How were we able to do that? Answer: our AAdvantage mileage program.
When our trip was in the barest beginnings of planning, I stumbled upon this website, called Help Me Travel Cheap.com. The author, Craig Ford, flies hundreds of miles each year with his family while paying only taxes as costs. Pennies, compared to the cost of full flights.
I read through his basic tutorial, subscribed to the email list, and downloaded the free ebook, "How to Travel Anywhere in the World for Next to Nothing." The basic premise is this: choose a mileage program, choose a credit card that awards miles for signup + $x spending in the first x months, sign up, spend the money and pay off the credit card in full each month, and watch the miles roll in.
We chose AAdvantage, the American Airlines program. Its airline partners include Japan Airlines, British Airways (who we flew with on the way to Europe), Hawaiian Air, Alaskan Air, and more. AAdvantage has a clear and easy rewards chart outlining peak and off-peak travel times, there are many flights available and the selection is easy, and best of all, you can do one-way flights. We planned on flying in to Italy, but we didn't know where we would fly home from, so one-way flights were crucial.
We both signed up for two Citi cards. Each card gave 45,000 miles for signup plus spending $750 in the first five months. At first, we thought it might be difficult to spend the required amount to get the miles. But, life happened: Devlin had car repairs for his van, we paid with the cards for all our grocery bills, electric and garbage bills. And so, we got the miles by paying for otherwise normal expenditures.
Our one-way flight from Eugene, Oregon to Munich, Germany cost us $330 each. It was more expensive because we flew with AAdvantage's partner airline British Airways, which routes all of its flights through London. Their taxes were a bit higher. However, our return flight from Fukuoka, Japan to Redmond, Oregon, cost only $30 each in taxes! A major pay-off in our trip savings.
We can't recommend this method of travel highly enough. Tickets to Europe or Japan, full-price, are usually at least $1,000 per person. If you plan your approach to using this system and pay off the credit cards in full each month to avoid paying interest, this system works brilliantly for cutting the cost of travel.
So go forth and make those dream travel plans a reality!
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| AAdvantage's airline partners |
Tamara,
ReplyDeleteThanks so much for your blog post. It's exciting to hear about the ways people are able to use miles to take trips they otherwise couldn't afford.
All the best.