I get a lot of questions all the time about what are my favorite credit cards and programs for travel hacking, and it is a lot for me to explain in a short amount of time. So to summary, we do what is called “earn and burn”
Every year the travel awards programs reset how many points you need to redeem for certain experiences, and with it comes “devaluation” – they make it harder for you to book existing flights and hotels and raise the number of points you need to do it. So, hanging on to points for longer than a year or two, means that your points lose value.
So, instead, the Save My Cents work backwards: determine your destination, find the sweet spot, find a bonus sign-up, and then get the bonus.
Determine your destination
We have a list of places that we dream to go to, and by and large, every year, we are able to do one international trip on our own without our kids. We are able to design it this way because my husband has a generous PTO policy, I’m a business owner so I determine my own hours, we have grandparents around for the children, and we try to travel during a school week so that the children are mostly in school. Some of the places still on our wish list include Iceland, Thailand / Vietnam (I’ve never been), Sicily.
Find the sweet spot
If you search “sweet spot points redemption + [location]” you’re bound to find some recent blogs or Reddit posts on this. Basically, a sweet spot redemption is a crack in the universe, a loophole, or in some cases, just a destination that for some reason, a travel program decides to price very cheaply. For many years we used this strategy to fly to Hawaii via Turkish Airlines. Turkish Airlines used to (not anymore), price flights by segments. And, they considered a US flight to Hawaii – which many American airlines price separately from flights within the 48 states – as the same as a flight within the 48 states. Which meant that for a mere 7,500 miles we could fly economy one-way. Therefore, the goal is to then accumulate points that can transfer to Turkish Airlines.
Find a bonus sign-up
Then, we go searching for lucrative sign-up credit card bonuses, which is called credit card churn (described in this blog post). Usually this means looking at the major points blogs (One Mile at a Time, The Points Guy, View From the Wing) and the FlyerTalk forum. These places would often feature some of the latest and greatest big point sign ups.
Earn the points
We typically time our bonus sign-ups with periods when we expect to spend a lot of money. For example, we tithe on our credit cards, so sometimes we might bunch up a few months of tithes at a time, and then tithe on a credit card all at once. In 2025 we did a lot of home renovations, so we put a lot of those renovations on credit cards (when it was possible and when the fees were not too high).
And then, once the bonuses / points hit, we start booking our travel – we often do this nearly a year in advance to nab those elusive lie-flat business class seats!
If you’d like to learn more about travel hacking, these are some of the IG accounts I recommend:
aunt.kara
geobreezetravel
maxmilespoints
worldtraveladventurers
letstraveltalk
