Happy To Help A Friend

It's a great moment when a friend tells you that you inspired them to save miles for 3 years and now she, her husband and three kids are going on a European vacation for almost FREE. 
Amazing! 

Three years ago, my family and I traveled to Thailand for almost a month for FREE. We cashed in points and miles for airline tickets from San Diego to Bangkok through Japan Airlines and then stayed in a Sheraton in Bangkok. We had some expenses, but we rented our house while we were gone through Airbnb and the trip was FREE. 

Now my friend, Casey, sent me this testimonial:

A while back, you were telling us about your trip to Thailand and we took a look at similar cards and ended up choosing the Barclay's Arrival card. We charged everything we could to it (but paid it religiously every week so no interest) and saved up miles. We get double points on travel charges and 10% miles back when we redeem for travel credits. So far it has paid for more than half the trip!  If we were going good somewhere less expensive it would easily cover the whole thing:)

Thanks again for the inspiration!

This is why I write this travel blog to help people make travel much more affordable. Travel does not need to be expensive, but you do need to plan where you want to go and how you are going to get there. 

My family and I are headed to Peru this summer. We are flying for FREE on American, but we collected American miles for a few years to make this happen. We tend to collect bonuses on credit cards and my husband and I managed to collect more than 200,000 miles on American Airlines that we could cash in for this trip. We also collected British Avios miles that we are using for the domestic flights inside Peru. 

We rent out our house while we are gone and that pays for the rest of the trip. Travel does not need to be expensive so with a little planning, you can save a lot of money and have almost FREE family travel. 

Use Miles To Fly To Cuba - Great News!

Great news for those wanting to visit Cuba! 

The US Department of Transportation has granted approval for the following airlines out of the following US cities. 

While you can’t book flights just yet, there will be plenty of options to use miles and points with a total of 155 weekly trips on the approved airlines.  Here are the departure options:

• Chicago – Frontier Airlines
• Fort Lauderdale – JetBlue, Silver Airways, and Southwest
• Miami – American Airlines
• Minneapolis – Sun Country Airlines
• Philadelphia – Frontier Airlines

The routes will operate between Miami (MIA), Fort Lauderdale (FLL), Chicago (ORD), Minneapolis (MSP) and Philadelphia (PHL) and Camaguey (CMW), Cayo Coco (CCC), Cayo Largo (CYO), Cienfuegos (CFG), Holguin (HOG), Manzanillo (MZO), Matanzas (VRA), Santa Clara (SNU) and Santiago de Cuba (SCU).

Under the agreement, each country can operate up to 10 daily round-trip flights between the US and each of Cuba’s nine international airports, for a total of 90 daily round-trip flights. It’s worth noting that service to Havana is not included in this announcement, and the DOT said that distribution of the 20 allotted daily round-trip flights to the country’s capital city will be announced later this summer.

This great news because if you have the Southwest companion pass, it means you can buy 2 for 1 tickets to Cuba, awesome. Southwest had a great sale this past week so I actually booked my tickets to Fort Lauderdale hoping that Southwest would be approved for flights to Cuba. You can cancel flights on Southwest without any penalty so there was no downside to grabbing my seat. 

Now if I can snag one of those seats on the flight to Cuba, I'll be on my way. My personal goal is to travel 50 countries by the end of my 50th year. Cuba will be number 48! Woohoo. 

Travel Hacking

Now that summer is approaching, people are talking about their vacation plans. I am almost embarrassed these days when people ask me what I'm doing this summer. We are spending a week camping with the family, but we are also traveling to Peru for several weeks. The response is always a "wow, that's a big trip and an expensive one".
I smile and say "actually, it's not, because we travel for free."

Then they look confused. And I say it's my hobby, travel hacking. I can show you how to do it if you want. And that's where the conversation ends.
I don't understand this because who would want to pay thousands of dollars for something you can do for free with a little bit of planning. But I think most people think travel hacking is illegal or complicated or a hassle.
But I think it's fun and the result is a few years ago, we went to Thailand for free and this summer, we are heading to Peru! We fly for free and stay in most hotels for free. My kids see the world differently, they understand culture and history and have very open minds. In my son's classroom, they studied refugee crisis around the world. My son told the story about the crisis in Zimbabwe. He didn't read it in a book. Instead, he learned from the man in our hotel whose family fled Zimbabwe and lost their farm. He was able to describe the differences between Zimbabwe and Zambia because we explored both sides of the border and then discussed the differences that we saw as a family.
Amazing! That's why I travel hack and if you would like to learn, read my posts and I'll teach you.