My wife and I are celebrating our 10th year wedding anniversary this year and we’re in the process of arranging a trip to Maui using our airline miles credit card to help us! We visited Maui 10 years ago for our honeymoon thanks to some work bonuses, gifts, airline miles (I used to travel a lot for work) and hotel points. Hawaii is our favorite place to go for vacation and we’ve been able to visit several times by finding ways to save money on the airfare and hotels.
This year we’re arranging another trip and have booked our tickets using airline miles. I still travel on business (4 – 5 times per year) which has helped me earn some of the miles. We’ve also earned miles by using our Citi Platinum Select AAdvantage Visa Signature Card for a lot of everyday expenses as well as larger budgeted purchases throughout the year. We pay an annual fee of $85 to use this card, but the annual cost doesn’t compare to what we would have to pay to purchase the airline tickets at regular price. Note: fee waived for the first 12 months.
MAUI ROAD TO HANA © by DirectDish
You might be thinking it requires a lot of spending to earn miles with your credit card which can be dangerous if you’re not careful. I suppose you’re right, but you might also be interested to know that we don’t have any credit card debt. We make sure we pay the balance off every month by tracking our spending using YNAB and also make sure we don’t purchase more than we can pay off that same month! We never put ourselves in a situation which we have to deal with the credit card company about a late payment, interest charges, etc.
Obviously, this post shares my view of credit card spending. As you can tell, I don’t have any issues with credit cards. Yes, they do get a bad reputation and for a lot of valid reasons. Credit card companies don’t exactly make it easy to get out of credit card debt. The bottom line is that we don’t abuse the credit the card company provides us. Honestly, I only focus on spending within our budget. The form of payment doesn’t really matter to me, but the amount we’ve spent does and it’s tracked almost everyday!
Now we’re working on trying to find hotel accommodations at a reasonable price. My wife has become quite good at searching all over the web for the best deals. We’re searching for deals on rental cards and hotels and hoping we can further minimize our cost, stay at a nice place and experience Maui again 10 years later to celebrate our marriage.
Do you use an airline miles credit card? If so, tell us about your experience and if it saved you money on airfare.
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