How I gamed the system and used credit card points to fly to Brazil for only $107

In 2014, I finally got interested in the wonderful world of credit card hacking.

It always sounded scammy before and hey, credit cards are bad, right? How can you just sign up for cards and magically travel for free? Turns out it's pretty easy.

1. Sign up for cards with special bonuses
2. Spend money you would have spent anyway to hit minimum requirements for the bonus
3. Collect those points
4. Rinse and repeat

I had several friends playing the credit card points game. I hadn't jumped in up to that point, but after watching them take several amazing overseas vacations for almost no travel costs, I started asking questions.

I finally took the plunge when a few friends decided to sign up for the British Airways Chase card, which at the time offered a 100k Avios points signup bonus with a $100 annual fee and no strings attached.

For those not aware, this is a huge number of points. A roundtrip international flight to Western Europe or much of South America in coach is typically around 50,000 points. As someone taught to avoid debt, I'd only ever had one credit card that I paid off each month. Signing up for my second card ever was a big step.

The card showed up and I spent the required $2,000 in the first three months. This didn't take any extra effort, I just switched all my spending and bill pay to the new card.

So now I had 100,000 points. What do I do? They sat there for a long time, because what they don't tell you is that Avios are notoriously hard to use. You need to book them way in advance and you need to book them through a partner hub. BA's primary partner hub is United. I live in Houston, which isn't very United-heavy, so we could either use extra points to fly to Dallas or make the four-hour drive.

Houston to Brazil

After a miles-funded trip to a family reunion in LA used up 40,000 points and a first-class work flight to London topped my account back up, I transferred 25,000 points from my Starwood Amex (a later credit card signup) over to my BA account, bumping my total back to 100,000.

This gave us just enough to book our dream vacation of 2014. Rio! 

Flights are always the most cost prohibitive part of traveling for only a week or two, so to be able to use points allowed us a vacation we wouldn't normally dream of taking. For 50,000 points each, we were able to fly roundtrip for a grand total of $107 in taxes and fees.

For comparison, that trip today would cost about $2,600 for the two of us.

This lowered the cost of our trip dramatically and made it super affordable to take a vacation we otherwise wouldn't normally be able to take. It was cheaper to fly to Rio for the two of us than it would be to drive to Florida.

We managed to get $2,600 in flights from a single credit card signup, and if you add in LA, that's a sum total of $3,000  in flights for doing absolutely nothing but spend what I already would have spent.

All this for a five-minute signup and changing nothing about my spending habits is as close to free money as you're going to find. I was definitely hooked, and I've since signed up for another 5-6 cards and canceled several older ones as they hit their anniversary (and I would have been charged for another annual fee).

If you can't pay the full balance each month or have any credit issues, this isn't for you. You should also be careful if you are on the verge of a giant purchase (like a home) since opening and closing accounts will hit your credit score. There's often a short term drop of a few points when your credit is checked for an application.

However, it's been a fantastic travel tool for us and can save you thousands per year. Right now, we have another 300,000 points waiting to be spent and are planning a vacation to Thailand!

Adam Chudy is an analyst and investor living in Houston. He graduated from the University of Arkansas with a degree in finance and accounting and is a CFA Charterholder. For more on travel, personal finance, or some great cat photos, follow him on Twitter: @AdamChudy.

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