New United Excursionist One Way Perk

United Airlines launched its excursionist perk in October 2016, but it's just starting to catch on. And it's an amazing deal! The idea is that you can book multi city flights and get one leg for FREE. You can check it out here, but the details are as follows from United Airlines website. 

• The Excursionist Perk cannot be in the MileagePlus defined region where your travel originates. (For example, if your journey begins in North America, you will only receive the Excursionist Perk if travel is within a region outside of North America.)
• Travel must end in the same MileagePlus defined region where travel originates.
• The origin and destination of the Excursionist Perk is within a single MileagePlus defined region.
• The cabin of service and award type of the free one-way award is the same or lower than the one-way award preceding it.
• If two or more one-way awards qualify for this benefit, only the first occurrence will be free.

Click here for the list of United Airlines regions

Here are the steps, choose multi city and book an award flight. 

Step 2 - find the flight that works, if you qualify for excursionist fare, the leg of the flight will be marked 0 miles. 

Step 3 - Review and purchase

This is a great option and could save you hundreds of dollars if you want to check out more than one city in a region. Only catch is that you must book with United miles on United flights and all legs must be in the same class.  Let me know how you use this amazing perk! 

Wyndham Hotels Booked

One of the best deals out there is the Wyndham 45,000 point bonus on their credit card. The minimum spend is $2,000, but they actually give you 30,000 points with your first purchase. Then they award you the next 15,000 when you reach your minimum spend. There is a second card that comes with 18,000 points and a $1,000 minimum spend. There is a $75 annual fee on the first card. There is no annual fee on the second. I prefer the first one because it's worth an extra 2 FREE nights just for $1,000 more in spend.
This is a great way to get hotel points quickly. Every room worldwide is 15,000 points. So we used it last summer for 1 night at the Wyndham Costa Del Sol Lima located across from the airport. Next summer, we will use the points for 2 nights in Prague at the Ramada City Centre. 
Since we are family of 5, we booked 2 rooms for each night.
I used the last free night for me and 6 kids at the Days Inn San Francisco At The Beach.
The Wyndham hotel group is not my favorite, but it usually includes breakfast and if it's free, I like it.

Did you book your IHG point break hotel yet?

IHG opened their new list of point break hotels today for this quarter. You can reserve dozens of hotels around the world for just 5,000 IHG points. A lot of the hotels are in obscure places, but for me, one of them was around the corner from a university I am visiting in the spring. You can cancel these reservations up to one day before for a full point refund. But they sell out fast!
And they are usually only offered on reservations 2-3 months out.
And if you apply for an IHG credit card, you can get a 60,000 point bonus with just $1,000 minimum spend. That's a heck of a lot of 5,000 point break hotel rooms. The rules state you can only book 2 nights on point break, but you never know. And if you add an authorized user, you can get an additional 5,000 points. Nice!

How to prep your home with airbnb

One of the best ways to pay for your vacation is to rent out or exchange your home while you are away. It just makes sense. Your home is empty so use it to create income and pay for your vacation. At first, it may feel a little strange to know that strangers are living in your home, but look around, you are probably vacationing someplace awesome because of it.
So there are a few different companies out there that you can use to rent your home. They are all similar, but involve varying different fee structures.
I prefer Airbnb.com because the fees are low and they offer $1 million dollars insurance. They will also negotiate on your behalf if there is a problem. But there are others out there. I recommend listing on just one site so you avoid double booking.

Things to remember when you rent out your home:
1. Remove anything you do not want stolen or broken, just in case
2. Vet your guests as best you can. Check out their Facebook page and Google search them.
3. Build a relationship with your guest, ask lots of questions.
4. Provide the guest with a clean and welcoming place to stay

The other way to go is to exchange your home with someone else. These can be done simultaneously (you stay in the other home at the same time they are staying in yours) or not (usually in the case of a summer home). Again, you want to build a relationship with the guests. Sometimes, these arrangements include using each other's cars as well.

Both are great options to knock thousands off the cost of your vacation. And that's the idea of almost FREE family travel.

IHG Releases 5,000 Point Break Hotels

Each quarter, IHG releases a list of hotels that qualify for point break. Point break means they cost you just 5,000 points per night. Pretty great! Now I find that this list usually contains hotels in places you may never visit.
BUT sometimes you can find a few hidden gems.
This morning, IHG released a preview list for this quarter, check out the Candlewood Suites Anaheim and the Hotel Indigo Krakow plus there are few hotels that looked interesting in South and Central America.
And if you are spending some this spring, checking out colleges like we are, then there may be a hotel that works for you.
You can book these starting Monday Jan. 30 2017 and they go fast. So do your research and make plans over the weekend!

Ebates Launches 7% Back On Hotels

Ebates.com is one of my favorite cash back sites. The other one I like is through my shopping club where I get all my organic household items for 30-50% off regular prices. This morning, Ebates.com launched its own discount hotel booking site.
In the past, I have usually booked my hotels with points or through Booking.com with my Ebates.com account. This strategy usually netted me 6-10% back on hotels. Now Ebates.com is promising 7% back across the board.
A quick search showed that yes, the prices are discounted.

The price that Ebates.com shows you is the price minus the discount. The discount won't actually post until 45-60 days after your stay. I did a quick comparison with Booking.com which offered a 2% cash back if I went through my Ebates.com account and here's what I found.

The initial price for the hotel on both sites was the same so obviously 7% discount is more than 2%. So in this case you save more money if you use the new Ebates.com hotel discount for the Hilton Garden Inn in West Lafayette. Is that the same for every hotel? Who knows? You may have to play with both sites to see where you get the best deal.
But it's good to have options and as I tell everyone I meet "anytime you buy anything online, use a portal!"

*If you decide to sign up for an Ebates.com or Booking.com account, please use my link located to the right on my website almostfreefamilytravel.com. You will get a bonus and I will too. Thank you!

Priceline for last minute flights

Sometimes sad circumstances can lead us to great deals. A friend of mine needed to fly to the East Coast last minute due to the passing of her grandmother. She searched airline and travel sites and the best fare she could find from San Diego to Newark, NJ was about $1200. However, she remembered that Priceline.com offers last minute flight deals so she took a look.
You can only pick your day and daypart that you wish to fly then Priceline.com finds flights and deals. For my friend, it found a $400 round trip flight plus she went through her cash back portal for an additional 4% discount. Ebates.com offered 10% cash back. Wow!