Frequent flyer miles and flight vouchers going unused?  It’s no secret amongst our friends and family that we hoard frequent flyer miles and flight vouchers.  Yes, we are those people that run to the desk to volunteer our seats in exchange for a flight voucher or cash certificate on an oversold flight.  There were even times in our student days when we booked flights that looked to be full with the expressed hope that we would get bumped.  Thanks to those vouchers we’ve gone to the Grand Canyon, Washington, D.C. and even brought people to come visit us.

Our strategy now though is to focus on an airline and just simply amass a ridiculous amount of frequent flier points.  Sound simple right?  Well actually it was.  We decided on which airline based on our home airport and our most common routes.  Then we looked at the airline’s policies, mainly how easy was it to use free last minute vouchers or book flights with our points.  That left us with one major domestic carrier.  In the last year, thanks to applying for a few airline credit cards (both for personal and business) and focusing our credit card spending on those cards to hit bonus mile rewards we’ve amassed so many points that we’ve been awarded a voucher that lets us fly buy one get one free anywhere in the country.  Thanks to those frequent flier miles and the voucher we surpassed 13 domestic flights last year alone, at a cost of less than $5 per ticket.  True story.

We’ve heard so many people complain about being unable to use frequent flyer miles or flight vouchers but we find that it’s not true.  If you are strategic about who you fly with, how you fly and flexible enough to take advantage of bonus programs and flight voucher than you can maximize the rewards and benefits programs and really make them work for you.

We’ll be posting more about our frequent flyer and voucher strategy in the upcoming weeks to share our tips and tricks to help you maximize these programs to help you explore the world!