Welcome! What’s It All About? Where Do I Start?

Welcome to Travel and Credit dot com! This inaugurates as the official launch of the website & the first post. Here’s to many more!

So what’s it all about?
Everybody wants to travel, & I have discovered the gold mine of how you can do that for free, or close to it! Follow me on this website to learn all of my secrets! Click here to receive email updates, and never miss the hottest deals or new posts!
My vision for this website is to be a place where ANYONE can come to learn a vast wealth of information in the departments of both travel and credit! Hence the URL name “TravelandCredit”! Simple enough right?!
My name is David Morrison and I am the owner and writer of the website, and I look forward to sharing my journey with you all.
If you’ve read my ABOUT ME page then you already know quite a bit about myself and my life! The last several years, I’ve been touring around the world in a national band full time, and it fueled my love to travel to a new level. When we aren’t on tour as a band (4-6 months a year), I travel around the world full time to exotic and historic countries on vacation roaming through jungles, large cities, and whitewater canyons! What is the coolest part about it? I’m almost always getting my flights for free, & occasionally free hotels too!!

Most of you ask, “David, HOW do you do this?!”.
Here’s the simple answer in just one sentence: Earn hundreds of thousands of frequent flyer miles & hotel program points at little to no cost, and redeem them through the airlines & hotel programs for free flights, hotels, & rental cars.

Where Do I Start?

Earn frequent flyer miles & hotel points from:
#1 = OPENING AIRLINE/HOTEL/TRAVEL CREDIT CARDS FOR HUGE SIGN UP BONUSES
2. Putting all of your bills and spending on credit cards, NEVER on debit or with cash unless absolutely necessary
3. Flying on an airline with your frequent flyer # on the reservation, or staying at a hotel with your rewards # on the reservation.
4. Joining airline dining programs and linking your credit cards
5. Registering and participating in airline/hotel promotions for double flying miles, stacking hotel promotions, staying in multiple hotels on one trip to hit bonuses, etc.
6. Shopping online through airline shopping mall portals for bonus miles
8. Opening bank accounts (Citibank, Bankdirect, etc.) & brokerage accounts (Fidelity, TD Ameritrade) for sign-up bonuses
9. Other various promotions like getting insurance quotes online, filling out surveys, joining Netflix, & much much more that pop up from time to time with partners

Redeem miles/points by:
#1 = Booking free flights/hotels to anywhere in the world!
2. Redeeming for gift cards, or other gifts.
Obviously since this site is about travel, I’m going to almost always lean towards redeeming miles/points for travel. Is that just because I’m obsessed with travel and have a schedule that allows it frequently? No. Another very important reason why I recommend redeeming your miles/points for award flights on airlines, or award stays at hotels is because the value you can get out of each mile/point is usually MUCH MUCH higher than the value when you redeem for gift cards. So by redeeming your miles for free flights, you are just being smart financially!

For example – Most airlines & credit card point programs allow you to redeem your miles for gift cards to businesses for about 1 cent per mile. So 50,000 miles would get you $500 in gift cards to a store. Those same 50,000 miles could also get you a free round trip flight in coach to Japan, which runs upwards of $800, or 2 free off peak round trip flights to the Dominican Republic worth upwards of $1,500. $1,500 means you are getting 3cpm (cents per mile). — and these are COACH redemptions!
Let’s go further:
If you have 50,000 points with Hyatt hotels, their highest hotel category costs 22,000 points for a free night. This includes their nicest resorts such as the Park Hyatt Paris, Park Hyatt Tokyo, Park Hyatt Maldives, etc… Those hotels go for $800 – $1,100 A NIGHT just for their normal room categories!! So only 44,000 points would get you $1,600 – $2,200 in value from Hyatt which is 3.6-5cpm! I actually have redeemed that very same scenario with Hyatt, and it was an amazing experience! I will be writing about that in a post soon, so don’t miss out how you can do the same!

The absolute highest value you can achieve are generally award flights during holidays, last minute, or of course, the ever coveted business class & first class seats on international flights.
“You mean you can use your miles to book a 14 hour first class flight to Australia with a lay flat bed seat, console, extraordinary service, great meals, and free drinks & more that can cost upwards of $20,000 a ticket?!”
Yes…
Heck, I’ve redeemed hotel points at values of 6-8cpm before! So as you can see, the highest value is in travel, not cash back, not gift cards, and not Bose headphones from your credit card rewards.

“David, I’m already hooked, tell me MORE!”

The Basics Step for Every Beginner:

– Sign up for frequent flyer accounts with all major airlines and hotel programs that you use, or will potentially use in the future.
– Check your credit score
– Apply for excellent credit cards with HUGE airline/hotel point sign up bonuses! (if your score is over 700, & it’s clean of derogatory marks, delinquent accounts, etc.). The TOP DEALS page on my site is always updated with what I consider to be the hottest & most lucrative deals on the market right now. Most of them I have received myself – or plan to get soon!
– Sign up for a mileage dining program from your preferred airline and link your cards
– Use airline shopping mall portals for bonuses on your regular online shopping
– Read this website frequently & follow my Twitter & Facebook for the best deals and offers and to learn more about how each activity is performed! CLICK HERE TO SUBSCRIBE TO POSTS VIA EMAIL.

I will be going into great detail on all of the Basic Steps listed above over the next few weeks on this site, so stay tuned, visit the site daily, & subscribe to the RSS Feed or email updates for more Basic Steps instruction, trip reviews, hot deals, strategies, & more! I have a lot of exciting posts, deals, tricks, and stories coming up that I’m excited for you all to read!

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