- Andy and Nicole Hill, a couple from Michigan with two children, took their family to an all-inclusive resort in San José del Cabo, Mexico, for five nights and six days.
- The trip cost them just $329 dollars because they spent 10 months collecting nearly $6,000 worth of credit card points.
- Andy and Nicole have always been smart spenders and savers. In fact, Andy has his own blog and podcast where he discusses – along with other topics – strategies for saving money and building wealth.
- Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.
In 2018, Andy Hill and his wife Nicole took their two children to an all-inclusive resort in San José del Cabo, Mexico for five nights and six days.
Though the trip was valued at around $6,000, the Michigan family spent just $329 on the entire vacation – food, flights, hotel, and a spa day included.
Andy and Nicole have always been smart spenders and savers. In fact, Andy has his own blog and podcast where he discusses – along with other topics – strategies for saving money and building wealth.
In order to plan a memorable vacation without dishing out thousands of dollars, the couple dove into the world of credit card points.
Keep reading for a breakdown that shows how, exactly, they did it.
When it comes to personal finances, Andy and Nicole are no strangers to number crunching.
In 2013, the couple bought a $350,000, four-bedroom house by putting down $155,000 and taking out a $195,000 mortgage. At the time, Andy was (and still is) a sales director. Nicole became a stay-at-home parent shortly after the moved.
Andy told Business Insider that while they settled on a 15-year mortgage with a 3% interest rate, they set a goal to pay the whole thing off in less than five years.
By increasing their income, decreasing their expenses, staying organized, and cutting down on non-essential spending, they were able to pay it off in just under four years.
After successfully paying off their nearly $200,000 mortgage in less than four years, the couple decided to go on their first family vacation.
The couple and their two children went to an all-inclusive resort in San José del Cabo, Mexico, for five nights and six days.
"The kids played all day with us in the family-friendly pool and met new friends in the kid's club. Nicole and I enjoyed exercising in the fitness center in the mornings, laying out in the pool cabanas during the day and eating at a different on-campus restaurant each night. We didn't even care if the kids ate all of their food because it was all-inclusive," Andy wrote in a blog post.
The family stayed at the Paradisus Los Cabos, where rates start at $314 per night. If they'd taken a less savings-oriented approach to the trip, their five-night stay alone could have cost around $1,570. But instead, the entire trip cost them just $329.
The expenses, Andy told Business Insider, were divided three ways:
- $125 for tips
- $95 to pay an annual credit card fee
- $109 for food during travel days
The solution? "We found this magical world of travel rewards," Andy told Business Insider.
The couple's rewards points covered air travel, five nights at the resort, a couple's spa treatment, private transportation, airport parking, and a few smaller items like sunscreen.
The $6,000 travel credit was tax-free, Andy explained in his blog.
"That would have required me to earn around $8,000 at my job to pay for this trip," he wrote.
So, how exactly did they do it? To cover the real expenses of the trip, the couple spent 10 months piling up travel credit — around $6,000 worth of it.
Andy stressed that entering the world of credit cards can be dangerous.
Pulling off a $300 luxury vacation requires routinely tracking spending, making payments on time, and picking cards that offer the best bonuses.
He and Nicole signed up for credit cards with big travel bonuses — miles, points, and cashback. They put their typical monthly expenses on credit cards, hit the minimum spending requirements needed to receive the bonuses, and then repeated the process.
The couple used five different credit cards to collect points:
- The Gold Delta SkyMiles card
- The Chase Sapphire Preferred card
- The Chase Ink Business card
- The Barclaycard Arrival Plus card
- The Capital One Venture card
Working toward a nearly free vacation by earning points is no easy task. In his blog, Andy lays out a few tips he's learned along the journey.
Andy suggests signing up for automatic payments and paying off credit card bills in full each month.
He also suggests mapping out a schedule when applying for new credit cards.
"One major lesson learned was that as we were drawing closer to hitting our MSR [minimum spending requirement] is that we should have applied for our next card immediately. Sometimes the process of applying and receiving our next card would take a few weeks. This was precious points earning time that we were missing out on," he wrote.
