Since moving to Alaska in 2011, my family has wanted to come up for a visit. This summer they will have their chance, along with a million other tourist! If you don’t know any thing about Alaska, you should know that Alaska is the biggest US state, yes.. even bigger than Texas. Alaska actually dwarfs Texas in size.

If I wasn’t able to help my family with plane tickets, I don’t believe they would have ever made it up here. Since learning how to travel for free with rewards miles, I am able to fly four of my family members to Alaska for free. Sounds crazy doesn’t it! Traveling for free is possible and Daraius Dubash from Million Mile Secrets is a great testimony of this fact!

How did I get them free tickets and how did I save them $200 at the same time?

Ive earned rewards points and miles through various credit card offers and bonuses. Every credit card that my wife or I sign up with has to have some type of reward or bonus attached to it. We also have to be able to reach the bonus being offered. You will see some credit card offers that will give you 50k rewards points as long as you spend $10,000 within 3 or 5 months. For the average person this could be very challenging, this is challenging even for us. Every dollar we charge is through a credit card This means that everything we charge will earn us rewards points or free airline miles. Since we charge everything, we can normally reach many of the spending requirements to earn extra bonus points or miles.

Imagine how much you spend every year on yourself. Food, clothes, rent, utilities, gas, car, insurance, travel expenses.. you get the idea. Now imagine if you spent $25,000 on all of these items every year. Just from charging everything, you would earn enough rewards points or miles for a free airline ticket.

This is the very thing my wife and I do to earn most of our miles and rewards points. Whenever a credit card does offer a large bonus we try to capture it, which just adds to our large bank of miles or rewards points.

How did I save my family $200?

Even though the airline tickets were free, you still have to pay the baggage fees. Every airline has a different baggage fee which you can easily find using this chart. There are other ways of getting around paying for your luggage such as advancing to a higher class, paying for a first class ticket either with miles or cash or by owning a special credit card.

(4 pieces of luggage x $25 = $100 x round trip flight = $200)

Here is the simple way of keeping from paying that fee. Most airlines have their own credit card such as the Delta Gold card from American Express. Just by owning this credit card, you will have all your luggage fees waived, along with up to 9 other people within your reservation. So if you were a family of 4, each person’s luggage would be free. Be careful because these credit cards will come with a yearly fee. Most times they are waived for the first year, but after the year the fee is $95 for the Delta cards. As long as you fly twice a year (family of 2), then its worth having the card.

How much would the 4 airline tickets cost?

The four free airline tickets I got my family would have cost just over $2,200, but they were free, using Delta SkyMiles at 25,000 miles per ticket.