Affordable Family Travel: How We Use Points and Miles to Fly for Less
In my first India post, I mentioned how logistically impossible this trip seemed, and how — despite that — life kept dropping the right opportunities into our laps. One area of concern for us was the price of flights. Since we knew we’d want to travel to India and then stop in Europe on the way back West, the cost of flights for five people added up to a rather daunting number. Paying several thousands of dollars in cash for these flights simply wouldn’t work for us and I was determined to find another way.
Naturally, I went straight to Facebook again. I searched something like “cost of flights” in my Worldschooling group and found a thread where several people were mentioning “10X Travel”. I searched for more information online and realized that the people behind 10X are in something called the “points and miles hobby” (also called “travel hacking”) and they teach people how to use credit card points — especially the card sign-up bonuses — to get major deals on flights, hotels and more. The best part? Their course was entirely free, so I was able to sign up right away and start learning!
I joined their Facebook group and flew through the course, even printing some of the modules for Edan (age 8) to learn because we all found it so interesting.
Unfortunately, our credit wasn’t in the best place at the time and I knew I wouldn’t be approved for a new credit card until I remedied that. Archer’s credit would take up to a year to remedy, which was a bummer because the best way to play the points and miles game as a family is with your partner, so that you can rack up double the points and get referral bonuses as well. My credit would only take a month or two. The clock was ticking, though, and we had to buy our flights soon! Knowing this, I set my intention to improve my credit as quickly as possible so that we could at least fund our return flight with points.
A few weeks passed and I kept learning more and more about this hobby. Even though my credit score wasn’t quite up to par yet, I signed up for multiple airline reward programs and began preparing myself for the day when I’d be able to play the game. This turned out to be a great move, because one day I got an email from Virgin Atlantic — the airline we already chose for the Austin to Delhi flight — saying that they were having a big points sale where if you bought a certain amount of points, you’d get a percentage of free bonus points on top of that. I had already heard that these points sales are not always as good as they seem, so I immediately did the math to make sure (thanks to the 10X course!). Well, the math made it very clear that — yes — this was an enormous deal! By the time we purchased and used those points, I calculated that we had saved over $2000 in flights. $2000! All thanks to the course and the way that my mind had begun to think strategically.
After purchasing those flights, I managed to raise my credit score by 60+ points within one month. I applied for my first travel card in March — a Chase Sapphire Preferred — and to my surprise, I was instantly approved. This was an exciting moment for me. I was officially in the game!
Within three months, I had three credit cards: Chase Sapphire Preferred and two Chase business cards, an Ink Business Preferred and an Ink Business Cash card. By the time I met the minimum spend for my first two sign-up bonuses, I had acquired 160,000 points. For reference, our flights from Austin to Delhi, India ended up being 127,000 points (+ taxes and fees). Just with the sign-up bonuses from two cards, we likely had enough to get us home!
We were also able to use my points to book a hotel when our plans changed at the last minute (see my previous post). It was only 8000 points per night to book a 5 star hotel and this hotel — Hyatt Regency Dehradun — turned out to be such a blessing. It was the perfect place to recover from our 48 hours of travel and to get through those first few days of jet lag. (India is a 10+ hour time difference from Austin, Texas!)
For our most recent point redemption, we booked a flight from Delhi to Athens and I got to take advantage of two aspects of the points & miles hobby: (1) bonus transfers and (2) booking through partner airlines. Through the 10x group, I found out that Air Canada was offering a 20% transfer bonus for the month of July, which meant that if I transferred points from Chase to Air Canada, I would get 20% extra bonus points for free. After running several airline award searches to find the best point redemption, I realized that the best flight option was through Turkish Airlines (25k points + $73 in fees per person) and they happened to be a partner airline with AirCanada! This meant that I only had to transfer 105,000 points (resulting in an automatic 20,000 free bonus points) to book this Turkish flight through Air Canada. When I did the math, it was clear that this was a huge win!
I’m sure I’ll have many more points and miles wins to share in the future, but I wanted to share this with y’all right away because this hobby has already provided so much value to our family. It is honestly what made this trip possible.
**If you want to sign up for one of the most highly recommended travel cards to start with, the Chase Sapphire Preferred or the Ink Business Preferred, please consider using my links. My family and I will get a referral bonus in points and will be able to use those points to fund the rest of our travels. We would truly appreciate the help!
For future cards, I encourage you to use the affiliate links on 10x Travel’s Best Card list, as they deserve the credit for creating this course in the first place and for showing up to answer questions in their Facebook group and on their podcast. Our family is very grateful to have been able to learn from their resources.
