Monday, December 30, 2019

Travel hacking - 2019 results

I've been trying to do a better job of tracking my travel hacking results, so I used a spreadsheet this year. Here are the results of our 2019 travel hacking. Note that the United rewards I earn are from work travel...


  • Paid for flights from my parents, to come & watch the kids over spring break. Used $100 discount code for a delayed flight, plus a credit. Amount saved - $329.72
  • Used remaining wallet credit for a flight to Hawaii in June. Amount saved - $55.86
  • I paid for my sister's flight to Hawaii for a girls trip. I used a companion fare. Amount saved - $550.20
  • I used a discount due to another flight delay for Christmas flights. Amount saved - $100
  • I also used a wallet credit from a changed flight, for our Christmas flights. Amount saved - $332.40
  • Used miles for my parents to come hang out with the kids, when we had an unexpected trip to Hawaii for M's work trip. Amount saved - $548.20
  • Used United miles for trip to Whistler x4 -  $3,000 


Total saved from travel hacking = $4,916.38

I'm happy with the results. The Whistler trip gave us a big boost. I'll also add that I haven't been using miles to book flights for myself, because I'm trying to achieve status on my preferred local airline, and flights booked with miles aren't eligible. Instead, I'm using miles for when my parents visits, vs my own flights. I'm hoping to cross over into the $5k mark in 2020!

What about you? Do you track travel hacking? How much did you earn in 2019?

3 comments:

  1. Well done! Most of our miles are from a cc, some from earning through the airlines and some through the air miles program which is a loyalty shopping program in Canada. It sure does help when we fly or family flies which seems similar to how you do it.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I too saved big with points and discounts on travel. You have to be diligent and pray nothing goes wrong and if it does you will need to be on the phone for a while, but it works.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Most of our earning is through credit card churning. We did a bit of air travel this year but paid for it out of pocket both times. Once to take advantage of a coupon we still had, once because it was too short notice to find any good deals.

    Meanwhile, I'm hoarding miles for a future big trip somewhere... Japan maybe? I don't know. We haven't actually decided yet but we keep kicking that around in hopes we'll actually do it one day.

    ReplyDelete