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I always believed that taking our family of 5
to Hawaii would be impossible. After researching loads of overwhelming points
earning sites I decided to give it a try. I ended up saving over $7000 using credit card sign up bonuses. This blog post is LONG because I wanted to go into detail so it would be an easy idea to copy for anyone who wanted to try this free travel tactic.
I had heard of people using rewards points to pay for trips but never understood how people could earn enough points if they weren’t traveling ALL THE TIME for business. After a little research I decided to give it a try. My goal was pretty lofty. I wanted to pay for the entire trip with points (just to say that I did)! I wasn’t able to do that but got pretty close!
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I started exactly 14 months before
the trip would take place. The most
important thing I did was picking the exact trip I was working towards before I
started figuring out my plan. Some of my choices might not be the best use of
points according to some, but because I had a specific trip in mind they worked
for me!
Below is my step by step process for getting my
family to Hawaii!
First here are a few notes:
· Our credit scores have only improved. This is
due to our credit available being higher but our spending staying exactly the
same. It shows you can manage more credit. We never spent more than we
normally would have regularly and we paid off statement balances in full each month,
just as we normally have done.
· If you cannot meet minimum spend requirements
or pay your cards off in full each month do not even try this. It won’t be free
travel if you are paying finance charges.
· We put all spending on these cards during a
sign up bonus requirement. I mean everything, utilities, whatever.
· We specifically looked for cards where there
was no annual fee for the first year. We could then decide the 2nd
year if we wanted to cancel or downgrade a card.
It is fine to cancel or downgrade a card as long as you have a few
cards you are keeping long term for credit history. If you cancel a card make
sure to sign up for a new one somewhat soon after so that your credit limit
stays pretty similar.
· Sign up bonuses fluctuate and there is usually
a minimum spend to get the bonus. Most are still the same as when we did them
· Don’t be afraid of credit cards. If you never go
in debt on them you are basically being given free travel money! Example we got a free
$7000!
· Your credit score will actually improve if you
show you can manage more credit but not spend more than normal.
Step 1 – Flights
2 Chase Sapphire Preferred Rewards Cards Sign up bonuses
– 100,000 points
2
Authorized User Bonuses – 10,000 points
1 card referral
bonus – 10,000 points
Regular card use
earnings – 10,000 points
The first step of the plan was to sign up my spouse for the Chase SapphirePreferred Card for a point’s bonus of 50,000 Chase ultimate rewards points. We were required to spend $4000 in 3 months. We put every bit of our spending on the card and paid it off in full each month. We had to move a few automatic bills such as our internet and home utilities to this card but we wanted to put everything we could on it to get the bonus quicker. We did not spend anything more than we normally would have. If there is no way your family spends this much in 3 months there are other cards out there with great sign up bonuses which require much less spend.
After a
few months we hit the $4000 required spend and received the bonus. Next I
signed up for the same card. After a few months we again hit our required spend
and just like that we had 100,000 chase ultimate rewards points. We also put
each other as authorized users on each other’s cards. That gave us a bonus of
10,000 more points. We then referred my sister in law to the card and got
another 10,000 points. We also received another 10,000 points just from the
earned points of our $4000 spend on each card. And boom we had 130,000 chase
ultimate rewards points.
Chase
ultimate rewards are very versatile. They have tons of airline and hotel
transfer partners and also have their own travel portal. I transferred our
points to the Korean Skypass program, which was a super simple click of the
mouse. Korean charges 25,000 points for economy seats to Hawaii from the
continental US. They are a travel partner of Delta. By calling Korean I was
able to book 5 tickets on Delta airlines to Hawaii for January of 2019 for a
total of 125,000 ultimate rewards points and $11 dollars per ticket in taxes.
And BOOM just like that after a few months we had our flights booked and they
cost me a whopping $55 dollars total.
Unfortunately
as of August 2018 Korean is no longer a transfer partner of Chase Ultimate
rewards. But there are so many other airlines that are. Pick one, transfer your
points, and book your tickets! When I get a chance I'll write a blog post on how to do this with the other chase transfer airlines and link to it here.
Step 2 – Hotels
Chase Marriott
Card – 2 free Marriott nights + $200 statement credit
Chase Ink Business
Preferred Card = 80,000 Chase Ultimate Rewards
We chose
to visit the Island of Oahu and stay for 10 nights. Wanting to pack it in and
visit as much of the island as possible, we decided to hotel hop. If that
doesn’t appeal to you this process can still work for staying at one hotel for
your length of stay.
I next signed
up for the Chase Marriott card. The sign up bonus for this card was 2 free
hotel nights and a $200 statement credit and automatic silver elite Marriott
status. After reaching the required
spend and receiving our bonus we booked 2 nights at the Courtyard Marriott on
the north shore in the city of Laie. Because we only needed 2 marriott nights
only one of us signed up for this card.
We knew
we needed a lot more points to fill the rest of our nights. We started
researching business credit cards. Business cards have some of the most
lucrative sign up bonuses. But you obviously need a business to sign up for a
business card. But a business can be defined in lots of ways. And you do not
need a business tax ID, you can sign up as a sole proprietor the same way you
would a regular card. Do you sell things on ebay or etsy? Do you have a day
care or a blog? Then you have a business. If you don’t have a business, I will
list some alternate cards at the end of this post that can help you earn the
same types of points this business card earned for us.
We
signed up for the Chase Ink Business Preferred Card next under my husband’s
business. This card netted 80,000 chase ultimate rewards points plus another
5,000 after regular spending bonuses. This card was the first card that had a
$95 annual fee due immediately. Because the Marriott card came with a $200
credit we used that credit to offset this annual fee.
By this
point we were getting excited about how close we were getting to our goal. So
much so that we probably talked about it too much, but we ended up having some
neighbors want the card for their businesses and those two referral bonuses
gave us another 40,000 points. So just like that we had another 125,000
ultimate rewards points.
We used
these points to book 5 more nights of hotel on Chase’s ultimate rewards
website. We stayed at amazing hotels and one not so amazing hotel and they cost
us almost nothing. Nights start on Chase’s website for Oahu at around 10,000
points and up. So there are many many hotel possibilities. A total cost
breakdown for our trip will be at the end of this post. There were so many
hotels to choose from even if we had less points we could have stayed places
for free.
We still
had 3 more nights of hotel to fill. Since we have kids and it was on our bucket
list we decided to splurge and stay at Disney’s Aulani Hotel. Disney hotels are
not an option on Chase’s reward site currently or we would have used ultimate
rewards points. This hotel we did not get free So I’m not including it in my
$7000 saving (but I’m still including it on this post because we did get it for
over half off). If we had just cut our trip to 7 days then all our hotel would
have been free. So you can still follow
these steps for a completely free week. Disney Aulani nights go for $450 to
over $1000 per night. We rented nights through Davids DVC rentals which is a
place where Disney Vacation Club owners rent their points. We got our nights
for about $270 a night through this company, which is significantly discounted.
Chase
also has the option to transfer your points to various hotels instead of using
their travel portal. If you want to stay at one hotel for the entire time, this
is a great option also. Sometimes you can save points that way.
Rental Car
We used
our remaining Chase Ultimate Rewards points to book our rental car through
their portal. We had a 7 day rental car and then turned it in for the last 3
days so we didn’t have to pay exorbitant parking fees. We were able to take a
Lyft to the airport.
Food and Activities
1 Bank of America Premium Rewards Card - $500
statement credit,
1 Capital One
Venture Card – 70,000 miles after spending
We had
to get a little creative trying to figure out how to pay for these. I
signed
up for the Bank of America Premium Rewards Card which comes with a $500
statement credit. We were able to put food and activities directly towards this
credit. The BOA card did have an annual fee but it had 2 great benefits that negated
that fee. It came with free global entry or TSA precheck and $100 worth of
airline expenses such as meals on the airplane (which we used). So for a $100
annual fee there were $200 of benefits.
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Below is a total cost breakdown from our trip and cards opened!
Total Cost:
Airfare: $3500 Our Cost: $44
Rental Car: $382.00 Our
Cost: $0
Hotels: $2054.25 Our Cost: $0 (not including our half price Disney)
Misc $1800 Our
Cost: $600
(Misc included Food, gas, parking, Activities, a few Lyft
Rides, hotel resort charges, basically Hawaii is expensive and added up really
fast)
Total Cards Opened over 15
month period. Will will cancel some, downgrade some, and keep some at the year anniversary.
1st person – Chase
Sapphire Preferred Card
Chase Ink Preferred Business
Capitol One Venture Card
2nd person - Chase Sapphire Preferred Card
Chase Marriott Card
I loved planning and scheming how to get this trip for free! If you want to try the same thing let me know. I would love to help you. I think I enjoyed planning how to get it free more than I enjoyed going on the trip! We are currently working on planning our next big trip for free!
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