Friends, we have things to talk about! Buckle in and let me tell you about my latest trip. It started with a single day event in Chicago, and from there it morphed into a 10 day trip that included a train and Texas. As if that wasn't enough, I scored big time on the travel hacking front.
Last year I wrote about my baby steps into the world of travel hacking and bank bonuses, and a few months later I reported on my first big travel hacking coup. Now that I've been at this game a little bit longer, let's see how the credit card/bank bonus world is going.
In January I wrote a post called My Weird Hobby: A Credit Card/Bank Bonus Earnings Report where I dished the dirt on my baby steps into the world of travel hacking.
The big question that I had before I started looking into travel hacking was: can I do better than a cash back credit card, and if so, HOW?????
I planned to write an update next year, but since I just scored a big coup, I thought I would drop the deets in real time. The biggest thing to know about me is that I am someone who is learning about travel hacking by doing travel hacking. I am learning as I go, so what I am doing may or may not be "the best way". The second biggest thing to know about me is that I am someone who is susceptible to decision fatigue. I don't mind taking a bit of time to look up flights and crunch numbers, but I do mind taking a lot of time to do it. I would rather make a "good enough" decision now than an optimal decision later. This is the story about how I achieved those goals for a pricey trip that I have coming up.
From what I understand, the credit card industry has a name for people like me: a deadbeat. I use credit cards for convenience and pay my bill in full each month. They don't make any money off me.
For most of my adult life, I had a very simple credit card setup of always more than one card and never more than three. Prior to the fall of 2022, my lineup was: Amazon, Target, and Costco. $0 fees, 5% back at Amazon and
Target, and lesser percentages for all other spending. The reason that the fall of 2022 is significant is because this is when I started traveling, and a lot of credit card rewards are specifically for travel.
I kept hearing about Credit Card Hacking, and claims like "I got a $40,000 trip for free" and "my family gets $15,000 in free credit card travel every year!" Was I missing out? How exactly would I go about getting my mitts on the goods?
This is the story of what happened when I decided to find out.
