Free Trip to New York

This past year my hubby has been reading and researching about how a family of four with a stay-at-home-mom can afford going on family trips.  Now that my kids are pass that 2 year mark, we would have to pay for their seats on the flights (driving in usually not an option since they hate car rides) which means spending more $$$.  If you know my husband you know that he doesn't like spending money he doesn't have to...and since family trips is more a want rather than a need, it was not our first priority with our finances.  But praise God with his diligence in reading and researching different blogs and sites that allowed us to go to New York for FREE.  No we did not win a contest but we did apply for some credit cards.  

One blog he constantly checks is http://www.frugaltravelguy.com/.  This is the blog that convinced my husband that traveling as a family was doable and affordable.  In the beginning of 2011 we started applying for different credit cards, individually and not joint.  One thing I learned from my husband, which he read somewhere, was "use your good credit score to your advantage."  We were not going to buy a house or a new car so our credit score was just sitting there not being used...and they were good credit scores.  So we started using them.  He looked for credit cards that had signing bonuses.  For example we signed up individually for a credit card that had a signing bonus of 100,000 American Airline points after you spent a certain amount of money during a period of time (sometimes it was 3,000 in 6 months).  We both got approved and now we have 200K of AA points in our accounts.  It was through AA points that we got our 5 free airline seats using American Airline.  (the 5th seat was for Melody to be our baby sitter and visit her fiance).  So flight to NY check.

Another site that he looks at is http://www.flyertalk.com/.  Here's a site that has forums and such that people can discuss things about flying and things like that.  Since we do not know anyone in NY that can host our family we had to find a hotel for our week stay which means spending $$.  Of course this is not acceptable to my husband so reading and researching started again.  Through different sites he found out that he can transfer points from one company to another.   And this is what he did.  Since we had a lot of AA points we transferred some of those points to our Hilton Honors account which allowed us to use for our stay for a whole week.  It was a nice Hilton that was near Time Square that had a beautiful view of some buildings.  So hotel in NY check.

this is the view from our window

We got our flights for about $20 (taxes) and the Hotel was basically free.  All we spent was our leisure activities, food, and a photo shoot with the famous Ica Images.  

We didn't rent a car since we had the subway and we had good alone time since we brought a baby sitter.  So all in all our NY trip was amazing.  So in conclusion...traveling as a family is doable and does not have to be expensive.  So before you say "we can't afford to go" thing about our NY trip and maybe your family can travel for a really cheap price.