Travel with a little help.

Travel
Written By Joey Hines

Dreams turn into realities by going through with all the things we want to do, or say we should do.

It is a novel sentiment, but it truly is ourselves that hold us back. All the doubts and negative thoughts. All the ways that things could go wrong. All the other things we could spend our money on. These thoughts creep into our mind and cloud our judgment. We hardly consider all the things that can go right and all the money we can earn from the money we spend.

That is what sets the realizers apart from the dreamers. Their mentality. Once we change our mentality, and start doing, doors we never imagined start opening up. Our own dreams start to become realities.

Mount Hood Oregon

Mount Hood, Oregon.

Making my dreams into realities.

All that leads me to this picture and the site it is hosted on. Ever since I was a teen I dreamed of snowboarding at Mount Hood. I always wanted to go to the High Cascade Snowboard Summer Camp. Problem is, I was a kid from Florida who had never even been snowboarding before. I remember arguing with a much older lady at a family and friends Christmas dinner about the ability to actually snowboard on Mount Hood. As she put it, it was impossible to snowboard on Mount Hood because it was too windy. Well some 20yrs later I finally made it to Mount Hood. She was wrong, because you definitely can snowboard on Mount Hood. She was also right, though, it was windy as hell going above the timberline of the mountain.

Going down the mountain was everything I dreamed of. Even taking the snowcat to the top of the glacier for one of the longest top to bottom runs in America was an amazing experience. Taking that chairlift back up to the top though, that was not as fun. Getting whipped back and forth by the wind, the chair lift swinging side to side, and just all around freezing. Eventually you make the decision to just ride the bottom half of the ski resort. The one below the timberline where the trees still grown and can protect you from the wind a little.

My dad was on a work trip to Oregon and that was all the excuse I needed to check off an item on my bucket list. An opportunity presented itself and I took it. It could’ve been easy to come up with an excuse why not to go. Do I really want to go to mount hood alone? Wouldn’t I rather save the money to go on a trip with friends? The reality is that we never know if these opportunities will present themselves again. Thanks to my credit card rewards though I didn’t have to worry too much about the money factor. My plane ticket, 1 night at a hotel in Portland and the lift ticket were all covered by the rewards I earned by charging everything I buy to my credit cards. Now I could still save my money for a trip with my friends, and I could go on this trip. With the experience I could plan an even better trip if my friends decided they wanted to go in the future.

American Express Delta Platinum Credit Card, Capital One Venture X and BILT Mastercard.

Maximizing travel with credit cards.

A lot of people shy away from using credit cards. They don’t want to pay interest. They are afraid of being in debt. With a little self control, though, credit cards can be the key to checking off bucket list experiences that you may not have gotten the opportunity to do otherwise. Even this website is online today because AmEx had a statement credit offer for making a purchase through Squarespace. It was a small statement credit, but any statement credit is extra money in the bank.

Too many people want to look at the % back as just pennies. They want the money to come back too fast. They don’t realize that those pennies add up to dollars and those dollars add up to hundreds of dollars eventually. I went to the NFC Championship in Santa Clara, Ca in 2020 because of my Discover credit card rewards. I went on a 3 day trip with 2 days at Disneyland and watched the 49ers beat the rams at SoFi Stadium (also known as Levi South) in 2022 because of a chase sign up bonus, spend rewards and 15mo deferred interest.

Levi's Stadium NFL NFC Championship

2019-2020 NFC Championship 49ers 37 - Packers 20.

The key to unlocking all of these benefits from your cards is simple:

  • Don’t carry a balance - This is literally the worst thing you can ever do with a credit card. This wipes away any benefit you have from the rewards on the card. To be honest if you can’t afford to pay off your credit card every month then maybe you should look at other options. Don’t worry you can still earn rewards! Click here to find out how!

  • Make sure to hit sign up bonus spend requirements - There is no point to signing up for a credit card if you’re not gonna get the sign up bonus. Some of them are easy like the Capital One Savor One. Where if you spend $500 on the card within your first 3 months from account opening they will give you $200 cash back with no annual fee. Others are not so easy like the Capital One Venture X. Where you need to spend $4000 in your first 3 months from account opening to earn (at the time of this blog posting) 75k miles with a $395 annual fee. It comes with some nice perks though! If you get the Venture X and you don’t hit that spend amount to get your sign up bonus you’ve basically signed up for a high annual fee card and got nothing extra to offset the cost, other than the statement credit opportunities that come with it. Even worse, you will have to close the card and wait 4 years from date of closing to get another opportunity at earning a sign up bonus for that card. Moral of the story don’t sign up for a card unless you are gonna get a sign up bonus and actually earn it! There is one exception to the rule. The Bilt Rewards MasterCard. Anyone and everyone who rents should get this card as you earn rewards for paying your rent on the card, something you always have to do anyways, and there is no fee for paying the rent with the card because it acts as a ACH bank transfer!

  • Maximize your reward categories - This is simple. If you have the Discover card with rotating quarterly 5% categories, what ever it is that quarter, you max out the spend for that category before you use any other card for that spend. If you have 5% back on gas with your Discover card, why would you use your Chase Freedom Unlimited to only get 1.5% back. Just doesn’t make sense. There are even a few apps that will help you decide what card is best to use for what category before you make the purchase. I don’t use them, I tend to rely on myself to remember what card I should use, but I will admit that it is much easier to let an app handle it for you. The apps have free and paid versions. 2 of the ones that I have downloaded, and at least created free accounts on are MaxRewards and CardPointers.

  • Take advantage of as many statement credit opportunities as possible - This is an area that I won’t say is an 100% must, because sometimes the statement credits aren’t something you usually use or are that enticing (Here’s looking at you $10 monthly Resy credit Delta AmEx Platinum). With that being said if you have a credit card that does credit card offers such as AmEx then it is worth your while to check every so often to see what offers they have available. Example: I use Duolingo to try and learn Spanish, because I am taking this semi very seriously I have decided that I would like Duolingo premium because of the increased features that really allow you to learn better at your pace. Duolingo Premium cost $83.99 a year, but because I added an AmEx offer and made the purchase with my AmEx card I got a $30 statement credit bringing the cost down to 53.99. I’ve gotten that statement credit twice as I have just renewed Duolingo Premium for another year and AmEx had the same offer again. Before I make any purchase I always check my credit card offers. Why not save some money on something I was already gonna purchase anyways. That is the key though, don’t get over your head just for an offer. It doesn’t make sense to spend $50 to save $10 if you weren’t planning on spending that $50 already anyways. If you do chose to sign up for MaxRewards Gold they will automatically activate all offers on all credit cards you link with them, which is definitely very convenient. Then you never have to worry about missing an offer again.

Red Rock from SR159 Las Vegas Nevada

Red Rock from SR159. Las Vegas, NV.

About my blog.

Welcome to my blog! I now realize I should’ve put this up first but oh well. I don’t want this blog to be all over the place so every thing I will talk about will hopefully link to each other so you know what to expect. My name is Joey and I am a hobbyist photographer, a lover of travel and a lover of finance. I work a middle management retail job, but through smart financial decisions I am able to travel on a pretty regular basis. I will tie in travel photography, the majority of photos in my blogs will be taken by me (I will notify otherwise), you can check out my portfolio if you haven’t already; general travel information, think guides, top lists and experiences, etc…; and financial information, think budget trackers, credit card information, transfer bonuses, etc.. I think these all tie in together. You cant travel much if you don’t have your finances in order, credit cards can help make your travel more rewarding and who doesn’t like travel photos to boot. Hopefully I can inspire other people like me to be “Goers.” I hope you enjoy this ride with me! Please leave comments and feedback I would love to interact with you all! This is a new world for me and I’d rather not travel it alone! And for anyone who’s wondering I am at a 373 day streak on Duolingo at time of publishing, with a few streak freezes to help of course.

For information about the credit cards mentioned in this blog check the links provided below:

*I get a referral bonus if you choose to use my referral link to sign up for one of the products listed. More information in the Terms of Service.

Joey Hines https://www.JoeyHines.com
Previous

No Credit Cards? Yes Rewards!