Imagine you sit down with your finance to plan your honeymoon.
This is the time to go crazy. You’ll be on cloud nine form the wedding and you want to pull out all the stops for this trip. We’re talking first class flights, overwater bungalows, amazing food, the whole sha-bang!
You start mood boarding the shit out this.
Photos of happy couples floating on pristine water…
Cheers-ing of champagne on a deserted beach at sunset…
Giggling in their private hot tub…
Then you set the mood board on fire.
Because you realize the reason these couples are so damn happy is that they are rich as fuuuuck.
You’ve done the math. The type of vacation these couples were on, the type you can only dream of, costs way too much. We’re talking in the tens of thousands of dollars.
$65,000 to be exact.
And there’s just no way you could ever afford this type of vacation
TRAVEL HACKING
In this post, I’m going to break down exactly how you can go on the same amazing honeymoons without going bankrupt.
In fact, I’m going to show you how you can use various travel hacking strategies to go on a $65,000 honeymoon for only $3000. This breakdown is a real-life case study. All the prices are real and up to date as of August 2018.
So where are we going for our honeymoon?
The Maldives. obviously.
Go big or go home right?!
$65,000 MALDIVES HONEYMOON
The Maldives is considered the ultimate honeymoon destination.
Unfortunately for most peasants people, the island nation is not even an option. It is one of the most expensive places you could possibly fly to from the US. The average price of a round-trip economy ticket is $1600! The Islands are so small that most resorts encompass the entire Island, meaning that once you are there everything is done at your resort. This monopolistic situation drives up the costs of everything including the basic room prices.
Over-water bungalows are the considered the ultimate luxury resort accommodation, with each new resort trying to outdo the rest in their luxuriousness. It’s not unusual for these bungalows to have their own Infiniti pools, with a view of nothing but clear blue water.
Sold? Ok, on to the nerd stuff…
REAL LIFE COST
FIRST CLASS FLIGHTS: $17,000 X 2ppl
HOTELS: $5000 X 5 nights + $1250 X 3 nights
= $65,000
TRAVEL HACKERS COST
FIRST CLASS FLIGHTS: 230,000 AAmiles + $400 each
HOTELS: 240,000 Marriott points + 285,000 Hilton Honors points ($1500)
= $2300
STRATEGIES USED:
Credit Card sign up bonuses
Buy hotel points
Manufactured spend
Book reward rooms
FIRST CLASS FLIGHTS
AIRLINE: CATHAY PACIFIC
COST: $17,000 each
AWARD COST: 230,000 AA miles & $200 each
STRATEGY:
1) Apply for 3 AAdvantage Credit Cards
2) Reach minimum spending requirements
3) Earn huge points sign up bonus
4) Continue normal spending on cards for the remainder of points
5) Book reward flights
I told you we aren’t messing around. For this trip, you’ll be flying first class for almost 30 hours. That’s a shit tonne of caviar and foot massages. The flights will be on Cathay Pacific, who has an excellent first class product, with massive TV screens, lie-flat beds, and gourmet food on call. Did I mention the Caviar..?
AMERICAN AADVANTAGE MILES
We are going to be booking your flights using the American Airlines AAdvantage travel awards program. A one way First Class ticket costs 115,000 AAdvantage miles and $200 in taxes. A business class seat is only 80,000 miles and an economy seat is considerably cheaper at 40,000. However we’re shooting for the star here, so we need to accrue a total of 460,000 miles to fly two people round trip to the Maldives in First Class. Oh boy.
There are really only two ways to get this many miles in such a short period of time, assuming you are starting with zero American Airlines AAdvantage miles in your account. Obviously, if you have any flights you need to take in the interim, booking with American Airlines would be a no-brainer to make the task of accumulating 460,000 miles a little easier.
Our focus is going to be on credit card sign up bonuses and general spending.
Credit card bonus
Each of you are going to sign up for 3 AAdvantage Credit cards. As long as you meet the spending requirements – which should be easy, what with a wedding to put together and all – you will earn the sign up bonuses:
AAdvantage Aviator Red World Elite Mastercard – 60,000 after spending $2,500
Citi / AAdvantage Executive World Elite Mastercard 75,000 after spending $7,500
CitiBusiness / AAdvantage Platinum Select World Mastercard 70,000 after spending $4,000
General spending
Don’t forget you earn at least 1 Advantage point on every dollar you spend towards meeting the minimums spending requirements.
After meeting these spending requirements you will each have 219,000 Advantage points, Just 11,000 points shy of 230,000 needed for the first class flights.
The final 11,000 points can either be accrued by regular monthly spending. If you are short on time, you can utilize manufactured spending techniques to earn the points.
Remember the cardinal rule, don’t spend more than you would usually spend on the Credit Cards (unless in a strategic way like manufactured spending).
Timing
Hopefully, you are planning this trip with enough lead time to earn the miles and book far enough in advance to guarantee availability for the dates you want. How you space out these credit card applications is up to you. There are three factors to consider; time until the proposed honeymoon, spending requirements and credit score.
Credit Score
If your credit score isn’t good then you are going to want to take care of that first. You can find out tips to get your credit score in good shape here. If your credit score is low, you are going to want to be fixing it well before you even think about planning your honeymoon. If your credit score is great, then you can go ahead an apply for all 3 credit cards at once. Three is the maximum amount of credit cards you should apply for at the same time. Lucky for you 3 is all we need.
Time until honeymoon
Obviously, if you are planning a long way ahead then you can space out your credit card applications to take the pressure off having to reach all the sign-up bonus thresholds all at once. If you are short on time, best to apply for the credit cards all on the same day before your credit score has a chance to register the ‘hard pulls’ and drop a little from each application.
Spending Requirements
As already mentioned, you need to meet $14,000 of spending requirements in 3 months(each) between all three cards. If this is doable, feel free to apply for them all at once. The sooner you meet the spending requirements, the sooner you’ll get the bonus points and the sooner you can book your trip!
Booking the flights
To book the flights, you just need to visit AmericanAirlines.com, sign in and search for you flights with the ‘redeem miles’ box checked. From there it’s pretty straightforward.
ACCOMMODATION
HOTELS: $28,750
AWARD COST: 240 Marriott points, 285,000 Hilton Honors points
You’ll be staying in the Maldives for a total of 8 nights. To mix things up, I thought we’d book two separate properties. The first being The Conrad Rangali Island for 3 nights in your very own overwater bungalow. The next 5 nights you will spend at the hottest new property in the Maldives, the St Regis, in another *sigh* overwater bungalow. Being the sexy new kid on the block these bungalows at St Regis are booking out for $5000 a night during peak season. Luckily for us, peak season won’t affect the price in reward points.
CONRAD RANGALI
Twice voted ‘Best Hotel in the World’ as well as the ‘Leading Maldives over water Resort’ in 2015, the Conrad Rangali is the perfect resort to sip your toes into the life of luxury. A little amuse bouche if you will.
COST: $1250 per night x 3
AWARD COST: 95,000 per night X 3 = 285,000 ($1500)
STRATEGY:
1) Buy 300,000 Hilton Honors points at a discount
2) Book rooms using HH points
Buy Hilton Honors points
This is my all-time favorite trick. Even if you don’t have enough Hilton honors points in your account to book a stay, you can usually immediately go buy the points and then book the room with your newly minted points. Why bother? Because you can usually buy the points at a discount, resulting in at least a 50% saving on the final room price.
Hilton members are only allowed to buy a total of 80,000 points a year. So between the two of you, you can buy 160,000 points. As of today, there is a 40% discount off the price of points. 160,000 points, therefore, cost $960. However, as recently as just 2 months ago Hilton Honors were running a 100% bonus points promotion, meaning if you paid full price for the points they would give you twice as many as a bonus. So the 80k cap became 160k. If you, therefore, wait until the next 100% bonus points promo, you could each get 160k points for $800. You would now have 320,000 HH points between you, and it only cost you $1600.
However, we only need 285k so each of you will buy just 150,000 points at $750.
Book the Water Villa
Once you have 285,000 points head over to https://www.hiltonhhonors.com and search availability. You should see a STANDARD ROOM REWARD under WATER VILLA for 95,000 a night.
TOTAL COST: $1500
ST REGIS MALDIVES
COST: $5,000 per night x 5
AWARD COST: 240,000 total
STRATEGY:
1) Apply for 2 credit cards
2) Reach minimum spending requirements
3) Get huge points sign-up bonuses
4) Top off account buy buying points
5) Have partner buy 50,000 points
6) Consolidate in one account
7) Book rooms
8) Get the 5th night free after booking 4 reward nights
St Regis is apart of the Starwood Group. Starwood recently merged with Marriott and the cute couple just released their updated rewards chart.
Holy crap.
Usually, when mergers happen it is not good news for the customer, but this time the news is…phenomenal. The overwater bungalows at the St Regis have been priced as a category 7 property under the Marriot reward categories, costing only 60,000 a night. This is an absolute steal. Even just buying the Marriott points directly at full price using the same strategy we used for The Conrad, the bungalow would only cost you $750 a night. As an added bonus, Marriott gives you the fifth night free when booking with points.
So for 5 nights stay and one of the most incredible properties in the world, we only need 240,000 Marriott points.
To get the 5th night free the reservation needs to be booked from the same account. You are only allowed to transfer 50k a year from another account. This means that one of you will have to earn 190,000 and the other just 50,000 that will be transferred over.
SPG earning credit cards
Considering you will have already taken out 3 credit cards we will try and acquire the 190,000 with just 2 credit cards.
Chase Ultimate Reward points can be transferred to Marriot at a rate of 1:1. This opens up a bunch of credit card options. I would suggest taking out:
Chase Ink Business Preferred℠ Card 80,000 URP after spending $5000 in 3 months
Starwood Preferred Guest® Credit Card from American Express 75,000 after spending $3000 in 3 months.
Buy the remaining Marriott points
After meeting the minimum spends you will have 163,000 Marriott points. The remaining 27,000 can then be bought at a rate os $12.50 per 1000 points, totaling $337.50. Your spouse can then either buy the remaining 50,000 points on her account for $650 and transfer them across. Alternatively, she can also take one of the above credit cards and earn the points via the sign-up bonus.
Book the Overwater Bungalow
Log into your Ultimate Rewards Points account and transfer your points over to your linked Marriott account. The St Regis Maldives Vommuli Resort has a limited participation in the Starwood Preferred Guest Program. This means you have to call SPG directly to book and Overwater Bungalow with points. It also means that reward availability is even slimmer than usual, so be sure to be book plenty of time in advance.
TOTAL COST: $337.50
FINAL THOUGHTS
Timeline
- This plan calls for five credit card applications. This means at most applying for three cards at once and then the other two cards three months later. It will, therefore, take you approximately 6 or 7 months to rack up the points needed.
- You then are going to want to book your reward flights and hotels at least 10 months in advance to get the dates you want.
- All in all, you are looking at a year and a half of planning from start to finish.
- It can be done quicker if you are naturally high spenders and you also get lucky with reward availability
Additional Perks
Booking with reward points has other benefits:
- You have much greater leeway with cancellations, usually being able to cancel up until a few days/weeks before with no fees.
- You may get free room upgrades, free wifi, late checkout and other welcome gifts.
Be Smart
Are we gaming the system? No. The loyalty system wouldn’t except if it didn’t ultimately benefit the travel and credit card companies. We are just taking full advantage of it to extract maximum value. However, do not be complacent. The credit card companies especially are banking(literally) on your complacency to not only nickel and dime you but trap you in the financial system.
Things to be aware of:
- Credit card annual fees: I have included tall the annual fee for the first year in the overall cost of this Honeymoon. After the first year, you need to do an audit of your financial situation, credit card portfolio, and travel goals to determine which cards to close and which to keep. Do not just forget about them.
- Revolving debt: Be sure to pay off your credit card every month. Do not let debt roll over otherwise you pay interest on it. This is how the credit companies get you. Compound interest is your best friend when it comes to savings but your worst enemy with credit cards. Do not get into travel hacking if you already have credit card debt.
- Do not spend more than you would have without credit cards – unless you are purposefully utilizing manufactured spend.
The post How to get a $65,000 Honeymoon for $3000. Seriously. appeared first on The Cheeky Traveler.
