Travel Hacking Basics Part I: Credit Cards

Part I: Credit Cards
Part II: Points and Miles
Part III: Aspirations, Earn and Burn

I discovered “travel hacking” in 2011 from an article on cnn.com. I had no idea it was an actual thing and I got so excited when I realized what it meant. For those of you who aren’t familiar, travel hacking is basically a way to travel while spending as little money as possible, usually by earning miles and points that can be redeemed for flights or hotels. Since I don’t have a trust fund and work doesn’t send me on travel, the idea of travel hacking was immediately appealing to me. I’ve since spent a lot of time learning and thinking about the best ways to hack my trips and I’ll cover the basics over the next few posts.

Credit Cards

The easiest way to start earning miles and points is to begin by collecting credit cards. Most people are skeptical of this because we have always been taught to somewhat fear credit cards and to protect our credit score. The funny thing is, most people don’t even know what their credit score is based on. For those of you who don’t, your credit score is based on the following factors (in order of importance): 

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