An Example That I Cover My Whole Family’s Trip
During the Spring Break this year, I planned a short trip to several state parks in Austin, which are around a 3-hour distance from my home. So I decided to stay in hotels nearby for 2 nights. For 6 people in my family, I had to book 2 rooms per night. Although hotels nearby are not fancy 5-star hotels, they are still expensive as post-pandemic travel is booming. It looks like free travel is difficult, right?
Let’s see How much I need to pay if I use cash: it is easy to surpass $200 per night during the weekend:
This means I need to pay more than $400 per night for 2 rooms! Totally, just for the hotel, it will cost me $800! What an expensive 3-hour trip!!!
Luckily, I have points to redeem this hotel. It only cost 36,000 points per night.
Although I still need 72,000 points per night for a total of 144,000 points. It is easier for me to get the points, and I have other ways to reduce the requirement for points.
First, I have the IHG credit card(IHG is the parent group of Holiday inn, Holiday inn Express). It offers a huge signup bonus:
IHG Premier Credit Card: It has a 140,000 Sign up Bonus.
Second, this card also comes with an annual free night certificate, which could be used to redeem 1 night at any IHG hotel for free.
So If you have this card, you just need to use points to pay 10,8000 points and use the certificate to pay the remaining, then you will get the whole stay covered!
Best of best, this card will also rebate you 10% of the points you redeemed back, which means you will get 10800 points back after your finish the stay. The actual points you spend will be only 97200!
Sounds Crazy, right? I have more skills to tell you in the future to decrease the spending of points. Now I am just giving you this simple and straightforward example to let you know how easy to use credit card points to decrease travel spending! The less you spend on travel, the more you save for your cash flow!
