When did your love for travel start?
Amanda: I grew up traveling domestic with my family. Sometimes we flew and sometimes we drove, but we always enjoyed the time together to explore new places and visit extended family across the country. When I was in 6th grade, my parents gave me the opportunity to plan our entire family trip to South Dakota. I remember spending hours on our old desktop researching activities and hotels. I came up with an entire itinerary for our family trip complete with a budget! The one mistake I made was thinking we could eat PB&J the entire time, so in the end, the food budget was unrealistic, but it was a learning experience. All of our family vacations were memorable, and I also had the opportunity to travel internationally in high school and college which helped fuel a passion for international travel as well.
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| Hawaii: Cousins at a luau |
Matt: My mom grew up in Oregon, and we have a lot of family there. Most of my traveling memories growing up were trips to Oregon. Usually my sisters flew, and my dad and I took the scenic drive out (stretched to 5 days!). My sisters played college basketball, so we took other weekend road trips to watch games throughout the Midwest. In college, my roommates and I took annual college football road trips. We started small and went south to Iowa vs. Penn State. The next year we drove out to Pennsylvania for Penn St vs. Ohio State. The last year we made the trek to North Carolina for UNC vs. Virginia Tech and returned in time for the Sunday noon NFL game (total trip under 48 hrs). My biggest international adventure growing up was crossing over the border into Canada, before passports were required.
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| State College, PA: Roommates at Beaver Stadium |
Why do you travel now?
I read this article recently, and although it was about teaching your kids about the nations, it echoes our heart and passion for the nations and for travel.
"God determined the clans, languages, lands, and nations (Genesis 10-11). And he had a plan of redemption that included them all. So, we don't study merely to be knowledgable, but to celebrate what God has designed. We glory in God. We stand in awe of His creativity and imagination. The nations don't point us back to ourselves - they point us to God."
For us, the whole point of travel and adventure is to point us to God, growing us in relationship to Him and secondarily, to one each other. Through it, He is glorified and our joy multiplies. In our opinion, we could read about the nations and study maps all day, but there is something valuable and life-changing about actually experiencing life and culture in those places that help grow our hearts towards the nations but ultimately, towards Him. Someday, we look forward to not only teaching our children about the nations through books and maps, but actually letting them experience the nations and more of God through travel, whether it be missions trips or family vacations.
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| The Great Wall of China: December 2012 |
This C.S. Lewis quote was mentioned a while back on one of our trip reports and has since become the tag-line for this blog. It seems to sum up our purpose for travel well.
"The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing...to find the place where all the beauty came from."
-C.S. Lewis
How are you able to travel as much as you do?
In short, our answer would be this frugal travel hobby and time off that needs to be used.
Isn't travel expensive? How can you afford to travel often?
Although we love to travel for free or almost free, the reality is it still costs money. We are able to save money for travel by managing our budget in day to day life and by finding some great deals and rewards for affordable travel. For example: carpooling daily, not having internet or cable at home (hot spot from our phones), and date nights rolled into travel trip spend. We also plan out spending for a great return on investment to maximize mile and point rewards.
How do you manage your finances in general?
We keep a monthly budget with separate categories: spending on the mortgage, groceries, gas, household items, giving contributions (church, missions), gifts, insurance (health, home, car) and saving for retirement (Roth IRAs and 401Ks), 529 plans, future car funds, home projects, extra emergency funds, travel, etc. Currently, we are also working to finish off the last of Matt's school loans. Matt monitors the monthly budget meticulously, using a spreadsheet that he and his friends created. When we were first married, we had weekly family meetings. Now, we meet once or twice a month together to discuss the past month and look ahead to the next month, year, and future.
Do you have a budget while traveling?
Yes! Anyone who knows my husband knows that he loves spreadsheets, budgeting, and this travel hobby. Matt can frequently be seen on vacation plugging in numbers after purchases on the spreadsheet he keeps on his phone. It takes some time and organization, but it is helping us to see and experience the world, while living and traveling within our means.
How exactly do you earn points or miles?
We will not go into detail right now, but there are many ways that Matt will talk about in-depth in the upcoming posts:
- Mistake and sale fares
- Credit card sign-up bonuses
- Maximizing planned spending
- Strategies to pay for expenses that we couldn't normally pay by credit card (example: mortgage)
- Shopping online via portals
- Surveys
- Other points opportunities that arise
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| Using Southwest points for domestic travel |
How do you keep track of all of your points and reward programs?
We have some spreadsheets, but Award Wallet is very helpful to monitor points in each reward programs.
How do you organize your travel plans if you are planning multiple trips at a time?
Google Drive has been a huge help. We have folders for each year followed by additional folders for each trip. Within each trip folder, we keep all the documents (flights, hotel, and car reservations) and trip specific itineraries. This is especially helpful when we are planning trips with family or friends because we can share the document(s) and everyone can edit them and add their own notes.
What are some other good resources to learn more?
Read blogs. We enjoy reading many blogs including the following: Million Mile Secrets, Mommy Points, Frugal Travel Guy, Mile Value, One Mile At A Time, and The Points Guy.
Spend time on travel forums like Flyertalk. It is very valuable to be able to ask questions, get advice, and connect with other frequent fliers. Not only that, but it is entertaining to read some of the threads.
Attend a travel conference. We really enjoyed going to the Windy City for the Chicago Seminars last year and are looking forward to returning again this year, October 17-19. The sessions are very valuable, and networking with other frugal travelers is fun too! Matt attended last year with one of our friends, Nick. I just attended the spouse seminar, but am looking forward to attending the entire conference this year. We'd love for some of you to join us! In case you are interested, this post is an excellent wrap-up of the seminars from last year. You may even recognize someone in one of the pictures ;).
What is the most important thing(s) to know?
This hobby is not for everyone. It takes some time (or a lot of time depending on how into it you are). With regards to credit cards, it is not good for everyone. Credit cards are only meant for spending money on things you would normally purchase and should not cause additional spending just because credit is available or there are point incentives. If you are not organized or tend to spend excessively, this hobby is not for you, and we would suggest reading Dave Ramsey. :)
If those things are not an issue or temptation, carefully planned use of credit cards can allow for large travel savings and can increase your credit score, but "meticulous" monitoring of your credit is important. Any missteps on payments or carrying balances could quickly wipe out the original goal of savings. It is very important to be precise in keeping track of spending and to always pay the card(s) off in full each month.
We already know that there are questions and skepticism when it comes to credit cards, so Matt will continue on this subject later.
Our hope is that through subsequent posts, we would be able to help others travel frugally and often! If you do have questions at any time, please feel free to contact us; we would love to chat! Or, feel free to comment here so we can all network on travel saving tips!
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| Everglades National Park: Wearing our Travel Free, Travel Happy shirts |
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