Free Travel Update

[Edit: I've moved! If you're interested in up-to-date info on free travel, check out Free Travel in Your Twenties]

It's been five months since I left off my Free Travel series... Seems like a good time for an update!

I'll be making several assumptions in order to keep things as simple as possible. The first is to split points into two groups - hotel points and airline miles. That's because to me on average an airline mile (1.3 cents each) is worth about twice as much as a hotel point (0.6 cents each). So here's the breakdown:

Total Points:

Hotel - 239,000 ($1,434)
Airline - 163,000 ($2,119)

Again, these are drastically over-simplified numbers, and are my own personal values. There are lots of ways to value the points - the most expensive redemption possible, the amount of money I would've paid otherwise, the cost to replace the points, etc. Plus I threw all the programs together - this doesn't work in real life, as you can't redeem until you have enough points in one program! Still, they provide a good snapshot. I'm hoping to have something coming up on using the points, but first some info on how I earned them!


Pre-Game:

Hotel - 0
Airline - 27,000

This is what I had before deciding to turn free travel into a hobby. Having flown somewhat regularly for my job, Delta was the only airline I felt I flew often enough to care about the miles. Even so, that 27,000 came from three years of flying!

Credit Card Bonuses:

Hotel - 80,000
Airline - 50,000

I've signed up for two credit cards since I started this hobby seven months ago. The Chase Sapphire Preferred technically gives 50,000 Ultimate Reward points, but I'll group them in the airline points for now. The Priority Club (Holiday Inn and related hotels) Visa came with 80,000 points. My credit score dropped 10 points initially and should fully recover in the next six months.

Credit Card Spending:

Hotel - 0
Airline - 40,000

The Priority Club Visa is only used for Holiday Inn expenses, since it gets extra bonuses there. I got it because of the sign-up bonus, and because it comes with Platinum status at their hotels, which I stay at most often when traveling. That means all our spending has gone on the Sapphire Preferred. 1 point per $1 spent gave 25,000 points. $25k on a credit card in six months sounds like a lot of spending, right?! We had a bit of help - more than half of that came from paying rent with a credit card (via Amazon Payments) and work-related reimbursable expenses. Our card also gives bonus points - 2 points per dollar for dining and travel, resulting in another 8,000 points. The final 7,000 came from shopping through the Ultimate Rewards portal shown in an earlier post.

Actual Travel:

Hotel - 125,000
Airline - 25,000

For hotels, I earned 15,000 points in normal stays (somewhere around eight nights over three trips), and 110,000 points from bonus offers - that's huge! I managed to score (twice!) on a stay once/get 50,000 offer (now expired)! Airlines were similar - roughly half from normal flying and half from registering for bonuses.

Everything Else:

Hotel - 34,000
Airline - 21,000

This category is basically everything else - free bonuses, Liking Facebook pages, surveys, Foursquare check-ins, etc. Of all the categories, this took the most amount of time by far, especially given the low payback! But, like most free things, you're simply replacing your money with your time.



Results:

I'll be doing a bit more analysis in a future post, but here's the basic breakdown of my roughly $3,553 in free travel I've accumulated:

1. Actual Travel (27%)
2. Credit Card Bonus (26%)
3. Everything Else (11%)
4. Credit Card Spend (10%)
5. Pre-Game (7%)


There you have it! Five months of being intentional has resulted in more than $3,000 in free travel. More on the breakdown to come, as well as how I'll be refining my strategy going forward!