I’m going to let you in on a little secret. How I afford to travel so much! I’ve spent most of the last two years travelling around the world making video and photo content for my own social media channels and for small businesses. The most common question my friends ask me is how I afford to live like this. I do a bit of freelance work along the way and travel on a tight budget but I actually get a few free flights which helps me along. So I’m going to share how I get free flights. And this is NOT sponsored.
In the last two years I’ve flown Perth to Brisbane for free and back again for free, Singapore to Turkey for free, and London to here in Bali all for FREE. And I still have 3 free flights waiting for me to redeem. How do I do it? Watch this video and keep reading below for more tips and links!
You don’t even have to FLY to rack up the frequent flyer points. So if you’re thinking about a big trip in 6 months or a year, now is the perfect time to make sure you’ve got a bank of free flights when the time comes.
I only found out 2 years ago that you can actually rack up points without setting foot in a plane and I could have stacked up enough points to fly for free all those years before but I had no idea!
Signing up to airline frequent flyer programs
So the first thing is signing up to the frequent flyer loyalty systems. Most airlines do this without any fees or anything, just like how you get a stamp on your coffee and get the 10th coffee free though it’s a little more complex. It’s completely free to join and if you play it right, it will be insanely valuable.
I personally use Velocity which is the Virgin airline loyalty program but it’s linked with many other airlines so you can use your points to fly with Singapore Airlines, Air Canada, Air NZ and many more!
I also collect points on Air Asia’s Big Red which I’m yet to redeem a flight on because again, I only started logging my flights and tallying up points in the last few years, and I fly South East Asia a LOT!
Linked credit card to frequent flyer program
Get a credit card that’s linked to a frequent flyer loyalty program. This can be the biggest point earner! By the way most of my tips after this section are still relevant even if you don’t get the credit card so keep reading!
I have an AMEX Velocity Platinum card. It gives me free travel insurance, a free domestic return flight every year (between select destinations) and 2x free Virgin Australia airport lounge passes, but the best part is it’s a gold mine for points.
They give you mad sign up bonus points – usually around 50,000 points but if you sign up when there is a special promotion on, it can be insane. I signed up just under 2 years ago when there was a 100,000 bonus sign up points. To put into perspective that can get you from Australia to America or Europe if you play your booking game right, which I’ll get to soon.
AMEX is doing another short promotion for 100,000 sign up bonus points right now FYI if you want to get amongst those delicious, delicious points! Message me for my personal referral sign up link and we’ll both get some yummy bonus points!
Email me for my personal referral link to this card or send me a Facebook message and I’ll message it to you because this link is not allowed to be shared publicly; it’s very special secret business 🙂 But of course you can go directly to their website if you don’t want to use my referral link…
Obviously I’m not a financial advisor, but I can advise the opposite way and say DO NOT get a credit card if you’re not good with money. DON’T do it! I was in 10k credit card debt in my 20s and it took so long to get out of so take it from me, if you don’t trust yourself to pay it off every month, then don’t do it because you’ll get charged interest and it can get out of control. But if you’re sensible, or like me have learnt your lesson, this can be your golden ticket around the world if you pay it off every month and don’t get tempted to spend more money than what you would have otherwise.
The current introductory offer is up to 100,000 Velocity Points when you apply by 19 June 2019, are approved and meet the minimum spend criteria – that’s 25,000 points for each month you spend $1,000 in the first 4 months. It has an annual fee of $375 which for me is worth it when I factor in all the free flights and free travel insurance. And those bonus sign up points are worth at least double that on a flight redemption so I thought I’d just do it for one year and then cancel but I have actually found the rewards to still be worth it two years on!
Message me for the link and make sure you read the T&Cs before you sign up.
Make the minimum spend for bonus points
Ok so if you’ve got a credit card to a loyalty program, let’s rack up some serious points!
To get the big sign up bonus, you usually need to spend a certain amount in the first few months, so I timed it when I needed to buy a new laptop and some flights so I instantly got that big bonus, as well as the 1.25 Velocity points for every dollar spent on those purchases so I had an instant big bank of points.
So if you’re like me and don’t normally spend a lot of money, just time the signup for when you have some big ticket items you have to purchase and make that expense work for you.
Funnel all your regular expenses through your credit card to rack up the points
Next is to make sure you funnel all your monthly expenses through your credit card.
I haven’t worked out a way to pay my mortgage through it without fees that would counteract the benefits but pretty much everything else goes through it, racking up points – insurances, utility bills, phone bills, petrol, groceries, and any other shopping, anywhere that accepts credit card, I use it, even small things like coffee add up.
I have my AMEX linked to my Paypal so all my Uber, iTunes and all my online subscriptions like Adobe and Soundstripe earn points too. <– Psst! Use those referral links if you’re getting into the video or photo game and want to edit like a pro!
Most shops accept AMEX these days without an extra fee… but I also have another back up credit card, a Visa which is accepted everywhere which I use if they don’t accept AMEX. And this one accrues Flybuys points so literally every purchase I make, I earn points towards free flights. Which brings me to my next point!
Flybuys loyalty card in Australia
Flybuys is an awesome way to double dip! And it’s totally legit to do this. Flybuys is a loyalty card that half the big chain stores use. So if you shop at say Coles, Target, Kmart, Coles Express petrol, tap your Flybuys card to get points to that Flybuys program, and pay with AMEX to get additional higher value Velocity points on the Velocity system.
Flybuys obviously try to get you to use their points for discounts on groceries or for free products in their program but I use it towards my flights. I periodically transfer my Flybuys points to Velocity points. I always wait for a promotion because they usually do 2x a year promo when you get 15% bonus Velocity points for transferring your Flybuys points to them. So Flybuys is an awesome bonus to top up your Velocity points.
Flybuys also have some extra deals of their own for earning points. They’ll just have promos like 1,000 or 2,000 bonus points for spending $30 or $40 at Kmart or Target so I’ll usually try to wait until promotions come through before I buy things I need.
I also switched to Kleenheat gas for my house because they had a promotion of bonus Flybuys points for switching as well as automatic Flybuys points earned on each bill, plus I’m double dipping by paying that bill with my AMEX card and earning points there too. And the actual cost of the gas with that company was cheaper than my previous provider too, which is obviously important to check cos there’s no point paying more for points because the point is to get free points – get my point?!!!!!
Earn frequent flyer points on petrol at BP and Coles
If you drive a car, tap your Velocity card if you go through BP and earn Velocity points per litre on the petrol plus pay it with AMEX and earn points per dollar on the payment. Another epic double dip! And again, Coles Express servo is a back up for the Flybuys double dip. I favour straight up Velocity points over Flybuys points when there’s a choice like BP over Coles because it works out higher value points but obvs look at the petrol price because this is about saving money, so don’t get sucked in to paying more for points, just earn as many points as possible when it’s free to do so!
Shop online through Velocity Store for points
If you like online shopping, you’re going to love this next tip. You can shop online through the Velocity shop website and earn a crazy amount of points. So there are heaps of major brands on here and the system gives you points per dollar spent (as well as that AMEX payment double dip!) so that’s an awesome way to get extra points when you need to buy something, and again keep an out on those promotions.
There’ll be times when you can earn up to 6 Velocity points per dollar spent on certain brands so if you need something, it’s worth checking if you can get it on here first and rake in those points! You can even click through to eBay from here and earn points on anything you buy on eBay so for me that covers all my camera bits and bobs that I buy too!
Frequent flyer point hacks
Email promotions come through regularly through Velocity for all kinds of brands.
I’ve also bought a case of wine through the Virgin Wines program which came to me as an email promotion. I don’t drink but I was away for Christmas so I had a case delivered to my Mum’s doorstep the week before Christmas which was an awesome gift being overseas and having not planned a better present earlier!
So there’ll be heaps of random deals like that that come around offering bonus points. But again don’t get sucked in if you’re not already looking for something…
How to get free flights
Now this is about maximising the value you get from your points once you’ve got them.
Have a look on the Virgin flight booking website for the conversion rate of miles to points to get a rough idea and play around on random dates to get a feel for how they fluctuate – just like normal prices do when you pay with money.
It doesn’t correlate to a dollar figure, so for example a $200 flight might cost 20,000 points, but you might be able to get a $900 flight for 50,000 as a random example, because it’s based on miles not dollar amount. So look for the most expensive legs you plan to do in that mile zone and use your points for that flight and then pay money for flights that are cheaper to pay with money.
If you’re travelling a lot and want to squeeze out as many free flights as possible you need to be across this. So I had enough points to fly Singapore to Turkey which on the cheapest budget flight at the time I was going would’ve cost me about $800 and I paid the Perth-Singapore leg with money because it was about $170 compared to about half as many more points again to get the whole journey for free.
If you only get to travel once or twice a year then you can probably afford to just use use points for anything if there’s no incentive to save them but I like to travel as much as possible for as cheap as possible so me it’s better to save the points for flights that are much more expensive in comparison and pay the cheaper flights with money.
Hack the frequent flyer system
There are extra tricks you can play if you’re a little sneaky.
Most of these frequent flyer credit cards have generous sign up bonus points, so you can shop around each year. Each card will charge a decent annual fee of somewhere between ($100-400) every year and they only give you the bonus sign up points in the first year. So if you sign up for a credit card, buy your significant annual purchase (maybe it’s camera or computer gear like me, house renovation stuff from Bunnings, white goods, wedding planning, or maybe you regularly spend a lot anyway), it’s worth getting a new card, buying your big ticket items, earning the chunk of free bonus points, keep racking up points throughout the year on your regular expenses, take a couple of free trips in the year, get your free travel insurance for those trips, and then look around for the next card deal for the following year.
I’m keeping my AMEX because 1.25 points-per-dollar is the highest of any card, but I’m looking for a new card to add to my collection before I buy a new camera, because I’ll literally pay the yearly fee of a couple hundred, buy what I need to buy anyway and pocket a huge bonus sign up points nugget into my Velocity account which will be worth way more than the annual fee and only keep that credit card for one year so I only pay that annual fee once and get a mad return on it.
In theory you could do this every year if you go to a new provider each time as it’s only for new customers. It’s also good having a couple of cards to play the free travel insurance because my AMEX only gives up to 60 days travel insurance, while another international card gives 6 months so when I was away for almost a whole year I only had to buy like a months worth of travel insurance and that in itself more than covers the cost of the annual fees, let alone all those tasty free flights!
QANTAS or business class frequent flyers?
Now my final point is actually just sharing the love, because mine is mostly about Velocity in Australia because I’m obsessed with it and my linked American Express credit card. If you want to know more about the QANTAS frequent flyers card or hacks for upgrading your flights from economy to business class – then my friend Paul Ramondo is your man because he’s a fancy lord like that but I’m all about the free economy flights here.
AMEX Velocity Platinum frequent flyer credit card
I hope you’ve found this video and article useful for your quest to travel on a budget! Remember, don’t get a credit card if you’re not good with self control and managing your money but you can still sign up for the Velocity loyalty points systems and earn points on petrol, online shopping and flights, and Flybuys points at participating stores and utilities just as normal with no charges whatsoever.
So there you have it, one of my many secrets to travelling often on a tight arse budget! Let me know if you have any other hacks I’ve missed. Happy travels x
