Home
Jump to:
Strategies
The most comprehensive guide to saving money on all your trips, receiving valuable extra travel perks (usually reserved for frequent travelers), and easily earning free airline tickets and hotel nights.
There is no need to browse through hundreds of (frequently outdated) blog entries to become an expert on how to earn free travel and get the cheapest possible travel reservations. Everything you need to know as a beginner or more experienced travel "hacker" is explained, organized, and cross referenced.
Save money on all your reservations
If you simply go to a popular travel booking site, like Expedia, to book your travel reservations, you'll wind up paying more for your reservations, while missing out on extra benefits and reward points. To pay less and get more, check out our comprehensive guides to booking airfare, hotels, and rental cars.
Learn to take advantage of travel reward programs
Frequent flyer and hotel programs let you travel more often or more luxuriously. But, frequent flyer programs, in particular, can be difficult to take advantage of. Our Step-by-Step Guide to Booking Award Tickets provides the advice you need to actually find available award space and get the most out of your frequent flyer miles. If you don't already understand the basics of frequent flyer miles and airline alliances, read the background information in our Award Tickets 101: The Basics guide first. And Make Sure to Earn Miles for Your Flight.
Fortunately, taking advantage of hotel reward programs is a lot easier. Award Nights 101: Using Your Hotel Points provides all the details you need to use hotel loyalty programs to book free nights.
Unlock free travel and valuable benefits with travel and reward credit cards
The easiest way to get access to travel benefits that are usually reserved for "true frequent travelers", and to earn huge amounts of reward points that you can use for free airline tickets and hotel rooms, is to take advantage of travel and reward credit cards.
Credit card benefits and reward are the core of many of our travel strategies. As long as you can handle credit, signing up for a bunch of new credit cards won't destroy your credit rating—it just may improve it. Credit Cards 101 provides the basic details for taking advantage of travel and reward credit cards.
While many of our travel strategies revolve around credit cards, the ones you should use, depend on how comfortable you are at singing up for new cards, and how much effort you want to make.
- Level 1: Get a good rewards card and use it whenever you can. The simplet place to start is to make sure you get a credit card that offers a good reward rate, and start using it, instead of cash or checks, whenever you can. By simply using a good general-purpose reward card, you'll slowly and surely earn enough points for free airplane tickets and hotel rooms. If you make an effort to use your card to pay for as many expenses as you can, you'll increase the amount of free travel you can earn each year. Get a Great General Purpose Reward Card and Use It for All of Your Spending.
- Level 2: Put together a credit card collection that works for you. Many credit cards provide valuable travel benefits. Most people should gradually build up a core collection of credit cards that provide worthwhile benefits, based on the ways they travel and spend their money. For example, based on your travel patterns, you might want to get a premium card that offers airport lounge access, the credit card for your favorite airline (in order to get free checked bags), and a card that provides free breakfast at Hilton hotels. Along with the ongoing benefits, you'll also earn bonus points for signing up for each of these cards. Build Up a Core Credit Card Collection for Travel Benefits and Rewards.
- Level 3: Sign up for credit cards just to earn their signup bonuses. Rather than only signing up for the cards that have valuable ongoing benefits, you can continue to sign up for new cards, just to earn their lucrative signup bonuses. It is surprising how many cards you can get before banks start staying no, or your credit rating starts going down. With very little effort you can earn enough points for dozens of free hotel rooms and frequent flyer tickets. Credit Card Signup Bonuses: The Easiest Path to Free Airplane Tickets and Hotel Nights.
- Level 4: Use multiple cards to optimize the points you earn from your spending. Many credit cards provide bonus rewards for purchases in certain categories. For example, a card may earn 3x rewards on travel and restaurants, or 2x rewards on gas and groceries. To fully optimize the number of points you earn, you would get and use the cards that earn the highest possible rewards, in each different category. Because signup bonuses are a much faster way to acquire points, not everyone wants to make the extra effort to move on to this level. Some people don’t want to worry about remembering to use the right card for each type of purchase. But, other people wouldn’t dream of missing out on the extra points. Optimize Rewards by Using Different Cards for Different Purchases.
- Level 5: Increase your credit card charges, without spending any more of your money ("Manufactured Spending"). Advanced reward point enthusiasts generate large amounts of extra points by taking advantage of opportunities to generate additional credit card spending, without really spending any of their money. For example, they may buy Visa gift cards, use those gift cards to purchase money orders, deposit their money orders in their bank account, and then use the funds to pay off the gift card purchases. In the end, they are really only spending a small amount of fees, but they are generating points on large amounts of purchases. Most of these approaches require lots of research and effort and aren't recommended for most travelers. Earn More Credit Card Points with Manufactured Spending.