**Before we start, if you are not responsible enough or do not have enough money to pay off your credit card in full every month, do not get it! You should pay your statement in full every month and not accrue any interest charges for the loan. This is non-negotiable!***
As you have probably guessed from this website there are ultimately two passions of mine I have combined here; financial independence and adventure.
Intertwined between these two interests is my love of travel. This fancy Venn diagram hopefully clears everything up!
My hope and aim is that as I move closer to FI I can travel more, and my adventurous side will always mean I want to travel so even now with limited financial resources it is my top priority.
A way to make it easier is to apply a term used from America – Travel Hacking.
In a nutshell this means to use companies loyalty programmes to maximise their rewards, resulting in a lower cost for their service. Typically this is for flights and hotel stays which offer the bulk of your cost when travelling, but it can be used for other expenses such as car hire or day activities.
This will be a two part blog, with the first one going through my journey and fails, and the second one with my current situation and my plan now.
I was introduced to the world of travel hacking after listening to a few podcasts where the guests gloated about getting a business class flight for $100. Now I use the American Dollar symbol here not by mistake, but to emphasise the fact the this practice originated in the States, has a bigger following across the pond, and with better rewards. But that’s not to say you can’t take advantage here in the UK.
A great resource for UK travel hacking is Head for Points and The Points Guys. I find HfP much more comprehensive and thorough, but they both have decent content.
I decided to start my journey using specific credit cards which would ultimately give me the reward of either free upgrades or a free extra ticket in the same class – called a companion voucher. To get me on my way of travel hacking I start with a British Airways American Express credit card.
When I got this card I had two expectations:
1/ It would take many years before I could capitalise from my work
2/ I would make mistakes
I think it’s fair to presume these two assumptions would be the same for many others in the same position as I was starting off.
The BA AMEX card I opted for was the free one as I knew I would make mistakes and wasn’t sure entirely how I would use the offers, so didn’t want to commit any money at this point while I was learning the trade.
With any new travel credit card you generally get a sign-up bonus for new customers, for me this was 5,000 Avios (more on what these are later!) if I spent £1,000 in the first three months. The end goal was a companion voucher if I spent £20,000 in the first year. I managed to get the sign-up bonus offer no issue, but then after a number of months I realised my first mistake. At the time in 2018 you couldn’t use the free BA AMEX card for the companion voucher for business class flights – which was my aim. So I then decided to cancel the card, leave the AMEX for a number of years and instead move over to the Virgin Atlantic side of things.
I was happy with the move over to Virgin Atlantic because I would be eligible for their sign-up, a Mastercard is more widely accepted compared to an AMEX, and they flew a route I expected to fly in the next couple of years to South Africa.
I then went for their free credit card, managed to get the sign-up bonus of 25,000 red points within the first three months, and over the next two years managed to bag 2 companion/upgrade vouchers!
This was amazing, things were going great. Unfortunately these vouchers were ready to use at the end of 2019, we planned to go on this trip in 2020. I’m sure you all know how easy it was to go travelling in 2020……
So I now had around 10,000 Avios with no vouchers, 90,000 red points with 2 vouchers and unable to travel anywhere.
Once travel started to open up there was a big limit with the virgin Atlantic points at the time, I was unable to use them with many other airlines. This isn’t the case now but at the time it wasn’t as flexible. Also that trip to South Africa was no longer on the cards, so onto the next plan.
2 years had now lapsed since I cancelled my free BA AMEX card so I was eligible for any new customer offers that were about. I opted for the next level up which was the paid BA AMEX Premium Plus card, and thankfully for me this was 30,000 avios (I think!?) if I spent £3,000 in three months, and if I spent £10,000 in the first year I would have my companion voucher. 10 months later I have my companion voucher and at the time of writing 92,610 Avios points. For this pleasure I had to pay £250 for the credit cards annual fee.
But what the hell are Avios!?
Avios are the ‘currency’ that British Airways and other airlines use for their loyalty programme. For example a credit card may give you 1 Avios if you spend £1 on their card. At the end of the month your £1000 statement gets converted to 1000 Avios. Over time you build up your bank of Avios to be used to upgrade flights (alongside your companion voucher, but can be used separately), used on hotels, and so much more.
You also get offers where if you shop with certain brands they will give a bonus number of Avios, for example 8 Avios per £1. So if you spent £100 there, you would get 800 Avios, plus the 100 for using the credit card. So I haven’t spent £92k on my credit card, I have taken advantage of all these offers over time. Avios don’t expire, unlike your companion voucher which does.
You will need to set yourself up with a BA Executive Club account as well, free to join and loads of information on there.
Now to summarise what I have learnt, and what you need to consider.
1/ Have an idea which programme will get you where you want to go.
Virgin Atlantic at the time didn’t have the scope of travel options as using Avios or the companion voucher with BA. If you want to head to USA the Virgin Atlantic programme is a great option however.
2/ Having another option away from AMEX.
The BA AMEX cards offer great returns, but AMEX cards in general aren’t accepted everywhere. You should definitely have a back up in the way of Visa or Mastercard.
3/ Go for the free option until you understand it fully.
I made lots of mistakes in those first 2 years. I am glad there was no cost to me making those mistakes.
4/ Understand how partner airlines can help, and hinder your plans.
Virgin Atlantic now have great options with other providers, where just spending your red points can give you some great choices flying business class, for example out to Japan.
5/ The companion voucher needs to leave UK, and has limits on how far you can go.
If you think you will get all the way to Australia with your companion voucher, you will be very disappointed. There are limited seats available on all routes for vouchers to be used and over to Sydney for example there are only 2 for the whole year – good luck! Break your trip down and have a good bank of Avios to use .
So this was my position in July 2022 and I was fairly happy with things, then entered Barclaycards Avios credit card……in Part 2 we go through the gamechanger.
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