Lifestyle Design

When we tell people we often travel the world for free, they often look at is with a bit of incredulity.

Those who know us instantly assume it is because of this travel blog and that we bounce around from press trip to press trip. But we often shock them when we say that is not our scene and we go on few, if any, hosted trips. In fact, when we travel we don’t even pitch brands to work with.

It is something that we never enjoyed doing, so we don’t do it.

Our travels are instead primarily paid through points which we acquire in a mix of paying for travel with large companies and travel credit cards. So in this one, we thought we’d share about how our travel credit cards have helped us earn a ton of free (and deeply discounted) travel!

All cards featured herein are cards we personally have in our wallets right now (both of us in most cases-  double the rewards!), and we will do our best to update this guide as we open or close cards in the future.

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When we are at home, we like to have constant reminders of our travels. From the random knick-knacks to hand painted artwork we pick up on the road, our house is covered with decorations that remind us of where we’ve been over the years.

But one of our favorite pieces of travel art is one that does not come from our travels, but is about our travels- our world map!

For many years we were settled with a DIY travel map with push pins we made ourselves, but after a while we knew we were in need of an upgrade. We searched the internet, read countless reviews, and settled on one that appeared to be leaps and bounds better than the rest- Conquest Maps.

It was the best decision we ever made.

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It has taken me over 10 years, but I have finally completed part of my lifestyle design quest- namely, achieving digital independence via blogging.

I’ve built my websites to the point where they provide a comfortable and regular income stream such that I felt safe to make the leap into blogging as my full-time job.

It has been nearly a year since I made that decision to go full-time on the sites, and while I’m quite happy with that decision I’ve found out an ugly truth: I’ve monetized my life, and now everything is work.

De-programming myself has been one of the hardest parts of making the leap.

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Those who know us personally know that we absolutely love to travel hack.

Where other bloggers may source the bulk of their travels through comps, partnerships, and other discounts, we pay for most all of it ourselves and owe a lot of it to the insane amount of airline, hotel, and non-branded credit card points we rack up in any given year.

But we’ll let you in on a little secret: our version of travel hacking does not involve manufactured spending or crazy schemes in order to get points. It is simply through meeting minimum spend limits on credit cards and carrying on like normal!

Okay, it definitely isn’t that sexy when you really stop to think about it. This method really is as simple as opening credit cards, spending as normal, and receiving points. But while this approach may be relatively straight forward, it does have one perk that we’re going to share today- it is repeatable!

In this guide we’re going to take you down the rabbit hole of all the things you need to think about to before opening one of the best travel rewards credit cards to reap major rewards. The first task? Figuring how many cards you could possibly use in a given year!

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