Back when I first started to actually use Travel Reward cards was about a year and a half ago. We were planning to take a family trip to visit Paraguay in South America. That is where my wife is from and we have not been back there for a very long time. But of course it is very expensive to go there, especially for a family of 6!

I had just recently before that started researching travel rewards. I knew I would not have a lot of time to earn enough points to get us all there but at least a little bit would help. I started with the Capital One Venture card. I got one for myself and one for my wife.

Most reward cards have the most benefit when you get the sign on bonus. You spend X amount of dollars within 2-4 months and you get a large points bonus. As was the case with this one.

In the end, this time around we decided that just my wife and our oldest child would go since our oldest would be graduating High School the next year and may not get another chance. They went there for three weeks and very much enjoyed spending time with family.

Between the sign up bonus and purchasing the airline tickets with that card, there was enough points to cover the cost of at least one of the plane tickets. Not too bad considering the short time I had to gather points. Better than paying full price for sure.

Now a year and a half later I am going through reward cards like crazy, building up points so that next year, summer of 2020 we can go as a family and have most or all of the cost covered. How do I do this? We alternate between myself and my wife getting personal and business cards and then simply putting all of our payments on that one card until we reach the spend amount needed for the bonus. Currently we are going through the Chase Saphire and Ink Business cards. Once we have all we can get there we will start to use other hotel or airline cards. So our grocery shopping, utilities, gas, doctor bills, anything that we would normally pay with cash or check gets put on the card. Then we immediately pay it off when the bill comes.

Don’t spend anything more than you normally would. You do not want to put yourself in debt to get points. Just the things you normally pay for each month using cash or check or other online bill-pay methods. Often the card itself will send you an email asking for you to refer them to someone and then you get additional bonus points for that. My wife and I refer each other when we get those if it is still a card the other needs. We can then later combine these points into one account using the Chase family of rewards.

Going back to the Capital One Venture card. I still use this card to some degree. I have certain recurring payments going on that one. For example right now I have my kids monthly payments for braces going on it. So it is racking up points still. And I often use it when paying for hotels.

We just recently used that Venture card to cover the cost of a hotel. At the beginning of August we took a small vacation to visit Moab, UT. This is why I got a bit behind on my normal post schedule. We went to Arches National Park, Canyonlands National Park, and Dead Horse Point State Park. We stayed at a hotel in Moab for 3 days and two nights. We got a room with 3 queen beds, which I don’t see very often. But it was nice having the extra space. It cost a little more than I personally like to pay for a hotel but the nice thing is that when I got the bill, I just went into my Capital One account and used my points to pay for the cost of the hotel.

That alone was a pretty big savings. It definitely makes trips more fun when they cost you a lot less than expected. We also visited various dinosaur museums along the route. All in all it was a fun mini-vacation before starting the school year.

If you would like to start earning travel reward points so that you can start taking free or reduced cost vacations, please visit my travel rewards page and use the links there to find the card that’s best for you.

I will be doing a more detailed explanation on how to properly use rewards points in a later post. So be sure to check back regularly. Travel rewards play a large role in the Financial Independence community. Building up points and saving money on travel is an easy way to maintain a budget while still getting to enjoy traveling the world. Even if you are not working toward FI, it is still a smart way to save money on travel.