How I Earn 1 Million Frequent Flier Miles Each Year

Updated: 12/28/2018 | December 28th, 2018

The best way to travel when you don’t have any money is to take money out of the equation. OK, not completely. While you can travel really, really cheaply, some money is required (unless you want to go hobo-style like this guy, in which case, this article isn’t for you).

But, assuming you don’t want to do that, you are going to need some money for travel. But you don’t need as much as you think you do, especially if you work to make your two biggest expenses — accommodation and flights — virtually free.

How?

By travel hacking.

I’ve written about it before, but I’ve never really broken down how I earn all those points and miles and redeem them for the business-class flights you always see me enjoying on Instagram. In this post, I’ll go into detail and provide the step-by-step breakdown of exactly what I do to earn around one million points a year — all without traveling! (When you add in the miles and points I get from traveling, it’s well over a million per year!)

This is going to be a long post, so get your coffee ready.

First, a refresher: travel hacking is the art of collecting frequent flier, hotel, and credit card points and airline miles and redeeming them for free travel. But it’s not about spending lots of money — the idea is to “hack the system” and use rewards programs against themselves to get lots of points and miles without spending a lot of money or traveling a lot. You leverage these systems to your benefit.

And it’s not just for Americans — Canadians, UK residents, Australians, Kiwis, and Spaniards can work these systems in their favor. (In reality, anyone can, but it’s just easier if you’re in these countries. So, while I will use the American market as an example, as that is the one I have access to, the principles and strategies I use can apply to you. Just substitute your local cards and programs for mine!)

One quick note before we begin (especially to the travel hackers reading this): in the travel hacking world, my mileage earning is pretty small. I know people who earn multiple millions of miles a year doing what I do (and a few other things), but I value my time, so why spend time earning miles I don’t need? My mileage needs are taken care of. I don’t waste time getting miles I don’t need.

Miles also lose value over time as airlines change their earning and burning rules, so I would rather have what I need and not waste time getting something with a decreasing value. Miles aren’t money.

Some people do this for the love of the game; I do this because I’m cheap and want to pay for as few flights and hotels as possible.

Here’s how I get those points and miles:

Step 1 – Sign up for credit cards

Credit cards are the tool through which you run your money in order to accumulate your points and miles. Think of them as the points-and-miles printing press. You can earn points and miles without them, but the process takes a lot longer and is a lot harder. To make this work, you will need a credit card.

When used properly, credit cards are smart financial instruments. You can earn hundreds of thousands of miles per year that enable you to travel for free (and they offer better purchasing protection than your debit card). Simply having them won’t send you into debt or cost you high-interest rates. Just make sure not to spend more than you have and to pay off your bill each month.

So the first thing I do is apply for a bunch of these credit cards. But I don’t do it willy-nilly. I have a goal in mind.

As a crazy travel hacker, I have more cards than the average person needs, but I always apply for new cards to reach a specific goal. Be sure to do this: think about the trip you want to take, where you want to stay, and how you want to get there, and then get the cards that help you get there.

If I’m low on American Express points, I’ll look for a new American Express card. If I want to go to Iceland, I’ll sign up for an Alaska Airlines card because I can use those miles to book a rewards ticket to Iceland thanks to their partnership with Icelandair. Moreover, I always look for what card offers the highest bonuses, even if I don’t need those points right away.

What have I signed up for this year? In the last six months, I applied for the following cards:

• IHG – I don’t stay in hotels often, but I use hotel points for any last-minute stays I need or for conferences when I don’t want to stay in hostels. Since I’d never held this card before, I got the 65,000-point bonus.
• American Airlines Platinum Business Card – Though I fly AA often and earn their miles easily, it had been a while since I had this card, so I applied again for a 50,000-mile sign-up bonus.
• American Airlines personal card – Same as above.
• Alaska Airlines personal card – Since Bank of America lets you cancel and sign up for this card again and still be eligible for the bonus, I sign up for this card every 2–3 months. This got me 25,000 miles.
• American Express Everyday card – They ran a 25,000-point promotion so I finally got this card, as the normal bonus is 15,000 points.
• Chase Ink Bold – When they offered a recent 60,000-point sign-up bonus, I applied for this business card as my charity FLYTE’s card.

Total points earned: 275,000

One thing to note about credit cards is that you can’t just sign up, cancel, and sign up again. Many card companies make you wait 18–24 months before you become eligible for a sign-up bonus again. (American Express only lets you earn the bonus once per card per lifetime!) I cycle through cards on a multiyear basis.

Therefore, I try to space out my sign-ups. I do two or three big credit card sign-up frenzies per year. This allows me to meet any minimum spending requirements (see below), allows the temporary dip the application causes in my credit score to go away, and gets me around any red flags the credit card companies have. For example, if issuers see you have applied for a ton of credit cards lately, they are less likely to approve you. Chase has something called the 5/24 rule, which states people who’ve applied for more than five cards within a 24-month period can’t get a new card from them. I’ve heard mixed reports on this, though — sometimes it catches people, sometimes it doesn’t.

Moreover, despite popular belief, having a lot of credit cards won’t hurt you. In fact, it can help you. Outside of your payment history, your utilization is the next most important factor in your credit score. Don’t worry about anything else. If you have $100,000 in available credit but only are using $5,000, that’s better than only having $5,000 in credit and using it all every month. Having more cards can actually help your credit score because of the better utilization ratio they create.

Here’s a list of credit cards you can sign up for!

Step 2 – Meet the minimum spending requirements

Each of these cards comes with a minimum spending requirement before you can earn that bonus. You just don’t get it for nothing. That meant I had to spend $11,000 in three months in order to meet the requirements and earn my bonuses! (The Alaska Airlines card comes with a fee of only $75 and no spending requirement so I essentially just bought 25,000 miles for 75 bucks.)

Here’s how the cards broke down:

• IHG: $1,000 minimum spend
• AA business card: $3,000 minimum spend
• AA personal card: $3,000 minimum spend
• Alaska Airline: none
• American Express: $1,000 minimum spend
• Chase Ink business card: $3,000 minimum spend

But my everyday spending isn’t anywhere close to that.

Since the purpose of travel hacking is to not spend extra money (you should absolutely not go into debt for this), I had to figure out ways to meet those spending requirements without incurring extra debt. Here’s how I did it:

• In the US, you can pay your federal tax bill on a credit card for a fee of 1.87%. I don’t pay all my taxes during the year so that at the end of the year, I have to pay them in one large chunk. I then time that tax payment with a credit card sign-up so I can get the bonus. Yes, there is a fee, but if you work out the math, it’s worth it. That took care of a big chunk.
• I time my purchases and sign-ups. If I have to move, buy furniture, need a computer, or join a gym, I sign up for a card and then charge my big purchases to the card.
• I go out to dinner with my friends, pay, and ask them to reimburse me. I used this technique in Las Vegas, and that took care of the entire minimum spending for the Amex Everyday card.  This is especially easy with apps like Venmo nowadays, where they can reimburse you easily at the exact moment of payment.
• I ask friends and family if I they have a big purchase they wouldn’t mind letting me put on my card. This doesn’t always work, and it isn’t always needed, but often friends and family will let me put it on my card as a favor, and then they’ll pay me instead of the store.
• I manufacture spending for the remainder. This is when you move money around so that you artificially create spending through gift cards and money orders. You can buy pre-paid debit cards, turn them into money orders, put those money orders in your bank account, and then pay off your credit card. You have to pay a fee for the cards and money orders, but when doing this for sign-up bonuses, it’s worth the cost. I purchase pre-paid debit cards in $500 increments.

Note: As I incur a lot of business expenses, it’s easy for me to meet the minimum spending requirements for business cards (for the Chase Ink business card, we met the spending requirements by paying expenses for the charity). The steps outlined above were used for the personal cards.

Total points earned: 25,000 (21,000 in spending, plus category bonuses [see below] on food and office supplies; my tax bill represented half my spending)

Step 3 – Be smart with spending

Get category bonuses
In the movie Up in the Air, George Clooney’s character never wastes an opportunity to earn points. I’m the same way. I never, ever, ever just earn one point per dollar spent if I can get 2, 3, or 6 points per dollar spent.

Certain cards have what are known as category bonuses, where you receive 2–5 points per dollar spent. It varies by card, but generally, you get 2 points on restaurants, 2–3 on airfare, and 5 on office supplies. Here’s a list of the cards I use regularly and their spending bonuses:

• American Express EveryDay Preferred: 3 points per dollar spent on groceries (up to $6,000 annually)
• American Express Premier Rewards Gold: 3 miles per dollar spent on flights
• Citi ThankYou Premier: 3 points per dollar spent on groceries; 2 points per dollar spent on hotels
• Chase Sapphire Preferred: 2 points per dollar spent on food
• Chase Ink Bold: 5 points per dollar spent at office supply stores or business expenses (up to $50,000 annually); 2 points per dollar spent on hotels

For example, if I am buying an airline ticket, I’ll use my American Express Premier Gold and get 3 miles for every dollar I spend. I buy gift cards at Staples on my Chase Ink card to get 5 points per dollar spent. I pay my cellphone on that card too!

Why get one point at a time when you can get five?

But there are also a few other ways to get bonuses, too:

Use airline shopping portals
All airlines, hotels, and travel brands have preferred merchants. These companies — ranging from clothing retailers to sporting good stores to office supply businesses and everything in between — partner with airlines’ (hotels’, etc.) special shopping malls. By ordering online through these malls, you can earn additional points.

You can use Evreward or Cash Back Monitor to discover the current best deals across various programs. Simply type in the merchant or product you want, and it will compile a list of bonuses the various point programs are offering at that moment so can you maximize the programs to purchase from.

Say, for example, you want new clothes from the Gap. Going into the Gap store gets you one point per dollar spent. By using Evreward, you can see that by going the United shopping portal, signing in, clicking the link to Gap, and purchasing online you can earn three points per dollar spent. Suddenly, you get 300 points instead of 100 for your $100 shopping spree!

Shopping portals 2.0
While purchasing online is great and can lead to earning multiple points per dollar spent, you can stack offers to get double and triple the amount of points! For example, if you go to Sears through American Airlines’ portal and buy a $100 gift card, you get three AA points per dollar spent. Go back through the portal to use the gift card for $100 in merchandise and get another three points for total of 6 points for $100 spent. This way you earn 600 AA points instead of the 300 you would have gotten if you had just made your purchase directly through the online portal in the first place. Remember, if you just walk into a Sears store, you’ll only get 100 points for that $100 USD purchase!

So if I used my AA credit card, I would get 700 points total (600 in bonus points plus the 100 from spending) or I could get 600 AA points and 100 Chase points if I used a Chase card.

Dining rewards programs
Just like shopping portals, airlines also have dining rewards programs. You sign up with your frequent flier number, register your credit card, and get extra points when you dine at participating restaurants in the airline’s network (which rotate throughout the year). It’s important to note that while you can sign up for every program, you cannot register a credit card with more than one. That means that if your Chase Sapphire Preferred card is tied to your American Airlines account, you can’t earn miles on your United Airlines account with that same card.

Join one of the programs in the Rewards Network (they run all the dining programs) so you can get five miles per dollar spent once you became a “VIP member,” which happens after 12 dines. So if you get those 12 under your belt (so to speak) early in the year, for the rest of the year you’ll be racking up five points per dollar spent!

A note on keeping track of all this: As I was writing this post, I went to dinner with a few friends. My buddy Noah was like “This is too much to keep track of.” That’s a common feeling among people looking to start travel hacking. However, it appears more complicated than it really is. Once you know what cards give you what bonuses, the next step is to simply use the cards that get those bonuses and meet your goals.

For example, as I mentioned above, all my airfare goes to my American Express Gold card. I get three miles per dollar spent, and this is what provides a bulk of my yearly AMEX points. For restaurants, I use Chase Sapphire since I get 2 points per dollar. For online shopping, I tend to go to AAdvantage shopping portal as a way to “juice” my AA account.

You never want to spread yourself too thin, though: having points all over the place will lead you to having low point balances in multiple accounts. I tend to stick to just a few accounts with my everyday spending: Chase Ultimate Rewards, American Express Membership Rewards, and Citi ThankYou points because they are all transferable to other airlines and hotels. (Note: Since I mostly fly American, I don’t worry about building miles in that account as I get them through flying. Most of my business expenses go to Starwood SPG so I don’t worry about building a balance there through personal spending.)

Total points earned per year: roughly 150,000 (spending and bonus category dependent)
 

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Step 4 – Rinse and repeat on the manufactured spending

There are some people in the travel hacking world who manufacture spending like it’s their job. I have a friend who processes $10-20,000 a month in gift cards. That’s too much work for me. I’m busy and don’t feel like putting that much effort into it. However, I do a small amount of this in order to “juice” my point accounts, especially those with category bonus at Staples via my Chase Ink card that help offset the $4.95 fee per card. Here’s a diagram of how this works:

I don’t do this every month (you can’t do it while traveling) but this helps me offset minimum spending requirements on cards and earn a few extra miles each year.

Total points earned per year: 150,000

(Note: I use my Chase Ink business card a lot at Staples. I buy Amazon, iTunes, and restaurant gift cards to be sure I maximize the 5 points per dollar spent bonus. The number above reflects not only the manufactured spending I do but the gift cards I buy too.)

Step 5 – Sign up for every contest, survey, and deal in the world

Airlines and hotels often offer points and bonuses for signing up for a deal, taking a survey, filling out a form on Facebook, etc. The points here are small (100-1,000 at a time) but over the course a year they can add up. United recently gave 1,000 miles to people who signed up for their dining program. American Airlines gave you 350 miles just for entering a contest to win more miles!

Moreover, I also use the E-Rewards survey program. Every day they send me surveys via email and if I have time, I fill them out. They take 5-20 minutes each. Each completed survey is worth a certain number of “e-dollars” that can be redeemed for points on a number of programs:

Point redemptions vary but $100 in e-rewards money equals 2,000 AAdvantage miles.

Total points earned per year: 25,000

Step 6 – Buy points/miles… sometimes

Airlines and hotels sometimes offer really good deals for points/miles and, if I know I am going to use them soon, I’ll buy them at a discount. This basically lets you buy flights for cheaper than booking them. For example, Lifemiles (Avianca’s membership program) often does a promotion where you can get a 135% bonus on bought miles. If you max the promotion out, you usually get 352,000 miles for around $4,900, but at that rate, you’re buying miles for 1.4 cents per mile, which is an amazing deal. (The closer you get to 1 cent per mile, the better the deal! Follow websites like View from the Wing or One Mile at a Time and they alert you to all these point offers, break it down, and basically tell you if this is a good deal or not.)

It may sound crazy to spend that much money on miles (and you certainly don’t need to do it at all), but let’s put it in perspective. For 90,000 miles, you can book a one-way first-class flight from the US to Asia. Since you spent 1.4 cents per mile, that ticket works out to be $1,260. Not too bad for a first-class ticket, huh?

Buying points and miles is a way to pad your balance and buy tickets at a steep discount. I do this sometimes if I’m traveling soon and know I’m going to paying for the ticket anyways (I don’t always use miles when I travel). It’s not free, but I would rather buy a first-class ticket for $1,260 than an economy ticket for the same price.

Sometimes travel hacking is about finding value and doing a bit of arbitrage to get more for less!

Points earned: 100,000 points

Step 7 – Cancel cards I don’t use

Airline cards have fees, so when the yearly fee comes due, I’ll cancel the cards I don’t use or that don’t have a benefit to me. For example, the British Airways card: I used it for the sign-up miles and was done with it. It was canceled. The Hyatt card? It has a $75 yearly fee but it comes with two nights free each year. That’s two nights in a hotel for $75. I keep that one. The American Airlines personal card? One of the benefits is 10% miles back on redemptions, so if I redeem for 100,000 miles each year, I get 10,000 miles put back into my account — well worth the $95 annual fee.

Canceling cards doesn’t hurt your credit score. Old credit lines help, which is why I keep my Discover, Capital One, and a few other cards around. They have no fees and high limits so they anchor my credit. As I said before, what is important is your overall debt-to-credit ratio. So canceling a few cards lowers that ratio, but if I have no debt it doesn’t matter.

Moreover, I also transfer the credit lines to other cards with that card company so that I don’t lose the credit (and that doesn’t even make a mark on my credit score, let alone a dent!).

Step 8 — Get a second round of credit cards

Twice a year, I go on a big credit card splurge and start the cycle again. I’ll look at what I canceled and what I need. Since many operators require a waiting period between bonuses, I’ll aim for cards I haven’t had in a long time as well as which have another sign-up bonus.

Then after I get the new cards, I’ll repeat step 2 to meet any minimum spending requirements.

Total points earned: 200,000-300,000

Total points earned: roughly 975,000 per year ± 50,000

(The above tricks don’t count all the miles I earn via business expenses, which add up to an additional couple hundred thousand miles a year, putting me well over one million miles earned.)

A lot of this stuff depends on time and effort. If I got more credit cards, I could earn more. If I spent more money, I could earn more. I just don’t care enough. I have more miles than I need. I fly my team around on miles. I fly myself anywhere miles. I give miles to my mom.

By using the eight steps outlined in this article, the sky is the limit on how many miles you can earn. It just depends on how much you want to ramp up each step. As I said before, my million miles per year is a small number compared to some of the other travel hackers out there.

It is possible to earn more miles than you will need to travel and fly for free. Even if you travel only once a year, just want to visit your parents, or aspire to take your family on one trip, you can do it.

Travel hacking doesn’t have to be complicated. It’s simple and accessible to everyone.

The Ultimate Guide to Travel Hacking
For more information on how to earn points and miles that you can use toward free travel, check out The Ultimate Guide to Travel Hacking. This book shows you exactly how to take money out of the travel equation and use frequent flier programs to get free flights and hotel rooms.  The strategies in this book will get you out of your house faster, cheaper, and in comfort.

Click here to learn more and start reading it today!

Book Your Trip: Logistical Tips and Tricks

Book Your Flight
Find a cheap flight by using Skyscanner or Momondo. They are my two favorite search engines because they search websites and airlines around the globe so you always know no stone is left unturned.

Book Your Accommodation
You can book your hostel with Hostelworld as they have the largest inventory. If you want to stay somewhere other than a hostel, use Booking.com as they consistently return the cheapest rates for guesthouses and cheap hotels. I use them all the time.

Don’t Forget Travel Insurance
Travel insurance will protect you against illness, injury, theft, and cancellations. It’s comprehensive protection in case anything goes wrong. I never go on a trip without it as I’ve had to use it many times in the past. I’ve been using World Nomads for ten years. My favorite companies that offer the best service and value are:

• World Nomads (for everyone below 70)
• Insure My Trip (for those over 70)

Looking for the best companies to save money with?
Check out my resource page for the best companies to use when you travel! I list all the ones I use to save money when I travel – and that will save you time and money too!

Photo credit: 1

How Pat Got a Free Business Class Ticket (and You Can Too!)

Last month, my friend Pat came to me with a problem: he wanted to fly Cathay Pacific business class round-trip from the US to a conference in the Philippines. He had only a few frequent flyer miles and was all like “travel hacking, what?”

He needed help.

In the words of Barney Stinson: “Challenge accepted!”

I had two months to get Pat the 110,000 miles he needed.

I’ve written about traveling business class for free before, but as with everything in travel, methods and tricks that worked in the past might not work now, especially when it comes to airlines. They change their rules all the time.

As you know, I am an avid travel hacker because I hate flying coach. To me, there is nothing worse than being in coach on a 10-hour flight — and if I can avoid it, I will. When you are up in the air as much as I am, you want comfort.

So I collect points in order to upgrade or redeem for business- and first-class tickets, have a lie-flat bed, and enjoy some luxury before staying in my $10 a night dorm room. (Yes, I’m a bundle of contradictions. I’m a Gemini.)

Pat was an easy test subject, since he spends a boatload of money on his business each month and has great credit. I used all this to his advantage:

Since Cathay is part of the Oneworld Alliance, their US partner is American Airlines, and so we worked on getting him American AAdvantage miles.

First, he signed up for an American Airlines Citi card, which offered a 30,000-point sign-up bonus when he spent $1,000 USD in 90 days.

Second, he signed up for the business version of the same card with the same deal. (Note: you don’t need to be a business owner to get a business card. I used to sign up for these cards as a sole proprietor. The credit card companies never seemed to care.)

Third, I made him open a Starwood American Express card, which offers 25,000 Starwood points when you spend $5,000 USD in 90 days. He then transferred those points to American Airlines. Since Starwood gives you a 20% transfer bonus on 20,000 points, in the end 35,000 points (30,000 from the bonus, 5,000 from the spending) were transferred to his AAdvantage account.

Pat met all the minimum spending requirements with his regular spending. It was money he was going to spend anyway. (Never spend extra just to meet one of these spending requirements!)

After it was all said and done, Pat had 97,000 frequent flier miles.

But how to get those last 13,000 miles? There were a couple of ways to do this:

Pat could have “faked” his spending (which he also could have done to meet the spending requirements). He could have sent $1,000 every month via Amazon Payments to his wife without any fees and then she could have cashed the money back into their bank account.

Or he could have walked into a CVS and bought Vanilla Reload cards with his credit cards, then loaded the balance onto his American Express Bluebird account (maximum of $5,000 per month), and then used that money to pay off his credit card balance.

He also could have used online shopping portals to earn 3-4 miles per dollar spent (Christmas is coming!), meaning instead of spending $13,000 USD, he would have had to spend only $3,200-4,300 USD.

In the end, Pat used his business expenses as well as online shopping to get those final miles (he told me he found faking the minimum spending too time consuming).

Within a month, Pat had 110,000 miles he needed and I converted someone else to travel hacking (score!!!). He’s already set out to earn miles for a family trip to Hawaii!

“That sounds great, Matt, but I don’t want to open three credit cards nor can I spend that much money! Is there another way?”

Good question! What if you don’t want to open three credit cards? What can you do that doesn’t rely so heavily on credit cards?

I’ll tell you.

But first this point: you should open at least one rewards credit card because credit cards are the best way to jump-start your balance, and if you’re going to put money a card, you might as well get points for it. I mean, I bet you already have at least one card, right? Why not get free trips from it? Use your everyday spending to gain points for travel, even if you aren’t traveling until next year!

Moreover, you get a big sign-up bonus. My American AAdvantage card gave me 40,000 miles just for joining. That’s a free round-trip domestic ticket or miles I can use for an upgrade. United Airlines gives you 30,000 miles for signing up. Lufthansa is offering a 50,000 miles sign-up bonus right now!

I charge everything because of the miles it gets me. I am like Ryan Bingham from Up in the Air — I don’t spend any money without earning miles from it.

Non–Credit Card Ways to Earn Miles

But what else can you do to get miles that doesn’t require a credit card? Here are a couple of ways:

Shop with an airline’s preferred partners — All major airlines have a preferred shopping partner where you can get 3-20 points per dollar spent. If I am going to go shopping anyway, I might as well do it online and get four points per dollar spent than just the one I would have earned if I walked into the store. Do your shopping online, avoid crowds, get more points, fly quicker.

A good site to find which shopping portal is offering the best deals is Evreward.

Use your family — My parents might fly once a year. My sister might fly twice. They don’t really need or use their miles, so they give them to me. My parents use my credit card to purchase all their tickets, and when they fly, they transfer their miles over to my account. There is a small fee for the transfer, but it’s worth the extra miles. After they visited Israel last year, the miles they both earned ended up in my American Airlines account.

Sign up for newsletters — I sign up for all the airline newsletters as well as those for their credit cards so I can stay up-to-date on special fares, deals, and offers. Many of the best deals in the world are only sent via a newsletter, and if you don’t sign up, you’ll never know. Recently, I got triple miles on purchases on my Citi American AAdvantage card through an alert sent via e-mail.

Take surveys — Every little bit counts. And for signing up for surveys, liking Facebook pages, and more, many companies offer 250-1,000 points. I always participate in these stupid online contests because they add up over time. Airlines usually send this via their newsletters, but I also follow companies on Twitter and Facebook just to make sure I don’t miss anything.

Stay up-to-date on bonus offers — Be sure to constantly check for bonus offers on airline websites. Many brands, especially airlines, offer bonus offers on selected flight routes, fare classes, and dates. By flying during these times, you can maximize your miles for future redemptions. You can stay up-to-date via newsletters or following some of the sites listed in the resources section of this blog.

Airlines love when people actually fly to earn their miles, and they treat those who do with extra special care. However, they make it so easy to earn the frequent flier miles that it’s silly to not take advantage of the situation while it lasts. Business class is no longer out of reach for even the most infrequent flier.

Even if you only fly once or twice a year, why not put in a couple of extra hours a month to ensure that when you do fly, you fly in style, like Pat!

How to be a Travel Hacker in the United Kingdom

Updated: 08/17/2018 | August 17th, 2018

I’ve been writing about travel hacking a lot lately, and one question that keeps popping up is “Matt, how can we travel hack in the UK?” Well, while I know a lot about doing this in the UK, I don’t know as much as Robert (aka Raffles) from Head for Points, the premier travel hacking website for the UK. Today, I sit down with him and he explains in great detail how those of you from the UK can get free flights and hotels like the rest of us across the pond!

Nomadic Matt: How did you get into travel hacking?
Robert: The idea of “getting a deal” was ingrained in me literally from childhood, as my family never had much money. This also meant that my parents never traveled, as it was very expensive to fly in the 1970s. My dad never had a passport, and my mum only got one when she was 50.

I think I first flew when I was 18 in 1988 on a charter to Spain with friends. My first “hack” was when I was 20, when I “arranged” to win a flight to Paris in a British Airways competition. This was 1990, and BA gave away every seat on every flight for one day to boost business. You could pick your route, and I was smart enough to realize that 99% of people would pick a long-haul route with a minimal chance of winning. I picked Paris and, despite literally millions of entries, got my free seat — and even in 1990 flights to Paris from London were expensive.

It was only when I discovered FlyerTalk that I realized that I was only scratching the surface. I contributed heavily to FlyerTalk beginning in 2004 — and still do — and in 2012 started Head for Points as the first UK miles-and-points blog.

In January 2016, Head for Points hit one million monthly page views for the first time, almost all from the UK. I also launched Shopper Points to focus on UK supermarket loyalty schemes.

In the United States, it’s easy to be a travel hacker because we have so many ways to get points. Describe travel hacking in the UK.
It’s true that the UK market is not as generous as the US. However, it is still the second-best place in the world for travel hacking!

The advantage of doing it from the UK is that you can see a lot more of the world for a lot less. Whilst the low-level US airline saver reward is 25,000 miles (and even they are hard to find), British Airways will fly you to France, Germany, the Netherlands, etc., from 8,000 Avios return [round-trip]. Even a flight to Spain is only 13,000 Avios on an off-peak date. You can get to over 20 countries and see some of the world’s greatest sights for less than the cost in miles of a US domestic reward flight!

The typical UK “travel hacker” — someone who wants to earn reward flights but doesn’t earn miles traveling for business — will generally focus on credit card churning, primarily with American Express (Amex), and exploiting the promotions run by Tesco. Tesco is the UK’s largest supermarket chain, and its loyalty points can be converted into British Airways Avios points or Virgin Flying Club miles.

Can you explain the Tesco trick a bit more?
Tesco has a loyalty scheme called Clubcard. On the face of it, it is rather dull: spend £1 in their stores and you earn 1 point. One point gets you 1p off your shopping or you can swap it for other things, including 2.4 Avios points or 2.5 Virgin Flying Club miles.

The real value comes from regular bonus point promotions run by Tesco. These can be hugely aggressive. For example, they regularly offer 150 bonus points for buying selected CDs or DVDs, which can be as cheap as £3. That means you’re getting 360 Avios points for £3. They also like to offer bonus points on printer ink, which can be easily resold on eBay, often at cost price — which means the miles are free.

It scales up as well. They often offer 5,000 points (12,000 Avios) for taking out Tesco life insurance — with a minimum commitment of just £5 per month for a year. In late 2015 they offered a computer printer for £39 with 2,000 bonus points — that was 4,800 Avios.

All of these deals can be bought online, so you don’t even need to enter a Tesco store. Tesco also offers a free MasterCard credit card, which earns Avios (it works out to 0.3 Avios per £1 spent) This isn’t a great rate but it is the best Avios MasterCard or Visa deal available.

My new site Shopper Points is 75% devoted to Tesco Clubcard, not just for miles collectors but also for people who use the points for non-travel redemptions.

UK-based flights have hefty fuel surcharges (i.e., big taxes and fees) when you book award tickets. How does this impact travel hacking in the UK?
The key difference between the UK and US frequent flyer scene is that, in the UK, you cannot genuinely “fly for free,” at least not easily. Both British Airways and Virgin Atlantic (and indeed all of the other major European carriers) impose heavy fuel surcharges on redemption tickets.

This is compounded in the UK by Air Passenger Duty, a departure tax levied by the UK government that can add up to £166 to a business-class ticket. If you redeem your British Airways Avios points for a Club World (flat-bed business class) seat to New York, you will be asked to pay over £500 per person in taxes and surcharges for your “free” ticket.

This is still a good deal, of course, compared to the cost of buying a similar ticket for cash. However, when a couple needs to find £1,000 to cover the additional charges on a pair of long-haul reward seats, you are obviously restricting your market to people on a decent salary. Unlike the US, this is not a hobby for students or the low paid.

The other issue with the heavy taxes and surcharges is that it has made long-haul redemptions in economy fundamentally pointless, except in peak periods. Who would redeem 40,000 Avios points and £350 in taxes for a return economy flight to New York, when the same ticket can be bought for £400 in cash?

You can work around this, but it’s not easy. Air Berlin is an Avios partner and fellow Oneworld member, and has low-tax (£75 return) redemptions from Germany to the US and Abu Dhabi.

Aer Lingus also has low-tax redemptions from Dublin to the US. However, you need to ring British Airways to book these — and the BA website doesn’t tell you this. Only a handful of people know about it as a result.

Similarly, Iberia has low-tax (£150 instead of £500 for business class) redemptions from Madrid to North and Latin America. However, booking these on ba.com incurs a £500+ surcharge. Move your Avios to Iberia Plus (for free, online) and you can book the same seat for just £150 in taxes. BA doesn’t tell you that either!

Does the UK have a lot of good credit card offers like we do here? What are the bonuses typically like?
It has improved massively in the last couple of years. American Express has become very aggressive. It runs (for the UK) very high bonuses on the British Airways Premium Plus card — typically 20,000 to 25,000 points or miles — and is happy for you to churn their cards as long as you wait six months to reapply for the same one.

As long as you know, for example, that the points from the Starwood Amex, American Express Gold, and American Express Platinum cards can be turned into Avios points, then you can do very well. However, I reckon that 90% of Avios collectors are not aware of this.

You get occasional great deals from other issuers. MBNA/Bank of America offered 35,000 American Airlines miles as a sign-up bonus back in 2013, and that card was fee free. That would have gotten you a one-way ticket in business class on Etihad from London to Abu Dhabi!

Are there other cards beyond American Express?
The other big issuer is MBNA/Bank of America. They handle the UK credit cards for American Airlines, Etihad, Virgin Atlantic, Miles & More, and United, amongst others.

The standard MBNA bonus offers are pretty weak: the basic Virgin Atlantic credit card only offers 3,000 miles for signing up. You need to time it right and apply during a good bonus promotion. You also cannot churn MBNA bonuses, as these days they limit you to one bonus per card per lifetime.

That said, MBNA is a well-run business — they post your miles promptly, and their promos always work as promised.

Lloyds and Barclays, the two “mainstream” banks, also have some loyalty card operations. Lloyds runs cards for avios.com (as opposed to British Airways), and Barclays runs cards for Hilton and IHG Rewards Club. In general, though, their operations are shoddy. I receive lots of complaints about Lloyds not honoring sign-up bonuses, and Barclays has a habit of posting your points 3-4 months late.

The writing may be on the wall for non-Amex cards, however. In late 2015, the EU capped “interchange fees” (a proxy for what shops pay to accept credit cards) at 0.3% for Visa, MasterCard, and third-party–issued American Express cards. The previous rates were around 0.75%.

It is simply not possible to run a free credit card that earn miles with an interchange fee of 0.3%. That doesn’t even pay for the cost of funds for the card issuer, let alone the miles, bad debts, statement costs, etc. You don’t make much in interest payments from airline cards because you have a wealthy customer base.

In future, we are likely to see more annual fees and lower earning rates. However, the airline and hotel companies are desperate to keep their logo in your wallet, so compromises will be made. Cards may start to offer elite status, for example, or extra perks such as priority boarding. It will take a couple of years for the market to adjust.

If someone in the UK was looking to get into travel hacking, what advice would you give them?
Focus on something simple, because once you’ve got your first good redemption under your belt, it will encourage you to become more ambitious.

The Hilton Visa, for example, is free and gives you a free night in any global Hilton Family hotel for spending £750. Using that at, say, the Waldorf-Astoria in Rome or the Conrad in New York or Hong Kong would be a great result. If a couple each got this card, the two free nights would cover a long weekend.

For your first flight redemption, there is nothing wrong with a European redemption on British Airways. Perhaps pay the extra miles for Club Europe on the way out, and spend an hour or so before the flight in BA’s lounges at Heathrow. It will whet your appetite to scale up your collecting.

Do you see travel hacking getting easier or harder in the UK?
Ignoring BA’s fuel surcharges — which can be mitigated via Air Berlin, Aer Lingus, and Iberia — this is a golden age. As long as your credit is good, it has never been so easy for a UK resident to rack up a large pile of Avios points via credit card sign-up bonuses.

The expansion of Oneworld — with Qatar, Malaysian, and Sri Lankan joining in recent years — also continues to open up great opportunities for redeeming your miles.

Some of the great deals of the past have gone away — it was once ridiculously easy to get free Star Alliance flights via BMI Diamond Club miles, for example. There is now no UK airline in Star Alliance. All in all, though, these are still good times to be playing the game.

Are there online shopping or dining portals like in the US? Where are some ways to multiply your points per dollar spent so as to rack up points more easily?

Both British Airways and Virgin Atlantic have online shopping portals called Gate 365 and Shops Away, respectively. The problem is that they were late to the game.

The UK has two large cash-back websites, Quidco and TopCashback. The majority of merchants on the airline shopping portals are on those cash-back sites, so you are essentially “buying” Avios at a poor rate when you choose not to use them and instead take miles.

The only reason I would use the airline sites is for shopping at a merchant that refuses to work with cash-back sites. The most popular merchant that does this is the department store chain John Lewis.

There is another tweak, where shopping at TopCashback is far more attractive for earning Avios than using BA’s own Gate 365 portal. As I explained in this article , TopCashback lets you send £50 of cash-back per year to Tesco Clubcard. This can itself be converted into 12,400 Avios points. You have basically paid 0.4p each for those 12,400 Avios (£50.00 / 12,400 Avios), which is an excellent deal.

In the US, we have a lot of ways to manufacture spending to artificially get miles. Can you do that in the UK?

No, not at the moment. The main option — buying pre-paid Visa cards at face value in grocery stores using an American Express card and then redeeming them into your bank account — has gone.

It is a fluid situation, however. There are a lot of innovative products being launched in the UK financial services market at the moment, and new opportunities are bound to emerge. As we know from the US, they are unlikely to last for long when they do.

With US-based cards like Citi, Chase, or AMEX, you have many transfer partners, so you can move points to where the best deal is. Is that possible in the UK? What is the best way to use points on non-UK–based airlines?

If you are based in the UK but collect miles in a non-UK airline program, there are a couple of options.

(However, for a beginner, this is not something I would recommend. British Airways and — to a lesser extent — Virgin Atlantic offer far more options for redeeming if you are UK based. Only expats or people who end up flying other airlines with their jobs should put substantial efforts into building up miles elsewhere.)

Some non-UK airlines have UK credit cards: Lufthansa, Etihad, Emirates, United, and American. Others are American Express transfer partners, so you can send over points from an Amex Gold or Amex Platinum card: Emirates, Etihad, KLM, Air France, Singapore, Delta.

The other option many people forget is Starwood Preferred Guest. Starwood has over 30 airline partners, so you can earn points with the Starwood Amex card and transfer them across. The rate is pretty good, although the card has a £75 annual fee.

You can also transfer from American Express Membership Rewards to Starwood Preferred Guest to your preferred airline. The rate is not great because Amex to Starwood is only 2:1, but I have done this in the past to get Lufthansa miles.

Unless you have substantial credit card spend, it is unlikely that you would ever earn enough miles purely for a decent redemption. There are some amazing redemptions you can get — Emirates A380 business or first class, Etihad A380 business or first class, Lufthansa first class, etc. — but you will need at least 100,000 miles to redeem for any of those.

If you don’t fly these airlines for work and can’t build up your balance that way, credit card spend alone is unlikely to get you enough.

If you want to learn more about travel hacking in the UK, check out Robert’s website, Head for Points, and follow him on Twitter. We have it really good here in the United States with lucrative point deals and credit card bonuses, but there is clearly a lot of opportunity in the UK.

The Ultimate Guide to Travel Hacking

This book shows you how to take money out of the travel equation and and master the points and miles game. It will show you how to easily collect and redeem travel points for free airfare and accommodation so you can get you out of your house faster, cheaper, and in comfort. Click here to learn more about the book, how it can help you, and you can start reading it today!
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Breaking Down Credit Card Rewards with Brian Kelly

Long-time readers know I love travel credit cards because of the huge amount of points and perks they bring. (New readers now know this.) In fact, this month alone I signed up for an Amex Platinum (50,000 points) and United Airlines card (60,000 points), with more sign-ups planned next month. Points bring lots of benefits like free flights, elite status, free checked bags, and priority boarding. And, while I know a lot about this subject, there are people who spend their whole day figuring out how to maximize points. People like Brian Kelly.

Brian Kelly runs The Points Guy, a website dedicated to maximizing reward programs and credit card offers to get as much free travel and elite status as one possibly can. He knows the reward booking systems, points programs, and credit cards inside and out. Today, Brian shares his secrets.

Nomadic Matt: How did you become “The Points Guy”?
Brian Kelly: I started young. I’ve been passionate about points since I was 13 years old, when I planned a family trip to the Cayman Islands using my dad’s airline miles. By the time I was a sophomore in college, I was a US Airways elite flyer.

While working for a Wall Street bank after college, I was on the road constantly, earning tons of miles and points as well as elite status with airlines and hotels, and that allowed me to fund a great travel lifestyle in my spare time. I would take trips to Europe for the weekend using miles and points (I sat behind Madonna in British Airways first class once — that was memorable!), went on a blowout luxury trip to the Seychelles with my partner for just a few hundred dollars using points, and hopped all around the country.

I started blogging about news in the points world, as well as my own areas of expertise, and people started reading it. Then a lot of people started reading it, and I decided to start blogging full time. That was just under a year ago, and it’s been phenomenal! Challenging and exciting and motivating all at the same time.

Over the years, how many miles have you accumulated? How many credit cards did you have to open for that to happen?
From credit cards, I’ve pulled in millions of points and miles. Literally. Last year alone, just through credit card sign-up and spending bonuses, I raked in over 600,000 points. That took me about seven cards to do.

A lot of people are concerned that credit card “churning and burning” will hurt their credit score. What do you say to this?
I would never advise anyone with less-than-healthy credit to apply for multiple cards at once, as “churners” often do. For one thing, you probably won’t get accepted. For another, you should first concentrate on fixing your credit so that you can then take full advantage of the lucrative credit card deals that are out there.

That said, only 10% of your credit score is based on new credit — when banks perform a credit inquiry when you apply for a new card. Otherwise, the most important factors are your payment history and the amount of money you owe, which combined amount to 65% of your credit score. So before you even think about applying for new cards, you need to make sure your credit is in order and that you have a decent score.

If your credit is good, then applying for new cards should not hurt it. Your score typically only drops a couple points for opening a new card (out of a total of 850), so the impact is minimal.

Do you cancel a lot of your cards or just keep them going forever?
I cancel some of my cards, mostly to avoid hefty annual fees for cards I am not actively using or deriving some sort of benefit from. However, instead of closing the account completely, I usually try to ask the bank to either waive the annual fee or downgrade to a no-fee card so that the line of credit remains open and keeps my credit score healthy.

What makes for a good credit card offer?
The whole point of points is to find value, so if you find a credit card that will offer something of value to you, that makes it a good offer. The $450 annual fee on the Amex Platinum card seems onerous to some, but others love the $200 airline rebate you get from it, lounge access, and a host of other perks, including earning Membership Rewards points, whereas those looking for a lower annual fee might prefer the Amex Premier Rewards Gold card, with just a $175 annual fee, where you get three points per dollar spent on airfare and two points per dollar spent on gas and groceries, but not those higher-level perks. Still others might prefer the flexibility to use their points at a fixed value, like with Capital One, to buy the airfare they want, when they want, and don’t care about flying in a premium cabin, while those who do want to fly business internationally or stay in a fancy hotel suite might want to rack up points in their airline and/or hotel program of choice by getting a co-branded card. It really depends on what you want to do with those points, and once you have a strategy in mind, go after the cards that will get you there fastest.

With so many offers out there from so many different companies, what would be your top three tips for maximizing those offers for free hotels or flights?
1. Strategize — Don’t just sign up for every card with an OK offer. If you have a particular trip or goal in mind, concentrate your efforts on the cards that will get you the most miles for the airline that’s going to get you where you need to go, and the hotel where you want to stay.

2. Don’t just concentrate on the sign-up bonuses — The best cards out there are the ones that allow for sustainable points earning through your spending habits. And, for that matter, make sure you are putting every expense possible on a points earning card so that you are maximizing your earning potential.

3. Do your homework — See what bonuses the credit cards you’re interested in have historically offered and make sure you get the best one possible.

Do you earn points any other way besides these sign-up bonuses?
Of course. I travel a lot so I earn miles the good old-fashioned way of sitting in an airplane and going somewhere. In terms of credit cards, the best ones aren’t necessarily just the ones with the biggest bonuses. In my opinion, the best points-earning cards are the ones that allow you to sustain your lucrative points earning through category spending bonuses. For instance, while the current Chase Sapphire Preferred bonus offer is down to 40,000 Ultimate Rewards points from its high of 50,000, I still think it’s a great card because you get double points on travel and dining spending (basically all I do), and those categories are fairly broad, so you can earn a ton of points. You could then combine those points with the Ultimate Rewards points you earn with the Chase Freedom card’s quarterly spending bonus categories, where you earn five points per dollar spent on things like groceries, office supplies, gas stations, or specific merchants like Amazon. Suddenly you’re looking at a ton of extra points. Those are the kinds of cards worth holding on to even after you’ve redeemed your sign-up bonus.

How many miles a year do you fly? Is it all on points?
Last year, I flew about 150,000 miles, and though some of those trips were using miles (like one from the US to Mauritius in the Indian Ocean via Paris), and I recently traveled to Asia for three weeks using United and British Airways miles, I do pay for many of my tickets. After all, you’ve got to earn some of those miles and elite status flying.

Explain for a minute why you think these credit card offers are so good? Is it just the points you get, or do you get additional benefits like elite status?
It all depends on what you’re looking for. If you want the flexibility of transferable points that you can use on a variety of airlines or hotels, then American Express Membership Rewards and Chase Ultimate Rewards would be programs for you to look into, whereas if you want to be able to buy any ticket any time and don’t care about flying coach, maybe a fixed-value point system like Capital One Venture Rewards is the way to go. If you are going to be flying a particular airline a lot, maybe the co-branded card is what you should look at, such as Delta’s SkyMiles Amex, which gets you elite-status perks like free checked bags for up to nine people on your reservation (a huge value), discounted SkyClub passes, and 20% off in-flight food and entertainment, as well as other positives such as two miles per dollar spent on Delta; or the newly introduced United Club Card, which confers not only membership into the United Club at airports but also perks like two free checked bags for the cardholder and a companion, priority access, and elite status with both Hyatt and Avis. That’s a lot of value.

What is your favorite travel credit card?
I mentioned it earlier, but I love the Chase Sapphire Preferred card. It’s probably my favorite card at the moment. The Ultimate Rewards points I earn using it can be transferred to a variety of partners, including United, British Airways, Korean Air, and Southwest, hotels including Hyatt, Priority Club (Intercontinental), Marriott, and Ritz-Carlton, as well as Amtrak, so I can use them for pretty much anything. Plus, I get two points per dollar I spend on dining and travel, which includes a lot of categories, like taxis and even parking. I recently transferred the points I got for signing up to United and used them to fly business class from Newark to Singapore on Singapore Airlines for 60,000 miles and $2.50 USD in taxes/fees. That was a great redemption. Also, it’s made of metal, so it feels good and it looks cool in my wallet.

For more great tips on how to use airline credit cards and (legally) milk the points system for free travel, make sure you read Brian’s blog. You can also follow him on Twitter.

Disclaimer: This content is not provided or commissioned by American Express. Opinions expressed here are author’s alone, not those of American Express, and have not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by American Express. This site may be compensated through American Express Affiliate Program via the links on this page.

A Guide to Traveling with Technology

This is a guest post by travel tech guru Dave Dean of Too Many Adapters, a site devoted to technology for travelers. In this post, Dave breaks down the pros and cons of traveling with certain technology.

Wondering what to take on the road when it comes to electronics? You’re not the only one. Long gone are the days where a cassette player and film camera were the height of travel gadgetry. Walking into a hostel common room now, you’d be forgiven for thinking you had accidentally stumbled into the local electronics store. You’re likely to be surrounded by laptops and tablets, smartphones and DSLRs, and more softly glowing Apple logos than you can shake a stick at.

Often unsure of what they really need, people end up carrying a lot more tech gear on the road than they should. After several years of travel and working online though, I’ve figured out what works, what doesn’t, and what you really need.

Laptop

With the slow disappearance of Internet cafes in favor of Wi-Fi hotspots, a laptop is definitely worth considering. It’s the easiest method of staying in touch, backing up photos, and wasting time.

I use mine to work from the road, so I went for something relatively powerful, but for more typical use, a thin and light laptop like an Ultrabook (e.g., Asus Zenbook Prime) or a Macbook Air can provide everything you need at a lower weight and (potentially) cost. Things that matter include:

Size – Nothing larger than a 13” screen or that weighs much over 1kg, and less is definitely better. Consider the size and weight of the power adapter too. Those things can be huge!

Strength – Something made well that won’t fall to pieces the first time it gets knocked in your bag. Get a protective sleeve to prevent scratches and cushion minor bumps, and read the reviews of its durability.

Battery life – Five or six hours is the minimum, 8+ is much better if you plan to take long overnight buses or trains.

Storage space – Don’t skimp on the amount of storage you have. 128Gb really is the minimum, and more is much better. All those photos and downloaded movies take up more space than you think!

SD card slot – It’s not an absolute must, but having an SD card slot built into your laptop is very handy. Assuming your camera uses SD cards (most do), an built-in card reader makes copying your pictures super easy. All you do is insert the card and transfer!

Cost – The less you spend, the more money you have to spend at the bar, right? Not to mention the computer will be cheaper to insure and replace and less of a target for theft. Don’t spend much over $1000.

If your budget doesn’t stretch that far or your needs are more basic, you could go for a tablet instead. Older technology like netbooks could also do the job, although they’re becoming increasingly hard to find.

Tablet

If I didn’t work online, I’d ditch the laptop and carry a tablet computer instead. Smaller, lighter, cheaper, and with better battery life than a laptop, the most well-known example is Apple’s famous iPad (mini or full-size). While either of those will do the job for a traveler, the best value for money at the moment is in the Android range. A Google Nexus 7 or larger Nexus 10 would be my recommendation.

There’s a lot to be said for choosing a tablet if your main use is consumption (i.e., reading web pages, books, and emails, or watching movies) rather than creation (writing, editing video, etc.). Again, choose one with plenty of storage (either built-in or via microSD card).

To back up your photos, both Apple and Android devices let you plug in an external SD card reader, so pick one of those up as well.

If you have absolutely no other choice, you can also use the camera on your tablet to get that must-have shot. Just be aware you’ll look rather silly doing so.

Mobile phone

I carry a Samsung Galaxy S2. It has rapidly become an indispensable piece of travel technology, with all of my music, photos, apps, and entertainment stored on the microSD card, and it was both cheaper and easier to customize than the iPhone I used to use.

I made sure to buy the unlocked version of my phone, meaning that I can use a pre-paid SIM card anywhere in the world and take advantage of much cheaper calling and data rates. Your mobile company at home will charge incredibly high rates if you use your normal number overseas, making roaming calls and data prohibitively expensive for most travelers.

Switching to a local cell company when you arrive in a country can save you a small fortune. I personally know people who accidentally left data enabled when on vacation for a week and came home to a bill of several thousand dollars. If you can’t unlock your phone and absolutely have to use it while traveling, at least turn the data connection off to lessen the pain.

I use dozens of travel apps, but three of the best are:

• Skype: As a general rule, all of my international calls take place via Skype over Wi-Fi or 3G. It’s quick and easy, and buying a few bucks’ worth of SkypeCredit means I can call any phone in the world for hours.
• TripIt: I’ve tried all sorts of ways to keep track of travel bookings, but TripIt is the easiest. Many confirmation emails can simply be forwarded to add them to your list, and it doesn’t take long to manually add the others. With the Pro version, I even get notified of timetable changes and delays. Having every detail at my fingertips has saved me more than once at airport check-ins and bus stations around the world.
• Google Translate: Google just updated the Android version of its translation app, now letting me download language packs for offline use. Even before that, the app was handy for figuring out what on earth was on the menu, or saying/displaying a few words in the local language to get my point across. Now that I can use it anywhere, it’s indispensable.

E-book reader

I resisted buying an e-book reader for a long time. I’m a physical book kind of guy. But now that I’ve made the leap to a Kindle, I’m very pleased with it.

It’s incredibly small and light, more so than even a little paperback, and can store hundreds of books, travel guides, and whatever else I might need. I picked up the Keyboard 3G, which costs more than the Wi-Fi–only version, but the ability to download new books from anywhere with cell phone coverage is invaluable.

An unexpected benefit lies hidden away in the “experimental” section: a slow, clunky web browser. Why is that so great? Because with the 3G connection I have free access to email, Facebook, etc., in over 100 countries.

The browser is too painful to be my only way of getting online, but in a pinch it’s fantastic. This is the only Kindle model that has this feature. All the other 3G versions only let you access Wikipedia and the Amazon store.

I considered a tablet instead, but for reading on the road there was really no contest. The Kindle is cheaper, smaller and lighter, the battery life is measured in weeks rather than hours, the screen is so much better in sunlight, and I can happily lie on the beach without worrying about it.

Thanks to a cheap case I bought off eBay, it looks like a plain notebook if I need to pull it out on the street to check directions. There’s no way I’d even think of doing that with any tablet. I’d be far too much of a target.

Backup

I worked in IT when I wasn’t traveling, so data backup has long been a concern of mine. I just know too many travelers who have lost irreplaceable data due to hard drive failures and theft, among other reasons. Do you want to lose every single photo from your US road trip, your cruise on Halong Bay, and everywhere else you’ve been? Probably not.

I copy photos to my laptop each night, then use Crashplan+ to do the rest. For a few bucks a month it automatically manages backups to both online storage and a portable hard drive that I keep in my pack, all without me having to think about it. Before splashing out on that subscription I backed everything up manually, but found that I was forgetting to do it too often for my liking.

Although I use a Seagate portable drive and it works fine, I’d be looking at the rugged Transcend version if I were buying a new one.

For the small amount of hassle involved, the peace of mind is more than worth it. Don’t risk losing all of your digital memories.

Miscellaneous

Other than the chargers and cables that always seem to tie themselves in knots overnight, the only other gadgets I put in my pack are a universal power adapter and a four-way power box.

You’d struggle to spend more than $25 on the combination if you tried, and they take up very little room in my bag, yet are worth their weight in gold every time I get to a dorm room with one power socket for the 12 people staying in it. I plug all of my devices into the four-way box, connect it to the wall socket via my universal adapter, and I’m done. Easy.

Choosing the right gear to travel with doesn’t have to be a daunting task. Making a few smart choices and limiting yourself to what you truly need will give you all of the benefits that technology can bring while avoiding most of the downsides. Spend a bit of time and money getting it right before you leave — trust me, it will save an awful lot of frustration once you’re out there on the road.

Dave is one half of the team at Too Many Adapters, a site devoted to technology for travelers. A geek as long as he can remember, he worked in IT around the world for 15 years, combining his love of all things nerdy with an overwhelming travel addiction. Now based out of a backpack long term, Dave writes about travel and tech from anywhere with half-decent Internet and a great view. You can also find him talking about the life of a long-term traveler at What’s Dave Doing?

What Is a Passport Card? (Video)

Introduced in 2008, the passport card is a relatively inexpensive personal identification card that can be used in place of a passport book or driver’s license at land and sea entry points to the United States. It is not, however, sufficient for international travel by air—something to keep in mind when you dash to the airport hoping for a last-minute getaway.

But if you’re planning a road trip to Mexico or Canada from the United States, a passport card is all you need to get there. (The card was a post-9/11 brainchild of the U.S. State department and Department of Homeland Security, and is part of the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative.)  If you don’t yet have a passport, you can snag a passport card in person, at any of the accepted locations, using a standard form. You’ll need to bring substantial personal identifying information, or a combination of a couple different ones, so don’t forget them.

Getty Images

One of the benefits of the card, for those on a tight budget and those with large families needing to cross these borders frequently, is that—at $55 ($40 for kids) versus $135 ($105 for kids)—it’s a fraction of the cost of a full passport book. (The state department even has a handy-dandy page for breaking down the distinctions.)

Related: Should You Get an RFID Blocking Wallet and Passport Cover?

Passport cards also are used in Ready Lanes, a dedicated primary vehicle lane for travelers entering the States at border points of entry. Because the card contains a radio-frequency identification (RFID) chip, which connects it to stored records in government databases, it can pull up information quickly on your biographical data, other photos, etc.

Passport cards also come in handy if you’re boating to the Caribbean or to Bermuda. Since it’s physically smaller than the passport book by a long shot, it’s easy enough to tuck into your wallet alongside your Global Entry or TSA Precheck card—and as handy to pack up as, say, a tiny polka-dotted bikini or a pair of shorts in case you wanted pull a Y Tu Mamá También and start driving south.

Just remember: Land and sea travel only. Not air! Because there’s nothing as sad as a weekend getaway, foiled.

Alex Van Buren is a writer living in Brooklyn, New York. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram @alexvanburen.