Welcome! If you’re reading this, you’ve probably seen glimpses of our adventures on social media and are curious about how we pull it off. Honestly, there’s no big secret hedge fund or tricky magic behind it. Our ability to travel has resulted from slowly mastering a series of travel hacks—mostly finding cheap flights and making the most of miles and points.
In this post, we’re sharing a bit of our journey along with practical tips on these two key parts of travel hacking. Whether you’re just getting started or looking to step up your game, we’ve got plenty of insights to share—and we’ll point you to other helpful posts on our site along the way.
Finding Cheap Flights
Finding cheap flights is the best place to start when it comes to travel hacking. It opens up a world of possibilities, letting you explore new destinations without breaking the bank. For us, learning how to spot a good deal was a game-changer. It also taught us a lot about airlines, routes, and destinations. As we gained a better understanding of how the travel world works, everything else started to fall into place—like discovering travel credit cards and how to maximize points.
The single greatest success in finding cheap flights has been letting others do the work for us! There are email lists that send out deals based on your home airport, and subscribing to them is my top recommendation for anyone looking to start travel hacking. Flexibility helps too—being open to different dates or destinations gives you the best chance at snagging a deal. We’ll share a couple of our favorite email lists below so you can get started.
Our favorites are Scott’s Cheap Flights, Pomelo, The Points Guy, FareDrop, and Thrifty Traveler. All of these provide regular updates on discounted fares, error fares, and time-sensitive deals.
Check out our post on How We Find Cheap Flights to learn more.
The Inbetween
Another key to travel hacking is staying curious and constantly learning about new opportunities. There are countless ways to enhance your travels once you start discovering them. For example, we’ve used programs like Icelandair’s stopover to add extra destinations to our trips at no extra cost. The more you learn about the travel world, the more options open up, making each trip even more rewarding.
Taking the Next Step: Travel Credit Cards
Staying curious and learning more about the world of travel hacking is what ultimately led us to travel credit cards. While finding cheap flights is a great start, travel credit cards take things to the next level. They’ve allowed us to fly for free, stay in amazing hotels, and unlock all sorts of perks.
Not sure what travel credit cards are? Check out our post on Using Credit Cards to Fly for Free. In short, a travel credit card is a type of credit card that offers rewards, points, or miles for spending, which can be redeemed for travel-related expenses like flights, hotels, and car rentals. These cards often come with additional perks such as travel insurance, lounge access, and no foreign transaction fees.
When you’re diving into travel credit cards, it’s important to take things slow and not get overwhelmed by the sheer amount of information out there. To keep it simple, we recommend starting with either the Chase Sapphire Preferred or the Capital One Venture. We personally prefer the Venture card because it’s straightforward and easy to use, making it a great choice for those new to travel hacking. Both cards offer fantastic rewards and benefits, but the Venture card’s simplicity makes it a great starting point for building your travel rewards strategy. We knew very little when we first started all this, but the Venture card got us going. It’s the first card we opened, and we still use and love it
Why We Love the Capital One Venture and Venture X Cards.
Familiar with travel cards but aren’t sure what points are worth? What are Credit Card Miles and Points Worth.
Taking it further
These first two steps are intentionally straightforward, and that’s the beauty of travel hacking—it can be remarkably simple. By combining the power of cheap flights with strategic use of miles and points, you can unlock the ability to explore the world for free or at significantly reduced rates. Once you’ve dipped your toes into the basics of travel hacking, a whole world of advanced strategies awaits, enhancing your savings and elevating your travel experiences to new heights.
An example of this in action was our trip to Mexico City. Utilizing the Capital One Venture card and the Chase IHG hotel card, we spent a long weekend exploring Mexico City, one of our newfound favorite destinations, without paying for anything but activities and food—thanks to the rewards earned from these cards.
Additionally, Delta SkyMiles earned from the Delta Gold card have enabled us to book flights throughout the US, as well as to destinations like Costa Rica and Cuba, significantly enhancing affordability and accessibility.
Taking it even further, you can transfer your miles and points between airlines for even better value. For instance, on one of our trips to Hawaii, transferring Capital One Miles to Turkish Airlines allowed us to book round-trip flights for the equivalence of $150. Similarly, for our upcoming trip to Japan and later Tahiti, a blend of miles and points will be getting us flights and hotels.
To help expand on these strategies, we’ve begun compiling a comprehensive guide to the many ways in which miles and points can be maximized: Where Will Your Miles Take You? With miles and points, the potential for global travel is virtually limitless.
Another facet of travel ‘hacking’ involves gaining access to airport lounges. A standout perk of quality travel credit cards is their capacity to grant access to lounges worldwide, enhancing comfort and relaxation during layovers or before flights.
For further insight into our methodology and approach, explore our detailed post on The Way We Wander. This provides a deeper look into our methods for maximizing travel benefits through the use of credit card rewards and travel hacking techniques.
Conclusion
Hopefully, this post has provided you with a solid starting point for diving into travel hacking, or at the very least, pointed you in the right direction.
Our own journey with the travel bug began when we stumbled upon a killer deal to Barcelona through our email subscriptions. This trip took us through Spain, Switzerland, and Italy, sparking a deep passion for travel and exploration. Since then, we’ve actively pursued opportunities to incorporate more travel into our lives, discovering the world of travel credit cards and hacking along the way. It’s opened up a future we once only dreamed of.
While it’s easy to dream, now is the time to start turning those dreams into reality.
Have questions? Feel free to reach out to us!
Additional
These steps are designed to initiate your progress. There is so much to learn and do but you’ve got to start small and simple. You’ll eventually learn how to open and utilize multiple cards. This is done to increase the miles you’re able to earn from spending. The travel perks you may see others using also come from these different and higher-tier cards.
You’ll also learn how to maximize your miles far beyond their standard value. We’ve been fortunate to book round-trip flights to Hawaii for just 15,000 miles and to New Zealand for 35,000 miles. Miles can be so valuable and delaying the start only limits your ability to explore distant and exotic destinations.
Start simple and keep on learning and growing. It’s amazing what you can do with travel hacking.
A great “hack” that involves points and no credit cards, is MyVegas Rewards. A reward system with all kinds of cool perks. Check out the Travel Hack You Didn’t Know you Needed.
*Before you ever open a credit card you must do your own research and understand how they work. Never carry a balance and never miss a payment. As amazing and beneficial as a credit card is, it can ruin your life if you aren’t smart and careful.