So when did you get into the community of people who do this?Around 2005 is when I discovered the subculture. This was the travel hacking community before it was really called "travel hacking." We were just frequent flyer mile enthusiasts. I didn't start blogging until 2010, and there were a couple of other blogs at the time, but I was the first one to do it from New York. I worked on Wall Street at the time doing recruiting on college campuses... I was traveling around the US basically trying to convince [tech students] to work on Wall Street instead of Apple, Google, Facebook.
That was when I was racking in millions of miles per year, because I was paying for information sessions, and so even though it was during the recession, I was traveling like a multimillionaire. That was the whole genesis of the site. My friends were like, "You must have a trust fund to be going to the Seychelles. You work in HR and you're making like, $65,000 a year." But the amount of money I redeemed on miles was more than my annual salary. I was cash poor, but miles rich.
I quit my job the year after I made my first blog post. I took a trip to Tokyo and just said, "Let's do this."
"Let's do this" is how I feel right now, because I'm about two weeks away from paying off my credit card debt and fixing my score. How long do I have to wait to get started once that's done?You'll be so surprised that the minute you pay them off, it's almost an immediate jump. Utilization is the number-one factor in your credit score. As long as you pay your bills on time and don't have any late payments, you're gonna be fine. You're on the cusp. What's your score?
Very bad. About 580.You're fine. It's probably just because you have a relatively short credit history and a lot of credit, so you're high-risk. But once you pay that off—I'm not kidding, in one month it can shoot up 50, 100 points.
OK, once my credit score gets in a good place, what's my first step?I'll start with the type of credit card you should get. There are three main types. The best kind are transferable points cards. These are cards where you accrue points into a central pool and then you can transfer to another of different partners. You have a million options on how to redeem them. With airline credit cards, you're betting on that airline. And that's what I always warn people: Would you put your entire life savings into Apple stock? Just because it did great last year, it could tank this year, and then you'd be screwed.
That's the same exact thing that happens with airlines. Some are amazing ..........>>> http://snip.ly/mES2
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