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Want to travel more with your family without breaking the budget? Let me tell you about the strategy that has worked for us.
We’re a family of four – two teachers and two teens. We don’t focus on finding completely free travel – we just try to make our travel dollars go as far as possible.
Our Strategy
Use points and miles to purchase airline tickets
We try to spend as little as possible on airline tickets in order to save our travel funds for activities and restaurant meals during our trip. We use credit card points and airline miles earned through credit card sign-up bonuses and our everyday spending to book plane tickets.
We started with the Chase Sapphire Preferred card, then moved on to other programs like United, American Express Membership Rewards, and Aadvantage.
I always keep an eye on which credit cards are offering increased sign-up bonuses. We apply for new cards when we spot a great deal, typically every 3-6 months.
Keep in mind that many cards allow you to cancel after a year and reapply either two or four years later. The Barclays Aadvantage Aviator lets you receive a new bonus on the card 24 months after the last one.
Plan and book far ahead.
I typically have our summer travel planned by the previous October. Although it’s possible to find award ticket deals at any time, I’ve had the best luck when searching well ahead of the intended trip.
Book all flights one-way.
This allows us to use different programs for each direction of flight. For example, we traveled to Peru this summer. I found tickets using Aadvantage miles for 15k miles each, plus $20 in taxes and fees from Cedar Rapids, Iowa to Lima. I used the sign up bonus from one Barclays Aadvantage Aviator card to purchase them.
This means our total expense for four one-way tickets from Iowa to Lima was $179 ($99 annual fee for the credit card plus $80 total in taxes for four people), or around $45 each.
For the flight home, I transferred Ultimate Rewards to Virgin Atlantic to book Delta flights from Lima. Each ticket cost 22,500 miles and $48 in taxes and fees. Including the cost of the credit card’s annual fee, the tickets came out to around $71/each ($95 annual fee, $48 taxes and fees/each).
To purchase a round-trip ticket from Iowa to Peru in July costs between $700–900 depending on dates. We were able to book our flights for a total of $116 per person, including the cost of the credit card’s annual fees.
Again – traveling with points and miles is not completely free, but it does significantly reduce the cost of a major trip.
Be flexible about destinations and dates
When choosing a travel destination, we let the destination choose us. What that means is we have a variety of different locations we’d be interested in traveling to. The availability of flights with points is the deciding factor in which one we choose.
I often hear from people who have an entire trip planned for specific dates, then want my help to find flights with points. Don’t do this! It can be next to impossible to find a good points flight when you have no flexibility with your dates or destination. Book the flights first, and then start planning.
Prioritize affordable locations
We try to choose destinations where the dollar stretches as far as possible. For example, we spent time in Budapest where a typical meal in a mid-range restaurant costs around $8. Our Airbnb was comfortable, spacious, well-located and only cost $60/night. Groceries were significantly less expensive than in the US.
Check out these current Budapest prices.
There are so many incredible locations that are very affordable in comparison to the USA. Some of our favorites have been in Central Europe and Central America, specifically Czechia, Hungary, Bosnia, Montenegro, and Guatemala.
Western Europe can be expensive, but it’s not out of reach. For example, Paris is quite expensive with family sized holiday apartments costing at least $250-400/night. Southern France is much more affordable with plenty to see. We enjoyed Toulouse in particular.
Spain is another western European location that’s more affordable than the US. Using points and miles, you can plan a ten day trip for two to Spain for under $2,000 including all flights, lodging, and food.
Of course, some bucket list locations are expensive and you want to go anyway! We’ve taken the kids to London, New York City, Seattle, and a few other expensive places. In this case, I recommend using points to book lodging. For example, we stayed at the Hyatt Place Seattle in adjoining rooms with Ultimate Rewards points transferred to Hyatt.
Stay in apartments and prepare two meals a day in the kitchen.
We almost always stay in an Airbnb, Vrbo, or Booking.com apartment. This works for our family for a number of reasons.
Apartments make it easier to spend time together.
It’s easier to hang out and process the day when there’s a living room. I love sitting around in a random living room talking about what we saw or did that day. When we stay in hotel rooms, even when they’re adjoining, we tend to separate at the end of the day. I strongly prefer the apartment for this reason.
Apartments make it easy to cook at home.
We try to prepare two of our three meals in the apartment’s kitchen. This saves money on restaurant meals, while still allowing us to try the local cuisine each day.
Grocery shopping in a different country is a fun cultural experience too. In Split, Croatia, we bought groceries in a market built into Diocletian’s Palace. There were Roman columns in the grocery store!
Apartments make it easier to do laundry.
When we travel, each person brings one backpack and one carry-on suitcase. This helps us avoid issues related to lost bags and it also helps us sail through customs when connections are tight.
Of course, this means that we run out of clean clothes after a while! The simple solution is to book apartments with laundry. In Europe, it’s rare to find dryers, but many apartments provide washers. There is typically some kind of drying rack available.
Traveling light makes multi-country itineraries easier. I would much rather hop on a train with a carry-on suitcase, than wrangle multiple large bags.
Final thoughts
These are the tips that have helped us take our kids on multiple domestic and international trips. They work well for our family size, but can also work for a solo traveler or couple. The more you travel, the more you’ll develop your own style and find the right fit for you!