How to have a FREE honeymoon after your wedding?
Hi, my name is Yani and I am a wedding photographer based in Ontario, Canada, and I am also a traveller. Because I love traveling so much and for me to be able to afford it, I had to learn how to find cheap flights or how to get free flights through travel hacking. What I’m about to share with you is 100% legal and it is not a pyramid scheme. This is how I was able to travel for a year for $1,000 only spent on flights and that’s with over 9 countries, 26 cities… something, I can’t exactly remember. You can checkout my personal social medias, TikTok and Instagram, @yanimacute, if you want to see all my travel adventures.
Before you start planning your wedding or before you start paying for things for your wedding, I think you should really read this blog first! If you want to schedule a call with me to clarify things, on how to really do this, schedule a call with me here: email me.
Travel Hacking
Being a fan of social media, I spend a lot of my time on YouTube and many other social media platforms. As a traveler, I have a lot of travel youtubers in my timeline. One day, I saw a video on my timeline titled “Travel For Free”. I clicked it, obviously, and that’s when I started my travel hacking journey right then and there.
How To Get a Free Honeymoon?
So I am not going to sugar-coat this blog any further. Basically, to pay zero dollars for flight, and to pay zero dollars for your hotels, you have to collect travel points through travel credit cards and then use those travel points to pay for your flights and hotels instead of using your own cash.
Step 1:
You want to sign up for a travel credit card but not just any travel credit card. You want to look for travel credit cards that will allow you to collect travel points for major airlines, such as, Air Canada, Lufthansa, Eva Air, etc… (These airlines are member of the Star Alliance, more on alliances later). In order to collect travel points, you need to use your travel credit card to pay for things. A dollar value is equivalent to a travel point. But keep reading and I’ll tell you how to collect travel points faster.
Step 2:
You need to know the airline alliances. There are three major airline alliances: You have Star Alliance, Oneworld and SkyTeam. Each alliance has airlines as their members. For example, Star Alliance has 26 members and Air Canada is a member of Star Alliance. It is important to know the alliances so you can centralize your travel points collection to one airline (highly recommended). For example, if you start collecting travel points for Air Canada, continue collecting points only in that airline so you can collect and use your travel points faster. Lastly, you can also use your travel points to book flights with other airlines if they are from the same alliance. For example, if you collected points with Air Canada, you can use your Air Canada travel points to book flights with Lufthansa, Eva Air, etc. because they are all from the same alliance which is Star Alliance.
Step 3:
Now that you found a credit card and you decided which airline to collect and centralize your travel points in, it’s time to use your travel credit card in paying for your wedding expenses, vendors, online purchases and etc.
How to collect more travel points 10x faster?
Most travel credit card ‘sign-up bonus’ collection requirement looks like this:
“Spend $1,500 in the first 3-months and you will receive 35,000 travel points right away…” Something like that. Of course the spending value and the travel points acquired are different in each credit card. This huge travel point value that you can collect right away is called your “sign-up bonus”. Spend this much by this time, you’ll receive this 35,000 ‘sign up bonus’… is basically what they are saying.
After you receive the huge sign up bonus amount, you will be collecting 1 point per 1 dollar value onwards. Sometimes, not always, it looks like this:
travel expense would be $1 = 2 travel points,
grocery expense would be $1 = 1 travel points.
The values above would depend on each credit card
Here’s the secret…
After you receive the huge sign up bonus travel points, your travel credit card is now pretty much useless. You’ll be collecting $1 = 1 travel point, and it will take you a long time to collect enough points to pay for your flights and hotel.
What you can do is look for another travel credit card. This is why it is important to plan your wedding 1 year in advance so you have enough time to be signing up for many travel credit cards. I signed up to at least 6 travel credit cards within 2 years to be able to afford to travel for a year for $1,000 only spent on flights and hotels. You want to spread it out a bit so you don’t hurt your credit score that much.
Remember, always pay your credit card bill in FULL every month so you don’t hurt your credit score. This will also bump your credit score up if you are diligent in paying your credit cards off.
How to book flights for $0 using your travel points…
So now, you collected thousands of travel points, hopefully. You can now book flights for free through the airline’s website.
Here’s another secret…
You can book multiple flights for the price of one (travel points). For example, with Air Canada, if you book a flight using your travel points from Toronto - Milan, you are eligible for a one FREE stop over somewhere in between, maybe you want to see, Lisbon, London, or Paris.
Again, I understand this is a very complex topic, if you want to book a call, email me. Happy travel hacking!