Travel with kids for FREE? Yes please!

Learn how to travel for free with your family using points and miles! Get the details on travel hacking for beginners from busy mom Melissa, who's addicted to family travel on points.

Dreaming of taking your family to Hawaii, Europe, or Costa Rica without breaking the bank? In this episode of Family Travel Unpacked, host Melissa breaks down exactly how to use credit card points and miles to cover flights and hotels for your entire family.

In this episode:

• Best starter credit cards for family travel (Chase Sapphire Preferred, Freedom Unlimited)
• How to find and book award flights using transfer partners
• Hotel strategies that work for families (Hyatt, IHG, vacation rentals)
• The Southwest Companion Pass secret (bring a family member for ~$6!)

Whether you're brand new to points and miles or ready to level up your strategy, this episode gives you actionable steps to start traveling more while spending less. Download your free ebook to jumpstart your journey today!

00:00 Introduction to Family Travel Unpacked

00:59 Challenges of Traveling with Family

01:55 Earning Points: The Basics

03:17 Maximizing Credit Card Benefits

07:10 Booking Flights with Points

14:40 Hotel Strategies for Families

17:50 Practical Tips for Traveling with Kids

19:20 Conclusion and Resources

Resources:

Chase Sapphire credit cards

Best Travel Credit Cards for Families

Southwest Companion Pass

Four Reasons I LOVE Award Travel

How to get discounted rental cars

Chase Freedom credit cards

Chase Ink Business credit cards

Capital One Venture X credit card

Hosted by Melissa Conn, founder of The Family Voyage, certified Child Passenger Safety Technician, and mom of two who proves family travel is achievable for everyone.

Blog The Family Voyage

Get your free ebook The Busy Mom's Guide to Free Travel

Check out my favorite travel gear and my Etsy shop!

Chase Sapphire credit cards

Transcript

[00:00:00] Hey there, and welcome to Family Travel Unpacked. I'm your host, Melissa, and today we're talking all about my favorite way to save money on travel: points. If you're listening to this I'm guessing you're like me, you love the idea of traveling with your family, but when you start looking at flights for four or five people, hotel rooms, rental cars... those numbers can get scary fast, right? Today we're gonna dive deep into how you can turn your household expenses into amazing family trips.

Now, here's the thing, I've been traveling with points and Miles for almost 20 years, but it wasn't until the last few years that I got really serious about it. These days we're taking our kids on trips we never could have afforded otherwise. We've done Hawaii, Costa Rica, Europe, you name it, and we're mostly paying in points.

I'm gonna walk you through exactly how we do it. No fancy jargon, no overwhelming details, just practical strategies and examples that actually work for busy parents. And if you wanna dive even deeper after this episode, I've got a free ebook waiting for you in the show notes or you can go to [00:01:00] thefamilyvoyage.com/freetravel to start your journey. We can get you going in just one afternoon.

Sound good? Let's jump in.

 So first, let's talk about why this is all harder for families. When you're traveling solo or as a couple earning and using points is pretty straightforward. You just need enough points to cover flights and hotels for one or two people, and every adult who's traveling can basically cover themselves.

But with kids, it's a whole different ball game. You need to redeem a lot more points , but half of the people traveling can't contribute since they aren't allowed to open their own credit cards. When we travel, we're typically looking for four award seats on the same flight. And outside of the US we sometimes have to book two hotel rooms since occupancy limits are really strict. And trust me, those hotels mean it.

If you wanna travel for free as a family, you have to be really strategic about earning and using those points.

All right, let's talk about how to actually earn points. The secret? Signup bonuses. You'll earn way more points from welcome offers on new credit cards [00:02:00] than you ever will from everyday spending.

Here's how it works: credit cards offer huge blocks of points when you open a new account and meet the minimum spending requirement within those first few months. We're talking bonuses that could be worth a week at a nice hotel or a couple of flights. The key being strategic about which cards you open and when.

Start with cards that earn transferable points. These are points that you can move to different airline and hotel partners, which gives you max flexibility. Even if you prefer to fly a specific airline or stay with a certain hotel chain, you wanna keep your options open when you're trying to find the best deal to stretch a vacation budget for a family.

The Chase Sapphire Preferred is a great starting point. You can find the link to this one in the show notes. This card earns chase's ultimate rewards points, which are my favorite. They're some of the most flexible and useful ones in this whole game. The welcome bonuses are big, and those points can transfer to tons of great partners, United Southwest Hyatt, and also British Airways, Virgin Atlantic, Air Canada, and plenty more. Don't worry. [00:03:00] I'll explain in a minute why you should care about those foreign airlines, even if you never fly them. The $95 annual fee on the Chase Sapphire Preferred is pretty reasonable for what you get, and you can just think of it as a membership fee to get your foot in the door.

Depending on your overall spending, you might consider instead getting the Chase Sapphire Reserve. It's a much more expensive credit card these days, but it comes with some great travel benefits like lounge access and a global entry credit. Plus, you might be able to offset a huge chunk of the annual fee with credits for things like Peloton and Apple Music if you're already paying for those. There are also some perks when it's time to use those points that could make it worthwhile.

This card was recently refreshed, and I'll be honest that some people don't love it. But it could work so well for our family that I've tried to get it three times. Chase wouldn't give it to me with the signup bonus because I got that same card eight years ago. But if you're eligible, I definitely give it a look.

There are a few additional cards, including some free ones that earn those same ultimate rewards points, and they're often at better rates on your daily spending than the Sapphire [00:04:00] cards. If you're a small business owner like I am, grab a free Ink business credit card as well. All of those points can pool together and give you a really healthy stash of chase points to work with once you're ready to start planning a trip.

Eventually you'll want to branch out into the credit card points from other banks. Think of each one, like a unique currency with a different exchange rate and there are different uses, depending on your circumstances. We have credit cards that earn flexible points from Capital One and American Express, and I think we'll be adding Citibank back into the mix pretty soon.

Once you have a few credit cards that give you flexible points. You could consider credit cards for airlines that you fly a lot. I can tell you that my husband and I have a lot more airline credit cards than we ever expected to. We've opened them when they offer bigger than usual welcome bonuses on top of perks that save us real money, like fee waivers or hotel credits. But as I'll explain in a few minutes, you don't necessarily have to have those.

Some hotel credit cards can be a good value for families too, but keep in mind that they aren't all created equal. Most of them give you a free night certificate every year that you have it open, [00:05:00] but pay close attention to the expiration dates and maximum value on those. One type of welcome offer you'll sometimes see from hotels is something like five nights free when you sign up, but personally I would avoid those. The certificates are way less flexible than regular points, and because they cap the value of the property plus there are expiration dates to consider, you might not even be able to use them. Lots of hotel chains offer fourth and fifth night free when you're booking with points, and the certificates don't usually qualify for those deals either.

Just like with airline cards, you don't necessarily need a hotel credit card because all the different chains can receive transfers from those flexible points we talked about before. And sometimes you can get two or even four hotel points for each of those transferable points.

Here's where it gets really powerful. If you're a two adult household, you can both get the same credit card. That means double the welcome bonuses. That's what we do if there are points that we use a ton of, like those chase ultimate rewards.

Just don't make each other authorized users, because each bank has a different rule about how often they wanna see [00:06:00] opening new cards, and sometimes those authorized user cards can count against you. They make it harder to get approved for more cards down the line.

 Ronnie and I usually coordinate our new credit cards. We each open a few every year , usually taking turns with our applications. I also get a few new cards every year for my business. Between all of those, that's how we accumulate enough points to cover flights and hotels for our family of four.

I know it probably sounds like a lot and you will be paying annual fees, but overall you're still spending a lot less in annual fees than you'd spend on those flights and hotels that the points cover.

And you don't have to keep every credit card open forever. After a full year, you should evaluate every single card to see if the benefits make it a keeper for you or if it's not worth the annual fee. You might get an annual travel credit or a free hotel net on your anniversary that makes it worth keeping. And sometimes you can ask banks for a retention offer to incentivize you to keep the card open.

Okay, so you've earned a bunch of points. Now what?

The first rule: book early. Award availability typically opens 11 or [00:07:00] 12 months in advance, and the best airline seats go fast, especially for families that need four or more tickets. We try to book almost a year ahead if we know where we want to go. Yeah, it requires planning, but it's worth it.

The first place I usually look when we're booking is Google flights. There's just no better tool out there for understanding which airlines fly where and when. I love that you can put in multiple cities. I'll often include all the airports here in Ohio, just in case there's a great deal or a direct flight from one of them.

Then I use PointsYeah and AwardTool to search for award availability across multiple airlines. Those tools aren't perfect, but they give you a good starting point. They'll help you see what's possible. I also love using them to set alerts. In fact, when we were in Venice over the summer, I got an alert in my email that some last minute award space opened up and I was able to switch us to premium economy for fewer points than our original economy tickets. I'd say that PointsYeah is a little more user friendly and has better alerts, but AwardTool gives you more flexibility by searching multiple cities at the same time.

 One [00:08:00] limitation of both of those tools is that they're missing the airlines that use points called Avios, that includes British Airways, Iberia, Aer Lingus, Finnair, and Qatar. Be sure to check those airlines directly if you think they might be a good fit for your itinerary.

Obviously nothing beats scouring each airline's websites individually, but these aggregator tools are a quick way to start understanding what to look for. They can be a huge time saver. You might see that united flight that you really wanted offered cheaper through Air Canada or Avianca, or maybe Alaska's, offering a great deal on an American flight. Especially when you're getting started, those tools can really help you get the lay of the land.

 Another important point is understanding airline partnerships. I know that I mentioned finding great availability for United through Air Canada, and that's because they're partners. So there are three major alliances that you need to know about Star Alliance, sky Team and One World Research. Each of those three alliances and see which airlines are included in them. They each have at least one of the major domestic carriers here in the us, plus lots of partners around the world. Some airlines also [00:09:00] have non alliance partners that can be really useful depending on your destination. And it's this weird thing, but a lot of times you can find partner awards cheaper than if you were booking directly with the airline that you'll be flying. It happened to me just yesterday!

Once you find something promising, go directly to the airline's website to verify and book. Be sure to never transfer points until you've confirmed that the availability is really there on the airline's website. Sometimes those research tools can show phantom space and it's your responsibility to check before you transfer.

Now here's the beautiful thing about transferable points. You don't have to commit them until you're ready to book. Let's say you wanna fly to Europe. You might find great availability on United, which is a Chase transfer partner. Or maybe you find something better on Air France, which works with a lot of different flexible points and often has bonuses that you can combine with sale prices.

You search first, figure out which program has the best award, and then transfer your points. Until you've got a really good handle on what programs you use often and you're sitting on a big stash of [00:10:00] points and there's a really good transfer bonus, you shouldn't move any points unless you're ready to book right away. Always have a specific redemption in mind.

I wanna talk for a second about what are called repositioning flights. These can be a popular option, but they're not right for everyone. It's when you fly from your home airport to a major hub, hopefully on a cheap ticket, to take advantage of a great deal or a better travel experience that you can only get from a hub.

But your two flights are totally separate tickets, often on different airlines. You'll always wanna build in a long layover, even overnight, because if something goes wrong, neither airline has to help you.

There's a great website called FlightsFrom that shows you all the nonstop routes from a specific airport. So if we're looking at Ponta Del Gata and the Azores, I can put in that airport and then check the map to figure out all the possible connections that might work for us. That helps me figure out what to search in the tools that I talked about before, and it can also help me evaluate if repositioning is gonna make sense.

We actually did a repositioning flight for our trip to Costa Rica over spring break, and it mostly [00:11:00] worked out well. We went that route because all the Southwest flights from Columbus to Costa Rica were crazy early, like 5:30 AM and that doesn't say "vacation" to our family. So instead of getting up at 3:00 AM we flew down to Orlando the night before and stayed at the Hyatt inside the terminal, then we hopped on a nonstop in the morning.

From my husband's recent flight to Tel Aviv, flying from Columbus with a stop in New York or Boston would've been between 70 and a hundred thousand points each way. That's crazy. Instead, I got him a 9,000 point flight to Boston and a flight from Boston that was just over 30,000 points with a different carrier. It was a huge savings and definitely worth repositioning for. You really have to weigh if it makes sense for your family to reposition on every specific trip. Honestly, most of the time we don't choose to take a repositioning flight either because of scheduling issues or when I price out that shorter domestic ticket, it might not be a huge cost difference for us.

Another option is to take a repositioning drive. We live in Columbus and our only direct international flights are to Canada. So for some trips we might scoot [00:12:00] over to Detroit, Pittsburgh, or Cleveland in the car and fly from there. We did that to fly to Iceland, nonstop from Detroit, and it was actually a lot easier than we thought.

Okay, I have to talk separately about something that's a complete game changer for families, and that's the Southwest Companion Pass. The companion pass, lets one person fly with you for free. You just pay taxes and fees, which are around five bucks for domestic flights in the us. Sounds amazing, right? But here's what makes it especially powerful for families: if you're a two adult family, you can each earn your own companion pass and designate a different kid to fly with you. That means four of you can fly on two tickets, even if those tickets are bought with points. We're talking about trips that might cost over a thousand dollars for basically nothing, and you can use the companion pass over and over every year that you have it.

The easiest way to get a companion pass is to open two Southwest credit cards in the same year, one business and one personal. You hit the minimum spend on both and boom, you've got enough points for the companion pass. Sometimes there are even promotions that [00:13:00] give you enough points to earn a companion pass with a single card , and the great thing is that you aren't trading in your points for a companion pass; you still get to use those points for your own tickets.

The trick is timing. Apply in November or December for the first card, but don't hit the spending requirement until January. That way you get the pass for almost two full years. Down in the show notes, I have a really detailed article that goes through all of it. We've used our companion passes for so many trips, weekend getaways, spring break, you name it. Our kids flew with us to Hawaii on points twice in nine months. Our out-of-pocket cost for each kid was just $11 for each round trip. It's one of those things that sounds too good to be true, but it's completely legit and it's incredibly valuable for families like ours.

As of when I'm recording this in late November, we haven't heard of any big changes coming to the companion pass. But we don't know if Southwest has another party foul up their sleeves. They've been making a lot of changes lately that are very consumer unfriendly, so we'll see what's coming.

Let's move on to hotels now. Hotels can be easier than [00:14:00] flights in some ways because usually you have a little more flexibility, but as your family grows, options in some countries shrink due to occupancy restrictions.

If I could only have points in one hotel program, it would definitely be Hyatt. Their properties are generally high quality, the award chart still offers really good value, plus if you travel a ton each year and eventually get to top tier globalist status, you get free breakfast for everyone on top of other perks like suite upgrades. This is huge for our family. We're talking about saving potentially hundreds of dollars on breakfast alone for a longer stay. For that Costa Rica trip, we stayed at the Andaz Papagayo using Hyatt points, beautiful resort, amazing location, and we paid zero out of pocket for the room. Plus we got free breakfast as globalists and still had access to all the resort amenities like kayaks and paddleboards and snorkel gear- it was all included even though a resort fee was waived. Even if you aren't gonna try for status Hyatt is still a great program to look at because it gives you solid value and you can transfer chase points there.

One tip that's specific to [00:15:00] Hyatt is that if you do end up needing a second room, you can ask the hotel if they offer the family rate plan. It's kind of niche, but at some properties, mostly in Europe, you can get a room for your kids at up to half off. The discount varies, so you do have to check. That second room has to be paid with cash, but the first one can be booked on points. Unfortunately, the second room can only officially be for kids 12 and under, which I think is kind of silly. But if you have young kids and you're looking for two rooms, don't sleep on that program.

IHG is another great program for families, especially if you're doing a lot of travel in the US to places like National Parks. They have tons of properties and you can find solid options for relatively few points per night. When you book on points, you'll also get the fourth night free with IHG if you hold one of their credit. Those cards have a $99 annual fee, and they get you a free night certificate every year, plus they give you platinum status, which has gotten me a pretty nice suite upgrade. Holiday Inn Express properties include free breakfast pools, and they're pretty much everywhere. They're not sexy, but they're totally [00:16:00] functional for families.

If you see a lot of IHG in your future, take a look at getting one of those cards. Generally those points aren't worth as much as Hyatt, so I'd rather not transfer from Chase to IHG. A few times every year you can actually buy IHG points super cheap, so be sure to price that out if you have a special hotel in mind. I plan to use my stash of IHG points and my free night certificate for five nights at the Kimpton SeaFire in Grand Cayman, which is one of the best IHG properties for families in this entire hemisphere.

One word of warning though, outside of North America, I've had a really hard time booking IHG hotels for our family of four. Nearly all the rooms in Europe only allow two or three people per room, but the rates are still really high. If you wanna go somewhere like Zion National Park or the Caribbean, IHG is a great program to look at.

There are tons of other hotel programs to choose from. If you have Amex membership rewards points, every point you transfer into Hilton becomes two hotel points. I'm using that to our advantage in Portugal, where I was able to find a hotel that's [00:17:00] 34,000 Hilton points per night for each two person room. Even though I need to book two rooms for our family at 34,000 points per night for two rooms, it's still really reasonable.

Citi gives you a one to two ratio when you transfer their thank you points to choice hotels. Those might not be your top pick in the US, but they have some awesome properties in places like Northern Europe and Japan. You can also check out the Higher End Ascend collection within Choice.

I'll also sometimes book apartments through the Capital One Travel Portal and use the $300 credit we get every year with our Venture X card to save some money on that. I've booked a few hotels through the United Hotels portal, which has really reasonable rates and offers me a $50 credit twice a year on some of the United branded credit cards that we have through Chase.

Basically, there are a lot of options around hotels to help your family stay either free or much cheaper when you travel. 

Before we finish, I wanna share some practical tips that are specific to traveling with kids on points. First, if you have any flexibility within your school break, you'll have much [00:18:00] better luck finding award seats for flights. Being able to shift your trip by even a few days can make a huge difference. I know that means you aren't maximizing your days off necessarily, so you have to decide what's more important to you. Personally I really try to stretch those days away as much as I can, even if it means using a few more points.

When you're booking hotels, especially internationally, consider booking two rooms. Unfortunately, a lot of times a connecting room is treated as a premium option and costs more than double the price of two regular rooms. If you're going for two rooms, it's worth reaching out to the hotel to let them know that your kids will be in one of the rooms and that you'd like a connection if possible. This solves the occupancy limit problem and gives everyone more space.

Don't get obsessed with getting maximum value for every single point. I know that's hard if you follow points and miles Facebook groups, but focus on whether the redemption gets you the trip that you want at a price that works for you, as long as it's not absolutely terrible. A redemption that gets you okay value and lets your family take that dream trip? It's a win in my book.

All right, [00:19:00] let's bring this all together. The key to Free Family Travel is being strategic with your credit cards. You're using signup bonuses to build up big pools of transferable points. You are transferring those points to partners to unlock the best value and you're booking early. We usually book almost a year ahead to maximize our chances of getting those good award seats.

Does it take some effort? For sure, but once you get the hang of it, it becomes second nature and the payoff is incredible. Instead of travel being this rare, expensive treat, it becomes a regular part of your family's life. We take our kids somewhere almost every long weekend. Every school break, we're off exploring. And we're mostly not stressing about the budget because the flights and hotels are already covered.

If you wanna get started right now, grab my free ebook. It's linked down there in the show notes, and it has a lot more details. You can also find it at thefamilyvoyage.com/freetravel. I'll walk you through everything you need to help jumpstart your points journey this afternoon.

I've also included referral links for the cards I mentioned: the Chase Sapphire Preferred, the [00:20:00] Capital One Venture X, IHG one Rewards Premier, Southwest Cards and a few others. If you use those links, we both benefit because it helps me keep making free content like this for you.

Thanks for listening. If you found this helpful, be sure to follow along and drop a five star review below. You can even send it to another busy parent who wants to travel more.

You can always find me at thefamilyvoyage.com where I've got tons of resources to help you Plan your family adventures. Now go book that trip!