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It's time to plan your 2023 travels! Lyn offers 5 travel planning tips to help you decide where to go and save as much as possible in 2023.
Want to make more family travel memories without breaking the bank? Longtime travel journalist Lyn Mettler shares her top tips to help families quickly and easily travel for less using rewards points and inspires you with ideas of where to travel on your next vacation.
Do you love to travel and
save money or do you wish
you could travel? But money is
holding you back.
You're in the right place.
Welcome to the Families Fly Free
podcast where I show you
how to fly your family free
forever using my simple fly-free
formula. I'm your host,
Lyn Mettler.
My family of four has mastered
the art of flying free as simply
as possible since 2015 and
I want to show your family how to do
it, too.
Hello, everyone, and Happy New
Year. I hope everyone had a great
New Year's Eve, New Year's
Day holiday celebration.
I know that for
me, I feel like I've already been in
2023.
For the last month, I've been
working really hard to plan ahead
and get myself all set for this
year, so I kind of feel like I've
already stepped into it.
But as we all head into
this new year, I
always like to look back
at the past year, not in regret
or things I should have done,
but take a look at what happened
last year and how would I like
things to look differently this
year, and what are some
small changes that I can make
to accomplish that?
So when it comes to travel,
I encourage you to ask yourself,
did you travel where you wanted
to in 2022,
and were you happy with the
cost of your travels in 2022?
Did you feel comfortable with the
amount you spent?
Do you wish you had been able to
spend less?
Do you wish you had been able to
travel more?
I can tell you that my family had
an amazing year of travel
in 2022, and you
can check it out on Instagram
at Families Fly
Free. I shared a real
with some videos and pictures
of some of our travels from 2022.
I just sat down and did all
of the calculations of
how many points that we spent,
how many flights we took, and what
it was all worth.
And I'm pretty amazed
at how much we saved last
year. So we took 20
free round trip flights,
so we took six different trips
and then a couple of them, just my
husband and I traveled.
So that's where the number 20 comes
from on the rest of them, all four
of us went and
based on the number of points
that we paid to fly
free and we only flew domestically
last year on Southwest,
we saved $14,000.
So what that means is for
the flights that we took
and the points that we paid,
what we would have paid in cash for
those flights would have been
$14,000.
Now, would I have paid $14,000
for flights in 2022? Totally
not if I had had to pay for that out
of pocket, but because
we were able to redeem points and we
were able to bring my husband
as my companion for free,
that is how much we saved
by booking everything and frequent
flier miles.
And I had a couple of instances.
So like last year we went to Miami,
we went to Kauai,
in Hawaii, we went to New York
City, we went to Colorado,
we went to Santa Barbara, and then
we went to Disney World in Orlando
over Thanksgiving.
Now, on a couple of those trips, I
was able to
work the amount of points that we
paid on Southwest down
significantly, playing
some of the insider tricks and
hacks you hear me talk about that we
share inside of the Families Fly
Free membership.
So on our Hawaii flight last year,
I was able to save 300,000
points.
And what that means is I was able to
get our flights to
prime days and times that would have
cost a boatload more points.
But I was able to work it so I
didn't have to pay that full number
of points.
So we saved we basically paid,
you know, saved 300,000
points of what we should
have paid in points to fly to
Hawaii. And the same thing for
Orlando. I pulled a nifty little
trick all above board for
Thanksgiving flights and was
able to save us 100,000 points
to fly prime days nonstop
flights prime times over
Thanksgiving to Orlando.
So that's a pretty staggering
savings when
you calculate it that way of what
we actually would have paid out of
pocket $14,000.
So if you didn't travel
as much as you wanted to in
2022 like we did,
or if you actually had to pay
that amount out of pocket or you
paid more points than you thought
you should have,
it is time to make a change.
If you want different results in
2023, you're going to have
to do something different than
you did in 2022.
And I would like to see you come and
join us inside of Families Fly
Free this year and let
us show you how to do what
I just did last year.
And I'm not the only one doing that.
We've got hundreds of members doing
this, also saving thousands
and thousands of dollars.
So let us show you this easy
way to fly free to all the
places that you want to go.
Again, we really focus on the U.S.,
the Caribbean and Europe.
And so you can do it just like my
family and the hundreds of other
families who are doing it as well.
So let's talk about
what you can do to
start planning your travels for
2023.
So I've got five things that we're
going to talk about today.
The first one is you need to
figure out where you want to go,
right? That's where it all has to
start.
And I encourage you to think about
some travel goals for your family.
My family's goals always has been,
was initially to really travel
around the U.S. and see places that
we'd never seen, which was a lot.
And then from there, we wanted to
take everyone over to Europe.
So we now have accomplished
a good bit of that traveling
six times a year, most years
since 2015.
And so we have a few
places left in the U.S.
that have been on our list that we
haven't gotten to.
But we really want to start to
focus, I think now that things have
opened up on seeing all the places
in Europe that we would really like
to see. We've been multiple places,
but there's a whole lot more over
there that we would like to explore.
So talk about your with your family,
about what your goals are.
Maybe you want to fly around the
world, maybe you want to hit all the
national parks in the U.S.
Maybe you want to go see some
baseball stadiums around the
country.
Maybe you want to take that trip
to Disney World that you
know that you've dreamed of for
years, or you want to
get everyone to Hawaii.
That's a dream for so many people.
But sit around the dinner table,
start a family discussion.
This is a great family activity.
Let everybody weigh in on,
you know, if money were not a
concern, where would they want to
go?
And if you decide that you want
to join Families Fly Free and you
feel confident that you're going to
be able to travel as much as you
want, try to work in one
place that everyone in your family
wants to go. So maybe, you know,
one of the kids wants to go to
Disney and maybe, you know, mom
wants to head to the beach and maybe
dad wants to go hike in the national
parks or you know,
I've had families before, like the
kids who want to go to Detroit
because they love cars and they
wanted to go see certain car
museums. Or maybe you want to come
and see the Indianapolis 500 this
year. You want to go to Comic-Con
in San Diego.
There's so many different reasons
to travel, so pick
some fun ones and really brainstorm
and make a list.
And I know again, I recently just
sat down over the holidays and made
a list of where I want to go
before I die, because I
want to make sure that I get to do
all of these things.
And, you know, as you approach
midlife, you start to realize like,
oh, if I'm going to get these things
done, I better make a plan for it
and a better start working on it.
So that's something that you can do
to just make a bucket list of every
place that you want to see before,
before your life is up
and start knocking that off,
checking things off the list.
Okay, so that's the first one.
Decide where you want to go in 2023.
You want to narrow it down to if
you've got a bucket list, narrow it
down to what are some things that
you feel would be realistic in 2023?
And you might take, you know, make a
big one like pick a Hawaii or a
Disney or something for this year
and then pick some smaller ones too.
Like maybe you just want to head
to Denver and hike Rocky Mountain
National Park, or maybe you want to
go and hang out in San Diego,
you know, for a week and and do
some theme parks and some beaches
and lots of different things there.
Maybe you just want to go check out
a big city. So New York City or
San Francisco or Chicago or
something on your on your list.
All right. Number two is
get organized.
So particularly if you plan
to use travel rewards this year,
if you plan to collect and use
frequent flier miles, hotel
loyalty points,
get organized.
Just take a minute to do it.
Right now at the front end,
you will thank
yourself later.
I always like to look at this as I'm
helping my future self.
I'm helping future Lyn so she
doesn't have to be a
disorganized, stressed-out mess
in the future as we're planning,
that doesn't know what cards we have
or when we open them, or how many
points we have, or what the
different account numbers are
for our different loyalty accounts,
you know, get things
in place.
And so for your credit
cards, if you have travel cards that
you're using, we recommend a free
system like Travel Freely and
you can sign up for their program
at Families Fly Free dot com
slash travel freely all one
word freely
and I'll put that in the show notes.
They're a good system that's totally
free where you can enter
all of your cards that you have and
any information you have about them.
You can pull your free credit report
at annualcreditreport.com
and make a note of when you opened
those cards, if you have any
authorized users on those cards,
what the annual fee is.
And so they will notify you
like when your annual fees are
coming due again so you can decide
if you want to keep that card or
not. They'll let you know
if you're in this Chase 5/24
status. You can go back and listen
to my podcast all about that.
Or when you're out of it.
If you end up with too many cards.
So that's a good way to track
credit cards. But we also
recommend that you have a kind
of a manual spreadsheet process
too, because it really
helps to go through this
periodically and have it all be top
of mind. So inside Families Fly
Free we have what we call our Get
Organized Toolkit spreadsheets,
and we have many different
spreadsheets for many different
things that you might need to
track travel-wise
or travel rewards-wise.
So we definitely have one where you
can list all of your loyalty
accounts, passwords,
the numbers,
all of that stuff.
So it has is easy access if you need
to log into something.
We have one where you can keep track
of your credit cards for sure.
A big thing to keep track of if
you're flying Southwest Free is
what you paid for each Southwest
flight in points, because
once you add your companion, it
becomes a little more difficult to
figure out what you originally paid
so that if the price goes down
later, if the points price drops
from what you originally paid,
you're going to want to know that.
So you need to compare what you paid
initially to what the price is now
so that you can rebook and get those
points back. So that becomes an
important thing to keep track of.
And particularly if you're playing
some of the hacks and tricks that we
teach, you're going to want to keep
an eye on those things very closely.
We also have a minimum spend
calculator so that you don't
accidentally go over minimum spend
before you intended
and keep track of each charge
and then know when you're going to
hit that minimum spend.
We even have things like
a spreadsheet where you can compare
car rental prices through different
programs and direct
with car rental companies to find
the best price.
So lots and lots of different ways
to get organized inside
of Families Fly Free as well.
So we definitely recommend
just take a minute at the beginning
of the year, set yourself up, help
your future self, get yourself
organized going forward.
Okay. The number three thing I
recommend is to strategically
choose a card that you're going to
put your everyday spending on.
So we really do recommend that if
you're going to be flying free,
staying free, that you
do focus on
one or two at most cards
to put
your day-to-day spending on. These are bills that you're paying anyway, nothing that you're buying just to earn points. These are your utility bills. They are groceries. It is gas, it is tuition. If you're able to put that on a card. And just as a side note, a question I get a lot is if I'm being charged a credit card fee to make a purchase. So like my son's at college and I can pay his tuition with a credit card, but they charge me a two-and-a-half percent fee to do that. So how do you figure out if it's worth paying that two-and-a-half percent fee to get the points that you would earn by paying that tuition? And so we just put together a video that's now available inside
of Families Fly Free for our members
to help them understand how to
calculate that very easily
and know if that's a good deal or
not. So we're going to see that
coming up as we approach taxes.
It's hard to believe we're going to
start talking about taxes, but there
are ways you can pay your taxes
online with a credit card and they
charge a fee.
And so how to figure out if that
makes sense to do that for
the number of points that you would
get to use a card?
So anyway, when it comes
to picking an everyday spending card
you want, first of all, I recommend
you do not use an airline credit
card. And 90% of people who come
to me are putting their everyday
spend on a Delta card, on
a United card, on an American card,
on a Southwest card.
These are not good cards for your
everyday spend because number one,
you're only using miles or
points in that particular currency.
If you're spending on a Delta card,
you're only earning SkyMiles that
you can use to book Delta.
If you're spending on a Southwest
card, you're only using earning
Rapid Rewards points that you can
use to book on Southwest.
They are not flexible.
The second reason is generally these
cards do not earn
more points per dollar and
categories of spending that you're
likely going to be spending on if
you're traveling a lot.
So particularly if
you're spending on travel or dining.
So those are areas that you'll be
spending more on if you're flying
free six times a year because
you're going to have to eat out and
you're going to have to incur some
travel expenses.
So you want to pick a card that
earns the most points per dollar
or earns more points per dollar
in those two categories.
And typically, airline cards do not.
They earn more if you're buying
something directly with them.
So I might earn four points per
dollar on a Southwest purchase or a
Delta purchase on a Delta card.
But you shouldn't be spending much
with the airlines if you're flying
free, if you're using miles or
points to book.
You shouldn't be having to charge
airfare to the card.
You would only be charging maybe
like ancillary expenses,
which are just kind of not.
It's not even going to be worth
getting four points per dollar on a,
you know, if you're, you know,
checking a bag or something on Delta
and it's $30 times for
you earned 120 miles.
What do you do? Right.
So there's really no reason to use
these cards. They don't earn
flexible points and they don't earn
more points per dollar in most
categories of spending.
So we much prefer that you pick a
flexible card, something that earns
flexible points that can be used
with airlines, with hotels for
different purposes, and that
will earn more points per dollar,
particularly on dining and travel,
but also consider the categories of
spending that you spend the most on.
So if you run a farm and you buy
a lot of fuel, pick a card that
earns the most you can get on
gas.
If you have a big family and you
spend a lot on groceries, then pick
a card that earns the most on
groceries, etc.
So that's something you want to
consider when picking a flexible
spending card. But this can include
cards like Chase Sapphire Preferred,
which is one of my favorites Capital
One Venture X or Venture Rewards.
Also one of my favorites,
the Amex cards, they earn flexible
points and Citi cards also
earn flexible points.
Those last two are not my favorites,
but some of you may already
have a bunch of points in those
programs, and that may be your
preferred
program to use.
So consider the categories
of spending. Consider if it's a
flexible card.
Consider what your favorite airline
and hotel chains are.
And does that card play well with
those? Can you transfer that
system's points over to your
favorite airline and your favorite
hotel chain?
And lastly, I encourage you to pick
a business card as well,
particularly if you have any kind of
a small business because you can
be earning points on your business
expenses also.
And so you want that same mindset.
Choose a flexible card that's going
to earn you flexible points that you
can use in different purposes
and use that card to help fund your
personal leisure travel.
All right, number four and I can't
recommend this one enough is
to get travel insurance.
So we just saw all the
big issues with Southwest
over the holidays where they had to
have so many flight delays and
so many cancelations across
the board.
And while this was a particularly
bad incident and for
everyone who got stuck in it,
I'm so sorry.
I know that that is miserable when
you're going through it.
What we really encourage you to do
now is to plan
ahead and get a strategy in place
for things like this to happen.
This has just continued to happen
over the last year, at least,
if not longer.
Since the pandemic started with
almost every single airline, again,
this was a particularly bad one, but
they have all suffered from massive
delays and cancelations at some
point.
So it is just a risk that
you are incurring if you're going to
travel right now until they get some
of these hiring and
technology and systems and
everything fixed,
which I don't expect to happen
tomorrow.
So I have an annual travel
insurance policy.
You can go back and listen to my
podcast on why we opted to
get that. We are now in our second
year of that policy,
but my policy allows me
to if Southwest cannot
get me where I want to go that day,
it will allow me to book another
airline to get where I'm going and
be reimbursed for that.
And so for me, that's my
mitigation of the risk of
potentially Southwest having a delay
or a cancelation.
I know I can still get to where I
want to go, and if for whatever
reason, I just can't get there, I'm
still going to be covered on any
cost that I am out as a result
of that. Accommodations that I had
to prepay for park tickets that I
had to prepay for events, tours,
etc., that I had to prepay for,
I'm going to be reimbursed
through my travel insurance policy
for that.
So I just can't say it
enough. Get travel insurance.
Get travel insurance.
Get travel insurance if you want to
travel a lot this year.
It will give you peace of mind and
you want to make sure you always
have a plan B when you are traveling
these days. And so travel
insurance is part of that.
And for us, it's knowing what
airline I'm going to book if I can't
take my Southwest flight and
what do we do if we're at our
destination and we can't get back,
you know, maybe even having backup
hotel reservations that could be
canceled, backup car rental
reservations that can be canceled
because I'm not going to stop
traveling because of this.
I want to keep traveling, and
I'm sure you do, too.
So that's how we do our best to
mitigate that risk.
All right. The last thing I want to
talk about, if you really
want to up your game when it comes
to travel and you want things to be
simpler and way less expensive,
join Families Fly Free.
This is the best thing you
can do for your travel experience
if your travel goals and your
family's travel goals are similar to
my family's, which are to fly
as many places as you can around
the U.S., the Caribbean and Europe,
and bring the whole family with you
for free.
If that lines up with what you want
to do, come join us.
Let us show you how easy
this can be.
If you have any concerns.
Go listen to the different member
interviews I've done on the podcast
on our YouTube channel at Families
Fly Free.
Listen to what other members have
had to say. I've interviewed
countless people so that I can
demonstrate to you that I am not an
anomaly. I'm not a unicorn.
This works for all types of families
and people.
Let us show you how you can
really up the ante on
your family's ability to travel.
Make this the year that
you travel more than you ever
imagined you could.
Maybe you're going to save $14,000
on flights like my family
did, and you're going to make
those memories do it now
before your kiddos are out of the
house.
Do it now while you can.
While it's top of mind, just make
this a primary to do
for your family this year.
Jump in, see what you can
get accomplished. See if it works
for you.
Make a list of everywhere you want
to go and let's get you there.
So keep in mind too, with Families
Fly Free, not only are we going to
give you how to do this,
but this is not just a course that
you log into and you take and you
learn, right?
There's that part of it.
But this is really hands-on and
personal with me and my team.
We give you personal help all
along the way.
We give you a personalized plan
for your family and your travel
goals and your experience that tells
you what steps you need to take in
order to be able to fly free going
forward.
And then we answer any questions
that you have so you're not like
left out there by yourself trying to
implement this.
Any travel question you have,
whether it relates to how do
I work Genie Plus at Disney
World too, what's the best luau
in Hawaii, to what's
a great hotel to book in San Diego,
to how do I book the Southwest
flight to I am stuck in a delay
or cancelation help!
What do I do? We helped all of our
members through that
and help them with what they needed
to ask for in terms of
reimbursement, etc.
So you're never going to be left
alone. You're going to get an answer
that you can trust.
And that's going to be quick,
which I think is super important in
all of this. It's you're not left
to your own devices once you learn
how to do that.
And truly, if you ask
us your questions and if you
follow our recommendations,
you are not going to make a mistake
and you are going to be successful.
If you follow our recommendations
and you were not able to be
successful and at least save double
your investment in the membership,
then you're eligible to get your
money back. We are not going to take
your money if you tried to do what
we said and it didn't work for you.
But you really you do have to do
what we recommend or it
can't work, right?
So so keep that in mind.
So come in, ask your questions,
follow our recommendations, and
you're going to be blown away at
what your family is able to do in
2023.
So those are my five tips for you to
plan your family's travels this
year. I hope you have some amazing
places that you want to go.
We like to pick a mix of places.
We're still trying to sort it out.
We definitely have Turks and Caicos
booked for February.
That will be our kind of
warm weather annual beach vacation.
We like to throw in beach vacation,
a big city, a Disney trip,
Europe. So we definitely have our
eyes on Europe this year.
So we'll keep you posted as
we further our plans this
year. And have
a great week, everyone, and we will
see you on the next episode.
If you're ready to fly your family
free forever, I invite
you to join my Families Fly Free
membership. You'll learn how to stop
paying for airfare throughout the
U.S., Caribbean and Europe
so you can make those priceless
family travel memories
before your kids or even your
grandkids leave home for good,
and you'll learn it using my simple,
proven formula that's helped
hundreds of families.
Plus it's risk-free.
You either get your investment in
the membership back in free travel,
or I give you your money back.
You can get more information at
Families Fly Free dot com
slash join.