Many people have asked me, " How can you afford to go on such a huge trip??? " or " I wish I had the money to travel around the world ." It may sound like a ridiculously expensive and foolish thing to do, but it doesn t have to be.
As recent as a year ago, an around the world trip was something I would never do. World travel fascinated me and I envied those who had done it, but I figured it was just too expensive, too difficult, and not important enough to risk leaving my career. I read about around the world tickets, but hadn't given them any thought until I read Steve Kamb's post, How to Travel the World for $418 . I realized that I already had enough points to buy the same ticket as Steve and if I could double those points, Caroline and I could afford to travel to all the places we d dreamed about.
Something that seemed so impossible only a year ago, was now not only possible, it was ( almost discount rental cars clearwater fl ) free ! Seeing as money is one of the biggest reasons people don't travel , this was one of the critical factors that helped us decide to take the trip.
"But Josh, I know you. You had a job which required you to travel discount rental cars clearwater fl for business. discount rental cars clearwater fl You got your travel paid for and were able to keep the points. Not all of us can afford to fly twice a week every week…"
Travel hacking, as defined by Chris Guillebeau , is simply, "experiencing the world on a limited budget." The travel and leisure industry plays up travel (especially international travel) as a luxury only the rich can afford. By using some tips, tricks, and loopholes it's possible to travel across the world, or all the way around it for very cheap. There are many travel hacking strategies and tons of useful resources on the Internet, some of which I will share at the end of this post.
I'll show you how I earned my frequent flyer miles and hotel points, with and without actual travel. Then, I'll take you through the steps to plan your own trip and describe the process for redeeming your miles like I did. Finally, I'll leave you with the best resources for travel hacking on the web.
During one promotion, discount rental cars clearwater fl every three stays in an SPG hotel earned discount rental cars clearwater fl you one free resort night anywhere in the world. Each time you check into a different property it counts as a stay. The promotion discount rental cars clearwater fl ran for three months and during that time I switched between 3 SPG hotels every night to maximize my stays. I earned 7 free resort nights, just by booking ahead and packing and unpacking my bag each day. We used the free nights to cover the stay for our Around The World (RTW) Practice Run .
I earned plenty of points from business travel, and went through discount rental cars clearwater fl a lot of extra effort to maximize my earnings. Earning all these points only made me want to earn more. I was hooked. I loved seeing the mileage balance increase discount rental cars clearwater fl each week. But after learning about big mileage bonuses with airline credit cards , I earned a ton of miles in a much shorter period of time, without discount rental cars clearwater fl any actual travel.
For how much little work went into the travel hacking, it was considerably easier discount rental cars clearwater fl than getting on a plane twice a week for an entire year. All I had to do was fill out a few applications, switch all my daily spending to a certain credit card, meet the minimum spend, and (most importantly) pay off the bill each month. ( You must be organized )
You might be thinking discount rental cars clearwater fl how irresponsible discount rental cars clearwater fl this sounds. " You signed up for 6 new credit cards? " " How deep are you in debt? " You don't have to sign up for any credit cards to earn miles and fly for cheap. There are many other tactics for travel hacking, which I will write about in the future. However, to earn the greatest amount of points in the shortest amount of time, credit card bonuses are the best way. If you don't know what you are doing, or don't have the patience, energy or concentration to keep track of everything, please do not follow my advice. Caroline and I are debt-free with high credit scores, and our scores actually discount rental cars clearwater fl increased after applying for each of these cards. We never carry a balance on any of our cards and never miss a payment. Your credit is a vital asset. Use it responsibly!
Where in the world do you want to go? Have you always wanted to visit Angkor Wat in Cambodia, tour Europe, climb Kilimanjaro or surf in Australia? Just pick one place from your list that you'd like to visit.
This is where the travel hacking part comes in and you have to do some legwork of your own. Study or sign up for the travel resources at the bottom of this post for all the information you'll need. You can earn a bunch of points just by paying your normal discount rental cars clearwater fl monthly expenses on a different credit card.
Hopefully you enjoyed it so much that now you're hooked! This doesn't have to be a one-time thing. You can continue to find new ways to earn miles and take more trips than you ever thought you could afford.
Since I had all my airline miles on American Airlines (AA) and British Airlines (BA), I chose the oneworld alliance to book our RTW trip. Each oneworld airline has their own version of this award, which lets you book a certain number of segments on all the alliance s partner airlines. Confusingly, AA calls theirs a "OneWorld award". If you earn miles on another discount rental cars clearwater fl airline be sure to check their rules and regulations.
This is the fun part, spending those hard-earned miles. I wanted to cover as much ground (or air?) as possible since the tickets were basically free. I started by listing out every country we would ever want to visit. This was a long list and so we had to narrow it down. " This country is too expensive, this country is too far away, we can easily return to this country, etc. " Then, using the oneworld trip planner and route map we plugged in the capital cities of each country and tried to optimize for the greatest number of miles and destinations within the constraints.
The one year rule is especially challenging. You always want to book as far in advance as possible, since airlines have limited award inventory on each flight. I was told on the FlyerTalk forums that I would have a hard time getting the flights I wanted, since I needed to book out flights discount rental cars clearwater fl for an entire year, and the trip couldn't go beyond one year from the date I booked the tickets. Since I was booking in November for flights in January and February, I was concerned that the first few segments of the trip would already be full. Out of the 14 flight segments we booked, only two of the flights we wanted weren't available. Since we are flexible, we moved those flights by one day, and were still able to book the exact routing we had planned.
Originally, we were returning to the U.S. via Miami, but after we learned that we could include the Galapagos Islands on the ticket, we decided to use the remaining miles for that and make the whole ticket an open jaw.
I needed discount rental cars clearwater fl 280,000 frequent flier miles (140,000 x 2) to book our itinerary. discount rental cars clearwater fl At the time, I only had 220,000 miles in my AA account. Luckily, SPG allow transfers to most major airline programs , usually on a 1:1 basis. discount rental cars clearwater fl Even better, every 20,000 points transferred earns you a 5,000 point bonus. discount rental cars clearwater fl Since I had plenty of SPG points, I could transfer 40,000 points into 50,000 AA miles, giving me enough to book the tickets!
After getting the miles together, discount rental cars clearwater fl it was time to book, and pay the necessary taxes and fees. British Airways is infamous for high fuel surcharges and fees on award flights . In order to save on fees, I tried to avoid BA if possible. This is easy in Asia and South America, but was quite difficult for Africa, as BA seems to be about the only oneworld carrier discount rental cars clearwater fl that flies between the African and European continents. I managed to find one Iberia route from Johannesburg to Madrid (hence our stopover there) which would then get us to South America. This is the only attempt I made at lowering our fees. I had planned for as much as $1,000 per ticket after hearing discount rental cars clearwater fl about how high the fees on BA can be.
This trip takes us across 5 continents, 17 countries and 34,500 miles, and it only cost $346 and 140,000 frequent flyer miles! discount rental cars clearwater fl If you would have told me this a year ago, I wouldn't have believed you. But I actually did it, and am now traveling around the world for a year on flights that cost less than a month of groceries. discount rental cars clearwater fl I hope you too will be inspired to take the trip you've always wanted, and to do it on the cheap. If you have any questions, please leave a comment below, or contact us via twitter or email . Happy travel hacking!
If you're just learning about how to use frequent flyer miles and points, or are overwhelmed discount rental cars clearwater fl by the amount of information from the free resources above, there are some great premium resources that can teach you the ins-and-outs of travel hacking from the beginning. (These are affiliate links. If you buy an item using the links, we get a small commission.)
Great post, thanks for all the information. I ve been following your blog for few months since coming across it from another website. It peaked my interest because I m from Chicago as well. For now, I really love living vicariously through the two fo you and making preparations for what I hope to be my own RTW trip in a couple of years. Hope you all are enjoying Vietnam.
Great post! We decided against RTW tickets mostly discount rental cars clearwater fl so that we could just wander where we wanted and planning where to go for a whole year seemed so hard! That price though is Ridiculous! Meg traveled every week for work so she has a ton of points discount rental cars clearwater fl too. We ve leveraged those for a few cross continent flights, but they sure would have helped on a RTW ticket.
We re still talking about working the credit cards to get more points, but it just seems weird to open so many. We have good credit like you and wouldn t rack up debt, but something holds us back. Maybe when we finally have to pay for that flight to asia from europe we ll dive in? Hearing that your scores went up though definitely helps me feel better.
If I didn t have all the miles, we wouldn t have bought RTW tickets. For some regions, like SE Asia, we only booked HKG-SIN-B
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