Travel Awards

One thing I got right on my personal financial journey is participating in travel awards programs. Specifically, choosing those brands that are best for me and then sticking with them. I am convinced without travel awards, my family’s current challenges requiring frequent overseas travel to care for sick relatives would be more worrisome.

It is hard to put a cash value on things like airport club lounge access, free or inexpensive seat upgrades and free hotel nights. Perhaps if I did all the calculus, I might be disappointed! But the value of being able to duck into an airport lounge after a long flight, easily change an overseas ticket or quickly book a hotel room is well worth the time it takes to build status.

There is more to travel awards than racking up points to earn free nights or tickets. Earning traveler status is perhaps the best benefit of an awards program. This is why it’s important to do the homework to determine which airline or hotel has the best status earning program that fits with your needs and then don’t deviate! For our particular hotel brand, we’ve been “Globalist” as they call it for several years. While this results in a lot of nice perks, perhaps the best part is access to a 24/7 “E-concierge” to help with booking. It is actually easier to call the line and make reservations than clicking around on the web site!

Of course, racking up points or miles is key. Beyond just traveling a lot to earn miles, the best way to earn points is through a branded credit card. I’ve blogged and wrote about this tactic frequently and am convinced it’s the way to go. Bottom line, we put absolutely everything we can on our hotel or airline branded credit card racking up thousands of points (and awards) every year. Key to this tactic working successfully is paying the balance every month!

After some trial and error, we went with a major hotel chain for our personal card. The program offers very generous points for purchases and several bonus opportunities based on spending. Additionally, when we signed up there was a large bonus point offer after the first few purchases. Be sure to look for sign up offers when considering a rewards card!  We went with an airline for our business cards, so we got air and lodging covered.

While there are a lot of enticing benefits with rewards cards, important to remember many cards include a fairly substantial annual fee. This must also be taken into consideration when doing the math to determine which rewards card is best for you.

Some would argue putting every purchase, even a pack of gum, on a credit card is bad practice. Perhaps annual fees would be a turn off for others. I’d argue that we have racked up literally hundreds of thousands of points over the years earning traveler status and taken a lot of nice vacations for the family- absolutely free. This is a life hack worth teaching to those starting out on their journey. I wished I’d discovered it sooner! 

Looking for a good how-to on wealth building? Check out my book, Millionaire on a Worker’s Budget: Five Financial Truth’s to Build Wealth on sale now at Amazon!

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