2 Week European Vacation for $470

[Chareth Cutestory]

I’ve never posted anything, but feel pretty awesome about the trip I just went on, so I thought I should share it.

Long story short: my wife and I went on a 2 week trip to Barcelona and Malta. All travel and accommodations cost us $470. We did this, of course, through credit card rewards.

If you want to know the long story:
3 years ago we went on a month long honeymoon to Paris, Florence, and Malta. This, we paid for out of pocket. We had a very small wedding and asked for cash instead of presents because we’re cheap bastards. So the wedding “gifts” paid for our trip. However, during the trip we used the Barclay Arrival card and earned $675 in travel points.

After the trip I didn’t even think about the card. I only used it every now and then to keep it active, so it sat largely unused for a year and a half. Then during one boring day at work, after making the final payment on our $40,000 of private college loans (HELL YES) I realized that just with the Barclay rewards alone, we almost have 2 round trip tickets to London (NorwegianAir has some really cheap flights). So that is when my wife and I started the journey to accumulate as many reward points as possible and go back to Europe.

I read up on credit churning, how to do it without it hurting your credit score, and went at it. Over the next year and a half we took out three more credit cards: another Barclay Arrival Card, and two CapitalOne Venture Cards. Each card gives a signup bonus after you spend $3,000 in 3 months. I budget for $2,800/month, so we didn’t spend anything outside of what we usually spend, and paid every card off in full each month. Between the 4 cards we racked up $2,193 in free travel.

Here is the breakdown:

2 Round-trip tickets from Boston to London: $811 (Paid $136 after points)

2 Tickets from London to Malta: $161.44 (Paid $0 after points)

AirBnb in Malta: $725 (Paid $263 after points))

2 Tickets from Malta to Barcelona: $168.75 (Paid $0 after points)

AirBnb in Barcelona: $549 (Paid $71 after points)

2 Tickets from Barcelona to London: 175.69 (Paid $0 after points)


The wild thing is, we could have probably done t ose to $0 if we decided to stay in really dumpy Airbnb’s. Still, $470 for all of that it pretty great. I honestly can’t believe it worked. I kept thinking something was going to go wrong, they’d revoke my points, or there would be an issue with an airline... but nope. It worked flawlessly -- and it was really easy. It almost felt illegal.

Anyway, that’s the story. Not sure if it goes against the principles of this site, but it was pretty damn awesome.

[BrightFIRE]

Nicely done! Travel hacking is pretty awesome. Last Thanksgiving, we took an 11 day trip to Paris, France and Munich, Germany to visit the Christmas markets using mostly airline/hotel points. My FIL was very dramatic, and asked, "How on earth can you afford to travel so much?" Uh, we only had to pay for 1 hotel night ($65), train tickets and meals, that's how. (I've explained before, he just doesn't listen.)

Next April, we're going to spend 10 days in Nice, France, on the Riviera using airline miles and hotel points again. We value travel and want to continue it while we work towards FIRE and travel hacking is a way to keep it affordable.

[FireHiker]

Nicely done! We do very light travel hacking in our household, but we're looking to up our game. I love reading success stories!

[Chareth Cutestory]

Thanks! Because I wanted to spend very little out of my own pocket, the whole "churning" process took about 1.5 years.. but in the end it was totally worth it.

Once I systematically cancel the annual fee cards, I plan on moving onto the Chase Sapphire Preferred to fund our next trips.

[Slee_stack]

Impressive if that includes all your food, activities, and indicentals.

We spent right about $2000 all said and done on our two week trip earlier this year thru Amsterdam, Brussels, Dublin, and Northern Ireland.

It included all First/Business Class RT travel for the two of us, half of our stays at hoity-toity 4star+ hotels (half at average ones), a car rental for the week in Ireland, all of our activities, and all our meals (eating out) and drinks.  The biggest single cost was the taxes on the airplane tix (about $400).  I suppose I could have leveraged points for all of our out of pocket costs, but that's extremely poor redemption value.

The trip was luxurious, wasteful, and tons 'o fun.  We did get a good amount of hiking/walking in so it wasn't necessarily 'sedantary'.  It was also well within our budget. 

We earn enough points to do something similar every other year.  Life is good.

Credit Cards can be absolutely wonderful.  Its the people with poor financial skills mis-using them that is the nightmare.

Sapphire Reserve 100k was the best thus far.  Picking up the Ink 80k when I clear 5/24 in a few weeks.

[Chareth Cutestory]

No, that was just for travel an accommodations.

Honestly, we went crazy while we were there. At least for us it was crazy. We went out to eat every single night. Ordered whatever we wanted. Multiple bottles of wine... whatever. We even had a personal driver in Malta, haha. SO UNNECESSARY, but so great. The damage from that was a little over $1,500.

This is definitely not normal for us, but after we paid off our private loans I just decided it's time to live it up..... for 2 weeks, then back to pinching pennies.

[BrendanJ45]

Chase Sapphire Preferred is good for the 1st year with the annual fee waived, but for most people the Chase Sapphire Reserve will be a better value in the long run. Assuming you spend >$300 on travel (include flights, ubers, hotels and a lot more) per year the annual fee is only $150 net. For the additional $55/year you get 1 point more on travel and dining, access to Priority Pass lounges when flying, $100 credit per 5 years for Global Entry, travel, lost baggage and trip delay insurance and the ability to use points for 1.5 cents per point in the Chase travel portal.

P.S. You can always get the Chase Sapphire Preferred for the 1st year for free and then switch to the Reserve after the first year.

[Chareth Cutestory]

Thanks for the info!

[ptobest]

That's really awesome! A few years back, I managed to have a trip from the US -> London -> Frankfurt and back for basically free, thanks to British Airways points & volunteering to be bumped to an alternate flight on the way back. A London -> Denver flight turned into a London -> Chicago -> Denver flight and an extremely long day, but well worth it for the approximately $600 they gave me to compensate for being willing to switch flights.

I'm hoping to do a trip to Japan & South Korea in about 2 years from now. Currently the Chase Sapphire Reserve is my only airline points card, need to start doing research soon on what others will help me and my +1 do the Asia trip as cheaply as possible.

[Not Your Monkey]

That is so bad ass!  I’m so happy for you.