How it all began

They say marriage changes you. Before I married my wife, my favorite thing to do was to vegetate at home in front of the television or with an Xbox controller in my hand. While I still enjoy those things, my wife loves to travel, and over the past few years I’ve learned to love it too. In fact, at one point I was a little bit obsessed with it. Despite having very restrictive vacations, we were traveling as much as possible for awhile. This was the first step in my evolution.

The second step came about a year ago. I was eating dinner with some friends, when one mentioned how he and his wife covered almost all of their honeymoon costs through the use of frequent flier miles accrued from credit card bonuses. Like anyone, the first time I heard this I was skeptical, and I did nothing about it. A few months later, I was bored at home, and decided to do some internet research to see if getting miles through credit card bonuses was a viable and sustainable travel strategy. I stumbled on a litany of blogs, some of which you can see at the side. I quickly became obsessed and started jumping on credit card deal after credit card deal. After only a couple months and a few credit cards, my wife and I had banked enough miles to fly our yearly summer vacation completely in business and first class. I was hooked!

Now I have reached a third stage of my evolution as a traveller. I was so excited about my past trip that I couldn’t help telling friends and family about it. Also, since I can’t travel any time in the near future, I was going through a little bit of points withdrawal – I’ve been bored not being able to search award fares and itineraries. So, I’ve decided to try to help others do so – and I started with my in laws. This blog is my attempt to catalogue some of the things I’ve learned, hopefully people will find it useful. Obviously, there is a wealth of information out there, so my goal is to consolidate some of that information and just provide my personal take on things.

My goal is to share some lessons I’ve learned along the way, plus some individual case studies of how I’ve done things that people can try to mimic. Hopefully some people can use this information and get out and travel!