Happy Thanksgiving to any readers out there.
For this past weeks holiday I traveled with my family to see my wife's relatives and introduce our new baby. There was a little stress leading up to it for me due to the holiday's typically being a high volume of travelers. Also, traveling for the first time with a baby seemed like it would have been rough. However, I am happy to say, it was actually one of my easier traveling adventures. I must have been lucky to chose flights that left at low volume times because we did not have to deal with much traffic at the security check points or any hassles whatsoever. It was definitely a smooth trip. But this I attribute more to luck. The most low stress aspect of this trip was the cost.
The total cost for the flight for 3 people, hotel, and rental car was about $10 for the flight taxes. The joys of traveling with points.
This was achieved through the use of multiple credit card offers over the past few years that have allowed me to accumulate points that I allot specifically for travel. Rarely do I use points for anything else.
Flight
For the flights, we traveled for a total of about 20,000 points through Southwest Rapid Rewards. This total covers myself, my wife, and our baby. The low point spend was because we only had to pay for myself. Because I was able to accumulate 110,000 Rapid Reward points this calendar year, I was awarded a companion pass. This means my wife fly's for free, anytime I do through Dec. 31 2016. What a great deal. In addition, because our daughter is under 2, she can fly as a lap child, which does not require a ticket. Some may wonder how I accumulated so many points in a year, but in fact it is very easy with the offers that are available. Early this year, southwest offered 50,000 bonus points for a spend of around $2000 in 3 months. I took advantage and opened a personal and a business card. I used the personal card for all my expenses to easily cover the minimum spend, and the business card was used for all the renovations on our latest rental property. This also easily got us over the minimum spend to get the points.
Hotel
We decided that we wanted to stay for 1 night in Baltimore to try to see a bit of the city on the last night of our trip so I looked into our options. I found that there was a Hyatt Place located near the airport and decided that was a good option. It was a good option because I had previously opened a Hyatt Visa card that came with 2 free night stays anywhere in the world. 1 of those nights was used last year in Paris on our Honeymoon so I had 1 remaining. All I had to do was call and request to use my night at the Baltimore Hyatt Place and it was booked. Simple.
Rental Car
I was surprised that the rental car was the most expensive part of our trip in terms of points. I am used to booking cars through work and the corporate rates are much better than the general rates. Either way, I decided to use my Chase Ultimate rewards points to book a small SUV for our trip. I could have booked a smaller car to save, but with a baby and stroller, plus luggage, the SUV made sense. In the end I used 26,000 points for a 5 day rental. Not too bad at all. We actually got upgraded to a large SUV for free anyways, so that was a bonus.
All in all, I am happy with how that all worked out for us in terms of cost for the trip. We really only paid for food at the airports, which is expensive. I think the point of this post is to just make people aware of the opportunities out there to travel on a budget. I know many people say they would love to travel but cannot afford it. I would tell them there is always a way if you do your research.
That being said, I would not advocate this method of generating credit card points to everyone. We all know that not everyone can control themselves with the plastic in their hand. If you are someone who carries a balance on anything besides a 0% interest card, I would not recommend this to you. Mainly because it will end up costing you more than the benefit, but also because you not only have to spend the minimum spending, you generally have to pay it off in that time.
I hope this post can help someone out there to realize their travel goals while staying on a budget.
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