How I earned 1 million+ credit card points in one year
And how I used them to book $25,000 worth of luxury travel (and still have half left)
This is the Window Seat Travel Hacking series, your guide to turning everyday spending into five-star hotel stays and lie-flat flights. The goal? Help you make the most of the money you’re already spending so you can book the luxury travel experiences you used to only dream about.
If you haven’t yet read my Travel Hacking 101 guide, start there.
In my first Travel Hacking guide, we covered the basics of credit cards—when to sign up, which cards to open, and how to spend on them—and sign-up bonuses (aka welcome offers). Now that you have a foundational understanding, we’ll dive in a bit deeper.
Read on for:
The exact strategy we used to earn over 1 million points in just one year, without spending more than we normally would
Real-life redemptions, including how we booked a $25K honeymoon for nearly free (business class seats + Park Hyatt hotels)
A breakdown of every card we opened, how many points we got, and what we’d do differently next time
How I earned over one million points in one year
Let’s take it back to late 2022. My now-husband and I had gotten engaged in the Spring and were planning a wedding abroad for early summer of the following year. We were also planning a honeymoon in Japan, so we planned the latter for late fall to give ourselves some breathing room between each big trip.
We had already started playing the points game in earnest at the start of the year; recently, we’d experienced our first taste of victory: booking roundtrip flights to the South of France for on our preferred airline, along with two nights in a suite in a 5-star hotel in St Tropez—all for $60 and a handful of points. Before this, I was skeptical of the practice. It all seemed either too good to be true or too complicated. But after our trip to France, where our flight and a fancy hotel were effectively free thanks to the money we had already spent on credit cards, I was converted to a true believer.
With our wedding and honeymoon on the horizon—two significant international trips—we put our heads (and credit card points) together and into overdrive.
From November 2022 through November 2023, we opened 11 credit cards and checking accounts between the two of us. We timed the opening of each so we were able to take advantage of better-than-average welcome offers.
Below is a comprehensive list of the accounts we opened and the bonus points we received after achieving the minimum spend: