How to book your European vacation for Almost FREE

Family cooking class in Cuzco, Peru

Travelling does not have to be expensive! With a little advance planning and strategy, your entire family can travel for almost free. You can even travel to Europe, Asia or South America OR anywhere else you want to go.
I just booked my family on flights to Europe for next summer for about $350. We paid just taxes and fees for all of our flights.
So how did I do it? That's what I want to share here because you can do it too.
I picked Europe because my daughter says we have traveled to lots of exotic places and she would really like to see London and Paris. I had enough miles on United for 3 one way tickets to Europe, but we are family of 5. Now my husband will actually join us halfway into the trip so I will book his flight a bit later.
United is part of the Star Alliance so I checked out who else is part of that alliance and would allow me to book one way tickets. Singapore Air seemed like the best fit. I can book one way tickets using miles. Their mileage program is called Krisflyer. So then I looked at the 4 big general mileage clubs - Chase Ultimate Rewards, Citi Thank You Points, Starwood Preferred Guest and American Express Membership Rewards to figure out how I could get 165,000 Krisflyer miles.
Unfortunately due to the 5/24 Chase rule, I am not eligible for the Chase United Explorer card or any other Chase cards. I already have a few Starwood cards so I focused my research on American Express Membership Rewards. 
My husband and I each signed up for the Premier card with a bonus of 40,000 points with a minimum spend of $2,000. Then I could transfer Starwood points to Krisflyer directly to flush out the remaining points. Because Starwood gives you a 5,000 bonus for every 20,000 you transfer, I needed just 70,000 Starwood points to reach 165,000 Krisflyer miles.
As soon as the American Express Membership Rewards posted, I started to transfer all the miles/points into my Krisflyer account and book flights.
Yesterday I booked 4.5 round trip flights to Europe for $350. Woohoo!

Here are the simple steps I follow:

1. Where do you want to go?
2. Which airlines and partners fly there?
3. What mileage programs do they use and who do they partner with?
4. How many miles do you need?
5. How can you get those miles?

Then put your plan in action and cross your fingers.