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Way back in '70s, I bought Fodor's "$10 a day in Europe" and had traveled in five European countries for less than $200 in 10 days. By that time Europeans were more friendly and less suspicious towards foreigners. When I ran out of money in Zurich, a Swiss old lady took me home and treated me with dinner.
Nowadays if you do foreign travel, it is also inexpensive. The air ticket price for international destinations is lower than what you paid in the last 7-8 years. With a strong dollar, many places are bargains.
And in fact, there are many creative ways to travel. For example, if you live in a very popular city. i.e. Boston or NYC or San Francisco, you can swap your home with some travelers who wish to visit your city.
But the key part is flexibility. You got to be able to take vacation at any time of the year and you must have accumulated a lot of vacation days. Most travel good deals are offered in the off-peak season.
Way back in '70s, I bought Fodor's "$10 a day in Europe" and had traveled in five European countries for less than $200 in 10 days. By that time Europeans were more friendly and less suspicious towards foreigners. When I ran out of money in Zurich, a Swiss old lady took me home and treated me with dinner.
Nowadays if you do foreign travel, it is also inexpensive. The air ticket price for international destinations is lower than what you paid in the last 7-8 years. With a strong dollar, many places are bargains.
And in fact, there are many creative ways to travel. For example, if you live in a very popular city. i.e. Boston or NYC or San Francisco, you can swap your home with some travelers who wish to visit your city.
But the key part is flexibility. You got to be able to take vacation at any time of the year and you must have accumulated a lot of vacation days. Most travel good deals are offered in the off-peak season.
I couldn't agree more. I talk to friends about travel with some frequency because they understand my wife and I have learned to do it fairly cheaply. The first thing I find out is that most of them are stuck on traveling to Europe during very specific dates. I inform them that if this is the case, they are unlikely to get the best air fares that are available. Plan far in advance, but search for dates when the air fare is the cheapest. Also, don't get stuck on a particular city. I learned that airfare to Munich was much cheaper than Berlin or Cologne. Yet, you can easily travel from one city to another.
I think the best time to travel to Europe is usually mid-September through mid-October. Avoid the summer peak tourist season. If you go during the summer, realize you are competing with scads of other people. Lines to tourist attractions will be long. Hotels will charge more. Restaurants will be expensive.
The euro was trading yesterday at 1.06 to one U.S. dollar. This is an extremely favorable exchange rate. IMO, its unlikely to last. However, it makes Europe relatively affordable.
If you want to avoid big expenses, I also encourage to avoid the big cities such as London, Paris, and Rome. You'd pay a lot of money to spend time in New York. There is no reason to see big cities in Europe as any different than that.
Another tip is travel between cities by airplane. The train is generally more expensive.
With some flexibility and some patience, travel to many destinations can be quite cheap.
For the last couple years, we have been taking advantage of all of the great deals for various credit cards and the bonus miles. In last 2 years, we have used miles to pay for plane tickets to
Europe twice
Costa Rica
San Francisco
We also used a travel credit on one of the cards to pay for the entire hotel in San Fran and half of a hotel stay in Vegas.
From that, we still have left:
200K American Airline Miles
160K+ Delta Miles
80K United Miles
20K Jet Blue Miles
63K Hilton Points
$500 Travel Credit from Barclay Card
Our plan is to use the Delta Miles to go to Europe in Business Class for this upcoming Christmas and back in Coach on United. That will pretty much take up the Delta and United Miles but leaves us with all the rest up top remaining. In the right time of year, 200K American Airline Miles could get you to Europe and back four times.
When we travel, we travel pretty frugally, usually only eating out once a day, using AirBNB type accommodations, etc.
Way back in '70s, I bought Fodor's "$10 a day in Europe" and had traveled in five European countries for less than $200 in 10 days. By that time Europeans were more friendly and less suspicious towards foreigners. When I ran out of money in Zurich, a Swiss old lady took me home and treated me with dinner.
Nowadays if you do foreign travel, it is also inexpensive. The air ticket price for international destinations is lower than what you paid in the last 7-8 years. With a strong dollar, many places are bargains.
And in fact, there are many creative ways to travel. For example, if you live in a very popular city. i.e. Boston or NYC or San Francisco, you can swap your home with some travelers who wish to visit your city.
But the key part is flexibility. You got to be able to take vacation at any time of the year and you must have accumulated a lot of vacation days. Most travel good deals are offered in the off-peak season.
I also agree with this.
But this is the dream, isn't it?
To have the luxury of enough time off to be able to travel with flexibiity? Many people work and schedule vacation time off around those high peak times in order to maximize the time they'll have to travel.
So the tradeoff becomes paying less to spend less time in off peak season during those infrequent/rare vacations that you get, or pay more and travel during high peak times knowing you'll have probably several more days at your destination(s).
I'm not sure of the demographic of Home Exchangers (I'm actually a member of one of the sites but haven't secured an exchange yet); I'd think many of those doing the highest number of swaps are retired or not working, working part time or are from Spain and take off a whole month once a year
One of the reasons I haven't been able to agree to an exchange yet myself is because I have a full time job, have to schedule my vacation days for the entire year by the end of each January, and I only have 3 weeks off so whoever contacts me needs to be looking to exchange during those dates.
But I'm trying to devise a plan now that would probably involve making a moderate career and/or living-situation change in order to allow more opportunities for traveling abroad. We shall see how that goes. In the future I do envision being able to do frequent home exchanges though; I think it's a great idea for cutting down travel costs exponentially outside of credit card rewards.
Speaking of miles games, if you've got a Virgin America Elevate account from early 2016 or older, there's an offer right now for a $100 airfare credit or 10K in Alaska miles if you merge your Elevate account into an Alaska account. I had a little over 2K in Elevate points from a few 'sign up for spam' promotions.
As soon as the Elevate points transfer over, I'll have about 13K in Alaska miles. You can use Alaska miles on American and 12.5K can get you a one way Lower 48 coach ticket (availability may vary).
So hello almost free (about $20 in taxes and fees) plane ticket!
For the last couple years, we have been taking advantage of all of the great deals for various credit cards and the bonus miles. In last 2 years, we have used miles to pay for plane tickets to
Europe twice
Costa Rica
San Francisco
We also used a travel credit on one of the cards to pay for the entire hotel in San Fran and half of a hotel stay in Vegas.
From that, we still have left:
200K American Airline Miles
160K+ Delta Miles
80K United Miles
20K Jet Blue Miles
63K Hilton Points
$500 Travel Credit from Barclay Card
Our plan is to use the Delta Miles to go to Europe in Business Class for this upcoming Christmas and back in Coach on United. That will pretty much take up the Delta and United Miles but leaves us with all the rest up top remaining. In the right time of year, 200K American Airline Miles could get you to Europe and back four times.
When we travel, we travel pretty frugally, usually only eating out once a day, using AirBNB type accommodations, etc.
That's a LOT of miles!!!
I'm curious as to how long/over what period of time it took to accumulate so many miles. I'm assuming this is totaled across a couple (2 people) since you mention "we" and "us"?
I'm curious as to how long/over what period of time it took to accumulate so many miles. I'm assuming this is totaled across a couple (2 people) since you mention "we" and "us"?
My wife and I both do it. It's taken us less than 3 years to do all of that..I think we started with a USair Barclays card and worked from there. That was right before Christmas 2014. We put our normal spend on there..I have traveled some for work over last couple years (which is where I got the Hilton points from) so we usually get a new card around that time to put the spend on..the vast majority of those miles come from the bonuses achieved by hitting the minimum spends. We have no credit card debt and our credit scores are in the 830 range. Those totals above are after taking the trips where we used about 110 k or so AA miles and 60k united too.
Last edited by IonRedline08; 01-11-2017 at 05:51 PM..
My wife and I both do it. It's taken us less than 3 years to do all of that..I think we started with a USair Barclays card and worked from there. That was right before Christmas 2014. We put our normal spend on there..I have traveled some for work over last couple years (which is where I got the Hilton points from) so we usually get a new card around that time to put the spend on..the vast majority of those miles come from the bonuses achieved by hitting the minimum spends. We have no credit card debt and our credit scores are in the 830 range. Those totals above are after taking the trips where we used about 110 k or so AA miles and 60k united too.
Not bad...not bad at all. Especially for less than 3 years worth of churning...I wonder how many of your miles are signup bonus miles versus miles from just your normal spending. (I know many cards also give another smaller bonus which you hit a certain amount of spending.)
I recently got the 100k point Chase Sapphire Reserve bonus and was throwing around the idea of getting 1 or 2 more cards this year for the bonus offers. Just haven't had time to research yet which ones would be the next best ones to get.
Not bad...not bad at all. Especially for less than 3 years worth of churning...I wonder how many of your miles are signup bonus miles versus miles from just your normal spending. (I know many cards also give another smaller bonus which you hit a certain amount of spending.)
I recently got the 100k point Chase Sapphire Reserve bonus and was throwing around the idea of getting 1 or 2 more cards this year for the bonus offers. Just haven't had time to research yet which ones would be the next best ones to get.
Yeah it's less than 2.5 years so not bad, especially since we've used a ton already.
Most was from bonuses. For delta, we've gotten some referral bonuses too.
One thing we do to maximize earning is to utilize the AA shopping portal. For purchases we already were going to make, we've earned a ton of bonus miles. We also sign up for the dining programs, surveys, pretty much anything to earn extra.
If you were going to get a new one, I'd say it depends on where you live and fly out of, and try to get an airline card for that one first. If you are married or attached and both have good credit, for example, you can get the delta one when it offers 50k.. they usually offer a 10k referral (so if you want a link lemme know!) once you get the bonus, you can refer your spouse and get the 10k and they would get the 50. So on and so on.
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