Author: ParkerLucas

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A Week in Taiwan for Under $1,000 — Flights, Airbnb, and Spending Money Included

It’s always been our goal to travel more for less and to show others how they can do the same.

One of the biggest misconceptions about travel is that international trips have to be expensive. While they certainly can be, they do not have to be if you know how to use the right tools and strategies.

For our upcoming weeklong trip, we’re on track to visit Taiwan for under $1,000including flights, accommodations, and spending money.

Here’s exactly how we’re doing it.

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Navigating Airports With a Baby

Airports can be stressful, even when it’s just you and a carry-on. Add a diaper bag, a stroller, and a ticking baby bomb, and suddenly you’re starring in your own anxiety documentary.
The good news? There are systems in place to make it smoother, and once you’ve done it once, navigating airports with a baby becomes so much easier next time.

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Miles & Points 102: Your First Redemption

travel with miles and points

If you’ve read the first post in this series, you’ve already done the hardest part. You picked a travel rewards credit card, earned your first batch of points, and started learning how this hobby works.

So, now what?

Use Them for a Real Trip

The easiest first move is the one we made: use your bank’s travel portal.

Most banks have a portal that works a lot like Expedia. You search for a flight or hotel, book your trip, and use points instead of cash. That’s how we started. We booked with cash up front and then used Capital One’s Purchase Eraser to cover the travel afterward.

It wasn’t the best value we could have gotten from those points, and that’s okay. At that stage, the goal wasn’t to squeeze every last bit of value out of them. The goal was to take a trip, save some money, and see how the process worked.

Once you use points for a real trip, the hobby starts to make a lot more sense.

Keep Earning

One welcome bonus is enough to prove this hobby works. It usually isn’t enough to keep taking the kinds of trips most of us dream about. Bigger trips need bigger balances, and that means continuing to earn.

For most people, everyday spending alone won’t get you there quickly. That’s why people who travel regularly with points eventually open another travel rewards card and earn another welcome bonus.

That doesn’t mean opening five cards tomorrow. When I started, I didn’t have some elaborate strategy. I earned one bonus, took a trip, wanted to do it again, and looked into what card made sense next. Over time I added Chase, Amex, and a few others, not because I had a master plan, but because I wanted to keep traveling. If you don’t have a specific trip in mind yet, focus on transferable points. They keep your options open until you decide.

There’s One More Level to This Hobby

Here’s the one thing worth knowing before you go further: those same transferable points can also be moved to airline and hotel partners, not just spent through your bank’s portal. That single shift from “how much can these points erase” to “what’s the best way to use these points” is what eventually got us into business class seats and hotels that would’ve been way outside our normal budget.

We’ll walk through exactly how that works, transfer partner by transfer partner, in the next post. For now, just know it exists. You don’t need to understand it to take your first trip.

Learn From Other People’s Trips

One of the easiest ways to learn this hobby is by seeing how other people put the pieces together. Every trip we’ve booked has taught us something different. Sometimes we started with a destination and figured out what points we needed; other times we found an incredible opportunity first and built the trip around it.

That’s exactly why we’ve written about our trips to Taiwan, Tahiti, Thailand, Japan, Germany, and South Africa, plus how we’d plan a trip to Argentina from scratch. They’re not just trip reports; they’re the thought process behind each booking, what worked, what didn’t, and how the points came together.

You don’t have to copy what we did. Just start seeing how the pieces fit, and before long you’ll start spotting the same opportunities in your own trips.

Your Next Step

Keep earning when it makes sense. Take the trip. Pay attention to how other people use their points. Every redemption teaches you something new.

Eventually you’ll stop thinking of your points as a way to save money on travel, and start thinking of them as the tool that makes the trip possible in the first place.

Next up: how we actually research award flights, compare programs, and figure out what points we need before we ever transfer a single one.

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Miles & Points 101: How Points Actually Work

A few years ago, I thought business class flights, luxury hotels, and international adventures were things other people got to experience. Then I discovered miles and points.

If you’re reading this, you’re already ahead of most people. A lot of people say, “I wish I could travel more” or ” I want to know how to use miles and points,” but never take the next step to figure out how. Learning how miles and points work is that next step.

Since getting into this hobby, we’ve flown business class to Tahiti and Thailand, explored places like Japan, Finland, Turkey, and Taiwan, and even planned a safari in South Africa. The best part? This hobby isn’t reserved for experts, frequent flyers, or people who spend thousands of dollars a month. Anyone can learn the basics, start earning points, and unlock more travel for less.

This post is just about that: the basics. Not every strategy, not every program, just what you actually need to know to take your first step.

The Different Types of Points

Before we talk about earning points, it helps to understand the different kinds you’ll come across.

There are three main types: airline points, hotel points, and bank points.

Airline points are tied to a specific airline, like Delta SkyMiles or United MileagePlus. Hotel points work the same way, with programs like Marriott Bonvoy or Hilton Honors.

Then there are bank points, often called transferable points. These come from banks like Chase, Capital One, American Express, Bilt, and Citi.

These are my favorite because they’re flexible. You can use them through your bank’s travel portal to book flights, hotels, rental cars, and more. There’s no need to commit to one airline or hotel chain up front. Flexible points give you options, and those options become more valuable as you learn.

The Best Ways to Earn Points

There are three common ways to earn points.

Loyalty Programs (~1% of our points) If you fly often or stay in hotels regularly, you’ll naturally earn some points this way. Nice to have, but for most people it builds slowly.

Everyday Spending (~14% of our points) Once you have a travel rewards card, your normal purchases start earning points — groceries, gas, restaurants, bills, all of it.

Credit Card Welcome Bonuses (~85% of our points) This is where almost all of our points have come from. Travel credit cards often offer large welcome bonuses after you spend a certain amount in the first few months. One welcome bonus can be enough for a flight, several hotel nights, or the start of an international trip.

Combined with everyday spending, welcome bonuses are by far the fastest way to build a meaningful points balance. That’s why learning to use travel credit cards responsibly is the biggest step in this hobby.

Picking Your First Credit Card

This is usually where people start feeling overwhelmed, and where I did too. My first credit card was just a basic card from my local bank. I had no idea there was an entire world of travel rewards cards.

Most travel cards offer a welcome bonus after you spend a certain amount in your first few months. For example, 60,000 bonus points after spending $4,000. That doesn’t mean spending money you weren’t already planning to spend. The goal is to put your normal expenses on the card, pay it off every month, and earn rewards from purchases you were already making.

Our first travel rewards card was the Capital One Venture, and we still recommend it because it made the learning process simple. Another great beginner option is the Chase Sapphire Preferred, which also doubles as an excellent long-term travel card.

The best first card isn’t necessarily the one with the biggest welcome bonus or the longest list of benefits. It’s the one you’ll actually understand, use responsibly, and learn from.

Your First Steps

That’s really all you need to get moving:

  1. Find a travel rewards credit card that fits your situation.
  2. Earn the welcome bonus by spending money you were already planning to spend.
  3. Pay your balance in full, every time.

You don’t need to know every airline program or understand advanced strategies before you begin. The people who seem like experts today usually got there the same way — they earned one bonus, took one trip, and built their knowledge from there.

Once you’ve earned your first points, the next question is always the same one we asked ourselves: now what do you actually do with them?

That’s exactly what we cover in the next post.