I used miles to pay for travel.
This experiment may be one of my favorites … and in some ways, it has been one of the most challenging.
I’ve heard stories about people traveling for free, and it sure sounds exciting! I’ve also heard stories of people who paid thousands of dollars in fees and credit card debt, which took years and years to pay off. Like getting your groceries for free with coupons, I thought it was too much work and too confusing to figure out. So I didn’t try.
Until now.
This year, I made a vow to travel and see our family more often! Inconveniently, we have family in Pennsylvania and in California. Since they are on opposite sides of the country and far away from our home in Florida, that was motivation enough to figure it out!
First, I opened an American Airlines credit card when they were having an incredible sign on bonus of 85,000 miles! However, check the fine print before you open a card. In my case, I had to spend $4,000 in the first three months. If you can’t do that and—most importantly—you can’t pay the balance in full, DON’T OPEN THE CARD. I knew my property insurance was coming up, and I had already set aside cash to pay the bill.
After three months, I could redeem the miles for our trip to California. We are going to San Francisco for the first time to celebrate our 30th wedding anniversary and to celebrate our granddaughter’s first birthday.
That huge number of available miles got me punch drunk, and I paid for our flights and a night at a swanky hotel. In one fell swoop, my points went down to zero. It was fun getting a deal, but it turned out I didn’t get a very good deal after all. I clicked “redeem” before I determined the value of the points.
Live and learn! It’s going to take a long time to earn that number of points again. I’ve realized that I need a better strategy. I want to save money on travel to see my family and build points to take a dream vacation to London and Paris.
This is a good time to tell you … I have spent hours and hours reading stories on sites like Frequent Miler and The Points Guy. Both sites have a ton of information about amazing deals, as well as traveler testimonials that were fun to think about, but not realistic for me. I don’t have the time or the travel flexibility for that right now. Honestly, it seemed like a full-time job to research the best card to use, the tricks to earn points, and how to redeem them. For now, I’m going to use the airline redemption page for flights only.
I also needed a strategy for earning the points. Here are the guardrails that I’m using now:
1. Always pay your credit card balance in full at the end of the month.
2. Don’t buy things just to earn miles.
3. Don’t use the card to pay bills if there is a fee to pay with a credit card.
4. Take advantage of specials to earn extra miles. You can get double miles on gas or groceries or for certain restaurants—but only on budgeted expenses and things that you buy anyway.
5. Don’t automatically use miles. Only use miles if the redemption value is over 1.5 cents per mile. (cash price ÷ miles required)
6. Use your points for flights. Hotels and rental cars are rarely a good deal. Use AAA or AARP discounts instead.
This experiment showed me that I am not interested in a new hobby. I don’t want to check websites in search of deals every day or sign up for notifications whenever a flash sale is announced. Ugh, that sounds awful. My goal is to save money rather than travel for free.
The way I did it. The thrifty globetrotter.
This is part of what I’m calling Expeditionvision—my quest to find what a meaningful life looks like. One experiment per week: Possible strategies for a happier life. Trying things on purpose and paying attention to what happens. I’m not offering advice or giving instructions. I’m just sharing the way I did it. If there’s something that you’ve been wanting to try—but haven’t—I’d love to hear about it. I’m open to reader suggestions for future experiments.
Field Notes: For Paid Subscribers
Paid subscribers, I’ve added a short field notes section below with what surprised me the most, what I didn’t expect, what I might do next time, plus things I’m still working on.