Just returned from two weeks in Ireland, amazing! In the photo, you can see my family and I on a five mile hike along the top of the Cliffs of Moher. Fabulous! We also spent time in Dublin, stayed the night in a castle and took the Black Taxicab Tour in Belfast. 

And guess what? The trip from soup to nuts cost approximately $1,000 for all four of us. Yep, that includes flights, hotels, rental car, food and tours. 

I am going to break it down for you step by step so you can see how we did it. 

• Flights - erased with Capital One points and Chase Ultimate Rewards 
• Hotels - IHG points and a FREE night certificate, Marriott points, erased Airbnb.com reservations with Chase Ultimate Rewards points and Capital One Venture X $300 promotion credit
• Tours - Erased some with Capital One points 
• Dining - Erased with Chase Ultimate Reward points 
• Parking - Erased with the Chase Sapphire Reserve travel credit 

My goal is to teach everyone how to fly and stay for FREE so travel is accessible for all families. 

My Two Week Family Trip To Ireland Cost Only $1,000 

Step1 

The first thing I work on when planning a trip are the flights. Now that may seem so logical to you, but I have met people who book their hotels first. Wrong! 

You have to book the flights first because sometimes in order to get FREE flights, you have to be flexible with your dates/times and even destination. For example, it might be cheaper to fly to Paris and then catch a budget airline over to Dublin than to fly directly. 

For this trip to Ireland, we knew we wanted to leave around the end of June. Aer Lingus is the obvious airline of choice and usually it offers the best points deals. I had earned the 100,000 Avios bonus a few months back and planned to use those points to get us there. 

But when I started searching up flights, the fuel charges were so outrageous, it would have cost me 50,000 points plus $282 for each ticket. That's not FREE. 

So I checked American Airlines, Delta and United, but it was the same problem. Outrageous fuel charges. 

My next step was to look at the travel portals. Both Chase and Capital One offer travel portals where you can use points to "buy" your flights. 

Each portal works a bit differently and you can read about them here. 

After researching both portals, my best option was to book tickets for my husband and myself through the Capital One travel portal and "erase" the purchase with points. Those tickets cost us 55,000 points each, but no fuel charges. My husband had earned the points through the 100,000 bonus points Capital One Venture X credit card offer. Read about my ultimate Capital One Travel Portal hack here! 

And to buy my daughter's flight through the Chase Travel Portal on my Sapphire Reserve account with points. Since the Sapphire Reserve offers 50% bonus on points when you book through the portal, her round trip ticket cost 33,000 points. Read about the what you need to do before you book your flight through the Chase Travel Portal. 

My son was already in Europe. 

My Two Week Family Trip To Ireland Cost Only $1,000 

Step 2

Now that we have flights secured, we move onto hotels. I use awardmapper.com to check the areas for hotel chains. I notice there is a Holiday Inn Express Dublin City Centre that has rooms available. I cash in a FREE night certificate for the first night and then book three nights on points. IHG offers buy 3 nights with points and get a 4th night FREE. Now we have the first 5 nights covered for 89,000 points. We had earned those IHG points a few years back with a bonus on the IHG credit card. 

Back to awardmapper.com to check Belfast for hotels and bam, an AC Hotel by Marriott offers rooms for just 21,000 points per night. I'll take two nights there please. 

The rest of the nights, I book on Airbnb.com using my Chase Sapphire Reserve credit card which is running a promotion where you can use points to erase Airbnb.com purchases. 

The Capital One Venture X also came with a $300 credit on Airbnb.com so I used that to pay for the night in the castle.  

Now all the hotels are FREE. 

My Two Week Family Trip To Ireland Cost Only $1,000 

Step 3

I book the rental car and due to a technical issue at pick up end up paying for it on the Chase Sapphire Preferred credit card so I'll end up paying for that one. 

Step 4

While on the actual trip, I use the Chase Sapphire Reserve credit card to pay for all parking and dining. This card comes with a $300 travel credit so as we charge travel, it's erasing the charges. It also earns 3x points on dining and then when I return home, I erase another $700 worth of purchases with the pay myself back program.  Some may argue that you can get more value out of the points by transferring them to an airline, but it all depends on your travel plans. 

My Two Week Family Trip To Ireland Cost Only $1,000 

Step 5

I rent my house when I go on vacation and use those funds to pay for the trip too so that covers almost all the rest of the purchases less $1,000. 

Does it take some work and some planning, yep, is it worth it? Family time, memories and a chance to visit a beautiful country. I think so! 

If you want your entire trip to be FREE, you need to plan in advance and I recommend joining me at Families Fly FREE. We have teamed up with my friend and national travel blogger Lyn. She has created a simple system to help families fly free. 

If you would like to check them out, click here and let Lyn know I sent you. :)

If you are thinking about applying for the Chase Sapphire Preferred card, please use my referral link. 

If you are thinking about applying for the Capital One Venture X credit card, please use my referral link.