Point Triumph: Turning Capital One Rewards into a Mind-Blowing Free Tour!

 

While you are shopping for those holiday gifts, make each one count towards FREE travel. In my previous post, I shared my strategy planning for our trip to Tahiti next year. 

So far, I have the flights, the overwater bungalow and garden room, plus 3.5 days in the Airbnb for FREE. 

Though I earmarked the Capital One bonus points for the car rental, I still have more than 6 months to earn more points to erase that purchase. 

So when I saw an additional 10% off on the Lava Tube Canyoneering day tour we want to do while there, I jumped on it and then decided to go ahead and use Capital One points to erase it. 

Let's walk through that process so I can show you how valuable these points are. Some will argue you can get more value out of the points by transferring them to airlines or hotels, but my theory is like beauty, value is in the eye of the beholder. For me, erasing a $500 day tour is a good value. 

So how do you do it? First, you need to use your Capital One Venture X card to buy the tour or travel. Wait until the purchase is no longer pending and then you can click on "view rewards" and "cover purchases". 

The nice thing about Capital One is that you do not have to pay for the purchase to be able to erase it. In fact, you can erase the purchase before you pay for it. AND you can use the welcome bonus BEFORE you even pay the credit card balance that helped you earn the bonus. Quite a hack. 

It means you can use travel to earn the bonus and then erase the travel purchases with the bonus before you ever pay the bill. Crazy! 

When you click cover purchases, all of your travel purchases will come up. You have 90 days to erase them with points. You can erase the whole purchase or part of it, but in this case, I'll erase the entire tour purchase. 

It will take a few days for the purchase to drop off. You can keep ticking away at your travel purchases to get that almost FREE travel. 

For me, I will be using my Capital One Venture X card for all everyday purchases because it earns 2x points to earn enough points to erase the car rental. 

If you think the Capital One Venture X credit card should be part of your travel FREE strategy, please use my referral link. You will get an extra 15,000 bonus points for a total of 90,000 bonus points or $900 in FREE travel plus $300 travel credit, $100 Global Entry credit and Priority Pass Lounge Access. 

Now if this is confusing or scary or you just want some help deciding if this card is right for you and your travel goals, join my travel coaching program! I am launching the second cohort now and offering a Black Friday special of just $99. This is an incredible deal because it includes the video modules, the custom points and miles tracker, a 1:1 meeting with me and our monthly group coaching sessions for life. There are limited spaces available so don't wait! 

Thinking About Booking Summer Travel, Read This First!

 

Thinking about crossing the pond this summer? What about heading to Hawaii? Just getting around to making your summer plans? In the past 24 hours, I have received multiple emails from friends wanting to find out how they can travel FREE this summer. 

Usually, I recommend planning at least one year ahead to travel FREE, and if you are interested, click here to find out about the club at Families Fly FREE. But I do have one secret way to score some FREE travel this summer. In fact, I just recommended this secret to a friend wanting to travel end of May.

And I'm going to share this trick with you right now. 

 It has to do with the Capital One Venture X and Venture Rewards cards. These cards have a unique travel eraser tool. So here's the secret, if you charge your travel to these cards to reach the minimum spend, you can actually erase the travel purchase when you get the bonus and BEFORE you ever have to pay the balance due. 

Capital One will actually give you the bonus immediately when you spend the minimum and BEFORE you pay the bill. They do not make you wait until after you pay the balance like most Chase credit cards. 

That means you can actually buy the flights, hotels, rental cars, cruises, and tours as part of your minimum spend and then just erase those purchases. 

Following me here?

Thinking About Booking Summer Travel, Read This First! 

I just did that exact thing for my trip to Ireland. 

Plus the Venture X card comes with a $300 travel credit when you purchase your travel through the Capital One Travel Portal AND 5x points on flights AND 10x points on hotels and car rentals. 

So let's look at my friend's situation. She has already secured her flights to Maui for end of May using her Southwest companion pass, a buy one, get one pass for two years and one of the best travel benefits out there. Awesome! 

Now she would like to splurge for her birthday and stay at the Four Seasons or similar type hotel. But those hotels are running $1,600 per room per night. Ouch. 

If we had more time, we may use another strategy, but since this travel is happening in just a few weeks, I believe this is the best and probably the only option unless of course you have a stash of 500,000 points. 

Here's the strategy:

1. My friend and her partner EACH open a Capital One Venture X card. My friend should open hers and then immediately send her partner a referral link so he can open his card. The referral is worth 25,000 points. 

2. The card bonus offer right now is 75,000 bonus points for a $4,000 minimum spend

3. Purchase 3 hotel nights through the Capital One Travel Portal on my friend's card and 2 hotel nights through the portal on her partner's card. 

4. Quickly, charge another $640 on the partner's Capital One credit card to reach the minimum spend. Maybe a few snorkeling trips in Maui! 

5. The bonus should post pretty quickly, plus the 10x points on the hotel purchase so the purchase will yield 75,000 + 50,400 or 125,400 on my friend's account. 

5. Use the travel eraser to erase nearly one night at the hotel about a $1,300 value. 

6. The $300 statement credit will post immediately as well bringing the annual fee down to just $95. 

7. The referral will net another 25,000 points and you have 90 days to erase travel purchases so once that posts, erase another $250. Since you can erase partial payments, you can continue to chip away. 

Now do the same thing on the partner's Capital One card and bam, at least 2 nights are FREE. If you decide to try this trick, please use my referral link to support this blog. 

Thinking About Booking Summer Travel, Read This First! 

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. :) I'll be sharing testimonials from some happy members and I'll let you know when I'll be offering webinars. 

How You Can Get Your Next Tour or Airbnb For FREE

 

Some places that you travel to like Diamond Beach in Iceland do not have chain hotels that you can book on points like Marriott, Hyatt or Hilton. Or maybe like our family of five, hotels are not a good choice because you need two rooms or you will be forced to eat out for every meal. 

How You Can Get Your Tour or Airbnb For FREE

So how can you get your Airbnb, Bed and Breakfasts and tours for FREE if you can't use points?

The secret is in the Capital One Venture credit card.  Current bonus offer ends Sept. 9th so read carefully. 

The Capital One Venture and Venture X credit cards include a travel eraser and travel credit through the Capital One Travel Portal. 

 

Let's explain: 

1. Travel Eraser - When you log into your Capital One account and click view rewards, cover travel purchases, you will see a list of qualified purchases. Any purchase that codes as travel will qualify to be erased like Airbnb, tours, rental cars etc. You can erase the whole purchase or just part of it. You can even erase some of the purchase and then when you have more points, erase the rest. You have three months to erase the purchase so start with the oldest ones first. The value is 1:1 so some would argue you can get more value out of your points by transferring them to an airline, but I believe this is personal to your strategy and goals. For example, I erased the hotel charge for our 5th person in Tahiti. We already had our flights and over water bungalow covered so this was a random travel purchase we could get for FREE. Worth it! 

2. Travel Credit in the Portal - The Venture credit card comes with a $250 travel credit with the current bonus offer which ends Sept. 9th and the Venture X always comes with a $300 travel credit when you purchase hotels or flights through the Capital One Travel Portal. In order to use this credit, you must book your hotel or flight through the Capital One Travel Portal which works great for independent hotels and bed and breakfasts. In the booking process, the portal will ask if you want to use your travel credit to cover the purchase. You do not have to use the entire credit on a single purchase.  

 

Some people are hesitant to book travel through third parties like the Capital One Travel Portal, but I have found it to work quite well. Even when my flight was cancelled due to weather last summer, I was notified by both the airline and Capital One of the cancellation and how to reschedule. 

Ending Sept. 9th, Capital One Venture credit card is offering a $250 travel credit, $100 Global Entry credit and 75,000 bonus points when you sign up. There is a $4,000 minimum spend and a $95 annual fee. So with the travel credit, you are actually making money on this card approximately $1,000. You can only get this bonus once every 4 years. We do not know how long this offer is going to last so don't wait. 

The Capital One Venture X card is a good option if you want airport lounge access for you and your authorized users. The current offer is 75,000 bonus points for a $4,000 minimum spend and a $395 annual fee, but it includes a $300 travel credit. 

If you need some help figuring out if this card will help you reach your travel goals, join my Travel Coaching Program. The next cohort launches September 15th and it's my personal goal to help my clients collectively save more than $100,000 in 2025. 

How To Pay Yourself Back With Chase

An exciting new perk offered by Chase Sapphire Reserve and Preferred credit cards is the option to pay yourself back with your points. 

So what does this mean and why is it so exciting? Here is your step to step guide. The Chase Sapphire Reserve, Preferred, Freedom, Freedom Unlimited, and Ink credit cards all earn Chase Ultimate Reward Points. Personally, these are my favorite points right now just for their flexibility and for the travel portal. They are flexible because you can transfer the points to dozens of airlines, hotels and you can use them to book travel through the Chase travel portal. 

And if you are a Preferred or Reserve credit card holder, you get a bonus. Chase will actually offer you extra value on the points so instead of 1:1, you get 1:25:1 for Preferred credit card holders and 1:50:1 for Reserve credit cardholders. Check out my post about why I'm hanging onto the Reserve card. 

How To Pay Yourself Back With Chase

And now through September 30, 2020, you also get the extra value when you pay yourself back with points and essentially erase any grocery, home improvement, or dining purchase. 

The beauty here is that you still earn the Ultimate Reward points on your grocery, home improvement, or dining purchase and then you erase it with the extra value. When you book travel through the Chase portal, you also get the extra value, but you don't earn Chase points and you don't earn airline miles or hotel points. That's because Chase uses Expedia as its portal so you are making your reservation through a third party. 

You have 90 days after your purchase to essentially erase it with points and you can pick and choose from the list. 

1. Log in to your Chase account
2. Click on redeem points 
3. Click on earn/use points at the top left of the screen 
4. Click on pay yourself back 

You will see the list above of all your activity that you can erase, just check off whichever ones you want to erase and click on continue. Chase will ask you if you want to erase the entire purchase or just partial and tell you the bonus. Hit confirm and submit. Your statement credit will post within 3 business days. This is very similar to the process used by the Capital One credit card. 

As a comparison, you can see on this grocery purchase, I earned 6.68 points because at that point, you just earned 1x points. But when I redeemed points to erase it, it didn't cost me 668 points due to the bonus. 

At this point, since you might not be traveling, it might make more sense to erase grocery, home improvement, and dining purchases and then buy your travel. You get the bonus when you erase those purchases and then you double dip by getting points again when you pay for your travel. If you decide to apply for the Chase Preferred credit card, please consider using my referral link and supporting my blog. Right now, you can get 50,000 points when you spend $4,000 in the first 3 months. That's about $625 in travel, groceries, home improvement or dining. Awesome! 

How You Can Use Capital One Points To Erase Travel Purchases

 

Oh yes, the island of Moorea in French Polynesia is the picture of that perfect vacation. And what makes it even better is when you pay with points and it's almost FREE. 

If you would pay cash for this vacation, it would really put a dent in your wallet. 

Hopefully you have been following along as I walk through using points and miles for our family of 5 to spend a few weeks in French Polynesia. 

How You Can Use Capital One Points To Erase Travel Purchases 

First we secured flights for FREE for all five of us, then we secured the over the water bungalow and garden room. Next, we worked on the airbnb.com and tours. 

Now, we paid for the rental car using points. 

And this time, I used one of my favorite tricks. The travel eraser by Capital One. 

Some will say this is not the best use of your points since it really is a statement credit. But I believe that the value of points and miles is in the eye of the beholder and if I can get a $1,300 charge for the rental car down to $0, then it's worth it to me. 

How You Can Use Capital One Points To Erase Travel Purchases 

And the best part is that I never even paid for this purchase. Keep reading and I'll show you this trick. 

So we are assuming that you have already earned the bonus on the Capital One Venture or Venture X or Venture X Business cards and the points are in your account. You can access them by logging into your Capitalone.com online account and clicking on view rewards. 

If you scroll down, you will see "cover travel purchases." If you click there, you will see your travel purchases for the past 90 days that are eligible to be erased. It is a 1:1 value. 

You can choose to erase the entire purchase or just a portion. It can take a few days for the credit to post to your statement. If you can time the credit after the purchase and before the statement closes, you actually never pay for the purchase at all.

How You Can Use Capital One Points To Erase Travel Purchases 

If you look below, I made the purchase for the rental car on Feb. 2nd and then erased it on Feb. 4th and the credit posted on Feb. 6th. The statement closed on Feb. 8th with a balance minus the credit. 😊

Since I thought I would pay for the rental car closer to the actual trip, I had used some of my points to erase ferry tickets. But to get a $950 discount on the rental car, it's worth it. 

This is just one of the reasons why I love flex points like Capital One and Chase. 

If this interests you, but seems confusing, let me help you. Enroll in my travel coaching program. We will explore your travel goals, review your credit cards and make a plan. Then you can join our monthly live coaching sessions for more support. 

New $1,000 Bonus Travel Offer On Capital One Venture

 

Great new offer from Capital One! 

Apply for the Capital One Venture credit card and get $250 to use as a travel credit in the Capital One travel portal plus 75,000 points. That's $1,000 in free travel. Wow! The minimum spend is still $4,000 and the annual fee is just $95. 

This offer is equivalent to the Venture X offer, but the annual fee is $300 less. Amazing! 

Read here about my hack to use travel purchases to reach the minimum spend and erase them BEFORE you have to pay. It's crazy!

This is my go to credit card for any purchases that don't earn bonus points on the Chase FREEDOM or Sapphire Reserve credit cards. The Capital One Venture card earns 2x points on all purchases. The beauty of these flexible points is you can transfer points to a dozen different airlines including my new fave FlyingBlue.com, a few hotel chains and of course, you can erase travel purchases. 

The travel credit is only good for travel purchases made in the Capital One Travel portal, but I have found that the portal has improved and is actually quite reliable and easy to use. 

I actually got this card when we were going on a family trip to Costa Rica. By family, I mean extended family trip, you know, like a group of 20 people. The deal was everyone had to pay for their own airfare, but then once in Costa Rica, the trip would be a gift. Pretty sweet! The only other catch is we all had to fly on the same Delta flight. Since I didn't have enough Delta miles for 5 round trip airline tickets, my husband and I each applied for the Capital One Venture card. We charged the plane tickets and everything else to those cards to meet the minimum spend and we ended up getting three of the tickets FREE. 

Now I still like this card, however, I like the Chase Sapphire Preferred and Reserve cards better. Here's why:

• Capital One every purchase earns 2 points per dollar
• Chase Sapphire Preferred and Reserve - most purchases earn 1:1, but dining and travel earn 2:1 and there are categories where you can earn 5:1 if you have Chase FREEDOM, FLEX or INK cards. 
• Capital One points value are 1:1 when you use them to erase purchases
• Chase Sapphire Preferred values points at 1:1.25 if you use them in the travel portal or as a statement credit
• Chase Sapphire Reserve values points at 1:1.5 if you use them in the travel portal or as a statement credit 
• Capital One and Chase offer 1:1 transfer values to airline miles, but Chase offers way more partner airlines and hotels. 

I still think the Chase Sapphire Preferred and Reserve offer more flexibility than the Capital One.  But if you already have the Sapphire cards or the airline partners on the Capital One list work better for you, this is a great option. 

If you decide to give this one a go, consider using my referral link. You get the same great bonus offer and I get a little something for referring you and can use it to bring you more great ideas on how to travel for Almost FREE. 

If you would like to join my travel coaching program, you can use this link.   I would love to help you and your family travel for almost FREE. Use the promo code FREETRAVEL for $50 off. 

How You Can Stay At An Airbnb For FREE

 

After flights, accommodations are the biggest expense when you travel. 

But you have a few more days to cash in your Chase Ultimate Reward points to erase Airbnb purchases. 

It's part of the Pay Yourself Back program on the Chase Sapphire Preferred and Reserve credit cards. The program was launched during the pandemic so you could use your points even though you were not travelling and fortunately, it stuck. 

Back then, we could use the points to erase groceries and dining which was pretty awesome. 

Now you can use the points to erase the following:

• Airbnb 
• charitable contributions
• dining (with the Sapphire card only)
• membership fee (with the Sapphire card only)

And the best part is you get a bonus, the same bonus you get if you book travel through the Chase Travel Portal. On the Preferred card, you get a bonus 25% and with the Reserve you get a 50% bonus. 

But the offer ends June 30th, 2022. So don't wait. 

I erased several Airbnb purchases just today at a value of $700. 

I am going to walk you through exactly how to do this. The first thing you need to do before you erase anything, transfer any Chase Ultimate Reward points you have on a Chase FREEDOM or Ink card to your Preferred or Reserve. 

It's easy to "combine points":

• Log into your Chase.com account
• click on the card you want to transfer points FROM
• click redeem points
• then click on the three little lines at the top left
• scroll to the bottom
• click combine points. 

Once you have moved your points to your Chase Sapphire Preferred or Reserve, then you are ready to erase your purchases. From the Chase Ultimate Rewards home page, scroll down until you see the Pay Yourself Back promotion. 

Click on the promotion and you will see a list of your eligible purchases. Only purchases made in the past 90 days are eligible to be erased. There is even a handy countdown above each purchase. 

Since I have the Chase Sapphire Reserve, you can see my points are worth 50% more when I use them to erase Airbnb purchases. Just check the box for the ones that you want to erase. I usually start with the oldest ones, but since this promotion ends on June 30th 2022, it doesn't matter. 

You will be able to erase all of the purchase or just some of it so check as many boxes as you want. 

 

The purchases will be applied as a statement credit and it will take about 5-7 days to see that happen. 

Keep checking your Chase Sapphire Preferred and Reserve accounts too as the June 30th date gets closer or wait until the last day to cash in. After I cashed in 41,000 points, another 9,000 points showed up so I cashed those in too. 

And if you haven't booked your Airbnb yet for a trip coming up, book it and erase it before June 30th. 

This is just one of the reasons why the Chase Sapphire Preferred and Reserve are my favorite credit cards. You can read all about how these cards play an important part in my fly FREE strategy. 

If you do not have these cards yet, please consider using my referral link. It costs you nothing, but will award me for referring you so I can bring you more great information about how to FLY free. Right now, the Chase Sapphire Preferred is offering 60,000 points for a $4,000 minimum spend. Those points are worth $750 in the travel portal or if you erase an Airbnb purchase. But hurry, the Pay Yourself Back promotion ends June 30th. 

How You Can Vacation in South America For Pennies

 

My family and I just returned from two weeks in Chile and Argentina. This was a redo trip from a vacation that was supposed to happen in March 2020. That trip was going to be almost FREE so the question was could we repeat it almost three years later and still do the trip for almost FREE. The answer is yes. 

I'm going to break it down for you so you can see how I do it and hopefully see how you could do it for your family. 

I believe everyone can play this game and travel for almost FREE. 

I start planning big trips like this one almost two years in advance. Why so early? You need time to earn the points and miles and then the airlines open flight reservations approximately 330 days in advance. Depending on when you want to travel especially if you are looking at summer or the holidays, you need to be ready with your points/miles when those reservations open. 

How You Can Vacation in South America For Pennies 

For this trip, we were planning to travel over winter break. It's high season so I needed to be ready. 

The first thing I do is figure out what airlines fly to the destination. In this case, I targeted American Airlines. Between American miles and Marriott points, I had collected enough miles to fly our family of five one way to Santiago, Chile. I looked at several dates and it looked like I could find flights for 30,000 miles one way from San Diego to Santiago, Chile. 

You can see below if you click on the calendar, you can look at the entire month and pinpoint which days offer the best value. Right now, you could fly to Santiago for just 22,000 American miles one way. 

But the return from Buenos Aires was showing 50,000 to 100,000 miles on American. The key is to be flexible with dates and cities. So I tried multiple cities and dates and nothing. 

So I started looking at other airlines. I checked Avianca, United and Delta. Delta Airlines was showing returns for 25,000 miles pretty consistently. 

I decided to target Delta Airlines and start figuring out how to collect those miles. All of us had various amounts of Delta miles already due to flights over the years, earning miles with Airbnb and other random promotions. But only a few of us had the full 25,000 miles needed. Marriott points transfer to Delta Airlines at 3:1 with a 5,000 point bonus for every 60,000 points. So I could top off with Marriott points and bam, 125,000 Delta miles gets all five of us home for FREE. 

As soon as the flights open up, I book them. Now I will book one way flights when they open and then book the return when that opens. So for two weeks, I will sit with flights to the destination and no flights home. It's a bit nerve racking, but has worked for me every time. 

Once I secure the flights, I move onto accommodations. For our family of five with teens and young adults, Airbnb seemed like the way to go. In South America, Airbnb are very affordable and with the Chase Pay Yourself Back program allowing you to erase Airbnb purchases with points, it was a no brainer. Unfortunately, you can no longer erase Airbnb purchases with Chase points. BUT you can still erase Airbnb purchases with Capital One points. 

I booked Airbnb in Santiago, Mendoza and Buenos Aires and erased all of them with Chase points. Check out how to combine your points onto your Sapphire Reserve credit card to max out the value. 

For tours like this Tango lesson in Buenos Aires, I booked through Viator, Trip Advisor and Airbnb experiences. The ones I booked through Airbnb, I went ahead and erased with Chase points. I paid for the Glacier trek with my new Southwest credit card which will help me reach the minimum spend and earn the Southwest companion pass. 

I also leveraged some points on the Capital One Venture X credit card to erase a few travel purchases. 

There were a few flights we took during the trip. I booked those through the Capital One travel portal and the Chase travel portal so I could either use points or erase them with points. 

I will continue to erase dining purchases through the Chase Pay Yourself Back program for the next 90 days. 

All in all, flights and accommodations were FREE. Some tours were FREE. Some meals and taxis will also be FREE. 

Grand total for five people for two weeks in South America comes to approximately $3,000 out of pocket and that included the expensive mini trek on the glacier. If we had paid instead of using points, this trip would easily have cost $15,000. Does it take some planning? Yes. Does it take some time? Yes. But it is worth it, I think so. 

That's how we do it at almost FREE family travel.