How I Traveled to Europe for 2 Weeks for FREE

So, it is no secret that I love traveling. If I’m not putting together the perfect itinerary for a trip, I’m probably crunching the numbers to make a future trip happen. That was no different when I worked to maximize credit card rewards for our latest trip to Italy and Greece.

If you’d like to keep up with what we actually did on our two-week vacation, I’ll be posting blog posts for each location here.

There can be a negative stigma around using credit cards. However, there are some strong benefits to using a card for anticipated large purchases. We knew that our wedding was going to cost a lot of money, so I did research on the best credit cards to use to maximize credit card rewards. I figured if I was going to spend the money, I should at least be rewarded with points we can redeem for travel. Weddings are expensive. Weddings during the pandemic with postponements are even more expensive. With me being bougie, but also on a budget, I needed to find a way to make these costs worth it.

Our initial thought was to use those points to offset the costs of an anniversary trip to the Mediterranean. However, with a lot of thoughtful planning, we ended up planning 2.5 weeks to Italy and Greece for FREE. Yep, you read that right. Let me tell you how right now!

Choosing a Credit Card:

Going into planning, I already had an idea of which credit card I might want to get. We had heard so many good things about the Chase Sapphire cards from family and friends. I also knew that it was one of the best travel credit cards to get. I wanted to look into that first. We really liked what the card had to offer like the sign-up bonus, the additional points for travel and the customer service. Plus, we had just gotten a joint checking and savings account through Chase together. We started with the Chase Sapphire Preferred card. At the time, Chase was offering 100,000 points if you spent $4,000 in 3 months. This was a no-brainer for us. It was by far the best sign-up bonus for any other credit card.

They offer this deal a few times a year, so we snagged it when it came up. We ended up doing this again when Chase offered 2 years later to maximize points. I’ll talk about that more under down below under “Finding Additional Bonus Points.”

Planning Our Wedding:

Alright, so let me get into how we built up our points. We used our card to pay for most of the wedding expenses and then would just pay the card off. A lot of vendors charge an additional fee for using a credit card or sometimes offer a discount for paying in cash. We tried to gauge what made the most sense for us in terms of making a payment. Because of this, we didn’t put all wedding expenses on our card, but most of them we did.

We looked at what would earn us the most bonus points and made our decisions that way. For example, travel gave us 5x the points, restaurants gave us 3x the points, and some vendors only earned us 1x the points. We made sure to put any high reward purchases (for example, catering) on our credit cards. The one caveat to that is that we paid for our honeymoon in cash to take advantage of a steep discount through a travel agency.

When we first postponed our wedding, we weren’t charged any additional fees by our wedding vendors. However, this wasn’t the case after we decided to push the wedding celebration to 2021 post-elopement. We put those extra expenses on the card. We also ended up needing to add to our rental contract because we needed a tent and heaters now that it was an outdoor wedding in November. Tents are expensive, but I was at least glad we had the extra points! As a disclaimer and for reference, our wedding cost was between $25K – $50K paid over the course of 3 years. We probably paid for 70% of our wedding using our Chase credit card.

Maximize Credit Card Rewards:

Through Spending

After postponing our wedding, I decided to go all-in and get as many points as possible. We had postponed our honeymoon a year, so I knew we were going to have an extra year to accrue points for an anniversary trip. To maximize credit card points, we transformed our wedding credit card to become our primary card for joint purchases. This was happening gradually over the course of our first year with the card anyway. We started using it to pay for dog’s costs along with things like groceries.

At the end of 2020, we bought our first home! We bought all our new furniture and décor on our card as well. That can add up pretty quickly. We also began booking all our travels through our card for additional points, with the exception of our honeymoon. Even then, while we didn’t pay for our flights and hotels with our card, we did use our card while we were in French Polynesia. Due to a partnership with Lyft, we were also able to receive 5 – 10x the points on Lyft rides. As a Hilton Honors member, I also receive 3 Hilton points for every $1 spent on Lyft. You can connect your Hilton Honors accounts to Lyft here. At this point, I only use Lyft for rideshares given that perk. If you are new to Lyft, you can receive $10 in Lyft credit by using my referral link.

Through Sign-on Bonuses

Last fall, I continued to do some research around credit cards to see how I could rack up some points on a few of our remaining wedding payments. This is where it got good. I found out that Chase was doing another 100K point bonus for spending $4,000 in 3 months. Only one of us could be a primary holder on our original credit card, meaning the other was still eligible for that introductory deal. The more I looked into it, the better it got. Chase also allows you to share points among accounts within the same household at no charge. This means we could merge the points from two different cards.

Point Optimization

This is the finding that put us over the top. It gave us the points we needed to spend 2.5 weeks in Europe with our flights, trains, and hotels fully covered. I referred Hart to get his own Chase Sapphire Preferred card (even though he’s an authorized user on the one we had been using). This gave me a 20,000-point referral bonus. We hit our requirements for the sign-on bonus making a few final payments to our wedding vendors.

Once we got our bonus points, we transferred those points over to our original account. We also used this time to upgrade our Preferred card to the Chase Sapphire Reserve. The Reserve had better point bonuses and a $300 travel credit, but also came with a higher annual fee ($550 compared to $95.) With all the bonus points and the travel credit, the annual fee is basically paid for itself. By upgrading to the Reserve, we also ensured each of points would be worth more when redeeming for travel.

Each point is worth 1.5 cents when you have the Reserve card compared to 1.25 cents when you have the Preferred. For context, the 100,000 point bonus was worth $1,500 under the Reserve but only $1,250 under the Preferred account.

With our sign-on bonus requirement out of the way, we mostly stopped using the second credit card. Our reserve has a better point structure so we keep that as our primary. We’ll end up canceling the second card prior to annual renewal date to avoid the $95 fee.

Cashing in Our Points:

This is where the fun part comes in. We utilized the Chase Portal to book most of our trip. You can also use a “Pay Yourself Back” feature in the Chase Portal. For a limited time, it’s giving you the same point redemption structure as if you had booked through the Chase Portal. I didn’t realize this until after I booked most of my other hotels so I may have utilized this more and booked more Airbnbs had I known. I’ve posted a screenshot of the total points we used, the value, and what we used it on. For our last hotel, we used Hilton points I accumulated from various work trips and Lyft rides so that we could save Chase Points in case we needed them.

As a reminder, 220,000 of the points we used were simply from getting the credit card (first sign-on bonus, referral, and second sign-on bonus.) All in all, after booking all our flights and hotels, we saved $5,731.94 by booking with points. It’s important to note that we didn’t book 5-star hotels everywhere we went.

We had a variety of budget, moderate and luxury accommodations to ensure we were able to use our points for the whole trip. I also made sure to find good deals or wait for price drops before booking. We made a few last minute purchases for flights after a cancelation while we were on our trip, but we still have points left over to use the “Pay Yourself Back” option.

The Bottom Line:

Run, don’t walk, to get a credit card with a reward system that makes sense for you and for anticipated big expenses like home purchases and wedding costs. We were able to maximize credit card points (responsibly) and go on a trip of our lifetime. Each credit card has their own perks and reward system so find one that works for you and make sure you’re getting the most points for your purchases. We’re glad we did! We’ve already started plotting what trip we can utilize points for next. If you’re interested in the Chase Preferred card, you can use my referral link here. You’ll be eligible for the current sign-on bonus and I’ll get a bonus as well!

Useful tips & Tricks:

• Maximize credit card rewards for any big purchases like renovating or decorating a home and paying for a wedding.
• Explore and compare different credit cards to determine which is best for you. I like to use The Points Guy. I found this write up between Chase Preferred and Chase Reserve cards to be helpful.
• Pay attention to sign-up bonuses and make sure you’re getting the best one for the credit card you want.
• With Chase, you can transfer points between accounts within the same household at no charge
• When you refer someone to get a card, you’ll get the referral bonus even if they’re already an authorized user on your card.
• Most cards allow you to shop online directly through their portal for additional bonus points.