Hello All! My name is Mike, otherwise known as The Traveling Novice. I decided to begin this blog to discuss my ventures as I begin to dive head first into the world of miles and points collecting in order to travel more frequently at little to no cost.
Now, I'm not exactly a novice to traveling. I mean I HAVE traveled before. But it has been fairly infrequent and at considerable cost. I always wanted to travel more, but time and money have always been the biggest obstacles. Most all of my travel to date has been domestic (United States), with one trip to Canada, and a few cruises to the Carribean and Mexico. I'll give more details as to exactly where I've been in a future post.
Until my mid-30s, I had hardly traveled at all. I was still married at the time, helping raise two girls (step-daughters) and working constantly to build my career. Traveling was infrequent...just too costly for the four of us. Then I got divorced and found myself with more opportunities to start traveling. Not that it's been a lot...but certainly more in the last six or seven years than in all my previous 30+ years combined.
Now that I'm in my 40s, I have realized there is a LOT more I would like to do and places to see. One of my primary desires has been to visit Australia and New Zealand. No particular reason...just thought it would be a fun place to go. Also, their accents are really cool. But the cost of a first-class flight to Australia from where I live (which would almost be a necessity given the length of the flight) is outrageous.
A couple of years ago, I obtained my first credit card that would actually help me accumulate "miles" in order to offset the cost of traveling. I was tired of paying for things and getting nothing in return. This new card now allowed me to still pay the same amounts I was paying before, but instead get something back in return. This could go a long way to helping me board that plane some day with a destination of Sydney.
For three years I was putting every bill and expense I could on this one card, trying to rack up the "miles" that could get me to desired vacation destination. I was certainly racking up some free travel, to the tune of about $700 per year. Not bad and certainly better than nothing...which is where I was before this card. But in essence, $700 per year in "miles" may cover a nice, domestic weekend trip somewhere (one round-trip flight and a few nights at a moderately-priced hotel) but it won't be getting me to Australia in first class anytime soon. There had to be other options.
Then, about two months ago, I stumbled upon a few blogs on the internet devoted to miles and points accumulation and realized there were many more options with credit cards that may get me to my goal much faster. This totally caused me to re-focus my approach to obtaining awards travel.
So here I sit...just a few months into this new venture to obtain miles and points in order to pack my bags more frequently and see more of what this wonderful world has to offer. Since I am still relatively new to this, I thought it might be helpful and useful to document my journey for others who are also novices. Who knows...maybe even those more expereinced in this may learn a thing or two also.
It should be an interesting ride and I hope you will follow my exploits. Welcome to The Traveling Novice!
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