If you like to travel and want to do it for almost free, keep reading! Currently, one of the best credit cards for traveling for free has the best sign up bonus it has ever had!
I’ll elaborate…
We just got back from 12 days out in the Pacific Northwest. We flew into Seattle and traveled down the coast to San Francisco seeing amazing sights along the way. It was an epic trip, and I plan on blogging about it in detail later. Then, a week later, we flew down to Miami and spent 5 days exploring the Everglades and Key Largo. I had quite a few people ask me how we did so much traveling! Well, we used credit card points to cover the flights and all 16 nights in a hotel!
You should first read this post that I wrote 2 years ago when I first discovered travel hacking. It will explain most of this points stuff in detail.
Basically, if you can act responsibly and pay off your credit cards every month, credit cards aren’t bad and neither is having more than one open at a time. There are plenty of sites to read like 10xtravel or The Points Guy that talk about how this works, credit scores, etc, so I won’t go into it but do your own research!
The Chase Sapphire Preferred credit card is currently offering 60,000 points when you sign-up for the card and spend $4000 in the first 3 months of opening the card. If you just used the sign-up bonus for cashback, that would be $600 free! That’s crazy! However, as I mention in my previous post, if you transfer those points to Chase’s travel partners, you will get way more value out of those points! Let me explain.
We are a family of 6, and we often stay at Hyatt Places because they have occupancy for all of us. Hyatt Places typically charge 5k, 8k, or 12k points per night. So, with that signup bonus, you could potentially stay 12 nights in a Hyatt Place! Rooms typically cost between $120-$150 per night! That could be 12 nights for using $600 worth of points vs. paying low end $1500 for that many hotel rooms! That goes way farther than cashing it out for the $600. This can happen because Hyatt is a transfer partner with Chase. All you have to do is make a free account with World of Hyatt, then transfer points to them from Chase. It takes less than 5 minutes and is instant. Southwest and United are some other Chase transfer partners.
To be able to transfer Chase points to their travel partners, you have to have a Sapphire level card. The Sapphire Preferred is their entry level card, but it is still considered the best credit card for traveling. There is a $95 annual fee, but as you can see you can get so much value out of the points that come with the card that it more than covers the annual fee. This card also gets 2% cash back (points) on travel and 3% on restaurants. It gets 1% cash back (points) on everything else.
With this card, you can also book travel through the Chase Travel Portal. Your points go 1.25% instead of 1:1. I booked several hotels this way for our trip out to the Pacific Northwest when Hyatts weren’t available.
We have been to so many places in the last two years with the help of points. I’m so thankful for all the memories and experiences we’ve had together as a family. We might not have been able to travel as much without maximizing our points! Flying with 6 people is expensive! So, I wanted to share this awesomeness with the 5 people who might read this blog (haha).
The link to the card is my referral link. You’ll get the same amount of points you would if you just went through the Chase site, but I’ll get some too…just wanted to be upfront about that. However, I would still recommend this card with its unprecedented sign-up bonus which truly makes it the best credit card for traveling for free even without a referral link! This is too good to not share!
Here is a picture of us in May at Crater Lake National Park. It’s truly one of the most stunningly beautiful places I’ve ever been. I’m thankful that we could use points to make our flights and hotels free so that we could do all the activities and other things we did possible!
Leave comments or email me if you have questions! Happy travels! I’m currently planning a trip to Boston for May using points for flights and hotels again! Since I won’t have to pay for flights or hotels, this will allow us to spend our money on fun activities like whale tours, personal guide for the Freedom Trail, Boston Tea Party Museum, Plimoth Plantation, and more!