Hello everyone, Travory Ward's has long been one of our most popular topics covered on this particular podcast episode nine of our podcast is to this date our most downloaded episode of all times so thank you so much for listening to that sharing it with friends of family glad that it has been a value to you.

But we recognize that we haven't gone back to it recently and a lot of stuff's changed and a lot of stuff is more valuable than ever.

And so today we're going to be talking with Lynn from families fly free and we're going to be talking about the 80 20 of Travory Ward sure there's what's on the cover of you know some travel website and you know that it's Instagram worthy but in reality you're never going to do it.

But families lots of families are using travel rewards to massively profit and take something that was an expense on their budget and turning it into a bonus a bonus category that they can do for free and they can act with.

Extreme generosity to friends and family with as well so Lynn documents this extensively on her podcast the families fly free podcast and she's joining us on the show today to cover that exact topic welcome to the ultimate ground source personal finance podcast this is choose a.

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All right guys very excited to dive into this week's episode and help me with this I'm my co host Brad here with me today how you doing buddy.

Hey Jonathan I am doing quite well yeah this is great going back to travel rewards right we call this one of the pillars of fire way back when we first started with

choose a fire and like you said episode nine is our most downloaded podcasts I mean that shows how this concept resonates with our entire community and

obviously travel has been a bit odd the last couple years and we haven't put a lot of focus on travel rewards but what's so great about Lynn is she takes this from the normal person standpoint it's not oh how can I get 15 cents per point flying in first class and having a shower across the Atlantic right it's how can families take a vacation how can regular people take a vacation or to every single year and I love that so Lynn with that welcome to choose a vibe.

Yes thanks so much for having me I'm excited to be on today so then we were talking about this concept of travel rewards you know for everyday people travel rewards for families but my question to you to really start off with this how did you get into this you know why did this have appeal to you personally so a couple things I've been a long time travel writer for different online outlets and so I get pitched a lot of story ideas and so I had one point this couple pitch an idea about how they were traveling around the world using frequent flyers.

I'm not going to go to the air miles but they weren't flying to earn the miles that was the light bulb moment for me I thought frequent flyer miles meant you have to fly I to earn them right other things and so this kind of struck me as the couponing of travel if you will you know instead of getting a hundred boxes of cereal or toothpaste I could potentially be able to take my family to travel because we had never been able to fly I couldn't afford to take a lot of money.

I was going to pay for people to fly anywhere and I saw this maybe this was a way we could accomplish that that same couponing mindset if you will so we started into this very slowly we were buying a house at the time so we knew to wait till we were done with that process to open our first credit cards we didn't impact the interest rates in any way and from there we earned this Southwest companion pass so one of us could fly free and then we also when you earn the money you can get a lot of money.

In that pass that's one of the big things that I teach everyone is how to earn the Southwest companion pass one of you flies free and then you end up with a bunch more points that you earned to get that pass so you can fly everyone else with the points you earned so we took our first trip to San Diego in 2015 all of us flying free and then the rest is history.

So to get from point A to Southwest companion pass I'd love to hear was there some skepticism because I think a lot of people when they first hear about this especially back in you know this is pre 2015 right so let's say 2013 20 early 2014 like I remember being skeptical thinking how could this possibly be real can I actually do this how much planning is it going to take am I going to be able to book these seats like all this stuff like did that cross your mind and like how quickly did you jump in with both feet.

To get the companion pass yeah I mean I would say my husband was more the skeptic in that regard he definitely had that there's no way this is too good to be true also we don't want to get involved with credit cards we had been in debt before so he was very cautious about that I tend to be more of the optimist like well these people are doing we can do it too let's jump in you know but I do spend a lot of my time now explaining to people helping them overcome that exact concern that it's too good to be true because it really.

Does sound too good to be true I mean we fly when it's not a pandemic six times a year for people free I mean that's crazy so yeah you're right so after we took our first trip my husband was fully on board so he was ready.

This is really after we thought we proved it worked that first time so I wanted to go ahead and address the too good to be true aspect so I think you know for people that are maybe just hearing this and they're saying all right I haven't wanted to look at travel

reports but that's interesting you're saying six flights a year multiple family members all for free and this is doable by regular people sounds too good to be true you know I think one thing for me is when I think of couponing

generally I think of someone that has five shelves just full of mustard with an expiration date of 2045 right and I would actually say like I think that stands up also a lot of soap that you never would have bought you know otherwise or just random third party you know you

get with a smattering of random objects with couponing but we travel reward you actually end up with points that can be redeemed for flights and a lot of us do have some level even if it's not travel goals we have travel needs we have to go somewhere and so okay you know just to kind of create a little space between the couponing analogy now the next layer of this is the too good to be true aspect you mentioned you know I was applying for a mortgage so I waited till that was over before I looked I think we should probably point out what are the points of consideration for people.

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