Travel Free Using Credit Cards: How We’ve Done it for 5 Years

Do you think that being able to travel free using credit cards is a pipe dream? I’m living proof that it’s not.

Five years ago, my wife and I took an honest look at our annual income and came to a disappointing realization. In our current situation, saving enough for travel each year simply wasn’t going to happen.

That’s when we discovered credit card rewards. We soon became credit card reward ninjas (while making sure to avoid the pitfalls of credit card ownership). And for the past 5 years, we’ve been able to travel free using credit cards.

• When I say that we’ve had 5 years of “free travel,” I should clarify by explaining that I mostly mean free hotels, airfare, and car rentals.
• On most trips, restaurants and attractions still cost us money (although cash back credit cards have helped us cover many of these costs as well).

But transportation and lodging are a huge chunk of travel expenses. And we’ve been able to cut them out completely for 5 years and counting. These are the credit cards that we’ve used to make that possible.

The Travel Credit Cards That We Used

Let’s begin with the travel credit cards that we used. When I say “travel” cards, I’m referring to credit cards that offer the best bang for your buck when you redeem your points for hotel stays or airfare.

Travel cards typically include additional travel perks as well, like free checked bags, priority seating, hotel room upgrades, travel insurance, car rental insurance, etc.

1. Chase Sapphire Credit Card

If you’re looking to travel free using credit cards, the Chase Sapphire card is a great one to start with. It was the very first travel card that we went after. At the time, there was only one Chase Sapphire card. Now, there are two options: the Chase Sapphire Preferred® and the Chase Sapphire Reserve®.

Marriage Has its Perks

At the time, the Chase Sapphire card was offering a 50,000 point sign-up bonus if you spent at least $3,000 within the first three months of owning the card. The annual fee was waived for the first year.

• I got this card in 2014, kept it for a year, and then canceled it right before the annual fee hit.
• We promptly opened a Chase Sapphire card in Kendall’s name in 2015.
• We got the 50,000 bonus points both times.

So by getting this card twice, we earned a total of 100,000 in bonus points alone from this card. Yeah, it was awesome.

The Ultimate Travel Hack: Transferring Chase Sapphire Points to Hyatt

When you have the Chase Sapphire card, you can transfer your Chase Ultimate Rewards points to any of Chase’s travel partners. And we took advantage of this perk in a major way by transferring nearly all of our Chase Ultimate Rewards points over to our Hyatt account.

Why did we do this? Because Hyatt offers Category 1 hotel free nights for only 5,000 points and Category 2 hotel free nights for only 8,000 points.  In my opinion, this is the craziest deal in the hotel award space. Here’s why.

• Most Hyatt Category 1 hotels cost $100-$200 a night
• Most Hyatt Category 2 hotels cost $150-$300 a night.

Yet award nights only cost 5,000 and 8,000 points respectively. Using a cash back card, those points would only be worth $50 and $80. That’s what I call valuable points!

Transferring the 100,000 Ultimate Rewards points that we earned from the Chase Sapphire card over to Hyatt netted us 17 FREE hotel nights!

Check out a few of the many hotels that we’ve been able to stay at for FREE using Hyatt points.

North Charleston Hyatt Place, (Category 1 = 5,000 points/night)

Savannah Georgia Hyatt Place (Category 2 = 8,000 points/night)

Hyatt Place, San Antonio/Quarry Market (Category 1 = 5,000 points/night)

2. Hyatt Credit Card

You thought I was done talking about the benefits of the Hyatt credit card? Oh, I haven’t even gotten to what might be the best part.

At the time that we signed up for the Hyatt credit card, they were offering a sign-up bonus of two free nights at ANY category level after spending $2,000 within the first three months. This is a HUGE deal. Just consider a few of the spots that you could go to for FREE with this sign-up bonus.

Unfortunately, the “2 free nights at any category deal” is no longer a thing. With the new World of Hyatt credit card, they now give 50,000 point sign-up bonuses (referral link) instead.

• As a result, you could get several more free nights out of your sign-up bonus (up to 10 nights if you used all your points on Category 1 hotels).
• But it also means you could only afford 1 free night at the highest category hotels.

And one more cool thing about the Hyatt credit cards — they give you 1 free night at any Category 1-4 hotel with each cardmember anniversary. If you want to travel free using credit cards, it’s always great to have cards in your arsenal that give you free nights on an annual basis.

Here are a few of the places that we’ve been able to stay at for FREE using our sign-up bonus/anniversary free nights.

Grand Hyatt, Washington DC (Standard Rate: $469/Night)

Andaz, Savannah (Standard Rate: $239/night)

Hyatt Regency Orlando (Standard Rate: $199/Night)

3. Southwest Airlines Rapid Rewards Credit Cards

The Southwest Rapid Rewards credit cards (referral link) are fantastic deals. As of the publishing of this article, there are 3 Rapids Rewards cards, and each comes with a different set of perks and annual fees.

There are plenty of articles that compare and contrast each card’s features, but that isn’t the purpose of this article. Instead, I want to talk about sign-up bonuses that each card offers.

When we got our Southwest cards, we actually received 50,000 point sign-up bonuses, but our minimum spending requirement was also higher at $3,000.  Now you can get 40,000 bonus points (referral link) after spending $1,000 within the first 3 months.

High-Value Points

Regardless of how big of a sign-up bonus you receive, Southwest Rapid Rewards points are uber valuable! For instance, I just ran a few itineraries on Southwest.com. Here were the cheapest one-way flights I could find for each trip:

• New York to Atlanta: 4,621 points
• Chicago to Seattle: 7,982 points
• Atlanta to Los Angeles: 8,345 points
• Orlando to Dallas: 9,917 points

That’s crazy cheap! As a result, we’ve been able to book several cross-country roundtrip flights for free using Southwest points:

Going Back to the Well

We actually canceled both of our Southwest cards right before their annual fees hit in 2015 and 2016 respectively. But just this year I decided to see if enough time had gone by for me to get approved for a card again. Sure enough, I was approved!

• So, in September, I’ll be using Southwest points to fly free to Washington, DC and back for a work trip.
• And, in October, we’ll be flying to Pennsylvania and back for a wedding using Southwest points.

Southwest also allows Rapid Rewards points to be used on hotels, car rentals, and gift cards. When we took our 2nd Texas trip, for instance, we only needed about 25,000 points for the flights. We used the rest of the points to pay for our car rental and nab a bunch of free restaurant gift cards that we used during our trip.

Oh and did I mention that Southwest gives every passenger 2 free checked bags? And free flight cancellations? That’s what I call frugal travel at its best, baby!

4. Mariott Bonvoy Credit Card

Believe it or not, my wife and I have never actually had the Mariott Bonvoy card. So why is it on this list?

I included the Mariott Bonvoy credit card on this list because it has recently replaced the Starwood Preferred Guest credit card, which we did own. The changes took place at the end of 2018 after Mariott completed their purchase of the Starwood Hotels brand (making Mariott the largest hotel chain in the world).

Before merging with Mariott, Starwood owned several well-known hotel brands, including:

• Sheraton
• Four Points by Sheraton
• Westin
• W Hotels
• Aloft

Using our Starwood points, we were able to land free nights at a Four Points by Sheraton hotel in both Cocoa Beach and Philadelphia.

But our favorite little secret about Starwood was that they also owned the Swan & Dolphin hotels at Walt Disney World’s Boardwalk. We were able to land a free night at the Dolphin resort for an anniversary getaway to Epcot. The back entrance of Epcot is literally a 5-minute walk from the hotel. It’s awesome!

Walt Disney World Dolphin Resort (Standard Rate: $309/Night)

The good news is that you can still book both of these Disney boardwalk hotels with points from the new Mariott Bonvoy card. Also, since its still a fairly new card, Mariott is currently offering a 100,000 point sign-up bonus. That’s a fantastic deal!

5. Barclay Card Arrival® Plus World Elite MasterCard®

Ok, so the Arrival Plus is a bit different than the other cards that we’ve covered so far. Typically, when you’re trying to travel free using credit cards, you have to commit to a particular hotel brand or airline.  But not so with the Arrival Plus.

Instead, the Arrival® Plus allows cardmembers to redeem any purchase that is coded as “travel” at 1 cent per point. Examples of qualified purchases include:

• Airlines
• Hotels,
• Timeshares
• Car rentals
• Cruises
• Discount travel sites (like Priceline, Hotwire, Kayak, Expedia, etc.)
• Trains, buses, and taxis

What makes Arrival® Plus so nice is the flexibility it offers.

• You get to choose whichever airline or hotel you want. This allows you to shop for the best deal.
• You can even use discount travel sites like Priceline.
• Once you’ve made the purchase, you just log on to your Arrival Plus online portal to redeem points for a statement credit.

We used our Arrival® Plus card to redeem a car rental booking that we made through Priceline. We also used points from this card to pay for the final 2 nights of a 5-night stay at a Hyatt in San Antonio.

• At the time, we didn’t have quite enough points to book the entire stay on points.
• So we booked the first 3 nights with points and then paid for rest with our Arrival Plus card.
• Then, we just redeemed enough Arrival Plus points to cover the charge.

Can you see why cards with flexible points like this are nice to have around?  The Capital One® Venture® Rewards card is Barclay’s primary competitor in this space and is definitely a card worth checking out as well.

6. Citi Premier^SM Credit Card

The final two travel cards are unlike the others because these are the cards that we plan to use this year. With the exception of a 1-night hotel stay that we used some IHG points for, we haven’t used any of the points from these last two cards yet.

• We signed up for the IHG card last summer when they were offering a 50,000 point sign-up bonus.
• We signed up for the Citi Premier^SM card right before the holidays last year when they were offering a 60,000 point sign-up bonus.

So both cards currently have over 50,000 points sitting in their rewards account waiting to be used. We plan to use most, if not all, of those points this year on our various travel plans.

Citi Premier^SM (referral link) is a direct competitor to the Chase Sapphire cards. Citi ThankYou® points can be transferred to any of Citi’s airline partners, including:

• Avianca
• Asia Miles (Cathay Pacific)
• EVA Air
• Etihad Guest
• Flying Blue (Air France / KLM)
• Garuda Indonesia
• Jet Airways
• JetBlue
• Malaysia Airlines
• Qantas
• Qatar Airways
• Singapore Airlines
• Thai Airways
• Turkish Airlines
• Virgin Atlantic

Transferring Citi points to their airline partners may be the way to get the most value out of them. But you can also get great value for your points on Citi’s travel portal — where you can redeem them for flights, hotels, rental cars, and cruises.

7. IHG® Rewards Club Credit Card

IHG is a conglomerate hotel company that owns many popular hotel brands, including:

• Candlewood Suites
• Crowne Plaza
• Holiday Inn
• Hotel Indigo
• Staybridge Suites

Hotel redemptions with IHG aren’t quite as customer-friendly as Hyatt’s. Hyatt award nights cost the same amount of points no matter the time of year. But IHG hotels require more points during busy seasons.

As an example, last summer we booked a 1-night stay at a Holiday Inn Express near Busch Gardens. Our stay was in July (obviously one of their busiest months) and it cost us 20,000 points for 1 night. However, I just checked their website and they are only asking 10,000 points for many spring dates.

Holiday Inn Express Busch Gardens (Standard Rate: $103/Night)

Depending on travel dates and locations, some will be able to get more mileage out of IHG points than others.

But with 120,000 bonus points available right now, everyone should be able to get at least several free nights out of this card.

The Cash Back Credit Cards That We Used

When most people ask “What are the best cashback credit cards?” what they usually mean is “Which card will earn me the most cash back on my daily purchases?”

That’s a valid question to ask. But, for Kendall and I, we don’t ever keep credit cards long enough to worry about that. We simply chase after the sign-up bonuses. Why?

It’s simple math, really.

Earning sign-up bonuses is the easiest way to travel free using credit cards. This strategy earns us anywhere from $250-500 in rewards every 3 months.

Unless you are using your credit card for business expenses, it would be nearly impossible to earn that much money in that short an amount of time with even the most generous of cashback cards.

So in addition to our travel cards, we always try to earn 1 or 2 cashback credit card sign-up bonuses throughout the year.

• Cashback card sign-up bonuses typically have a low minimum spending requirement (usually $500-$1,000).
• For this reason, there have been times that we’ve been able to earn sign-up bonuses for a cashback card and travel card in the same 3-month span.

Once we see the statement credit hit our account, we immediately pull that amount of money out of the bank and place it in an envelope marked “travel” at the house (or transfer it into a designated travel savings account). Once we are on vacation, we use that cash to pay for things you can’t typically use points for, like restaurants and attractions.

Here are a few of the cashback cards that we’ve signed up for over the years and the bonuses that we’ve earned (many of them twice):

• Amex Blue Cash Preferred Credit Card: $250
• Chase Freedom Credit Card: $150
• Wells Fargo Propel American Express Credit Card: $500
• TD Ameritrade Credit Card: $100

Conclusion:

So there you have it. That’s how we’ve been able to travel free using credit cards for 5 years.

And the crazy part? There are TONS of more cards that we still want to get. In fact, you may have been reading this article thinking, “Why hasn’t he gotten ________ card yet!?” The answer is probably, “Oh don’t worry, we plan to someday.”

• But as I explain in our beginner’s guide to credit card travel rewards,  you never want to commit to more sign-up bonuses than you can earn while keeping your spending habits the same.
• In order to stay true to that principle, we’ve honestly had to say “no” to some credit card deals that were pretty tempting.

But even with the few cards listed above, we’ve been able to travel free for the past 5 years. And we plan to continue traveling free for many years to come.