Travel like a millionaire—without spending like one
A clear, practical intro to travel hacking: what cards to open, how to earn points, and why it matters
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’re unfamiliar with the term travel hacking (also called points hacking), it refers to the process of earning and redeeming credit card points for travel. My husband and I have been doing this for a few years now, and we’ve been able to make it more than worth our while: we’ve flown across the globe in one of the top business class products and stayed in bucket list hotels we used to only dream of. How? We spend our money as we normally would, except we spend that money on credit cards that allow us to earn points that we can redeem to subsidize our travel costs.
With travel hacking, you can—quite literally—open up an entire world of opportunities. But I also know that, despite how great all of this sounds, travel hacking can still be hugely overwhelming. My goal is to empower you to feel like you can do it too! I’m working on a series of guides that break down the process and show you, step-by-step, how we’re earning our points and redeeming them for actual trips.
For this first issue, I’ll be breaking down the basics of credit cards: when to sign up, which cards to open, and how to spend on them.
The reality of using credit cards
💳 But first, an absolutely ESSENTIAL disclaimer: travel hacking requires a good credit score and strong financial discipline. If you think opening credit cards might encourage you to spend outside your means—and I say this with absolutely NO judgment—consider holding off until you feel more confident in your money habits. Similarly, don’t start travel hacking until you’ve fully paid off any credit card debt you may currently have. For context: I have upwards of 10 credit cards open between my personal and business accounts, but a) I do not have any credit card debt, b) I do not spend on all of them and c) I never carry a balance or pay interest on any cards.
When I see people share their success with travel hacking, a common disgruntled response goes something like, “This isn’t actually possible without spending an ungodly amount of money.” So, the first thing that’s crucial to understand is that the whole point of this process is NOT to spend MORE money. It is to maximize the money you’re already spending. If you’re not using credit cards to achieve this, you’re leaving👏 money👏 on the table! 👏
What does this actually mean, though? Take this example: You are looking to book a flight that’s going to cost you $250. You have the cash in your account, so you could use a debit card to make the purchase. But if you used an AmEx Platinum card instead, for example, you’d also be earning 5 points per dollar—that’s 1,250 points. You already have the cash, so you can immediately pay off the $250 transaction you just put on the credit card. In terms of spending money, there’s no difference. But in terms of maximizing your money, you just earned points that you can spend like cash. So really, you just made money by choosing to use a credit card instead of a debit card. See the difference?
Now, what the above disgruntled sentiment does get right is that you can’t just open one credit card, put all of your typical spending on it, and expect to earn enough points for a year’s worth of luxury travel. In this case, you would have to spend an ungodly amount of money—and that’s not at all what we’re here to do. We’re trying to get the maximum number of points with the minimum amount of effort.
And that’s where welcome offers, aka sign-up bonuses, are absolutely crucial.
Sign-up bonuses are the key to successful travel hacking!