HOW I GOT HERE

I first learned about credit card points when my mom introduced me to the Southwest card. She taught me how to extreme coupon which is really what drives me. She told me that I could be earning free money from the money I already spent… WHAT. After getting this card and the American Airlines card I still wasn’t getting the kind of travel I dreamed of.. ( think free upgrades to first class sipping champagne). The other cards from larger banks all had rewards programs that sounded confusing so I never really took the time to look into it. Fast forward to our wedding and I finally opened the Chase Sapphire card (this would have been my first card if I could do it all over again), but I was hoarding the points for a day when we had “enough” to do something really cool like fly in business class. Then fast forward our honeymoon in the Maldives. We paid cash to fly economy on Emirates. On the flight home there was an option to upgrade to business class also on Emirates. Since we were flying Emirates we felt like it was an opportunity we couldn’t pass up. It was AMAZING. I thought, there has to be a way we can keep flying in business class without spending thousands of dollars? It was official, we were addicted to the luxury life. Not sure where to start in the world of using credit card points to get free travel, we continued to put all of our expenses on the Chase Sapphire Preferred card with a goal to redeem these points for a first class flight!