Fly free all year using credit card rewards by following this 10-minute guide
tl;dr:
Sign up for a credit card with a good signup bonus (often $500+ in travel credits)Meet the minimum spending requirement within 3 monthsRedeem the points for free flights and hotel nightsRinse and repeat
In the two years since graduating from college, I’ve been taking free round trip flights around the world using a strategy called “churning”. A few destinations I’ve visited or will visit soon:
Florence, Italy | Puerto Vallarta, Mexico | Tokyo, Japan | Marrakech, Morocco | New York City, New York | Portland, Oregon | San Diego, California | Phoenix, Arizona (3x) | Las Vegas, Nevada (3x)
There are some good but fairly lengthy guides to rewards travel out there, like this one from Million Mile Secrets or another from The Points Guy. I wrote this guide for people who just want to learn the basics and get 80% of the benefit from 20% of the work.
Why am I posting this?
My hope is to mostly remove financial considerations from travel planning and make it easy to go wherever, whenever. I find it unfortunate that the life stage when people are most inclined to travel is also the time when we’re most financially constrained.
Prerequisites
Earning credit card points can be risky if you aren’t careful. You should only attempt the credit card game if you:
Have a 680+ credit score (check yours at www.creditkarma.com)Trust yourself to pay off balances on time and keep your spending in checkDon’t have existing credit card debtAre stably employedAre willing to put in a couple of hours of work each month to keep up with your cards
If your credit isn’t good enough to qualify for the cards listed below, start out by reading online about how to build your credit and qualify for basic credit cards.
Step 1: Sign up for a credit card with a good signup bonus
There are dozens of good choices for your first few cards. You can go through these cards in the order below, or you can customize based on personal preference and upcoming travel plans.
Chase Freedom is a solid starter card, especially if you have limited credit history and are new to credit card rewards. There’s no travel reward, but you can use the cash reward on whatever you want.
Earn a $150 cash bonus after spending $500 within the first 3 months. That means for every dollar you spend, you’ll get 30 cents back. That’s a pretty nice discount on everything that you pay for with a credit card.
No annual fee → you can keep this card open forever. This matters because your credit score takes into account the average age of your open credit lines, so you’ll want to keep your no-fee cards for a long time.
Chase Sapphire Preferred is excellent for both international and domestic travel. I used this one to book a round-trip to Italy.
Earn 50,000 Chase Ultimate Rewards points after spending $4,000 in the first 3 months. You can transfer those points to United, Hyatt, Southwest, etc. for $600+ worth of plane tickets or hotel stays.
Introductory $0 annual fee, then a $95 annual fee after the first year
Chase’s Southwest Airlines Rapid Rewards (R) Premier and Southwest Airlines Rapid Rewards (R) Plus are excellent cards for domestic travel. These two are almost identical. Get them both!
It’s best to sign up when Chase offers a promotional 50,000 Southwest points as a signup bonus (sometimes they only offer 25,000). Again, you need to spend $2,000 in 3 months to earn the bonus.
The annual fees are $99 for the Premier card and $69 for the Plus card. You can redeem these Southwest points for hundreds of dollars in domestic travel.
To get incredible value out of these cards, earn the Southwest Companion Pass. This lets you bring a companion with you on any Southwest flight for free for 1–2 years. The trick is to earn 110,000 Southwest points in one calendar year. After getting both the Plus and Premier cards, you’ll have over 100,000 bonus points so you’ll be very close.
To get some even more Southwest points you can try applying for the Southwest Rapid Rewards (R) Premier Business card for another 50,000 points. You can apply for this as an individual contractor or owner of a small business.
Starwood Preferred Guest from American Express is another all-time favorite for hotels and flights. Caveat: Starwood was just acquired by Marriott, so who knows what will happen to their rewards program?
Earn 25,000 Starpoints (R) after spending $3,000 in the first 3 months. You can redeem these for free hotel stays or transfer them to airline reward programs for free flights.
$0 introductory annual fee, then $95.
Once you get the hang of this process, you’ll be able to make your own decisions about which card to get next based on upcoming travel plans and personal preference. Here are a few other cards worth considering, in no particular order:
Chase’s Hyatt card. Two free nights in Hyatt properties worldwide. That includes top tier luxury hotels (ever seen Lost in Translation? It was filmed at the Park Hyatt in Tokyo.)Citi’s Hilton HHonors. Two free weekend nights at Hilton properties worldwide.
Chase’s United MileagePlus Explorer. Up to 50,000 United points for domestic or international travel plus lots of other perks.Citi’s ThankYou® Premier. 50,000 ThankYou points redeemable for $500+ in travel credits, gift cards, etc.
Step 2: Meet the minimum spending requirement
Usually you’ll need to spend between $1,000 and $3,000 on your card in the first 3 months to earn the signup bonus. A few ways you can do this:
Use a credit card for all your regular expenses (dining, groceries, shopping, etc.)Pay the bill for a group when you’re out to dinner/drinks and get reimbursedPay for reimbursable business expenses on your cardPut recurring payments on the card (e.g. auto insurance, subscriptions, gym membership)Buy a gift card that’s as good as cash to you (e.g. Amazon) and use it laterGive to charity, although keep in mind that they’ll have to pay a transaction fee
Don’t let yourself spend money unnecessarily just to earn rewards!
Step 3: Redeem the reward by booking free flights and hotel nights
To redeem points, just log in to your credit card account online and visit the rewards section. It’s kind of surreal how easy it is to book flights to dream vacation destinations just by using points.
For example, if you earned the 50,000 point signup from the Chase Sapphire Preferred card, this illustrated guide shows you exactly how to redeem them for airline points. Transferring those points to United would be enough for a round trip to from San Francisco to Honolulu or New York to Puerto Rico!
When in doubt, Google it — there are a ton of resources on getting the most value out of every specific rewards program.
Step 4: Rinse and repeat
Apply for another card every few months to keep gaining insane amounts of travel credit. If you don’t want to pay the annual fees on the cards that have them, make sure you set a calendar reminder to close the card by logging into your account online or calling the card issuer.
If you’ve already gotten all of the cards listed above, you’ve more than graduated from this guide! Go Google around for more deals. There are enough cards out there to get a new one every few months for many years before running out of options. I’ve opened 19 credit cards so far and don’t expect to run out of good options any time soon.
Won’t this hurt my credit score?
Short term, maybe. Longer term, no.
This system actually helps you build your credit over time. For many people with only 1–3 credit cards, applying for more cards will actually improve a credit score by increasing total available credit (thereby decreasing overall credit utilization, one of the most important measures of creditworthiness).
How it hurts your credit score short-term:
You’ll get a “hard” credit inquiry every time you apply for a card. This means that the credit check will show up on your credit file, which has a slight negative impact on your credit score. Too many inquiries in a short period of time can temporarily harm your credit score, but after a year or two this effect goes away.
How it helps your credit score long-term:
Having a lot of open lines of credit is actually a good thing if you aren’t using them. Every additional credit line you have is more proof that you’re responsible, because it means other lenders were willing to lend to you and you didn’t abuse the credit they extended. Also, as you get more credit cards your total credit limit will increase, and therefore your “credit utilization” (% of available credit you’re using) will go down. This is another signal of creditworthiness.
It’s best not to play the credit card game if you’re going to be taking on a large amount of debt soon (e.g. buying a house with a mortgage). But as long as you aren’t planning on that in the next couple of years, you’re good to go.
Have fun!
Thanks to Jonathan Eng, Paul Gu , and Benjamin Hoffman for the help along the way.