I first learned to ski in middle school and then participated in ski club in high school. Additionally, I skied several times in my adult life but didn’t really pick it back up until about 6 years ago.

When I was in debt, I took a break deciding to focus most of my income on paying off my debt. However, now that I’m debt free and saving for financial independence, I’ve decided to add this lovely hobby back into my budget. The goal for 2019 was to plan a trip out west and ski some powder and that is exactly what I did.

Hacking a Ski Trip

I have some friends here in Ohio who are very active skiers and participate in some local ski clubs. Additionally, they typically take trips out west each year to ski. Well, I introduced my friends to the concept of Financial independence (FI) and the ChooseFI podcast and one of them dove all in. She was always good with her money but FI helped her take it to the next level. Once we learned about using travel rewards we decided to plan a ski trip that way.

In our local ChooseFI group here in Northeast Ohio we have a travel rewards guru, Anna, who has been a big help in navigating these waters.

To be honest I was a little overwhelmed at the thought of planning a ski trip. However, it turned out to fine. Additionally, it saved us a boatload of money. I’m convinced and will continue to use travel rewards for all of my travel. Anywho I wanted to create a little post showing you all how we did it compared to what we could have spent with cash or by taking a ski club trip.

Spoiler alert: travel rewards is the winner by a long shot!

Credit Cards Used

Firstly, I only recommend using credit cards for travel rewards if you have the discipline to pay off your cards in full each and every month. If not, you’ll end up paying high-interest rates and negating the benefit of the travel rewards. Seriously, only do this if you can to the former. With that being said, here are the credit cards I used for this trip:

Chase Sapphire Preferred – I earned 50,000 bonus points by spending $4,000 in the first 3 months. If you use my link to sign up, I will earn 10,000 bonus points. This card does have a $95 annual fee that is waived the first year. I plan on downgrading to the Chase Unlimited Freedom card after the first year to avoid the fee.
Chase Ink Business Cash – I earned $500 cash back by spending $3,000 in the first three months. However, because I had a premium card open (see #1) I could transfer this to my Chase Ultimate Rewards portal and receive 50,000 travel points. Additionally, I use this card to pay for my internet & utilities and earn 5% cash back. If you want to sign up, go to ChooseFI and use one of their affiliate links to sign up. They’ve taught me most of what I’ve learned about travel rewards.
Capital One Venture – This is probably the easiest travel card to use because you can simply erase charges that show up as travel on your credit card. I used these points to erase our ground transportation to and from the ski resorts. I earned 50,000 bonus points for spending $3,000 in the first three months. Additionally, it has a $95 annual fee but it is waived the first year. I plan on downgrading to Capital One Venture One after the first year. Again I recommend going to ChooseFI to sign up with their affiliate links.

Cost Comparison

Alright now for the fun stuff! Let’s review three different ways we could have done this ski trip to Utah:

Using Travel Rewards
Paying Cash
Going with ski club – keep in mind that this is not exactly apples to apples because the ski club only went to two ski resorts and we went to 4

Skiing

We decided to buy the Ikon pass. My friend, Shari bought hers in the spring of 2018 for $599 through the ski club and got a $20 visa gift card. So essentially she spent $579 for hers. I foolishly waited until the fall of 2018 and bought mine for $699. As you can see by the chart had I bought my lift tickets in cash from the 4 resorts we went to, I would have spent $660. However, by buying the Ikon pass, I have access to other resorts such as SnowShoe, WV which I skied two days. Lift tickets would have cost me $198 so buying the Ikon pass saved me money here.

The four Utah ski resorts we skied:

I loved them all but I think Alta was my favorite!

Skiing Alta with our friend John whom we met at a Utah ChooseFI meet up

Flight

We flew Southwest which I highly recommend for any ski trip since they allow for two free pieces of luggage under 50 lbs. Additionally, they count skis and a ski boot bag as one. We were able to check our luggage for no additional cost. We both transferred some of our Chase Ultimate Rewards points directly to Southwest (Chase travel partner) and used 23,220 points to buy our flights. The only cost was the tax at $11.20.

Hotel

This would have been the biggest expense by far if we paid cash. We stayed at the Hyatt Place Park City which would have cost each of us $1005.51 for the week. However, we transferred some of our Chase Ultimate Rewards points to World of Hyatt (Chase travel partner) and booked our room that way. We stayed 7 nights and I paid for three (15,000 points a night for a total of 45,000 points) and Shari paid for four (15,000 a night for a total of 60,000 points).

In hindsight, we realized it would have been fewer points to stay at the Hyatt in Sandy, UT. Additionally, it would have been closer to the Cottonwood canyons and 4 amazing ski resorts (Alta, Snowbird, Brighton, and Solitude). However, we enjoyed Park City for sure and especially their free bus system.

Being that Shari used more of her points for the hotel we found a way to even out the deal. I used more of my points for shuttles and bought one of her meals.

Ground Transportation

As I mentioned the Park City bus system was free so we used that to get around Park City and to and from Deer Valley ski resort. However, to get to the Cottonwood Canyon ski resorts we used shuttles. Additionally, we used Uber & Lyft on a few occasions in the evening. All of these charges were erasable as travel on my Capital One card.

Food

I spent $232.67 on going out to eat for the week. I probably could have done better but I came in under what I budgeted for food so I’m happy. Additionally, we could have done better by going to the grocery store and making sandwiches to take to the ski resorts, but we decided to splurge a little here.

Thanks, John, for the awesome homemade sandwiches you brought to Alta!

Other

I spent $107.82 on other things such as toiletries and souvenirs. I still came in under budget with my little splurges.

Final Analysis

As you can see by the chart, I used a total of 97,725 points and paid $1059.69 for this trip. However, if we would have gone the cash route for everything, it would have cost me $2,599 total which is 147% higher!! Or if we would have chosen to go with the ski club for a similar Utah ski trip, it would have cost ~$2065.49 which is 97% higher!!

Skiing is not a cheap hobby but as you can see a seemingly expensive trip can be significantly reduced with some travel rewards redemptions. The two biggest expenses for me were skiing and food.

Closing Thoughts

While I’m all for frugality and reducing expenses, I’m also for enjoying life along the way. Skiing is something I value and so I budget and save for it throughout the year. I’m glad I’ve found some ways to reduce expenses by introducing travel rewards into my life.

Enjoy the photos and please let me know any questions you may have in the comments…

We picked the right year to ski in Utah.

So much wind & snow that we couldn’t get to the summit at Solitude

Friends showing us around the mountains at Brighton. I even got to demo some different skis!

Lunch with my friend Shari at Deer Valley

Cash Is King But How About Those Travel Reward Miles?

So if you’ve followed my story you know I came out of the Dave Ramsey camp. I followed the debt snowball method and it worked. I’m now completely debt free and on the path to achieving Financial Independence (FI). Woohoo!

The further I go down the wealth building road, the more I learn about the value of travel reward miles. Let me make one very important disclaimer before I go any further:

I only recommend using credit cards within your budget if you have the discipline and means to pay off the balance in full each and every month!

Budgeting With Cash

While I was in the debt pay off phase, I was on a strict budget and I utilized the cash envelop system. I still recommend this to anyone working their way out of debt. If you are not familiar with the cash envelop system here are the basic steps:

Develop a monthly zero-based budget where you assign every dollar to a category.
Withdrawal cash each month equal to the amounts in all categories, except the ones you will pay out of your checking account.
Divide the monies into separately labeled envelops (i.e. groceries, gasoline, automotive repair, entertainment, etc.).
Use the cash envelops to navigate through your monthly expenses.
When the cash is gone, you are done spending for the month
1. You can borrow from one envelope to add to another but be careful on this to not run out of money completely.

It totally works. There is no doubt that cash is king for driving down monthly expenses. When I’m in the grocery store with $40 in my envelope, I carefully select items to stay within my budget. When a friend asks me out to dinner and there is nothing left in my entertainment envelope, I politely decline.

Yep, cash is king so why I have I branched out into the world of travel hacking??

I’ve Dipped My Toes In The Travel Hacking Waters

I opened up a Chase Sapphire credit card this spring and obtained 50,000 bonus miles for meeting the minimum spend of $4,000 in the first three months.

I’ll admit that I typically don’t have enough expenses to allow me to meet 4k in three months. So you may ask how did I do it?

I opened the credit card when I knew I had some upcoming extraordinary expenses, like moving and buying new skis.

First, I made sure I had the funds to pay for these expenses. Second, I charged them. Third, I paid them off quickly.

Additionally, I added my Mom as a user on my Chase Sapphire card (and got another 5k in travel rewards miles) and she helped me meet my minimum spend. Thanks, Mom!

If you are interested in opening a Chase Sapphire card and want to support me, you can click on this link to sign up. If you are approved I will get another 10,000 bonus miles.

Keep in mind that Chase Sapphire has $95 annual fee but it’s waived the first year. You can always downgrade to a Chase Freedom card after your first year. However, you’ll want to use or transfer your travel rewards miles before doing so.

If you are interested in learning more about travel hacking I recommend the free course, Travel Miles 101.

I’m Wading In The Travel Hacking Waters

I racked up around 70,000 reward miles with my Chase Sapphire card by:

Earning the 50k sign-up bonus
Adding my Mom as an authorized user and earning another 5k
Referring a friend and earning another 10k
Charging items which provide points

As a result, I’m experiencing some lovely benefits:

I booked my plane ticket to FinCon18 in Orlando Florida for 15,839 points.
Secondly, I transferred 8,532 points to the travel partner Southwest Rapid Rewards and was able to fly to Milwaukee to visit my BFF from kindergarten. #Priceless
Finally, I transferred another 45,000 points to the travel partner Hyatt and booked a room in Utah for an upcoming ski trip in 2019.

BTW, one of my FI friends & I are planning this ski trip to Utah wholly with travel rewards miles (minus lift tickets & food) so you can bet your pretty little self, I’ll write about how we did it here!

A week’s stay at a Hyatt hotel in Utah cost a total of 105,000 points. My friend used 60k of her rewards miles and me 45k. I’ll settle up that disparity in points with a cash equivalent.

BFFs – From Kindergarten to Now – We Haven’t Changed a Bit!

I’m Going Deeper Into the Travel Hacking Waters

Now that I have an upcoming flight to purchase for my 2019 Utah ski trip, I opened a Chase Ink Business Cash Card.

The minimum spend on this card is $3,000. If you charge that amount within three months, you earn $500 cash back. Once this bonus is earned I’ll be able to transfer it to my Chase Ultimate Reward account and receive the equivalent of 50,000 bonus miles.

I’m totally hooked which leads me to the ultimate purpose of this post…

How Do You Budget With Credit Cards?

Firstly, it’s not as simple as budgeting with cash but it’s also not impossible. Typically my bi-monthly budget is how I also balance my checkbook.

I am loving travel hacking so I wanted to come up with a way to stay within budget and use credit cards to earn travel miles.

Automating My Savings

The first thing, I’ve done is to automate my savings. My simple IRA and HSA deductions are set to max out for 2018 and are automatically taken pre-tax out of my paycheck so you won’t seem them on my budget.

Additionally, I have a Roth IRA and have been depositing money into this account each month and buying ETFs. However, I’ve decided to set up automatic monthly deposits into this account to ensure I max it out for 2018.

The automatic deposit goes into a Federal Money Market Settlement fund. I do have to take the extra step each month to go into my Vanguard account and buy ETFs, so I just set a reminder in Todoist to do this!

I typically have leftover money each month and I transfer this into my online Ally Savings account. This is where I store my emergency fund and money to buy my next car. Moreover, I’m growing it to includes monies for a future real estate investment.

I also opened an after-tax brokerage account to put leftover money into.

For right now, I’m not automating this deposit but as I get better at budgeting with credit cards, I plan to do so.

So I’ve created a sample month’s budget on Google Sheets which you can view here. If you want to use it, first save a copy and then you’ll be able to edit and enter your own numbers.

The numbers on the Google sheet are my projections for October. You can also view it here:

How It’s Done

Alright, it took me some time to play around with it but I think I have something simple. Let’s see if I can break it down for you…

Expenses

The far left column is where all the expenses are named and the next column over is the monthly suggested amount. Some of these are fixed amounts, like rent, cell phone, tithing, etc. And others are variable; however, I still want to have a target I’m aiming at. Through the years of cash budgeting, I’ve learned what I typically spend in each category.

I broke it into 8 categories that I won’t repeat here since you can see them in the above picture. Although, the one thing I’ll point out is that there are some things which might be needed only once or twice a year (Christmas money, automotive repairs, license renewal, etc). These are in the savings category as I move them into a savings account until I need them.

Then there are things which might not be needed right away but more frequently than once a twice a year. These things stay in my checking account until I need them.

I keep a second tab with a running total of how much extra I have in my savings & checking account for these budgeted items.

Pay Period

I break out my budget by bi-monthly pay periods. like rent and utilities are due on specific days so I plug those in first. Then I played around with the other numbers until I made the numbers work.

The bottom row balances out. I do zero-based budgeting where every dollar is assigned to a category. Typically, I have extra left over in the bottom row and so I either throw it into my online savings account or after-tax brokerage account.

Paying With Credit Card

I highlighted everything which gets paid with a credit card in blue. I look at my credit card online account each month and track what I’ve spent in each category.

When I’m trying to meet a minimum spend on a specific credit card, I will pay my rent with that credit card. I’m assessed a fee for paying my rent with a credit card but the bonus miles typical outweigh the fee.

Over/Under Budget

The far right column shows if I am over, under or on budget. Ideally, I want this to zero out. I created a conditional rule to turn any cell red if the number is negative. This way, I can clearly see where I am over budget so I can adjust my spending habits next month.

Closing Thoughts

Travel rewards miles have allowed me to take more trips this year than normal. For me, the key was getting it to work within my budget. I didn’t want to be using a credit card to get free travel if I was going to be spending more money on my expenses.

As you may know or can imagine, it’s easy to spend more with a credit if you are not careful. This requires organization and discipline.

I think I’ve found a way to make it work.

So what have I missed? Do you have any travel reward or budgeting tips you want to share?