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.

On my way to a Southwest Companion Pass!

I opened email the other day to see that I had been approved for the Chase Marriott Premier credit card. I jumped for joy! Not because I love Marriott or have some destination in mind, but because the 80,000 bonus points that come with this card will put me very close to earning a Southwest companion pass for next year and the year after.
Since my daughter will be going to college next year, this will help us afford the multiple trips we will need to make across the country.
You may be scratching your head asking how do Marriott points earn you a Southwest companion pass? 
And why did you doubt you would be approved?
First, Chase has recently changed their authorization policy so if you have opened 5 credit cards with any bank in the last 24 months, Chase is denying you for new cards. This changes the game for a lot of people who collect points and miles. Chase has a lot of cards so this puts a serious dent in the hobby.
But I was approved, hooray.
Now how does this help me get a companion pass. This is a bit tricky, but definitely worthwhile because the Southwest companion pass is one of the most valuable out there.
The pass allows you to take a companion along for FREE anywhere Southwest flies. Think of it as a buy 1, get 1 FREE pass.
Awesome!
So I have enjoyed having this pass for the past year and this current year. I was able to earn the pass by opening several Southwest credit cards each with a bonus of 50,000 points. This is by far the easiest way to earn the pass. However, you can only open these cards every 24 months so to earn the pass again, I needed to find a new way.

Here's what I found. I opened 2 Marriott Premier cards, one personal and one business card. My husband also opened a Marriott card. Each card comes with 80,000 points plus 7,500 for authorized users. The business card only came with 70,000 points and no authorized user unfortunately. Now here's the interesting part. Marriott offers flight/hotel packages in its reward program. One of the packages is for Southwest points plus a week at a Marriott hotel category 1-5. You need 270,000 Marriott points to buy that package.
With my points and my husband's points and a bit of spend on my Marriott card, we should have enough points to buy the package.
And when the Southwest points hit my account, I will earn the companion pass. BAM!
This takes some work and some planning so the points hit your account in January, but the reward is the companion pass for the next 2 years. And in my book, that is definitely worth a bit of work.

How To Get Started

  If you are new to the hobby of Almost FREE Family Travel, how do you get started? I recommend beginning with just 1 or 2 credit cards until you get the hang of it. You also want to figure out where you want to go in order to get the most bang for your buck. If you just collect miles and points with no destination in mind, you may find that you don't have enough points on a certain airline or with a certain hotel chain to take that dream trip.

My daughter and I volunteered near La Laguna Coicocha in Ecuador

If you are not sure where you want to go yet or how you want to use the miles, then the most flexible card is actually one of my favorites, Chase Sapphire Preferred. This card unlocks a world of value. The current sign up bonus is 50,000 Chase Ultimate Rewards points (valued at $625) and can be transferred to different hotels and a variety of airlines. The minimum spend is $4,000 in the first 3 months and the $95 annual fee is waived for the first year. Besides transferring the points to hotels and airlines, you can get cash back. Cash back is not the best value for the points, but you have that option.

Most of the time, Chase Ultimate Reward points transfer to partners at a 1:1 ratio so you can see how valuable these points can be. Imagine spending 2 nights at the Hyatt Aruba ($545 per night or 25,000 points) for FREE.

The bottom line is that you are spending money everyday, but if you spend it with a plan, you can earn Almost FREE Family Travel!

So dream big, where do you want to go?

Getting Started

I was going to write about some new credit card offers that are floating around. Then I thought I will write about my frustration with Starwood. I signed up for their business card two weeks ago for a 25K bonus and now they are offering 35k bonus. When I called to ask for an adjustment, they said no. I checked the boards and they are denying everyone. Bad customer service. Surprising from Starwood, but now they are merging with Marriott so I guess this is the first of many changes to come.

But I digress.
I actually want to write about how many people I meet who don't use their credit cards to earn miles, points or cash back. And how many people I meet who shop online and don't shop through a portal to get cash back or earn miles.
This is like parking your money under your mattress. You are saving your money, but you are not earning any interest on it. Make it work for you. You are spending it anyway so why not save money and earn miles so you can take trips for a discount or even free. It's so easy yet so many people leave these points, miles and cash back on the table.
So I am making it my goal this year to teach people how to take advantage of the portals, credit card offers etc. so everyone can travel for almost free!

                                     Family photo at the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa

Volunteering - Our last week

Our time at the San Roche preschool/daycare is quickly coming to an end. It has been such an amazing experience. The children can be so sweet and loving. Every day when I arrive, I am a greeted by a chorus of holas and ciaos and followed by hugs. 

They smile and are open to learning. We work on puzzles and building legos. I have been able to teach them how to put the puzzles together and find similar pieces of legos to fit together. 

Their puzzles are missing pieces and their legos are broken, but they don't care and enjoy the learning process. 

They enjoy dancing and singing songs. I have been able to teach them Simon Says, Freeze Dance and Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. 

We even got to celebrate the January birthdays with the children. 

And then you get so caught up in the moment and the children look up at you and smile, and only then do you notice that they have no teeth or rotting teeth. 

That their clothes do not fit or have holes or are just filthy. 

And then I remember that these children have little to nothing. 

And I give them an extra hug or rub on the back because they are children. 

I recently closed my indoor park for children who are nearly the same age. I brought some of the mini notebooks and bubbles with me and the kids love them. 

It means a lot to know that My Kids Clubhouse was able to share some love with these children. 

When I return to San Diego, I plan to prepare packages to send to the school. The teachers need pens and pencils and they love my Renew lotion. The kids need extra clothes, backpacks, art supplies, puzzles, dvds and those rope walkers. 

I am hoping to make an annual package to send to the school. If you would like to make a donation, please email me at mykidsclubhouse@gmail.com