Well…almost free anyway. But more on that in a moment.
Hot off the heels of our trip to Germany in June, I had no plans for any big international trips in 2019, in line with our general “Big Trip Every Other Year” family policy.
All that changed over the course of the last few days, when Mrs. CC caught wind of an incredible deal from Delta offering low-point fare to select European and UK cities, including Zurich, Frankfurt, and London.
“Uh, do what!? Points? Where I come from we pay in dollars, son.”
Well, kind sir, we did too for many years. Just like everyone else, I’d sit on a break at lunch, reading articles or enjoying photos of far-away places, dreaming at the chance of a visit. “If only I had more vacation time! If only travel wasn’t so expensive! I want to go to SPAIN and crush buttery limestone and eat small fish. Ughhh.”
Travel Rewards Credit Cards
Then we discovered the world of what has unfortunately been termed “travel hacking”. Despite the truly horrific-sounding name, these “hacks” are not nearly as disturbing as they sound. The premise is this: if you’ve been a good boy or girl and kept your credit in excellent shape, you are entitled to amazing travel rewards credit cards. Should you apply for and be granted one of these divine cards, exceed a minimum spend (generally $2,000-$4,000) over a two- or three-month period, you will then be bestowed a hefty dump of sign-on bonus points to your account. And your only effort was spending five minutes filling out an online form and spending the money you would have spent anyway. Damnit this is exciting! Let’s continue…
Sign-On Bonuses and Awards Booking
Many of the best cards offer a sign-on bonus in the range of 50,000-60,000 points, and some business cards offer bonuses up to 100,000 points. And again, to be perfectly clear, we simply apply, get the card, and then divert all our normal spending to that single card until we meet the minimum spend requirement and secure the bonus points. We pay off all credit card balances each month. Every. Single. Cent. DO NOT CARRY CREDIT CARD DEBT AHHHGHGHGHG!! DIRTY, DIRTY CREDIT CARD DEBT! Anyway, we then apply for another card, rinse and repeat. We may or may not keep all these cards for the long haul, dependent on how easy it is (or isn’t) to re-open them on down the road and get the bonus all over again, and/or the expense of the yearly fee.
When it comes to travel, using United Airlines as an example, a good rule of thumb is that you can expect to get to Europe for 60,000 points round-trip for one person. So, by opening one or two cards, you could be stamping your ticket to locations across the globe. FOR FREE. Or open one card and take a few free domestic flights. I would be remiss if I didn’t admit that some airlines carry a fee for the points booking, but even if you have to pay $100 for your ticket in fees, you’re going to a new far-away land ripe with adventure for $100. Try beating that deal on your now soon-to-be-defunct shortcut of that old favorite travel search engine.
Mallorca
So back to our current situation. We’ve opened a variety of cards in the last year or two. And let me quickly interject: We were very late to this game, and I kick myself daily for not starting this cycle years sooner, as some card companies have caught wind to our little game and have begun tightening down.
One card Mrs. CC opened in the past year was the Gold Delta SkyMiles card through American Express, which at the time was offering a bonus of 60,000 points for spending $1,000 in the first three months. Easy money, why not? Honestly though, this card was a bit of a red-headed stepchild in our game of running through the Chase Ultimate Rewards program, and we carried a touch of regret for getting this card…until now.
Out of nowhere Delta announced flights to select cities for the winter months for 32,000 points (64K for two of us). We could travel round-trip to Europe essentially for the bonus we had received on this single card! Done, booked to Frankfurt, Germany.
Needless to say, we didn’t want to be in northern Europe in winter (we’re not skiers), so we took the next step to find a cheap transfer flight to some Mediterranean sun. To make a long story short (we’re going to Sicily! No, we’re going back to France! No, we’re going to northern Italy! No, we’re going to southern Spain! No…), we ended up booking a transfer flight from Frankfurt to the stunning Spanish island of Mallorca, which as my climbing audience will recall is home to the deep-water soloing made famous by Father Sharma (which I won’t be doing, because it’s winter, but yeah).
We went ahead and booked a couple of hotel nights in Frankfurt on the beginning and end of our Spanish journey, and booked the transfer flight using the purchase-erasing power of our trusty Capital One Venture card, which we’ve both carried since 2011. The premise of these handy cards is that any travel-related purchase can be “erased” from your balance within 90 days of expenditure, so long as the purchase was made on that card and so long as you have the travel points to cover some or all of the expense. And of course, they too offer a sign-on bonus.
So far, two days in, we’re booked up on flights and Frankfurt hotels.
Grand total thus far = about $200/person.
Naturally, we’ll be securing lodging in Mallorca (we prefer Airbnb for these adventures), as well as a rental car, plus food and all that good stuff.
Honestly, this is not even close to a textbook case study on how to maximize the benefits of rewards travel. Had we not been caught off guard by this deal, we would have stacked a variety of cards in place to fully fund (minus fees) all airfare and lodging, perhaps even our rental car as well. But hey, expensive airfare has historically always been by far our largest expense on international travel. Wouldn’t you travel more if airline costs were in the range of say, $0-$300?
We’ll of course keep you abreast to the details of this trip as the pieces are put into their proper place. The bottom line is that we’re just trying to look outside the box and live our life a bit different.
Here’s how it went: Mallorca: January Adventures and the Cost to Do It
If you are interested in learning far more about travel rewards than I could provide in this already-too-long post, we ask that you take the following two steps:
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- Use the Contact Form to request a free third-party travel rewards program to maximize your benefits. This program is run by folks in the FIRE community, and we’ve both benefited greatly from this information. Again, 100% free, no BS, no spam, no catch, pure altruism for those that want to do better in this life. We don’t roll any other way. Simply write, “I’d like to know more about travel rewards”.
Happy Travels!
Collage photo credit: climber: https://www.ukclimbing.com/articles/destinations/mallorca_-_jewel_of_the_med-2519; Food: http://www.thecutlerychronicles.com/2018/03/11-local-dishes-mallorca-spain/; Boat: https://www.lonelyplanet.com/spain/mallorca; Awning: http://www.creativindie.com/join-me-on-spanish-island-writing-retreat-in-mallorca/
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