Hello! Today, I have a great guest post to share from Lyn Mettler. Lyn is sharing how her family of 4 flies for free. Enjoy.
My family just got back from Kauai.
This is our second spring break in a row flying free to Hawaii. Last year, we scored an amazing deal to fly all 4 of us to Maui, and this year, we decided to return to check out the “Garden Isle” of Kauai.
But that’s only one of 4 trips we’ve taken by plane in the last 7 months. Add to the list Miami, Universal Studios Orlando and Disney World.
This is how my family rolls these days. We’ve been flying all 4 of us free 6 times a year since I learned about travel rewards back in 2015.
Back then, air travel was not even something I considered. Pay to fly 4 of us anywhere? Not in the budget, because there was no money to spare on anything besides bills.
If we got lucky, my in-laws would pay for us to meet them at Disney World every few years, and a couple times, my husband and I dipped into our credit cards to take a couples’ trip to a condo my family owned in Colorado (so no hotel expense!). Otherwise, no travel for my family.
But everything changed in 2015.
As a longtime travel writer for outlets like US News & World Report, the TODAY Show and USA Today’s 10Best, I frequently interviewed travel experts, and one day I was pitched a story about a couple who was flying around the world FREE using frequent flyer miles, but they weren’t earning their miles by flying. This blew my mind, because I thought to earn “frequent” flyer miles, you had to frequently fly, right? This is how my dad, a longtime business traveler, earned his miles, at least.
But no. They were earning travel rewards in other ways, never paying for a flight AT ALL. [Read more…]