See! I told you it was free..

I have an article that goes more in-depth about ways to accumulate travel reward miles and you can read that here. For this trip I have slowly accrued Chase Reward Points by getting the 80,000 sign up bonus points from the Chase Ink Business Card and 50,000 points from the personal Chase Sapphire card.

This created a nice little war chest of miles that I used on this trip. I still have a decent amount left that I should be able to use to pay for, or come close to, my next international trip!

If you have concerns about credit card hacking let’s answer some concerns you may have?

1. The first thing I will say on this is if you are NOT able to pay your card off at the end of the month, DO NOT GET A CREDIT CARD! The rewards aren’t worth it. You need to be getting out of credit card debt and avoiding it at all costs, not getting deeper into it!
2. Won’t churning cards affect my credit score? It may ding you a couple points but your credit score fluctuates anyways in the course of the month and it won’t hurt you in the long run.. 
3. I don’t have a business so how can I get a business credit card. You’re card could be for anything you have, real estate, selling on Etsy, dog walking, art selling, song singing, really whatever. You should also be able to get an EIN number off the tax website If needed. 

There are a couple different ways, and I'm sure many more, to help you find cheap flights.

Let The Deals Find You
These are sites that you enter in your airport of choice and they will email you periodically with cheap flights. When you get an email you have to feel comfortable moving fast as they can change pretty quickly. These sites are great because they are constantly sending you emails that make you want to travel. 'Do you want to go to Iceland for $200?' as a matter of fact I did! These sites are best if you are flexible with your time and booking in advance or going during slow season. 

Next Vacay - A membership will cost you $25 for a year and comes with a 1 month free trial.  I was still in the trial period before I found my trip to Australia. I had been looking to go over my winter break of 2017 and was seeing that flights were around $2000- $2200. Within a week or two I got an email saying there were cheap flights from LA to Sydney for like $550 in the spring of 2018. I emailed my bosses to seeing if I could take the week off before my spring break and by the time I woke up the price had increased to around $800 so I just booked it. Better to ask for forgiveness than permission! I don't live in LA but was able to get there and back using Southwest miles.

Scott's Cheap Flights - I have never used Scott's but it looks like it would work very similar to Next Vacay. It is $50 for a year and you can cancel anytime.

Escape Flights - The site originally started only finding cheap flights out of Houston but has since added New York/ Newark Los Angeles, Chicago/Milwaukee, Seattle, and Portland. You can either sign up for a free subscription or go to the site and browse around to see what catches your eye. Obviously if you don't live in these cities you need to add in the costs and time of travel to these places. Last month I tried to convince my mom to snag a round trip flight from LA to Paris in February for $295 with 1 stop.

Find Flights On Your Own
Maybe you have a specific place and time in mind and want to find a cheap flight there. This will be a little trickier but I have some recommendations.

If you are going to look for flights using Google Chrome make sure you use an incognito window. 

Google Search - This one comes down to personal preference because whether you use Google, SkyScanner, Expedia, etc. they all use the same thing information and come back with the same results. I actually checked the same flight and dates across them just to make sure before I said that. I typically use Google.

Airefarewatchdog - The site combines a little big of everything. They have flights, a travel blog, alerts and more!

Hopper - ​ You'll need to download the app to your phone but their goal is to help you track flights and know when the right time to book is based off their data. 

If you have any other ways that you are able to travel on the cheap I'd love to hear them!

In 2019 Southwest you would give you a companion pass (buy one get one free) when you reach 110,000 points in a calendar year. Wait, it gets better. The companion pass lasts for the remainder of the year you got it and the one after as well. My hope is to get it early in 2020 so I can essentially have it for two years, 2020 and 2021.

The trick is to get the personal Southwest card and get the sign on bonus for 40,000 by doing you minimum spend. Next, you'll get the business card and the 80,000 sign up bonus by doing your minimum spend. There is also a business card with 60,000 sign up that is less expensive but you'll need to earn the rest of the point. At that point you have all the points you need and boom, you and your travel buddy are flying for the price of one!

In 2020, they caught on and are now requiring you to get 125,000 points. They also reduced the sign up bonuses to 70,000 if you spend $5,000 in 3 months for both business cards and 40,000 points for spending $1,000 in 3 months for a personal card. This makes it more complicated because even if you reach your minimum spends you'll have $116,000 points (bonuses plus money spent) and need to spend another $9,000. You can use tricks like buying gift cards and all that be just be more careful when pursuing this now!

This is a great time to get the pass as Southwest just started flying to Hawaii, Costa Rica, Belize, and plan to expand even more.

Just to clarify, you can get buy one get one free Southwest tickets to places like Hawaii and start with 130,000 points. It really doesn't get better than that!

Let’s answer some concerns you may have?

1. The first thing I will say on this is if you are NOT able to pay your card off at the end of the month, DO NOT GET A CREDIT CARD! The rewards aren’t worth it. You need to be getting out of credit card debt and avoiding it at all costs, not getting deeper into it!
2. Won’t churning cards affect my credit score? It may ding you a couple points but your credit score fluctuates anyways in the course of the month and it won’t hurt you. 
3. I don’t have a business so how can I get a business credit card. You’re card could be for anything you have, real estate, selling on Etsy, dog walking, art selling, song singing, really whatever. You should also be able to get an EIN number off the tax website If needed. 
4. With the Southwest companion pass the points have to be earned in the year you get them. So, you can't get jump ahead and get the card in December and do all you Christmas shopping.​
5. You are not able to get the sign up bonus if you have received one in the last 2 years.
6. These cards fall under the chase 5/24 rule. Meaning you can't get this card, because it is with Chase, if you have opened more than 5 cards in the past 24 months.  

If you have any questions don’t hesitate to reach out! Happy Free Traveling! ​

My first year out of graduate school I was living in Grand Junction, Colorado and while booking a Southwest flight to visit my friends in NYC they had an offer to get their credit card and get 50,000 miles (woah!) and the first year annual fee waived. I had heard of people using the card and liking it and figured I’d give it a shot, it was free after all. With the money I would spend throughout the year, and the annual bonus, I averaged 1.5-2 flights a year and figured that was worth the annual $99 fee. It was saving me money on trips I would take normally. Not to shabby. 

But, Grand Junction is a town of about 100k people and Southwest didn’t fly there so having their card was super inconvenient. I typically had to drive 4 hours to Denver, leave my car at a friends place, and bum a ride to the airport just to use my miles. Was it really worth it? I eventually got an American Airlines card, just in case, but only used the card until I got the bonus. This came in handy because when I went to Europe I used my Southwest miles to get to NYC, stayed there for a few days, then paid $180 to get to London, and used my American Airlines miles to get me home at the end of the trip. Going to Europe and back for $180 isn’t awful but I could do better!

When I started an LLC for my real estate properties I got a chase preferred business card with it. I chose to do the business card because it offered more miles (80,000) but came with an annual expense of $95. Over the course of the next year I just put all my business expenses on it and come the spring of 2019 I was able to book a round trip flight to shanghai for free! Nothing, zero, zilch, the ole bagel. Now this is something I could get into! 

Around this time I was listening to the podcast which took my travel hacking to a whole new level. I learned Chase has a lot of good travel rewards cards but they put a limit on how fast you can churn through them. They limited it to 5 cards every 24 months (10 in 24 if you are married). I started making my own list of cards, with the best points, and going through them. 

The first card I got was the Chase Sapphire personal card. With this card I was able to get 60,000 in points and then the Chase Preferred business card and got an additional 80,000. As of June 24th I was sitting at around 180,000 points which isn't awful, especially if getting to Shanghai and back was 93,000. I have roughly two free international trips whenever I need them.

The glorious thing about Chase ultimate rewards points is you can use them on flights, hotels or even transfer them to other rewards programs if I wanted. 

Let’s answer some concerns you may have?

1. The first thing I will say on this is if you are NOT able to pay your card off at the end of the month, DO NOT GET A CREDIT CARD! The rewards aren’t worth it. You need to be getting out of credit card debt and avoiding it at all costs, not getting deeper into it!
2. Won’t churning cards affect my credit score? It may ding you a couple points but your credit score fluctuates anyways in the course of the month and it won’t hurt you. 
3. I don’t have a business so how can I get a business credit card. You’re card could be for anything you have, real estate, selling on Etsy, dog walking, art selling, song singing, really whatever. You should also be able to get an EIN number off the tax website If needed. 

If you have any questions don’t hesitate to reach out! Happy Free Traveling! ​