A warm welcome to Millionaire Mob - my first guest post on the blog! I am thrilled to share these clutch travel hacks for any and all wanderlust adventurers like me. These photos are from their most recent trip to Paris where they vacationed on a budget of $40. Talk about travel envy! Read on to learn more and check out their website at millionairemob.com.
3 Ways to Start Travel Hacking Your Next Vacation
This is a guest post by Millionaire Mob, a
blog focused on investing in dividend growth stocks, passive income ideas and
travel hacking. We have helped thousands of people with bettering their
financial future through our personal finance tips. Millionaire Mob quit
investment banking to help people understand how to get Wall Street advice
without the price tag. I look forward to learning and growing with you.
Travel hacking is
a very lucrative proposition for traveling the world for little to no cost to
you. I’ve been able to travel to France and book my flights to Japan for a mere
$40 total! If you are like me, saving every extra dollar is important.
For every cost
that I can obtain for free is another opportunity to invest and increase my
income / net worth. That is why travel hacking was so appealing to me. I love
to travel and explore the world, but I think it makes no sense to spend
thousands of dollars to do so.
Let me highlight
how you can use these 3 ways to travel hack your next vacation.
3 Steps to Travel Hack Your Next Vacation
1. Credit card churning
- Credit card churning is the act of repeatedly opening and closing credit cards so that you can earn the sign-up bonuses over and over. If you’re able to do this with several cards it will allow you to build up many more rewards than using just one card. We’ve built a guide to help you understand the basics of credit card churning.
- There are several credit cards out there that offer the best value proposition for signing up such as the Chase Sapphire Preferred. I am fortunate to have a high credit score and high income. This allows for me to get instantly approved for some of the most lucrative credit cards out there.
- Try to apply for credit cards with the best upfront bonuses first.
2. Pair churning with credit card manufactured spending
- Credit card manufactured spending can be summarized as a credit card technique where you spend money in ways that allow you to get the money back as cash. I like to minimize my amount of cost to obtain the rewards as much as possible. For example, for a data point, I just liquidated a Vanilla One gift card purchased at Walgreen’s for the Chase Freedom 5% cash back category.
- I went to my local grocery store and liquidated the gift card by purchasing a money order with the gift card. The local grocery store uses MoneyGram services for money orders. The cost was $0.79 to purchase the money order and the fee for purchasing the gift card was $5.95. For $500 of manufactured spending, I was able to generate $25 in cash back rewards for a fee of $6.74 in total. I am fine with that. Time to go do it again!
- We consider manufactured spending an opportunity to build significant rewards points and hit our minimum spending requirement to achieve the bonus category quicker.
3. Use online
resources
- Surprise, it’s 2018! There is so much data available and online tools that are completely free that can help you start travel hacking. I use a number of different online resources to find the best rewards points. In order to achieve points #1 and #2 above, you must elect in every rewards program possible to ensure you are maximizing travel benefits from there I have my most important flight screeners set up on:
- Google Flights
- Scotts’ Cheap Flights (they alert you for outstanding travel deals)
- SkyScanner
- After that I ensure that I can book my award travel with the most optimal amount of points on a per dollar basis. This is a calculation called cents per point. You take the cost divided by the points. For example, if my flight would cost $2,000 if I wanted to purchase it for cash or I could redeem it for 100,000 points. Then the calculation for cents per point would be 2.0x. Anything above a 1.5x redemption is a great deal.
- Here are some outstanding ways to find the best award travel:
- AwardMapper
- AwardWallet
- Reddit for AwardTravel
By using these
three steps above I was able to book a trip to France and Japan for little to
no cost to me. In addition, I stayed at the Ritz-Carlton
Laguna Niguel. This was a fantastic way to unwind for a week and enjoy the sandy
beaches of Southern California.
What are some of
your favorite ways to find amazing travel opportunities? Do you travel hack?
Let us know in the comments below. I’d love to hear from you.
Author Bio: Millionaire Mob is where people come together to find the best travel deals and financial advice. We specialize in dividend growth investing, passive income and travel hacking. Our advice has helped thousands of people travel the world and achieve financial freedom. Millionaire Mob hopes to provide the best advice to help you learn and grow along the way. Let’s achieve financial freedom together. Follow us on Instagram, Twitter and/or Facebook for all the latest updates.
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