There’s been a lot of talk lately “in the world” (or at least, my world) about travel hacking and credit card rewards and ways to optimize these things to save significantly on annual travel expenses. It is very impressive what some people seem to be able to do with this! From afar, it definitely seems to be worth it.
To be honest, from afar (and, um, up close), it also looks really confusing to me. Managing dozens of different cards, rewards programs, sign on bonuses, annual fees, and then, what so far has been the most confusing part to me –> figuring out how to ACTUALLY USE THE POINTS in an optimized way.
But when you see the amount of free travel people are getting by doing this, well, it’s hard to not think, “I should really look into this too!”
We actually already have quite a few rewards credit cards, thanks to Ivan. (If it had been up to me, I probably would have one single credit card (maybe two, so I’d have a backup 😅) and I would just put everything on there and be done.) We have a couple cards with no international fees, a card that gives higher back on gas, a couple cards that are go-tos for dining out or travel expenses, etc.
I already sort of hate this, because I can never for the life of me remember which stupid card I’m supposed to use in which situations, and Ivan is constantly harping on me, “Did you use XYZ card for that purchase?” and I’ll be like, oh… um… no? Whoops.
THEN he also wants me to remember, especially when making any larger purchases, to check if any of our cards have specials going on with extra % back for that vendor. (Random example- Chase currently has an 8% cash back offer at ALDO. So if I happened to need to buy a pair of shoes today at ALDO, it would behoove me to activate that 8% back in the app. But the Vendor list is so random and it varies week to week and I just often forget about this altogether. Plus, since we have multiple types of cards (AmEx, Chase, BMO and Capital One), they all have different bonus offers…Sorry, but it’s annoying to check all these different apps every time I want to buy something! (I think Ivan tends to scroll through the offers once a week or so just to have in the back of his mind if there are any that are relevant to us as he goes about his week. I do not…. I suppose I could try this.)
Anyway, we have all these cards and we do spend a lot on credit cards (always paying in full, the usual but important disclaimer), so we do get a good amount of rewards points. However, neither of us really knows much about the best way to optimize USING the points. Historically we have just periodically cashed in rewards for a statement credit- which can be a good chunk of money, like ~$1,000 at a time type thing.
We have never used points to get a flight for $30 like some people seem to do. We also have never transferred points to different travel portals, or even gotten a free hotel stay using points, etc.
Like I said, I keep hearing so much about the extreme travel hacking that many people are doing, so I felt we should try to up our game here! So, I recently opened a Chase Sapphire Preferred which is known for being a good, versatile rewards card that also had a large sign on bonus. (That’s where people really hack this game- with those sign on bonuses. You can get like 80,000-100,000 points at a pop for opening new cards, and those can add up fast.)
Okay, so I got my new card, I got my big sign on bonus, and now…. I feel stuck. So far, I feel like I am terrible at this. I just don’t get it. I mean, I logically know it can’t be that hard. But nothing with this travel hacking stuff is super straight forward.
What I really want is to just be able to book my travel however I want and then get some money off (essentially, what we have done with the cash back statement credits). However, that’s not the “best” use of the points, or so they say. You can get “better deals” by doing things like transferring the points to Hyatt or United Airlines etc. But IT IS SO CONFUSING to me.
First off, my eyes sort of glaze over every time I try to read about this stuff. Then, when I think I understand it and I go to look for flights/hotels that would work for my needs, the options all look terrible. 🤯 That’s the part that I’m hating- a point is not a point and a mile is not just a mile. When looking for flights, sometimes the points go farther than other times, so sometimes it can literally be a “bad” deal to use the points on a particular flight. And the flight options on the particular airline my points transfer to were terrible, anyway, at least for our dates and times, and I was feeling annoyed to be “limited” to this one airline if I want to use my points.
Then I was looking at Hyatt hotel options for a possible upcoming trip, and when I went to click “use points” I learned that not all the room types are available if you use points. It took the room options from like, 6-8 if paying cash down to 1 if using points that would fit all of us, and the points room option didn’t have a view, whereas the others did. (And I don’t even really want to stay at the Hyatt? That’s another thing…I am rather finnicky about where we stay on trips. Not because I need the grandest or finest, but because I am very finnicky about things like the vibe, views, location, amenities, or even just what the pool or hot tub area looks like.)
What I’m saying is, this is stressing me out. I hear of people getting amazing deals using points (case in point: I paid $735 to get to Nova Scotia, and Sarah paid $70! using points) and since we do like to travel and yet do not have crazy high unlimited budgets, the idea of travel hacking is appealing! But at the moment it is feeling like another thing to do and figure out and I’m just not sure it’s worth it. (I am sure it is not actually that hard and I’m probably exaggerating this. I know I am a perfectly intelligent person who would be capable of learning to do this, but I don’t find it interesting at all to learn about and it is not my forte and it makes me feel easily confused and overwhelmed.)
I also hate the idea of feeling limited at all by what I “can or can’t do” when booking a trip. (Again, I realize that this can actually open up MORE options –> FREE TRAVEL!, but to me, at this point, it feels restrictive. I am used to just opening up Booking.com or another source and finding a hotel that works for us and booking it.)
I do like the idea of maybe leaning more into a certain airline, like Sarah does on American Airlines. She has Platinum status, which affords automatic perks, and then gets the miles to use there, which seems straightforward. I’d like that. BUT, in our case, we tend to fly all different airlines, and our biggest travel restriction is often the dates. So we really just need to fly WHATEVER airline will fly us there on the specific dates we need to go….Then there are different airline that work best for, say, our frequent Mexico trips, versus going to Ireland (Aer Lingus!). We flew British Airways to London, IcelandAir to Copenhagen, I flew United to Nova Scotia… I guess we could try work on trying to be more airline loyal and see how it goes, but it feels a little iffy.
This whole thing reminds me of when we tried to get a Costco membership 10+ years ago. I instantly hated it. I know, people love Costco! And I’m sure maybe it would have grown on me. But for me, at the time, as the main person who does the grocery shopping (and had 2 little kids, at the time), it just felt like another damn errand. I already was going to Aldi and Woodman’s (our huge local store which has everything and already solidly low prices usually), and now I was also supposed to stop at Costco? The main thing I hated about Costco was how everything was huge. Like, no, I don’t want 20 boxes of Kleenex for $30. I don’t want to spend $30 on Kleenex today (nor do I want to store 20 boxes of Kleenex), I just want 2 boxes of Kleenex to use for the week! I felt perpetually confused every time I reached for something if it was a “good deal” or not. So while I KNOW, Costco is the GOAT, yada yada, I was like, nope. I don’t want to deal with this…and we cancelled it. lol.
I was fretting about all of this yesterday (which is what inspired this post), feeling confused as I was thinking about our upcoming trips and how I could “best” use these points…. Suddenly it dawned on me (and I honestly heard my dear friend Elisabeth’s voice in my head saying this (she didn’t actually say this, but I know this is what she would say, if I talked to her about this 💗….): I don’t have to do this.
I don’t!
I can just say, yep, travel hacking can be a great deal, but I still am not doing it, it’s not for me right now, I don’t have time to learn it at the moment. Or, I can do it at the very lowest level- I can just keep cashing in for credit card statements and be done with it. Or, I can put a pin in this and lean into it more in a few years when the boys are out of the house and I have time for a “new hobby”, lol. (The amount of information in the world about this topic and on forums, podcasts, newsletters, etc is insane. Makes my head explode when I even start reading it…). Or, maybe we try the airline route and see where we get! I don’t know.
But my realization in the shower was that I do not HAVE to do this, and this is a good example of a way that I get my little self turned into a little stress ball over something that is actually not a life requirement. 🙂
Okay, that was a major brain dump and I have to go pick up Asher from swim and don’t have time to edit, so, hopefully at least some of that made sense. 🤣
Happy Saturday!
Feel free to convince me that I’m way overthinking this! Or, are you like me so far and are kind of a “meh, I’ll pass” on all the travel hacking stuff?!
Daily Gratitude:
I am grateful for depth perception! Thought of that this morning while merging onto the highway… would be pretty hard to navigate life successfully without that… 😳
GRATEFUL KAE 
Can I say that my heart rate kind of increased and I felt almost stressed reading about travel hacking? We don’t do this either and let me tell you, Phil is all about saving money and finding deals. But he has historically focused on bonuses for moving savings around. Sometimes we would get like a $500 bonus if we moved X to Ally for 6 months, etc. He entirely manages it and tells me what to do. Some deals required a certain amount of swipes so he would track that and use certain cards for his weekday lunches at work.
I think we don’t travel enough for this to make sense for us. We are not willing to take connections (and we don’t need to since we live in a delta hub) nor will we fly at odd times to save money. I mean even frugal Phil wouldn’t take a 6am flight to save money because he values his time more than the money saved for a crappy itinerary. We were more flexible before we had kids but with kids, there’s no way I am taking a crappy flight time that will result in overtired children. And we are not hotel people at all. We only will stay at Airbnb type of places at this stage of life. I would do a residence inn with 2 bedrooms but the cost of that is likely on par with an Airbnb…
I also don’t really understand how people wrack of these insane amounts of points. We use my credit card for the before/after care and now Taco’s tuition for Pk is part of that bill so that is going to be a big number. But it’s still not so massive that we have all these points. I pretty much exclusively use my delta card because we will then use the miles I accumulate towards flights and I get a companion fare each year (but the fee is quite high so this is not the card for many families). But it’s just not worth my time to figure this out. The small amount of travel we do is such a tiny % of our total spending so I can’t spend hours optimizing it… it’s just not worth it. But hey, congrats to those who are doing all this hacking. It just stresses me out too much to even think about it!!!
We are also not Costco people. My MIL gifted us a membership year ago. We have yet to use it. It’s so out of the way and we agree about the massive quantities. We are a small family of 4. I do not need to buy massive quantities of anything! There are a few things my MIL buys for us – namely huge boxes of Cheerios and these pickles I like.
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Hey Kae!
So true that you do NOT have to do this if it doesn’t bring you joy. I feel that way about games and puzzles… they stress me out and are fundamentally unpleasant. It’s ok not to do those things; we’re grownups!
That said, the travel hacking stuff is actually relatively straightforward from an 80/20 standpoint (you get 80% of the gains with the first 20% of the work).
On the earning side of things, I did a 5 part series on my podcast (episodes 66-70). On the “burning” side — actually using the points to book travel — starting next week with episode 74 I’m going to start a series on booking flights and hotels. In case it strikes your fancy, the link to my podcast should show up below. I’m trying to break things down at a 101 level, although there are content creators there who do a much better job than I. Katie’s Travel Tricks is a good one; she’s super accessible and all her content is free.
IF you want to do this, you can! You’re smart. If you reframe it as a challenge with only up side (you save money no matter what!), it can be a total blast. That said, if it doesn’t suit you, that’s ok too. And you can always use the bank points you have in their travel portal, if that’s easiest for you. It’s not the most “cents per point” for some redemptions, but it’s very simple.
Also, we are not Costco people either. It’s a solid place, but we need smaller amounts of many specialty ingredients that they don’t have, and I don’t want to store massive amounts of any given food or home product. So team “no thanks!” on Costco with you!
@Lisa: I do the account bonus thing too! It’s fun to get a few thousand extra per year from just some quick transfers.
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@Kathleen, your podcast is great! I’ve been listening since you were on SHU’s podcast back in August.
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Oh my goodness, thank you so much! I hugely appreciate that!
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Oh my goodness, thank you so much! I hugely appreciate that!
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I love your podcast episodes on travel hacking! You are the only person who talks (in a sensible way) about how to accumulate miles, not just open 8000 cards for the sign up bonus. Thanks to your Rakuten/Sofi tip I got 30k Amex points and was able to get a free flight to visit my son in college. Also I love that you mention not trying to get the best/maximum deal at all times. Just use the points! Can’t wait for future episodes.
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Totally agree!! Even though I’m personally still kinda dumb at all the travel hacking stuff, Kathleen is a total genius and her episodes are amazing!! I’m excited for the “using the points” eps upcoming, even if I’m maybe not going to go all in (as mentioned in my post). If nothing else, I’m sure I will learn valuable info and will save them to reference again when I have more time to dig into it all!
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Thank you so much! Hearing stories like this is super encouraging. When you’re one person speaking into a mic, it’s hard to know whether the message is hitting effectively. Thank you for the encouragement!
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I pass for sure because we have specific dates we can want travel and I don’t like layovers in general so we prettty much book what we want to fly with. What I do is to try to book early, use my chase card, and the rest I let it go. I don’t enjoy doing it thus chose not to do it and feel no guilt for not saving.
Each to its own 🙂
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No travel hacking for me. As my friend would say, “these are first-world problems” but I don’t like to have to constantly be opening and closing cards (and would probably end up with 30 cards open because I would forget to close the old ones). But, I do love Costco! We just went there last night. My husband likes to BBQ and their meat is always high quality. I also like that they are constantly bringing in new things to try out and I can taste them first! We got a frozen Indian dish last night because we got to taste it and it was really yummy. I am not very adventurous with food purchasing and always wish I could try things first. So, Costco is a dream that way. We also had a VERY cheap dinner there before we shopped – hot dogs, daughter got pizza and we all had drinks and an ice cream for $13.50!! It wasn’t the best, but definitely as good as it would have been to go to McDonalds or something – and that would have cost us over $30 probably!
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As someone who adores travel hacking, I AGREE WITH EVERY WORD THAT YOU WROTE IN THIS POST. YOU DON’T HAVE TO DO THIS.
I’ve gotten something like $4k in free travel this year from redeeming Chase points through United and Hyatt. This only worked because United was the best airline to get where I wanted to go, and there are a few instances where Hyatt was the best option. BUT that was after a lot of time spent reading blogs, watching Youtube videos, and pouring my heart out into a spreadsheet. It is not everyone’s idea of fun, and there are so many other ways to save/earn $4k. One reason that you hear so much noise about travel hacking is a thing called referral bonuses – content creators rave about all the free travel they’re getting and oh by the way here is their link for you to sign up for the card, which is how they’re getting the points for all of the free travel. Also banks are not giving away all of these perks because they like us. They are making far more money than they give away.
I’m more aligned with Ivan, but my husband is totally on your team. He has two credit cards and there is nothing that he would rather do less than keep track of which card to use and figure out how to pay for something with points/miles/funny money. You know what he does instead? When something breaks in our house, he figures out how to fix it for pennies. When we needed another car, he figured out how to get a sweet deal on a great used car. He saves us more money by doing these things than I will ever dream of saving through travel hacking.
I have a lot of issues with Dave Ramsey, but a billion years ago he said something on his podcast that I thought was brilliant. Someone was asking if they were missing out by not getting credit card rewards, and his answer was “if you survey all of the billionaires of the world, not one of them will say that they made their money from credit card rewards”.
I think you told me that you have something like 80k Chase points. I would say maybe hold on to them for a few more months just to see if a situation pops up where it makes sense to use them for travel. If it doesn’t, then cash those suckers out and close the card! 80k points = $800 and there is nothing wrong with that. My advise to Ivan is the same as any other situation where one person is really into a thing and the other person isn’t – there is nothing wrong with him living large and racking up points, but since you don’t like keeping track of “I use this card at the grocery store and this card for gas and this card when there is a full moon”, then you get to use the card that you want to use.
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I totally agree with this!! Especially with kids you have more restrictive schedules, Maybe in future with more flexibility it would make more sense.
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So, we don’t travel hack per se, but we do use points to fly. We are very Delta loyal and live in the NYC area so we can get pretty much anywhere we need to on Delta or a Delta partner. We flew to Tanzania on KLM ( a Delta partner) and all our status and priority transferred and we we got Delta miles on 6 round trip flights from NYC to Tanzania. We even used Delta miles to pay for one leg of the trip. So you aren’t as restricted airline-wise as it may seem.
A few years ago we switched from a straight AmEx to a Delta AmEx and I really don’t know why we didn’t do it sooner. We put everything on one card and so just from buying our usual stuff we how have Platinum status and are sky priority (Lisa flies enough for work that she may get pretty high status just from flying but we don’t fly that much). That means we spend a lot less time waiting in lines at the airport (the Delta terminal at JFK is enormous and crazy busy). We also get 15% off on miles purchases and earned a companion ticket last year which we definitely used. Plus now I get upgraded the minute I book a flight which is a nice perk that I would never pay for but is nice on longer flights.
Point being, you don’t need to be travel hacking at Kathleen’s level (which is incredible btw!) to get some great perks from being a little airline loyal and using an airline credit card. There are different levels.
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The interesting thing is that I can only make platinum through travel because our spending on our delta Amex is just not enough to get to platinum status. I will probably lose my platinum status in 2026 since I canceled 8 trips this fall after my accident. So I will lose the ability to book comfort plus but oh well. I think now that our youngest’s PK tuition goes on our Amex (it would have resulted in an extra fee at our daycare), our miles earned through the credit card will be more meaningful. If we went with the delta reserve it probably would help but I can’t get over the huge fee on that card so we just have the platinum card. I do think an airline card can work well when it’s your only practical choice which is the case for us being in a delta hub (JFK must be as well?). I would never fly another airline unless it was the only option for a direct flight for a vacation (like to Mexico or areas of Florida, for example).
I do love all the points I rack up on delta from flight. That’s how we paid for our Mexico flights in March! And one of our tickets to DC in April will be a companion fare.
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I am with you! We don’t travel by plane, so all the airline points in the world don’t attract us. I’d rather have flexibility to travel when it’s convenient for me in a thrifty manner, rather than spend my time gaming points, keeping track of multiple cards and accounts. I just take my credit card points in gift cards and have gifts to give or free food on crazy nights.
I do try to use the card to get those points- all groceries, utilities etc go on the card. The last time we bought a car, at a dealership an hour away, my husband and son went to look it over. Then, rather than paying right there with a credit card, he came home to get me and the checkbook. He didn’t realize the points from the card would have compensated for the small fee for using a card. And it would have saved gas and time. Sigh. However, he fixes everything in the house and stretches pennies on his hobbies, so his lack of savvy about points is forgiven.
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100% this. It’s actually much less of a thing in Europe/UK as the government regulates the amount that credit card companies can charge (0.8% versus 1.8% in the IUS) so the rewards are much less but even so it’s impossible to use them in school holidays for normal flights. I just use a cash back card and bank the miles for when we are not so tied to dates. But yeah just let it go. Time is money. 💵
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Thanks for posting this! All the posts about travel hacking make me feel like I’m wasting money. However, when I think about the specifics it seems unlikely to work better for us than our 2% back card without a lot of work or compromising. I work on a college calendar and my kids are on a public school calendar so vacation times often don’t line up. When they do we really want to take advantage and need to travel on very specific dates. We also live in an area with lots of driving vacation destinations and like to stay in VRBO-type rentals so some years we would have very few occasions to even try to use points. I think of it as something I might get into in retirement with more time and more flexibility. I’ll either have lots of sign up bonuses to grab or the entire system will be different and I can be glad I didn’t bother.
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Same. Same, same, same!! I get a headache just by thinking about this topic.
I do, however, have a B of Am travel card and I charged most of my Russia and France travel on it. I think I can get 1,500 for 100K points which I will reach kind of soon-ish so I plan on redeeming it for our rental car in France which was around 1,200.
Apart from that I feel like you need patience and self-discipline to be able to pay the balance off and just accumulate the points.
Also not Costco people, at all. I went with a friend, and came back with anxiety. lol so yeah, not for me.
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I used to love travel hacking when I was a poor young student person. I remember I used to do a thing where I would fly from SFO to Portland all the time on Southwest and then I would get a free southwest flight and I would use the free flight to go to the east coast which felt like a big win!
I used to travel for work and I never really figured out the points thing because I was always on different airlines and at different hotels. Eventually I just didn’t have time to try and figure it all out. About two years ago I had an email saying my “Avios” were expiring (I guess from british airways) and I decided to look it up online and managed to get a free case of wine. That was cool! But then I wonder whether that free case of wine could have been converted into a flight if I had exchanged the avois for something or used some portal and I just get tired about it again.
I don’t think the points hacking thing is as big in the UK as it is in the US though I signed up for a new credit card at the shop we use for groceries and then it turned out that we get 1 point for every £10 we spend and 500 points is a £5 gift card and it all seemed very marginal. I went back to using my bank credit card because I can see my balance on the same screen as my normal bank account.
So yes – you do you! It’s definitely not a requirement. I think like all these things you have to want to do it and enjoy the time spent on it in order to make it worthwhile. Time isn’t free!
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I don’t do much more than use the points occasionally with some airline loyalty. Points work better for me if it’s just me or the dates are flexible. Maybe when you aren’t tied to the school calendar it might work better but you don’t have to now and won’t have to then.
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We just collect opening bonuses by opening 1-2 cards each a year. It definitely takes some time to open, minimum spend, close and we didn’t do it when the kids were really little but now we can get enough points to travel twice a year to see my in laws which would otherwise be $3000 / trip for the 5 of us. We’ve been able to get points flights during the school holidays but it’s probably easier in that we have one destination we travel to and are flexible within the school break for exact dates so we can just compare cash vs points availability on the 2 airlines we could take and decide if it’s better to use points or pay. I also give points to my parents sometimes if they want to see my sister and the cash flights are expensive and there’s a points option available. But we never stay in hotels and or travel internationally and it sounds like points hacking in the US is a lot more lucrative – and potential complex!
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Truly, I want to travel hack (or hack spending in any other way) but Jon is extremely reluctant to open more credit cards (he wished I only had one, but I am already juggling three and trying to earn cash back) and I hear you about it all being TOO MUCH and TOO complicated to just “do on the side”. It sounds like a full time job.
I will say, however, that I love having a Costco Card – even for a two person household. I don’t go there every week but it’s worth going and stocking up on a few things every couple of months. Just sayin. 🙂
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Oh wow. I’m fascinated by this post, and the responses so far. Lately it seems like everyone has been talking about this, so I brought the idea up to my husband. (I would like to start traveling a little more, scouting out places where we might want to move). He was totally against it. He doesn’t want to open any new credit cards and felt like it would be too complicated, and we would mess it up. It’s true, we have a hard enough time organizing our finances as is. We do have one credit card that earns rewards, and I think we could be optimizing that a little more, but that’s probably the most we’ll do. i’m glad to know I’m not the only one not travel hacking!
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I am a serious travel hacker but have been at it for more than 20 years. It has a time commitment component like any other hobby. It may not be right for you at this stage in your life. You may want to look into using credit cards to pay college tuition as you can rack up a lot of points that way. You should ONLY do this if you have the funds readily available to pay the entire bill in full when it is due. The Frequent Miler blog is a good resource for learning the ins and outs.
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Well, a year ago I definitely could have written this exact post because I had an awareness of travel hacking and always felt I “should” be looking into it more, but it seemed like a big time investment that I didn’t have time/bandwidth for. So until last year I only did the very soft/easy version of travel hacking, which was to have an American Airlines credit card (my husband travels a lot for work on AA so we went all in with them even though our airport isn’t a hub for them or any other airline) and put all our spend on that to accrue points, then use them 1x per year for a family vacation.
But now in the last six months I’ve gotten into more “intense” travel hacking. I just booked a 6-night trip to Aruba for our 15th wedding anniversary next year (only our second kid-free trip since becoming parents 13 years ago!) and both the flight and the hotel were completely free (other than airline taxes). And the hotel has a cash rate of $550 per night (i.e. a rate I would never be willing to pay cash for! I don’t really like to pay over $300 for lodging). That all being said, I 100% agree with everything in your post! It does require an upfront (and continuing, but less so) investment of time/energy/planning/mental space. You are an excellent planner and organized person so you’d definitely excel at it if you chose to do it, but it’s also totally fine not to, particularly since you guys currently manage to go on awesome memorable family trips without travel hacking. I do think that although anyone can travel hack, some people are better situated to capitalize on its benefits. For instance, since you travel frequently with teenage boys AND your parents, an Airbnb or condo is often going to be a better fit for you in this stage of life and is less travel hackable, which is fine! And when you travel internationally like in Europe most hotel rooms don’t fit a family of four anyway, so you’re booking multiple hotel rooms and points don’t go as far. I approach it with an attitude of not trying to travel hack absolutely everything, but to take advantage of it when I can. Like I am looking at some possible national park trips for next summer, and they don’t all have the big brand hotels near them (Hyatt, Hilton, etc.) and that’s fine, I don’t have to have every night covered by points–I don’t want to put myself in a position of not going to the destinations I WANT to go to (like national parks) just because it’s easier to travel hack, say, an all-inclusive resort in the Caribbean or a European city vacation.
One other thing I will add is that I do NOT spend a lot of mental energy focusing on which card to use for which purchase all the time for maximum points, because it doesn’t feel like that is worth it (and would probably strain my marriage because my husband is NOT into doing that AT ALL). With travel hacking it’s really all about the sign up bonuses compared to regular daily spending, so I find it’s more trouble than it’s worth to sweat the small stuff of am I getting 3x vs 1x points on groceries or whatever. In that regard I do agree with Kathleen’s 80/20 rule mentioned above!
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I love this post because it is so very true that this hobby really is not for everyone. It really stresses some out, and takes the fun out of it. I do think something that could be better for you/easier is to take the idea of signing up for new CCs to get the bonus part of it, but then take the cash back/statement credits – even focusing on cash back cards instead of travel cards. Once you get over the idea that opening new credit cards is bad, there are LOTS of options out there, as long as you can manage the transactions/payments.
I also will say that none of our trips are fully free – zero. I really hate when people also say they paid “nothing” for trips, because points ARE a currency – at a minimum you can cash those out for 1 cent per point, and you might be getting a better value for that, but if I would not personally spend $1000 on something I used 100,000 points for, then I shouldn’t do it. That’s the calculus I go through at least! For the trip I just took, a week in Italy, I used points for flights (although I did have to pay kind of a stupid amount in taxes for one part of it, really negating a lot of the value of it), and points for 3/7 of the hotels. The limitations of what flights/hotels/rooms are available with points IS super frustrating, and means that many trips just won’t work exactly the way you want them to – which might be why focusing on cash back cards could be better, or even ONLY focusing on trying to get flights with points, which is generally easier. We’ve had some good luck with Hyatt hotels in certain places, but we ALWAYS get 2 rooms – we’re going to Maui for spring break and that truly will be a trip that is almost exclusively paid for with points, which is amazing. It doesn’t work in every location, but some are easier than others!
Overall though, it’s ok to let this pass you by for now!! You’ll find a way to use the points you have, even if it isn’t the “best” redemption – the best is the one that works for you!
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Oh and, yes I also love Costco lol
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I RELATE TO THIS SO MUCH OMG. It feels like it should be simple! So many people do it! And yet it confuses me SO MUCH, and, like you said, finding the best deals is both limiting and time consuming. My husband is MUCH better at it, and we only have two credit cards: Chase Sapphire and Capital One something something. I cannot imagine having more than two. I don’t actually even have the Capital One card with me — we use it solely for a few recurring charges and my husband figured out how to optimize those. He is also the one who figures out the points conversion and what’s going to get us the biggest bang for the points, which is great because, as you said, my eyes glaze over the second he starts talking about it. And we’re like you! We don’t stick with one particular airline because it completely depends on where we’re going when. My husband is also really keen on nonstop flights (which aren’t always possible) so that is another rate limiting factor as well. And your points about trying to buy something through the Chase app — I am exactly the same. I forget it exists most of the time, honestly.
Anyway: full commiseration over here. I love your Elisabeth-based conclusion that you don’t have to worry about this! It’s not fun or interesting for you, so it wouldn’t be a hack, it would be an additional burden. I too am choosing to leave the travel hacking to someone else!
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I feel you on the credit card points- so confusing!! We did start dabbling in them the past year and I will say they’ve covered some flight costs and that was pretty exciting! But the level of people that are opening new cards and transferring points and all that jazz, I don’t think I’ll ever be there. It overwhelms me, too!
Costco though… I must oppose you. 😉
Not necessarily for everyday food necessarily, but on staples (paper towels, bully sticks for the dog, kettle and fire bone broth, frozen chicken sausages, pretzel thins, pimento cheese… see, just the essentials ;)), it’s fantastic!
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Travel hacking seems like such a waste of time to me because: (1) I can earn more at my job per hour than I’d save; (2) I don’t want to spend my limited leisure time on something like this – I guess some find it fun but it seems aggravating and stressful to me. I have no interest in owning a rental property for similar reasons.
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Of course you shouldn’t feel pressured to do it if you don’t find it fun! Hobbies are supposed to be fun, and what’s fun is individualized to each of us! You do you, all the way!
I would push back, however, on the idea that it’s not a hobby with substantial potential financial payoff. I’m a senior “big law” litigator (read: very well compensated) but find this hobby worth it in part because the payoff is extraordinary. I’m booking around $50k of points-based travel for my family each year (net all taxes and fees), without putting all that much time into it. Although I haven’t done a formal comparison between what I take home post-tax per hour as a lawyer and what this hobby “pays,” the amount it pays is handsome.
Also, it’s not as if we take our leisure hours and only deploy them towards things that make money (including working more at our day jobs) or save money. Cool if we do, but that’s not really the point of a hobby. None of us call our time reading, or baking, or exercising “wastes of time” because they’re not economically productive. We do them for the joy of it! But I guess this all circles back to the core idea: if efficiency and optimization games are fun for you, travel hacking is super cool AND can also have huge payoffs. But if it’s not fun for you, there should be no pressure to do it. Each to his own!
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I’m with you! I started feeling like I was missing out so I started looking into it more, and the thing is, I don’t want to stay at the hotels that give free stays, and I don’t spend enough regularly to get the bonus offers so I would really have to plan that out. I also like to fly exactly when I want to fly, and I live in a city that doesn’t have a huge amount of flight choices that are good, so I want to pick. That being said, I have some nice cash back cards and use them wisely and enjoy that perk. And I try to remember my extra cash back offers, but…yeah…keeping track of all that isn’t my idea of fun either.
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I’m with you! I started feeling like I was missing out so I started looking into it more, and the thing is, I don’t want to stay at the hotels that give free stays, and I don’t spend enough regularly to get the bonus offers so I would really have to plan that out. I also like to fly exactly when I want to fly, and I live in a city that doesn’t have a huge amount of flight choices that are good, so I want to pick. That being said, I have some nice cash back cards and use them wisely and enjoy that perk. And I try to remember my extra cash back offers, but…yeah…keeping track of all that isn’t my idea of fun either.
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I couldn’t relate MORE to a post! Every time I read about travel hacking, I get so overwhelmed. But then every time someone says, “I used points for my flight and hotel so my trip to Paris cost me $30!” I AM VERY JEALOUS. But I just do not have the energy to travel hack myself (nor am I someone who can be trusted with more than one credit card), so it is something I’ll leave for other people.
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