signing up for so many credit cards affect your credit rating?
It will often make it higher.
Hey Jeremy, great post. We’ve been using credit card miles/points for just six moths and have already funded a roundtrip to Spain for the summer for my family, a roundtrip to China to pick up our soon-to-be adopted child, and multiple free trips in the US. You do a good job summarizing the benefits to this kind of program. We do the same on our site, where we mention you and the lessons we’ve learned from your travels: http://www.lifeiscomfy.com/comfy-blog/2016/2/20/not-so-secret-firesauce
Hey Jeremy, how long will you guys spend in Lisbon? We’re currently in Ecuador, but will be flying to Lisbon mid-April too. We’re also using miles, but will be flying economy and paying about $11 out of pocket. We are using Airbnb to stay a couple days in Lisbon, and then 4 weeks in an apartment by the water in Albufeira. After that, we’re exploring more of Europe and heading to Asia after that. We definitely want to stay in the apartments you stayed at in Chiang Mai! https://gocurrycracker.com/our-375-a-month-apartment-in-chiang-mai-thailand/ We love your blog and are finally making our first comment. Would be awesome if we could meet up in Europe! D has a big crush on GCCjr!
-J&D
That is understandable, GCCjr is pretty popular with the ladies ;)
So far just 1 week in Lisbon, but maybe longer if we really love it. We are always happy to meet up for a coffee. Send me an email with your travel dates and we can arrange something.
Your travels sounds awesome!
E-mail sent. Thanks! We’re excited :)
I really like your site and particularly your clear headed analysis of various financial scenarios. T
hat said I would be more comfortable if you disclosed what (if any) financial relationship you have with the credit card companies you reference. i good example would be onemileatatime who is quite up front about referral bonuses etc.
On the other hand if you don’t get a bonus you should say so. I’m fine with you getting one but I do recommend transparency on this issue.
Much thx and keep up the good work.
Bill
https://gocurrycracker.com/disclaimers/
Oops missed that. All good with me. Keep up the good work.
Bill
Check out IHG’s Points + Cash Program. Using this program circumvents paying most if not all taxes, which adds even more value. We just got a night at a hotel we use often for $34 + 5,000 points. Basically the $34 is used to buy the additional points needed to “pay” for your room night. Since the whole stay is “paid” in points, there are generally no taxes or tourism fees levied, which can be substantial. If you cancel the stay, the points are deposited into your account in lieu of a refund, which can occasionally be a lucrative way to “back door” points.
Of course, you pay for the stay with your IHG rewards card, which generates more points, plus a point rebate, depending on your status level. If your card includes Spire Elite status (and it should), you can generally get a room upgrade as well. If they don’t offer it automatically, an easy ask usually nets one. At check-in, always decline the Welcome Amenity package in exchange for another 500 points.
After I booked the aforementioned room, I got an email that Points + Cash stays booked by March 26th for rooms through April 30th are 15% off. I’m assuming that’s how I got such a great deal, but I’ll be sure to double-check before the 26th.
Next, familiarize yourself with the Point Breaks Program, where featured hotels are a mere 5,000 points per night. It’s a little cumbersome to find on the IHG website, which must be by design, as the site and app are very easy to navigate. I generally just ask Google and one of the travel sites pops up with a current list and link. Get in the habit of checking and booking as soon as the new list is published, as the best locations book up quickly. We often grab a staycation weekend at a new-ish Staybridge Suites about an hour from home. Two nights in a lovely king suite room with full kitchen and four hot breakfasts for 10K points? Suite, indeed!
Next, Marriott is running a good promo. Register and complete two stays between Feb. 1 and May 15 and get a credit for a free night.
FYI, Marriott has begun enforcing a long-dormant “use it or lose it” policy, so check your accounts. After two years of inactivity, your points vanish. It happened to me when I tried to book a stay last week, even though a recent email update showed a substantial balance. I was able to get them all back with one friendly phone call, since they were only recently “expired”, but whew, that was close.
The IHG Cash & Points and Points Breaks are awesome.
The site http://travelisfree.com/ is a great resource for figuring it all out (a couple who travels full time staying in 5 star hotels for ~$50/night using IHG points.)
Hi Jeremy, I wonder how you manage to gather so many points on cards when your monthly spending is so low? I am in Canada so the programs available are different and probably not as many. Right now I use a joint card for me and my wife and it gets us TD Expedia Travel points. Between the two of us we spend about $3500 a month on our CC and that is putting everything we can on them – we don’t have anymore spending to do! This generates about $650 a year in travel dollars that I can apply to hotels or flights book through Expedia.
This is probably a post in itself.
The key is the sign up bonuses. The hotel points I outline in this post are across 8 cards with a minimum spend of $19k. Spending $3500 per month, this takes only 5.5 months to accomplish.
Spending $3500 to meet the minimum spend might result in 25k-50k points, whereas $3500 on normal spending results in only 3500 points. That is a 14x difference in rate of return.
See this Reddit FAQ for more details.
I’m trying to get better at the travel hacking but it’s a work in progress. I also haven’t used Airbnb yet but want to give it a try this year to save on hotel costs. Can’t wait to learn more about the trip.
What is the net effect of having so many credit cards on your credit score? My understanding is that even with a 0.00 balance, it hurts your score. And you can’t cancel the cards, or it hurts you score. Just curious, I’d love to take advantage of credit card promos.
I got 12 credit cards last year and my credit score went from ~675 to 725-760 (depending on which one I look at). Definitely did not hurt probably for a few reasons
1. My line of available credit went from $5K to $60K. Have a higher line of credit looks good because the agemcy figures that if people will let you borrow so much then you must be low risk.
2. My credit utilization went from about 15% to 1% (due to my higher lines of credit). Your score goes up when you are using very little (but still some) of your line of credit.
3. Other factors I’m just not aware of.
Thanks JD and GCC.
Opening a new credit card can reduce the score in the short term but have no impact or even a positive impact in the long term.
But… I don’t care about my credit score at all. This number is meaningless. Focus on building wealth instead.
But eventually, having your credit damaged (from too many inquiries, too many cards, short average length time per card, etc) would prohibit you from getting new cards and repeating this process. Is this just a one-time thing? Otherwise, it seems like it would take a long time to recover and repeat.
Damaged is much too harsh of a word. Opening new accounts and closing a few cards is a minor effect on credit rating. Tis but a scratch.
Do you pay your bills on time? Every month? Do you have enough income to pay your bills? These things are much more important.
Source: more than a decade of personal experience using credit card rewards to fund travel.
My wife and I play as a (small time) team. I get a few reward CCs a year, personal or for my solo business, to game some miles and bonuses. My credit score (again, not much concern for us) hovers in the mid 700’s. She keeps a stellar score ( 800+) w/ long clean history, high ratios, and no inquiries – so we run home & auto insurance through her for the best rates.
Hey Lee. To add my experience to what others have said.. I opened three new cards to take advantage of sign up bonuses early 2015. My credit score dipped by 10-15 points, but then rose back over the year. I think it’s higher now than it was before I started using so many cards. Even with the dip though I have good credit – around 800-814 depending on what service you look at. So it was a non-event for me. The key to this is card management (i.e. check each statement every month, at the appropriate time, even if you thought you were no longer using that particular card).
I haven’t closed any cards yet so I can’t report what the impact of that would be on your credit score. I assume if I only close new cards, the impact will be small.
We travel hack but not like you, Mr. All Star. Our 7 week trip to Mexico last year was half off thanks to just a few hotel points and some airline miles.
We paid for 6 nights in Sheraton/Aloft hotels with starwood points from one credit card sign up bonus. Regular rates for the place in Cancun where we stayed was $250 USD/nt. Instead we paid 3000-4000/nt in points.
The flights to Mexico were free using 50,000 British airways points (one way non stop from Charlotte to Mexico city = 10,000 points per person x5) and returned on 45,000 southwest points (cheap Cancun-Raleigh fares paid with points).
The rest of the stay was very affordable since we rented airbnb and vrbo houses for 2 weeks at a time. The craziest rate we paid was $21 USD/nt for a 2 BR house plus guest house in Oaxaca.
I’ll be taking notes on your European escapades since we hope to pull together a couple months in Europe next summer. Any useful tidbits on economizing (even though I know you aren’t optimizing to the lowest cost possible) would be appreciated. Trains, planes, cheap meals, cheap places to stay, free/cheap touristic sites, etc.
I’m just an average player. The real all stars generate millions of points per year.
Hopefully we don’t raise our spending to stupid levels in Europe, but I have a feeling we’ll be spending $2k/month on Iberico ham, black truffles, and caviar. Good thing the hotels will be discounted!
I’m pretty frugal but I don’t see a problem with $2k/mo on jamon Iberico, truffles, and caviar if you have the money. :) I like the first very much (along with Spanish chorizo or any kind of chorizo really), haven’t had many truffles (and the truffle infused olive oil I just bought was gross!), and don’t like caviar (but Mrs. Root of Good LOVES it).
Lately we’ve been spending more on luxury food items since it’s hard to travel during the kids’ school year. So far it’s rounding errors on the monthly grocery budget.
And you’re right, some of those mileage/points guys are insane in their skills. I guess it’s like a full time job at some point. I’m feeling pretty sharp if I can burn through 5-6 new cards per year (only on the first one so far this year).
Have you heard much about the Starwood pts once they merge with Marriott Rewards? I’m afraid my 1xx,000 SPG points will get devalued so we’re burning about a week’s worth this summer (including a couple nights at the Niagara hotel overlooking the falls).
I don’t think anybody knows yet what happens with the SPG / Marriott rewards merger. And now their is another suitor.
Historically though the SPG points were worth much more than the Marriott points, so for reasons similar to you we are trying to spend them all.
I think it could be a good time to get both the Starwood Amex and the Marriott Visa for you and Mrs. ROG (4 cards), plus the business versions (so 8 cards in total.)
This is a very timely post for us since we have been looking into optimizing credit card rewards points for travel.
As we were reading, we had the same question that Peter has, above: “I wonder how you manage to gather so many points on cards when your monthly spending is so low?” We just opened up a new card (for sign-up bonus, etc.) and can hardly keep up with demands that we charge essentially $3000-5000 on the new card in the first few months–even though we are using that card almost exclusively (and, sadly, our spending isn’t as low as yours…).
Like you, we also attempt to balance out expensive travel with more economical travel. We spent 2 months in Europe a couple of summers ago, 6 weeks of that time spent in cheaper lodgings in Spain (most of that time averaging about 40 Euros per night while walking the Camino de Santiago) before moving on to our VRBO-rented apartment in Le Marais area of Paris for two weeks. Yes, those two weeks in Paris cost more than the six weeks in Spain, but at least it evened out somehow…
See my reply to Peter.
But also, here is an example of how we met min spend of 4k on two cards ($8k total):
– fund a new bank account ($150 cash back) (see example) – $1k
– pay hotel and Airbnb for Malaysia – $1.5k
– pay hotel in Singapore – $0.6k
– pay Airbnb in Lisbon – $0.35k
– book flight from Iceland to the US for Aug 2016 – $0.8k
– book flights for my sister & nephews – $2k (will pay back with cash)
– pay deposit for lake cabin in Minnesota for Aug 2016 – $1k
– various restaurants over last few months – $0.75k
Total: $8k
Additionally, I’ll be paying our tax bill for 2015 and estimated taxes for 2016 with a credit card. This will incur tax deductible fees with an effective rate of 1.3cents per point
Are you concerned by the typically 2-3% foreign conversion fees you incur with most point based cards or are you just factoring this in as cost? If so, and give your note about above your taxes, what is the real estimated cost of your points?
None of these cards have foreign transaction fees. The real estimated cost is zero.
Expanding on my tax payment comment above:
The effective cost of points on paying income taxes is $0.013/pt on the tax payment, but when done as part of minimum spend on a new card this is reduced to $0.001/pt (~0%.)
Math:
Taxes paid: $3k (the min spend)
Fees: $56.10 (1.87%)
Points from tax payment: 3056 (1 per $1)
Fee after tax deduction: $39.13 (FICA savings of 15.25% and 15% fed tax)
Signup bonus: 35k points
Total points: 38,056
Cost of points: $39.13
$/pt: $0.001
Great to hear! Before I moved to Europe in 2012 I did some research and the vast majority of cards were carrying a 2-3% fee for foreign transactions. I haven’t looked recently so I didn’t know this had changed. May be time to get a few new cards :)
I own rental property and paying expenses for that helps me meet minimum spends – property taxes, insurance, etc. I recently spent $2500 for tree cutting so airline points galore on that!
I pay all my bills like cellphone, electric, etc. with credit cards. You can prepay your bills for a couple of months if you need to meet minimums – as long as you have the $ in the bank to pay the card when it is due. For example – double the payment to the electric company – the credit card bill won’t be due for 3 to 5 weeks anyway when you started with a zero balance, and by then the next electric bill payment would have been coming around anyway.
We spend a lot on gasoline (some for business) and every bit of that goes on whatever credit card is most advantageous for points or cash back at the moment.
I even use my credit card to buy stuff at Goodwill! Yep I paid for a $3 pair of shorts for vacation with a credit card!
My dentist even prefers credit cards over checks and so I paid for my crowns last fall even though the money came out my E-fund at the time. I have another broken tooth to fix this week and that will go on my new Hilton card that I just got in the mail…..
The trick is to time you application for the credit cards about 2 to 3 weeks before you know that big expense is coming up that you have to pay for anyway…..
Julie + Will – The other difference is that many of your expenses may be impossible (or at least difficult) to pay with a cc. For example you likely pay rent or mortgage, utilities and car payment while GCC pays for hotel rooms, AirBNB and Uber.
And Uber gives you SPG points. Double win.
https://www.spgpromos.com/uber/
Get your 1st Uber ride free.
Hi, each card has roughly 3k spend in 90 days. how do you guys meet that with so many card?
See my replies to Peter and Julie & Will above
Hey Jeremy, great post, can’t wait to do the same in the future! Credit cards bonuses are great and all, but what the annual fees on some of those cards? Do you tend to keep them and pay the annual fee or cancel before it hits?
Some we will keep & some we will cancel.
Some cards are well worth the annual fee, such as the IHG card. The annual fee is $49 but in return you get one free night at any hotel (worth much more than $49.)
edit: I’ve calculated the ROI on some of these annual fees. The returns are great!
We retired in November 2015 and began serious Travel Hacking in July 2015. We “earned” 1,500,000 points with sign up bonuses and spending. We stay monthly with VRBO to leverage the one month for cost of 2-3 weeks. We started in Grand Cayman $3300/month to update 1969 and 1975 scuba diving certifications. We completed PADI open water and advance open water certifications recognized internationally. We enjoyed many scuba and skin dives in GC. GC VRBO and free untied air fare.
Next $1600/month in terra vista citrus hills Florida for nice 3 bed room house with all social clubs included. Our Mom 88 joined us to enjoy FLA in December 80F each day. We drive to FLA so cheap.
Next Hawaii Mid January to end of March all VRBO and one AIRBNB. Big island Pahoe in rain forest and near tide pools a chalet with pool $1500/ month, scuba in Hilo many turtles.
Next airbnb Kona 5 day treat with really cool pool and view $1000.
Next Molokai condo at wave crest on ocean with suv included $3000/month scuba and skin dive with turtles and whales.
Next big island Waikoloa 2 BR condo $7000/month at A bay with heated salt water pool. Our brother & wife visited for 10 days to escape Iowa.
We purchased 10 – 2 tank boat dives with equipment $1100. We continue to skin dive A bay and will be adding more scuba trips.
So our goal of endless summer complete November thru March 80F each day with warm ocean or pools. Now returning to eastern shore of Maryland, Easton, for graduations and wedding. We will enjoy Assateague island, Easton, Oxford and St. Micks this summer.
Next some car trips in US will use hotel points , airbnb and vrbo.
Planning next winter for more scuba perhaps Hawaii to OZ , NZ and Japan. Also GC is a favorite for more scuba & skin diving.
Time to TH some more sign up bonuses.
Keep Smiling and happy travels to all. Letro
Well done!
I often see stories like this on reddit, but wonder what happens a year or two later after you go through all the these bonuses and there aren’t many new signup bonuses left, especially as the rules for the bonuses are becoming stricter.
Maybe post a link to this story on reddit and ask what happens in 2 years?
GCC – I’m a novice and just did my first travel hack. Used the British Airways card to get 2 free round trip ticket Boston->Dublin. Everything went really smoothly. My question is: now that the flight is booked, is it okay if I cancel the card? Or do I need to wait until my trip in August?
What’s the rush? I’d try to avoid any sort of negative one-night-stand sort of relationship with the credit card company, and at least keep and use the card through the first year.
I love points, that reminds me, need to do more research on which card(s) we can sign up.
Do you have fewer options in Canada?
I used the American Airlines Citi card in conjunction with the Barclays US Airways card a few months before the merger and got about 100k miles. Then an emergency landing happened and I got another 20,000 or so. Just booked a round trip to Paris direct from Philly for about $100 total. Traveling on points is awesome. Great article GCC.
Nice! I was going to do something similar by adding the Marriott card to our collection before the SPG merger. But as of today there is another bidder for SPG.
this makes my brain hurt
Ha ha, this is EXACTLY my thought, too.
Love your thinking. Some great travel hack tips in here… I will have to study up. Enjoy your trip. Can’t wait to see the recaps.
Hey GCC,
Sound like an awesome trip, even better when it’s free. I wish I had discover travel hacking when the wife and I were dating. We could have save at least $3,000 a year. We just sign up for the Chase Sapphire card a few days ago. Every year we fly to CA and FL to visit family and friends. I am curious how much less we have to pay this year. Hopefully, it’s free like your trip to Europe.
So I guess you don’t have any trouble signing up for new cards despite being retired (i.e. unemployed) and your relatively low reported income?
As with most things, assets are more important than income. Or job title.
I respect your level headed reports. We live in Hawaii and doing the same trip in about 6 weeks everything booked for 3 people 1st class & all hotels booked all in about $300 from CC bonus.
I have one question what does Curry Cracker mean? hahahaha
Nicely done!
Curry Cracker comes from our honeymoon hiking the Wonderland Trail.
Strange logistics question: since you are regularly travelling the world, how do you deal with carting your belongings with you? Or do you have things pared down so you only have limited personal belongings? And if things are pared down to a minimum, what about going to areas with different climates?
We have minimal possessions. Anything we need can be purchased locally.
Hi GCC Crew,
I know you have already chartered your plan for the European visit. But perhaps, in future editions ( say 2017 or 2018), you may consider visiting Eastern Europe/SouthEastern Euro
pe. Costs are lower, and you get a lot of culture also – and this is an area that few seem to be aware of. There is a lot to see as well.
Have fun in your trips!
DGI
All we know is that we fly into Portugal and depart from Iceland. What happens in between is still anybody’s guess, although we do need to be outside the Schengen Region for 5 or 6 weeks.
Wow, this is awesome! We started using travel credit cards at the end of last year and have accumulated some serious points. You just made think of saving these points for when we’re ready to explore the world after early retirement. Can’t wait to hear more about your Europe exploration.
Capitalist Pig! LOL….
keep killing em! One suggestion…make sure you don’t pay the annual fee if you’re going to hold them for over a year…
I keep killing the same credit card companies over and over again by cycling through….Get one card, get the sign up bonus cancel a few months later..keep a spread sheet and put some calendar alerts up and bang there ya go, constant revolving free money.I believe the only companies that have restrictions are Amex and Capital One.
BTW, thanks Marriott and Hawaiian Airlines for paying for my vacation.
When do you plan to visit Berlin? It would be wonderful to meet you and have an interview with you for the German speaking financial freedom community. And maybe I can help you to find the right stay in this cool town.
Bye Gisela
Thanks Gisela. We don’t have any plans past the end of April yet, but we will probably pass through Berlin sometime in July.
Hi, great blog
Isn’t it better to sell the points to a broker and use the cash to get best deal, Hotwire, Priceline, etc. ?
Not being bound by points’ travel site.
I think if you Google that question, you’ll find lots of reasons why it isn’t a great idea.
If/when using hotels.com, you could also go through Ebates.com and get % cash back to put in your bank as another ‘reward’. Right now it’s 3% cash back. Sure, you don’t get the money back right away, but it would add up for you and be a nice treat every few months. Just a thought :)
That is a good approach. There is a way I like even more though.
If you buy hotels.com gift cards through a site like Raise.com, you can buy them at up to 6% off face value.
If you purchase them with a credit card that gives bonuses for office supply stores, such as the Chase Ink Plus or Ink Bold, you can get an additional 5% back.
When you use the gift card to book hotel nights, you get the full value in their Buy 10 get 1 free program.
This gives you an effective 20.7% discount. Use code RAISE75AF on your first purchase with the (affiliate) link above for an additional $5 off a $75 purchase.
Awesome! I had never heard of Raise.com, so will definitely be checking it out – thanks for the tip!
Awesome! We’ve only flown 1st class a couple of times. I’m too frugal with the points/miles hahaha. Our baby is about to turn 2 and would soon start using miles herself. Any ideas how babies can earn miles? Let me know!
Babies can earn miles if you buy them a full fare ticket. That is probably the only way.
Hello from Almeria Spain (city of beer and free tapas) Im writing this 1 month into my 1 yr travel hacking around europe with my husband. Im from ft myers FL. We started 1 yr before our trip earning airline miles via AA & Delta, then hotel points via Hyatt, Club Carlson, Hilton, and IHG. We have racked up 8 (1 way flights) and 17 hotel nights just by paying bills. (I’m not sure about points and miles exactly because they are already transfered in my travel plan.) I learned travel hacking through The Points Guy and Nomadic Matt and now GCC. I plan on utilizing some additional budget traveling tactics to travel around Europe like workaway programs, couchsurfing (some provide private rms) Airbnb (cheaper than a hostel as a couple) and spending the 90 days out of Shenzhen region partially in budget friendly Morocco. I am also using Charles Swabb High yield checking account for no international atm fee withdrawal. I hope more people who really want to travel will gain the courage from reading “done it and so can you” articles and seize the opportunity.
Hello from Madrid. Sounds like a great way to spend a year. Nice work on the travel hacking!
I’m curious how you decide what to keep open and what to close, and keep all the annual fees in check! :) We did this for our recent 10 day europe trip, had our flights totally paid for and our Vienna hotel. We stayed in an Airbnb in Budapest (totally recommended and affordable!). But now, my predicament is figuring out which cards to get…and which to close (if any) since the 3 I have all have annual fees upwards of about $95. I like each card (IHG, United, Sapphire), but I don’t know that it’s worth keeping them all due to the annual fees. :) Plus, I need to replenish some miles!
I’d only keep ones that are worth more than their fee. The IHG card is a no brainer, since the fee is low (<$50 AFAIR) but gives you a free night in any IHG hotel. That is an easy 500% return.The others are harder to justify unless you are using them as your primary spender. Which you probably aren't, since you need to meet minimum spends on all of the new cards you are applying for to get the signup bonus.
It bugs me when people call rewards points “free”. It’s a very common mislabeling, but you should know better, since you’ve said you count points as an asset (on your 2016 asset allocation page). If they’re an asset, they’re not free. They’re a discount on present spending, paid out in the future. And when you obtain extra points through favoring points cards, you’re incurring a cost through the opportunity cost of not putting that spending on a cash back card.
Don’t get me wrong, I love your site (just discovered recently). Just wanted to chime in on this in particular, since I worry points spending is more accurately described as using past spending to finance present luxuries. It doesn’t seem like that will be permanently sustainable on a low-spending budget.
OK, let’s do the math.
For the points above we spent about $23,500 across 9 different credit cards.
If we used one of the better cash back cards, say 2%, we would have instead received about $470. If we generously assume this cash was in our Capital One 360 savings account for 1 year at 0.75%, we would have received $3.5 in interest.
Instead we got $10k in travel, for a return of 2,100% +/-
Yeah, I agree points can definitely have more value than the equivalent cash-back, if you’re able to spend them on the right things. But I also think some blogs – especially The Points Guy – are misleading on the value of points. It’s only $10k in travel if you actually value business class flights at the same value the airline lists it at (on that particular day).
Business or 1st class, and top tier hotels, are luxury goods where the list price has little to do with their value and more to do with supply/demand. So the personal value – to a frugal person like you or me – of a business class upgrade isn’t necessarily the list price; it’d be fairer to say the value is whatever additional you’d be willing to pay (over the economy price) if you were paying out of pocket.
So if I stay in a $300 hotel on points, using $50 of foregone cash rewards, when I would’ve otherwise stayed in a $150 hotel or a $50 hostel, I don’t consider that a 500% return on investment.
If anything, I think Points Guy is too conservative in his valuation of points. We routinely get greater return.
While in the UK, we used 30k IHG points to stay at the Holiday Inn Express in Bath rather than pay £185 / $240, about 15% greater $/point than Points Guy estimates. We didn’t book this as some stretch luxury accommodation, but based on what was available. Our closest alternative was to pay £175 about 20 minutes into the countryside.
Similarly, in Belfast, Northern Ireland we used 30k Hilton Honors points to stay at the Hilton Belfast rather than pay £162.5 / $211, a 40% greater value than Points Guy estimates. The closest alternative was similarly priced.
Thanks so much for all your great tips for travel. I have a question, in applying for the Marriott rewards card, can I apply for a card and my husband apply for a separate card. We keep our finances separate and have different last names.
Every individual can apply for every card. Yes.
Don’t forget all those budget airlines in Europe. My friend recently found one way ticket from Edinburgh to Milan on Ryanair for £5