It has been 2 years since we first applied for a bonus credit card and since then we have used our points/miles on 3 cruises, trip to Hawaii, Italy, Greece, Montenegro, France and Croatia.

Today, I share how you can too, travel for Cheap as a beginner.

I am sharing my celebration with you, we are extremely happy and blessed how in such a short period we have been able to visit places we only dreamed about.. I hope this can be a motivation for you to start your travel journey and visiting those places you dream about as well.

Well, before I get started I want to share with you how many points/miles we earned during those 2 years, on this post you will see how it all started for us and where did we used those point in our travel.

Credit Card selected since June 11, 2015 up to June 11, 2017

Most of the credit cards selected on my first year the annual fee were waived while 2 of those credit cards the annual fee was $450 which it does seem a lot but with some good benefits it comes with that fee was totally worth it.

In a period of 2 years, we were able to reach almost a million miles with a combination of 10 credit cards,  I feel we were very conservative and kept a small number of credit cards between my husband and my self.

So, if we wanted to get a lot of miles within a 2 year period we could’ve tackled a lot more credit cards.  As you can see you can get a small number of credit cards in a 2 year period and still be able to reach almost a million miles.

How did it all begin…

I did a lot of reading, searching and cleaning our credit before selecting the credit cards we wanted to apply for.. I will be honest our credit wasn’t the best so we knew we might start not on the best foot, but luckily we did get approved and after a few months into this new journey we saw how our credit score just kept getting higher and higher.

Making sure we were both on the same page..

We knew we wanted to visit Hawaii and possibly Europe (this was our skeptical way of thinking), we saw how this was possible to so many people but I never met someone who could guarantee this would work.  So, after much reading and believing, I could make this happen now it was time to convince my husband..

Starting our Travel Journey (with one credit card at a time)…

Finally, we were both on the same page and now it was time to submit our first application, I had 2 credit cards in mind why? simply because you should have a back up in case the first one is denied.  Is always best to submit 2 credit card applications on the same day since your credit score won’t show any changes when submitting any applications.

That is what we did, we submitted our first application but we weren’t notified of our status so we had to call in that process they let us know a letter would be sent but they didn’t say if we got approved or not.

That felt like a step back so we decided to apply for our backup credit card and on that one, we were automatically approved.. So, now we are excited couldn’t believe we were approved even seeing that our credit score was far from excellent.

Total Surprise…

Now we are waiting for our card to get here, it felt like those 7 days were more like weeks.. but finally, we got it and knew it was time to charge all of our expenses (from utilities, mortgage, dining out, gasoline, etc..)

We have to be responsible so we needed to make sure we were following the envelope system but using our credit card, you don’t want to go back into debt, so be careful on what we charge our cc to was crucial.

Why hurry? well, each credit card offers an incentive/bonus but you must charge a total in most cases $3000 in a period of 3 months which is not bad at all.  So in order for us to receive our bonus we needed to make sure we reach the limit required..

But here is the surprised the very next day we receive a letter from our first credit card we applied for, inside it said we were approved and received our second credit card.

Now we needed to reach $6000 on both credit cards in 3 months. Luckily we did reach that sooner then we expected by then we received 50,000 bonus points on each credit card and 6000 extra for every dollar charge to the card.

First Year…(2015-2016)

We focus on understanding how each credit card work, researching which would be our best credit card to apply for next and making sure we reach the limit while paying everything before our balances were due..

During the year we set automatic payments on each credit card making sure they remained active just so we wouldn’t risk losing our points if that would be the case.

Once we had 6 credit cards by the end of 2015 we started to plan our anniversary trip to Hawaii (Hawaii Anniversary Trip – Day 1)    We also planned a Christmas cruise which some of our payment were made using points all for the year 2016.

June 2015 (started Travel Journey)
December 2015 (had 6 credit cards)
November 2016 (Hawaii Anniversary Trip)
December 2016 (Royal Caribbean Cruise)

Second Year…(2016-2017)

By the second year we were excited how our lives had changed, simply because we started applying for the right credit cards which made one of our dreams come true.. Now we are just as excited to apply for newer credit cards while planning for future trips.  We applied for 4 more credit cards which I share 2 post about them..

During this time we had accumulated many points and miles which we knew it was time to plan our next trip since our younger son was graduating from High School we wanted to take him on a trip as a present.

We hoped and planned for our oldest to be a part of this trip but since he’s in the Army in South Korea it would be very hard for him to get any leave time especially since his year was up, we are glad he made it to the graduation but we let him know that we are planning another trip with him for 2017.

May 2017 (Venice, Italy trip)

May-June 2017 (Norwegian Cruise Trip)

June 2017 (Quick France layover)

September 2017 (Family Birthday Cruise Trip)

Conclusion.

This was possible all using Miles & Points, of course, you could save even more if there wasn’t a cruise involve and instead you book your trip staying at hotels using your points.  In addition, if we both applied for the same credit cards our trip could have been a lot less out of pocket… But overall we save more than $10,000 on the trips we have taken since we started our TRAVEL JOURNEY

      

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