Intro to traveling on credit card points (aka Travel Hacking)

This is a big topic, which I'm pretty new at, but spent a lot of time when I had COVID (with nothing else to do) researching this topic and booking lots of hypothetical trips :)

The Big Picture- When you spend, you can earn points on your credit card (there are many types of points earning cards), which you can use on various things. When you want to use points to travel, certain cards are best for earning these types of preferred points for traveling.

Right before school started, I booked an impromptu trip to Santa Barbara. Hotel stays were $700 per night but I got the last room at the Mar Monte Hotel through Hyatt for 25,000 points instead, right across the beach. This allowed me to enjoy a last minute getaway with my kids and take a stroll along the beach right before sunset.

The best type of points are ones that are flexible and can be transferred variety of travel partners and redeemed there. This is different than using your points and booking your travel through your credit card portal (which is more commonly seen). The most common flexible points are Chase Ultimate Rewards (UR), American Express Membership Rewards (MR), Citi Thank You points, and Capital One Venture Miles. Each of these types of points can transfer to its own set of transfer partners. There are some transfer partners that work with all 4 credit card companies (ie. Air France) while some are very specific to just 1 card company (i.e. Hyatt only accepts transfers from Chase). Just because you have a credit card from one of these companies does not mean they earn that type of flexible points. For example, Chase has an Amazon branded card where the points can only be redeemed through Amazon purchases, so look and read the fine print when applying for a new card.

In each Credit Card company ecosystem, you need certain types of cards in order to transfer to those transfer partners. For example, Chase Freedom cards earn Ultimate Rewards points, only Chase Sapphire cards have the ability to transfer the points out to Hyatt, Air France, or any other Chase travel partners. You can combine your points within each of those points ecosystems, so they can still be used for travel, but you need to have the card with the ability to transfer.

Often times, when you sign up for a new credit card, they offer a sign up bonus. For example, you may be able to earn 60,000 Ultimate Reward points from Chase when you spend $4,000 in the first 3 months of holding the card. These sign up bonuses are great because it allows you to earn a lot of points at once, without spending a lot of money (i.e. you don't need to spend $60k to earn 60k UR points). The downside of this is that many of these premium cards that have points transferring abilities have an annual fee, some higher than others. On the other hand, they also often come with great benefits that may more than make up the cost of that fee, but you need to weigh if those benefits are worth it to you!

Once you rack up enough points, you can transfer those points to a transfer partner to book those trips! If you book early enough you can find some pretty great "award seats" which are limited in quantity. Once those award seats are gone, you may still be able to book that same flight on points, but at a higher, more "dynamic" price, so it's good to search around and book hypothetical trips to see what is really a good redemption. But generally, just to give you an idea, you can book an economy flight from LAX to London for 15k points each way (plus taxes and fees) on Virgin Atlantic, which is a transfer partner for both Chase and American Express. That means you can get 2 round trip flights with one sign up bonus, and same flight could run about $2000 round trip per person, especially during high seasons! So that's $4,000 in flights for just signing up for 1 credit card and making the minimum spend.

That is the general gist of using credit cards to travel on points. There are many more details with the types of cards you want to use, what order to apply for them, and what card to put each type of purchase on to maximize your points earnings, but we'll go into that another time. You can be as intense or as casual as you want with this, and while I'm probably somewhere in the middle you do what is best for your spending habits and time investment. Doing this has allowed us to book trips we never thought of doing, both big and small! We are grateful for the opportunities! If you're curious about the main cards that I use, you can check out my Travel tab and scroll to the bottom! Feel free to reach out if you have questions!