Travelling for free (almost)

Since the beginning of 2021, I've bought 12 plane tickets for me and my family (sometimes, I travel alone, sometimes, with one of my kids, sometimes, with all the family).

Among these 12 plane tickets, I've paid the full price 0 time. I've always used Aeroplan or Air Miles to reduce the bill. Which makes that I've probably paid less than 20% of the full price for these 12 tickets.

And for hotels, I've used points too. For instance, I've stayed 10 days with breakfast included at a nice Marriott hotel in Orlando, 5 days in a nice Marriott in St-John's (Newfoundland), 3 days at the foot of the pyramids in Cairo, 1 day in a nice Marriott hotel at Cairo's airport and 2 days just besides the Dead Sea in Jordan.  All these stays were for free. Full price would have been about 5000 CAN$. 

I estimate that I've saved at least 20 000$ since 2018 with travel hacking. Of course, I have to pay some fees here and there. It's not entirely free. But instead of paying 25 000$ for plane tickets and hotels for all these trips (China, Europe, Florida, Louisiana, Egypt, etc), I've paid maybe 5000$.

Some people have asked me how it was possible to travel for such little money.

The answer is that you have to be aggressive with  credit cards. Because some bonuses are great. 

Where to begin?

With some credit cards, if you spend 3000$ in three months, you'll get enough points to buy 2 round trips in North America for almost nothing. Or you could use these points to get free nights in beautiful Marriott hotels.

You begin that way, slowly, with only one new credit card. But aftter a few months, you get completely crazy like me and you get 10 different cards. 

Then it's a lot of management with your Excel file, but you'll get a shitload of points. And you can basically go anywhere.