Travel rewards lets try this thing out

I don't know if travel is a life essential, a perk, or a hassle. The one thing I know is that traveling can be expensive.

To get an idea how bad travel effects your finances here is a perfect example.  The wife and I went on our honeymoon almost 10 years ago to Hawaii.  We stayed their 7 days, 5 on Kauai and 2 on Honolulu.  Want to guess how much it cost?   Give up?  $5,000 yep that is a big chunk of change.  We spend almost $1000 on food and $2800 on airfare, hotel, and transportation.  Crazy stuff. That's with using some miles on our flights.  It was a life experience that we highly enjoyed.  

I've been hearing about travel rewards for awhile and I wanted to give it a try. We spent around $6,000 on vacations last year. That was mostly just traveling to see family.   With a few trips around 1/2 marathons.  

From what I can tell Chase Ultimate rewards are the cream of the crop when it comes to travel rewards.   My wife and I are going to start this together.  For one so we can double up the points and two we can get referral bonuses from each other.  

We are starting the Chase program.  Some call it the Chase Gauntlet or Chase Ultimate Rewards 5/24.

The reason for starting with Chase was one it has one of the best partner programs for hotels and flights and two the 5/24 rule chase has.  This is Chase will not approve a card for you if your opened any 5 cards in a 24 month period. It doesn't matter if they are Chase or Amex. 

We are starting off with the Chase Sapphire Preferred which has current bonus of 60K points after spending 4K in 3 months.  Then you get 15k points for every referral.  I got this card and opened it to pay for car insurance.  Since that was around $2000 I was able to take care of half the spending right away. 
After I finished hitting the spending limit my wife picked up the same card and we got an additional 15k for the referral.  These cards have great benefits besides just the points and a card you can transfer ultimate awards points.  An example is it provided primary car rental insurance not secondary like most cards. 

We are early in our journey with currently a total 160,000 Ultimate Reward points.

We are trying to map out next years vacations.  We are going to try to get the Southwest cards to get companion passes for the kids.  A companion pass is earned by getting 125k southwest as of 1/2020 points in a calendar year.  Reward points with the Southwest credit card counts for these points.  The companion pass is basically buy one get one free plus you get the pass for the current year and the next.  For a family of 4 that is huge.  I'm not the biggest fan of Southwest mostly because I like having an assigned seat, but I can get over that. This also works like doubling your reward points.

Since we are just about to hit October and we want to time the Southwest cards for the beginning of next year to maximize passes we are looking at hotel cards.  We normally stay at Hilton hotels because of my wife's work travel points, but Hilton doesn't fit into the Chase cards and it may not be the best to maximize points.  Currently looking to Marriott to get free stay for a ski trip planned.

The biggest reason we are doing this is to reduce our vacation spending and to enjoy our family time. Just remember this should fit into your normal spending habits. If you can't spend the amount required either open the card around a big purchase like car insurance or go with a card with less spending requirement.  Other options are to buy gift cards like amazon to pay for your future amazon expenses.

As this is the most important part of travel rewards. If you are not paying off you cards in full every month don't start this.  You need to get a handle on your debt until you can start gaining these rewards.  A hole will only get bigger the more shovels that are available.