Introduction to Travel Hacking- using credit cards to your advantage

This post is just an introduction to the world of travel hacking, but please, only do this if you can be successful at using credits cards and paying off the full balance. Basically, you usually need at least 6 months ahead of your planned travel time to make this work for you.

Credit card competition is fierce in the US so many credit cards will have sign up bonuses to get you use their credit card instead of others. So here is how you save a ton of cash on your trip, find the credit card with the airline you would like to use or some other equally rewarding system. Usually, the minimum spending is $3000 in 3 months for you to get the sign up bonus. Spending $3000 in 3 months is not that difficult, especially if you are a family of 2 or more. My recommendation for meeting the spending criteria is putting everything that you pay on a regular basis on your credit card.
Pay close attention to these bills:
Cable/internet bill
Insurance
Cell phone bill
Health insurance
Water bill
Any recurring donations
Gasoline

For me, these already add up to more than half of the monthly requirement. The rest, usually, will get spent on food and other necessary expenses. These are things you pay each month anyway, so why not make your money work for you?

If you have a lot of time before you are planning to travel, you can pick two and have your accommodation and flight purchased with credit card rewards.

Pick a card that is with an airline that has a high sign up bonus (50,000 is a good number to start) and them or their code share goes where you want to go. Try to avoid the cards with very high annual fees, those fees are not usually waved the first year. For airlines, I like the American Airlines card, but you can look here for other easy comparisons. You have enough miles for a national round trip and it has rewards shopping and dining if you sign up through their website.
My favorite travel card is the Capital One venture card. The miles are easy to understand and the card has benefits for all kinds of travel, train, rental car, bus, hotels, hostels, airbnb, etc. I will talk more about this card in another post about not spending money on fees while traveling.

Here is an example of how to use these benefits.

You have now earned your free flight for your New York vacation by strategically planning your normal expenses and putting them on your credit card. In order to not have too many credit inquiries all at once, I recommend your partner to take out the next credit card although you can too, just give yourself a break after this as far as credit inquiries go. I recommend taking out one like the Capital One venture, that allows you to use the miles for other parts of your trip.

Don't use the miles right after you book your accommodation or tour. You can use these miles up to 90 days after your purchases, so why not continue racking up these miles while traveling and use even more?
After your travels you may have around $500 worth of miles to use up for account credit. My husband and I had time for our travel plans and I already had the venture card with enough miles for $500 of purchase erasing, so my husband took out his card and then we had more than $1000 off of our trip budget. I hope you can too.