Perhaps it’s in my blood to be an explorer and lover of adventure: Both of my grandfathers were pilots, my grandmother was one of the first twenty flight attendant hired by Delta Airlines, and I am the daughter of a retired Delta pilot (my brother was actually the first third generation hired by Delta!). One of the greatest perks of my dad’s job was that he could claim unsold seats on flights for our family, free of charge. As a result, my childhood was filled with air travel around the globe. I suppose it’s what planted the seed for my wanderlust, and I’m forever grateful for the opportunities my dad’s career afforded our family, in more ways than one.
My beautiful grandmother, one of the first flight attendants for Delta Airlines
When I graduated from college as a new veterinarian with a meager income (DVMs make a tiny fraction of what MDs make!) and student loans to pay off, my flight benefits were even more valuable to me….except they had become more challenging to use. I was now beholden to a small window of vacation time, and it was too risky to depend on an empty seat for return flights when my boss was expecting me to show up to work. It became obvious that I would need to buy plane tickets if I wanted to travel by air.
Cue the sound of a needle screeching across a record! My wanderlust was now dictated by my ability to find airfare on a tight budget, and it was a hard pill to swallow since I had been spoiled accustomed to free flights my entire life!
Fast forward to my marriage and then three kids in tow, the importance of traveling on a budget became even more crucial to our family adventures. Not one to back down from a challenge, I started researching ways to travel on the cheap and discovered countless resources to achieve this goal. Before we knew it, we were traveling to both domestic and international destinations for next to nothing.
So what’s the secret? Hands down, the most economical way for our family to travel is to obtain our plane tickets and make hotel reservations through their travel reward programs. Well, duh, you’re probably thinking as you read this, everybody knows about “points programs.” Yes, they do, but how to quickly and steadily earn enough points to travel frequently is the secret sauce. There are better ways than others to do this. After a lot of research on various websites whose sole purpose is to teach people every single trick in the book to reduce travel costs, I felt like I learned enough tricks to get us going, and we haven’t paid for airfare in many years (and most hotels, unless they’re independently owned).
I’ve helped a handful of friends and family members get started, but many others have asked for advice. Because it’s more information that most people want to devote brain power to in one conversation, and the websites I refer them to are often overwhelming if you’re just getting started, I decided it would be easier to have resources posted on my blog for people to use.
If you want to get deeper in the weeds with it than what I outline, by all means, you should go for it! There are many travel bloggers out there that will take you further down the free travel rabbit hole than you can ever imagine, but I’ll only share what’s worked for us. Obviously I look for programs and rewards that cater to families, but everything I recommend will work equally, if not better, for a single person or a couple.
Without further ado, let’s get to it! But beware, it’s addictive and crazy fun to open the portal to travel opportunities you otherwise couldn’t swing financially. And in case you’re wondering, everything we do is perfectly legal and ethical. I wouldn’t do it if it wasn’t and certainly wouldn’t recommend it to people reading my blog.
Go here to learn how we pull it off!
P.S. If you want to watch a quick video produced by Delta Airlines, interviewing my Grandmother about what it was like to be a flight attendant in the 1940s, click here. She is adorable at every age (95, currently!)