Travel for Free: The VERY Basics

January 26, 2014 by

How to Travel for Free (or Cheap)

The #1 question that people who know about our travel habit ask is….how??? They know us, so they know that we are NOT rich, do not have a trust fund & have never inherited any money.  And yet we have been able to take month-long vacations to Hawaii, go on cruises, and spend LOTS of nights in hotels each year (I haven’t tracked exactly how many, but I am starting…now!).  How do we travel for free?  Or, more accurately, for a fraction of the cost of actually paying for a vacation? The answer to the question is Miles & Points.  Of course, it is much more (and kind of less) complicated, depending on how much background knowledge you have about credit card bonuses, frequent flyer and hotel loyalty programs, and cheap travel tricks.  I am constantly learning new things, and using old tricks to travel for free that I have been using for many years.  My plan is to have all of the details on this blog so that you can follow them, try it yourselves, or just continue to think that we are nuts (I prefer passionate, but we are OK with being nuts too).

There are tons and tons and tons of great blogs out there that are very detailed and, some would say, like speaking another language.  As you read more and become more familiar with this whole free travel world, it starts to become easy to absorb.  My goal is to start from the beginning and write this for you, my friends who are total newbies (you know who you are) and are just branching into this world of free & cheap family travel.   I promise it is not as complicated as it may seem at first.  You only need a few things: time, an internet connection, and a good credit score.  Ready? Here we go!

Sign up for frequent traveler programs

1. You need to sign up for various frequent flyer programs (ie American Airlines, USAirways, United, Southwest, Frontier, British Airways, etc). There are a ton of them out there, so start with the ones that you actually use, keep it simple until you get more hardcore about your travel obsession.  You can sign up, for free, on each of the websites.  Each of the airlines has a cute name for their frequent flyer programs (for example, Southwest’s program is called Rapid Rewards), so just look for it on the webpage and sign up. If you need help with this part, you may actually need to stop here and rethink why you are reading this blog (except for you Mom, I will help you with this part later).

Use AwardWallet to keep track of all of those pesky numbers

2.  But how will I keep track of all of these numbers and passwords? I use AwardWallet to track everything.  It is free and really easy to use.  You can even put your Sephora Beauty Insider frequent shopper number in there to track your points!  Oh, and any other things that may be important to you, like groceries and gas.

Use them….

3.  Please, please, please, I beg of you to USE your frequent flyer numbers when you are booking your flights.  We have some family members who will remain unnamed (you know who you are & will probably never actually read this anyway) who take multiple flights per year to visit other family members on the other side of the country & they never even get miles for doing it! I cringe!

Rinse and Repeat…

4. Repeat the same process for the hotel programs that you use (Hyatt, Hilton, Marriott, Club Carlson, IHG, etc).

Ok, I’m proud of you guys!  That was a good place to start.

See here to learn about the next step toward your new free travel hobby.