To the “Point”

We’re a big family and we don’t have a ton of extra money. There was no travel fund. No plan. It just felt like something we’d get to someday, which is the same as never.

I kept seeing stuff about points and kept ignoring it. Seemed complicated. Seemed like something people with more time or more money figured out. I don’t know when exactly it stopped feeling like that but it did, slowly, and then one day I just decided we were going to Hawaii.

I made a spreadsheet. Every person in the family, what they’d need to get there. Then I worked backwards: which cards, which bonuses, what timing. For us it was Southwest. We used the Companion Pass twice. Chris took one of the kids, I took one of the kids, and then I earned enough on other cards to transfer over and cover the rest of the family.

We got to Hawaii. Six of us. The babies stayed home, but we did it. And I paid almost nothing for it.

We haven’t stopped since. Six weeks through New England down to Florida. The Pacific Northwest twice. Texas, California. And now we’re planning Europe, Chris and I going to see our daughter who lives there. I would have laughed at that two years ago.

I’m not a finance person. I didn’t have a system. I just kept learning one piece at a time until I had enough to figure it out. And I want to show other families how to do the same thing because money really doesn’t have to be why you don’t go.