To the “Point”

We’re a big family and we don’t have a ton of extra money, so there was no travel fund and no plan, and it just felt like something we’d get to someday (which is the same as never, if I’m being honest).

I kept seeing stuff about points and I kept ignoring it, because it seemed complicated and it 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.

So I made a spreadsheet with every person in the family and what they’d need to get there, and then I worked backwards to figure out which cards and which bonuses and what timing. For us it was Southwest, and we used the Companion Pass twice, Chris took one of the kids and 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), and we did it and I paid almost nothing for it.

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

I’m not a finance person and 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.