24. Your Questions Answered: AMA with the Travel Mom Squad

Points Talk with the Travel Mom Squad

Alex, Pam and Jess

Places & Travel, Education, Society & Culture, How To

4.9 • 734 Ratings

🗓️ 16 May 2023

⏱️ 42 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In our latest podcast episode, your favorite trio of the Travel Mom Squad—Pam, Jess, and Alex— give you an exclusive peek into our jet-setting lives. As many of you know, we've spent years perfecting the art of award travel, and we're thrilled to share our insider secrets with our beloved community.

For this episode, we did something a little different: we turned to our Instagram followers (@travelmomsquad) to guide the conversation. Yes, every single question we tackle in this episode came straight from you, our loyal listeners!

One question that sparked a lively discussion was about our strategy with credit cards—do we keep them open even after hitting the minimum spend? Let's just say, if you've been closing your cards after hitting the minimum spend, you might want to reconsider.

But that's just the tip of the iceberg! We answered a wide range of questions...tune in now to hear them all!

If you're not already following us on Instagram, we encourage you to do so. We love to engage with our listeners and the IG platform provides a wonderful space for us to do just that. Join our IG family, submit your questions, and you might just hear them answered in our next episode.

So, what are you waiting for? Hit play to hear the full episode now and join us on this exhilarating ride. We can't wait to share our adventures with you!

Links For All Things Travel Mom Squad: stan.store/travelmomsquad

Episode Minute By Minute:

0:00 Show introduction
1:09 Question one: Do you keep your cards open?
3:46 American Express “Pop Up Jail”
7:33 Question two: After Hyatt, Hilton or Marriott?
9:26 Question three: How often do you open new cards?
9:58 Question four: What are the most common mistakes beginners make?
13:42 Question five: How do you split business responsibilities?
22:10 Question six: What is a realistic time frame for taking your first nearly free vacation?
23:55 Question seven: Do you ever take trips that are strictly vacation?
30:01 Question eight: Best business credit card offer currently available?
30:50 Question nine: How do I get under 5/24 while still earning signup bonuses? Is getting business cards the only way?
33:00 Question ten: How long does it take a signup bonus to hit your account?
34:12 Question eleven: Do you get nervous that award travel will get over inflated in the future?
35:40 Question twelve: Which cards have you opened so far this year?

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to Points Talk with the Travel Mom Squad, previously known as the Travel Hacking
0:04.7	Mom Show. Follow the links in the show notes to stay up to date with what the Travel
0:08.8	Mom Squad has been up to. On today's episode of the Travel Hacking Mom Show, we're answering
0:13.4	your questions. How often do we open cards? Which cards have we opened so far this year?
0:18.9	What's it like having a travel hacking business?
0:23.2	We answer all of these questions and more.
0:26.3	Welcome to the Travel Hacking Mom Show. We are three moms who've discovered how to leverage credit card welcome offers to get hundreds of thousands of dollars in travel expenses for nearly free.
0:34.4	We've used credit card points and miles to take vacations to places like Hawaii,
0:38.5	Paris, Greece, the Maldives, Italy, and so much more. And the best part, we each still have an
0:44.1	800 plus credit score. Imagine being able to book a vacation without having to check your bank account.
0:49.1	It's totally possible and we're here to show you how.
0:52.3	Hey, I'm Alex and I'm Pam, Alex's mom, and I'm Jess.
0:56.2	We are travel hacking moms. So for today's episode, we decided that we would put you in the driver's
1:03.0	seat. We put up a question box in our Instagram stories and asked you to submit your questions.
1:09.3	We got hundreds of submissions.
1:12.2	So while we won't be able to answer all of them, I did choose quite a few for us to cover today.
1:17.9	So let's get to it.
1:20.2	Question one, do you typically keep all of your cards open and just stop using them once you hit a minimum spend. So Pam, tell us,
1:30.5	tell us what you do, Pam. We definitely don't stop using them or, well, we may stop using them once we
1:38.2	hit a minimum spend, but we never close them once we hit a minimum spend. And I think that's a huge thing to, to recognize. I get a lot of
1:48.0	people saying, hey, I think I'm going to close my card because I reach my minimum spend. That's a huge
1:54.9	no-no, especially with American Express. They will actually claw back or take back your points
	...

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