how our family travels for FREE (+ yours can too!)

*** See updated blog post here - Travel Hacking 2.0 ***

Over the years our little family has been on some insane trips, thanks to free flights redeemed with Aeroplan points.

Last summer we went to Vienna and Bern, and this summer we are planning to visit Japan, and as always, the flights will be paid for by points!

Over the years, people have asked us for info on how we pull this off. So I asked Brad if he would write down some step-by-step instructions to make it as easy as possible to replicate! Feel free to ask any questions below and Brad will reply to your comments as he has time. Happy travels!

Hi everyone, Brad here. The process is actually pretty simple. It involves applying for certain credit cards which offer disproportionately high amounts of Aeroplan miles as a sign-up bonus, redeeming the miles for free flights, and cancelling the cards.

(If you don't already have an Aeroplan membership you can get one here (it's free).

FIRST THINGS FIRST

The first thing to do is to check your credit score. Every credit card application you make lowers your score by about 5-7 points. Now, that’s out of a total of 900 possible points, so it’s not a huge number, but it’s still something to keep in mind.

Some other quick thoughts on credit for those interested:

• A score represents a moment in time and can change based on your behaviour.
• Missed or late payments or lots of maxed out credit accounts will lower your score.
• The best way to increase your score is to pay back debts on time and consistently.
• Scores typically range from 400 to 900, and 'good' scores are usually 660 and higher; anything over 750 is considered 'excellent'. So whether it’s 750 or 850 doesn’t really make a difference. For an institution like a bank or credit union looking at your credit, anything over 725 is a no-brainer.
• If it might help allay your fears, I don't know how many credit cards I've applied for in the past few years, and Equifax tells me my score is 759.

The credit bureaus don’t make it easy to find, but here's a great way to get your credit score for free:

www.borrowell.com/free-credit-score

When you get your report, make sure all the information is accurate. If your report shows loans or credit cards that you didn’t apply for, someone may have used your identity to apply for credit or the credit bureau may have incorrect information about your credit use. Either way, you’ll want to tell the credit bureau about the discrepancy immediately.

Ok, let's get started!

STEP 1 - GETTING YOUR POINTS

In order to rack up the necessary points for your dream trip, you have to follow these steps:

1. Apply for a given card
2. Meet the minimum spending requirements for the card
3. Wait for the points to appear in your account (can be up to 6 weeks)
4. Cancel the card before the annual fee kicks in (these cards have annual fees of anywhere from $150 to $250 - the first year is free and is the key to this whole plan so do not forget to cancel them!)

These steps will lead you through applying for various American Express credit cards, whose points are transferable 1:1 to Aeroplan.

So when I refer to 'points' throughout this, I'm referring to either Aeroplan points or Amex points, since they are essentially the same with the same value.


Links to Credit Cards to Apply For:

Ok, start dreaming: where do you want to go? Figure out how many points you'll need, and then apply for the cards to make it happen.

Anywhere in North America: 25,000 points
Mexico: 40,000 points
Hawaii: 45,000 points
Europe: 60,000 points

All for round-trip flights!

(You can see the whole award chart here.)

Now let's take the first step: applying for cards!

Note: if you decide to sign up for a card, use the links below! You get 10,000 extra points per card for doing so!


AMERICAN EXPRESS BUSINESS GOLD REWARDS CARD – 30,000 points (40,000 if you use this link!)

• Annual fee waived for the first year!
• This is a great offer - the highest I've ever seen for a free card
• Here's what you need to know: 
• You need to include a business name - but it doesn't need to be an officially registered business. It can be anything that allows you to make money - even if it's not currently doing so.
• For example, I have sold the odd used book on Amazon. So I used my Amazon selling name as my "business" name and it worked perfectly. An eBay seller account would work as well. Have a blog? You can use that. It's really flexible.
• You also get 1 point per dollar spent on the card, so after meeting the minimum spending requirement (more on that below), you'll have 45,000 points, enough for Hawaii!

Tip #1 – Take a shortcut

If you’re in a hurry, this card offers 60,000 points, which is a huge amount – enough for a round-trip flight to anywhere in Western Europe:

AMERICAN EXPRESS PLATINUM CARD - 50,000 points (60,000 if you use this link!)

The $699 annual fee is obviously insane, but the card includes a yearly $200 travel credit, usable any way you like. So if you use the credit twice (once upon receiving the card, and once a year later just before cancelling), you are effectively reducing the annual fee to $299.

Which is admittedly still a good chunk of change. But for 60,000 points it’s actually not bad at all.

This card also has the advantage of having a much lower minimum spending requirement (only $3,000).


Tip #2 – Rinse, repeat

Here’s another lucrative secret: after cancelling the card, believe it or not, six to eight months later you can reapply for the exact same card and still receive the bonus points. (I’ve heard of people successfully reapplying after as little as two months, but that’s a little hardcore even for me.)

I’m on my 4th or 5th time through some of these cards and much to my amazement, it just keeps working!

STEP 2 - MEETING THE SPENDING REQUIREMENT

You'll notice that these cards require that you use them to spend a certain amount of money before they'll dish out the points: $3000 to $5000 in three months.

Which is definitely no small amount. If you're wondering how to hit this minimum spending requirement, here's some ideas:

• This is obvious, but put everything you can on your credit cards. Sometimes people seem reluctant to do this, but as long as you pay your bills promptly, it’s a no-brainer.
• Some businesses won't take Amex, but almost everything online will: Paypal, Airbnb, Amazon, etc.
• Donations: if you give monthly to an organization, an option is to cancel the donations for a few months and simply make a one-time donation. So you cancel your $100/month donation for 6 months and make a $600 donation. (But don’t forget to restart the monthly donations after!)
• Offer to put big purchases for a group on your card. A friend of ours put some big costs for his brother's wedding on his card, his brother paid him back, and he was able to hit his minimum spend in one shot!
• A brand new and very interesting option is using PayTM: they enable you to use an Amex card to pay your bills - even your property tax bills! They charge a 2% fee, which is perfectly balanced out by the points you get for using the card. I've been doing this for a few months and it works great!
• Use promo code PTM9935132 to get a $10 bonus after paying your first bill of $50 or more!

Converting Your Points

Since you’re working towards an Aeroplan flight reward, you need to convert your American Express points to Aeroplan miles (they transfer 1:1). Thankfully, this is super easy. Go to the Rewards section after you log in to Amex, and find the link for "Rewards", and then “Transfer my points.”

The conversion from Amex points (called Membership Rewards points) to Aeroplan is instantaneous – however, you must first register your Aeroplan account, and that can take a few days. So plan accordingly!

STEP 3 - SPENDING YOUR POINTS

Now here’s the fun part: booking your flight!

But wait. You’ve probably heard about the dreaded taxes that accompany a reward flight booking. It’s true. And really, it’s ridiculous that a “free” flight isn’t actually free. In particular, there is often a “fuel surcharge” levied which can be $500-$600 alone. So the fees and taxes can amount to almost the full price of the actual flight! Which would mean this was all a colossal waste of time.

But I learned of an ingenious workaround: different airlines charge different levels of fees and taxes.

And some airlines charge very little! Want to know which ones? Here is a list of some of the airlines that you can book with your Aeroplan points in order to avoid the most obscene of the reward flight surcharges:

• United
• Swiss
• Brussels Airlines
• Croatia Airlines
• Egypt Air
• Aegean Air (for Greece!)
• Air China
• Scandinavian Airlines
• Air New Zealand
• Turkish Airlines
• Ethiopian Airlines
• LOT Polish Airlines

We paid about $150 in taxes for each of our round trip flights to Copenhagen and Amsterdam. Considering those flights were supposed to cost over $1200 each, I’ve never paid $150 with a bigger smile on my face.

There are two ways to redeem your Aeroplan points for a flight:

1. Online through your Aeroplan account page
2. Over the phone with an Aeroplan agent

Most of the time, you should be able to find your preferred flight on the Aeroplan website. But sometimes you may need to call Aeroplan to book it. (Note that they charge $35 for this. Which is why it’s always preferable to find it on Aeroplan’s website if you can. But if you’re doing a convoluted routing, it’s well worth the charge.)

STEP 4 - PROFIT!

That's it! A few more tricks to mention...

Adding a stopover

You know how when you’re flying you often have a stopover in some random airport for a bunch of hours? Wouldn't it be cool if instead of a random airport it could be a place you actually wanted to visit? And instead of 4 hours, you had a week? Well, a little known fact is that you can intentionally add a stopover your trip.

Different airlines have different policies, but generally, you can add a stopover on both your outbound and inbound flights. So essentially, you are getting completely FREE flights to new destinations.

We were limited by vacation time constraints, so we only added one, but here’s how we did it:

Outgoing flight: YUL-IAD-CPH
Return flight: CPH-AMS-ORD-YUL

So on our return flight, technically we are flying Copenhagen to Montreal. But we forced a stopover in Amsterdam...which lasted 8 days. After 8 days, our return voyage resumed, and we flew to Chicago (mandatory stopover because there’s no AMS to YUL direct) en route to Montreal.

This is probably one of the coolest tricks out there. If you have the time, and if your destinations are considered ‘valid’ (in other words, you can’t fly Toronto to Belfast with a Shanghai stopover, as it exceeds the 'Maximum Permitted Mileage') you can almost literally fly around the world for no additional cost.

Know Your Perks

On top of everything else, these credit cards come with some really cool perks. Things like lounge access, free travel health insurance, trip cancellation insurance, and, my personal favorite: delayed baggage insurance ($1000 spending spree if your bag is delayed for more than 6 hours! This happened to Em and I once and we got to spend $1000 each in Casablanca!)

Timeline

One last helpful bit of info would probably be: how much time does this all take? How far out do I need to start?

Amazingly, finding flight availability was not a problem at all. If you’ve ever heard that flight rewards need to be booked a year in advance, that’s totally bogus. Airlines constantly release new availability depending on sales and route popularity, so if your desired routing is not available, just check back the next day.

Here’s an example from a previous trip:

Jan 2015: applied for the cards
Early Feb 2015: started putting money on the cards to hit the minimum spend requirements
Early Apr 2015: hit the minimum spends
Early May 2015: all points received – began searching for flights
May 17 2015: booked the flights (Aug 10 departure)

So really, it wasn’t a painfully long process. If you’re the cautious type, you can always just give yourself more time and start earlier.

Note: Amex says it can take up to 8 weeks to credit your account with your points. So plan accordingly. But if you get into a tight spot (like I did) you can ask them to please pretty please expedite the process. They did for me.

Thanks Brad! I hope this was helpful to you guys! We love traveling and aim to go somewhere new every year, but who has the budget for that? Not us...without these crazy tricks. The cost of an average European vacation for us is akin to going to South Carolina or Florida for a week and a half... except we are in Europe for 2-3 weeks! When flights are free and you cook most of your own meals, and if you stick to cities, negating the need for a rental car, your European Once-In-A-Lifetime Vacation is actually quite realistic.

Congratulations if you made it through this textbook of a blog post! I know it's long, but this info is really helpful and has allowed our family to have countless priceless experiences, so I wanted to share :)

Thanks again for using the links in this post, and don't forget to mention any questions for Brad in the comments below. Bon voyage!