The short answer is credit cards. Apply for them, get them, spend however much you need to spend on them, and then gather up the points in your arms and whisper sweet nothings to them.
This was for a 4-day, 3-night trip to Providenciales, Turks and Caicos with a night layover in Miami, Florida in September 2023.
Flights: $98.95/person
Flight from Denver to Miami – $0 using my Chase Sapphire Preferred credit card portal. The retail price of the ticket on the date I bought it was $109.
Flight from Miami to Providenciales, Turks and Caicos – $5.60 in taxes and fees and 13,000 miles on American Airlines. The retail price of the ticket was $210. I could have bought a Denver to Turks and Caicos flight with a shorter layover in Miami for the same amount of points, but Boyfriend doesn’t do overnight flights if he can help it. And we could help it!
Flight from Providenciales to Denver – $92.95 in taxes and fees and 8,000 miles on American Airlines. 8,000 miles is a steal for a ticket of this sort, I think. I built the whole trip around this flight because it was such a good deal. I think. The retail price of the ticket was $243.
Hotels: $25 total ($12.50/person)
Hotel in Miami – $25 – Boyfriend used his credit card points and booked one of the sweetest hotels I’ve ever stayed in. Our room had a patio that opened up into the pool on the ninth floor. This is nicer than what we would have paid for ourselves. We had the whole pool to ourselves when we went out at midnight to swim. It was pretty magical.
The only cost was the $25 resort fee.
Hotel in Providenciales, $0. I used nearly $2,000 worth of my Chase Sapphire Preferred points and booked an incredible one-bedroom hotel room that ran for nearly $500/night.
There’s a catch. The same room on hotels.com ran for $1,774 for those same nights. Plus, I’d get free airport transfer if I had booked through hotels.com. I tried my hardest to get them to honor the airport transfer, but they wouldn’t budge because, fairly, I didn’t book on hotels.com.
But the property was gorgeous. It had two pools, an on-call chauffeur to the beach, a quick five-minute golf-cart ride away.
Food and drinks: $437.29 total ($218.65 each)
In Turks and Caicos, we went to the grocery store and bought breakfasts and lunches and most dinners that Boyfriend cooked ($129.03 in groceries). We went out to eat once ($63.80) because we always go out to eat on Wednesdays. We’d have to buy food if we were at home as well, so I don’t mind spending this.
We used the lounge in the airport in Denver and Miami for free food (article on that coming soon) and the first hotel gave us free breakfast and $100 for dinner because of Boyfriend’s credit card.
We spent $66.80 to eat in the airport at Turks and Caicos because we got there too early and there wasn’t much else to do.
In Turks and Caicos, we spent $49.36 to get drinks at the hotel and $45 on drinks at other hotels along the beach.
In Miami, we spent $83.30 on food and drinks, above and beyond what the hotel gave us for free. It was an expensive/fancy hotel and we enjoyed ourselves.
Transportation – $158.92 total ($79.46 each)
When we went to the airport from our house in Denver, we drove and used a couple of dollars worth of gas. Parking in a lot outside the airport, I used my accumulated free days and a discount code and had a balance of $7.92. Then I used a rebate gift card I got from buying contact lenses to pay that eight bucks.
Getting to and from the hotel in Miami to the airport cost us $36.92 roundtrip. I couldn’t find a way around this. Public transportation would have taken us three times longer and we wanted to enjoy our hotel as much as possible.
Getting to and from the hotel in Turks and Caicos cost us $77 roundtrip. Again, I couldn’t find a way around this. There’s no real public transportation in TCI.
Getting to and from eating Indian food dinner cost us $45.
A word about cab drivers in Turks and Caicos. Every single time we used a cab we got scammy vibes. Oops, they had no change or they gave us the wrong change hoping we wouldn’t notice or the price magically changed when we arrived. Which worked out okay because the hotel was so gorgeous, we really didn’t want to leave it.
We used the hotel’s electric bikes to get to the grocery store in Turks and Caicos for free the rest of the time, but that was fraught with peril.
Gym – $0
Normally, I find a gym at my vacation destination closest to where I’m staying, but the gyms at Turks and Caicos wanted $25-$30 per day, which is too high for me on a normal day, much less a trip I’m trying to brag to you about, so I downloaded some tough FitnessBlender workouts and did them in the hotel’s outdoor yoga area.
Activities -$0
We did all the free activities like swimming in the pool, playing in the ocean, reading by the beach and bicycling around the island. If we had one more day, I would have done some kayaking or something.
All in all, this fabulous trip cost $879.11. For two people! That’s $440/person. Amazing!
Subtract from that the money we made renting out our house the days we were gone ($551.48) and the entire trip cost $327.63. Let me say it again. Amazing!!
What I learned. For credit card points, I think it makes more sense to buy airline tickets. They cover the taxes and fees and it appears more akin to prices in the real world.
Turks and Caicos Bucket List
1. Spend a lot of time in the water
The water was the highlight of Turks and Caicos for me. The ocean water was bath water temperature and calm. You could go so far out and the waves were gentle. It was a real confidence booster!
2. Bicycle around the island
The hotels had bikes you could take out for free, so we went around on these regularly. It was scary because drivers are a little crazy, the sun is hot, and there are no dedicated or shared bike lanes. You just bike on the sidewalk.
Also, boyfriend’s front wheel came off when he was riding toward the end of the trip and he got pretty banged up. Road rash. Bruises. Swollen ankle. We were afraid to take the bikes after that. Should we sue? If he hadn’t been wearing a helmet or if there were a car coming, he’d have been killed.
I still want to go on a long bike road trip. Have you ever done that?
3. Go to the beach and read a book
I read “Die with Zero,” a book I’ll try to tell you about. Later.
4, Spend as wisely as possible
Initially, this item read “spend as little as possible”, but that got old kind of fast. I’ve been “spending out” so much that it seemed silly not to do things we wanted to do when we had the money and the time. Plus, it made me feel cheap. A life bucket list item for me is to be generous, so this felt gross.
So we spent as wisely as we could. We tipped everyone. From the hotel maids and the golf cart drivers to the restaurants and bartenders, we went to the bank and got $60 worth of two dollar bills and gave them out regularly.
We spent more than we needed to on food and drink, but we don’t care. It was a fabulous trip.
5. Take a kayak to iguana island
We didn’t end up doing this. We found three weeks to be too long when we went to Europe in May, but three days is too short for Turks and Caicos.
6. Celebrate 41
I know I just went on a trip to Asia a week before this, but I don’t like spending my birthday in the United States if I can help it, so I scoured the website looking for deals and found the 8,000 points one way flight I was telling you about and it all came about from there.
7. Cross another country off the visited countries list
Turks and Caicos was country number 85 for me (depending on what you call a country).
I would say the only negative for me, besides the bike accident and the shady drivers, was the many mosquito bites I received during my time there.
I’ll tell you about one of the credit cards we used in my next post.
Very nice, that’s one of the things I miss about Australia – being able to gamify frequent flyer miles. Back in Ireland now and we have no such opportunities. PS 85 countries is pretty amazing, you will hit 100 one of these days
One of the many things to miss about Australia!
But how much did you have to spend on the credit cards to get all the points? I’m not criticizing, I am curious. Also, were those necessities?
I usually only get credit cards when I know I’m going to purchase something big on them. The amount varies, but I seem to recall $3,000 in 3 months which is doable for sure. And no, probably not necessities. 🙂
Maybe I’m missing out: I refuse to pay an annual fee for credit. “Seems scammy,” to quote you.
I get 2% cash back from Citibank, deposit it in my bank account, and use it as I wish. I guess I could combine cash back account with annual credit card fees to offset credit card fees. Is it worth it?
Probably not, honestly. I prefer simpler and your way sounds better. It’s just fun sometime to play the credit card hacking game. I usually get the first year free and then cancel the card. Except for one, which I’ll tell you about next week.
A successful brag! 🙂 Do I spy malai kofta? Did you get to eat it on the beach?
I’ve done some minor credit card churning. I have gotten the Delta Skymiles card at least twice over the years and was awarded 60,000 miles each time. I also cancel the card before the annual fee kicks in unless I know I’ll be redeeming a more valuable perk, such as a companion ticket. Not sure Delta is still offering this many miles or if they will investigate my questionable history. Right now I’m using Capital One’s Quicksilver card (1.5% back) and a Costco Citibank card (suburban bound, sigh).
Good eye! Kofta is one of my go-tos for Indian restaurants. Sorry you’re suburban bound, but appreciate the credit card suggestions!
That looks good !!
It was good!
I know there is no uber however did you try the conch cabs? Just curious.
No, I just looked it up. I wish I had known about it before I went there!
Really glad you’re back and posting regularly! I’m also very interested to hear about your adventures with AirBnb. Also wanted to throw this site your way if you’re ever interested in getting 30 day+ renters for longer trips. I haven’t used it, but it definitely seems cool https://www.furnishedfinder.com/
I just signed up for that after reading Medium Term Rentals. It has more traffic than I realized. Thanks for the suggestion!
Maybe a dumb question, but how is a country determined dependent on one persons’ consideration of this? What “countries” have you been to that would be questionably considered countries vs. not countries by other people? 😀
I would also be curious to hear more about the logistics of short term renting out your home while you are away. Do you have some type of electronic lock on the front door where people just have to input a code to get in? Do you have any locked rooms that are inaccessible by the renter?
Taiwan. Is that a country? China doesn’t think so. Puerto Rico. That’s definitely not a country, but it’s a check mark on my visited places website I use. What about Curacao? That’s a country, but it’s *not* on my visited places website.
We do indeed have an electronic lock on the front door and people input a code. We lock our bedroom and put all our stuff in there. We’re getting better at it. 🙂
Oh wow, you’re going places! Points hacking is fun, but I’d also love to hear how you picked WHERE to go 🙂
(Also, how do you get new credit lines when you’re retired and have no job to put on the application?)
If people invite me someplace and I say Yes! Or I look at my visited countries map and think about what I want. I want to go everywhere, so a new place is always fun. I figure out what time of year is it and where it is good to travel and then I just start looking around for flights or hotels or an activity to build the trip around. 🙂 It’s one of the best parts of traveling in my opinion, the planning and the dreaming.
Also, the credit card I talked about in the next post (New travel hack – lounges!) is my boyfriend’s card. He just made me an authorized user.
You asked about a long bicycle trip! We’ve done a few cycle tours. The longest was over a year during the pandemic across Europe (from London to Van in Turkey). It’s an amazing way to travel, and super thrifty! We went through France, Italy, Croatia, Montenegro, Albania, North Macedonia, Bulgaria and to the eastern side of Turkey. You really come to know the people and take in the landscape in a way you don’t with conventional travel.
You don’t have to be an incredible cyclist, you just train as you go, starting with very small distances, and slowly increasing to whatever distance/pace you like. You could ride for 1 hour a day, or 10 hours. Take as many rest days as you please. We did a lot of camping in countries where accommodation was more expensive, then B&Bs where it was cheaper.
Highly recommend all of it! If you want to start out somewhere small and with super safe roads, with a million food stops, and onsens at the end of each day, Japan is the best place for cycle touring! We did it on a tandem, following the cherry blossum bloom.
This was exactly the type of comment I was looking for when I asked about bike road trips! I’m taking notes. Appreciate the tips!! I just mentioned it to my boyfriend (Japan) and he’s all in! Love it!! So many exclamation points.