This is the pre-post of the post explaining my first series on a completely free trip. $0 in hotels. $0 in airlines (+ $0 in taxes and fuel surcharges).
This takes free travel from a theory to real life examples. We’ll show what every flight and every hotel costs and give screen shots the entire way.
The concept is this… all the time on this blog, or in reply to this blog, people point out that travel is not free. Their proof? They spent lots of money on their last miles/points trip.
And while that’s true, maybe you/they/he/she/them did spend a lot of money on a trip… they didn’t have to.
My favorite is when people prefer to fly premium cabin on a specific airline that passes on fuel surcharges, like British Airways. These are the same people who tend to get defensive about “travel is free”. Like… Dude, you could have redeemed your AA miles on anyone but British Airways and avoided 100% fuel surcharges.
The Goal…
Goal 1: Teach frugal miles and points concepts
What I’m trying to do on the blog is to teach the concepts for using miles and points well… if you define well as cheaply.
Recourses for this goal:
MasterChart for Avoiding Fuel Surcharges
Collect miles that give you the option to redeem without fuel surcharges. Or of the miles you have, who can you redeem with to avoid fuel surcharges?
On the same note, I don’t even bother earning Delta miles because there’s a fat chance of avoiding fuel surcharges. And I do collect as much as I can with AA and United because of their lack of fuel surcharges.
To me this is an important bookmark because it shows how to use miles and what miles to get as a frugal miles/points collector.
Stopovers and Open-jaws Infographic
Obviously, I’ve written a ton about stopovers in general, but this infographic will:
- Explain what stopovers are
- Explain airline’s specific stopover rules
- and below it will link to other posts on Stopovers (or you could browse the stopover category)
Complete Maps of Hotel Properties
These are maps of every single hotel by each chain sortable by category. The idea of the complete maps is two fold (although it has potential for more.) 1) If you have a ton of points, you could get ideas for cheap/exotic locations. And 2) If you already have a destination in mind, you could look for the cheapest options with the hotels you have points with.
If you have points with IHG, you could go to the IHG map and only show category 1 & 2 hotels and pick the cheapest in the area.
Complete Guide to Earning Miles with Credit Cards
When you sign up for the newsletter you get the complete guide to earning miles with credit cards. This is a more in depth look at some of the frugal concepts discussed above.
This is seriously important because this is a large majority of our miles right here. And by listening to card pimpers you can get cards that sound good, but are really kind of worthless. The Delta 50k promotion was a fire sale that worked, I’m sure it got signups. But now people are going to pay jacked up prices and fuel surcharges. 50K won’t go nearly as far as it would with AA.
Educate yourself with one complete guide. However, this one only comes with the newsletter signup.
(btw, the newsletter is only once a month and is not just the blog posts in email form. That would be an RSS and other blogs misusing “newsletter” are confusing my readers. Sign up because it’s great content kept off the front page).
Sign up for the newsletter at the bottom of this post or in the top right corner.
Also, feel free to browse the categories:
To me the most important category is the Complete Guides (although so far the number or airlines and hotels is limited).
Goal 2: This series will show people that a vacation can be free
Completely free trips are possible. I want to completely avoid any expenses associated with this hobby. This means not paying a dime for the flight and hotel.
It also means not paying a dime for eaning the miles used to book the flight. Not buy miles, not do some expensive MS strategy, not pay with hotel points, not flying for miles, or paying for hotels to get hotel points, etc… Aquisition of miles and points has to be $0.
The use of free miles has to cover all the expenses. No airport taxes, taxes in general, airport fees, and fuel surcharges. That’s easy with hotels and possible for using airline miles.
Of course, you’ll still have the same living expenses, as you need to eat at home or while traveling and that’s irrelevant to travel. But I do know a lot of people like to eat out while on vacation. That’s not my point, eat what you want. Also, what you do while you travel is up to you. Pay for the opera in Vienna or going to a free clasical show at an ancient church. And that’s not our point either. We want to discuss in this series the actual travel expenses.
The point is that you can freely go to the places you’ve dreamed of going.
While we travel year round, we realize that the strategy for full time travel is different than what the average person needs/wants. See the goal of full time travel is for us to spend less than we would have being stationary and live better. Now we travel full time our expenses are around the poverty level for income. Yet, we live in an average of 4.2 star hotels. Basically, we are saving money by traveling, because rent in Charlottesville was more expensive alone than all of our expenses while traveling, thanks to miles and points.
But most people only have two to three weeks of vacations a year. If that’s the case, you should have everything free. Because it’s totally possible to earn enough miles and points for a free vacation for free. A two week vacation every year for free is completely possible.
But instead of explaining how a 3 week vacation could be possible, we’re going to do it. It’s easy to explain how to do, and everyone knows that. But we intend to show it.
How We’ll Do It:
Our first in our free trip series will be a free trip to Central and South America for 24 nights. And that will be the first time we’ll explain exactly what we’ll do. We’ll tell you the specific cards we got to make this trip possible, but the rules are similar.
- Credit credit bonuses
- Book tickets that don’t have fuel surcharges
- Hop on great hotel promotions, or make smart redemptions
- Booking airline stopovers
- Having a card that can reimburse the airport taxes and fees.
Hopefully on our second series we’ll take things one step further as we just got a bunch of cards that give a statement credit. We always book tickets that don’t have fuel surcharges. Always. There were a ton of Latin American hotel promotions with IHG recently, but again, the Complete Maps show you smart redemptions in the area of travel.
We really took advantage of stopovers on the last trip:
However, that many stopovers and flights added a lot of airport taxes. But we used the Barclay Arrival Plus to take care of those fuel surcharges. But details and screen shots about all of this will come with the series of the trip.
Conclusion
The choice is yours. If you prefer fancy starwood hotels (over fancy IHG hotels) and you prefer British Airways business class over Air Berlin’s or AA’s… that’s fine. If you fly first class all the time and use more miles than you can earn, and therefore end up doing expensive share miles and buy miles promos… that’s also fine. But don’t think those deals are saving you money. They aren’t. They might get you business class for cheaper than straight buying business class, but they aren’t frugal in any way.
I’ve never seen a buy miles promo that tempts me at all. Why? Because I guarantee you there’s a free way to get those miles. It takes a little more effort than just clicking “buy now”, but that’s the point of this hobby. You could just click “buy now” on a ticket through Kayak… but instead we work reward programs.
And of the costs that do exist, there are ways to avoid them. Whether it’s a $450 annual fee not waived for the first year, or buying gift cards for $4.95 each… I guarantee you there is a free version. There is always a free version.
There’s always a free way and there’s always more than one way. We will show a way. Soon we will show the way we saw Panama, Colombia, Costa Rica, and Guatemala for $00.00.
Personal note: I’ll be at the bottom of the Canyon, so won’t be able to approve all comments on the 20th.
I tend to think that a lot of the ‘Points and Miles’ bloggers spend so much time plugging Business/First just because it means people need to sign-up for more bonuses and so click more CC affiliate links. To my mind, this hobby is all about stretching those points and miles for as many nights and flights as possible!
I never thought about the first class flying means more points, which means more clicks… Genius! I’m going to have to rework the next trip around this concept instead. :-p
Can’t wait for this one!!
Me neither. O_o
Looking forward to the series as well. Enjoy the trip to Central America. Just hope you don’t get anyone complaining that travel *isn’t* free, because they still have to pay for the Dom Perignon they order at dinner each night. I guess you could also get a bunch of statement credit cards for that though!
Oh I’ll still get it. Eating out at nice places is a need.
Very exciting! Really enjoying the most recent content. Thanks again!
Thanks for the support!
Drew
After getting the Arrival card, what next is there to get to reimburse award booking fees and taxes? Since I believe we cannot churn the Arrival card, I think I maximized my 40,000 arrival miles and I can’t get it again..
Amex Plat and the RC card come to mind.. together it’s $1000 in fees you could get reimbursed for. (Plat- 400, RC-600)
I think most non-miles earning cards can reimburse points. Citi TY points, Cap1, Amex, Discover, BOA?, etc…
The way you’re breaking it down sounds awesome. Aside from the credit card selection, I think I can predict your routing and hotels from the information you go into on this blog. I may try and plot it out. Then compare with what you actually do. Good practical exercise!
Well, it is latin and using my RA status on every hotel. That’s a big indicator of the route. 😉 However, the miles I used may not be obvious, as I used what I had and didn’t go collecting the best miles, like ANA.
So you might out do me. :-p
I think what you describe is possible, but I think we’ll see that it takes the better part of a year of advanced planning to have “in your pocket” all the types of points one will need for a 2-3 week vacation. And, depending on the location, you may then need to book your flights close to a year in advance. So yes I think this is possible, but it will take some serious dedication of time and planning.
If you saw the last newsletter I earned 500,000 miles in the last two months. Just got some more too.
And I’m spending under 300,000 miles. So it takes 1-2 months to do what I’m doing. No planning went into it either, all last minute bookings.
Of course, Free Travel–to the point–is possible. I’ve been saying it for the last 5 years at least. Positioning yourself for a free hotel breakfast and lounge food can help a lot. Fuel surcharges are totally no-go, I don’t even know why it needs to be explained. Cards like Arrival, Cap One, and Ritz Carlton will take care of airline incidentals and occasional upgrades.
But…
The problem with Free Travel is not that it can’t be done, but it won’t. Most people on vacation are not going to hold on to every penny. You need transportation, you need to buy tours, you need to buy souvenirs, you need to eat in good restaurants sometimes. The quality of your vacation will incredibly suffer from extreme penny pinching. Even in cheap places like South East Asia, your expenses add up. So yes, you’re making a good play for full-time travelers, just not for 99.99% of the rest of the population. 🙂
Andy,
Not sure if you read the whole thing or you skipped over the meat of it– he isnt’ counting restaurants/food, souvenirs, etc. Only the physical travelling portion. So yes, I think it’s a good play for everyone.
“you need to buy souvenirs, you need to eat in good restaurants sometimes”
I think it a difference in perspective. I can’t have a high quality trip without spending money. Just by meeting locals, getting invited to see their traditions and what not… that’s quality to me. Shot glasses, t-shirts and fancy food aren’t why I travel.
Nice and can’t wait! I really like all the maps, complete guides, and infographics. You’re setting the travel-blogging bar pretty high.
Setting the bar high by living low. :-p jk
Thanks Angela!
Looking forward to this series.
I think there is room in this hobby for all types of travelers. But, I do think the blogs skew towards ultra-luxury travel. I’m not entirely sure if this audience-driven (that’s what people want to read about) or affiliate-driven (that’s what pays).
I really enjoy that your blog shows things that are more interest to me as someone who is trying to do this frugally while leveraging my work-paid-for travel as much as possible. Optimization is my motto.
Assuming they’re reporting faithfully, bloggers do get much of their award booking business from those looking for premium awards. On the other hand, that could be because those not looking for premium awards are simply able to find what they want more easily without needing outside aid. And I also agree with Andy about penny pinching. I often tell frugal travel companions they don’t need to calculate everything down to the penny and always try to scrape by as cheaply as possible. I’m cheap, but always open to spending extra on a special experience. So for me, Drew’s welcome series will simply offer a model, a set of ideas, and it’s up to me to what extent I choose to follow them. It will be a learning experience, but the final call will be mine.
@DaveS – A wise approach. I like reading all kinds of bloggers with all different travel styles. I take what I like and try to apply it to my circumstances and ignore things that don’t suit me. I enjoy this blog in particular because it provides a very different viewpoint than the traditional points/miles blog.
I agree, no one actually wants to live as cheapo as I do. 😀 But they don’t want to save money and stretch miles. And that’s the concept. … I think
Let’s be clear there’s no such thing as completely free travel. Any time you use flexible points of any sort they usually have minimum cash out value. That 30k ultimate rewards transfer to united costs you a minimum of $300. Same with arrival points and others. Earning miles also has costs in the form of spending redirected to a new card vs elsewhere or manufacture spending….which is never free.
@Rick b Some of your cases, though, could be called spending zero vs. maximizing opportunity for a negative cash expenditure instead. It depends how you want to look at it. If you get UR points for zero and spend them on travel, your cost for travel could be truly zero, even if isn’t the most cash value you could actually wring out of the process.
I think you are comparing apples to oranges.
Drew seems to be discussing *free* travel in terms of cash-flow or what is actually spent by the person in terms of fiat currency.
That’s an entirely paradigm than evaluating opportunity cost or what you are foregoing by choosing to spend your points/miles on travel versus cash payouts.
Which isn’t to say that both aren’t interesting measures.
Just because you get to choose between free cash or a free flight… doesn’t mean it’s not free. How much did I actually spend? $0. That’s free. Just because other opportunities exist doesn’t mean they aren’t free.
I am so interested in this series!
I have a suggestion. I would be thrilled to see a tab at the top of the page that has a link to all the “complete guides”, a link to hotel maps, a link to everything united, a link to the posts on BRG’s, etc. It is sooooooo hard for me to find what I’m looking for on your site. I know it’s there somewhere, because I read it through my Feedly reader at one point, but I can’t find it easily.
Am I missing something? Maybe I am.
Thanks!
Aww. Yea, I mean I am hoping to get that done… and back on the side.
I do have a search bar on the right. Maybe I should make the search bar easier to find. But since my other idea is hard, maybe I should link to some categories in the mean time, complete guides, maps, stopovers, etc…
Love it as usual, Drew. This is definitely something I do. I don’t care about the “cash out” value of the points I acquire. My family could rarely go on vacation at all if it weren’t for the free travel part of it. Thank you and I am SO excited!
Thakns Erin. I even start to stray away from the word value. Because the “value” of a fancy hotel is less than a hotel that has my family in it. 😉
Now this I’ve got to read…. 🙂 Two huge challenges await clarification:
1. just how you can get back airport taxes and fees with a cc? (I missed THAT one) For real?
2. And do hope you’ll be more candid with the ms strategies…. In the last newsletter issue, if I read it right, you copped out by telling us you don’t write about ms specifics. THAT was frustrating and NOT helpful. Hope you’ve changed your mind and will now be spilling at least a few beans…. If not, then you won’t be delivering on the tease above.
Well…. on the other hand there is good reason not to disclose too much about MS…
Well, there won’t be much MSing in this first trip. And airport taxes for this will be points from the Arrival plus.
@Will. MS strategies are shared, usually in small groups, forums, etc. . . You’ve got to just try a few things out, see what works, then scale up. The game is always changing.