How to Start Travel Hacking: A Beginner’s Guide to Points, Miles, and Nearly Free Travel
If you’ve ever wondered how people manage to fly in business class for the price of economy, stay in five-star hotels for little to nothing, or casually mention booking a flight for “just the taxes and fees,” you’re in the right place.
At some point, most people who get into travel hacking ask the same question:
How are people actually doing this?
Because when you first start learning about points and miles, it can feel like everyone else knows something that you don’t. People mention transfer partners, elite status, airline alliances, award travel, and 5/24 as though those terms are obvious. Meanwhile, you’re just trying to figure out whether earning enough points for a free hotel night is realistic.
The good news? Travel hacking is not nearly as complicated as it sounds.
At its core, travel hacking is simply using credit card points, airline miles, hotel rewards, and loyalty programs to reduce the cost of travel. This requires some learning how loyalty programs work and using them intentionally. Sometimes that means free flights. Sometimes it means hotel stays.
And the best part? You do not need to be a frequent flyer, a huge spender, or someone opening ten credit cards every year to travel hack.
This post is your beginner-friendly roadmap to understanding how travel hacking works, how people earn points and miles, common mistakes to avoid, and where to start without feeling overwhelmed.
What is travel hacking?
The term “travel hacking” makes it sound more mysterious than it really is.
It is the process of earning points and miles and redeeming them for travel. And it’s to your benefit to learn how to use loyalty programs strategically to maximize your travel. Airlines want repeat customers. Hotels want repeat customers. Banks want people using their credit cards. Those companies reward loyalty, and travel hacking is learning how to earn and stack those rewards in ways that support your travel goals.
For some people, that means international business class and finding the maximum redemption. For others, it means offsetting the cost of family vacations, visiting new places more often, or making expensive destinations feel a little more attainable. For us? We say we travel hack because we want to travel more while spending less. Simple as that.
We’ve used points and miles for flights and hotel stays across a number of locations, both domestic and international. As we’ve gotten into travel hacking more, the cards we’ve opened have given us access to airport lounges and benefits that make traveling as a family easier.
Travel hacking looks different depending on your goals. We’re big believers that there isn’t one right way to do it. It’s about doing it in a way that works for you and how you like to travel.
Is travel hacking worth it?
I think this depends entirely on what you want out of travel. If your goal is luxury hotels and aspirational flights, travel hacking can absolutely help with that. If your goal is taking your family on trips without spending as much cash out of pocket, travel hacking can help with that too.
But it’s important to set expectations.
Travel hacking is not:
- Spending money you wouldn’t normally spend just to earn points and miles
- Carrying balances and paying interest on your credit cards
- Opening multiple credit cards immediately because someone online said to or because the sign-up bonus sounds good (but you have no idea how to hit it)
- Booking luxury trips just because other people are doing it
The biggest misconception beginners have is that travel hacking starts with opening a bunch of cards. I’d argue most people should start with understanding how it works first and taking some simple steps to see if they can capitalize on things they’re already doing to earn more points and miles for travel. Opening cards for sign-up bonuses and additional benefits comes later.
How do beginners actually earn points and miles?
There are a lot of strategies people use, but most beginner travel hacking comes down to a few core methods.
One of the fastest ways to earn a meaningful amount of points is through credit card welcome or sign-up bonuses. You’ve probably seen offers like: spend a certain amount within a few months and earn 60,000 or 100,000 points.
Credit card companies want you to open a card because that’s how they benefit. And earning these points quickly can be really worthwhile for travel hacking. A welcome bonus can sometimes become flights or hotel stays much faster than everyday spending alone.
But there’s an important caveat: points are never worth paying interest for. If you need to spend money you weren’t planning to in order to achieve a sign-up bonus, travel hacking becomes more costly than it’s worth.
Without opening new cards or chasing sign-up bonuses, there’s still everyday spending, which sounds much less exciting but honestly can help you accrue a significant amount of points and miles over time if you leverage elevated category spend.
For example, our Chase Sapphire Preferred earns elevated rewards (3x) on streaming services, so our monthly Netflix charge goes on that card. Why earn only one point per dollar if we can earn three?
Other recurring bills don’t fit into bonus categories or earn elevated rewards. Our internet bill is a good example. For expenses like that, we use our Chase Freedom Unlimited because we value Chase Ultimate Rewards points over other points (like Citi, Capital One, or American Express) and earn at least 1.5x on everything. These may not seem like much, but your regular bills can add up.
The same thing applies to loyalty programs. If you’ve never signed up for airline or hotel accounts because it felt unnecessary, start there. You’ll need them eventually anyway, and having those accounts means work trips, hotel stays, or promotions become opportunities to earn instead of missed chances. Places like Starbucks have a partnership with Marriott where you can link your accounts and periodically earn Marriott points throughout the year from purchases.
If you haven’t done this yet, read Four Free Ways to Start Travel Hacking because it covers easy ways to begin earning more points and miles without opening a new card.
And then there are shopping portals, which may be one of the most underrated beginner strategies out there. Shopping portals let you earn extra points or miles on purchases you were already planning to make. We’ve earned easy rewards from things as simple dog food and household purchases.
Travel hacking isn’t one huge strategy or a singular credit card. It’s stacking lots of smaller ones together over time.
Best beginner travel cards
Eventually, many people decide they want to open a travel credit card.
If that’s you, I’d generally start with flexible points before jumping into airline-specific or hotel-specific cards.
Cards beginners often consider include:
Chase Sapphire Preferred → Our #1 recommended travel hacking starter card, which offers strong travel protections, flexible points, access to the best transfer partners (in our opinion)
Capital One Venture Rewards → Straightforward earning and redemption process (2X on everything is what draws a lot of people in)
Citi Strata Premier → Strong earning categories on everyday spending
These cards earn transferable points, which means you have options later. And flexibility is valuable when you’re still figuring out how you like to travel.
What are transfer partners, and why do people care so much?
Transfer partners are one of the reasons travel hacking sounds intimidating.
Here’s the simple version:
Some credit card points can be moved into airline or hotel loyalty programs.
For example:
Chase → United
Chase → World of Hyatt
This matters because transferring points frequently creates significantly more value than booking directly through a credit card’s travel portal. A lot of experienced travelers focus on transfer partners because this is where outsized redemptions can happen. But beginners don’t need to master this immediately.
One important rule: Transfer points only when you’re ready to book.
Transfers are irreversible, once they’re with the travel provider, they’re there for good.
Common beginner mistakes to avoid
One thing I’ve noticed is that people rarely struggle with travel hacking because they aren’t smart enough. Sure, it takes some time to learn, but it’s not rocket science. Some common issues:
Opening cards without a plan. You get pulled in by a significant sign-up bonus and open a new credit card without having a plan for the spend. The spend required is higher than what you’d planned and puts you at risk for missing the requirement. Then, you have a credit pull on your account, a missed sign-up bonus, and perhaps the inability to ever open that card again based on the provider.
Our advice? Stick with spend you know for a fact you can hit. That may mean you miss the massive 150,000 or 200,000 sign-up bonuses. But receiving sign-up bonuses with spend you already do or were planning to do is better than spending money you didn’t need to.
Ignoring annual fees. Similar to the above, you open a card for the benefits or rewards and it happens to have a high annual fee. That might be okay at first. As you get more into travel hacking, however, you can accrue thousands of dollars in annual fees and not really benefit from them.
Be strategic about the annual fees you take on. Are you actually getting true benefits from them or are they costing you more than they’re worth?
Hoarding points forever while waiting for the perfect redemption. Travel hackers advise you “Earn & Burn“. What’s that? Points depreciate over time as travel providers require more points year over year for the same redemption. It’s okay to wait to accrue enough for your dream destination, but if you’re waiting for the “best” redemption, you may be waiting for years and cost yourself in the long run. Earn your points and use them!
Missing shopping portals. A super-simple way to earn points with minimal effort required from you. Click a button and wait for points. If you shop online, this is a way to increase your points and miles balance without changing any of your spending habits or opening a new credit card.
Booking through third-party sites and losing out on rewards. If you already travel, you’re likely able to earn points with the big hotel and airline providers. But if you don’t book directly with the provider (particularly for hotels), you may not be able to earn loyalty points based on the terms of the agreement with the third-party provider. We exclusively book with the providers in order not to miss out.
What I’d do if starting over today
If we were starting from zero, I wouldn’t begin with several credit cards. I’d create airline and hotel loyalty accounts first. I’d install Rakuten and at least one airline shopping portal to compare the points & miles I’d earn from each.
I’d learn basic terminology because points and miles really can feel like another language at first. Then, I’d open one flexible travel card (which I did when I opened the Chase Sapphire Preferred as my first travel hacking card nearly a decade ago) and focus on understanding that ecosystem (Chase Ultimate Rewards) before expanding. I had exclusively Chase cards for about six years before expanding my points earnings into American Express Membership Rewards.
Because one of the easiest ways to get overwhelmed is believing you need to do all of this perfectly from day one. You don’t.
Final thoughts
Getting started with travel hacking doesn’t mean you need to drastically change what you’re doing. It means taking one smart step and letting the rest build over time. Maybe that’s opening your first rewards card. Maybe it’s creating loyalty accounts you should have signed up for years ago. Maybe it’s finally installing a shopping portal. Perhaps it’s realizing you actually have a fair amount of points and learning how to redeem them. Most people don’t start with free international business class or luxury hotels.
Most people start by earning their first few hundred or thousand points and learning how the system works. The habits come first. The trips tend to follow. Whether you want to save on your honeymoon, take your kids to Disney without draining your savings, or simply make travel feel more affordable, travel hacking can help. And we’re here to help you figure it out.