Get Two Airline Tickets & Five Hotel Stays For Free; I Did
A few years ago I wanted to find a way that my family and I could reduce our vacation expenses. We had taken a few vacations, but not as many as we would have liked to because of schooling and the amount of income we earned at the time. We wanted more from what we were already doing, but without having to change the way we managed our money. After some investigation we settled on using a travel rewards card to earn airline tickets and hotel stays.
Travel and accommodation expenses are generally the most expensive part of any trip. Airlines tickets can cost hundreds of dollars each and staying a night at a decent hotel can cost upwards of $100 or more per night. There are a number of travel reward credit cards available and we needed to find one that fit our existing lifestyle. After much consideration we decided on the Starwood American Express card. This credit card lets us earn one point for every $1 we spend towards the use of airlines miles or hotel stays at any of the over 860 Starwood Hotels around the world. Airlines flights requiring only 20,000 points versus the standard 25,000 with other cards and we can stay in a Starwood Hotel for as little as 3,000 points per night. With the Starwood credit card, we can also redeem our points for gift cards and many other rewards.
Some cool features of the card include a 10,000 point bonus after your first purchase when you apply and are approved for the card. You can also earn an additional 15,000 points when you spend $15,000 or more in six months. Our favorite feature is Starwood’s Nights & Flights program. This is the program that lets you redeem points for two airline tickets and five nights’ hotel stay for free. Starwood Hotels groups their hotels into categories which reflect the amount of point required. Choose to redeem 60,000 points for hotels in category 3 or 70,000 points for hotels in category 4. There are also several other point redemption options to choose from.
With a little help from our travel reward credit card, we can now take our vacation for a fraction of the cost it would normally cost us. We didn’t have to change the way we lived or even the way we manage our money. Instead, we just make sure to use our travel reward credit card for every possible purchase we make. At the end of the month we make sure to pay it off in full and never spend more than what we currently have cash for. Now the tough part, where will we go on our vacation?
