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Nate

Top 10 Personal Travel Rewards Credit Card Offers [March 2021 Update]

March 1, 2021 by Nate 10 Comments

Top 10 Personal Travel Rewards Credit Card Offers [March 2021 Update]
This page contains affiliate links, and we may receive compensation if you click on a link. You can read our full advertising disclosure here.

The miles and points we’ve collected from travel credit cards have easily saved us over $20,000+ in travel expenses, and they have enabled us to enjoy luxurious experiences like business class flights and luxury hotel stays that we otherwise wouldn’t have been able to afford.

We believe a good travel credit card (or a few) is a tool that all financially responsible travelers should be using. However, knowing which travel credit card(s) to apply for can be confusing.

Between restrictions like Chase’s 5/24 rule and some bonus offers only being available for a limited-time, it’s important to strategize the time and order in which you sign up for new credit cards. To help you prioritize your credit card sign-ups, we update this post every month to include what we believe are the top credit card offers on the market. Since we’re covering what we consider to be the best offers — not just limited time offers — some of the cards on this list may remain consistent from month to month.

If you still need help choosing a card after reading this post, we’d be more than happy to recommend a card (or two) for you! All you need to do is fill out this form.

At a Glance

Credit Card Is It Right for You? Details
Chase Sapphire Preferred This card is perfect for getting a nice amount of flexible points while paying a lower annual fee Learn More
 width=Chase Sapphire Reserve® I like this card for the traveler who needs flexible points and free lounge access Learn More
American Express Platinum Card This card offers amazing perks and bonuses in addition to a great amount of Membership Rewards points Learn More
British Airways Visa Signature Card This is the best card for those who are looking to book incredibly cheap, shorter flights on Oneworld partners Learn More
Southwest Rapid Rewards® Priority Credit Card For the traveler who mostly flies within the US Learn More
Hilton Honors American Express Surpass Card For the traveler who frequently stays at Hilton properties Learn More
American Express® Gold Card This is best for those would would like to build up a balance of Membership Reward points Learn More
Marriott Bonvoy Boundless™ Credit Card A great card for those looking for flexible points and the ability to book Marriott redemptions Learn More
 width=IHG® Rewards Club Premier Credit Card I like this card for the traveler who frequently stays at IHG properties Learn More
Citi® / AAdvantage® Platinum Select® World Elite™ Mastercard® For the traveler who frequently travels with American Airlines Learn More

Detailed Reviews

1. Chase Sapphire Preferred®


Current offer: 60,000 Ultimate Rewards points after spending $4,000 within the first three months.

Annual fee: $95

Why it’s great: The Chase Sapphire Preferred is a great card to get a tidy sum of Ultimate Rewards points without paying a very high annual fee. Ultimate Reward points are valuable, given their flexibility and ability to use to make an award booking. The points are worth more when redeemed through the Chase Travel Portal, at 1.5 cents each. So your 60,000 bonus points are worth $750 in free travel! You can also transfer your points at a 1:1 ratio to the following airlines: United, Singapore, British Airways, Korean, Southwest, and Virgin Atlantic.

Other benefits worth mentioning:

  • No foreign transaction fees
  • $50 credit for grocery purchases
  • 2x points on travel and dining purchases
  • 5x points on Lyft rides (through March 2022)
  • Discounts on DoorDash with free DashPass subscription
  • Car rental insurance
  • Travel accident insurance

2. Chase Sapphire Reserve®


Current offer: 50,000 Ultimate Rewards points after spending $4,000 within the first three months.

Annual fee: $550

Why it’s great: The incredible travel rewards earned from this card more than make up for the high annual fee. One of the best perks is the $300 travel annual credit, which will include gas and grocery purchases until June 2021. This credit all but lowers the annual fee to $250. You’ll also get up to $120 in food delivery credits with DoorDash over the course of 2020 and 2021. Our favorite reward from this card is the free Priority Pass membership that gets the card holder and up to 2 guests free access to over 1,000+ airline lounges around the world! If you’ve ever watched our Youtube videos, you know we put this benefit to use almost every time we fly. This is a service we would gladly pay $250 for every year!

*** Chase Bank only allows you to sign up for one Sapphire card, so you have to choose between the Sapphire Preferred (mentioned below) and the Sapphire Reserve (this card). Given the amount of rewards offered by the Reserve card, I would recommend starting here. 

Other benefits worth mentioning:

  • No foreign transaction fees
  • 3x points on travel and dining purchases
  • 10x points on Lyft rides (through March 2022)
  • Complimentary year of Lyft Pink (must register by March 31, 2022)
  • Discounts on DoorDash with free DashPass subscription
  • $100 application credit for Global Entry or TSA Pre-check
  • Lost luggage reimbursement
  • Car rental insurance
  • Travel accident insurance

3. American Express Platinum Card


Current offer: 75,000 Membership Rewards points after spending $5,000 within the first six months.

Annual fee: $550

Why it’s great: The American Express Platinum Card offers some of the best perks available. The welcome bonus of 75,000 points is an excellent value, and the $550 is completely offset by spending credits. This card earns 10x the points on supermarket and gas spending, as well as 5x the points on select hotel and flight purchases. Of course, our favorite benefit from this card has to be entrance to the American Express Global Lounge Collection, which includes access to the Centurion Lounge. 

Other benefits worth mentioning:

  • No foreign transaction fees
  • $200 credit for airline fees
  • $200 credit for Uber
  • Up to $180 credit for PayPal spending
  • $100 credit for Saks Fifth Avenue spending
  • Global Entry spending credit

4. United Club(SM) Infinite Card

Current offer: 75,000 bonus miles after spending $3,o00 in the first three months

Annual fee: $525

Why it’s great: We love the United MileagePlus program because the points are valuable and the awards are a breeze to redeem. This card is a great opportunity to earn a cache of United points, as well as to earn 4x the points on United spending and 2x on all other travel, restaurant and delivery spending. This card also includes a membership to the United Club, allowing you lounge access any time you fly.

Other benefits worth mentioning:

  • $100 rebate on Global Entry/TSA PreCheck application fees
  • Get 25% back on in-flight purchases
  • No foreign transaction fees

5. British Airways Visa Signature Card


Current offer: 50,000 bonus miles after you spend $3,000 on purchases within the first 3 months of account opening and a companion ticket called the “Travel Together Ticket” after spending $20,000 in total within the first year from your account opening, allowing a second person to fly with you on your award flight for only the prices of the taxes and fees.

Annual fee: $95

Why it’s great: You can get so much value from of British Airways Avios if you learn how to strategically redeem them using British Airways’ distance based award chart. For example, if you wanted to fly from Nashville to Dallas on American Airlines (a Oneworld partner), you would only need to pay 9,000 Avios each way. So with the 50,000 Avios you’d earn from the sign-up bonus, you could fly from Nashville to Dallas 5 times!

Other benefits worth mentioning:

  • No foreign transaction fees
  • Earn a companion ticket after spending $30,000 in a calendar year
  • 10% off British Airways flights starting in the US
  • Lost luggage reimbursement
  • Car rental insurance
  • Travel accident insurance
  • Trip cancelation insurance

6. Hilton Honors American Express Surpass Card


Current offer: Get 150,000 Hilton Honors bonus points after spending $2,000 in the first three months.

Annual fee: $95

Why it’s great: The current sign-up bonus is quite generous for a mid-tier hotel credit card. It grants card holders automatic Hilton Gold status, so you’ll get to enjoy perks such as free breakfast during all stays. You’ll also get a free weekend night stay that can be redeemed at any Hilton property around the world in each calendar year that you spend $15,000.

This card also has a $150 statement credit on after your first purchase on the card within your first three months.

Other benefits worth mentioning:

  • Earns 6x points for every $1 spent at U.S. supermarkets, restaurants and gas stations
  • Priority Pass membership that is good for 10 free airport lounge visits
  • No foreign transaction fees
  • Earn 12x points for every $1 spent at Hilton properties
  • Travel accident insurance
  • Zero fraud liability

7. American Express® Gold Card

Current offer: 60,000 Membership Rewards® points after spending $4,000 in the first six months

Annual fee: $250

Why it’s great: The American Express Gold card has great earning potential, including 4x miles on all restaurant and supermarket spending, 3x on booking flights. 

Other benefits worth mentioning:

  • Receive up to $120 in dining credits, $10 per month
  • A $100 credit on airlines spending
  • No foreign transaction fees

8. Marriott Bonvoy Boundless™ Credit Card


Current offer: Get 75,000 Bonus Points after spending $3,000 in the first three months.

Annual fee: $95

Why it’s great: The Bonvoy Boundless card is another great hotel card to pick up. The current bonus will net you 75,000 points, which can be used to book reward stays or can be transferred to a number of airline partner programs, usually at a 3:1 ratio. This card also earns you one free night stay on the anniversary on your account.

Other benefits worth mentioning:

  • Earns 6x points for on Marriott spending
  • Automatic Silver Status
  • No foreign transaction fees
  • Travel accident insurance

9. IHG® Rewards Club Premier Credit Card


Current offer: Get 140,000 IHG points after spending $3,000 in the first three months.

Annual fee: $89

Why it’s great: This card has a hefty bonus given its low annual fee. It comes with automatic Platinum elite status, plus an annual award night worth up to 40,000 points. You’ll also always get your fourth night free when you redeem points for stays of four or more nights.

Due to the coronavirus outbreak, existing certificates set to expire March 1, 2020 or later will be extended through Dec. 31, 2020. All new certificates issued in 2020 will be valid for 18 months (instead of 12 months).

Other benefits worth mentioning:

  • Earn 25x points total for every $1 spent at IHG properties
  • Earn 2x points total for every $1 spent at gas stations, grocery stores and restaurants
  • $100 rebate on Global Entry/TSA PreCheck application fees
  • No foreign transaction fees

10. Citi® / AAdvantage® Platinum Select® World Elite™ Mastercard®


Visit our airline credit cards page to learn how to apply

Current offer: This card is offering 50,000 AAdvantage miles after spending $2,500 in the first three months.

Annual fee: $99 (waived the first year)

Why it’s great: 50,000 American Airlines miles is enough for two round trip tickets inside of the US. Once you meet the minimum spending requirement, you’ll almost have enough frequent flyer miles for a round-trip ticket to Europe (60,000)! Plus, the annual fee is waived for the first year which makes this an awesome opportunity to earn 50,000 AA miles for $0 in fees!

Other benefits worth mentioning:

  • No foreign transaction fees
  • Your first checked bag is free on domestic AA flights
  • You get preferred boarding on AA flights

That wraps up our review of the top personal travel credit card offers for this month. If you found this post useful, we’d be super grateful if you used our links to start your next credit card application!

Cheers,

Nate (and Kara)





Filed Under: Nate's Recommendations, Travel Hacking

Top 10 Small Business Credit Cards for Travelers [March 2021 Update]

March 1, 2021 by Nate 1 Comment

Top 10 Small Business Credit Cards for Travelers [March 2021 Update]

This page contains affiliate links, and we may receive compensation if you click on a link. You can read our full advertising disclosure here.

The miles and points we’ve collected from travel credit cards have easily saved us over $20,000+ in travel expenses. They have enabled us to enjoy luxurious experiences like business class flights and luxury hotel stays that we otherwise wouldn’t have been able to afford.

Most people know that the quickest way to earn miles and points is by using travel credit cards. But most people only apply for personal credit card offers, and they don’t realize they could also be earning points with small business credit cards.

Getting approved for a business card may be easier than you think, just check out this post. If you’re not applying for business credit cards, you’re missing out on a lot of value because many of these cards offer big sign-up bonuses and unique perks not found with personal cards.

If you’re ready to apply for your first, or next, business credit card, we’d love to help guide you through the best current offers on the market. We’ve taken into account the welcome bonus, the spending bonuses, the additional perks, and the annual fees in order to bring you the top 10 small business credit cards for travelers.

If you still need help choosing a card after reading this post, we’d be more than happy to recommend a card (or two) for you! All you need to do is fill out this form.

At a Glance

Credit Card Is It Right for You? Details
 width=Ink Business Preferred℠ Credit Card My top recommendation for the business traveler who wants the best all around business credit card Learn More
 width=The Business Platinum® Card from American Express OPEN I like this card for the business traveler frequently travels through airports with a Centurion Lounge Learn More
The Hilton Honors American Express Business Card For the business traveler who is loyal to Hilton Hotels Learn More
Marriott Bonvoy Business™ American Express® Card This card is great for business travelers who frequently stay at Marriott properties Learn More
Delta Reserve for Business Credit Card from American Express I like this card for the business traveler who is loyal to Delta or lives near a Skyteam hub Learn More
 width=Ink Business Unlimited℠ Credit Card I like this card for business travelers who want to keep their points earning simple but valuable Learn More
 width=Ink Business Cash℠ Credit Card I like this card for the business traveler who values cash back over points Learn More
United℠ Business Card I like this card for the business traveler who is loyal to United or lives near a Star Alliance hub. Learn More
Southwest Rapid Rewards® Performance Business Credit Card I like this card for the business traveler who mainly travels domestically on Southwest Airlines Learn More
Capital One Spark Miles for Business For those looking for a flexible point system with a number of great benefits Learn More

Detailed Reviews

1.Ink Business Preferred℠ Credit Card

Current offer: 100,000 Ultimate Rewards points after spending $15,000 within the first three months

Annual fee: $95

Why it’s great: When you redeem your points through Chase Ultimate Rewards, your points are worth 1.25 cents each, which means the 100,000 point welcome bonus alone is worth $1,250 in free travel. You could also transfer your points to United, and after meeting the minimum spending requirement, you’d have enough points for a free round-trip award flight from the US to Asia!

This card gets our top spot not only because of the fantastic welcome bonus, but also because it has great spending bonuses that will earn you even more points moving forward. You’ll earn 3x points on travel and other business expenses (including shipping purchases, internet, cable, phone services, and advertising purchases made with social media sites and search engines), up to a maximum of $150,000 in spending each year.

Other benefits worth mentioning:

  • No foreign transaction fees
  • Cell Phone Protection up to $600
  • Points can be transferred to 5+ airlines at a 1:1 ratio
  • Points are worth 25% more when redeemed through Chase Ultimate Rewards

2. The Business Platinum® Card from American Express OPEN

Current offer: 85,000 points after spending $15,000 within your first 3 months of card membership.

Annual fee: $595

Why it’s great: If you plan on spending enough on the card to earn the full 75,000 point welcome bonus, these points will be worth at least $750 in free travel when redeemed through the Membership Rewards Travel portal. Plus, you’ll have the opportunity to transfer these points to a number of airline and hotel programs to potentially get even more value.

The other huge benefit to this card that’s worth noting in this section is LOUNGE ACCESS. This card will give you free lounge access to our favorite chain of domestic airport lounges, the Centurion Lounge!

Other benefits worth mentioning:

  • Earn 5x points on flights and prepaid hotels purchased through Amex Travel
  • $200 annual spending credit on Dell Technologies
  • Earn 1.5 points per $1 on qualifying purchases over $5,000
  • Up to $200 in statement credits each year for any Dell technology purchases
  • Receive 35% off your points back when you use them to purchase a first or business class flight through American Express Travel

3. United℠ Business Card

 

 

 


Current offer:
 75,000 miles after spending $5,000 in the first three months.

Annual fee: $99 (waived the first year)

Why it’s great: United is currently my favorite frequent flyer program because I’ve found they have the best award space availability. This means the points are easier to use and you usually have more options. This card is a great way to earn more than 75,000 United miles quickly. 

75,000 points is enough for a round-trip domestic business-class ticket or a one-way business-class ticket to Europe.

Other benefits worth mentioning:

  • 2 one-time use United Club passes that entitle you to United Club lounge access
  • Priority Boarding on United flights
  • Your first checked bag is free on United flights when you use your card to pay for the flight
  • Earn 10,000 bonus miles after spending $25,000 each year
  • No foreign transaction fees

4. The Hilton Honors American Express Business Card

Current offer: 150,000 Hilton Honors bonus points after spending $2,000 in the first three months

Annual fee: $95

Why it’s great: This card packs in a ton of benefits, especially if you’re loyal to Hilton. To start, 150,000 points is a very generous welcome bonus, and you’ll also receive a $150 statement credit after your first purchase on the card. If you do spend money staying at Hilton properties, this will be the card you want to use because you’ll earn 12x points for every $1 spent with Hilton.

Just by signing up for the card, you’ll get complimentary Hilton Gold Status. If you spend $15,000 on the card in a calendar year, you’ll get a free weekend night. And if you spend an additional $45,000, you’ll get a second free weekend night.

Other benefits worth mentioning:

  • Priority Pass membership that is good for 10 free airport lounge visits
  • No foreign transaction fees

5. Marriott Bonvoy Business™ American Express® Card

Current offer: 75,000 miles after spending $3,000 in the first 3 months.

Annual fee: $125

Why it’s great: This card is a great way to earn a decent balance of Marriott points, and is especially valuable for those who are Marriott loyalists. You earn 6x miles on bookings on Marriott, 4x the miles on at US restaurants, gas stations and wireless telephone services, and double the miles on everything else.

Marriott Bonvoy points transfer at a 3:1 ratio to many other programs, making these points a great way to top up other mileage balances when booking award travel.

Other benefits worth mentioning:

  • Complimentary Silver Elite status
  • Earn one free night on the account anniversary
  • No foreign transaction fees

6. Delta Reserve for Business Credit Card from American Express


Current offer: Earn 45,000 bonus miles and 10,000 Medallion Qualification Miles (MQMs) after you spend $4,000 in the first three months.

Annual fee: $550

Why it’s great: Although I don’t love Delta SkyMiles, this card does offer a great welcome bonus of up to 45,000 Delta SkyMiles, and it would rank higher if it wasn’t for the $550 annual fee. However, if you live near a Delta hub (Atlanta, Detroit, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, New York, Seattle) and you own a small business, this card should be in your wallet. In addition to the bonus, you’ll also earn 10,000 Medallion Qualifying Miles, which will put you closer to your next tier of status with the airline. Plus, you can earn an additional 15,000 MQMs for every $30,000 you spend on the card in a calendar year, up to four times per year!

Also, if your home airport has a Delta Sky Club Lounge or American Express Centurion Lounge, you’ll want to grab this card because it will get you in for free.

Other benefits worth mentioning:

  • Earn 3x miles on Delta purchases
  • Earn 1.5x miles on non-Delta purchases after you spend $150,000 on your card in a calendar year
  • Complimentary upgrades for non-elites
  • Annual companion certificate
  • Priority boarding

7. Ink Business Unlimited℠ Credit Card

Current offer: $750 Cash Back (or 75,000 Ultimate Reward Points) after spending $7,500 within the first 3 months

Annual fee: $0

Why it’s great: The sign up bonus on this card is advertised as $7500 cash back, but if you have another card that earns Ultimate Reward points, such as the Chase Sapphire Preferred, Chase Sapphire Reserve, or the Ink Business Preferred, you can turn your $750 cash back bonus into 75,000 Ultimate Reward points.

The 50,000 points you earn from the welcome bonus will be worth at least $750 in free travel, and if you have one of the cards mentioned above, you can transfer the points to 8 airlines at a 1:1 ratio. The reason this card has earned the a spot in the top ten is because it has an awesome sign-up bonus and no annual fee. Plus, it earns 1.5% cash back on every purchase, which means it’s great for purchasing things that don’t fit into bonus categories on other credit cards.

Other benefits worth mentioning:

  • Purchase protection (covers new purchases up to 120 days)
  • Rental car insurance 

8. Ink Business Cash℠ Credit Card

Current offer: $750 Cash Back or 75,000 Ultimate Reward Points after spending $7,500 within the first 3 months

Annual fee: $0

Why it’s great: This card offers the exact same benefits as the Ink Business Unlimited (mentioned above). The only difference is the bonus points you’ll earn on certain spending categories. Instead of earning 1.5% on every purchase, you’ll earn bigger bonuses spending money in certain categories and 1% on everything else. Additionally:

5% on purchases at office supply stores and online, plus cable and phone services (up to $25,000 per year)

2% on purchases at gas stations and restaurants (up to $25,000 per year)

1% on all other purchases

The reason this card is tied for second with the Ink Business Unlimited is because I can’t rank one higher than the other without knowing where you spend the majority of your money. If most of your spending fits into one of the bonus categories mentioned above, definitely sign up for this card. However, if most of your spending doesn’t fit into one of these specific categories, sign up for the Ink Business Unlimited to earn 1.5% on all of your purchases.

Other benefits worth mentioning:

  • Purchase protection (covers new purchases up to 120 days)
  • Rental car insurance

9. Southwest Rapid Rewards® Performance Business Credit Card

Current offer: Earn up to 100,000 points — 70,000 Southwest Rapid Rewards after spending $5,000 in the first 3 months, plus an additional 30,000 points after spending $25,000 in the first six months.

Annual fee: $199

Why it’s great: 100,000 is a very generous welcome bonus. Southwest points are worth roughly 1.4 cents each, which means the sign-up bonus alone is worth over $1,000 in free Southwest flights. If you spend most of your time flying in or around the US, you’ll be able to get a lot of value out of this card. Plus, it’s a great way to earn 100,000 points towards the Southwest Companion Pass!

This card also offers many ongoing perks that add value to the card in the long run, including four upgraded boardings per year, inflight Wi-Fi credits and an application credit for Global Entry or TSA Pre-check once every four years.

Other benefits worth mentioning:

  • Earn 3x points on Southwest purchases
  • Earn 2x points on social media and search engine advertising, Internet, cable, and phone services
  • 9,000 points every year after your cardmember anniversary (aka 9,000 points every year your keep the card and pay the annual fee)
  • 1,500 Tier Qualifying Points per $10,000 you spend (up to 15,000 TQPs each year)
  • No foreign transaction fees

10. Capital One Spark Miles for Business

Current offer: 50,000 miles after spending $4,500 in the first three months.

Annual fee: $95 (waived the first year)

Why it’s great: Capital One Spark Miles for Business is currently offering a welcome bonus of 50,000 points after hitting the spending target, which is worth $500 in travel bookings, a great value. This card earns 5x on hotels and rental cars and 2x on all other spending, as well as offers a number of great perks. 

Other benefits worth mentioning:

  • $100 credit on Global Entry or TSA Precheck
  • Free employee cards
  • Complimentary roadside assistance
  • No foreign transaction fees

That wraps up our review of the top 10 business credit cards for travelers. If you found this post useful, we’d be super grateful if you used our links to start your next credit card application!





Filed Under: Nate's Recommendations, Travel Hacking

The Best Deal of 2020 – Get $50 for FREE ($150 for couples)

August 4, 2020 by Nate Leave a Comment

The Best Deal of 2020 – Get $50 for FREE ($150 for couples)

Our favorite travel debit card is basically giving away free money for signing up!

You know we love a good travel hack, and this might be the best one of 2020. Here’s how you can get $50 for just a few minutes of your time, and if you’re a couple, you can easily get $150! Plus, if you travel internationally it’s going help you obtain local currency with zero fees!

SoFi Money is an online bank account that does not charge any account fees. And the free debit card that comes with the account allows us to withdraw money around the world fee-free! We have been using the SoFi card since the beginning of the year, and it’s become our go-to card for withdrawing money from foreign ATMs.

BUT even if you never plan travel internationally, you should probably still create an account to get the sign-up bonus! Below is the short version for people who just want to take advantage of the free money. If you plan to use the card internationally to withdraw foreign currency fee-free, I recommend skipping to the long version below that explains why this card is such a game-changer for travel!

Short Version: How to Get $50 in 5 Minutes

Step 1: Create a SoFi money account using my referral link. By using the link below, you’ll receive $50, and I’ll receive $50 (after you transfer $500 to your new SoFi account).

CLICK HERE to use my referral link and get $50! 

Step 2: Connect your bank account and transfer at least $500.

Step 3: Wait patiently for your $50 sign-up bonus! In most cases, your $50 sign-up bonus will show up in your account in 2-3 days, but it could take up to a week.

Step 4: Now that you have a SoFi account, you can download the app to get your own personal referral link. For each person you refer, you’ll earn $50!

Step 5: If you have a partner, invite them to create an account using your new referral link, you’ll get $50 for referring them, and they’ll get $50 for signing up! You can find your personal referral code by downloading the app and looking under the “money” tab (see screen shot below).

That’s it!

Also, if you have $1,000 to fund a SoFi Investing account, you can get another $50 – $150 in free stocks. Just use my referral link to start the sign-up process, and fund your account with at least $1,000.

Click Here to create a SoFi Investing Account and get $50 in free stocks!

The Long Version: Get $50 in 5 Minutes + Fee-Free ATM Withdrawals Around The World

One of the questions that we get over and over again in the comments on YouTube and in emails sent directly to my inbox is:

“What is the best way to get local currency?”

Whenever we have the option, we always pay for stuff using a travel credit card that offers no foreign transaction fees. Our go-to card for over a year has been the Chase Sapphire Reserve because it earns three times the points on travel and dining purchases, which covers most of our spending.

Credit Card Is It Right for You? Details
Chase Sapphire Reserve® This card is best for travelers who needs flexible points and free lounge access Learn More

However, there are many times when we aren’t able to pay with a credit card, and we must use local currency for one reason or another.

When we first started traveling, this was a HUGE pain for us because we were stuck choosing between exchanging cash for local currency (which usually involved getting ripped off on the exchange rate), or getting cash out of an ATM using the debit card from our bank.

The problem with using our bank’s debit card is that they charged us a 3% foreign transaction fee + a $5 ATM withdrawal fee. That meant if we were withdrawing $100, we would end up paying $8 in fees (a huge rip-off).

Then, right before we left to start traveling full-time, we learned about the Charles Schwab High Yield Investor Checking Account debit card. This account was designed as an account for investors, but it also works great for travelers because the debit card that comes with the account doesn’t charge foreign transaction fees, and it reimburses all ATM fees!

This card has allowed us to withdraw foreign currency from ATMs around the world with no fees during our first four years of travel. Up until this year, anytime someone asked about the best way to get local currency, I always pointed them to this card.

However, it’s not exactly convenient to set up one of these accounts. Since this is an investing account (and Charles Schwab is pretty old school), in order to set up this account I actually had to go into a branch and apply, get a credit check, and in order to fund my account, I had to mail a physical check to one of their bank branches. It’s not exactly the easiest setup process, and it really only makes sense for someone who does a lot of traveling to go through all of this effort.

However, at this beginning of this year I found a new card that has replaced our Charles Schwab card, and I recommend signing up for it even if you never plan on leaving your couch, because the bank will give you $50 just for signing up and funding your account with $500.

We have replaced our Charles Schwab card with the new SoFi card because it has all of the features we love about the Charles Schwab card. Plus, it’s built to be a mobile banking account, so it’s much easier to manage the account from abroad.

PLUS if you sign-up using our affiliate link below and transfer $500 to your account, SoFi is giving you $50 for free! It’s a no-brainer!

CLICK HERE to use my referral link and get $50! 

It gets even better for couples because you can easily get $150 from the bank.

If you refer a friend, SoFi will add an extra $50 to your account. So, here’s how Kara and I earned a free $150:

I signed up for the card and transferred $500 to my account. (+$50)

Then I invited Kara to create an account so I could earn the $50 referral fee. (+$50)

Then Kara created account and transferred $500 to her new account which earned her an additional $50. (+$50)

Total = $150 in free money (thank you SoFi!)

Even if you aren’t a couple, you can still earn $50 for each friend you refer.

It’s rare that an opportunity this good comes along, and it usually doesn’t last long. Do as we did and ask fast before they take away these generous account bonuses!

Click Here to Sign-Up for SoFi Money and get $50!

I assume these bonuses won’t last forever, so even if you’re reading this post and the bonuses aren’t available anymore, I would still highly recommend signing-up for this account and using it to obtain local currency around the world with zero fees!

P.S. If you have $1,000 to fund a SoFi Investing account, you can get another $50 – $150 in free stocks. Just use my referral link to start the sign-up process, and fund your account with at least $1,000.

Click Here to create a SoFi Investing Account and get $50!

Filed Under: Uncategorized

The Best Deal of 2020 – Get $50 for FREE ($150 for couples)

August 4, 2020 by Nate Leave a Comment

The Best Deal of 2020 – Get $50 for FREE ($150 for couples)

Our favorite travel debit card is basically giving away free money for signing up!

You know we love a good travel hack, and this might be the best one of 2020. Here’s how you can get $50 for just a few minutes of your time, and if you’re a couple, you can easily get $150! Plus, if you travel internationally, it’s going to help you obtain local currency with zero fees!

SoFi Money is an online bank account that does not charge any account fees, and the free debit card that comes with the account allows us to withdraw money around the world fee-free! We have been using the SoFi card since the beginning of the year, and it’s become our go-to card for withdrawing money from foreign ATMs.

BUT even if you never plan to travel internationally, you should probably still create an account to get the sign-up bonus! Below is the short version for people who just want to take advantage of the free money. If you plan to use the card internationally to withdraw foreign currency for free, you can skip to the longer version below that explains why this card is such a game-changer for travel!

Short Version: How to Get $50 in 5 Minutes

Step 1: Create a SoFi money account using my referral link. By using the link below, you’ll receive $50, and I’ll receive $50 (after you transfer $500 to your new SoFi account).

CLICK HERE to use my referral link and get $50! 

Step 2: Connect your bank account, and transfer at least $500.

Step 3: Wait patiently for your $50 sign-up bonus! In most cases, your $50 sign-up bonus will show up in your account in 2-3 days, but it could take up to a week.

Step 4: Now that you have a SoFi account, you can download the app to get your own personal referral link. For each person you refer, you’ll earn $50!

Step 5: If you have a partner, invite them to create an account using your new referral link. You’ll get $50 for referring them, and they’ll get $50 for signing up! You can find your personal referral code by downloading the app and looking under the “money” tab.

That’s it!

Also, if you have $1,000 to fund a SoFi Investing account, you can get another $50 – $150 in free stocks. Just use my referral link to start the sign-up process, and fund your account with at least $1,000.

Click Here to create a SoFi Investing Account and get $50 in free stocks!

The Long Version: Get $50 in 5 Minutes + Fee-Free ATM Withdrawals Around The World

One of the questions that we get over and over again in the comments on YouTube and in emails sent directly to my inbox is:

“What is the best way to get local currency?”

Whenever we have the option, we always pay for stuff using travel credit cards that offer no foreign transaction fees. Our go-to card for over a year has been the Chase Sapphire Reserve because it earns three times the points on travel and dining purchases, which covers most of our spending.

Credit Card Is It Right for You? Details
Chase Sapphire Reserve® This card is best for travelers who needs flexible points and free lounge access Learn More

However, there are many times when we aren’t able to pay with a credit card, and we must use local currency for one reason or another.

When we first started traveling, this was a HUGE pain for us because we were stuck choosing between exchanging cash for local currency (which usually involved getting ripped off on the exchange rate), or getting cash out of an ATM using the debit card from our bank.

The problem with using our bank’s debit card is that they charged us a 3% foreign transaction fee + a $5 ATM withdraw fee. That meant if we were withdrawing $100, we would end up paying $8 in fees (a huge rip-off).

Then, right before we left to start traveling full-time, we learned about the Charles Schwab High Yield Investor Checking Account debit card. This account was designed as an account for investors, but it also works great for travelers because the debit card that comes with the account doesn’t charge foreign transaction fees, and it reimburses all ATM fees!

This card has allowed us to withdraw foreign currency from ATMs around the world with no fees during our first four years of travel. Up until this year, anytime someone asked about the best way to get local currency, I always pointed them to this card.

However, it’s not exactly convenient to set up one of these accounts. Since this is an investing account (and Charles Schwab is pretty old school), in order to set up this account, I actually had to go into a branch and apply, get a credit check, and in order to fund my account, I had to mail a physical check to one of their bank branches. It’s not exactly the easiest setup process, and it really only makes sense for someone who does a lot of traveling to go through all of this effort.

However, at the beginning of this year I found a new card that has replaced our Charles Schwab card, and I recommend signing up for it even if you never plan on leaving your couch because the bank will give you $50 just for signing up and funding your account with $500.

We have replaced our Charles Schwab card with the new SoFi card because it has all of the features we love about the Charles Schwab card. Plus, it’s built to be a mobile banking account, so it’s much easier to manage the account from abroad.

PLUS if you sign-up using our affiliate link below and transfer $500 to your account, SoFi is giving you $50 for free! It’s a no-brainer!

CLICK HERE to use my referral link and get $50! 

It gets even better for couples because you can easily get $150 from the banks.

If you refer a friend, SoFi will add an extra $50 to your account. So, here’s how Kara and I earned a free $150:

I signed up for the card, and transferred $500 to my account. (+$50)

Then I invited Kara to create an account so I could earn the $50 referral fee. (+$50)

Then Kara created account and transferred $500 to her new account which earned her an additional $50. (+$50)

Total = $150 in free money (thank you SoFi!)

Even if you aren’t a couple, you can still earn $50 for each friend you refer.

It’s rare that an opportunity this good comes along, and it usually doesn’t last long. Do as we did and ask fast before they take away these generous account bonuses!

Click Here to Sign-Up for SoFi Money and get $50!

I assume these bonuses won’t last forever, so even if you’re reading this post and the bonuses aren’t available anymore, I would still highly recommend signing-up for this account and using it to obtain local currency around the world with zero fees!

P.S. If you have $1,000 to fund a SoFi Investing account, you can get another $50 – $150 in free stocks. Just use my referral link to start the sign-up process and fund your account with at least $1,000.

Click Here to create a SoFi Investing Account and get $50!

Filed Under: Travel Hacking

These Credit Cards Have Welcome Bonuses of 100,000+ Points

March 29, 2020 by Nate Leave a Comment

These Credit Cards Have Welcome Bonuses of 100,000+ Points

Now is not the time for nonessential travel, either domestically or internationally. The only way to stop the spread of the coronavirus is stay put for a while, which is why Kara and I have been voluntarily self-isolating in a hotel room in Singapore. However, that doesn’t mean you can’t use this time to start laying the groundwork for something that will improve your life in the future, such as planning your next trip. There are a number of great credit card bonuses out there right now that could provide a ton of value for future trips once life returns to normal.

Not only are there a number of great credit card offers out there right now, but there are many welcome bonuses of 100,000 points or more. Most welcome bonuses typically range somewhere between 30,000 to 60,000 points so getting a 100,000-point is phenomenal. Points and miles from travel credit cards have saved Kara and I thousands of dollars in travel expenses and are why we’ve been able to enjoy luxurious experiences like business class flights and luxury hotel stays.

I’m going to go over both personal and small business cards with 100,000+ point welcome bonuses. Some of the bonuses are only available for a limited time so you won’t want to wait long to apply. Keep in mind that getting approved for a business card may be easier than you think, just check out this post.

Personal Cards At a Glance

Credit Card Is It Right for You? Details
United Club℠ Infinite Card I like this card for its United Club membership, which includes access to Star Alliance partner lounges Learn More
British Airways Visa Signature Card I like this card for the traveler that frequently flies in and out of Oneworld hubs Learn More
IHG® Rewards Club Premier Credit Card I like this card for it's low annual fee and the Platinum Elite status perk Learn More
Hilton Honors American Express Surpass Card I like this card for the traveler who frequently stays at Hilton properties Learn More

Business Cards At a Glance

Credit Card Is It Right for You? Details
Ink Business Preferred℠ Credit Card My top recommendation for the business traveler who wants the best all around business credit card Learn More
Southwest Rapid Rewards® Performance Business Credit Card I like this card for the business traveler who mainly travels domestically on Southwest Airlines Learn More
The Hilton Honors American Express Business Card For the business traveler who is loyal to Hilton Hotels Learn More
United℠ Business Card I like this card for the business traveler who is loyal to United or lives near a Star Alliance hub. Learn More

Personal Credit Cards with Bonuses of 100,000+ Points

1. United Club℠ Infinite Card

 

 

Current offer: For a limited time, you’ll get 100,000 miles after you spend $5,000 in the first three month.

Annual fee: $525

Why it’s great: This newly introduced card offers an impressive 4x miles on United purchases, 2x on all other travel and dining and 1x on everything else. It comes with many valuable perks for those that fly United often. The card provides a full United Club membership, your first two checked bags free and Premier Access, which gives you access to priority boarding, exclusive check-in lines at the airport and more.

Other benefits worth mentioning:

  • $100 rebate on Global Entry/TSA PreCheck application fees
  • Hertz rental car elite status
  • Get 25% back on in-flight purchases
  • No foreign transaction fees

2. British Airways Visa Signature Card


Current offer: Up to 100,000 bonus miles — 50,000 bonus miles after you spend $3,000 on purchases within the first 3 months of account opening and additional 50,000 bonus miles after you spend $20,000 total on purchases within your first year from account opening. That totals to 100,000 Avios if you spend $20,000 on the card within the first year.

Annual fee: $95

Why it’s great: You can get a ton of value out of British Airways Avios if you learn how to strategically redeem them using British Airways’ distance based award chart. For example, if you wanted to fly from Nashville to Dallas on American Airlines (a Oneworld partner), you would only need to pay 9,000 Avios each way. So with the 100,000 Avios you’d earn from the sign-up bonus, you could fly from Nashville to Dallas 11 times!

Other benefits worth mentioning:

  • No foreign transaction fees
  • Earn a companion ticket after spending $30,000 in a calendar year
  • 10% off British Airways flights starting in the US
  • Lost luggage reimbursement
  • Car rental insurance
  • Travel accident insurance
  • Trip cancelation insurance

3. IHG® Rewards Club Premier Credit Card


Current offer: Get 140,000 IHG points after spending $3,000 in the first three months.

Annual fee: $89

Why it’s great: This card has a hefty bonus given its low annual fee. It comes with automatic Platinum elite status, plus an annual award night worth up to 40,000 points. You’ll also always get your fourth night free when you redeem points for stays of four or more nights.

Other benefits worth mentioning:

  • Earn 25x points total for every $1 spent at IHG properties
  • Earn 2x points total for every $1 spent at gas stations, grocery stores and restaurants
  • $100 rebate on Global Entry/TSA PreCheck application fees
  • No foreign transaction fees

4. Hilton Honors American Express Surpass Card


Current offer: Get 125,000 Hilton Honors bonus points after spending $2,000 in the first three months.

Annual fee: $95

Why it’s great: The current sign-up bonus is quite generous for a mid-tier hotel credit card. You get automatic Hilton Gold status just for having this card so you’ll get to enjoy perks like free breakfast on all stays. You’ll also get a free weekend night that can be redeemed at any Hilton property around the world each calendar year you spend $15,000.

Other benefits worth mentioning:

  • Priority Pass membership that is good for 10 free airport lounge visits
  • No foreign transaction fees
  • Earn 12x points for every $1 spent at Hilton properties
  • Travel accident insurance
  • Zero fraud liability

5. Hilton Honors Aspire Card from American Express


Visit our credit cards page to compare cards

Current offer: Get 150,000 Hilton Honors bonus points after spending $4,000 in the first three months.

Annual fee: $450

Why it’s great: You get automatic top-tier Hilton Diamond status just for having this card so you’ll get to enjoy free upgrades and free breakfast on all stays. You’ll also get a free weekend night that can be redeemed at any Hilton property around the world each calendar year, an annual $250 airline fee credit and an annual $250 Hilton resort statement credit.

Other benefits worth mentioning:

  • Earn 14x points for every $1 spent at Hilton properties
  • Earn 7x points for every $1 spent on flights, car rentals and U.S. restaurants
  • Priority Pass select membership
  • No foreign transaction fees
  • Travel accident insurance
  • Zero fraud liability

Small Business Credit Cards with Bonuses of 100,000+ Points

1. Ink Business Preferred℠ Credit Card

Current offer: For a limited time, earn 100,000 Ultimate Rewards points after spending $15,000 within the first three months

Annual fee: $95

Why it’s great: When you redeem your points through Chase Ultimate Rewards, your points are worth 1.25 cents each, which means the 100,000 point welcome bonus alone is worth $1,250 in free travel. You could also transfer your points to United, and after meeting the minimum spending requirement, you’d have enough points for a free round-trip award flight from the U.S. to Asia!

This card ranks #1 because of the awesome sign-up bonus, but it also has great spending bonuses that will earn you even more points moving forward. You’ll earn 3x points on travel and other business expenses (including shipping purchases, internet, cable, phone services, and advertising purchases made with social media sites and search engines) up to $150,000 in spending each year.

Other benefits worth mentioning:

  • No foreign transaction fees
  • Cell Phone Protection up to $600
  • Points can be transferred to 5+ airlines at a 1:1 ratio
  • Points are worth 25% more when redeemed through Chase Ultimate Rewards

2. Southwest Rapid Rewards® Performance Business Credit Card

Current offer: For a limited time, you can earn up to 100,000 points — 70,000 Southwest Rapid Rewards after spending $5,000 in the first 3 months, plus an additional 30,000 points after spending $25,000 in the first six months.

Annual fee: $199

Why it’s great: 100,000 is a very generous welcome bonus. Southwest points are worth roughly 1.4 cents each, which means the sign-up bonus alone is worth over $1,000 in free Southwest flights. If you spend most of your time flying in or around the U.S.A., you’ll be able to get a ton of value out of this card. Plus, it’s a great way to earn 100,000 points towards the 110,000 points you need to get the Southwest Companion Pass!

This card also offers many ongoing perks that add value to the card in the long run. These include four upgraded boardings per year, inflight Wi-Fi credits and an application credit for Global Entry or TSA Pre-check once every four years.

Other benefits worth mentioning:

  • Earn 3x points on Southwest purchases
  • Earn 2x points on social media and search engine advertising, Internet, cable, and phone services
  • 9,000 points every year after your cardmember anniversary (aka 9,000 points every year your keep the card and pay the annual fee)
  • 1,500 Tier Qualifying Points per $10,000 you spend (up to 15,000 TQPs each year)
  • No foreign transaction fees

3. The Hilton Honors American Express Business Card

Current offer: 125,000 Hilton Honors bonus points after spending $3,000 in the first three months

Annual fee: $95

Why it’s great: This card packs in a ton of benefits, especially if you’re loyal to Hilton. To start, 125,000 points is a very generous welcome bonus. Plus, if you do spend money staying at Hilton properties, this will be the card you want to use because you’ll earn 12x points for every $1 spent with Hilton.

Just by signing up for the card, you’ll get complimentary Hilton Gold Status. If you spend $15,000 on the card in a calendar year, you’ll get a free weekend night. And if you spend an additional $45,000, you’ll get a second free weekend night.

Other benefits worth mentioning:

  • Priority Pass membership that is good for 10 free airport lounge visits
  • No foreign transaction fees

4. United℠ Business Card

 

 

Current offer: For a limited time, this card is offering a welcome bonus of up to 100,000 miles. Earn 50,000 miles after spending $5,000 in the first three months and an extra 50,000 miles after spending $25,000 total on purchases in the first six months.

Annual fee: $95 (waived the first year)

Why it’s great: United is currently my favorite frequent flyer program because I’ve found they have the best award space availability. This means the points are easier to use, and you usually have more options. This card is a great way to earn 100,000 United miles quickly.

100,000 points is enough for two round-trip domestic business-class ticket or a one-way business-class ticket to Europe.

Other benefits worth mentioning:

  • 2 one-time use United Club passes that entitle you to United Club lounge access
  • Priority Boarding on United flights
  • Your first checked bag is free on United flights when you use your card to pay for the flight
  • Earn 10,000 bonus miles after spending $25,000 each year
  • No foreign transaction fees

That wraps up our review of credit cards with welcome bonuses of 100,000 points or more. Not all points currencies are equal, but all of the bonuses mentioned above represent terrific value.

If you found this post useful, we’d be super grateful if you used our links to start your next credit card application! If you need help choosing a card, we’d be more than happy to recommend a card (or two) for you! All you need to do is fill out this form.





Filed Under: Travel Hacking

How to Get Approved for Your First Small Business Credit Card

March 15, 2020 by Nate Leave a Comment

How to Get Approved for Your First Small Business Credit Card


Designed by Jcomp

This page contains affiliate links, and we may receive compensation if you click on a link. You can read our full advertising disclosure here.

As you (hopefully) know by now, the quickest way to earn miles and points and “hack” your way to free travel is to sign up for travel credit cards. But most people only apply for personal credit card offers, and they don’t realize that they could also be earning the welcome bonus from small business credit cards. Many of these cards offer big sign-up bonuses and unique perks not found with personal cards. So, if you’re not signing up for small business credit cards, you’re missing out on a lot of value.

You may have never considered applying for a small business credit card before because you didn’t think you could get approved. If that’s you, I have good news! It’s easier to qualify than you might think, and in this post I want to explain how almost anyone with a side hustle and a good personal credit score can get approved for a small business credit card.

Who Can Qualify For a Small Business Credit Card?

via GIPHY

Many people hold back from signing up for business credit cards because they assume that only large and established businesses are eligible. However, that’s not the case at all — the term “business” can actually be used quite broadly. Basically, anyone who’s generating (or at least trying to) extra income outside of their day job can apply. Here are some examples of who may qualify:

  • Someone that sells things online (Amazon, eBay, Etsy, etc.)
  • Someone who does any type of freelance work (graphic design, programming, writing, etc.)
  • Bloggers/vloggers
  • Ride-sharing app drivers
  • Food couriers
  • Craftsmen (home improvement, sewing, baking)

Misconceptions About Small Business Credit Cards

Before we dive deeper into this post, I wanted to ease your mind from a few of the major misconceptions that people get hung up on when applying for their first business credit card. Remember, you just need a side hustle. You don’t need to a be a big business.

  1. You DO NOT need a legal business name with an EIN (Employer Identification Number) to qualify.
  2. Your business DOES NOT need its own address.
  3. Your business DOES NOT need to be profitable.
  4. Your business DOES NOT need to have employees.
  5. Your business DOES NOT need to fit into one of the categories listed on the credit card application.

Although small businesses eventually establish their own credit history, in most cases, card issuers will review your personal score to determine your company’s creditworthiness. As long as your personal credit score is good, you should have a decent shot of getting approved.

For example, Kara and I have both been approved for business credit cards for our YouTube channel, and I can almost guarantee you that they based their decision on our personal credit history and not the merit of our “YouTube business”.

Tips for Filling Out Your Application

Now I want to spend some time looking at a standard business credit card application. I’ll point out the spots where a lot of people get hung up, and I’ll give you guidance on how to fill it out. However, before we go any further, I want to stress the importance of being honest on your application!! DO NOT lie on your application to try to increase your odds of getting approved. It’s illegal. Ok, now that’s out of the way, let’s go!

1. Legal Business Name & Business Name on Card

If you’re operating a small side hustle you probably haven’t gone through the process of setting up a business entity with a legal business name (if you do have a legal business name, obviously put it in this field). If your business doesn’t have a legal name, just put your full name on this part of the application. Your “business name on card” can be your personal name or business’s legal name.

2. Tax Identification Number

This section is where a lot of people get hung up. If you’ve gone through the process of getting a legal business name for your business, you probably have an EIN. Add that here. If you don’t have an EIN, just add your social security number to this section on the form.

3. Type of Business

Obviously, if you’ve structured your business a certain way, select the corresponding business structure. For the side hustlers who used their personal name and social security at the beginning of the application, select Sole Proprietor.

4. Annual Business Revenue

Since the bank will most likely fall back on your personal credit history to approve your application, you’ll want to include the revenue from your business and your personal income in this section. For example, if you make $50,000 at your job, and your side hustle will make $10,000 in revenue this year, add them together and put $60,000 in this section.

5. Everything Else

Don’t put too much pressure on the rest of the application. Just answer the questions as honestly as possible. If you’re the only person that works at your business, just put 1 employee. You can use your personal address as your business. Plenty of people operate their business from home. Don’t stress about which category your business fits into, just pick the closest one or choose other. None of these answers are going to stop you from getting approved.

What Happens If You Aren’t Instantly Approved?

Keep in mind, it’s rare to be instantly approved for a business credit card. Most of the time your application will move to “pending” before being approved.

If you apply for a card and you get a message that your application is pending, the best thing to do is hold tight and wait for a decision. I normally recommend calling the reconsideration line immediately, but with business credit cards you may have a better chance of getting approved if you wait it out.

The thinking behind not calling the reconsideration line is that you still have a chance to get auto-approved within the system. If you get auto-approved, congratulations! You just successfully signed up for your first business card. If you get denied…

via GIPHY

You’ll need to call the reconsideration line to give them more information and help them to better understand your business. To find the phone number for the credit card reconsideration line, just google “name of the bank + business credit card reconsideration phone number.” For example, if you applied for a credit card through Chase Bank, search “Chase Bank Business Credit Card Reconsideration Phone Number.”

When you call the reconsideration line, you can expect the phone rep to ask standard questions like:

  • What’s the name of your business?
  • What products do you sell?
  • How long have you been in business?
  • What’s your job title?
  • How many employees do you have?
  • Why do you need a business card?

There’s also a chance they’ll ask more in-depth questions like:

  • What’s your annual revenue and expenses?
  • What was your revenue last year?
  • Are you currently operating at a profit or a loss?
  • What is your expected revenue next year?

You shouldn’t be intimidated by these questions, just answer them honestly. However, before you make your phone call to the reconsideration line, make sure you’re prepared with answers to these questions.

Even if you’re a bit nervous when making the call (which is totally understandable), it’s important to know this information about your business. If you don’t know the answers to these questions, it could come off as irresponsible, and no bank wants to extend credit to an irresponsible business owner.

Additional Benefits of a Business Credit Card

Putting tangible benefits aside (e.g. welcome bonuses, spending bonuses, etc.), business cards are great because they make it easy to keep business expenses separate from personal ones, and they can give your business the spending power it needs to grow.

Plus, it’s important to understand that the new line of credit you’ll be opening remains separate from your personal one. So you won’t be hurting your personal credit score if your utilization ratio increases.

The best part for all of the travel hackers out there? Chase doesn’t add business cards towards your 5/24 count. However, if you are already over 5/24, you can’t get approved for this card.

Top Business Credit Cards

Hopefully, by now you’re ready to apply for your first business card. Now the question becomes which card is best for you? Our goal is to make this decision as easy as possible for you! Each month we round up the top 10 business credit cards that will help you travel more in a post called:

Top 10 Small Business Credit Cards for Travelers

If you read through this post, and you still need help choosing a card, we’d be more than happy to recommend a card (or two) for you! All you need to do is fill out this form.

Filed Under: Travel Hacking

Why Every Traveler Needs a Travel Credit Card & Which One You Should Get!

January 14, 2020 by Nate 5 Comments

Why Every Traveler Needs a Travel Credit Card & Which One You Should Get!

The page contains affiliate links, and we may receive compensation if you click on a link. You can read our full advertising disclosure here

For the uninitiated, travel hacking can be intimidating and confusing. To be fair, once you get into more of the advanced strategies, things can get quite complex.  Most people who get into travel hacking have to spend time learning the strategies, keeping up with the latest changes, and actually executing the strategies that will benefit them the most. This is why I consider travel hacking a hobby.

People who are ready to dive into this hobby head first can reap the rewards of nearly free travel (thanks to miles and points). And for these people, I’ve created the course 30 Days to Becoming a Travel Hacker.

However, I realize that not everyone has the time to pick-up a new hobby, but just because you’re not ready to fully immerse yourself in the world of travel hacking doesn’t mean you should miss out on all of the benefits!

Just by signing up for one travel credit card, you could get over $600 in free travel and a host of other benefits that I’ll explain later in this post. Kara and I believe a good travel credit card is a tool that all financially responsible travelers should be using because you’re missing out on some huge benefits if you don’t have at least one great travel credit card in your wallet.

There’s one question that I keep getting asked over and over again which has encouraged me to write this post:

“What if I just want to sign up for one travel credit card? Which one is the best?”

So in this post, I’m going to give you my recommendation for the one travel credit card every traveler should have in their wallet, but first, let me give you 6 reasons why every traveler should be using a travel credit cards.

#1 Earn miles or points that can be redeemed for free travel

All good travel credit cards will allow you to earn points in at least two ways: first by earning a sign-up bonus when signing up for the card, and secondly by earning points for every dollar you spend on the card.

This is why I say using cash or a debit card is like throwing away free money.

#2 No foreign transaction fees

Most debit cards and some credit cards will charge you a foreign transaction fee when you make a purchase in a different currency. Foreign transaction fees are normally around 3%. So, if you were to go on vacation to another country and spend $1,000 on your debit/credit card, you’d be charged $30 in foreign transaction fees.

A good travel credit card will never charge a foreign transaction fee.

#3 Zero Fraud Liability

If someone steals your financial details while you’re traveling, and they use that information to empty your bank account, you could be liable for some or all the money they stole from you. However, the best travel credit cards offer zero fraud liability. So you never have to worry about being liable for money stolen from your account.

#5 Lost Luggage Insurance

Imagine looking forward to a trip for months, spending days packing your suitcase to make sure you have exactly what you need for the adventure. Then you land at your destination only to learn that your suitcase didn’t make it and the airline has no clue where it is or when it will arrive. Unfortunately, this is a scenario that plays out all too often.

A travel credit card can’t help an airline find your luggage, but a good one will cover the cost of your missing luggage if it never shows up again.

#5 Rental Car Insurance

I hate hidden fees, which means that I dread picking up rental cars. I feel like every time I approach a rental car counter, I always learn about several things I “need” to buy that aren’t included in the original price I was quoted on the internet. Insurance is normally one of those things they try to up sell you on when you’re picking up the car, and it’s always ridiculously expensive.

Thanks to our travel credit cards, we’ve never once had to pay for rental car insurance on the road because we get it for free.

#6 Travel Incident Insurance

If something catastrophic were to happen on your next trip, would you be covered? Probably not, unless you went through the effort of purchasing travel insurance for your trip. However, if you use a good travel credit to buy the trip/tickets, you receive hundreds of thousands of dollars in reimbursement if something terrible did happen to you or family member during your trip.

The benefits listed above easily add up to hundreds of dollars in savings every year, and you won’t receive these benefits when using cash, a debit card, or even most credit cards. This is why we believe every financially savvy traveler should have a good travel credit card in their wallet.

Hopefully, by this point, I’ve convinced you that it’s time to pick up a good travel credit card. Now the question becomes: if you’re only going to sign up for one card, which one should you choose?

Chase Sapphire Preferred

We love this card so much we got 2 🙂

Everyone’s situation is different, so it’s hard to pick a single card that is best for everyone. However, I can say with certainty that the Chase Sapphire Preferred is the best travel credit card available for 90% of travelers who are reading this post. Let’s look at the many reasons why:

#1 A Sign-Up Bonus That’s Worth At Least $750 in Free Travel

The Chase Sapphire Preferred card comes with a 60,000 points sign-up bonus after you meet the minimum spending requirement.

In case you’re not familiar with credit cards, a minimum spending requirement is an amount of money you have to spend on a credit card in order to receive the sign-up bonus. It’s basically the bank’s way of making sure you’re actually using the card and not just signing up for it to receive the bonus. In order to receive the sign-up bonus on the Chase Sapphire Preferred card, you must spend $4,000 in the first 3 months of opening the card. Once you meet the minimum spend you’ll receive 60,000 Ultimate Reward points that can be redeemed for at least $625 in free travel!

#2 The Points Are Super Easy to Use

Some banks make it really difficult to use your points, not Chase. Ultimate Reward points are super easy to use. You can book flights, hotels, activities, and cruises through the Ultimate Rewards travel portal with no blackout dates. Your points are worth 1.25 cents each when redeemed towards travel, and if you don’t have enough points, they allow you to use a combination of points + cash to buy the flight. If you’re looking for the easiest way to cash in your points, this is going to be your best option, and you’ll get $750 worth of value out of your 60,000 points sign-up bonus (60,000 x .0125 = $750).

#3 The Points Can Be Transferred To Airlines (best value)

If you want to put a little more effort in to redeeming your points to get even higher value, I recommend transferring your points to one of Chase’s airline partners. You can transfer your points at a 1:1 ratio to the following airlines: United, Southwest, British Airways Singapore, Air France, Korean Air, and Virgin Atlantic.

Kara and I end up transferring most of our points to United Airlines. So, I’ll use United as an example to show you how you can get even more value out of your points. United has what’s called a zone-based award chart, and the price of a flight depends on which zones you fly between. To fly from the U.S. to Europe (two different zones) it costs 60,000 points round trip.

Let’s say the cheapest round-trip flight you could find from your hometown in the U.S. to Europe is $1,200. It doesn’t matter how much the flight costs, all you have to pay is 60,000 miles when booking with United. So if you used 60,000 points to book a ticket on United that otherwise would have cost you $1,200, the value per point would increase from 1.25 to 2 cents! ($1,200/60,000 = $.02)

The way you want to redeem your points is totally up to you. That’s one of the things I love about this card. The points are super flexible. So if you’re just looking for the easiest way to redeem your points, you can use the Ultimate Reward travel portal. If you want to get the most value, and you’re willing to put in a bit more effort, you can transfer them to an airline!

#4 Get 5,000 Extra Points for Adding an Authorized User

Adding an authorized user to your account is free, and Chase will give you an extra 5,000 Ultimate Rewards for doing it. An authorized user is someone who has permission to use your account in their name. They’ll get a card with their name on it, but you’ll be responsible for anything they spend on the card. So make sure it’s someone you really trust, preferably a spouse or family member. By adding an authorized user, your sign up bonus will increase to 55,000 which will be worth at least $687.50 (55,000 x .0125).

#4 Earn Points for Everyday Spending

In addition to the points that you earn when signing up for the card, you’ll also earn points for everyday spending. You earn 1 point per $1 spent on the card (which is pretty standard), but you’ll earn 2x the points on travel and dining purchases.

Let’s imagine that you spend $40,000 per year, and you put 75% of that spending on your credit card ($40,000 x .75 = $30,000). Even if you never made a travel or dining purchase, at a minimum you would earn an extra 30,000 points per year. That’s $375 in free travel that you’d earn every year just by spending money on things you already buy.

#5 No foreign transaction fees

Like any good travel credit card, you’ll never pay a foreign transaction fee when using the Chase Sapphire Preferred overseas.

#6 Insurance & Protection

At this top of this post, I listed several insurance coverages that every good travel credit card should offer, and this card ticks all of the boxes. You’ll get:

  • Zero Fraud Liability – You don’t have to pay a penny if someone steals your card and goes on a spending spree.
  • Primary Car Rental Insurance – If you use your card to pay for your rental car, you’ll get primary coverage through Chase. This means if your car gets damaged or stolen during the rental, you won’t be on the hook for the bill. Since it’s primary coverage, this means it kicks in before your regular car insurance. You don’t have to file a claim with your current car insurance company where you would possibly have to meet a deductible or run the risk of rate increases.
  • Lost Luggage & Baggage Delay Insurance – If your luggage is delayed by more than 6 hours and you’ve used the card to pay for your trip, you’re entitled to $100 per day in delayed baggage insurance (for up to 5 days). You’ll be reimbursed for necessities like toiletries, clothing, and a phone charger. If the airline loses your luggage forever, and it never shows back up, Chase has you covered for up to $3,000.
#7 The Card is Metal

This last one has no real monetary value, it’s only for fun. This card is metal which means that it looks and feels cool. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve handed the card to a cashier and heard, “Wow! This card is really heavy.” Again, there’s no real value in the metal, but it feels good pulling a nice card out of your wallet!

There you have it! The top 7 reasons I believe the Chase Sapphire Preferred is the single best travel credit card.

I hesitated to include this last part because I don’t want to confuse anyone, but before you sign up for this card, there’s one more thing you should know. Chase has two different “Sapphire” credit cards, and you’re only allowed to sign up for one of them (in a 24 month period). So, before you sign-up for the Sapphire Preferred card that I’ve been telling you about in the post, let me quickly tell you about the Sapphire Reserve card (your other Sapphire option).

Chase Sapphire Reserve

The reason this card isn’t for everyone is that it has a very high annual fee of $550. The higher annual fee comes with a host of additional benefits, but you need to make sure you maximize the benefits in order to make it worth paying the higher annual fee.

There are two main benefits that differentiate this card from the Sapphire Preferred card.

#1: $300 Travel Credit

Every year you’ll be reimbursed for up to $300 in travel expenses. You don’t need to register for this benefit, they make it super easy to use. Once you spend the money on an expense that is categorized as travel, the expense will automatically be deducted from you bill.

#2: Lounge Access

The Sapphire Reserve entitles you a yearly Priority Pass lounge membership that will get you and 2 guests into over 1,000 lounges around the world free of charge.

Most people will spend $300 per year on travel. So in my mind, that brings the annual fee down to $250. Really, the choice all comes down to how much you value lounge access. Are you willing to pay $250 per year for a Priority Pass membership? It’s a great deal if you’re going to utilize the lounge access multiple times throughout the year, but if not, you’re going to be better off sticking with Sapphire Preferred.

Final thoughts: The best time to sign up for your first travel credit card is now! The sooner you can start using this credit card for your everyday purchases, the sooner you’ll start earning points that you can put towards your next trip!

If you’re ready to apply for a travel credit card, and you’d like to support our work, you can use any of the credit card links you find on our site to start your application, or you can use our links in the top menu of the site under “credit cards“. If you do this, the banks pay us a commission if you get approved, and that allows to continue creating great content for you 🙂

If you’re still having trouble deciding which card is right for you, click the link below to tell us about your travel goals and we’ll help you pick the right card for your situation.

Filed Under: Travel Hacking, Uncategorized

The Easiest Way to Instantly Save $500 On Your Next Flight!

January 1, 2020 by Nate 16 Comments

The Easiest Way to Instantly Save $500 On Your Next Flight!

This page contains affiliate links, and we may receive compensation if you click on a link. You can read our full advertising disclosure here.

Stick with me through this short post, and I’m going to show you how even the laziest travel hacker can save $500 on their next flight!

After traveling to 80+ countries and strategically using credit cards to save over $20,000 on airfare, Kara and I believe a good travel credit card is a tool that all financially responsible travelers should be using to their advantage.

I could talk for days about all of the different strategies we’ve used to earn free travel, but in a nutshell, our strategy boils down to maximizing travel credit card rewards and learning the ins and outs of the different frequent flyer programs so we can squeeze as much value as possible out of every point!

As I’ve continued to tell anyone who will listen about these strategies, I’ve come to realize a couple things:

  1. Some people don’t have the time or the motivation to learn the ins and outs of every frequent flyer program.
  2. The idea of signing up for multiple credit cards makes people really uncomfortable.

If you fall into one or both of the categories above, this post is for you! Just because you don’t have the time to start a new hobby, it doesn’t mean you should miss out on all of the benefits of a great travel credit card. I want to show you how almost anyone can quickly and easily save $500 on their next flight (no travel hacking required).

The Capital One Venture Rewards Credit Card [learn more] currently has a 50,000 point welcome offer. This means if you sign up for the card and spend $3,000 on purchases within 3 months of opening your account, you’ll earn 50,000 Venture Miles. Each Venture Mile is worth $.01 when redeemed for travel purchases. Therefore, 50,000 miles [(50,000 x $.01) = $500] is equivalent to $500 worth of free travel.

The great thing about Venture Miles is that they’re dead simple to use. In fact, I’m going to show you exactly how you can use them to save $500 on your next flight in just 30 seconds.

All you need to do is use your Venture Rewards card to purchase ANY flight. You don’t need to purchase this flight through a special portal. You can literally buy the flight from anywhere. If you prefer to purchase your flights through an online travel agency such as Kayak.com, great. Buy your flight there. If you prefer to purchase your flight directly from the airline, that works too! It doesn’t matter how or where you purchase your flight, as long as you use your card.

Once you’ve purchased your flight, you have 90 days to use the 50,000 points that you earned from the welcome bonus to erase $500 of travel expenses from your account. Here’s the step by step process.

Step 1: Login to your account

Step 2: Click on your mileage balance (you should see around 50,000 points in your account after meeting the minimum spending requirement)

Step 3: Click the button says “Redeem Travel Purchases”

Step 4: You’ll see a list of all the travel-related purchases you’ve made with the card in the last 90 days. Choose which one you want to erase and click “Redeem”.

That’s it! Four steps to saving $500 on your next flight. You don’t have to learn a single thing about frequent flyer miles. You don’t have to worry about blackout dates or figuring out how to book any type of special flight. All you have to do is sign up for a credit card, meet the minimum spend, and use that credit card to purchase your next flight!

If you like the simplicity of the strategy I laid out in this post, learn more about the Capital One Venture Rewards card by clicking the link below!

Credit Card Welcome Offer Details
Captial One Venture Rewards 50,000 points after spending $3,000 in the first 90 days Learn More

FAQ

Can I Use My Miles for Other Travel Purchases?

Here’s exactly what Capital One says counts as a “travel” purchase.

“Purchases made from airlines, hotels, rail lines, car rental agencies, limousine services, bus lines, cruise lines, taxi cabs, travel agents and timeshares are generally considered to be travel purchases and availability for redemption is based on the merchant category code assigned to them by the merchant. Capital One is not responsible for how merchants assign these codes.”

Is There a Minimum Amount of Miles I Can Redeem?

One of the great things about this card is that it has no limits on the minimum amount of points you can redeem for a travel purchase. Unless you’re redeeming your miles to cover a partial amount of a bigger purchase, then the minimum amount you can redeem is 2,500 ($25)

Do I Earn Miles for Spending on This Card?

Yes, you’ll earn 2 points for every $1 you spend on the card, and there is no cap on the number of miles you can earn.

Will My Miles Ever Expire?

As long as your account is open, your miles will never expire.

Does the Card Offer Any Other Benefits?

Tons! But I wanted to keep this post short so I didn’t go into all of them.

  • No foreign transaction fees
  • Earn 2x miles on every $1 you spend on the card
  • Receive up to a $100 application credit when you use your card to pay for your Global Entry or TSA
  • PreCheck application
  • Travel incident insurance
  • Auto Rental Collision Damage Waiver Insurance

Is There an Annual Fee?

Yes, the annual fee is $95, but it’s waived for the first year.

Do you have other questions about this card? Let me know in the comments below!

Filed Under: Travel Hacking

900k Giveaway

November 11, 2019 by Nate 9 Comments

900k Giveaway

900k Giveaway | Win Our Travel Bags!

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Income & Expense Report | July – September 2019

November 7, 2019 by Nate 75 Comments

Income & Expense Report | July – September 2019

This is by far the best quarterly income and expense report we have ever posted, and the first one to ever break six figures in profits. However, before you dive into it, we want you to know that it hasn’t always been this way. If this is your first time ever reading one of our income and expense reports, I suggest starting with the first one we ever published in July of 2016 (our total income was $603.26)

Now that we’re making what feels like a crazy amount of money from this business, I feel like it’s important to tell you why we started writing these reports in the first place – and why I am continuing to write them (at least until we hit our goal of 100 countries).

When we first made these reports in our 6th month of full-time travel, the goal was to make enough money to cover our travel expenses so we could continue traveling. The purpose was to document that journey. We thought that if we were successful, maybe we could inspire some other people along the way to go after a crazy dream of their own.

When Kara and I used to tell people we traveled full-time, we’d almost always get the same response: “I wish I could do that.” At that point in the conversation, I would usually just bite my tongue. I realize that, for some, full-time travel truly isn’t possible. But for most of the people who say, “I wish I could do that,” they could if they really wanted to. Yes, some people would have to work harder than others, but most people could make it happen if they were willing to make travel a priority.

One of the selfish reasons we started these reports was to show people that we weren’t trust fund kids, and to prove to them that travel doesn’t have to be expensive. We were sharing the exact numbers behind how 2 normal people could travel the world for a year for $35,000. The hope was that, down the road, we could also show how it was possible to start a business while traveling that would continue to fund our travels, but it was just a dream at that point.

Fast forward 3 years, and we can’t believe where that dream has taken us!

Because of this path we’ve found ourselves on, I feel like the purpose of these income and expense reports have shifted. When we started, I felt like the numbers we were sharing were very relatable to the average person who wanted to go and travel. We were writing as 2 broke newlyweds, and the reports proved that you didn’t need a lot of money to go travel.

Now, I feel like these reports have become much less relatable from a travel expense standpoint, and they aren’t serving their original purpose. For a long time, I went back and forth on whether or not to continue publishing these reports, but I ultimately realized that they are now serving a different purpose that I never intended them to serve.

Based on the feedback I’ve started receiving, these reports are inspiring others outside of the realm of travel to pursue whatever they’re passionate about. This is really special to me. I’ve known from the beginning that it’s not everyone’s dream to travel (I have family and friends who would hate living a week in our shoes). That’s why I’ve never wanted to preach “everyone should travel full-time or you aren’t living life to the fullest.”

However, I do believe far too many people get swept up in the current of life and just end up wherever it takes them. Then, they look up one day and wonder how they got there. If I can inspire people to at least think about what they really want in life and encourage them to start pursuing it some way, I consider that a success.

So I am going to continue writing these reports (at least until we hit 100 countries) to show people a real-life case study about two people who went against the grain to pursue something they were really passionate about. And it worked out better than they ever could have imagined.

I think most people believe you have to make a choice between pursuing your passion or making money. We’re proof that it doesn’t have to be one or the other. We didn’t go into this thinking we were going to start a successful business. We just wanted to have enough money to continue traveling. But because we started doing what we really enjoyed and worked really hard at it, we’ve found ourselves somewhere we never dreamed of being.

Thoughts on Quarter 3 of 2019

I don’t like to brag. That’s not why I started writing these reports. They actually get harder and harder to publish as we continue to make more money, but If I’m being completely honest, I’m really proud to get to publish this report.

Just two and a half years ago, we were still digging into our personal savings and spending that money to continue traveling and make these videos. It’s incredible to look back at how much things have changed financially in such a short amount of time.

I definitely didn’t expect to be writing this back in July when the quarter started. However, thanks to a semi-viral video that lead to substantial channel growth, and two of the biggest sponsorships we have ever received, we broke six figures in profit for the first time this quarter.

Grab a cup of coffee, and dive into the report below to read all the details.

Income Report

1. YouTube Ad Revenue – $50,707.67 (Change from Q2 +$18,192.12)

In last month’s report, I mentioned how consistent our channel growth and ad revenue had been for the first half of the year. It seemed like no matter what we did (for better or for worse) our channel continued to grow at the same rate, and our ad revenue hovered right around $10,000 per month.

This quarter, we saw a major jump in channel growth and ad revenue for the first time in 2019.  It’s crazy how much a difference one video can make. In mid-August we published a video called “Our Tiny Home in the Swiss Alps” and within a week, the video had hit 1 million views.

The best part for us about a video like this going semi-viral is not the ad revenue we receive from that specific video. Instead, it’s the number of new people it brings to our channel who stick around, watch more videos, and become subscribers.

As you can see in the image below, the video has now been up for almost 2 months, and we’ve made almost $3,000 in ad revenue just from this video alone (which is awesome).

However, because this video attracted new people to our channel who stuck around and watched more videos, our ad revenue for the quarter increased by almost $15,000!

I think we secretly hope every video we upload will hit 1 million views in a week, but the reality is, it rarely happens. And for the most part, it’s out of our control. So, having this video do so well this quarter was a great surprise!

2. Patreon & PayPal – $10,748.52 (Change from Q2 -$215.33)

It can be scary to build a business on top of a platform that you don’t own (especially in the beginning). If you read the section above, you can see how much control YouTube has over our monthly ad revenue. This month, we were blessed by the algorithm, but it could just as quickly go in the other direction.

So much of our success/failure is tied to the growth of our YouTube channel, and we have very little control over that growth. This is why we’re so grateful for our patrons! Thanks to their support, we know that no matter what YouTube decides, this is one consistent source of income that we can count on every month!

For those of you who aren’t familiar with Patreon, it’s an online platform that allows you to support the work of your favorite creators giving them a chance to continue working on their creations without having to worry about where their next meal is going to come from!

CLICK HERE to learn more about becoming a patron!

3. Course Sales – $8,889.00 (Change from Q2 +$684)

We’ve each created a course to teach others the subjects where we have the most expertise. For me, that’s travel hacking, and for Kara, it’s video editing. These took a ton of upfront work to create, but they have continued to be a great source of passive income over the last couple of years even with very little promotion. If you don’t know what online courses I’m talking about…

  1. 30 Days to Becoming a Travel hacker is a course I created to teach others the strategies I use to save thousands of dollars on flights and hotels.
  2. Kara’s Behind the Scenes Guide to Creating a Vlog is the course Kara created to let you watch over her shoulder and learn the exact methods she uses to create one of our travel vlogs.

4. Affiliate Income – $28,642.53  (Change from Q2 +$7,101.98)

  • Amazon – $1,266.30
  • Epidemic Sound – $3,960
  • Creditcards.com – $22,346
  • Audible – $105
  • ConvertKit – $71.10
  • Adobe – $338.89
  • TubeBuddy – $30.83
  • TravelCon – $337.12
  • Wandrd – $187.29

The majority of our affiliate income comes from the ongoing promotion of companies and products we love, such as banks with great travel credit cards, Epidemic Sound, and travel gear. It’s an awesome feeling to get rewarded for doing something we are already doing for free: recommending products we use and love.

This quarter, we saw a substantial increase in our affiliate income. We didn’t do anything differently this month, but the channel growth we experienced led to more people checking out affiliate links which ultimately generated more commissions.

The major driver of our affiliate income this year has been credit card referrals. The data we receive around these referrals isn’t very detailed, but I’m pretty sure the major driver of referrals is from our free credit card consultation service. This is where we help people find the best travel credit card(s) that will help them achieve their travel goals.

It is a manual and time consuming task to talk with each person about their specific situation and make sure we’re recommending the right card(s). So, it’s awesome that we’re able to offer this service for free thanks to the commissions we receive from the banks.

If you’d like help figuring out which travel credit card(s) to sign up for to maximize your rewards and savings, you can request a FREE consultation by clicking the button below!

Or you can check out our Top 10 Travel Credit Cards post that we update every month!

Our second-largest source of affiliate income is Epidemic Sound. We get all the music for our YouTube videos through this service. It’s hard to find good music for YouTube videos. Kara used to waste hours of her life searching for music, and now she has a huge library of royalty-free songs to choose from! She loves this service, promotes it at the end of all of our videos, and we get paid anytime someone signs up for a free trial.

If you need music for YouTube videos, click here to check out Epidemic Sound!

Last but not least, Amazon also brought in a decent amount of affiliate income. The majority of our Amazon affiliate income is generated by people who visit the following pages where we recommend gear we use and love:

Our Vlogging Gear
Our Packing List
Keep Us on the Road

5. Sponsored Content – $50,100 (Change from Q2 -$34,800)

As our channel grows, we continue getting more and more opportunities to include sponsorships in our videos. It seems like every day someone sends me an email asking us to review their product on our channel. We turn down the majority of these offers, but if the product/company meets our 3 criteria, then we entertain the idea of adding them as a sponsor:

  1. Can we get genuinely excited about the product/company?
  2. Is this something we think our viewers would be interested in knowing more about?
  3. Does the company value our platform, and are they willing to pay us enough money?

We keep a list of brands we’d love to work with, but we do not proactively reach out to companies to set up sponsorships. We’ve just learned that this usually doesn’t work out. In fact, 100% of the money we’ve made from working with brands this year has come from companies approaching us wanting to work together.

This month, we finally had the opportunity to work with a brand who has been at the top of our list for a very long time. We have been living out of our Away luggage for the last 2 years. We love these bags so much that we have been approached by other luggage brands who have offered to pay us, but we have turned them down because we wanted to continue traveling with our Away luggage.

So, when Away reached out to us earlier this quarter, we were super excited to finally have the opportunity to work with them. Together, we came up with the concept of incorporating their brand into a series of videos where we helped a loved one mark something off their bucket list, which lead to us bring Kara’s dad to Vietnam 🙂

Normally when we get approached by a brand, it’s because they want us to promote a product to our audience, but this quarter OnePlus reached out to us with a different idea. They gave us the opportunity to shoot part of a video for the launch of their new OnePlus 7T. It was a fun challenge to create a video completely different from the videos that we normally upload to YouTube. If you want to check it out, you can do so here.

These were the two big projects that lead to a big boost in our sponsored content revenue this quarter.

Total Q3 Income – $149,087.72 (Change from Q2 +$60,562.77)

The pie chart above gives you a quick breakdown of how each revenue stream is contributing to our total income.

Expense Report

Transportation Expenses – $5,831.75

Normally we’ll travel really fast for a few months and get super behind on content before finally making ourselves take a long break to catch up. However, we want our videos and our real-life to be as close as possible as we reach our goal of visiting 100 countries. So, we’ve tried to do a better job of taking breaks between trips to edit and post.

We actually did a decent job at finding a balance this quarter (which is rare), and since we traveled slower than usual, we didn’t have to spend a ton on transportation. Especially if you exclude the three flights we bought to Vietnam to make the Away project a reality. They are included in this category because even though they were paying us to make a video, we still had to cover all of the travel costs.

OriginDestinationTransportUSDMisc.
Total$5,831.75
HanoiVenicePlane$1251.08
Tutto DoppoiZurichTrain$0CitizenM Project
ZurichSt. MoritzTrain$0CitizenM Project
St. MoritzZermattTrain$594Glacier Express
ZermattInterlakenTrain$83.37
InterlakenLiechtensteinTrain$95.27
LiechtenstienZurichTrain$38.31
ZurichKievPlane$550.66
KievLvivOvernight Train$107.13
LvivBarcelonaPlane$716.80
BarcelonaVietnamPlane$2,395.21Me, Kara, and Kevin

Accommodation Expenses – $3,784.49

Thanks to Airbnb referral credits, good friends, and a few complimentary accommodations for work projects, our accommodation expenses averaged out to just over $1,200 per month. That’s not exactly cheap, but it’s also not bad considering we spent 2 weeks in Switzerland, and we booked really nice Airbnbs by local standards in Ukraine and Vietnam.

CLICK HERE to save $40+ on your first Airbnb

LocationAccommodationsNightsCostMisc.
$3,784.49
HanoiHotel3$0Marriott Points
HanoiAirbnb23$0Redeemed Airbnb Referral Credits
VeniceAirbnb2$150
Tutto DoppioB&G's19$0Thanks B&G
ZurichHotel3$453.16
St. MoritzAirbnb3$0Redeemed Airbnb Referral Credits
ZermattHotel3$451.99
Monte RosaMountain Hut1$195.74
InterlakenAirbnb2$0Redeemed Airbnb Referral Credits
Liechtenstein Hotel2$287.03
KievAirbnb11$255.29Redeemed Airbnb Referral Credits
LvivAirbnb9$412
HanoiHotel4$489.28
Ha Long BayCruise1$610
Ninh BinhHotel2$113
HanoiHotel8$367

Destination Expenses – $4,672.30

This category is the money we spent while on the ground at each destination. This includes things like food, local transportation, and entertainment.

DestinationDatesExpenses
Total$4,672.30
HanoiJuly 1 - 8$242.13
VeniceJuly 9 -31$354.40
Tutto DoppioJuly 11 - 31$736.86
SwitzerlandJuly 31 - August 16$685.75
KievAugust 16 - 28
$686.94
LvivAugust 29 - Sept 8$685.42
BarcelonaSeptember 8 - 14$450.60
VietnamSeptember 14 - 30$830.28

Business Expenses – $9,382.80

Each month we pay for several online subscriptions and other things to keep the vlog, blog, online courses, and email list running smoothly. We have also hired a few independent contractors to make sure we can keep things going strong as our channel and business continue to grow and evolve.

Travel Hacking Wingman -$3,880
If you’ve submitted a credit card consultation or signed up for my travel hacking course, you probably know Benji. He helps manage our travel hacking Facebook group for the students of my 30 Days to Becoming a Travel Hacker Course. He also helps me write travel hacking blog posts and give credit card consultations. I tried to do this alone for a long time, but I realized I needed help to ensure that we could help as many people as possible to travel cheaper using my travel hacking strategies. So, I’m super thankful I’ve found a fellow travel hacker I trust to help me with the mission.

Video Editor – $1,800
We currently work with one part-time editor who helps rough-cut almost every video. The original goal of hiring an editor was to help save Kara time in the editing process. At this point, that’s still debatable, but it’s definitely increased the quality of our videos which we’re really happy about!

Assistant – $570
This is our first full quarter with a part-time assistant, she only works a few hours per week (as you can tell from the pay), but she has really helped free us from some of the repetitive tasks that were taking up too much of our time.

Convert Kit – $0 (we paid upfront for the year)
The great email platform that we use to send emails to our list of 50,000+ people. It’s great!

Teachable – $297
The platform where we host our courses – 30 Days to Becoming a Travel Hacker and Kara’s Behind the Scenes Guide to Editing a Vlog.

Premiere Pro (Adobe) – $263.64
The program Kara uses to edit our videos.

Google Service – $62.99
This is the money we pay Google for our email address every month so that we can look semi-professional.

Touchnote Postcard – $719.80
This is the service we’re using to send postcards to our patrons!

Epidemic Sound – $45
This is where we get all of our royalty free music for our YouTube videos!

TubeBuddy – $57
This service allows us to bulk edit the cards and end screens across all of our videos on YouTube. Basically, we pay $19 to avoid spending hours of our lives monotonously changing small details on our channel.

Godaddy – $446.37
This is the service we use to pay for our website, hosting, and SSL certificates. Plus, all of the other domains I buy when I think of a good business idea 😉

Gleam.io – $0
This is the service we used to host our giveaways.

Motion Array – $87
I could have sworn we unsubscribed from this service…

VideoBlocks – $199
This was a service we used for stock footage to help us tell a better story in one of our videos. We went ahead and paid for a year upfront to get a discount.

OptinMonster – $0 (we paid upfront for the year)
If you’ve been to our website, you may recognize we have a few popups on different pages. This is the service we’re using to generate more email subscribers.

Affiliate payout – $450
We have an affiliate program for our online courses. This is the commission we paid out to affiliates who helped us make sales.

New Gear – $593

We purchased several miscellaneous pieces of this gear this quarter, but nothing noteworthy. Just small things we needed to keep things running smoothly.

Fixed Costs – $797.77

T-Mobile Phone Plan – $279.52

Google Fi – $296.49

Kara stuck with the T-Mobile Unlimited International plan because she can’t give up her iPhone. However, I decided to switch to Google Fi on my android because it’s a lot faster than T-Mobile’s international service. Having separate carriers slightly increases our overall phone bill, but both of us are happy with our current setup.

Health Insurance – $221.76

We switched to a new international health insurance plan this year: it’s called Safety Wing. It’s cheaper, but we haven’t actually had to use it, so I can’t tell you whether or not we recommend it.

Miscellaneous – $494.75

This category is made up of expenses that didn’t fit into any of the categories above. Some little things like Spotify and Netflix, and a few bigger things like credit card annual fees.

Total Q3 Expenses – $26,896.95

Summary

Total Profit$123,530.77
Income
YouTube Ad Revenue$50,707.67
Patreon$10,748.52
Courses$8,889.00
Affiliate Income$28,642.53
Video Sponsorship$50,100.00
Total Income$149,087.72
Expenses
Transportation-$5,831.75
Accommodations-$3,784.49
Destination Expenses-$4,672.39
Business Expenses-$9,382.80
New Gear-$593
Fixed Cost-$797.77
Miscellaneous-$494.75
Total Expenses-$26,896.95

That’s a wrap for our Quarter 3 income and expense report. Thank you for all of your support. We couldn’t do it without you. I’d love to hear what you think about this report in the comments below!

Filed Under: income reports

The Best Credit Cards and Rewards Strategies for Booking Cruises

October 18, 2019 by Nate 1 Comment

The Best Credit Cards and Rewards Strategies for Booking Cruises

From repositioning cruises across the Atlantic, to river cruises in Myanmar and Egypt, Kara and I have become big fans of cruising. It’s such a fun way to travel and allows us to easily cross off countries from our list.

The one bummer with cruising is that unlike flights and hotels, there’s no good way of booking cruises using points and miles. However, with the right credit cards and booking strategies, you can significantly cut your cost. Here’s how:

The Best Credit Cards for Booking Cruises

The most important step in the cruise booking process is to use the right credit card. You’ll either want to use a card that provides a good return for cruise spending, comes with perks like onboard credits or a combination of both. You might notice that I didn’t include any of the major cruise line cobranded cards on this list. That’s because there are many travel rewards cards that offer equal or even greater returns. Additionally, most people, ourselves included, don’t cruise enough to be loyal to one cruise line so it’s better not to restrict your rewards to their programs.

1. Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card


Current offer: 60,000 Ultimate Rewards points after spending $4,000 within the first three months, plus an additional 5,000 Ultimate Rewards points when you add an authorized user to the card who makes a purchase within the first three months.

Annual fee: $95

Why it’s great: This card consistently ranks at the top of my monthly roundup of the top personal travel rewards card offers. It comes with generous 60,000 point sign-up bonus and offers a lot of flexibility with which you can use those points. You can redeem those 60,000 Ultimate Reward points for $750 worth of free cruises or other travel when booking through the Chase travel portal. Or, if you want to get even more value out of your points, you can transfer them to a number of airline and hotel programs at a 1:1 ratio. Plus, this card offers terrific travel protections for when things go wrong.

The card earns 2x points all travel (including cruise bookings) and dining purchases and 1x point on everything else. It also has no foreign transaction fees.

2. Chase Sapphire Reserve®


Current offer: 50,000 Ultimate Rewards points after spending $4,000 within the first three months.

Annual fee: $550

Why it’s great: If you travel a lot (not just cruises) then it could make more sense for you to get this card over the Preferred. Although it has a much higher annual fee, the rewards you’ll get more than make up for it. To start, you’ll get a $300 annual travel credit every year that’s you can use toward booking your cruise or any other travel expense. This basically brings the annual fee down to $150. Then, you get a free Priority Pass membership that gets you card holder and up to 2 guests free access to over 1,2000+ airline lounges around the world. If you’ve ever watched our Youtube videos, you know we put this benefit to use almost every time we travel. Plus, when you have this card, your Chase Ultimate Reward points are worth more when redeemed through the Chase Travel Portal. The points are worth 1.5 cents each. So although the welcome bonus is technically smaller than on the Preferred, your 50,000 bonus points are still worth at least $750 in free travel! Transferring your points is also still an option.

The card earns 3x points all travel (including cruise bookings) and dining purchases and 1x point on everything else. It also has no foreign transaction fees and comes with a $100 application credit for Global Entry or TSA Pre-check.

*** Chase Bank only allows you to sign up for one Sapphire card, so you have to choose between the Sapphire Preferred (mentioned above) and the Sapphire Reserve (this card). For serious travelers who will benefit from the lounge access, $300 travel credit, and increased value of the Ultimate Reward points, I would highly recommend signing up for the Reserve (this card) over the Preferred.

3. Capital One® Venture® Rewards Credit Card [Learn How to Apply]


Current offer: 50,000 bonus miles after spending $3,000 in the first three months.

Annual fee: $95 (waived the first year)

Why it’s great: This card is best for its simplicity. To start, you’ll earn a 50,000 point early spend bonus that is worth $500 in free travel such as cruises or potentially more if you transfer them to one of Capital One’s airline partners. Then, you’ll earn a flat 2x points on every purchase, regardless of whether you’re booking a cruise, buying a cup of coffee or something else. What’s great about the fixed-value redemption option is that unlike the Chase cards previously mentioned, you don’t necessarily need to book your cruise through Capital One’s travel portal. You can book your cruise any way you want and then “erase” some or all of the cost of your booking after.

Through January 2020, the card is offering 10x points for booking hotels through hotels.com/venture. Cardholders also get a $100 rebate on Global Entry/TSA PreCheck application fees.

4. The Platinum Card from American Express [Learn How to Apply]


Current offer: 60,000 Membership Rewards after spending $5,000 in the first three months.

Annual fee: $550

Why it’s great: Although Amex has run special offers where you can earn 5x points on some cruise bookings in the past, cruises are not a permanent bonus category on the Amex Platinum card so you’ll typically earn just 1x point per dollar spent on your bookings. So, you’re probably wondering what this card is doing on this list if it doesn’t offer any bonus points. Well, similar to the Fine Hotels & Resorts program, Amex offers something called the Cruise Privileges Program. By booking through the program, you’ll receive a shipboard credit and additional exclusive amenities unique to each cruise line, such as a spa voucher or bottle of premium champagne. Plus, from time to time, there are Amex Offers which let you earn 15,000 to 25,000 bonus points for putting your cruise purchase on your credit card.

The Cruise Privileges Program is valid for cruises of 5 nights or more on select cruise lines. To book, you can either visit americanexpress.com/cruises, call 800-525-3355 or contact the Platinum Travel Service. Worth mentioning, the business version of this card, The Business Platinum® Card from American Express OPEN [Learn How to Apply], also has access to this program.

Although the card normally earns only 1x point per dollar spent on cruises, you will get 5x points on flights booked with airlines or American Express Travel and  5x points on hotels booked on amextravel.com. The card has the highest annual fee of any of the cards on this list, but it comes with benefits like a $200 airline fee credit (good for one airline that you choose at the beginning of the year), a $200 Uber credit that gets reimbursed to your card in monthly increments of $15 (plus a $20 bonus in December) and $100 annual Saks Fifth Avenue credit that’s broken into two $50 statement credits for the two halves of the year. As you probably know by now, our favorite benefit, however, is the lounge access. In addition to a free Priority Pass membership, you also get access to American Express’s terrific Centurion Lounges!

The 60,000 point welcome bonus is worth $600 in free travel when redeemed through the Membership Rewards travel portal or potentially more when transferred to one of Amex’s travel partners.

Other Considerations

In addition to earning points with your credit card, you may be able to earn miles for your cruise bookings by going through your preferred airline’s cruise portal. American Airlines, Delta, United and other airlines offer them. Similar to shopping portals, these allow you double dip your rewards. Plus, depending on the program and your status with the airline, you might be able to unlock some special perks like a complimentary specialty dinner.

Kara and I’s favorite cruising “hack,” however, is to book repositioning cruises. When seasons change, often times cruise ships need to relocate to a region of the world with a climate more suitable for cruising. For instance, on our first repositioning cruise, the ship was moving from Europe (where it’s cold) to the Caribbean (where it’s nice and warm). During a repositioning cruise, there are usually long stretches at sea with few port days included in the itinerary. Because of this, they are usually quite a bit cheaper than usual. (Our’s across the Atlantic came out to $54 per night per person, including all food, drinks, taxes, and port fees!)

If you need some more cruise inspiration, consider joining us on our Myanmar River Cruise Adventure where we’ll spend a week cruising up the Irrawaddy River. It’s going to be a luxurious adventure to one of the most unique countries we have ever visited. The trip is quickly approaching (Nov. 12-19) and we only have a few room left, so if you’re interested in joining, you’ll need to act quick. For more details, click here.

If you found this post useful, please be sure to use our links in this post when signing up for your next credit card. It supports the work we do because the credit card companies pay us a commission if you get approved. This enables us to continue writing more helpful guides like this one 🙂

Still not sure which card is right for you? We’re happy to help! All you need to do is click the link below and fill out the form.

Filed Under: Travel Hacking

Income & Expense Report | April – June 2019

September 1, 2019 by Nate 37 Comments

Income & Expense Report | April – June 2019

This is the “worst” financial quarter we’ve posted in the last year, but for being the “worst” it’s still pretty good 😉 If you would have told us a couple of years ago that we would be calling this a “bad” quarter, we wouldn’t have believed you. However, it hasn’t always been this way. If this is your first time ever reading one of our income and expense reports, I suggest starting with the first one we ever published in July of 2016 (our total income was $603.26)

Now that we’re making what feels like a crazy amount of money from this business, I feel like it’s important to tell you why we started writing these reports in the first place – and why I am continuing to write them (at least until we hit our goal of 100 countries).

When we first made these reports in our 6th month of full-time travel, the goal was to make enough money to cover our travel expenses so we could continue traveling. The purpose was to document that journey. We thought that if we were successful, maybe we could inspire some other people along the way to go after a crazy dream of their own.

When Kara and I used to tell people we traveled full-time, we’d almost always get the same response: “I wish I could do that.” At that point in the conversation, I would usually just bite my tongue. I realize that, for some, full-time travel truly isn’t possible. But for most of the people who say, “I wish I could do that,” they could if they really wanted to. Yes, some people would have to work harder than others, but most people could make it happen if they were willing to make travel a priority.

One of the selfish reasons we started these reports was to show people that we weren’t trust fund kids, and to prove to them that travel doesn’t have to be expensive. We were sharing the exact numbers behind how 2 normal people could travel the world for a year for $35,000. The hope was that, down the road, we could also show how it was possible to start a business while traveling that would continue to fund our travels, but it was just a dream at that point.

Fast forward 3 years, and we can’t believe where that dream has taken us!

Because of this path we’ve found ourselves on, I feel like the purpose of these income and expense reports have shifted. When we started, I felt like the numbers we were sharing were very relatable to the average person who wanted to go and travel. We were writing as 2 broke newlyweds, and the reports proved that you didn’t need a lot of money to go travel.

Now, I feel like these reports have become much less relatable from a travel expense standpoint, and they aren’t serving their original purpose. For a long time, I went back and forth on whether or not to continue publishing these reports, but I ultimately realized that they are now serving a different purpose that I never intended them to serve.

Based on the feedback I’ve started receiving, these reports are inspiring others outside of the realm of travel to pursue whatever they’re passionate about. This is really special to me. I’ve known from the beginning that it’s not everyone’s dream to travel (I have family and friends who would hate living a week in our shoes). That’s why I’ve never wanted to preach “everyone should travel full-time or you aren’t living life to the fullest.”

However, I do believe far too many people get swept up in the current of life and just end up wherever it takes them. Then, they look up one day and wonder how they got there. If I can inspire people to at least think about what they really want in life and encourage them to start pursuing it some way, I consider that a success.

So I am going to continue writing these reports (at least until we hit 100 countries) to show people a real-life case study about two people who went against the grain to pursue something they were really passionate about. And it worked out better than they ever could have imagined.

I think most people believe you have to make a choice between pursuing your passion or making money. We’re proof that it doesn’t have to be one or the other. We didn’t go into this thinking we were going to start a successful business. We just wanted to have enough money to continue traveling. But because we started doing what we really enjoyed and worked really hard at it, we’ve found ourselves somewhere we never dreamed of being.

Thoughts on Quarter 2 of 2019

In Q2 we saw a $27,000 decrease in revenue from Q1. The crazy thing is, all of our revenue streams stayed very consistent except for one. Our sponsorship revenue decrease by $26,000 accounting for almost 100% of our loss in revenue this quarter.

With that said, it’s not something we’re necessarily disappointed about. Sure it would have been nice to have the extra sponsorship income, but hear me out… The way we approach sponsorships is very passive. At this point in our YouTube journey, we’re fortunate enough to have a lot of companies reaching out to us for partnerships. We are very strategic about which companies we choose to promote, and we turn down the majority of opportunities we receive.

We usually only say yes to one or two sponsorship opportunities per month to keep the ads on our channel to a minimum. However, this quarter we launched FareDrop, and we didn’t want to overcrowd our channel with other promotions, so we only said yes to opportunities that were a perfect fit – which turned out not to be very many.

So while our sponsorship revenue decreased, it was a conscious choice, and it gave us more opportunities to promote FareDrop. This has been the biggest project we’ve worked on since launching our YouTube channel, so we’re really excited about it from a business standpoint – but we’re also excited because we just launched in May, and we’ve already helped people save over $10,000 on flights!

FareDrop is the first revenue stream we’ve created since we started traveling that won’t be included in these reports. We partnered with a developer to create this service, so we want to respect his financial privacy since not everyone is comfortable sharing their finances with the world.

In case you haven’t heard about FareDrop, it’s a new service we launched that helps you find cheap international flights up to 80% off! We worked with a developer to create a software the searches over 100,000 flight combinations per day. Our members can tell us what kind of deals they want to receive, and when we find a great deal that matches their preferences, we send it to them via email and/or text so they can book the flight!

If this sounds like something that could be useful to you, you can try it free for 30 days! 

Income Report

1. YouTube Ad Revenue – $32,515.55 (Change from Q1 +865.87)

Our total monthly channel views and ad revenue has been extremely consistent since the beginning of the year. It seems like no matter how many videos we post or how well the videos do, YouTube is determined to keep our monthly views at around 5 million and our ad revenue at around $10,000 per month.

On the one hand, this can be a little frustrating because when we continually put more effort into our videos, we hope to be rewarded with growth. On the other hand, 10k per month in ad revenue is a great place for our growth to plateau, and you will never hear us complain about our channel receiving 5 million views per month. I just find it interesting that things have been so consistent. It feels like if we are slow publishing videos or if some videos don’t do as well as others, YouTube find other older videos to promote to make sure our channel continues receiving enough views. However, if we’re publishing more videos and the videos are getting more views than normal, it’s like YouTube stops promoting our older videos to make sure our channel doesn’t get too many views. Just an observation…

2. Patreon & PayPal – $10,963.85 (Change from Q1 +$1,226.51)

It’s scary to build a business on top of a platform that you don’t own (if you read the section above, you can see how much control YouTube has over our monthly ad revenue). So much of our success/failure is tied to the growth of our YouTube channel, and we have very little control over that growth. This is why we’re so grateful for our patrons! Thanks to their support, we know that no matter what YouTube decides, this is one consistent source of income that we can count on every month!

For those of you who aren’t familiar with Patreon, it’s an online platform that allows you to support the work of your favorite creators giving them a chance to continue working on their creations without having to worry about where their next meal is going to come from!

CLICK HERE to learn more about becoming a patron!

3. Course Sales – $8,205.00 (Change from Q1 -$1,553.00)

Outside of placing links on our website and in the description of our YouTube videos (goes to check we’re still linking to these in the description of our videos), we didn’t do any promotion for these courses this quarter, but they still brought in a decent amount of passive income.

If we’re being completely honest, neither one of us has been motivated to promote our course because we both feel like they need an update. The courses are still super valuable, which is why we haven’t taken them down, but we’ve both learned a lot since building the courses, and we have so much content we want to add. However, it’s one of those things that keeps getting pushed down the to-do list as things like posting videos and figuring out where we’re going to sleep tend to get top priority. Hopefully we can get these updated before I write up next quarter’s report.

If you don’t know what online courses I’m talking about… We’ve each created a course to teach others the subjects where we have the most expertise. For me, that’s travel hacking, and for Kara, it’s video editing.

  1. 30 Days to Becoming a Travel hacker is a course I created to teach others the strategies I use to save thousands of dollars on flights and hotels.
  2. Kara’s Behind the Scenes Guide to Creating a Vlog is the course Kara created to let you watch over her shoulder and learn the exact methods she uses to create one of our travel vlogs.

4. Affiliate Income – $21,540.55  (Change from Q1 +$9.93)

  • Amazon – $1,355
  • Epidemic Sound – $3,480
  • Creditcards.com – $16,047.40
  • Audible – $105
  • ConvertKit – $72.69
  • Adobe – $352.84
  • TubeBuddy – $127.62

The majority of our affiliate income comes from the ongoing promotion of companies and products we love such as Amazon, banks with awesome travel credit cards, and Epidemic Sound. It’s an awesome feeling to get rewarded for doing something we are already doing for free: recommending products we use and love.

The major driver of our affiliate income this year has been credit card referrals. The data we receive around these referrals isn’t very detailed, but I’m pretty sure the major driver of referrals is from our free credit card consultation service where we help people find the best travel credit card(s) that will help them achieve their travel goals.

It is a manual and time consuming to talk with each person about their specific situation and make sure we’re recommending the right card(s). So, it’s awesome that we’re able to offer this service for free thanks to the commissions we receive from the banks.

If you’d like help figuring out which travel credit card(s) to sign up for to maximize your rewards and savings, you can request a FREE consultation by clicking the button below!

Or you can check out our Top 10 Travel Credit Cards post that we update every month!

Our second largest source of affiliate income is Epidemic Sound. We get all the music for our YouTube videos through this service. It’s hard to find good music for YouTube videos. Kara used to waste hours of her life searching for music, and now she has a huge library of royalty-free songs to choose from! She loves this service, promotes it at the end of all of our videos, and we get paid anytime someone signs up for a free trial.

If you need music for YouTube videos, click here to check out Epidemic Sound!

Last but not least, Amazon also brought in a decent amount of affiliate income. The majority of our Amazon affiliate income is generated by people who visit the following pages where we recommend gear we use and love.

Our Vlogging Gear
Our Packing List
Keep Us on the Road

5. Sponsored Content – $15,300 (Change from Q1 -$27,370)

As our channel grows, we continue getting more and more opportunities to include sponsors in our videos. It seems like every day someone sends me an email asking us to review their product on our channel. We turn down the majority of these offers, but if the product/company meets our 3 criteria, then we entertain the idea of adding them as a sponsor:

  1. Can we get genuinely excited about the product/company?
  2. Is this something we think our viewers would be interested in knowing more about?
  3. Does the company value our platform, and are they willing to pay us enough money?

We do not proactively reach out to companies to set up a sponsorship. I believe 100% of the money we’ve made from sponsorships this year has come from companies approaching us wanting to work together. With said, the majority of companies who reached out to this quarter didn’t mean at three of the criteria we have listed above. So, we turned down the majority of the opportunities.

Plus, we feel that our followers have a limit for how many sponsorships they’ll watch on our channel before the entire channel starts to feel like one big ad so we try to keep our sponsorships to a minimum. Since we knew we’d be spending more time promoting FareDrop this quarter we were even more intentional about saying “no” to opportunities that weren’t a perfect fit.

Total Q1 Income – $88,524.95 (Change from Q1 -$26,820.69)

The pie chart above gives you a quick breakdown of how each revenue stream is contributing to our total income.

Expense Report

Transportation Expenses – $6,719.34

Normally, we save money on our transportation expenses using miles and points that we’ve saved up by applying for the best travel credit cards. However, this quarter, we spent more than usual on transportation because we ended up buying four business class tickets.

Back in January, we found a business class “error fare”, and we were able to book two flights from Da Nang, Vietnam to New York for only $695 per ticket. Normally, these tickets would cost $5,000 to $10,000 each. We didn’t have plans to travel to Vietnam or New York, but the deal was too good to pass up!

We love any chance we get to travel in business class, so it was worth $695 to us just be able to try out one of the top 10 business class products in the world for the 16-hour flight between Hong Kong and New York.

The reason we booked 2 of these flights is because the second flight enabled us to earn significantly more frequent flyer miles plus Platinum Status with American Airlines! So the benefits we earned were worth more than what we paid for the flights. After flying 4 of these 16 hour flights around the world (in addition to all of our other travel), it felt like we pretty much lived on airplanes for most of quarter 2. It was a lot of flying, but we would both do it again in a heartbeat. 🙂

OriginDestinationTransportUSDMisc.
Total$6719.34
CopenhagenCabo San Lucas Plane$1355.03
Cabo San LucasTodos SantosRental Car1459.39Rental Car for 3 Weeks
Cabo San LucasNashvillePlane$553.90
NashvilleSeoulPlane$307.60
SeoulHo Chi MinhPlane$400
Ho Chi MinhDa NangTrain$93.28
Da NangNew YorkPlane$795.90Business Class
New YorkMichiganRental Car$376.01
New YorkDa NangPlane$795.90Business Class
Da NangAustraliaPlane$0Project with PADI
AustraliaDa NangPlane$0Project with PADI
Da NangNew YorkPlane$695.23Business Class
New YorkNashvillePlane$259.80
NashvilleNew York$259.80
New YorkDa Nang$695.23Business Class
Da NangHanoi$131.66

Accommodation Expenses – $4,449.16

In case you haven’t been following the Airbnb drama over the last few income and expense reports:

In the past, we have saved a lot of money on accommodations thanks to Airbnb credits that we have accumulated through people signing up for the service through our link. However, midway through last year, we abruptly stopped receiving credits from Airbnb.

With no help from Airbnb, we eventually learned that Airbnb has a $5,000 credit limit cap. Since we had received $5,000 in credits, they quit giving us additional credits even though we were still referring new members.

To get around the cap, we created a new account, and we want to say huge thank you to everyone who used our new link this quarter because we have already earned an additional $1,300 in Airbnb credits! If you’d like to save $40 on your first Airbnb, and give us some Airbnb credit as well, you can sign-up using our new link below.

CLICK HERE to save $40+ on your first Airbnb

LocationAccommodationsNightsCostMisc.
$4,449.16
Los AnglesHotel1$149
Todos SantosAirbnb23$2,536.69
NashvilleHome7$0
SeoulAirbnb7$671.75
Ho Chi MinhAirbnb12$701.08
MichiganHotel4$417.96
Da NangHotel1$55
AustraliaHotel12$0Project with PADI
Da NangHotel1$62
NashvilleHome10$0
Da NangHotel5$45Used Free 7 Night Marriott Certificate

Destination Expenses – $2,786.62

This category is the money we spent while on the ground at each destination. This includes things like food, local transportation, and entertainment.

DestinationDatesExpenses
Total$2,786.62
Todos SantosApril 1 - 23$818.16
NashvilleApril 23 - May 1$250.27
SeoulMay 3 - 10$370.54
Ho Chi MinhMay 10-21$511.20
Da NangMay 22-23$16.19
MichiganMay 23 - 27$228.13
Da NangMay 29$13.71
Australia May 30 - June 12$213.67
Da NangJune 12 - 13$11.51
NashvilleJune 14 - 23$289.47
HanoiJune 25 - 30$63.77

Business Expenses – $7,959.75

Each month we pay for several online subscriptions and other things to keep the vlog, blog, online courses, and email list running smoothly. We have also hired a few independent contractors to make sure we can keep things going strong as our channel and business continue to grow and evolve.

Travel Hacking Wingman -$3,727.50
If you submitted a credit card consultation or signed up for my travel hacking course, you probably know Benji. He helps manage our travel hacking Facebook group for the students of my 30 Days to Becoming a Travel Hacker Course. He also helps me write travel hacking blog posts and give credit card consultations. I tried to do this alone for a long time, but I realized I needed help to ensure that we could help as many people as possible travel cheaper using my travel hacking strategies. So, I’m super thankful I’ve found a fellow travel hacker I trust to help me with the mission.

Video Editor – $2,768
After working with a few different editors, and spending a lot of time trying to figure out the best way to transfer big video files around the world, we finally have a system that we’re happy with! We are down to one awesome editor who helps rough-cut almost every video. The original goal of hiring a editor was to help save Kara time in the editing process. At this point that’s still debatable, but it’s definitely increased the quality our videos which we’re really happy about!

Assistant – $165
At the end of this quarter we hired a part-time assistant who just works 5-10 hours per week to help with some of the repetitive tasks that were taking up too much of our time.

Convert Kit – $0 (we paid upfront for the year)
The great email platform that we use to send emails to our list of 50,000+ people. It’s great!

Teachable – $297
The platform where we host our courses – 30 Days to Becoming a Travel Hacker and Kara’s Behind the Scenes Guide to Editing a Vlog.

Premiere Pro (Adobe) – $223.65
The program Kara uses to edit our videos.

Google Service – $61.48
This is the money we pay Google for our email address every month so that we can look semi-professional.

Touchnote Postcard – $179.95
This is the service we’re using to send postcards to our patrons!

Epidemic Sound – $45
This is where we get all of our royalty free music for our YouTube videos!

TubeBuddy – $57
This service allows us to bulk edit the cards and end screens across all of our videos on YouTube. Basically, we pay $19 to avoid spending hours of our lives monotonously changing small details on our channel.

Godaddy – $18.17
This is the service we use to pay for our website, hosting, and SSL certificates. Plus, all of the other domains I buy when I think of a good business idea 😉

Gleam.io – $0
This is the service we used to host our giveaways.

Click Funnels – $291
“I’m trying to get more sophisticated with our landing pages and sales funnels, but so far I’m just wasting money with this complicated service.” I wrote this in the last quarter, but it’s still true.

Motion Array – $87
This was a service we tried out for animated text and maps. It didn’t work out.

VideoBlocks – $39
This was a service we used for stock footage to help us tell a better story in one of our videos.

OptinMonster – $0 (we paid upfront for the year)
If you’ve been to our website, you may recognize we have a few popups on different pages. This is the service we’re using to generate more email subscribers.

New Gear – $1,838.11

We purchased several miscellaneous pieces of this gear this quarter including a couple of lens filters, hard drives, and new memory cards. However, the bulk of this expense comes from Kara’s new phone. Hopefully, you’ve noticed an increase in the quality of our Instagram stories… That was the justification for buying a new phone, haha.

Fixed Costs – $738.17

T-Mobile Phone Plan – $220.07

Google Fi – $296.34

Kara stuck with the T-Mobile Unlimited International plan because she can’t give up her iPhone. However, I decided to switch to Google Fi because it’s a lot faster than T-Mobile’s international service. Having separate carriers slightly increases our overall phone bill, but both of us are happy with our current setup.

Health Insurance – $221.76

We switched to a new international health insurance plan this year: it’s called Safety Wing. It’s cheaper, but we haven’t actually had to use it, so I can’t tell you whether or not we recommend it.

Passports & Visas – $1,199.98

Before we left to travel full-time at the beginning of 2016, we got brand new 52 page passports. After 3.25 years of travel, we finally filled them up. Because our time in the U.S. is limited, we had to pay a hefty fee to get rushed passports in one week.  However, the amount we save on taxes by being outside of the U.S. was totally worth paying the rush fee so we could leave the U.S. faster.

Miscellaneous – $1040.31

This category is made up of expenses that didn’t fit into any of the categories above. Some little things like Spotify and Netflix, and a few bigger things like credit card annual fees.

Total Q1 Expenses – $26,259.73

Summary

Total Profit$62,265.22
Income
YouTube Ad Revenue$32,515.55
Patreon$10,963.85
Courses$8,205.00
Affiliate Income$21,540.55
Video Sponsorship$15,300.00
Total Income$88,524.95
Expenses
Transportation-$6,719.34
Accommodations-$4,449.16
Destination Expenses-$2,786.62
Business Expenses-$7,959.75
New Gear-$1,838.11
Fixed Cost-$738.17
Passport & Visas-$1,199.98
Miscellaneous-$568.60
Total Expenses-$25,059.75

That’s a wrap for our Quarter 2 income and expense report. These numbers continue to surprise us every quarter when I type them into the computer. If you find it hard to believe that we’re making this much money while traveling the world, you’re not alone. We pinch ourselves from time to time!

Thank you for all of your support. We couldn’t do it without you. I’d love to hear what you think about this report in the comments below!

Filed Under: income reports

The 5 Best Travel Rewards Credit Cards for College Students

August 30, 2019 by Nate 1 Comment

The 5 Best Travel Rewards Credit Cards for College Students

One of the most common questions we get through our free credit card consultations is what credit card to get if you’re a college student with limited credit history and disposable income. First off, if you’re a student and are already planning your credit card strategy, congratulations, you’re already ahead of most people your age.

There are many reasons why it’s important to start building good credit while you’re young. Aside from qualifying for the top credit card offers, you’ll need it to rent an apartment, finance a car, sign up for a new cell phone plan and potentially even to get a job.

As a college student, there are several factors in particular that you should consider when deciding which card to get. For instance, aside from high approval odds, you’ll likely also want a low (or no) annual fee and low spending requirement for the sign-up bonus. And if you’re thinking about studying abroad, you’ll also want a card with no foreign transaction fees so that you could use it overseas without accumulating extra charges.

There are many ways to get creative with your spending if you need help reaching the minimum spend requirements for any of the welcome bonuses I’m going to discuss below. For instance, you could offer to pay for the table when dining out with friends and then have them pay back using cash or Venmo or even pay your tuition with your credit card — so long as your school doesn’t charge hefty fees for doing so. Additionally, it’s important to know that simply being a student may not be enough to qualify for a “student” card. Most cards generally require access to at least some income. If you’re under 21, you can only count personal income from your job, scholarships, or grants, but if you’re over 21 you can include any sources of income to which you have “reasonable expectation of access” such as from a spouse or partner. If you have no income at all, you might need to start with a secured credit card.

With all those things in mind, here are our top five picks for students looking to get their first credit card.

1. Citi Rewards+℠ Student Card

Current offer: 2,500 points after spending $500 in the first three months.

Annual fee: $0

Why it’s great: This card rounds up your earnings on all purchases to the nearest 10 points. This means that your $3 cup of coffee (or tea if you don’t have a coffee addiction like Kara) earns you at least 10 points and a $12 lunch at least 20 points.

Other benefits worth mentioning:

  • Earn 2x points per $1 spent at supermarkets and gas stations (for the first $6,000 per year, then 1x)
  • Get back 10% of the points redeemed for the first 100,000 points per year

2. Chase Freedom Unlimited®

Current offer: 3% cash back on all purchases in your first year (up to $20,000 spent), then an unlimited 1.5% cash back on all purchases.

Annual fee: $0

Why it’s great: 3% cash back in your first year and then an uncapped 1.5% thereafter is terrific for purchases that doesn’t fall into the typical bonus categories offered by other cards, such as textbooks and tuition. While these returns are pretty good on their own, the card becomes even more valuable when paired with a Ultimate Rewards-earning credit card like the Chase Sapphire Preferred since you’ll be able to convert your cash back points to fully transferable Ultimate Rewards points.

Other benefits worth mentioning:

  • Purchase protection
  • Extended warranty protection

3. Chase Freedom®

Current offer: $150 after spending $500 on purchases in the first three months.

Annual fee: $0

Why it’s great: This card earns 5% cash back on up to $1,500 in combined purchases in popular rotating categories that change every quarter. Previous bonus categories have included gas stations, grocery stores, department stores and PayPal. Like the Freedom Unlimited, the cash back can be converted to transferable Ultimate Rewards points when paired with an eligible card.

Other benefits worth mentioning:

  • Earn 1% cash back on non-bonus purchases
  • Purchase protection
  • Extended warranty protection

4. Capital One® VentureOne® Rewards Credit Card [Learn How to Apply]

Current offer: 20,000 miles after spending $1,000 in the first three months.

Annual fee: $0

Why it’s great: This card earns a flat 1.25 miles per dollar spent on all purchases. While that return isn’t as good as with the Freedom Unlimited, you’re able to transfer your miles to over a dozen airline programs without having to pick up another credit card. This card is especially great for those looking to study abroad as it offers a great bonus on hotel spending and has no foreign transaction fees.

Other benefits worth mentioning:

  • Earn 10x points when you book your hotel on hotels.com/venture (through January 2020)
  • No foreign transaction fees
  • Purchase protection
  • Lost luggage reimbursement

5. Journey® Student Rewards from Capital One® [Learn How to Apply]

Current offer: N/A

Annual fee: $0

Why it’s great: This card is similar to the Capital One VentureOne, but is easier to be approved for. It earns 1% cash back on all purchases, but that’s bumped to 1.25% each month you pay on time.

Other benefits worth mentioning:

  • No foreign transaction fees
  • Special access to concerts and other events
  • Extended warranty

That wraps up our review of the top credit cards for students. As long as you pay your bills on time, you’ll establish some good credit and get approved for the big league cards in no time.

If you found this post useful, please be sure to use our links in this post when signing up for your next credit card. It supports the work we do because the credit card companies pay us a commission if you get approved. This enables us to continue writing more helpful guides like this one 🙂

Still not sure which card is right for you? We’re happy to help! All you need to do is click the link below and fill out the form.

Filed Under: Travel Hacking

Income & Expense Report | January – March 2019

July 3, 2019 by Nate 76 Comments

Income & Expense Report | January – March 2019

For the second quarter in a row, we brought in $100,000 from our YouTube channel and other related income streams! Yes, it still feels just as crazy as it did last quarter. However, it hasn’t always been this way. If this is your first time ever reading one of our income and expense reports, I suggest starting with the first one we ever published in July of 2016 (our total income was $603.26)

Now that we’re making what feels like a crazy amount of money from this business, I feel like it’s important to tell you why we started writing these reports in the first place – and why I am continuing to write them (at least until we hit our goal of 100 countries).

When we first made these reports in our 6th month of full-time travel, the goal was to make enough money to cover our travel expenses so we could continue traveling. The purpose was to document that journey. We thought that if we were successful, maybe we could inspire some other people along the way to go after a crazy dream of their own.

When Kara and I used to tell people we traveled full-time, we’d almost always get the same response: “I wish I could do that.” At that point in the conversation, I would usually just bite my tongue. I realize that, for some, full-time travel truly isn’t possible. But for most of the people who say, “I wish I could do that,” they could if they really wanted to. Yes, some people would have to work harder than others, but most people could make it happen if they were willing to make travel a priority.

One of the selfish reasons we started these reports was to show people that we weren’t trust fund kids, and to prove to them that travel doesn’t have to be expensive. We were sharing the exact numbers behind how 2 normal people could travel the world for a year for $35,000. The hope was that, down the road, we could also show how it was possible to start a business while traveling that would continue to fund our travels, but it was just a dream at that point.

Fast forward 3 years, and we can’t believe where that dream has taken us!

Because of this path we’ve found ourselves on, I feel like the purpose of these income and expense reports have shifted. When we started, I felt like the numbers we were sharing were very relatable to the average person who wanted to go and travel. We were writing as 2 broke newlyweds, and the reports proved that you didn’t need a lot of money to go travel.

Now, I feel like these reports have become much less relatable from a travel expense standpoint, and they aren’t serving their original purpose. For a long time, I went back and forth on whether or not to continue publishing these reports, but I ultimately realized that they are now serving a different purpose that I never intended them to serve.

Based on the feedback I’ve started receiving, these reports are inspiring others outside of the realm of travel to pursue whatever they’re passionate about. This is really special to me. I’ve known from the beginning that it’s not everyone’s dream to travel (I have family and friends who would hate living a week in our shoes). That’s why I’ve never wanted to preach “everyone should travel full-time or you aren’t living life to the fullest.”

I don’t believe that, but I do believe far too many people get swept up in the current of life and just end up wherever it takes them. Then, they look up one day and wonder how they got there. If I can inspire people to at least think about what they really want in life, and encourage them to start pursuing it some way, I consider that a success.

So I am going to continue writing these reports (at least until we hit 100 countries) to show people a real-life case study about two people who went against the grain to pursue something they were really passionate about. And it worked out better than they ever could have imagined.

I think most people believe you have to make a choice between pursuing your passion or making money. We’re proof that it doesn’t have to be one or the other. We didn’t go into this thinking we were going to start a successful business. We just wanted to have enough money to continue traveling. But because we started doing what we really enjoyed and worked really hard at it, we’ve found ourselves somewhere we never dreamed of being.

Thoughts on Quarter 1 of 2019

During Q4 of last year, our YouTube channel experienced a ton of growth, and our revenue shot up in areas we weren’t expecting at the beginning of the quarter. For example, we went from making $15,000 in YouTube ad revenue to $45,000 in ad revenue (due to the holidays). Then, at the last minute, we decided to offer a Black Friday discount on our online courses, and we did a surprising $15,000 in sales in 3 days.

All of this to say, we had some extreme things happen during Q4 that led us to $100,000 in revenue. Looking forward to Q1 of this year, I didn’t see how we could possibly top Q4. But once again, to my surprise, we did it.

As expected, we saw a large drop in YouTube ad revenue and course sales, but a few unexpected sponsorship opportunities and steady growth in affiliate income made up the difference. Let’s dive into the report, and I’ll explain in more detail.

Income Report

1. YouTube Ad Revenue – $31,649.68 (Change from Q4 -13,999.32)

During Q4 of last year there was a perfect storm that took our ad revenue to $45,000. We had a video go semi-viral in early November, and we gained a lot of new subscribers. Plus, advertisers were increasing their ad rates around the holidays so this lead to a huge increase in ad revenue. However, by the end of the quarter, our new subscribers were starting to level out again, and ad rates started dropping the day after Christmas. We knew we’d need something crazy to happen to maintain a similar level of ad revenue in Q1.

Unfortunately, nothing crazy happened during Q1, and our ad revenue dropped by almost $14,000. However, you can see from the chart above that our ad revenue was consistent throughout the quarter. So while it always hurts to see a decrease in revenue of any income stream, we are both very happy with where it has leveled out.

2. Patreon & PayPal – $10,285.51 (Change from Q4 -$1,285.15)

It’s scary to build a business on top of a platform that you don’t own (if you read the section above, $14,000 can be given or taken away pretty much overnight). So much of our success/failure is tied to the growth of our YouTube channel, and we have very little control over that growth. This is why we’re so grateful for our patrons! Thanks to their support, we know that no matter what YouTube decides, this is one consistent source of income that we can count on every month!

For those of you who aren’t familiar with Patreon, it’s an online platform that allows you to support the work of your favorite creators giving them a chance to continue working on their creations without having to worry about where their next meal is going to come from!

CLICK HERE to learn more about becoming a patron!

3. Course Sales – $9,758 (Change from Q4 -$13,153)

As I said in the introduction, last month our Black Friday Sale brought in $15,000 in 3 days. During Q1, we didn’t do any promotions for our courses outside of including the links in our videos and on our website. Due to the lack of intentional advertising, the drop in revenue was expected.

If you don’t know what online courses I’m talking about… We’ve each created a course to teach others the subjects where we have the most expertise. For me, that’s travel hacking, and for Kara, it’s video editing.

  1. 30 Days to Becoming a Travel hacker is a course I created to teach others the strategies I use to save thousands of dollars on flights and hotels.
  2. Kara’s Behind the Scenes Guide to Creating a Vlog is the course Kara created to let you watch over her shoulder and learn the exact methods she uses to create one of our travel vlogs.

4. Affiliate Income – $21,530.62  (Change from Q4 +$6,779.03)

  • Amazon – $1,566.69
  • Epidemic Sound – $3,660
  • Creditcards.com – $16,303.93
  • Audible – $90
  • ConvertKit – $44.10
  • Adobe – $205.17
  • TubeBuddy – $22.80

The majority of our affiliate income comes from the ongoing promotion of companies and products we love such as Amazon, banks with awesome travel credit cards, and Epidemic Sound. It’s an awesome feeling to get rewarded for doing something we are already doing for free: recommending products we use and love.

The major driver of our affiliate income this quarter was credit card referrals. This was our first full quarter offering free credit card consultations and consistently publishing our “Top 10” blog post every month. Based on the feedback we’ve received, people are getting a lot of value out of these personal consultations. So it’s awesome that we’re able to offer this time-consuming service for free thanks to the commissions we receive from the banks.

If you’d like help figuring out which travel credit card(s) to sign up for to maximize your rewards and savings, you can request a FREE consultation by clicking the button below!

Or you can check out our Top 10 Travel Credit Cards post that we update every month!

Our second largest source of affiliate income is Epidemic Sound. We get all the music for our YouTube videos through this service. It’s hard to find good music for YouTube videos. Kara used to waste hours of her life searching for music, and now she has a huge library of royalty-free songs to choose from! She loves this service, promotes it at the end of all of our videos, and we get paid anytime someone signs up for a free trial.

If you need music for YouTube videos, click here to check out Epidemic Sound!

Last but not least, Amazon also brought in a decent amount of affiliate income. The majority of our Amazon affiliate income is generated by people who visit the following pages where we recommend gear we use and love.

Our Vlogging Gear
Our Packing List
Keep Us on the Road

5. Sponsored Content – $42,670 (Change from Q4 +$33,670)

As our channel grows, we’re getting more and more opportunities to include sponsors in our videos. It seems like every day someone sends me an email asking us to review their product on our channel. We turn down the majority of these offers, but if the product/company meets our 3 criteria, then we entertain the idea of adding them as a sponsor:

  1. Can we get genuinely excited about the product/company?
  2. Is this something we think our viewers would be interested in knowing more about?
  3. Does the company value our platform, and are they willing to pay us enough money?

This is where we saw a major growth in our income this quarter! Normally when a company wants to work with us, they will reach out and ask how much we would charge for _ (fill in the blank). This quarter, we were approached by a couple of companies with upfront offers that were bigger than any we had ever received. These offers allowed us to see that we had been undervaluing ourselves in sponsorship deals in the past.

We did a few more sponsorships than usual this quarter because a couple were too good to turn down. However, we expected to see a sustained increase in revenue in this category by increasing our rates and still keeping our sponsored videos to a minimum.

Total Q1 Income – $115,893.81 (Change from Q4 +$12,011.56)

The pie chart above gives you a quick breakdown of how each revenue stream is contributing to our total income.

Expense Report

Transportation Expenses – $1,984.79

Normally, we save money on our transportation expenses using miles and points that we’ve saved up by applying for the best travel credit cards. However, this quarter, the majority of our savings were thanks to sponsored trips.

For as much as we bounced around the globe this quarter, we spent surprisingly little on flights. During Q1 of this year, we traveled to 15 different countries, but we spent what most couples would for round trip flights to from the U.S. to Europe. This is because we planned our travel around a few key sponsorships in order to make sure most of our long-haul flights were covered. We also visited 5 of the 15 countries on a cruise ship, so that helped cut down our “transportation” costs as well.

OriginDestinationTransportUSDMisc.
Total$1,984.79
CancunHavanaPlane$392.88
HavanaSt. MaartenPlane$0MSC Project
St. MaartenCosta RicaShip$0MSC Project
Costa RicaMexicoPlane$0Iberostar Project
MexicoJordanPlane$0Iberostar Project
JordanLebanonPlane$400.79
LebanonIraqPlane$543.74
IraqTurkeyPlane$454.48
TurkeyFinlandPlane$0Tesla Project
FinlandIndiaPlane$192.90OnePlus Project
IndiaFinlandPlane$0OnePlus Project
FinlandCopenhagenPlane$0Tesla Project

Accommodation Expenses – $4,357.51

In the past, we have saved a lot of money on accommodations thanks to Airbnb credits that we have accumulated through people signing up for the service through our link. However, in the last report, I told you we had abruptly stopped receiving credits from Airbnb. We reached out to Airbnb about our links not working, but they said everything looked fine.

After a lot of internet research, I finally learned that Airbnb has a $5,000 credit limit cap. Since we had received $5,000 in credits, they quit giving us additional credits even though we were still referring new members. That alone is frustrating enough, but it’s even more frustrating that they didn’t tell us about the cap when we reached out, and instead told us our link seemed to be working fine. I digress.

To get around the cap, we have created a new account that is still offering you the same savings as our old account. So, if you’ve never signed up for Airbnb, and you want to save $40+, help us save money on our accommodations in the future by signing-up using our link below:

CLICK HERE to save $40+ on your first Airbnb

LocationAccommodationsNightsCostMisc.
$4,357.51
CubaAirbnb8$318.87
St. MaartenCabin3$696.60
Caribbean CruiseCruise13$0Project with MSC
Costa RicaHotel1$97.71
CancunResort7$0Project with Iberostar
AmmanAirbnb9$880.62
JordanHotel7$168.76Project with Jordan Tourism
BeruitHotel11$585.81
IraqHotel2$135
TurkeyHotel3$255.84
FinlandHotel3$61.82Project with Tesla
IndiaHotel4$0Project with OnePlus
HelsinkiHotel1$107.91
KemiHotel2$245.04
RovaniemiHotel3$0Project with Hotels
CopenhagenHotel/Airbnb8803.53

Destination Expenses – $4,135.79

This category is the money we spent while on the ground at each destination. This includes things like food, local transportation, and entertainment.

DestinationDatesExpenses
Total$4,135.79
CubaJanuary 1 - 9$600
St. MaartenJanuary 9 - 13$247.44
Caribbean CruiseJanuary 13 - 27$43.07
MexicoJanuary 27 - Feb. 4$0
JordanFebruary 5 - 22$695.12
LebanonFebruary 22 - Mar. 5$635.44
IraqMarch 5 - 8$264.29
TurkeyMarch 8 - 11$824.24
FinlandMarch 11 - 14$77.24
IndiaMarch 14 - 19$160.22
FinlandMarch 19 - 24$400.22
DenmarkMarch 24 - 31$1,406.51

Business Expenses – $8,402.70

Each month we pay for several online subscriptions and other things to keep the vlog, blog, online courses, and email list running smoothly. We have also hired a few independent contractors to make sure we can keep things running smoothly as our channel and business continue to grow and evolve.

Travel Hacking Wingman -$3,297.50
If you submitted a credit card consultation or signed up for my travel hacking course, you probably know Benji. He helps manage our travel hacking Facebook group for the students of my 30 Days to Becoming a Travel Hacker Course. He also helps me write travel hacking blog posts and give credit card consultations. I tried to do this alone for a long time, but I realized I needed help to ensure that we could help as many people as possible travel cheaper using my travel hacking strategies. So, I’m super thankful I’ve found a fellow travel hacker I trust to help me with the mission.

Video Editor – $2,290
At the moment we have two different editors who split time to help rough cut our footage. This is supposed to be saving Kara time and increasing the quality of our videos, but in all honesty, we’re still perfecting this process. It’s been a challenge to figure out how to transfer huge files around the world, coordinate schedules, and still be able to determine if this is actually saving us time. With that said, I think we’re getting close to a good process.

Convert Kit – $911.83
The great email platform that we use to send emails to our list of 50,000+ people. It’s great!

Teachable – $297
The platform where we host our courses – 30 Days to Becoming a Travel Hacker and Kara’s Behind the Scenes Guide to Editing a Vlog.

Premiere Pro – $123.41
The program Kara uses to edit our videos.

Google Service – $59.70
This is the money we pay Google for our email address every month so that we can look semi-professional.

Touchnote Postcard – $179.95
This is the service we’re using to send postcards to our patrons!

Epidemic Sound – $45
This is where we get all of our royalty free music for our YouTube videos!

TubeBuddy – $57
This service allows us to bulk edit the cards and end screens across all of our videos on YouTube. Basically, we pay $19 to avoid spending hours of our lives monotonously changing small details on our channel.

Godaddy – $107.67
This is the service we use to pay for our website, hosting, and SSL certificates. Plus, all of the other domains I buy when I think of a good business idea 😉

Gleam.io – $49
This is the service we used to host our 500k Giveaway.

Click Funnels – $291
“I’m trying to get more sophisticated with our landing pages and sales funnels, but so far I’m just wasting money with this complicated service.” I wrote this in last quarter, but it’s still true.

Shipping – $56.66
We couldn’t take the drone to Cuba so we had to ship it to St. Maarten.

StoryBlocks – $117
We were really excited to start including more stock video in our vlogs to help tell a better story, but so far we’ve been disappointed with the selection.

Motion Array – $87
This was a service we tried out for animated text and maps. It didn’t work out.

Misc – $11.98
This was a charge on my credit card… I was pretty sure it was business related, but I didn’t know what it was.

OptinMonster – $197
If you’ve been to our website, you may recognize we have a few popups on different pages. This is the service we’re using to generate more email subscribers.

WeTransfer – $24
This is the service we used to allow everyone to send in videos for Kara’s birthday surprise.

Accountant – $200

New Camera Gear – $7,623.16

We upgraded almost all of gear this quarter! If you watched our video from Turkey, you know we struggled with the decision. However, after using the gear for a few months, we are very happy with the investment we made this quarter. The new drone and the new camera set up have lead to a noticeable difference in our video quality (in our opinion).

  • Sony a7iii
  • Sony G-Master F2.8 16-35
  • DJI Ronin S
  • DJI Mavic 2 Pro + Fly More Combo

Fixed Costs – $663.02

T-Mobile Phone Plan – $220.07

Google Fi – $221.19

Kara stuck with the T-Mobile Unlimited International plan because she can’t give up her iPhone. However, I decided to switch to Google Fi because it’s a lot faster than T-Mobile’s international service. Having separate carriers is increasing our overall phone bill, but neither of us are willing to budge from our position.

Health Insurance – $221.76

We switched to a new international health insurance plan this year: it’s called Safety Wing. It’s cheaper, but we haven’t actually had to use it, so I can’t tell you whether or not we recommend it.

Miscellaneous – $1040.31

This category is made up of expenses that didn’t fit into any of the categories above. Some little things like Spotify and Netflix, and a few bigger things like credit card annual fees.

Total Q4 Expenses – $28,207.28

Summary

Total Profit$87,686.53
Income
YouTube Ad Revenue$31,649.68
Patreon$10,285.51
Courses$9,758.00
Affiliate Income$21,530.62
Video Sponsorship$42.670
Total Income$115,893.81
Expenses
Transportation-$1,984.79
Accommodations-$4,357.51
Destination Expenses-$4,135.79
Business Expenses-$8,402.70
New Gear-$7,623.16
Fixed Cost-$663.02
Miscellaneous-$1040.31
Total Expenses-$28,207.28

That’s a wrap for our Quarter 1 income and expense report. These numbers continue to surprise us every quarter when I type them into the computer. If you find it hard to believe that we’re making this much money while traveling the world, you’re not alone. We pinch ourselves from time to time!

Thank you for all of your support. We couldn’t do it without you. I’d love to hear what you think about this report in the comments below!

Filed Under: income reports

Work With Us!

June 4, 2019 by Nate Leave a Comment

We have a number of new projects we’d like to get off the ground and many ideas of how we could improve our YouTube channel, blog, and courses if we had more help. It’s obvious that we have a wide range of talented people in this community. So, if you’d be interested in working with us, please check out the projects and tasks that we need help with at the link below.
Please fill out the form using the links below to apply. These are projects that we plan to work on throughout the year. So if you don’t receive a response immediately, that doesn’t mean you won’t hear back from us. We just don’t have the bandwidth to work on everything at once.

Graphic Designer

We have never been able to find a good affordable designer. If you’re a designer that would be interested in working with us on a project by project basis, please submit some examples of your work, and let us know your rate. We could use help on a wide range of projects from web design, to logo creation, to the overall branding. I’d love to find a jack of all trades who could be our go-to designer for all of the crazy ideas we dream up in the future.

I really like this company’s style of design, so if you have a similar style, you may be a good fit.

Click Here to Apply

Video Editor

We film over an hour of video footage almost every day. We could always use extra help editing. Do you want to help us edit our YouTube videos? Could you create 30-60 highly edited cut down videos for Instagram? Let us know how you could help and submit some examples of your work.

Click Here to Apply

E-book Editor

This is a one-time design gig. I wrote a 100-page e-book on travel hacking. It’s currently in a word document. I want to release it as a PDF with clean design and graphics that help illustrate strategies explained the book. If you’re interested in turning my ugly word document into a beautifully designed PDF, please submit examples of your past work, and let us know how much you would charge at the link below.

Click Here to Apply

Travel Hacking Writer

We are always looking to create more content to help others travel cheaper. If you’re an expert travel hacker, and you’d be interested in writing a blog post or longer form guide, we’d love to hear from you!

Here’s how it works: I’m not looking for someone to write blogs and guides that I tell them to write. Instead, I’m looking for content ideas and someone who can create the content. You pitch me an idea for a project, let me know how much you would charge, and if I like it, I’ll hire you to bring the project to life.

It could be anything, like a simple blog post, for example: Chase just released a new credit card, I can write a blog to tell people everything they need to know about the travel benefits offered by this new card.

Or a long form guide, for example: I would like to create a 20 page PDF guide that shows people all of the ways they can use miles and points to travel to Europe, and in the guide, I will highlight sweet spots from little known frequent flyer programs that will help people save tons of points when booking flights to Europe.

Click Here to Apply

Pitch Us A New Idea!

The more details you can share, the more likely we’ll to get back to you. For example, if you wanted to create a new intro for our YouTube videos. Explain the idea for the intro in as much detail as possible. Tell us how long it would take you. Send us examples of your work. Let us know what you need from us to make it happen. What would the next steps be if we decide to move forward? How much you would charge?

Here are a few examples:

I could create an epic intro for your YouTube videos that could be customized for each new country you visit.

I could create custom animations and animated maps for your videos that would make them stand out from all of the other travel videos on YouTube.

I’m a programmer, and I have an idea for an app that would revolutionize the way people travel. Let’s start a business together.

I make beautiful hand-made coffee cups, we should put your logo on them and sell them together.

I am a real estate developer. Let’s start a chain of Kara and Nate boutique hotels in your favorite destinations.

I work for the travel channel, I’d love to talk to you about hosting your own show.

It could be ANYTHING!

Click Here to let us know how we can work together

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Income & Expense Report | October – December 2018

March 30, 2019 by Nate 78 Comments

Income & Expense Report | October – December 2018

In Q4 of this year, we brought in over $100,000 from our YouTube channel and other related income streams! Yes, that feels as crazy for me to type as it does for you to read. However, it hasn’t always been this way. If this is your first time ever reading one of our income and expense reports, I suggest starting with the first one we ever published in July of 2016 (our total income was $603.26)

Now that we’re making what feels like a crazy amount of money from this business, I feel like it’s important to tell you why we started writing these reports in the first place and why I am continuing to write them (at least until we hit our goal of 100 countries).

When we first made these reports in our 6th month of full-time travel, the goal was to make enough money to cover our travel expenses so we could continue traveling. The purpose was to document that journey. We thought that if we were successful, maybe we could inspire some other people along the way to go after a crazy dream of their own.

When Kara and I used to tell people we traveled full-time, we’d almost always get the same response: “I wish I could do that.” At that point in the conversation, I would usually just bite my tongue. I realize that for some, full-time travel truly isn’t possible. But for most of the people who say “I wish I could do that,” they could if they really wanted to. Yes, some people would have to work harder than others, but most people could make it happen if they were willing to make travel a priority.

One of the selfish reasons we started these reports was to show people that we weren’t trust fund kids and to prove to them that travel doesn’t have to be expensive. We were sharing the exact numbers behind how 2 people could travel the world for a year for $35,000. The hope was that, down the road, we could also show how it was possible to start a business while traveling that would continue to fund our travels, but it was just a dream at that point.

Fast forward 3 years, and we can’t believe where that dream has taken us!

And because of this path we’ve found ourselves on, I feel like the purpose of these income and expense reports have shifted. When we started, I felt like the numbers we were sharing were very relatable to the average person who wanted to go and travel. We were writing as 2 broke newlyweds, and the reports proved that you didn’t need a lot of money to go travel.

Now, I feel like these reports have become much less relatable from a travel expense standpoint, and they aren’t serving their original purpose. I’ve been going back and forth on whether or not to continue publishing, and I’ve almost quit a couple of times. However, I’ve recently realized that these reports are now serving a different purpose that I never intended them to serve.

Based on the feedback I’ve received from the last few reports, these reports are inspiring others outside of the realm of travel to pursue whatever they’re passionate about. This is really special to me. I’ve known from the beginning that it’s not everyone’s dream to travel (I have family and friends who would hate living a week in our shoes). That’s why I’ve never wanted to preach “everyone should travel full-time or you aren’t living life to the fullest.”

I don’t believe that, but I do believe far too many people get swept up in the current of life and just end up wherever it takes them. Then, they look up one day and wonder how they got there. If I can inspire people to at least think about what they really want in life and encourage them to start pursuing it some way, I consider that a success.

So I am going to continue writing these reports (at least until we hit 100 countries) to show people a real-life case study about two people who went against the grain to pursue something they were really passionate about, and it worked out better than they ever could have imagined.

I think most people think you have to make a choice between pursuing your passion or making money. We’re proof that it doesn’t have to be one or the other. We didn’t go into this thinking we were going to start a successful business. We just wanted to have enough money to continue traveling. But because we started doing what we really enjoyed, and worked really hard at it, we’ve found ourselves somewhere we never dreamed of being.

This introduction has become much longer than I intended. So, in summary, I now hope these reports inspire people to work hard at pursuing their passion because you never know where it will lead.

So without further ado, let’s jump into the Q4 Income and Expense Report.

Thoughts on Quarter 4 of 2018

Wow! Last quarter we made really good money from our Vespa Tour, and I didn’t think we’d get anywhere close to our Q3 profit numbers any time soon. But somehow our Q4 profits got dangerously close to the profits we posted in Q3. Chalk this one up as another report that I write in disbelief.

This quarter we made more money from YouTube ad revenue than I ever dreamed possible. To put it into perspective for you, we had never made more than $5,000 in one month from ad revenue. In the month of December, we made over $20,000. It was a crazy feeling watching our ad revenue skyrocket when it felt like we were doing the exact same thing we always do… uploading videos.

It really was the perfect storm in the best sense of the phrase. Ad rates drastically increased around the holidays because all of the advertisers are competing for your attention. At the same time, our channel was growing faster than ever due to a semi-viral video of us riding a train. These two things collided at the perfect time to quadruple our ad revenue.

Spoiler Alert: I’m writing this in February 2019, and I can tell you that the phrase “easy come, easy go” is very accurate when describing our future ad revenue after this quarter 🙁

The other biggest contributor to this quarter’s financial success was Black Friday. We almost let it go by without a thought, but I had some free time on Friday morning so I decided to send out an email offering a discount on both of our online courses. A couple of hours later, I opened my inbox in disbelief. We had sold more courses than we had in months in a couple of hours. It seemed like every time I refreshed my inbox, there would be another sell. By the end of the weekend when the sale ended, we had sold over $16,000 in courses in 4 days making Black Friday my new favorite holiday.

In all seriousness, thank you so much to everyone who trusted us enough to purchase one of our courses. We worked really hard putting them together, and we hope you’re getting a ton of value out of them.

Those were the two biggest factors that led to the big growth in our income. Everything pretty much increased proportionally with our channel growth. That tends to be how it goes. When our channel is growing, so do our other income streams. When our channel growth is slow, all of our other income streams go down.

It’s a bit of a scary position to be in with YouTube. They have so much control, but we’re very thankful that they’ve liked us a lot over the last 3 months.

Ok, let’s dive into the details of the Q4 report!

Income Report

1. YouTube Ad Revenue – $45,649 (Change from Q3 +31,701.41)

As I said in the intro, there was a perfect storm that took our ad revenue to levels we never expected. As you can see from the spike in the chart, we had a video go semi-viral in early November. That video led to a lot of overall channel growth which allowed us to maintain ad revenue above $500 per day for most of November. Part of this was due to our channel growth, and part was due to advertisers increasing their ad rates around the holidays. It was a fun ride, but as you can see these rates weren’t sustainable. You can already see them dropping off as soon as the Christmas season ended.

2. Patreon & PayPal – $11,570.66 (Change from Q3 +$5,997.14)

Our Patreon revenue is directly tied to the number of videos we upload. When you set up a page on Patreon, you can choose to charge your patrons monthly or per video. We choose “per video” for this very reason.  We didn’t want our patrons to pay us anything if we weren’t creating new content. For example, we didn’t upload a video in July, so we didn’t make any money from Patreon that month.

It’s scary to build a business on top of a platform that you don’t own. So much of our success/failure is tied to the growth of our YouTube channel, and we have very little control over that growth. This is why we’re so grateful for our patrons! Thanks to their support, we know that no matter what YouTube decides, this is one consistent source of income that we can count on every month!

For those of you who aren’t familiar with Patreon, it’s an online platform that allows you to support the work of your favorite creators giving them a chance to continue working on their creations without having to worry about where their next meal is going to come from!

CLICK HERE to learn more about becoming a patron!

3. Course Sales – $22,911 (Change from Q3 +$11,453)

Without looking at the dates at the bottom, can you guess when we launched our Black Friday sale? (Haha).

I didn’t expect it to go so well, but looking back I think I know why we were able to sell so many. Our channel was going through a big growth period, and I think we had a lot of new subscribers who had never heard of our courses before. We don’t talk about these very often, so I think people learning that they exist + a generous Black Friday discount ended up being the perfect combination.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about… We’ve each created an online course to teach others the subjects where we have the most expertise. For me, that’s travel hacking, and for Kara, it’s video editing.

  1. 30 Days to Becoming a Travel hacker is a course I created to teach others the strategies I use to save thousands of dollars on flights and hotels.
  2. Kara’s Behind the Scenes Guide to Creating a Vlog is the course Kara created to let you watch over her shoulder and learn the exact methods she uses to create one of our travel vlogs.

4. Affiliate Income – $14,751.59  (Change from Q3 +$78.41)

  • Amazon – $1,159.61
  • Epidemic Sound – $3,000
  • Creditcards.com – $10,110.85
  • Audible – $210
  • ConvertKit – $44.10
  • Adobe – $227.03

The majority of our affiliate income comes from the ongoing promotion of companies we love such as Amazon, banks with awesome travel credit cards, and Epidemic Sound. It’s an awesome feeling to get rewarded for doing something we are already doing for free, recommending products we use and love.

The really exciting part about our affiliate income this quarter is that it should all be reoccurring. We didn’t do any special promotion this quarter. We just went about business as usual using the systems we already have in place, and we earned over $14,000. This income isn’t completely passive, but it’s really close.

I’m personally really excited about how well the credit card affiliate program is going. I have been teaching people how to use credit cards to travel for less for years now, and it’s awesome to be making good money from something I was already doing for free!

If you’d like help figuring out which travel credit card(s) to sign up for to maximize your rewards and savings, you can request a FREE consultation by clicking the button below!

Or you can check out our Top 10 Travel Credit Cards post that we update every month!

Our second largest source of affiliate income is Epidemic Sound. We get all the music for our YouTube videos through this service. It’s hard to find good music for YouTube videos. Kara used to waste hours of her life searching for music, and now she has a huge library of royalty-free songs to choose from! She loves this service, promotes it at the end of all of our videos, and we get paid anytime someone signs up for a free trial.

If you need music for YouTube videos, click here to check out Epidemic Sound!

Last but not least, Amazon also brought in a decent amount of affiliate income. The majority of our Amazon affiliate income is generated by people who visit the following pages where we recommend gear we use and love.

Our Vlogging Gear
Our Packing List
Keep Us on the Road

5. Sponsored Content – $9,000 (Change from Q3 +$500)

As our channel grows, we’re getting more and more opportunities to include sponsors in our videos. It seems like every day someone sends me an email asking us to review their product on our channel. We turn down the majority of these offers, but if the product/company meets our 3 criteria, then we entertain the idea of adding them as a sponsor.

  1. Can we get genuinely excited about the product/company?
  2. Is this something we think our viewers would be interested in knowing more about?
  3. Does the company value our platform, and are they willing to pay us enough money?

This quarter we published 37 vlogs, and only 4 of those videos were sponsored. We included one advertisement for Trade at the beginning of a video and one advertisement for Quip at the beginning of a video. The other 2 videos that were sponsored by PADI. The great thing about the PADI videos is that we would have filmed those anyway, and partnering with them allowed us to make even better content (at least that’s our opinion).

Total Q3 Income – $103,882.25 (Change from Q3 -64,450.56)

The pie chart above gives you a quick breakdown of how each revenue stream is contributing to our total income.

Expense Report

Transportation Expenses – $2,822.39

Normally, we save money on our transportation expenses using miles and points that we’ve saved up by applying for the best travel credit cards. However, this quarter we ended up paying for a lot of flights out of pocket for a couple different reasons.

First, I got a little lazy with the planning and ended up having to book a couple of last-minute flights around the holidays. At this point, award flights weren’t available, and flights were expensive, so it was a double whammy.

Second, we are normally flexible with our travel plans. We can choose to fly when award flights are available or when the flights are really cheap. However, there were a few times this month where we had to be certain places on exact days. So if award flights weren’t available, we just had to suck it up and pay for the flights that were available that day.

With that said, we did spend 5 weeks in Chiang Mai, so we didn’t move as much as usual. This helped keep our transportation costs around what we normally spend in quarter.

Accommodation Expenses – $2,977.38

For the past 2 quarters, our accommodation expenses haven’t been over $500 which is crazy! This has mainly been due to Airbnb credits that we had accumulated through people signing up for the service through our link. Unfortunately, about halfway through the year, we stopped receiving credits from Airbnb and they eventually dried, which is one of the reasons our accommodation expenses are higher than normal. We reached out to Airbnb about our links not working, but they said everything looked fine. I just have a hard time believing that we went from getting multiple referrals per week to 0 referrals ever. I digress.

If you’ve never signed up for Airbnb, and you want to help me test my theory, you can sign-up at the link below.

CLICK HERE to save $40 on your first Airbnb

Another thing that increased the expense of our accommodations was the 5 weeks we took off to work in Chaing Mai and another 3 weeks in Mexico. Normally, if we’re going to take this much time off we go home, but we couldn’t this year for tax reasons.

CityAccommodationsNightsCostMisc.
Total$2977.38
CanadaCampervan7$185.81Campgrounds
CanmoreCabin7$0Thank you Mark and Brian
SingaporeHotel1$0IHG Free Night Certificate
Chiang MaiAirbnb5$0Airbnb Credit
Chiang MaiApartment Rental30$913.95
Dominican RepublicResort2$273.20Project with PADI
TulumAirbnb17$841.28Partial Airbnb Credit
NashvilleHome5$0Stayed with Family
CancunAirbnb5$763.14

Destination Expenses – $3,572.89

This category is the money we spent while on the ground at each destination. This includes things like food, local transportation, and entertainment.

DestinationDatesExpenses
Total$3567.89
CanadaOctober 1 - 18$777.10
SingaporeOctober 19-20$63.51
Chiang MaiOct. 20 - Nov. 25$1293.71
Dominican RepublicNov. 26 - Dec. 4$107.99
TulumDecember 4 - 22$545.85
NashvilleDecember 22 - 27$570.82
CancunDecember 27 - 31$208.91

Business Expenses – $8,806.56

Each month we pay for several online subscriptions and other things to keep the vlog, blog, online courses, and email list running smoothly. I look at most of these expenses as “investments” instead of expenses because most of them are tools that enable us to make money. With that said, I may have gotten a little over zealous this quarter. Having 8 work weeks gave me plenty of time to brain storm new ideas and new strategies, and I bought online courses and softwares with the hope of implementing a few new things in the future.

Travel Hacking Wingman -$2,002.68
Benji used to be our partnerships manager, but his role has morphed into being my travel hacking wingman. Benji helps manage our travel hacking Facebook group for the students of my 30 Days to Becoming a Travel Hacker Course. He also helps me write travel hacking blog posts and give credit card consultations. I want to help as many people as possible travel cheaper using my travel hacking strategies, but I didn’t have enough time. So, I’m super thankful I’ve found a fellow travel hacker I trust to help me with the mission.

Video Editor – $397.83
After only publishing 20 videos in Q3, we knew something had to change. So we hired my sister to help rough cut videos. The goal was to save Kara some time in the editing process so that she could publish more videos. Unfortunately, it wasn’t working out as planned so we gave up pretty quickly. Even though my sister was doing a good job rough cutting the videos, by the time Kara watched the clips and got familiar with video, she didn’t end up saving much time.

Convert Kit – $2,849.50
The great email platform that we use to send emails to our list of 50,000+ people. Every year around black Friday, they offer a big discount for paying for the next year in full. Since we know the email list won’t be going anywhere, I went ahead and paid for it up front to save hundreds of dollars.

Teachable – $297
The platform where we host our courses – 30 Days to Becoming a Travel Hacker and Kara’s Behind the Scenes Guide to Editing a Vlog.

Premiere Pro – $98.28
The program Kara uses to edit our videos.

Google Service – $55.14
This is the money we pay Google for our email address every month so that we can look semi-professional.

Touchnote Postcard – $749.75
This is the service we’re using to send postcards to our patrons!

Epidemic Sound – $45
This is where we get all of our royalty free music for our YouTube videos!

TubeBuddy – $57
This service allows us to bulk edit the cards and end cards across all of our videos on YouTube. Basically, we pay $19 to avoid spending hours of our lives monotonously changing cards on our channel.

Godaddy – $386.47
This is the service we use to pay for our website, hosting, and SSL certificates. Plus, all of the other domains I buy when I think of a good business idea 😉

Equipment– $440.51
We bought the new GoPro Hero 7 for our diving trip in the Dominican Republic, and it’s the first GoPro we’ve ever enjoyed using.

Gleam.io – $49
This is the service we used to host our 400k Giveaway.

Fiverr – $42
I wrote a travel hacking ebook in November, and I used Fiverr to get 6 different cover options designed.

Facebook Ads – $48.87
I think there’s a huge opportunity to increase our business with Facebook ads so I was just running a few tests.

Click Funnels – $194
I’m trying to get more sophisticated with our landing pages and sales funnels, but so far I’m just wasting money with this complicated service.

Webinar Jam – $497
I had a grand idea to start hosting more webinars this year. So far I’ve hosted 0. I’m hoping since I paid so much for a webinar software it will motivate me to follow through we the idea sooner rather than later.

Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing Course – $169
I bought this course thinking I’d learn a lot about affiliate marketing, but as I should know by now, there’s no magic formula. You have to spend a lot of time putting in the work. I’m not saying the information in this course wasn’t good, it just wasn’t life-changing.

Giveaway Prizes – $294
This is the money we spent buying the prizes for the 400k Giveaway winner.

Shipping – $94.53
We couldn’t take the drone to Cuba so we had to ship it to St. Maarten.

StoryBlocks – $39
We were really excited to start including more stock video in our vlogs that helped tell a better story, but so far we’ve been disappointed with the selection.

Fixed Costs – $880.67

T-Mobile Phone Plan – $220.07

Health Insurance – $372

Google Fi – $288.60

It would be irresponsible to travel without health insurance, so we pay what feels like too much money for an international health insurance plan every month. We used the T-Mobile Unlimited International plan for the first 2 years of our travels. However, at the beginning of this year, I decided to switch to the Google Pixel 2XL and try out Google’s phone service called Google Fi. It’s a lot faster than T-Mobile’s international service, but having separate carriers is increasing our overall phone bill. So I either need to convince Kara to come to the Android dark side or jump back on the T-Mobile train with Kara. We’re currently at a stand still.

Miscellaneous – $472.29

This category is made up of expenses that didn’t fit into any of the categories above. Some little things like Spotify and Netflix and a few bigger things like credit card annual fees and birthday presents for friends and family.

Total Q4 Expenses – $19,527.18

Summary

Total Profit$84,355.07
Income
YouTube Ad Revenue$45,649
Patreon$11,570.66
Courses$22,911.00
Affiliate Income$14,751.59
Video Sponsorship$9,000
Total Income103,882.25
Expenses
Transportation-$2,822
Accommodations-$2,977.38
Destination Expenses-$3,567.89
Business Expenses-$8,806.56
Fixed Cost-$880.67
Miscellaneous-$472.29
Total Expenses-$19,527.18

That’s a wrap for our Quarter 4 income and expense report. These reports are getting more and more unbelievable. If you find it hard to believe that we’re making this much money while traveling the world, you’re not alone. We’re having a hard time believing it too! Thank you for all of your support. We couldn’t do it without you. I’d love to hear what you think about this report in the comments below!

Filed Under: income reports

Top 13 Must Eat Foods in Chiang Mai, Thailand

December 19, 2018 by Nate 13 Comments

Top 13 Must Eat Foods in Chiang Mai, Thailand

If you’ve just watched our Chiang Mai food video, and you’re wondering where you can find all of these mouth-watering foods, don’t worry! We’ve got you covered! If you’ve somehow managed to find our blog without seeing the video, check out the video below to learn more about all of these dishes. The blog post below is just going to tell you where you can find each dish and approximately how much it will cost.

Chiang Mai is probably our favorite city in the world. One of the biggest reasons we love this city so much is because it’s so easy to find incredibly delicious food with incredibly low prices to match! After living in the city for 5 weeks, these are the foods we found ourselves eating over and over again.

This is by no means a comprehensive guide to eating in Chiang Mai, and it’s a bit biased towards the Nimman area of the city because that’s where we stayed. However, if you’re visiting Chiang Mai, you should make it a goal to eat at all of the places on this list. I guarantee you won’t be disappointed!

Even if you only make it to one of the places, take a picture and tag us on Instagram @karaandnate! Nothing makes us happier than to see you guys supporting these local business owners and having an awesome experience in the process. 🙂

Khao Soi and Thai Tea at Khao Soi Mae Sai

Location (Nimman)

Massaman, Purple Pad Thai, and Fruit Smoothie from Anchan

Location (Nimman)

Fried Chicken from The Chicken Man

Location – Nimmana Haeminda Road 9 (somewhere close to the Lotus Express)

Chicken Tikka, Chana Masala, Naan

Location (Old City)

Banoffee at Fabulous Roasters

Location (Old City)

Tom Yum at the Maya Mall Food Court

Location (Nimman)

Laab at Labkai

Location (Nimman)

We forgot to take a picture of the Laab before we ate it. You’ll have to check out the video.

Mango Sticky Rice at Any Street Food Cart You Can Find

Location – Everywhere

We hope you found this guide useful! Don’t forget, if you visit one of these places, be sure to take a picture and tag us on Instagram @karaandnate!

Filed Under: Uncategorized

How Alec Used Travel Hacking to Save $3,000+ On His Honeymoon!

December 15, 2018 by Nate 5 Comments

How Alec Used Travel Hacking to Save $3,000+ On His Honeymoon!

A couple of months ago Alec posted the message below in our Travel Hacking Mastermind Facebook Group, and it made my entire week! The private Facebook group is a place where members of my travel hacking course can ask questions, share strategies, and celebrate traveling hacking wins like this one!

This one was too good to keep private. So, I asked Alec if he’d be willing to share the exact strategies he used to save over $3,000 on his recent honeymoon!

Enter Alec:

Hi, I’m Alec. I’m 27 years old from a small town in Indiana (1,200 people). I just got married on November 10th 🙂

I started travel hacking last year before I got engaged. I knew I wanted to plan a great honeymoon for my now wife, and I don’t make that kind of money to afford anything fancy and out of the county. We both love to travel and I wanted to do something special. I emailed Nate about it and told him why I wanted to take the course and if it was right for me. After he assured me that it would help out, I signed up for the class and started studying everything I could about travel hacking. I signed up for the Chase Sapphire Preferred card to use to buy the engagement ring.

I was a little hesitant about starting because I didn’t think I would be able to gain enough points to actually do anything meaningful, but Nate made me feel better through his email. The class showed me how to gain points quickly and efficiently.

I am currently on the trip that I booked with miles and points. For our honeymoon, we went to Greece. We flew from a small airport 20 minutes from my house to Athens with American Airlines. American Airlines runs offseason point discounts so it made the most sense to fly with them.

A round-trip ticket from Fort Wayne, IN to Athens, Greece would’ve cost $1,500 each. Each of our tickets cost 45,000 AA points + $150 for ROUNDTRIP!! So it cost me 90,000 AA points and $300 for both tickets instead of $3,000. That alone made the class well worth it.

Nate’s Note: You could easily earn 90,000 American Airline miles by signing up for 2 credit cards. There are currently 2 credit cards offering generous welcome bonuses worth 50,000 and 40,000 points (more details here). Plus, these points could be earned even quicker if both Alec and his wife signed up for the cards separately. Click here to learn how couples can maximize their miles and points.

I also signed up for the IHG card for our time at Athens. I used 75,000 IHG points to get 4 free nights in the Crowne Plaza in Athens, and I have lounge access due to my status from that card. One night in this hotel is about $110 so I saved another $440 using points. In the Philadelphia airport, we got to experience our first ever airport lounge because the United Mileage Plus card gives 2 free one time passes. We have been very spoiled on this trip for sure.

I earned a lot of my American Airlines points between two cards: The Citi American platinum card and the Barclays Red Aviator, and also the IHG card from Chase.

Nate’s Note: Find these cards and others I highly recommend here: Top 10 Personal Travel Rewards Credit Card Offers

I earned most the points just from everyday spending and paying bills. Also, since we were planning a wedding, there were other things to buy for that. I earned most of my IHG points while booking our fancy hotel in Santorini and the flights to Santorini and back to Athens.

I redeemed the points for the flights through the AA website and same with the IHG points. The class showed me how to do it and made it simple.

For anyone looking to take a similar trip, I’d like to think the way I did it was fairly smart and the right way to do it. It was with very little out of pocket. I also have a lot of United/Chase points sitting around so if you were travel hacking just to do one trip, then focus on one airline and get miles for that. I made sure I had enough for the trip and have been saving up for future trips as well.

If you want to follow my travels or just talk you can find me on Instagram @the.alec.betz or in the travel hacking group.

Exit Alec:

I want to publicly say a huge thank you to Alec for taking the time to write this up and share his exact strategies with you! Hopefully, this has inspired you to start planning a trip of your own! If you need help figuring out which travel credit cards will help you achieve your travel goals, click the button below to request a free personal consultation.

Filed Under: Travel Hacking

9 Hotel Credit Cards That Offer Free Night Certificates & How to Maximize Each One!

October 21, 2018 by Nate 9 Comments

9 Hotel Credit Cards That Offer Free Night Certificates & How to Maximize Each One!


Designed by Mrsiraphol

This page contains affiliate links, and we may receive compensation if you click on a link. You can read our full advertising disclosure here.

Last week, Kara and I redeemed a “free night certificate” that we earned through our IHG credit card for a free night at the Intercontinental Singapore. Rooms in this hotel usually cost between $400 – $500 per night, and we stayed there completely free!

For those of you who aren’t familiar with free night certificates, let me explain… Many hotel chains offer some form of free night certificates that can be redeemed for a free night at one of their hotels (usually with some restrictions). The easiest way to earn these free night certificates is by signing up for hotel credit cards.

After receiving such awesome value from our most recent free night certificate, it got me thinking… Which other hotel credit cards offer free night certificates, and how can I maximize the value of these free nights. After hours of research, I have compiled a list of 9 travel credit cards that offer free night certificates.

Most of the cards offer free nights on your cardmember anniversary. Basically what that means is you won’t receive the free night during the first year you sign up for the card, but every year when you renew your card membership by paying the annual fee, you’ll be rewarded with a free night. Many of the cards listed below are worth signing up for and keeping forever, because the value of the free night easily outweighs the value of the annual fee.

On the other hand, some credit card companies make you “earn” your free night by spending a certain amount of money on the card. The Hilton cards listed below are a good example of “earned” free nights.

Before you dive into the list, let me explain the 4 criteria I have listed for each card below.

  1. Annual Fee – This is the fee you must pay every year to renew your card membership.
  2. Free Night Details – This is what you need to do to earn the free night certificate.
  3. Free Night Restrictions – These are the restrictions you need to be aware of when redeeming the free night certificate.
  4. Maximize the Value of Your Free Night at These Properties: I took into account the restrictions of each free night certificate, and I listed 5 properties where you can use the certificate to get the maximum value.

If you find this post valuable and decide to sign up for a hotel credit card, you can support our work by using the links in this post to start your credit card application process. We’ll earn a commission that will motivate us to continue writing more helpful guides like this one 🙂

Without further ado, let’s jump into the list of awesome hotel credit cards that offer free night certificates!

Truly Free Nights (all you have to do is pay the annual fee)


Designed by Jannoon028

1. IHG® Rewards Club Premier Credit Card


Annual Fee: $89
Free Night Details: Receive 1 free night certificate each year after your account anniversary
Free Night Restrictions: Only valid at IHG® Hotels with a current point redemption level of 40,000 points or less
Maximize the Value of Your Free Night at These Properties:

1. InterContinental Fiji Golf Resort & Spa
2. InterContinental Bangkok
2. InterContinental Prague
4. InterContinental Doha, Qatar
5. InterContinental Aqaba, Jordan

2. Starwood Preferred Guest® Credit Card from American Express [Learn More]


Annual Fee: $95 (waived the first year)
Free Night Details: Receive 1 free night certificate each year after your account anniversary
Free Night Restrictions: Only valid at SPG/Marriott hotels with a current point redemption level of 35,000 points or less
Maximize the Value of Your Free Night at These Properties:

1. The St. Regis Bangkok
2. Four Points by Sheraton Manhattan Midtown West
3. The Ritz-Carlton Coconut Grove, Miami
4. JW Marriott Phu Quoc Emerald Bay Resort & Spa
5. JW Marriott Chicago

Search for other Marriott/SPG Hotels by category here.

3. Starwood Preferred Guest® Business Credit Card from American Express [Learn More]


Annual Fee: $95 (waived the first year)
Free Night Details: Receive 1 free night certificate each year after your account anniversary.
Free Night Restrictions: Only valid at SPG/Marriott hotels with a current point redemption level of 35,000 points or less
Maximize the Value of Your Free Night at These Properties:

1. The St. Regis Bangkok
2. Four Points by Sheraton Manhattan Midtown West
3. The Ritz-Carlton Coconut Grove, Miami
4. JW Marriott Phu Quoc Emerald Bay Resort & Spa
5. JW Marriott Chicago

Search for other Marriott/SPG Hotels by category here.

4. Marriott Rewards® Premier Plus Credit Card


Annual Fee: $95
Free Night Details: Receive 1 free night certificate each year after your account anniversary.
Free Night Restrictions: Only valid at SPG/Marriott hotels with a current point redemption level of 35,000 points or less
Maximize the Value of Your Free Night at These Properties:

1. The St. Regis Bangkok
2. Four Points by Sheraton Manhattan Midtown West
3. The Ritz-Carlton Coconut Grove, Miami
4. JW Marriott Phu Quoc Emerald Bay Resort & Spa
5. JW Marriott Chicago

5. Marriott Rewards® Premier Business Credit Card


Visit our credit cards page to compare cards

Annual Fee: $99
Free Night Details: Receive 1 free night certificate each year after your account anniversary.
Free Night Restrictions: Only valid at SPG/Marriott hotels with a current point redemption level of 35,000 points or less
Maximize the Value of Your Free Night at These Properties:

1. The St. Regis Bangkok
2. Four Points by Sheraton Manhattan Midtown West
3. The Ritz-Carlton Coconut Grove, Miami
4. JW Marriott Phu Quoc Emerald Bay Resort & Spa
5. JW Marriott Chicago

6. The World of Hyatt Credit Card


Annual Fee: $95
Free Night Details: Receive 1 free night certificate each year after your account anniversary. Plus, receive an additional free night if you spend $15,000 on the card during a calendar year.
Free Night Restrictions: Only valid at category 1-4 Hyatt hotels and resorts
Maximize the Value of Your Free Night at These Properties:

1. Andaz Costa Rica Resort at Peninsula Papagayo
2. Hyatt Centric Fisherman’s Wharf San Francisco
3. Andaz Xintiandi, Shanghai
4. Grand Hyatt Washington
5. Hyatt Residence Club Sedona, Piñon Pointe

7. Hilton Honors Aspire Card from American Express


Visit our credit cards page to compare cards

Annual Fee: $450
Free Night Details: Earn a free weekend night reward during your first year of card membership and every year after that. Plus, earn an additional free weekend night reward after spending $60,000 on the card in a calendar year.
Free Night Restrictions: When available, you can use your free night on Friday, Saturday, or Sunday at almost any Hilton Hotel except the ~40 properties that are on this list.
Maximize the Value of Your Free Night at These Properties:

1. Grand Wailea, A Waldorf Astoria Resort
2. Conrad Bora Bora Nui
2. Conrad Maldives
4. Conrad London St. James
5. Conrad Koh Samui

Free Nights That Require Work


Designed by Mrsiraphol

8. Hilton Honors American Express Ascend Card [Learn More]


Annual Fee: $95
Free Night Details: Earn a free weekend night reward when you spend $15,000 on the card in a calendar year.
Free Night Restrictions: When available, you can use your free night on Friday, Saturday, or Sunday at almost any Hilton Hotel except the ~40 properties that are on this list.
Maximize the Value of Your Free Night at These Properties:

1. Grand Wailea, A Waldorf Astoria Resort
2. Conrad Bora Bora Nui
2. Conrad Maldives
4. Conrad London St. James
5. Conrad Koh Samui

9. Hilton Honors American Express Business Card [Learn More]


Annual Fee: $95
Free Night Details: Receive 1 free night certificate each year after your account anniversary. Plus, receive an additional free night if you spend $15,000 on the card during a calendar year.
Free Night Restrictions: When available, you can use your free night on Friday, Saturday, or Sunday at almost any Hilton Hotel except the ~40 properties that are on this list.
Maximize the Value of Your Free Night at These Properties:

1. Grand Wailea, A Waldorf Astoria Resort
2. Conrad Bora Bora Nui
2. Conrad Maldives
4. Conrad London St. James
5. Conrad Koh Samui

Cool. That’s the end of the list. I hope you got a lot of value out of this post! If you did, don’t forget to use our links in this post when signing up for your next credit card. It supports the work we do because the credit card companies pay us a commission if you get approved. This enables us to continue writing more helpful guides like this one 🙂

Still not sure which travel credit card is right for you? We’re happy to help! Click the link below to request a free consultation.

Filed Under: Travel Hacking

Top 10 Small Business Credit Cards for Travelers – October 2018

October 15, 2018 by Nate 4 Comments

Top 10 Small Business Credit Cards for Travelers – October 2018

This page contains affiliate links, and we may receive compensation if you click on a link. You can read our full advertising disclosure here.

The miles and points we’ve collected from travel credit cards have easily saved us over $10,000+ in travel expenses, and they have enabled us to enjoy luxurious experiences like business class flights and luxury hotel stays that we otherwise wouldn’t have been able to afford.

Most people know, the quickest way to earn miles and points and “hack” your way to free travel is by signing up for travel credit cards. But most people only apply for personal credit card offers, and they don’t realize that they could also be earning points with small business credit cards.

Getting approved for a business card may be easier than you think, just check out this post. If you’re not applying for business credit cards, you’re missing out on a lot of value because many of these cards offer big sign-up bonuses and unique perks not found with personal cards.

If you’re ready to apply for your first (or next) business credit card, we’d love to help guide you through best current offers on the market. We’ve taken into account the welcome bonus, the spending bonuses, the additional perks, and the annual fees in order to bring you the top 10 small business credit cards for travelers.

If you still need help choosing a card after reading this post, we’d be more than happy to recommend a card (or two) for you! All you need to do is fill out this form.

Nate’s Note: Due to advertising restrictions, I am not allowed to link directly to any of these cards from this blog post. However, if you’d like to support our work, you can find the best offering of travel credit cards in the menu bar at the top of every page on our site, or use the link below. If you use any of these links, we will receive a commission, and we’ll be super grateful for your support 🙂

1. Ink Business Preferred℠ Credit Card

Current offer: 80,000 Ultimate Rewards points after spending $5,000 within the first three months.

Annual fee: $95

Why it’s great: When you redeem your points through Chase Ultimate Rewards, your points are worth 1.25 cents each which means the 80,000 point welcome bonus alone is worth $1,000 in free travel. You could also transfer your points to United, and after meeting the minimum spending requirement, you’d have enough points for a free roundtrip award flight from the U.S. to Asia!

This card ranks #1 because of the awesome sign-up bonus, but it also has great spending bonuses that will earn you even more points moving forward. You’ll earn 3x points on travel and other business expenses (including shipping purchases, internet, cable, phone services, and advertising purchases made with social media sites and search engines) up to $150,000 in spending each year.

Other benefits worth mentioning:

  • No foreign transaction fees
  • Cell Phone Protection up to $600
  • Points can be transferred to 5+ airlines at a 1:1 ratio
  • Points are worth 25% more when redeemed through Chase Ultimate Rewards

2. Ink Business Unlimited℠ Credit Card

Current offer: $500 Cash Back (or 50,000 Ultimate Reward Points) after spending $3,000 within the first 3 months.

Annual fee: $0

Why it’s great: The sign up bonus on this card is advertised as $500 cash back, but if you have another card that earns Ultimate Reward points (such as the Chase Sapphire Preferred, Chase Sapphire Reserve, or the Ink Business Preferred) you can turn your $500 cash back bonus into 50,000 Ultimate Reward points.

The 50,000 points you earn from the welcome bonus will be worth at least $500 in free travel, and if you have one of the cards mentioned above you can transfer the points to 8 airlines at a 1:1 ratio. The reason this card has earned the #2 spot is because it has an awesome sign-up bonus and a $0 annual fee. Plus, it earns 1.5% cash back on every purchase, which means it’s great for purchasing things that don’t fit into bonus categories on other credit cards.

Other benefits worth mentioning:

  • Purchase protection (covers new purchases up to 120 days)
  • Rental car insurance 

2.1 (tied for second) Ink Business Cash℠ Credit Card

Current offer: $500 Cash Back (or 50,000 Ultimate Reward Points) after spending $3,000 within the first 3 months.

Annual fee: $0

Why it’s great: This card offers the exact same benefits as the Ink Business Unlimited (mentioned above). The only difference is the bonus points you’ll earn on certain spending categories. Instead of earning 1.5% on every purchase, you’ll earn bigger bonuses spending money in certain categories and 1% on everything else.

5% on purchases at office supply stores and online, plus cable and phone services (up to $25,000 per year)

2% on purchases at gas stations and restaurants (up to $25,000 per year)

1% on all other purchases

The reason this card is tied for second with the Ink Business Unlimited is because I can’t rank one higher than the other without knowing where you spend the majority of your money. If most of your spending fits into one of the bonus categories mentioned above, definitely sign up for this card. However, if most of your spending doesn’t fit into one of these specific categories, sign up for the Ink Business Unlimited to earn 1.5% on all of your purchases.

Other benefits worth mentioning:

  • Purchase protection (covers new purchases up to 120 days)
  • Rental car insurance

3. Capital One® Spark® Miles for Business

Current offer: 50,000 miles after spending $4,500 in the first 3 months.

Annual fee: $95 (waived for the first year)

Why it’s great: The Capital One Spark Miles for Business is grabbing the #3 spot for its generous early spend bonus and 2x bonus for every $1 spent. The reason I love this card is it keeps everything super simple. You earn 2x points on every purchase. There’s no need to keep track of spending categories. Plus, the points are super easy to use. There’s no need to search for award flights that may or may not be available. Instead, each point is worth $.01 of free travel on any airline! 

If you don’t want to pick up the hobby of travel hacking, but you still want to get a ton of value from a new business credit card, this is the card for you.

Other benefits worth mentioning:

  • No foreign transaction fees

4. CitiBusiness® / AAdvantage® Platinum Select® World Mastercard®

Current offer: 70,000 AAdvantage miles after spending $4,000 in the first four months.

Annual fee: $99 (waived the first year)

Why it’s great:  70,000 American Airlines miles is enough for two round-trip tickets to the Caribbean or more than enough for a round-trip ticket to Europe. The main thing this card has going for it is this sign-up bonus. This probably isn’t the card you want to use for your everyday business spending unless you’re spending a lot of money with American Airlines (in which case you’ll earn 2x the points).

Other benefits worth mentioning:

  • No foreign transaction fees
  • Your first checked bag is free on domestic AA flights
  • You get preferred boarding on AA flights

5. Southwest Rapid Rewards® Premier Business Credit Card

Current offer: 60,000 Southwest Rapid Rewards after spending $3,000 on purchases in the first 3 months.

Annual fee: $90

Why it’s great: 60,000 is a very generous welcome bonus. Southwest points are worth roughly 1.4 cents each, which means the sign-up bonus alone is worth $840 in free Southwest flights. If you spend most of your time flying in or around the U.S.A., you’ll be able to get a ton of value out of this card. Plus, it’s a great way to earn 60,000 points towards the Southwest Companion Pass!

Other benefits worth mentioning:

  • No foreign transaction fees
  • 6,000 points every year after your cardmember anniversary (aka 6,000 points every year your keep the card and pay the annual fee)

6. United℠ MileagePlus Explorer Business Card

Current offer: 50,000 bonus miles after spending $3,000 in the first 3 months

Annual fee: $95 (waived the first year)

Why it’s great: United is currently my favorite frequent flyer program because I’ve found they have the best award space availability. This means the points are easier to use, and you usually have more options. This card is a great way to earn 50,000 United miles quickly. 

50,000 points is enough for 2 round trip flights within North America, and if you spend $10,000 on the card and rack up 60,000 total points, you’ll have enough points for a round-trip flight to Europe.

Other benefits worth mentioning:

  • 2 one-time use United Club passes that entitle you to United Club lounge access
  • Priority Boarding on United flights
  • Your first checked bag is free on United flights when you use your card to pay for the flight
  • Earn 10,000 bonus miles after spending $25,000 each year
  • No foreign transaction fee

7. Starwood Preferred Guest® Business Credit Card from American Express

Current offer: 100,000 after spending $5,000 in the first 3 months.

Annual fee: $95 (waived for the first year)

Why it’s great: 100,000 bonus points can be redeemed for a great stay at many Marriott or SPG properties, but what’s even more exciting to me is that the points can be transferred to 20+ airlines at a 3 to 1 ratio. Plus, you’ll get a 5,000-mile bonus for every 60,000 points you transfer. This means if you wait until you have 120,000 points saved up, you could turn those 120,000 points into 50,000 miles on 20+ airlines! 

In addition, every year you renew your card membership, you’ll be rewarded with a free night at any Marriott or SPG property (up to 35,000 points).

Other benefits worth mentioning:

  • No foreign transaction fees
  • Earn 6x points per $1 spent at Marriott and SPG properties 
  • Complimentary Silver Elite Status
  • Or spend $35,000 on the card in a calendar year and earn Gold Elite status

8. The Business Gold Rewards Card from American Express OPEN

Current offer: 50,000 Membership Rewards points after spending $5,000 in the first 3 months.

Annual fee: $175 (waived the first year)

Why it’s great: The 50,000 point welcome bonus is worth $500 in free travel. Plus, you’ll have the opportunity to transfer these points to a number of airline and hotel programs to potentially get even more value.

Additionally, if you value Membership Reward points, it’s not a bad card to use for everyday spending. You can choose to earn 3x per $1 spent from one of 5 categories (including gas stations), and you’ll continue to earn 2x from the remaining categories (up to $100,000 per year)

Other benefits worth mentioning:

  • No foreign transaction fees

9. The Hilton Honors American Express Business Card

Current offer: 125,000 Hilton Honors bonus points after spending $3,000 in the first three months.

Annual fee: $95

Why it’s great: This card packs in a ton of benefits, especially if you’re loyal to Hilton. To start, 125,000 points is a very generous welcome bonus. Plus, if you do spend money staying at Hilton properties, this will be the card you want to use because you’ll earn 12x points for every $1 spent with Hilton.

Just by signing up for the card you’ll get complimentary Hilton Gold Status. If you spend $15,000 on the card in a calendar year, you’ll get a free weekend night. And if you spend an additional $45,000, you’ll get a second free weekend night.

Other benefits worth mentioning:

  • Priority Pass membership that is good for 10 free airport lounge visits

10. Delta Reserve for Business Credit Card

Current offer: 70,000 bonus miles after spending $5,000 in the first 3 months

Annual fee: $450

Why it’s great: Although I don’t love Delta, this card does offer a great welcome bonus of 70,000 Delta SkyMiles, and it would rank higher if it wasn’t for the $450 annual fee. However, if you live near a Delta hub (Atlanta, Detroit, Los Angeles, New York, Seattle) and you own a small business, this card should be in your wallet. In addition to a great welcome bonus, you’ll also earn 10,000 Medallion Qualifying Miles which will put you closer to your next tier of status with the airline. Plus, you can earn an additional 15,000 MQMs and an additional 15,000 redeemable SkyMiles by spending $30,000 on the card in a calendar year! 

Also, if your home airport has a Delta Sky Club Lounge, you’ll want to grab this card because it will get you in for free!

Other benefits worth mentioning:

  • No foreign transaction fees
  • Priority Boarding
  • 20% off in-flight purchases

That wraps up our review of the top 10 small business credit cards for travelers. If you’re ready to start saving big on travel by strategically utilizing a small business credit card, click the button below to find the right travel credit card for you.

Filed Under: Travel Hacking

Income & Expense Report | July – September 2018

October 12, 2018 by Nate 47 Comments

Income & Expense Report | July – September 2018

In Q3 of this year, we brought in over $168,000 from our YouTube channel and other related income streams! Yes, that feels as crazy for me to type as it does for you to read. However, it hasn’t always been this way. If this is your first time ever reading one of our income and expense reports, I suggest starting with the first one we ever published in July of 2016 (our total income was $603.26)

Now that we’re making what feels like a crazy amount of money from this business, I feel like it’s important to tell you why we started writing these reports in the first place. It is NOT to brag about how much money we’re making. Trust me, when we first started sending out these reports, we were actually losing a lot of money!

There are three major reasons we started sending out these income and expense reports:

1. I (Nate) am a business nerd! I always wonder how much money people are making and exactly how they’re making it. I wish more people would transparently share their entrepreneurial journey; so that’s why I do it! When other people do it, I find it inspiring and incredibly interesting! So I hope you’re inspired or at least entertained when you read these.

2. When Kara and I tell people that we travel full-time, the response we get the majority of the time is, “I wish I could do that.” At this point in the conversation I usually just bite my tongue. I realize that, for some, full-time travel truly isn’t possible. But for most of the people who say “I wish I could do that,” they could if they really wanted to. Yes, some people would have to work harder than others, but most people could make it happen if they were willing to make travel a priority.

A couple of years ago, Kara and I made travel our top priority. We saved up money for over a year, we moved out of our apartment, we sold our cars, and we quit our jobs. Now we put in the work (almost) every day to be able to afford to continue traveling. We hope that by sharing this report each month, it will inspire some of you to go from “I wish I could” to “How could I.”

3. We’re not special, and we want you to remember that, no matter where this journey takes us. I feel like once people become “successful” it’s easy to think they’re “special,” and that’s why they were able to achieve success. Our hope is that by sharing this journey from the beginning you’ll be able to see that two regular people had a crazy dream and worked hard to make it a reality. In turn, we hope this will inspire you to dream a big dream and go after it.

Thoughts on Quarter 3 of 2018

Wow! Where do I start? This quarter’s report is a special one. Who knows, this could be the best income and expense report we ever post. Hopefully not, but it will be a hard one to beat moving forward.

In the quarters leading up to this report, our income from YouTube and other related activities had increased to a level we never expected. This quarter, we continued to maintain our normal revenue streams, and we hosted our first tour which turned out to be our biggest financial win in the last 3 years.

Hosting our first tour was a daunting task and a big risk. Once we committed to hosting the tour, my brain raced with “what if” scenarios. What if we can’t fill all of the spots? What if people drop out at the last minute? What if this costs way more than our budget? What if someone wrecks a Vespa? What if we’re terrible hosts? What if no one has fun?

Thankfully, I’m a very optimistic person, and I can dismiss those thoughts almost as quickly as they come to mind. There were 101 reasons this tour wouldn’t work, but thankfully we didn’t let those doubts hold us back from one of the most rewarding months of our lives (both personally and financially).

When you get further down into the report and you see how much money we brought in from the tours, you’re going to think, “Wow! They brought in that much money and got to spend a month driving around Italy on a Vespa and eating delicious food?”

At the risk of sounding like we’re complaining, I’ll keep this part short. Technically, yes. We got paid well to ride Vespas around Italy. But it wasn’t all sunshine, rainbows, and delicious Italian wine. We knew going into it that hosting the tours would be a lot of work, but nothing could have prepared us for how all-consuming and exhausting it would be to host 4 weeks of tours back to back.

The tours were a huge success, but that came at the expense of neglecting everything else in our lives for an entire month (including our main focus for the last 2 years: our YouTube channel). Going into it, we thought Kara would be able to edit for a couple hours every night, and the plan was to continue posting a couple videos per week.

That didn’t happen. We weren’t able to upload a single video during the month of July, and you’ll see below that several of our income streams were down due to the decrease in uploads. However, the income from the Vespa Tour more than made up for the dips in other areas.

This was a super interesting quarter, and we wouldn’t trade the experiences that we’ve had over the last few months for anything. Even if the Vespa Tour wouldn’t have worked out financially, it was rewarding in ways that we never expected. There’s something about connecting in person over a unique shared experience that creates a very special bond. We want to say a huge thank you to everyone that came and made the trip so special!

Ok, let’s dive into the details of this unique Q3 report!

Income Report

1. YouTube Ad Revenue – $13,947.59 (Change from Q2 -$1,661.75)

We saw a dip in ad revenue this quarter, but it actually wasn’t as bad as I expected considering we didn’t upload a single video in the month of July. When I realized there was no way we were going to have time to edit and upload videos during the Vespa Tour, I got really nervous that YouTube would punish us for not uploading for a long period of time. I fully expected to see a huge drop in both new subscribers and ad revenue.

Even when we weren’t uploading, our ad revenue stayed between $100 – $150 per day, and when we started uploading again it jumped back up between $175 – $250. It’s nice to have a library of 500 videos that can continue getting views and earning ad revenue even when we aren’t posting new videos!

Although our channel’s ad revenue faired better than expected, I do feel like we lost some momentum after not posting for a month. Before the Vespa Tour, our channel was growing around 1,000 new subscribers per day. Ever since the tour, our growth has slowed to 500 – 700 new subscribers per day. It’s hard to complain too much about 500 – 700 per day, but it’s not a good feeling to see your growth curve going in the opposite direction.

2. Patreon & PayPal – $5,759.04 (Change from Q2 -$2,621.97)

Our Patreon revenue is directly tied to the number of videos we upload. When you set up a page on Patreon, you can choose to charge your patrons monthly or per video. We choose “per video” for this very reason.  We didn’t want our patrons to pay us anything if we weren’t creating new content. Since we didn’t upload a video in July, we didn’t make any money from Patreon that month.

It’s scary to build a business on top of a platform that you don’t own. So much of our success/failure is tied to the growth of our YouTube channel, and we have very little control over that growth. This is why we’re so grateful for our patrons! Thanks to their support, we know that no matter what YouTube decides, this is one consistent source of income that we can count on every month!

For those of you who aren’t familiar with Patreon, it’s an online platform that allows you to support the work of your favorite creators giving them a chance to continue working on their creations without having to worry about where their next meal is going to come from!

CLICK HERE to learn more about becoming a patron!

3. Course Sales – $11,453 (Change from Q2 -$4,896)

Our course income dropped by almost 30% this month, but it’s not as bad as it looks. Last month Kara launched her editing course and sold over 50 in the first week which inflated our Q2 income.

I had suspected that our sale of online courses was closely correlated to our YouTube channel’s growth, and since our channel is growing more slowly after neglecting it during the month of July, I expected the drop in course sales to be more substantial.

Thankfully, this was our first full quarter of selling 2 courses, and I believe that’s what kept our income at about $10,000 for the quarter. We’ve each created an online course to teach others the subjects where we have the most expertise. For me, that’s travel hacking, and for Kara, it’s video editing.

  1. 30 Days to Becoming a Travel hacker is a course I created to teach others the strategies I use to save thousands of dollars on flights and hotels.
  2. Kara’s Behind the Scenes Guide to Creating a Vlog is the course Kara created to let you watch over her shoulder and learn the exact methods she uses to create one of our travel vlogs.

We do very little promotion for either course. My plan for Q4 is to create an email funnel for both courses that promote the courses to our new subscribers. I’m hoping that this will increase our combined sales to $5,000 per month (that’s the goal).

4. Affiliate Income – $14,673.18  (Change from Q2 +$2,316.76)

  • Amazon – $1,226.64
  • Epidemic Sound – $2,850
  • Creditcards.com – $7,172.64
  • TravelCon – $2,892.75
  • Audible – $165
  • ConvertKit – $44.10
  • Adobe – $322.05

The majority of our affiliate income comes from the ongoing promotion of companies we love such as Amazon, banks with awesome travel credit cards, and Epidemic Sound. It’s an awesome feeling to get handsomely rewarded for doing something we were already doing for free, recommending products we use and love.

This is where the income report really starts to get exciting! Of the $14,000+ we made from affiliates this month, over $11,000 should be reoccurring moving forward. The only one off promotion we did this month was for the TravelCon virtual ticket ($2,892.75).

This was our first full quarter being a part of a travel credit card affiliate program. Even with very little promotion, this program has become the biggest contributor to our affiliate income. Our biggest forms of promotion at the moment include our Top 10 Travel Credit Cards monthly posts, and our free credit card consultations.

If you’d like help figuring out which travel credit card(s) to sign up for to maximize your rewards and savings, you can request a FREE consultation by clicking the button below!

My goal is to continue producing more helpful travel hacking content and hopefully get our credit card affiliate income to over $5,000 per month by the end of the year.

Our Epidemic Sound affiliate income is still increasing. We get all the music for our YouTube videos through this service. It’s hard to find good music for YouTube videos. Kara used to waste hours of her life searching for music, and now she has a huge library of royalty-free songs to choose from! She loves this service, promotes it at the end of all of our videos, and we get paid anytime someone signs up for a free trial.

If you need music for YouTube videos, click here to check out Epidemic Sound!

Last but not least, Amazon also brought in a decent amount of affiliate income. The majority of our Amazon affiliate income is generated by people who visit the following pages where we recommend gear we use and love.

Our Vlogging Gear
Our Packing List
Keep Us on the Road

5. Sponsored Content – $8,500 (Change from Q2 +$5,000)

As our channel grows, we’re getting more and more opportunities to include sponsors in our videos. It seems like every day someone sends me an email asking us to review their product on our channel. We turn down the majority of these offers, but if the product/company meets our 3 criteria, then we entertain the idea of adding them as a sponsor.

  1. Can we get genuinely excited about the product/company?
  2. Is this something we think our viewers would be interested in knowing more about?
  3. Does the company value our platform, and are they willing to pay us enough money?

This quarter we published 20 vlogs, and only 1 of those videos was sponsored. We’re thankful that Audible saw enough value in our first sponsorship (in Q2) to sponsor a second video this quarter. I love listening to audiobooks, and it’s awesome that Audible is willing to pay us to recommend our favorites!

The biggest chunk of our “sponsorship” income came from a video that wasn’t even posted on our channel. We worked with Matador Network to make a video for GoRVing. The agreement was for us to travel to Maine and be the “talent” in the video, and post 2 Instagram photos promoting the final video when it was released on the Matador Network’s channel.

This was the most we had ever been paid for a sponsored video, and we didn’t even have to bother our audience (you) with an ad on our channel. It was awesome!

6. Vespa Tour – $113,000 (Change from Q2 +$113,000)

During the month of July, we hosted our first tour! It was exciting, fun, exhausting, stressful, and rewarding both emotionally and financially.

We conceived and planned this tour completely from scratch. When we originally had the idea for the tour, we didn’t know if anyone would be crazy enough to come on a tour planned by two YouTubers who had no clue what they were doing when it came to hosting a tour.

So, we were surprised when our tour sold out in less than an hour. We had originally only planned to host one week long tour, but we were encouraged by how quickly the first one sold out. So we opened up 2 additional weeks of tours that sold out within the month. Then our family and friends decided they wanted to come, so we planned a 4th week of the tour with them! In total, we hosted 4 weeks of tours with a total of 45 people.

When we originally sold the tickets we hadn’t fully planned the tour yet, and I had to do my best to estimate the costs. Thankfully, my estimates were decently accurate once everything was tallied up at the end of the tour. Although we spent a lot more than expected on some things, other things ended up costing less than we had budgeted.

The part that made the tour really special was also the reason it ended up being a big financial win for us. We planned and controlled every aspect of the trip, and we had (wonderful) friends and locals help out instead of hiring a professional company to oversee things like logistics and meals.

We didn’t do this to save money. We did it because we wanted our tour to be different from all of the other group tours. We wanted the people on the tour to connect with locals and have an experience that was authentic to the region.

Instead of hiring a professional tour guide, we hired a local college student who was knowledgeable about the region, but more importantly, super passionate about her hometown. Instead of hiring a professional chef, we had a local friend come to the villa and cook us authentic food that he grew up eating. Instead of meticulously planning out every aspect of the day, we left plenty of free time for people to go off on their Vespa and discover the area without a guide.

Hosting the Vespa Tour was one of the most rewarding experiences of our lives. Now that the tours are over, it feels like we have 30+ new best friends, and it was an incredible feeling to get to share one of our favorite places in the world with all of our new friends! If you came on the Vespa Tour and you’re reading this, thank you for making it such a special month.

There will probably never be another Vespa Tour, but we will definitely plan other tours. If you’d like to be the first to know when we announce our next tour, add your email below!

7. Speaking – $1,000 (Change from Q2 +$1,000)

A few weeks ago we gave our first talk ever at a conference. We were invited to speak about getting started on YouTube at TravelCon, which was NomadicMatt’s inaugural travel conference. We were super nervous before giving our first talk, but it went extremely well. I never thought I would enjoy public speaking, but it was a huge adrenaline rush and actually a lot of fun!

From a financial perspective, speaking at the conference didn’t really make sense. The $1,000 we got paid, didn’t even cover the cost of our flights from Kyrgyzstan ($1,400). So we actually ended up paying $400 to speak, and I probably spent close to 40 hours preparing for the talk.

With that said, we didn’t do it for the money. This was an opportunity for us to push ourselves outside of our comfort zones which I believe is the best way to grow as a person. And, hopefully, it put us in a position to give more talks down the road that could pay off financially (or at least give our brand more exposure).

Total Q3 Income – $168,332.81 (Change from Q2 +112,092.04)

The pie chart above gives you a quick breakdown of how each revenue stream is contributing to our total income.

Expense Report

Transportation Expenses – $3,648

Normally, we save money on our transportation expenses using miles and points that we’ve saved up by applying for the best travel credit cards. However, this month we ended up paying for a lot of flights out of pocket because we either 1. couldn’t find an available award flight or 2. it didn’t make financial sense to use our points.

We spent a lot of time in Central Asia this quarter, and it turns out that there aren’t a lot of award flights (flights you can book with points) available when traveling within the region. On top of that, there isn’t a lot of airline competition within the region which means flights aren’t cheap. So, we ended up spending more than usual on flights this quarter.

Plus, there were a couple times when award flights were available, but it actually made more sense to save our points and just pay for the flights. When I redeem frequent flyer miles, I try to get at least $.02 of value from each point. So, if I do the math, and I’m getting less than $.02 of value per point, I usually save my points and just pay for the flight. I’ll give you a quick example.

One way flights from Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan to Austin, Texas were $700. It would have cost 42,500 United miles for an award ticket, plus taxes and fees of $100. Below is the math I use to get the value per mile.

$700 (cost of a paid ticket) – $150 (taxes and fees of award ticket) = $550 (true savings of using frequent flyer miles)

$550 (true savings of using frequent flyer miles)/42,500 (frequent flyer miles needed for award ticket = $.0129 (value per mile)

Since I was only getting a value of $.0129 per mile, I just decided to pay for the tickets to Austin instead of using my frequent flyer miles. I hope that makes sense and wasn’t too confusing.

OriginDestinationTransportUSDMisc.
Total$3,648
ItalyMainePlane$0Matador Network Project
MaineItalyPlane$0Matador Network Project
ItalyGeorgiaPlane$726.29
GeorgiaArmeniaRental Car$398.43
GeorgiaAzerbijanOvernight Train$80
AzerbijanBishkekPlane$813.56
BishkekAustinPlane$1,418.52
AustinTylerCar$50
DallasVancouverPlane$161.2025,000 United Miles

Accommodation Expenses – $343.07

Our accommodation expenses seem to keep getting lower. It helps that we spent the month of July in Italy hosting the Vespa Tour. The villa that we stayed in definitely wasn’t free, but our accommodation costs were lumped in with the Vespa Tour expenses. Outside of the Vespa Tour, Airbnb credits we receive from referrals and a couple sponsored trips enabled us to keep our accommodation expenses crazy low this quarter!

CityAccommodationsNightsCostMisc.
Total$343.07
RipatransoneVespa Tour Villa34$0
MaineHotel5$0Matador Network Project
TbilisiAirbnb10$0Airbnb Credit
SighnagiGuest House2$30
SevanHotel2$50
VardziaGuest House1$15Redeemed Marriott points
SachkhereAirbnb1$0Airbnb Credit
TbilisiAirbnb2$0Airbnb Credit
BakuAirbnb1$0Airbnb Credit
AlmatyHotel1$44
Issyk KulHotel7$0Media for World Nomad Games
BishkekAirbnb8$45Airbnb Credit
TylerSister's Hosue3$0Thanks Kayla!
VancouverRV Park5$159.07

Destination Expenses – $2,376.49

This category is the money we spent while on the ground at each destination. This includes things like food, local transportation, and entertainment.

DestinationDatesExpenses
Total$2,376.49
ItalyJuly 1 - Aug 4$39.30
MaineAugust 4 - 9$119.68
Georgia/ArmeniaAugust 10 - 29$920.80
Azerbaijan August 30 - 31$38.37
Kazakstan September 1$94.67
KyrgyzstanSeptember 1 - 18$413.07
AustinSeptember 19 - 22$53.83
TylerSeptember 22 - 25$183.96
Vancouver September 25 - 30$512.81

Business Expenses – $3,208.80

Each month we pay for several online subscriptions and other things to keep the vlog, blog, online courses, and email list running smoothly. I look at most of these expenses as “investments” instead of expenses because most of them are tools that enable us to make money.

Partnerships Manager – $1,019.75
In addition to helping us secure partnerships, Benji also manages our private travel hacking Facebook group, writes blog posts, and helps with credit card consultations.  I guess it’s time to think about updating his title…

Video Editor – $601.60
For the first time ever, we hired an editor to help rough cut our videos in an effort to cut down on Kara’s editing time so we can start uploading more consistently. Kara would like me to make it VERY CLEAR that she still edits our videos. Our new editor just cuts off the unusable stuff at the beginning and end of every clip and then adds the clips to the timeline in Premiere Pro. This usually saves Kara a couple hours of time, but she’s still doing all of the real editing and crafting the overall story of the video.

Convert Kit – $0 (paid upfront yearly)
The great email platform that we use to send emails to our email list of 25,000+ people

Teachable – $297
The platform where I host my course “30 Days to Becoming a Travel Hacker”, “The Mistake Fare Manual”, and now Kara’s new editing course.

Premiere Pro – $98.28
The program Kara uses to edit our videos

Google Service – $49.17
This is the money we pay Google for our email address every month so that we can look semi-professional.

Touchnote Postcard – $299.90
This is the service we’re using to send postcards to our patrons!

Epidemic Sound – $45
This is where we get all of our royalty free music for our YouTube videos!

TubeBuddy – $57
This service allows us to bulk edit the cards and end cards across all of our videos on YouTube. Basically, we pay $19 to avoid spending hours of our lives monotonously changing cards on our channel.

Godaddy – $92.05
This is the service we use to pay for our website and all of the other domains I buy when I think of a good business idea 🙂

Equipment– $649.05
We had to invest in some new backpacks, hard drives, and other miscellaneous things this quarter.

Fixed Costs – $1,010.09

T-Mobile Phone Plan – $219.05

Health Insurance – $558

Google Fi – $233.04

It would be irresponsible to travel without health insurance, so we pay what feels like too much money for an international health insurance plan every month. We used the T-Mobile Unlimited International plan for the first 2 years of our travels. However, at the beginning of this year, I decided to switch to the Google Pixel 2XL and try out Google’s phone service called Project Fi. It’s a lot faster T-Mobile’s international service, but having separate carriers is increasing our overall phone bill. So I either need to convince Kara to come to the Android dark side or jump back on the T-Mobile train with Kara.

Miscellaneous – $550.31

This category is made up of expenses that didn’t fit into any of the categories above. Some little things like Spotify and Netflix and a few bigger things like credit card annual fees and birthday presents for friends and family.

Vespa Tour- $66,215.45

I’m not going to try and break this category down in detail. That needs an entire expense report of its own. Instead, I’ll just give you the total cost of running the Vespa Tour all lumped together.

Total Q2 Expenses – $11,136.76 + 66.215.45 = $77,352.21

Summary

Total Profit$90,980.60
Income
YouTube Ad Revenue$13,947.59
Patreon5,759.04
Courses$11,453
Affiliate Income$14,673.18
Speaking$1,000
Video Sponsorship$8,500
Vespa Tour$113,000
Total Income168,332.81
Expenses
Transportation-$3,648
Accommodations-$343.07
Destination Expenses-$2,376.49
Business Expenses-$3,208.80
Fixed Cost-$1,010.09
Miscellaneous-$550.31
Vespa Tour-$66,215.45
Total Expenses-$77,352.21

“Savings”

This is how much money we saved this month thanks to partnerships, frequent flyer miles, and referrals. This is just a fun vanity metric to calculate. If you love numbers like me, it’s fun to look at how much money this quarter “should have” cost us.

Frequent Flyer Miles – $650

Before Kara and I left to travel full-time, we saved up almost 2 million miles and points! We’ve used these miles and points to save over $25,000 on travel expenses. If you want to learn how to do the same check out my course 30 Days to Becoming a Travel Hacker!

This quarter we only put our frequent flyer miles to use once. We redeemed 25,000 United miles for a last minute flight from Dallas to Vancouver. These flights would have cost us over $800, but instead they were only $150 in taxes and fees. They would have been even cheaper, but we had to pay a fee for booking them at the last minute.

Airbnb Credits – $1,167.40

When someone signs up for Airbnb using our link, they save $40 on their first stay. Plus, we get between $20 – $40 when that person completes their first trip!

It’s a win-win, and we wanted to say thank you to everyone who has signed up and taken a trip using our link!

If you want to save $40 on your first Airbnb stay, click the link below to create an account!

CLICK HERE to save $40 on your first Airbnb

Partnerships – $4,500

Every month our YouTube channel gets over 3,000,000 views, which gives us opportunities to partner with companies for free experiences/accommodations in return for featuring them in our videos. Below are partnership exchanges we participated in this quarter.

Maine Trip (Including Flights) – $3,500

World Nomad Games – $1,000

Total “Savings” – $6,317.40

That’s a wrap for our Quarter 3 income and expense report. These reports are getting more and more unbelievable. If you find it hard to believe that we’re making this much money while traveling the world, you’re not alone. We’re having a hard time believing it too! Thank you for all of your support. We couldn’t do it without you. I’d love to hear what you think about this report in the comments below!

Filed Under: income reports

Top 10 Personal Travel Rewards Credit Card Offers for October 2018

October 8, 2018 by Nate 7 Comments

Top 10 Personal Travel Rewards Credit Card Offers for October 2018

This page contains affiliate links, and we may receive compensation if you click on a link. You can read our full advertising disclosure here.

The miles and points we’ve collected from travel credit cards have easily saved us over $10,000+ in travel expenses, and they have enabled us to enjoy luxurious experiences like business class flights and luxury hotel stays that we otherwise wouldn’t have been able to afford.

We believe a good travel credit card (or a few) is a tool that all financially responsible travelers should be using. However, knowing which travel credit card(s) to apply for can be confusing.

Between restrictions like Chase’s 5/24 rule and some bonus offers being available for only a limited-time, it’s important to strategize the time and order in which you sign up for new credit cards. To help you prioritize your credit card sign-ups, we want to share a post with you every month with what we believe are the top credit card offers on the market. Since we’re covering what we consider to be the best offers — not just limited time offers — some of the cards on this list may remain consistent from month to month.

If you still need help choosing a card after reading this post, we’d be more than happy to recommend a card (or two) for you! All you need to do is fill out this form.

Nate’s Note: Due to advertising restrictions, I am not allowed to link directly to any of these cards from this blog post. However, if you’d like to support our work, you can find the best offering of travel credit cards in the menu bar at the top of every page on our site or by using the link below. If you use any of these links, we will receive a commission, and we’ll be super grateful for your support 🙂

1. Chase Sapphire Reserve®

Current offer: 50,000 Ultimate Rewards points after spending $4,000 within the first three months.

Annual fee: $450

Why it’s great: The incredible travel rewards you’ll earn from this card more than makeup for the high annual fee. To start, you’ll get a $300 travel credit every year that’s super easy to use. This basically brings the annual fee down to $150. Our favorite perk is the free Priority Pass membership that gets the card holder and up to 2 guests free access to over 1,000+ airline lounges around the world! If you’ve ever watched our Youtube videos, you know we put this benefit to use almost every time we travel. We would gladly pay $150 for this membership every year! Plus, when you have this card, your Chase Ultimate Reward points are worth more when redeemed through the Chase Travel Portal. The points are worth 1.5 cents each. So your 50,000 bonus points are worth $750 in free travel! Or you can also transfer your points at a 1:1 ratio to the following airlines: United, Singapore, British Airways, Korean, Southwest, and Virgin Atlantic.

*** Chase Bank only allows you to sign up for one Sapphire card. So you have to choose between the Sapphire Reserve (mentioned above) and the Sapphire Preferred (mentioned below). For serious travelers who will benefit from the lounge access, $300 travel credit, and increased value of the Ultimate Reward points, I would highly recommend signing up for the Reserve (this card) over the Preferred.

Other benefits worth mentioning:

  • No foreign transaction fees
  • 3x points on travel and dining purchases
  • $100 application credit for Global Entry or TSA Precheck
  • Lost luggage reimbursement
  • Car rental insurance
  • Travel accident insurance

2. Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card

Current offer: 50,000 Ultimate Rewards points after spending $4,000 within the first three months, plus an additional 5,000 Ultimate Rewards points when you add an authorized user to the card who makes a purchase within the first three months.

Annual fee: $95 (waived the first year)

Why it’s great: This card consistently ranks in the top 3 best travel credit cards for it’s generous 50,000 point sign-up bonus and the flexibility with which you can use those points. After meeting the minimum spending requirement, you’ll receive 50,000 Ultimate Reward points which can be redeemed for $625 worth of free flights when booking through the Chase travel portal. Or, if you want to get even more value out of your points, you can transfer them to the following airlines: United, Singapore, British Airways, Korean, Southwest, or Virgin Atlantic.

Other benefits worth mentioning:

  • No foreign transaction fees
  • 2x points on travel and dining purchases
  • Trip cancellation insurance
  • Travel accident insurance
  • Car rental insurance
  • Zero fraud liability

3. Citi ThankYou® Premier Card

Current offer: 60,000 ThankYou points after spending $4,000 within the first three months.

Annual fee: $95 (waived the first year)

Why it’s great: This card’s sign-up bonus has been increased to 60,000 points for the first time ever! You can transfer Citi ThankYou points to 12 different airlines, or you can redeem them for flights any time on any airline through the ThankYou Travel Center. ThankYou you points can be redeemed through the Travel Center for 1.25 cents each. This means the increased sign up bonus is worth $750 in free travel!

Other benefits worth mentioning:

  • No foreign transaction fees
  • 3x points on travel (including gas stations!)
  • 2x points on dining & entertainment
  • Travel accident insurance
  • Car rental insurance
  • Lost Luggage Insurance

4. The Platinum Card® from American Express

Current offer: 60,000 Membership Rewards after spending $5,000 in the first three months.

Annual fee: $550

Why it’s great: The Platinum Card has the highest annual fee of any of the cards on this list, but it also offers some of the best benefits. Depending on your travel habits, this card could offer more value than other cards on this list. To start, you have the 60,000 point welcome bonus which is worth $600 in free travel when redeemed through the Membership Rewards travel portal. Alternatively, you can get way more value out of your points by transferring them to one of the following airlines: Delta, British Airways, Air Canada, Air France, Singapore, Etihad, and more.

If you use your Platinum Card strategically, you can get up to $400 in travel credits each year! It comes with a $200 airline fee credit (good for one airline that you choose at the beginning of the year), and a $200 Uber credit that gets reimbursed to your card in monthly increments of $15 (plus a $20 bonus in December).

Our favorite benefit of the Platinum Card is the lounge access. In addition to free Priority Pass membership that will get you into over 1,000 airport lounges around the world, you also get access to American Express’s Centurion Lounges! These lounges are by far our favorite domestic airport lounges! The food is always incredible, and some of them even offer free massages!

Other benefits worth mentioning:

  • Earn 5x points on flights booked with airlines or American Express Travel
  • Earn 5x points on hotels booked on amextravel.com

5. AAdvantage® Aviator® Red World Elite Mastercard®

Current offer: 60,000 AAdvantage miles after making your first purchase and paying the annual fee within the first 90 days of card membership.

Annual fee: $95

Why it’s great: It’s very rare to see a 60,000 point welcome bonus that’s awarded when you make your first purchase on the card. Similar cards require spending $3,000 on the card in order to receive the bonus miles. Plus, 60,000 AAdvantage miles is enough for a round-trip ticket to Europe! 

If you’re approved for the card, you’re basically paying $95 for a round-trip ticket to Europe (assuming you can find an available award ticket)!

Other benefits worth mentioning:

  • Your first checked bag is FREE on domestic AA flights
  • No foreign transaction fees
  • Priority Boarding
  • 10% of your redeemed miles back
  • Earn $3,000 Elite Qualifying Dollars after spending $25,000 in a calendar year

6. Citi® / AAdvantage® Platinum Select® World Elite™ Mastercard®

Current offer: 50,000 AAdvantage miles after spending $2,500 in the first three months.

Annual fee: $99 (waived the first year)

Why it’s great:  50,000 American Airlines miles is enough for two round trip tickets inside of the U.S.A. Once you meet the minimum spending requirement, you’ll almost have enough frequent flyer miles for a round-trip ticket to Europe (60,000)! Plus, the annual fee is waived for the first year which makes this an awesome opportunity to earn 50,000 AA miles for $0 in fees!

Other benefits worth mentioning:

  • No foreign transaction fees
  • Your first checked bag is free on domestic AA flights
  • You get preferred boarding on AA flights

7. United℠ Explorer Card

Current offer: 40,000 bonus miles after spending $2,000 in the first three months. Earn an additional 5,000 miles after adding an authorized user to your account who makes a purchase with your card in the first 3 months as a cardmember.

Annual fee: $95 (waived the first year)

Why it’s great: United is currently my favorite frequent flyer program because I’ve found they have the best award space availability. This means the points are easier to use, and you usually have more options. This card is a great way to earn 40,000 United miles quickly. 

Other benefits worth mentioning:

  • $100 rebate on Global Entry/TSA PreCheck application fees
  • 2 one-time use United Club passes that entitle you to United Club lounge access
  • Priority Boarding on United flights
  • Your first checked bag is free on United flights when you use your card to pay for the flight

8. British Airways Visa Signature® Card

Current offer: 50,000 British Airways Avios after spending $3,000 within three months from the account opening. Plus, if you’re a big spender, you can earn an additional 25,000 points after spending $10,000 during your first year of card membership, and another 25,000 point bonus (for a total of 100,000) if you spend $20,000 in the first year of card membership.

Annual fee: $95

Why it’s great: You can get a ton of value out of British Airways Avios if you learn how to strategically redeem them using British Airways’ distance based award chart. For example, if you wanted to fly from Nashville to Dallas on American Airlines (a One World Partner), you would only need to pay 6,500 Avios each way. So with the 50,000 Avios you’d earn from the sign-up bonus, you could fly from Nashville to Dallas 7 times!

Other benefits worth mentioning:

  • No foreign transaction fees
  • Earn a companion ticket after spending $30,000 in a calendar year
  • Lost luggage reimbursement
  • Car rental insurance
  • Travel accident insurance
  • Trip cancelation insurance

9. Barclaycard Arrival® Plus World Elite Mastercard®

Current offer: 60,000 Barclay Arrival miles after spending $5,000 in the first 90 days and paying the annual fee.

Annual fee: $89

Why it’s great: If you need a card with super flexible rewards, this is the card for you! Arrival miles are worth 1 cent each when redeemed for travel so the 60,000 point sign up bonus is worth $600 in free travel. When you take into account the $89 annual fee you have to pay, you still come out on top by $511! 

Arrival Miles are super easy to use. All you have to do is pay for travel using your card, then you can go into your online account and use your points to erase the charge within 120 days of making the purchase.

Other benefits worth mentioning:

  • Get 5% miles back every time you redeem your miles
  • No foreign transaction fees
  • International chip and PIN for use at self-service terminals around the world
  • Lost luggage reimbursement
  • Car Rental Insurance

That wraps up our review of the top 10 best personal travel credit card offers for the month of September. If you’re ready to start saving big on travel by using credit card rewards, click the button below to find the right travel credit card for you.

10. Capital One® Venture® Rewards Credit Card

Current offer: 50,000 bonus miles after spending $3,000 in the first three months.

Annual fee: $95 (waived the first year)

Why it’s great: If you want to keep your credit card strategy super simple, but still save a ton of money on travel, this is the card for you. To start, you’ll earn a 50,000 point early spend bonus that is worth $500 in free travel. Moving forward, you’ll earn 2x points on every purchase without having to worry about bonus/rotating categories. When it comes time to redeem your points, it’s super simple. All you have to do is make a travel purchase using your card. Then, you have 90 days to log in to your account and erase that purchase using your points!

Other benefits worth mentioning:

  • $100 rebate on Global Entry/TSA PreCheck application fees
  • No foreign transaction fees
  • Use your points on any airline
  • Earn 10x points when you book your hotel on hotels.com/venture

 

Filed Under: Travel Hacking

Top 10 Personal Travel Rewards Credit Card Offers for September 2018

September 15, 2018 by Nate 4 Comments

Top 10 Personal Travel Rewards Credit Card Offers for September 2018

This page contains affiliate links, and we may receive compensation if you click on a link. You can read our full advertising disclosure here.

The miles and points we’ve collected from travel credit cards have easily saved us over $10,000+ in travel expenses, and they have enabled us to enjoy luxurious experiences like business class flights and luxury hotel stays that we otherwise wouldn’t have been able to afford.

We believe a good travel credit card (or a few) is a tool that all financially responsible travelers should be using. However, knowing which travel credit card(s) to apply for can be confusing.

Between restrictions like Chase’s 5/24 rule and some bonus offers being available for only a limited-time, it’s important to strategize the time and order in which you sign up for new credit cards. To help you prioritize your credit card sign-ups, we want to share a post with you every month with what we believe are the top credit card offers on the market. Since we’re covering what we consider to be the best offers — not just limited time offers — some of the cards on this list may remain consistent from month to month.

If you still need help choosing a card after reading this post, we’d be more than happy to recommend a card (or two) for you! All you need to do is fill out this form.

Nate’s Note: Due to advertising restrictions, I am not allowed to link directly to any of these cards from this blog post. However, if you’d like to support our work, you can find the best offering of travel credit cards in the menu bar at the top of every page on our site or using the link below. If you use any of these links, we will receive a commission, and we’ll be super grateful for your support 🙂

1. Chase Sapphire Reserve®

Current offer: 50,000 Ultimate Rewards points after spending $4,000 within the first three months.

Annual fee: $450

Why it’s great: The incredible travel rewards you’ll earn from this card more than makeup for the high annual fee. To start, you’ll get a $300 travel credit every year that’s super easy to use. This basically brings the annual fee down to $150. Our favorite perk is the free Priority Pass membership that gets the card holder and up to 2 guests free access to over 1,000+ airline lounges around the world! If you’ve ever watched our Youtube videos, you know we put this benefit to use almost every time we travel. We would gladly pay $150 for this membership every year! Plus, when you have this card, your Chase Ultimate Reward points are worth more when redeemed through the Chase Travel Portal. The points are worth 1.5 cents each. So your 50,000 bonus points are worth $750 in free travel! Or you can also transfer your points at a 1:1 ratio to the following airlines: United, Singapore, British Airways, Korean, Southwest, and Virgin Atlantic.

*** Chase Bank only allows you to sign up for one Sapphire card. So you have to choose between the Sapphire Reserve (mentioned above) and the Sapphire Preferred (mentioned below). For serious travelers who will benefit from the lounge access, $300 travel credit, and increased value of the Ultimate Reward points, I would highly recommend signing up for the Reserve (this card) over the Preferred.

Other benefits worth mentioning:

  • No foreign transaction fees
  • 3x points on travel and dining purchases
  • $100 application credit for Global Entry or TSA Precheck
  • Lost luggage reimbursement
  • Car rental insurance
  • Travel accident insurance

2. Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card

Current offer: 50,000 Ultimate Rewards points after spending $4,000 within the first three months, plus an additional 5,000 Ultimate Rewards points when you add an authorized user to the card who makes a purchase within the first three months.

Annual fee: $95 (waived the first year)

Why it’s great: This card consistently ranks in the top 3 best travel credit cards for it’s generous 50,000 point sign-up bonus and the flexibility with which you can use those points. After meeting the minimum spending requirement, you’ll receive 50,000 Ultimate Reward points which can be redeemed for $625 worth of free flights when booking through the Chase travel portal. Or, if you want to get even more value out of your points, you can transfer them to the following airlines: United, Singapore, British Airways, Korean, Southwest, or Virgin Atlantic.

Other benefits worth mentioning:

  • No foreign transaction fees
  • 2x points on travel and dining purchases
  • Trip cancellation insurance
  • Travel accident insurance
  • Car rental insurance
  • Zero fraud liability

3. Citi ThankYou® Premier Card

Current offer: 60,000 ThankYou points after spending $4,000 within the first three months.

Annual fee: $95 (waived the first year)

Why it’s great: This card’s sign-up bonus has been increased to 60,000 points for the first time ever! You can transfer Citi ThankYou points to 12 different airlines, or you can redeem them for flights any time on any airline through the ThankYou Travel Center. ThankYou you points can be redeemed through the Travel Center for 1.25 cents each. This means the increased sign up bonus is worth $750 in free travel!

Other benefits worth mentioning:

  • No foreign transaction fees
  • 3x points on travel (including gas stations!)
  • 2x points on dining & entertainment
  • Travel accident insurance
  • Car rental insurance
  • Lost Luggage Insurance

4. The Platinum Card® from American Express

Current offer: 60,000 Membership Rewards after spending $5,000 in the first three months.

Annual fee: $550

Why it’s great: The Platinum Card has the highest annual fee of any of the cards on this list, but it also offers some of the best benefits. Depending on your travel habits, this card could offer more value than other cards on this list. To start, you have the 60,000 point welcome bonus which is worth $600 in free travel when redeemed through the Membership Rewards travel portal. Alternatively, you can get way more value out of your points by transferring them to one of the following airlines: Delta, British Airways, Air Canada, Air France, Singapore, Etihad, and more.

If you use your Platinum Card strategically, you can get up to $400 in travel credits each year! It comes with a $200 airline fee credit (good for one airline that you choose at the beginning of the year), and a $200 Uber credit that gets reimbursed to your card in monthly increments of $15 (plus a $20 bonus in December).

Our favorite benefit of the Platinum Card is the lounge access. In addition to free Priority Pass membership that will get you into over 1,000 airport lounges around the world, you also get access to American Express’s Centurion Lounges! These lounges are by far our favorite domestic airport lounges! The food is always incredible, and some of them even offer free massages!

Other benefits worth mentioning:

  • Earn 5x points on flights booked with airlines or American Express Travel
  • Earn 5x points on hotels booked on amextravel.com

5. Citi® / AAdvantage® Platinum Select® World Elite™ Mastercard®

Current offer: 50,000 AAdvantage miles after spending $2,500 in the first three months.

Annual fee: $99 (waived the first year)

Why it’s great:  50,000 American Airlines miles is enough for two round trip tickets inside of the U.S.A. Once you meet the minimum spending requirement, you’ll almost have enough frequent flyer miles for a round-trip ticket to Europe (60,000)! Plus, the annual fee is waived for the first year which makes this an awesome opportunity to earn 50,000 AA miles for $0 in fees!

Other benefits worth mentioning:

  • No foreign transaction fees
  • Your first checked bag is free on domestic AA flights
  • You get preferred boarding on AA flights

6. Gold Delta SkyMiles® Credit Card

Current offer (no longer available): 60,000 Delta SkyMiles and 10,000 Medallion Qualification Miles after spending $3,000 in the first 3 months.

Annual fee: $95 (waived first year)

Why it’s great: 60,000 is a very generous welcome bonus for an airline credit card. I personally don’t make it a point to earn Delta SkyMiles because I’ve found their award availability to be the worst of the three major U.S. airlines. However, if you live near a Delta hub (Atlanta, Detroit, Los Angeles, New York, Seattle) this card could be a great choice for you.

Delta has done away with their award chart, so you have to search on the website to find the exact price (in miles) for a flight. In most cases, 60,000 will be enough for a round trip ticket to Europe!

If you fly Delta a few times per year, this card could also save you a lot of money on baggage fees because you get your first checked bag for free when you use this card to pay for your flight.

Other benefits worth mentioning:

  • No foreign transaction fees
  • Priority Boarding

7. United℠ Explorer Card

Current offer: 40,000 bonus miles after spending $2,000 in the first three months. Earn an additional 5,000 miles after adding an authorized user to your account who makes a purchase with your card in the first 3 months as a cardmember.

Annual fee: $95 (waived the first year)

Why it’s great: United is currently my favorite frequent flyer program because I’ve found they have the best award space availability. This means the points are easier to use, and you usually have more options. This card is a great way to earn 40,000 United miles quickly. 

Other benefits worth mentioning:

  • $100 rebate on Global Entry/TSA PreCheck application fees
  • 2 one-time use United Club passes that entitle you to United Club lounge access
  • Priority Boarding on United flights
  • Your first checked bag is free on United flights when you use your card to pay for the flight

8. British Airways Visa Signature® Card

Current offer: 50,000 British Airways Avios after spending $3,000 within three months from the account opening. Plus, if you’re a big spender, you can earn an additional 25,000 points after spending $10,000 during your first year of card membership, and another 25,000 point bonus (for a total of 100,000) if you spend $20,000 in the first year of card membership.

Annual fee: $95

Why it’s great: You can get a ton of value out of British Airways Avios if you learn how to strategically redeem them using British Airways’ distance based award chart. For example, if you wanted to fly from Nashville to Dallas on American Airlines (a One World Partner), you would only need to pay 6,500 Avios each way. So with the 50,000 Avios you’d earn from the sign-up bonus, you could fly from Nashville to Dallas 7 times!

Other benefits worth mentioning:

  • No foreign transaction fees
  • Earn a companion ticket after spending $30,000 in a calendar year
  • Lost luggage reimbursement
  • Car rental insurance
  • Travel accident insurance
  • Trip cancelation insurance

9. Capital One® Venture® Rewards Credit Card

Current offer: 50,000 bonus miles after spending $3,000 in the first three months.

Annual fee: $95 (waived the first year)

Why it’s great: If you want to keep your credit card strategy super simple, but still save a ton of money on travel, this is the card for you. To start, you’ll earn a 50,000 point early spend bonus that is worth $500 in free travel. Moving forward, you’ll earn 2x points on every purchase without having to worry about bonus/rotating categories. When it comes time to redeem your points, it’s super simple. All you have to do is make a travel purchase using your card. Then, you have 90 days to log in to your account and erase that purchase using your points!

Other benefits worth mentioning:

  • $100 rebate on Global Entry/TSA PreCheck application fees
  • No foreign transaction fees
  • Use your points on any airline
  • Earn 10x points when you book your hotel on hotels.com/venture

10. Barclaycard Arrival® Plus World Elite Mastercard®

Current offer: 60,000 Barclay Arrival miles after spending $5,000 in the first 90 days and paying the annual fee.

Annual fee: $89

Why it’s great: If you need a card with super flexible rewards, this is the card for you! Arrival miles are worth 1 cent each when redeemed for travel so the 60,000 point sign up bonus is worth $600 in free travel. When you take into account the $89 annual fee you have to pay, you still come out on top by $511! 

Arrival Miles are super easy to use. All you have to do is pay for travel using your card, then you can go into your online account and use your points to erase the charge within 120 days of making the purchase.

Other benefits worth mentioning:

  • Get 5% miles back every time you redeem your miles
  • No foreign transaction fees
  • International chip and PIN for use at self-service terminals around the world
  • Lost luggage reimbursement
  • Car Rental Insurance

That wraps up our review of the top 10 best personal travel credit card offers for the month of September. If you’re ready to start saving big on travel by using credit card rewards, click the button below to find the right travel credit card for you.

Filed Under: Travel Hacking

Income & Expense Report | April – June 2018

August 13, 2018 by Nate 39 Comments

Income & Expense Report | April – June 2018

In Q2 of this year, we brought in over $56,000 from our YouTube channel and other related income streams! The numbers in this report feel completely crazy to us, but it hasn’t always been this way. If this is your first time ever reading one of our income and expense reports, I suggest starting with the first one we ever published in July of 2016 (our total income was $603.26)

Now that we’re making a significant amount of money from this business, I feel like it’s important to tell you why we started writing these reports in the first place. It is NOT to brag about how much money we’re making. Trust me, when we first started sending out these reports, we were actually losing a lot of money!

There are three major reasons we started sending out these income and expense reports:

1. I (Nate) am a business nerd! I always wonder how much money people are making and exactly how they’re making it. I wish more people would transparently share their entrepreneurial journey; so that’s why I do it! When other people do it, I find it inspiring and incredibly interesting! So I hope you’re inspired or at least entertained when you read these.

2. When Kara and I tell people that we travel full-time, the response we get the majority of the time is, “I wish I could do that.” At this point in the conversation I usually just bite my tongue. I realize that, for some, full-time travel truly isn’t possible. But for most of the people who say “I wish I could do that,” they could if they really wanted to. Yes, some people would have to work harder than others, but most people could make it happen if they were willing to make travel a priority.

A couple years ago, Kara and I made travel our top priority. We saved up money for over a year, we moved out of our apartment, we sold our cars, and we quit our jobs. Now we put in the work (almost) every day to be able to afford to continue traveling. We hope that by sharing this report each month, it will inspire some of you to go from “I wish I could” to “How could I.”

3. We’re not special, and we want you to remember that no matter where this journey takes us. I feel like once people become “successful” it’s easy to think they’re “special,” and that’s why they were able to achieve success. Our hope is that by sharing this journey from the beginning you’ll be able to see that two regular people had a crazy dream and worked hard to make it a reality. In turn, we hope this will inspire you to dream a big dream and go after it.

Thoughts on Quarter 2 of 2018

Last quarter I was in slight disbelief of the big numbers we were posting in our income and expense report. This quarter, we doubled our profits from last quarter… After two years of barely scraping by (financially), it feels surreal that our YouTube channel is turning into a real business that’s making real money.

Our channel is continuing to grow at 700 – 1,000 subscribers per day, and that growth is directly translating to substantial growth in all of our major revenue streams, but we’re not just sitting back on autopilot. We don’t know how long we’ll continue growing at this rate, so we’re trying to capitalize on the opportunity by creating additional income streams.

I’m really excited about both of the new income streams we created this quarter. First, Kara created an online course that teaches exactly how she edits our videos. Tons of people have asked her about her editing process, and I finally convinced her to take a week off from editing our videos to sit down and record her entire editing process.

If you want to watch over Kara’s shoulder as she edits one of our travel vlogs, click the link below to check out the course.

Kara’s Behind the Scenes Guide to Creating a Vlog

Second, I was finally able to get approved for the creditcards.com affiliate program. This affiliate program allows us to earn a commission anytime someone signs up for a credit card I mention on our blog or in my travel hacking course. We were already promoting these credit cards because they can help save travelers a ton of money. So, it’s nice to finally be rewarded for the referrals we’re sending their way!

Since travel credit card offers are constantly changing, I’ve started publishing a new blog every month ranking the top travel credit cards. If you want to see how much you can save on travel by signing up for one the top cards, check out my most recent post.

Top Travel Credit Cards for August 2018

If you find this post useful, we’d really appreciate it if you use our links to sign up for your next card.

Ok, let’s dive into the nitty gritty details of the Q2 report!

Income Report

1. YouTube Ad Revenue – $15,609.34 (Change from Q1 +$1,425.34)

Once again, we made more money than I ever thought we’d make from YouTube ad revenue. This quarter our views increased from 8 million to 10 million, and almost 50% of those videos were monetized. This means YouTube showed an ad on the video, and we split that ad revenue with YouTube.

So even though we’re splitting pennies with YouTube on each ad that’s shown on our channel, those pennies really start to add up as our channel views continue to increase. I’ve also noticed an increase in ad rates when we post videos from luxury destinations. So, the Maldives was a nice little bump for us. I assume that’s because advertisers are paying more to reach people who would potentially spend a lot of money to visit those destinations.

2. Patreon & PayPal – $8,381.01 (Change from Q1 +$1,880.01)

It’s scary to build a business on top of a platform that you don’t own. So much of our success/failure is tied to the growth of our YouTube channel, and we have very little control over that growth. For the second quarter in a row, YouTube has continued showering us with new subscribers. So, I’m starting to get more optimistic that the growth will continue, but in the back of my mind I’m always a little nervous YouTube will turn off the subscriber faucet, and we’ll be back where started.

This is why we’re so grateful for our patrons! Thanks to their support, we know that no matter what YouTube decides, this is one consistent source of income that we can count on every month!

For those of you who aren’t familiar with Patreon, it’s an online platform that allows you to support the work of your favorite creators giving them a chance to continue working on their creations without having to worry about where their next meal is going to come from!

CLICK HERE to learn more about becoming a patron!

3. Course Sales – $16,349 (Change from Q1 +$7,674)

 

We saw a huge increase in course sales this month because we now have 2 courses for sale! We’ve each created an online course to teach others the subjects where we have the most expertise. For me, that’s travel hacking, and for Kara, it’s video editing.

  1. 30 Days to Becoming a Travel hacker is a course I created to teach others the strategies I use to save thousands of dollars on flights and hotels.
  2. Kara’s Behind the Scenes Guide to Creating a Vlog is the course Kara created to let you watch over her shoulder and learn the exact methods she uses to create one of our travel vlogs.

As you can see from the chart above, we had a huge spike in course sales toward the end of May and beginning of June. That was the first week Kara launched her course, and we put a lot of effort into promoting the launch. It paid off because, in the first week, she sold over 50 courses!

Money aside, I’m super proud of all of the effort she put into creating the course. It took me a long time to convince her into making it because she didn’t think she was good enough, and she was scared people wouldn’t like it.

As I suspected, the exact opposite has been true! She’s received tons of good feedback, and she’s empowered almost 100 people with the ability to create beautiful and engaging videos.

If you’re interested in learning how to edit videos, you should really check it out – Kara’s Behind the Scenes Guide to Creating a Vlog

4. Affiliate Income – $12,356.42 (Change from Q1 +7,377.42)

  • Amazon – $1,502.55
  • Epidemic Sound – $1,800
  • Creditcards.com – $2,442
  • The Paradise Pack – $5,964
  • Other – $341

The majority of our affiliate income comes from the ongoing promotion of companies we love such as Amazon and Epidemic Sound. This quarter however, we made the majority of our affiliate income from a one week affiliate promotion of The Paradise Pack.

The Paradise Pack is a huge collection of online resources that help people save money on travel and work from the road. Once per year my friend and travel hacking mentor, Travis Sherry, bundles all of these resources together and sells them for a HUGE discount. The catch is that the discount only lasts for one week. If you miss it, you have to wait until the next year to buy it. This year, there was over $5,000 worth of online resources being sold for $497.

We were honored to have Kara’s new course included in this year’s Paradise Pack. By including Kara’s course in the Paradise Pack, we were able to earn a 50% commission when someone purchased the pack using our link. This one week sale made us over $5,000 in affiliate income!

While $5,000 is a big chunk of change, I get much more excited about by the consistent streams of passive income through our ongoing affiliate promotions.

Up to this point, our biggest stream of affiliate income has been Epidemic Sound (around $1,000 per month). We get all the music for our YouTube videos through this service. It’s hard to find good music for YouTube videos. Kara used to waste hours of her life searching for music, and now she has a huge library of royalty-free songs to choose from! She loves this service, promotes it at the end of all of our videos, and we get paid anytime someone signs up for a free trial.

If you need music for YouTube videos, click here to check out Epidemic Sound!

I’m super excited about the potential of the creditcards.com affiliate relationship because in the first full month of promotion we were able to generate over $2,000 in income. My goal is to be consistently making $5,000 per month by the end of the year!

And last but not least, Amazon also brought in a decent amount of affiliate income. It’s pretty awesome that we made over $1,000 just by recommending products we use and love. The majority of our Amazon affiliate income is generated by people who visit the following pages.

Our Vlogging Gear
Our Packing List
Keep Us on the Road

5. Video Licensing – $45 (Change from Q1 -$455)

We aren’t proactive about seeking out sponsored videos or video licensing deals. However, sometimes they come to us. This quarter fewer people reached out to us than usual, but we were still able to sell a clip of sleeping in the airport for $45. At least there was a bit of a silver lining to having to sleep in the airport, although I would have gladly paid $45 to have not missed our flight.

5. Sponsored Content – $3,500 (Change from Q1 +2,000)

As our channel grows we’re getting more and more opportunities to include sponsors in our videos. It seems like every day someone sends me an email asking us to review their product on our channel. We turn down the majority of these offers, but if the product/company meets our 3 criteria, then we entertain the idea of adding them as a sponsor.

  1. Can we get genuinely excited about the product/company?
  2. Is this something we think our viewers would be interested in knowing more about?
  3. Does the company value our platform, and are they willing to pay us enough money?

This quarter we published 33 vlogs, and 2 of those videos were sponsored. Our first sponsor was Quip. Quip is a toothbrush company which, admittedly, doesn’t scream perfect fit for an audience of travelers. However, I had almost purchased a Quip toothbrush for both of us last time we were in the United States because it looked like the perfect electric travel toothbrush. Once they sent us the brushes, we confirmed they were awesome and were really excited to promote them.

We also worked with Audible. I LOVE Audible and listening to audio books when we travel. So, when Audible reached out it was a no-brainer. We’re working on creating a long-term relationship with them so you’ll probably hear more about Audible soon!

Total Q2 Income – $56,240.77 (Change from Q1 +19,901.77)

The pie chart above gives you a quick breakdown of how each revenue stream is contributing to our total income.

Expense Report

Transportation Expenses – $1,737.09

Normally, we save money on our transportation expenses using miles and points that we’ve saved up by applying for the best travel credit cards. However, this month we were able to save all of our miles and points and still lower our cost thanks to a few sponsored flights.

Turkish Airlines was kind enough to sponsor our flights (in business class) to and from the Shorty Awards! We didn’t know if we would win a Shorty Award, and we debated for a long time whether or not it was worth spending the money to fly from Bali to New York to sit through an award ceremony where we would potentially lose. Thankfully, Turkish Airlines sponsored the flights so we didn’t have to make the tough decision.

Also, Epidemic Sound flew us to and from Stockholm so we could attend their annual company party as a way to say thank you for promoting their service!

I should probably add a lot of exclamation marks behind all of the sentences in the section above, because I don’t say these statements flippantly. This is a huge deal for us to get sponsored flights and we’re super grateful for both Turkish Airlines and Epidemic Sound!

OriginDestinationTransportUSDMisc.
Total1,737.09
MyanmarBaliPlane$464
BaliKuala LumpurPlane$130.94
Kuala LumpurNew YorkPlane$0Partnership with Turkish Airlines
New York MaldivesPlane$0Partnership with Turkish Airlines
Maldives Sri LankaPlane$1109,000 British Airways Miles
Sri LankaEgyptPlane$390.08
CairoLuxorTrain$168
EgyptTurkeyPlane$474.07
TurkeySwedenPlane$0
SwedenItalyPlane$0

Accommodation Expenses – $465.86

Our accommodation expenses seem to keep getting lower. Thanks to Airbnb credits we receive from referrals, hotel points, a couple sponsored trips, and good friends we were able to keep our accommodation expenses crazy low this quarter!

CityAccommodationsNightsCostMisc.
Total$465.86
MandalayHotel1$21.75
BaliHotel/Airbnb7$300
New YorkFriend's House5$0Thanks!
MaldivesHotel3$0Partnership with Soneva
Sri Lanka11$35Thanks Mom & Dad
CairoJ.W. Marriott9$0Redeemed Marriott points
LuxorHotel1$27
River CruiseBoat6$0Partnership
AswanHotel1$30
TurkeyAirbnb11$52.11Airbnb credits
SwedenHotel5$0Partnership with Epidemic Sound
ItalyFriend's House30$0Thanks B&G!

Destination Expenses – $2,424.86

This category is the money we spent while on the ground at each destination. This includes things like food, local transportation, and entertainment. Let’s be honest though, most of this spending probably went towards delicious local food.

DestinationDatesExpenses
Total$2,271.05
MyanmarApril 1 - 2$22.54
BaliApril 2 - 11$373.51
Kuala LumpurApril 11$45.51
New YorkApril 12 - 18$352.70
MaldivesApril 20 - 24$119
EgyptApril 25 - May 13$443.17
TurkeyMay 13 - 24$594.01
SwedenMay 24 - 30$270.61
ItalyMay 30 - 31$50

Business Expenses – $3,489.55

Each month we pay for several online subscriptions and other things to keep the vlog, blog, online courses, and email list running smoothly. I look at most of these expenses as “investments” instead of expenses because most of them are tools that enable us to make money.

Partnerships Manager – $2,030
In addition to helping us secure partnerships, Benji also manages our private travel hacking Facebook group, writes blog posts, and helps with credit card consultations.  I guess it’s time to think about updating his title…

Convert Kit – $311.16
The great email platform that we use to send emails to our email list of 25,000+ people

Teachable – $297
The platform where I host my course “30 Days to Becoming a Travel Hacker”, “The Mistake Fare Manual”, and now Kara’s new editing course.

Premiere Pro – $98.28
The program Kara uses to edit our episodes

Google Service – $55.14
This is the money we pay Google for our email address every month so that we can look semi-professional.

Touchnote Postcard – $167.40
This is the service we’re using to send postcards to our patrons!

Epidemic Sound – $45
This is where we get all of our royalty free music for our YouTube videos!

TubeBuddy – $57
This service allows us to bulk edit the cards and end cards across all of our videos on YouTube. Basically, we pay $19 to avoid spending hours of our lives monotonously changing cards on our channel.

Motion Array – $57
We bought some cool new transitions for videos from this service.

Express VPN – $25.90
We had to buy a VPN so we could access YouTube on our river cruise and upload our videos.

Equipment – $328.23
While we were in Sweden we had to buy a new hard drive and microphone for our camera.

Fixed Costs – $1,157

T-Mobile Phone Plan – $374.28

Health Insurance – $558

Google Fi – $189.33

It would be irresponsible to travel without health insurance, so we pay what feels like too much money for an international health insurance plan every month. We’ve been really happy with our T-Mobile Unlimited International plan for the past 18 months. However, last quarter I decided to switch to a Google phone and try out Google’s phone service called Project Fi. So far it’s superior to T-Mobile’s international service, but I accidentally continued paying for T-Mobile for a couple months :/

Miscellaneous – $821.97

This category is made up of expenses that didn’t fit into any of the categories above. Some little things like Spotify and Netflix and a few bigger things like credit card annual fees and birthday presents for friends and family.

Total Q2 Expenses – $13,959.44

Summary

Total Profit$46,333.34
Income
YouTube Ad Revenue$15,609.34
Patreon$8,381.01
Course$16,349
Affiliate Income$12,356
Video Licensing$45
Video Sponsorship$3,500
Total Income$56.240.77
Expenses
Transportation-$1,737.09
Accommodations-$465.86
Destination-$2,271.05
Business Expenses-$3,489.55
Fixed Cost-$1,121.61
Miscellaneous-$821.97
Total Expenses-$9,907.13

“Savings”

This is how much money we saved this month thanks to partnerships, frequent flyer miles, and referrals. This is just a fun vanity metric to calculate. If you love numbers like me, it’s fun to look at how much money this quarter “should have” cost us.

Hotel Points- $1,470

Before Kara and I left to travel full-time, we saved up almost 2 million miles and points! We’ve used these miles and points to save over $25,000 on travel expenses. If you want to learn how to do the same check out my course 30 Days to Becoming a Travel Hacker!

JW Marriott Cairo – $1,470

Earlier this year we redeemed 270,000 Marriott points for a Nights + Flight package. This earned us a 7-night certificate which was good for a free 7-night stay at any Marriott category 1-5 hotel. We also got 132,000 United miles to redeem towards free flights. We cashed in our 7-night certificate for this stay. It costs $210 per night for a room at the Cairo JW Marriott. So, the total value of this certificate was $1,470!

Partnerships – $24,890

Every month our YouTube channel gets over 3,000,000 views, which gives us opportunities to partner with companies for free experiences/accommodations in return for featuring them in our videos. Below are partnership exchanges we participated in this quarter.

Bali Customized Tours Day Trip – $150

Turkish Airlines Business Class Flights (KUL > NYC > MLE) – $13,000

Soneva Maldives Experience – $7,000

Istanbul On Food – Food Tour – $120

Pyramids Day Trip – $120

Nile River Cruise – $3,900

Epidemic Sound Stockholm Trip – $1,600

Airbnb Credits – $580.84

When someone signs up for Airbnb using our link, they save $40 on their first stay. Plus, we get between $20 – $40 when that person completes their first trip!

It’s a win-win, and we wanted to say thank you to everyone who has signed up and taken a trip using our link!

If you want to save $40 on your first Airbnb stay, click the link below to create an account!

CLICK HERE to save $40 on your first Airbnb

Total “Savings” – $27,940.84

That’s a wrap for our Quarter 2 income and expense report. These reports are getting more and more unbelievable. If you find it hard to believe that we’re making this much money while traveling the world, you’re not alone. We’re having a hard time believing it too! Thank you for all of your support. We couldn’t do it without you. I’d love to hear what you think about this report in the comments below!

Filed Under: income reports

The Top 10 Personal Travel Rewards Credit Card Offers for August 2018

August 5, 2018 by Nate 4 Comments

The Top 10 Personal Travel Rewards Credit Card Offers for August 2018

This page contains affiliate links, and we may receive compensation if you click on a link. You can read our full advertising disclosure here.

The miles and points we’ve collected from travel credit cards have easily saved us over $10,000+ in travel expenses, and they have enabled us to enjoy luxurious experiences like business class flights and luxury hotel stays that we otherwise wouldn’t have been able to afford.

We believe a good travel credit card (or a few) is a tool that all financially responsible travelers should be using. However, knowing which travel credit card(s) to apply for can be confusing.

Between restrictions like Chase’s 5/24 rule and some bonus offers being available for only a limited-time, it’s important to strategize the time and order in which you sign up for new credit cards. To help you prioritize your credit card sign-ups, we want to share a post with you every month with what we believe are the top credit card offers on the market. Since we’re covering what we consider to be the best offers — not just limited time offers — some of the cards on this list may remain consistent from month to month.

If you still need help choosing a card after reading this post, we’d be more than happy to recommend a card (or two) for you! All you need to do is fill out this form.

Nate’s Note: Due to advertising restrictions, I am not allowed to link directly to any of these cards from this blog post. However, if you’d like to support our work, you can find the best offering of travel credit cards in the menu bar at the top of every page on our site or using the link below. If you use any of these links, we will receive a commission, and we’ll be super grateful for your support 🙂

1. Chase Sapphire Reserve®

Current offer: 50,000 Ultimate Rewards points after spending $4,000 within the first three months.

Annual fee: $450

Why it’s great: The incredible travel rewards you’ll earn from this card more than make up for the high annual fee. To start, you’ll get a $300 travel credit every year that’s super easy to use. This basically brings the annual fee down to $150. Our favorite perk is the free Priority Pass membership that gets the card holder and up to 2 guests free access to over 1,000+ airline lounges around the world! If you’ve ever watched our Youtube videos, you know we put this benefit to use almost every time we travel. We would gladly pay $150 for this membership every year! Plus, when you have this card, your Chase Ultimate Reward points are worth more when redeemed through the Chase Travel Portal. The points are worth 1.5 cents each. So your 50,000 bonus points are worth $750 in free travel! Or you can also transfer your points at a 1:1 ratio to the following airlines: United, Singapore, British Airways, Korean, Southwest, and Virgin Atlantic.

*** Chase Bank only allows you to sign up for one Sapphire card. So you have to choose between the Sapphire Reserve (mentioned above) and the Sapphire Preferred (mentioned below). For serious travelers who will benefit from the lounge access, $300 travel credit, and increased value of the Ultimate Reward points, I would highly recommend signing up for the Reserve (this card) over the Preferred.

Other benefits worth mentioning:

  • No foreign transaction fees
  • 3x points on travel and dining purchases
  • $100 application credit for Global Entry or TSA Precheck
  • Lost luggage reimbursement
  • Car rental insurance
  • Travel accident insurance

2. Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card

Current offer: 50,000 Ultimate Rewards points after spending $4,000 within the first three months, plus an additional 5,000 Ultimate Rewards points when you add an authorized user to the card who makes a purchase within the first three months.

Annual fee: $95 (waived the first year)

Why it’s great: This card consistently ranks in the top 3 best travel credit cards for it’s generous 50,000 point sign-up bonus and the flexibility with which you can use those points. After meeting the minimum spending requirement, you’ll receive 50,000 Ultimate Reward points which can be redeemed for $625 worth of free flights when booking through the Chase travel portal. Or, if you want to get even more value out of your points, you can transfer them to the following airlines: United, Singapore, British Airways, Korean, Southwest, or Virgin Atlantic.

Other benefits worth mentioning:

  • No foreign transaction fees
  • 2x points on travel and dining purchases
  • Trip cancellation insurance
  • Travel accident insurance
  • Car rental insurance
  • Zero fraud liability

3. Citi ThankYou® Premier Card

Current offer: 60,000 ThankYou points after spending $4,000 within the first three months.

Annual fee: $95 (waived the first year)

Why it’s great: This card’s sign-up bonus has been increased to 60,000 points for the first time ever! You can transfer Citi ThankYou points to 12 different airlines, or you can redeem them for flights any time on any airline through the ThankYou Travel Center. ThankYou you points can be redeemed through the Travel Center for 1.25 cents each. This means the increased sign up bonus is worth $750 in free travel!

Other benefits worth mentioning:

  • No foreign transaction fees
  • 3x points on travel (including gas stations!)
  • 2x points on dining & entertainment
  • Travel accident insurance
  • Car rental insurance
  • Lost Luggage Insurance

4. United℠ Explorer Card

Current offer: (Limited time offer – no longer available)  40,000 bonus miles after spending $2,000 in the first three months, plus a $100 statement credit after your first purchase. Earn an additional 5,000 miles after adding an authorized user to your account who makes a purchase with your card in the first 3 months as a cardmember.

Annual fee: $95 (waived the first year)

Why it’s great: United is currently my favorite frequent flyer program because I’ve found they have the best award space availability. This means the points are easier to use, and you usually have more options. This card is a great way to earn 40,000 United miles quickly. It would normally make my top 10 list, but it’s moved up to the top 5 thanks to the generous $100 statement credit they’re offering for a limited time!

Other benefits worth mentioning:

  • $100 rebate on Global Entry/TSA PreCheck application fees
  • 2 one-time use United Club passes that entitle you to United Club lounge access
  • Priority Boarding on United flights
  • Your first checked bag is free on United flights when you use your card to pay for the flight

5. The Platinum Card® from American Express

Current offer: 60,000 Membership Rewards after spending $5,000 in the first three months.

Annual fee: $550

Why it’s great: The Platinum Card has the highest annual fee of any of the cards on this list, but it also offers some of the best benefits. Depending on your travel habits, this card could offer more value than other cards on this list. To start, you have the 60,000 point welcome bonus which is worth $600 in free travel when redeemed through the Membership Rewards travel portal. Alternatively, you can get way more value out of your points by transferring them to one of the following airlines: Delta, British Airways, Air Canada, Air France, Singapore, Etihad, and more.

If you use your Platinum Card strategically, you can get up to $400 in travel credits each year! It comes with a $200 airline fee credit (good for one airline that you choose at the beginning of the year), and a $200 Uber credit that gets reimbursed to your card in monthly increments of $15 (plus a $20 bonus in December).

Our favorite benefit of the Platinum Card is the lounge access. In addition to free Priority Pass membership that will get you into over 1,000 airport lounges around the world, you also get access to American Express’s Centurion Lounges! These lounges are by far our favorite domestic airport lounges! The food is always incredible, and some of them even offer free massages!

Other benefits worth mentioning:

  • $100 rebate on Global Entry/TSA PreCheck application fees
  • No foreign transaction fees
  • Use your points on any airline
  • Earn 10x points when you book your hotel on hotels.com/venture

6. Citi® / AAdvantage® Platinum Select® World Elite™ Mastercard®

Current offer: 50,000 AAdvantage miles after spending $2,500 in the first three months.

Annual fee: $99 (waived the first year)

Why it’s great:  50,000 American Airlines miles is enough for two round trip tickets inside of the U.S.A. Once you meet the minimum spending requirement, you’ll almost have enough frequent flyer miles for a round-trip ticket to Europe (60,000)! Plus, the annual fee is waived for the first year which makes this an awesome opportunity to earn 50,000 AA miles for $0 in fees!

Other benefits worth mentioning:

  • No foreign transaction fees
  • Your first checked bag is free on domestic AA flights
  • You get preferred boarding on AA flights

7. Platinum Delta SkyMiles® Credit Card

Current offer: (Limited time offer – no longer available) 70,000 Delta SkyMiles and 10,000 Medallion Qualification Miles after spending $3,000 in the first 3 months.

Annual fee: $195

Why it’s great: 70,000 is a very generous welcome bonus on this card. I personally don’t make it a point to earn Delta SkyMiles because I’ve found their award availability to be the worst of the three major U.S. airlines. However, if you live near a Delta hub (Atlanta, Detroit, Los Angeles, New York, Seattle) this card could be a great choice for you.

Delta has done away with their award chart, so you have to search on the website to find the exact price (in miles) for a flight. In most cases, 70,000 will be enough for a round trip ticket to Europe!

If you fly Delta a few times per year, this card could also save you a lot of money on baggage fees because you get your first checked bag for free when you use this card to pay for your flight. Last but not least, you’ll also receive a Companion Certificate that’s valid for one round-trip flight within the 48 contiguous United States (restrictions apply).

Other benefits worth mentioning:

  • No foreign transaction fees
  • Priority Boarding
  • Car Rental Insurance

8. British Airways Visa Signature® Card

Current offer: 50,000 British Airways Avios after spending $3,000 within three months from the account opening. Plus, if you’re a big spender, you can earn an additional 25,000 points after spending $10,000 during your first year of card membership, and another 25,000 point bonus (for a total of 100,000) if you spend $20,000 in the first year of card membership.

Annual fee: $95

Why it’s great: You can get a ton of value out of British Airways Avios if you learn how to strategically redeem them using British Airways’ distance based award chart. For example, if you wanted to fly from Nashville to Dallas on American Airlines (a One World Partner), you would only need to pay 6,500 Avios each way. So with the 50,000 Avios you’d earn from the sign-up bonus, you could fly from Nashville to Dallas 7 times!

Other benefits worth mentioning:

  • No foreign transaction fees
  • Earn a companion ticket after spending $30,000 in a calendar year
  • Lost luggage reimbursement
  • Car rental insurance
  • Travel accident insurance
  • Trip cancelation insurance

9. Capital One® Venture® Rewards Credit Card

Current offer: 50,000 bonus miles after spending $3,000 in the first three months.

Annual fee: $95 (waived the first year)

Why it’s great: If you want to keep your credit card strategy super simple, but still save a ton of money on travel, this is the card for you. To start, you’ll earn a 50,000 point early spend bonus that is worth $500 in free travel. Moving forward, you’ll earn 2x points on every purchase without having to worry about bonus/rotating categories. When it comes time to redeem your points, it’s super simple. All you have to do is make a travel purchase using your card. Then, you have 90 days to log in to your account and erase that purchase using your points!

Other benefits worth mentioning:

  • $100 rebate on Global Entry/TSA PreCheck application fees
  • No foreign transaction fees
  • Use your points on any airline
  • Earn 10x points when you book your hotel on hotels.com/venture

10. Barclaycard Arrival® Plus World Elite Mastercard®

Current offer: 60,000 Barclay Arrival miles after spending $5,000 in the first 90 days and paying the annual fee.

Annual fee: $89

Why it’s great: If you need a card with super flexible rewards, this is the card for you! Arrival miles are worth 1 cent each when redeemed for travel so the 60,000 point sign up bonus is worth $600 in free travel. When you take into account the $89 annual fee you have to pay, you still come out on top by $511! 

Arrival Miles are super easy to use. All you have to do is pay for travel using your card, then you can go into your online account and use your points to erase the charge within 120 days of making the purchase.

Other benefits worth mentioning:

  • Get 5% miles back every time you redeem your miles
  • No foreign transaction fees
  • International chip and PIN for use at self-service terminals around the world
  • Lost luggage reimbursement
  • Car Rental Insurance

That wraps up our review of the top 10 best personal travel credit card offers for the month of August. If you’re ready to start saving big on travel by using credit card rewards, click the button below to find the right travel credit card for you.

Filed Under: Travel Hacking

The Top 10 Personal Travel Rewards Credit Card Offers for June 2018

June 12, 2018 by Nate 10 Comments

The Top 10 Personal Travel Rewards Credit Card Offers for June 2018

The page contains affiliate links, and we may receive compensation if you click on a link. You can read our full advertising disclosure here

The miles and points we’ve collected from travel credit cards have easily saved us over $10,000+ in travel expenses, and they have enabled us to enjoy luxurious experiences like business class flights and luxury hotel stays that we otherwise wouldn’t have been able to afford.

We believe a good travel credit card (or a few) is a tool that all financially responsible travelers should be using. However, knowing which travel credit card(s) to apply for can be confusing.

Between restrictions like Chase’s 5/24 rule and some bonus offers being available for only a limited-time, it’s important to strategize the time and order in which you sign up for new credit cards. To help you prioritize your credit card sign-ups, we want to share a post with you every month with what we believe are the top credit card offers on the market. Since we’re covering what we consider to be the best offers — not just limited time offers — some of the cards on this list may remain consistent from month to month.

If you still need help choosing a card after reading this post, we’d be more than happy to recommend a card (or two) for you! All you need to do is fill out this form.

Nate’s Note: Due to advertising restrictions, I am not allowed to link directly to any of these cards from this blog post. However, if you’d like to support our work, you can find the best offering of travel credit cards in the menu bar at the top of every page on our site or using the link below. If you use any of these links, we will receive a commission, and we’ll be super grateful for your support 🙂

1. Citi® / AAdvantage® Platinum Select® World Elite™ Mastercard®

Current offer: 60,000 AAdvantage miles after spending $3,000 in the first three months.

Annual fee: $99 (waived the first year)

Why it’s great: This card takes the top spot this month thanks to its increased sign-up bonus. 60,000 American Airlines miles is enough for a round-trip ticket from the U.S. to Europe or 2 round-trip flights inside the U.S. Plus, the annual fee is waived for the first year which makes this an awesome opportunity to earn 60,000 AA miles for $0 in fees!

Other benefits worth mentioning:

  • No foreign transaction fees
  • Your first checked bag is free on domestic AA flights
  • You get preferred boarding on AA flights

2. Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card

Current offer: 50,000 Ultimate Rewards points after spending $4,000 within the first three months, plus an additional 5,000 Ultimate Rewards points when you add an authorized user to the card who makes a purchase within the first three months.

Annual fee: $95 (waived the first year)

Why it’s great: This card consistently ranks in the top 3 best travel credit cards for it’s generous 50,000 point sign-up bonus and the flexibility with which you can use those points. After meeting the minimum spending requirement you’ll receive 50,000 Ultimate Reward points which can be redeemed for $625 worth of free flights when booking through the Chase travel portal, or if you want to get even more value out of your points you can transfer them to the following airlines: United, Singapore, British Airways, Korean, Southwest, Virgin Atlantic.

Other benefits worth mentioning:

  • No foreign transaction fees
  • 2x points on travel and dining purchases
  • Trip cancellation insurance
  • Travel accident insurance
  • Car rental insurance
  • Zero fraud liability

3. Chase Sapphire Reserve®

Current offer: 50,000 Ultimate Rewards points after spending $4,000 within the first three months.

Annual fee: $450

Why it’s great: The incredible travel rewards you’ll earn from this card more than make up for the high annual fee. To start, you’ll get a $300 travel credit every year. This basically brings the annual fee down $150. Our favorite perk is the free Priority Pass membership that gets the card holder and up to 2 guests free access to over 1,000+ airline lounges around the world! If you’ve ever watched our Youtube videos, you know we put this benefit to use almost every time we travel. We would gladly pay $150 for this membership every year! Plus, when you have this card your Chase Ultimate Reward points are worth more when redeemed through the Chase Travel Portal. The points are worth 1.5 cents each. So, you’re 50,000 bonus points are worth $750 in free travel! Or you can transfer your points at a 1:1 ratio to the following airlines: United, Singapore, British Airways, Korean, Southwest, Virgin Atlantic.

*** Chase Bank only allows you to sign up for one Sapphire card. So you have to choose between the Sapphire Reserve and the Sapphire Preferred (mentioned above). For serious travelers who will benefit from the lounge access, $300 travel credit, and increased value of the Ultimate Reward points, I would highly recommend signing up for the Reserve (this card) over the Preferred.

Other benefits worth mentioning:

  • No foreign transaction fees
  • 3x points on travel and dining purchases
  • $100 application credit for Global Entry or TSA Precheck
  • Lost luggage reimbursement
  • Car rental insurance
  • Travel accident insurance

4. United℠ Explorer Card

Current offer: (Limited time offer – no longer available)  40,000 bonus miles after spending $2,000 in the first three months, plus a $100 statement credit after your first purchase. Earn an additional 5,000 miles after adding an authorized user to your account who makes a purchase with your card in the first 3 months as a cardmember.

Annual fee: $95 (waived the first year)

Why it’s great: United is currently my favorite frequent flyer program because I’ve found they have the best award space availability. This means the points are easier to use, and you usually have more options. This card is a great way to earn 40,000 United miles quickly. This card would normally make my top 10 list, but it’s moved up to the top 5 thanks to the generous $100 statement credit they’re offering for a limited time!

Other benefits worth mentioning:

  • $100 rebate on Global Entry/TSA PreCheck application fees
  • 2 one-time use United Club passes that entitle you to United Club lounge access
  • Priority Boarding on United flights
  • Your first checked bag is free on United flights when you use your card to pay for the flight

5. Capital One® Venture® Rewards Credit Card

Current offer: 50,000 bonus miles after spending $3,000 in the first three months.

Annual fee: $95 (waived the first year)

Why it’s great: This card earns a top 5 spot because of it’s ease of use. If you want to keep your credit card strategy super simple, but still save a ton of money on travel, this is the card for you. To start you’ll earn a 50,000 point welcome bonus that is worth $500 in free travel. Moving forward, you’ll earn 2x points on every purchase without having to worry about bonus/rotating categories. When it comes time to redeem your points, it’s super simple. All you have to do is make a travel purchase using your card. Then, you have 90 days to log in to your account and erase that purchase using your points!

Other benefits worth mentioning:

  • $100 rebate on Global Entry/TSA PreCheck application fees
  • No foreign transaction fees
  • Use your points on any airline
  • Earn 10x points when you book your hotel on hotels.com/venture

6. The Platinum Card® from American Express

Current offer: 60,000 Membership Rewards after spending $5,000 in the first three months.

Annual fee: $550

Why it’s great: The Platinum Card has the highest annual fee of any of the cards on this list, but it also offers some of the best benefits. Depending on your travel habits, this card could offer more value than other cards on this list. To start, you have the 60,000 point welcome bonus which is worth $600 in free travel when redeemed through the Membership Rewards travel portal. Alternatively, you can get way more value out of your points by transferring them to one of the following airlines: Delta, British Airways, Air Canada, Air France, Singapore, Etihad, and more.

If you use your Platinum Card strategically, you can get up to $400 in travel credits each year! It comes with a $200 airline fee credit (good for one airline that you choose at the beginning of the year), and a $200 Uber credit that gets reimbursed to your card in monthly increments of $15 (plus a $20 bonus in December).

Our favorite benefit of the Platinum Card is the lounge access. In addition to free Priority Pass membership that will get you into over 1,000 airport lounges around the world, you also get access to American Express’s Centurion Lounges! These lounges are by far our favorite domestic airport lounges! The food is always incredible, and some of them even offer free massages!

Other benefits worth mentioning:

  • $100 rebate on Global Entry/TSA PreCheck application fees
  • No foreign transaction fees
  • Use your points on any airline
  • Earn 10x points when you book your hotel on hotels.com/venture

7. Marriott Rewards® Premier Plus Credit Card

Current offer: 100,000 Marriott Rewards after spending $5,000 in the first three months.

Annual fee: $95

Why it’s great: This is one of Chase’s newest additions to their already awesome lineup of travel credit cards. Normally, when they release a new card, there’s a really good sign-up bonus that doesn’t stick around forever which is most likely the case for this card. The current sign-up bonus is 100,000 Marriott points!

Also, once SPG and Marriott merge their rewards programs in August, you’ll be able to transfer your Marriott points to many different airlines (including AA) at around a 2.24 to 1 point ratio. This would allow you to transfer the 100,000 point sign up bonus to AA and pad your balance by about 44,000 points. So, whether you want to earn hotel or airline miles, this could be a great card to add to your wallet.

Other benefits worth mentioning:

  • Free award night every year of card membership (valued up to 35,000 points)
  • No foreign transaction fees
  • Earn 6x points per $1 spent at Marriott and SPG properties
  • Automatic silver elite status

8. Hilton Honors Ascend Card from American Express

Current offer: 100,000 Hilton Honors Bonus Points after spending $3,000 in the first three months, plus earn a free weekend night award after your first anniversary of card membership. (Limited time offer – ends 6/27/2018)

Annual fee: $95

Why it’s great: A 100,000 point sign-up bonus is the best bonus we’ve seen on a Hilton card in a very long time. Plus, for a limited time, you get a free weekend night after your first year of card membership. This weekend night can be redeemed at any Hilton property around the world. So you could get a ton of value out of this perk if you’re strategic. Last but not least, you get automatic Hilton Gold status when signing up for this card! 

Other benefits worth mentioning:

  • No foreign transaction fees
  • Earn 12x points for every $1 spent at Hilton properties
  • Travel accident insurance
  • Zero fraud liability

9. British Airways Visa Signature® Card

Current offer: 50,000 British Airways Avios after spending $3,000 within three months from the account opening. Plus, if you’re a big spender, you can earn an additional 25,000 points after spending $10,000 during your first year of card membership, and another 25,000 point bonus (for a total of 100,000) if you spend $20,000 in the first year of card membership.

Annual fee: $95

Why it’s great: You can get a ton of value out of British Airway Avios if you learn how to strategically redeem them using British Airway’s distance based award chart. For example, if you wanted to fly from Nashville to Dallas on American Airlines (a One World Partner), you would only need to pay 6,500 Avios each way. So with the 50,000 Avios you’d earn from the sign-up bonus, you could fly from Nashville to Dallas 7 times!

Other benefits worth mentioning:

  • No foreign transaction fees
  • Earn a companion ticket after spending $30,000 in a calendar year
  • Lost luggage reimbursement
  • Car rental insurance
  • Travel accident insurance
  • Trip cancelation insurance

10. Southwest Rapid Rewards® Premier Credit Card

Current offer: 40,000 Southwest Rapid Rewards after spending $1,000 in the first three months.

Annual fee: $99

Why it’s great: You can usually redeem Rapid Reward points for ~1.5 cents each. So the sign-up bonus is worth approximately $600 in free Southwest flights! Now that Southwest is flying to international destinations, 40,000 points could be enough for a free round trip flight to another country!

Other benefits worth mentioning:

  • Earn 6,000 Rapid Reward points every card membership anniversary
  • No foreign transaction fees
  • Your points never expire as long as you keep the card
  • Lost luggage reimbursement
  • Earn 2x points for every $1 spent with Southwest

That wraps up our review of the top 10 best personal travel credit card offers for the month of June. If you’re ready to start saving big on travel by using credit card rewards, click the button below to find the right travel credit card for you.

Next month, we’ll add a list of the best small business credit cards for all of the business owners reading this blog 🙂

Filed Under: Travel Hacking

Income & Expense Report | January – March 2018

June 6, 2018 by Nate 60 Comments

Income & Expense Report | January – March 2018

This report is being published late for a couple of reasons. The first is because we’ve been really busy. The second is because, for the first time since we started publishing these reports over a year and a half ago, it feels to me like we’re bragging by publishing this report.

Up until this point, we’ve been scraping by financially. We spent the majority of our savings during the first year of travel (2016), and we were still “losing” money up until Q4 of last year. These past reports were easy for me to publish because they showed that we were making sacrifices to pursue our dreams. This felt admirable to me, and I was proud of the financial risk we were taking to turn our dream into a reality.

I hesitated to hit publish on this report because I didn’t want people to get the wrong impression. However, when we first started publishing them, we said our goal was to inspire others to go after their big dreams. It wouldn’t be fair to share the struggle (financially) without sharing the success!

So, here it is… In Q1 of this year, we brought in over $36,000 from our YouTube channel and other related income streams! The numbers in the report feel completely crazy to us, but it hasn’t always been this way. If this is your first time ever reading one of our income and expense reports, I suggest starting with the first one we ever published in July of 2016. Spoiler alert, our total income was $603.26.

So, now more than ever, I feel like it’s important to tell you why we started writing these reports in the first place. It is NOT to brag about how much money we’re making. Trust me, when we first started sending out these reports, we were actually losing a lot of money!

There are three major reasons we started sending out these income and expense reports:

1. I (Nate) am a business nerd! I always wonder how much money people are making and exactly how they’re making it. I wish more people would transparently share their entrepreneurial journey; so that’s why I do it! When other people do it, I find it inspiring and incredibly interesting! So I hope you’re inspired or at least entertained when you read these.

2. When Kara and I tell people that we travel full-time, the response we get the majority of the time is, “I wish I could do that.” At this point in the conversation I usually just bite my tongue. I realize that, for some, full-time travel truly isn’t possible. But for most of the people who say “I wish I could do that,” they could if they really wanted to. Yes, some people would have to work harder than others, but most people could make it happen if they were willing to make travel a priority.

A couple years ago, Kara and I made travel our top priority. We saved up money for over a year, we moved out of our apartment, we sold our cars, and we quit our jobs. Now we put in the work (almost) every day to be able to afford to continue traveling. We hope that by sharing this report each month, it will inspire some of you to go from “I wish I could” to “How could I.”

3. We’re not special, and we want you to remember that no matter where this journey takes us. I feel like once people become “successful” it’s easy to think they’re “special,” and that’s why they were able to achieve success. At this point in our lives, Kara and I are pursuing this crazy dream of turning our passion for travel into a sustainable business, and we’re starting to see some level of success. Our hope is that by sharing this journey from the beginning you’ll be able to see that two regular people had a crazy dream and worked hard to make it a reality. In turn, we hope this will inspire you to dream a big dream and go after it.

Thoughts on Quarter 1 of 2018

Wow! I never thought we’d publish a Q1 income report that put us on track to earn over 6 figures in a year while traveling full-time. It’s crazy to look back at just how far we’ve come in the last 2 years. The first income and expense report we ever published was a monthly report of July of 2016. We made a grand total of $603.26.

I remember being really excited when we made $8,792 the first quarter of last year, and we almost broke even on our income and expenses. Here we are one year later, we’ve quadrupled our income, and it’s looking like we may be able to put some money in the bank for the first time since we started traveling.

In the beginning, we never thought we’d earn enough ad revenue from YouTube to pay the bills. So, we’ve focused on creating multiple income streams that are complements to our channel. Now that our channel is growing faster than ever other revenue streams are growing along with it.

To give you some perspective on the unexpected growth we’re experiencing, the majority of last year our channel received 75 to 100 new subscribers per day. This year, our channel is growing between 750 – 1,000 new subscribers per day. As more people discover our channel, there are more opportunities for them to buy our courses, sign up to become patrons, and buy stuff from our affiliate links.

So, our channel growth has resulted in a huge jump in our income this quarter, which I’ll break down for you now.

Income Report

1. YouTube Ad Revenue – $14,184.58 (Change from Q4 +$5,966)

Honestly, this is more money than I ever thought we’d make from YouTube ad revenue. We’ve worked hard to create multiple income streams because I didn’t think it would ever be possible to cover the expenses of traveling full time with YouTube ad revenue alone. It turns out I was wrong! Our ad revenue this quarter more than covered our expenses, and there was even a bit left over.

Out of the 8 million views that received in Q1, almost 50% of those videos were monetized (This means YouTube showed an ad on the video and we split that ad revenue with YouTube). Our monetization rate has been closer to 30% in the past. So, the major jump in ad revenue was due to a combination of increased views and a higher monetization rate.

2. Patreon & PayPal – $6,501 (Change from Q4 +$2,656)

It’s scary to build a business on top of a platform that you don’t own. So much of our success/failure is tied to the growth of our YouTube channel, and we have very little control over that growth. At the moment, YouTube is being very kind to us and showering us with new subscribers. But in the back of my mind I know that things could change at any moment, and we could be right back where we were last year (barely scraping by).

This is why we’re so grateful for our patrons! Thanks to their support, we know that no matter what YouTube decides, this is one consistent source of income that we can count on every month!

For those of you who aren’t familiar with Patreon, it’s an online platform that allows you to support the work of your favorite creators giving them a chance to continue working on their creations without having to worry about where their next meal is going to come from!

CLICK HERE to learn more about becoming a patron!

3. 30 Days To Becoming A Travel Hacker Course – $8,675 (Change from Q4 +$3,590.20)

30 Days to Becoming a Travel Hacker is a course I created to teach others the strategies I use to save thousands of dollars on flights and hotels.

This is a great example of our channel’s growth impacting other revenue streams we’ve created. In the description of every video, we promote a free guide I wrote called the “Ultimate Guide to Lounge Access.” When someone downloads this guide, they are added to our email list. Over the following week, I send them a lot of free and useful information about how they can reduce the cost of travel by implementing my favorite travel hacking strategies. At the end of the week, I give them the option to buy “30 Days to Becoming a Travel Hacker” where they’ll get access to all of my best travel hacking strategies in an easy to follow online course.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with the world of online marketing, this is called a sales funnel. If your funnel is good, the more people you put in the funnel, the more people end up purchasing your product in the end.

Now that our channel is receiving over 3 million views per month, more than 50 people are downloading my guide and entering the funnel every single day. This means 50 new people per day learn about my course, and a small percentage end up purchasing it.

If you’re interested in learning how to earn and redeem frequent flyer miles to travel around the world for pennies on the dollar, check out 30 Days to Becoming a Travel Hacker!

6. Affiliate Income – $4,979 (Change from Q4 +3,590)

  • Amazon – $1036
  • Epidemic Sound – $1,800
  • Ultimate Photography Bundle- $1,978
  • Other – $165

Last year we purchased a bunch of online photography resources at a crazy discount during a one week sale called the “Ultimate Photography Bundle.” Kara used these resources to improve her photo editing and level up our Instagram game. This year we had the opportunity to promote the bundle and earn a commission for each bundle we sold. I sent out an email to our list, and Kara made an Instagram story promoting it. It obviously resonated with our audience because we were able to make almost $2,000 with just those two posts.

Our most consistent source of affiliate income is Epidemic Sound. We get all the music for our YouTube videos through this service. It’s hard to find good music for YouTube videos. Kara used to waste hours of her life searching for music, now she has a huge library of royalty-free songs to choose from! She loves this service, promotes it at the end of all of our videos, and we get paid anytime someone signs up for a free trial.

If you need music for YouTube videos, click here to check out Epidemic Sound!

As usual, Amazon also brought in a decent amount of affiliate income. It’s pretty awesome that we made over $1,000 just by recommending products we use and love. The majority of our Amazon affiliate income is generated by people who visit the following pages.

Our Vlogging Gear
Our Packing List
Keep Us on the Road

5. Video Licensing – $500 (Change from Q4 -$1,000)

We aren’t proactive about seeking out sponsored videos or video licensing deals. However, sometimes they come to us. This quarter we granted non-exclusive licensing rights to our footage from the Bolivian Salt Flats to a company for $500.

5. Sponsored Content – $1,500 (Change from Q4 +1,500)

In the past we have done very little sponsored content, but as our channel grows we’re getting more and more opportunities. We turn down 90% of the opportunities that come our way because they aren’t a good fit for our channel, but this quarter we got an opportunity to work with DJI to review their new mobile gimbal.

The video we did for DJI was less about the money and more about (hopefully) creating a long-term relationship with a company that makes awesome products! The mobile gimbal was a good starting point, but we’re hoping we’ll have the opportunity to review one of their new drones at some point in the future!

Total Q1 Income – $36,339 (Change from Q4 +15,815)

The pie chart above gives you a quick breakdown of how each revenue stream is contributing to our total income.

Expense Report

Transportation Expenses – $3,949.49

We started the year off by going on a cruise through the middle east. The cruise wasn’t cheap, but it was a great way to see 4 middle eastern countries in the limited amount of time we had during the month of January. Cruises are a little tricky to categorize in this report because I track transportation and accommodations separately, and a cruise falls into both categories. So to keep things simple I just included all of the cruise expenses here in the transportation category.

Had it not been for the cruise, our transportation expenses would have looked crazy low for all of the travel that we did this quarter. We basically flew around the world 1.5 times for less than $2,000 thanks to miles and points!

OriginDestinationTransportUSDMisc.
Total3,949.49
NashvilleOmanPlane$4485,000 UA Miles
OmanOmanRental Car$306.56
OmanDubaiBus$42.20
DubaiDubaiCruise$2,302.91
DubaiNashvillePlane$201.4280,000 AA Miles
NashvilleArubaPlane$31.2030,000 AA Miles
ArubaDelhiPlane$184.82100,000 UA Miles
DelhiVrindavanTrain$40
VrindavanDelhiTaxi$60
Delhi VaranasiPlane$297
VaranasiAgraTrain$80
AgraJaipurTrain$100
JaipurMumbaiTrain$140
MumbaiBangkokPlane$033,824 Citi Points
BangkokYangonPlane$119.38

Accommodation Expenses – $1,082.88

Thanks to Airbnb credits we receive from referrals, hotel points, and a couple sponsored trips, we were able to keep our accommodation expenses crazy low this quarter!

CityAccommodationsNightsCostMisc.
Total$1,082.88
NashvilleHome10$0Thanks Mom & Dad
MuscatOman4$246.26
DubaiAirbnb1$0Airbnb Credits
DubaiHotel2$0Partnership
NashvilleHome4$0Thanks Mom & Dad
ArubaAirbnb7$248.50Airbnb Credits
DelhiHotel10$67Marriott Points
VrindavanHotel3$79.11
VaranasiHotel4$96.52
AgraHotel2$31.28
JaipurHotel2$45.55
MumbaiHotel3$156.36
BangkokAirbnb7$0Airbnb Credits
YangonHotel268.80
MandalayHotel243.50

Destination Expenses – $2,424.86

This category is the money we spent while on the ground in each destination. This includes things like food, local transportation, and entertainment. Let’s be honest though, most of this spending probably went towards delicious local food.

DestinationDatesExpenses
Total$2,424.86
NashvilleJan. 1 - 11$233.24
OmanJan. 12 - 19$161.26
DubaiJan. 19 - 29$114.91
NashvilleJan. 30 - Feb. 5
ArubaFeb. 5 - 12$99.51
IndiaFeb. 12 - March 12$827.77
BangkokMar. 12 - 20331.57
MyanmarMarch 20 - 31656.60

Business Expenses – $3,219.88

Each month we pay for several online subscriptions and other things to keep the vlog, blog, online courses, and email list running smoothly. I look at most of these expenses as “investments” instead of expenses because most of them are tools that enable us to make money.

Partnerships Manager – $1,425
This quarter we gave Benji some additional responsibility. In addition to being our Strategic Partnerships Manager, he’s also started managing our private travel hacking Facebook group for people who purchase my travel hacking course. Now that we have over 200 members, it was getting hard for me to keep up with it. So I was very excited to get some help from a fellow travel hacking expert.

Travel Hustle Editor – $200
This quarter Claire finished up her final two posts in the Travel Hustle interview series she was writing for the blog!

Convert Kit – $323.54
The great email platform that we use to send emails to our email list of 25,000+ people

Teachable – $297
The platform where I host my course “30 Days to Becoming a Travel Hacker” and “The Mistake Fare Manual”

Premiere Pro – $98.28
The program Kara uses to edit our episodes

Google Service – $47.22
This is the money we pay Google for our email address every month so that we can look semi-professional.

Touchnote Postcard – $238.66
This is the service we’re using to send postcards to our patrons!

Epidemic Sound – $45
This is where we get all of our royalty free music for our YouTube videos!

TubeBuddy – $57
This service allows us to bulk edit the cards and end cards across all of our videos on YouTube. Basically, we pay $19 to avoid spending hours of our lives monotonously changing cards on our channel.

Gleam – $39
This is the service we used to host our 100k Giveaway.

Motion Array – $57
We bought some cool new transitions for videos from this service.

Express VPN – $12.95
We had to buy a VPN so we could access YouTube on our river cruise and upload our videos.

Fixed Costs – $1,157

T-Mobile Phone Plan – $371.13

Health Insurance – $558

Car Insurance – $210

Google Fi – $49.53

It would be irresponsible to travel without health insurance, so we pay what feels like too much money for an international health insurance plan every month. We’ve been really happy with our T-Mobile Unlimited International plan for the past 18 months. However, this quarter I decided to switch to a Google phone and try out Google’s phone service called Project Fi. It’s still early, but so far it’s far superior to T-Mobile’s international service.

Miscellaneous – $2,143,20

This category is made up of expenses that didn’t fit into any of the categories above. Normally, it’s made up a few small purchases we’ve made here and there, but this quarter we had a couple of the big expenses included in this category.

Chase Sapphire Reserve Membership Fee – $450

Google Pixel 2 XL – $948

Total Q2 Expenses – $13,959.44

Summary

Total Profit$22,379.55
Income
YouTube Ad Revenue$14,184
Patreon$6,501
Course$8,675
Affiliate Income$4,979
Video Licensing$500
Video Sponsorship$1,500
Total Income$36,339
Expenses
Transportation-$3,949.49
Accommodations-$1,082.88
Destination-$2,424.86
Business Expenses-$3,219.88
Fixed Cost-$1,139.13
Miscellaneous-$2,143.00
Total Expenses-$13,959.44

“Savings”

This is how much money we saved this month thanks to partnerships, frequent flyer miles, and referrals. This is just a fun vanity metric to calculate. If you love numbers like me, it’s fun to look at how much money this quarter “should have” cost us.

Frequent Flyer Miles – $5,500

Before Kara and I left to travel full-time, we saved up almost 2 million miles and points! We’ve used these miles and points to save over $25,000 on travel expenses. If you want to learn how to do the same check out my course 30 Days to Becoming a Travel Hacker!

Nashville to Oman – $1,800

We redeemed 85,000 United Airlines frequent flyer miles to fly from Nashville to Oman for only $44! It’s still crazy to me that frequent flyer miles give you the ability to book two tickets to the other side of the world for the same price that you’d pay for a nice dinner.

Dubai to Nashville – $1,600

These flights should have cost around $800 a piece. Instead, we redeemed 80,000 American Airlines miles, and we just paid $100 each in taxes and fees.

Nashville to Aruba – $600

We had to head straight from a wedding in Nashville to a wedding in Aruba. Thankfully, the flights didn’t break the bank. Instead of paying $600 for flights we redeemed 30,000 American Airlines miles and paid a grand total of $31.20 to fly to Aruba.

Aruba to Delhi – $1,500

It is not cheap to get from Aruba to Delhi, India. The cheapest tickets we could find would have cost us $1,500. Instead, we redeemed 100,000 United miles and only paid $184.82 for both tickets!

Partnerships – $8,160

Every month our YouTube channel gets over 3,000,000 views, which gives us opportunities to partner with companies for free experiences/accommodations in return for featuring them in our videos. Below are partnership exchanges we participated in this quarter.

Oman Desert Camp (2 nights) – $400

Visit Dubai (Hotel & Activities) – $1,610

Delhi Food Tour – $150

Myanmar River Cruise – $6,000

Airbnb Credits – $1,202.93

When someone signs up for Airbnb using our link, they save $40 off their stay. Plus, we get between $20 – $40 when that person completes their first stay!

It’s a win-win, and we wanted to say thank you to everyone who has signed up and taken a trip using our link!

If you want to save $40 on your first Airbnb stay, click the link below to create an account!

CLICK HERE to save $40 on your first Airbnb

Total “Savings” – $14,862

That wraps up our Quarter 1 income report. It’s still hard for me to believe what I just finished writing! We just made over $20,000 traveling the world. I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below!

Filed Under: income reports

Income & Expense Report | October – December 2017

February 7, 2018 by Nate 55 Comments

Income & Expense Report | October – December 2017

Before we jump in, let me give you the “why” behind this report. It is NOT to brag about how much money we’re making. Trust me, when we first started sending out these reports, we were actually losing a lot of money!

There are three major reasons we started sending out these income and expense reports:

1. I (Nate) am a business nerd! I always wonder how much money people are making and exactly how they’re making it. I wish more people would transparently share their entrepreneurial journey; so that’s why I do it! When other people do it, I find it inspiring and incredibly interesting! So I hope you’re inspired or at least entertained when you read this.

2. When Kara and I tell people that we travel full-time, the response we get the majority of the time is, “I wish I could do that.” At this point in the conversation I usually just bite my tongue. I realize that, for some, full-time travel truly isn’t possible. But for most of the people who say “I wish I could do that,” they could if they really wanted to. Yes, some people would have to work harder than others to make it happen, but most people could make it happen if they were willing to make travel a priority.

A couple years ago, Kara and I made travel our top priority. We saved up money for over a year, we moved out of our apartment, we sold our cars, and we quit our jobs. Now we put in the work (almost) every day to be able to afford to continue traveling. We hope that by sharing this report each month, it will inspire some of you to go from “I wish I could” to “How can I.”

3. We’re not special, and we want you to remember that fact no matter where this journey takes us. I feel like once people become “successful” it’s easy to think they’re “special” and that’s why they were able to achieve success. But in reality, (almost) every successful person started out as a “regular” human. At this point in our lives, Kara and I are pursuing this crazy dream of turning our passion for travel into a sustainable business. If we do achieve success one day, we hope that by sharing this journey from the beginning you’ll be able to see that two regular people had a dream, went after it, and achieved success. In turn, we hope this will inspire you (a “regular person”) to dream a big dream and go after it!

Thoughts on Quarter 4 of 2017

Wow! Where do I start? We almost doubled our revenue from Quarter 3, and we made over $20,000 this quarter. Our channel is experiencing a ton of growth right now, and that’s leading to growth in all of our revenue streams. Plus, this quarter included the holiday season; so we were able to sell merchandise, and I was able to offer a special promotion on my course to increase sales. And as if things couldn’t get any better, we were also offered the most money we’ve ever been paid for a licensing deal. It was pretty much the perfect storm (in a good way) that allowed us to double our revenue this quarter.

Income Report

1. YouTube Ad Revenue – $8,217.75 (Change from Q3 +$6,079.96)

From the very beginning, we’ve looked for additional ways to fund our travels so we didn’t have to rely on ad revenue from YouTube. I didn’t think it would ever be possible to make enough money from YouTube ad revenue to sustain our travels, but if the last few months are any indication, I may be wrong.

Our channel experienced a ton (for us) of growth the last 3 months of 2017. It started in late September when we published our first Trans-Siberian Railway video. We had no clue people would be so eager for content about the Trans-Siberian Railway. To date, the first video from the trip has over half a million views!

We’ve had other videos in the past do really well, but usually, the growth is short-lived, and our channel levels back out somewhere around previous levels. To our surprise, our channel still hasn’t dipped back down and is continuing to grow!

To help put this growth in perspective, the first 9 months of 2017 we averaged just above $20 per day in YouTube ad revenue. During the last three months, we averaged over $90 per day! During the month of December alone we made almost $4,000.

Will we continue to get this level of ad revenue moving forward? I doubt it. I think this substantial increase in ad revenue was a perfect storm of sorts. Our channel was experiencing a lot of growth during the holiday season when ad rates are at their peak. Even though I expect our ad revenue to drop in the first quarter of 2017, I still think we’re going to be way ahead of last year’s averages!

2. Patreon – $3,854 (Change from Q3 +$50)

We’re in the good graces of YouTube at the moment, but if there’s one thing we’ve learned over the last two years, it’s that things can change in an instant. It’s super comforting to know that if YouTube changed everything tomorrow, and our revenue went to $0, we would still have this incredible group of Patrons supporting our work!

Even though we only show an increase in $50 of support for the quarter, our base of patrons has actually grown substantially. For the majority of the year, we published around 20 videos per month. During the last three months, we only posted between 10-15. It seems that YouTube is rewarding us for slowing down our posting schedule (I think they like it when our most recent video racks up a lot of views before we publish a new one). Even though we slowed down our posting, our increase in new patrons has kept our revenue at a similar level.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with Patreon, it’s an online platform that allows you to support the work of your favorite creators giving them a chance to continue working on their creations without having to worry about where their next meal is going to come from!

CLICK HERE to learn more about becoming a patron!

3. 30 Days To Becoming A Travel Hacker Course – $4,420 (Change from Q3 $1,196)

In the last 3 months of the year, we saw a $1,000+ increase in course sales. The majority of this growth can be attributed to our Black Friday deal. For a few short days around Black Friday, I decreased the cost of my travel hacking course from $147 to $119. A lot of people jumped on the opportunity to grab the course at a discount. As you can see from the graph above, on Cyber Monday (the day the discount was ending) we made over $1,000 from course sales in a single day! Aside from the original course launch, that’s the most courses we’ve ever sold in a single day!

I had the idea to create this course for over a year before I actually made myself sit down and put it together. In the end, I probably spent over 100 hours creating it, but I’m so glad I finally found the self-disciple to make it happen. Making this course was the best thing I did for our finances in 2017! To date, it’s generated over $20,000 in passive income for us while we’ve been on the road.

In addition to it being a huge financial win for us this year, it’s also been super rewarding helping people travel to their dream destinations for pennies on the dollar. It makes my day when I get an email from someone who’s super excited about a cheap flight they just booked using the skill they learned in the course!

If you’re interested in learning how to earn and redeem frequent flyer miles to travel around the world for pennies on the dollar, check out 30 Days to Becoming a Travel Hacker!

6. Affiliate Income – $1,388.80 (Change from Q3 +654.54)

  • Amazon – $487.70
  • Audible – $75
  • Epidemic Sound – $780
  • Gleam – $20
  • Convert Kit – $26.10

Up until this point, Amazon has always been the main driver of our affiliate income. The majority of our affiliate income has come from recommending products we use and love on the following pages on our website.

Our Vlogging Gear
Our Packing List
Keep Us On The Road

However, this month my entrepreneurial wife took it upon herself to generate over $780 in affiliate from the music site we use and love called Epidemic Sound. I can’t take any credit for this increase in affiliate income. It was Kara’s idea to sign up for the Epidemic Sound affiliate program. It was her idea to start promoting their service at the end of our videos, and it’s really paid off.

We get all the music for our videos through Epidemic Sound. It’s really hard to find good music for YouTube videos. Kara used to waste hours of her life searching for music, and now she has a huge library of quality royalty-free songs to choose from!

If you need music for YouTube videos, click here to check out Epidemic Sound!

5. Sponsored Videos & Video Licensing – $1,500 (Change from Q3 -$922)

As I have said before, we aren’t proactive about seeking out sponsored videos or video licensing deals. However, now that we’ve published over 450 videos on YouTube, occasionally people find them and want to license them for their own projects. This quarter a media company putting together a video for a bank wanted exclusive rights to footage from one of our videos, and we were able to license it to them for $1,200. We also licensed two other videos (non-exclusively) for $150 to a travel company that creates those viral style videos that you see on Facebook.

6. Merch Sales – $1,152

It had been a year since we sold t-shirts and mugs, so we got my super talented sister to create a new design for us just in time for the holidays. Even though we sold 147 units, the profit margins were pretty low because we choose to print on high quality t-shirts. Honestly, we weren’t super happy with the quality of the merchandise we sold last year, so this year it was less about making money and more about making sure people got a shirt they would be really excited to wear!

Total Q4 Income – $20,532.55 (Change from Q3 $10,039.55)

Since the beginning, we’ve been trying to develop multiple income streams that will combine together to fund our travels. The pie chart above gives you a quick breakdown of how each revenue stream is contributing to our total income. I believe this is the first time YouTube has ever made up the largest percentage of our revenue.

Expense Report

Transportation Expenses – $2,133.91

We were at home 7 out of the last 12 weeks of the year for a wedding and the holidays, so we didn’t rack up as many transportation expenses as usual. This number would be extremely low, but we included the cost of our repositioning cruise in this section. The cost should really be spread across the accommodations as well, but I thought it would be cleaner to keep the entirety of the cruise expense in one place.

OriginDestinationTransportUSDMisc.
Total$2,133.91115,000 FF Miles
SeoulBolognaPlane$109.6090,000 UA Miles
BolognaRipatransoneTrain$80.18
RipatransoneLondonPlane$228
LondonSouth HamptonBus$67.37
South HamptonBarbadosCruise$1,596
BarbadosNashvillePlane$52.7625,000 AA Miles

Accommodation Expenses – $0

Yes, you read that right. We spent $0 on accommodations during the last 3 months of the year. I was as shocked as you were when I was putting this report together. I’ll try to briefly explain how this happened. We spent three weeks in Italy staying with our awesome friends. We spent one night in London partnering with the Yotel in return for free accommodations. We spent two weeks on a repositioning cruise which we technically paid for, but those expenses were accounted for in the transportation section.

We spent 3 nights at an Airbnb in Barbados, and we redeemed airbnb credits that we got from referrals for a free stay. Our last two nights in Barbados we partnered with Sandals for a 2 night all-inclusive stay. We spent the rest of the year staying at our parents’ houses while were were home in Tennessee. All of this cost us a grand total of $0. We owe a big thank you to our parents and Bob and Gina for the 10 weeks of free accommodations!

LocationAccommodationsNightsCostMisc.
Total$0
RipatransoneFriends20$0Thanks B&G
BarbadosAirbnb3$0Airbnb Credits
BarbadosSandals2$0Partnership
NashvilleParents50ish$0Thanks Mom & Dad

Destination Expenses – $1,468.52 ($1,225 less than Q3)

This category is the money we spent while on the ground in each destination. This includes things like food, local transportation, and entertainment. This quarter also included buying Christmas gifts and other non-travel related expenses while we were home for 7 weeks.

DestinationDatesExpenses
Total$1,468.52
ItalyOct. 1-19$60.15
CruiseOct. 20 - Nov. 4$271.61
BarbadosNov. 4 - 9$59.08
NashvilleNov. 9 - Dec. 31$1077.68

Business Expenses – $4,517.33 ($2,059 more than Q3)

Each month we pay for several online subscriptions and other things to keep the vlog, blog, online course, and email list running smoothly. I look at most of these expenses as “investments” instead of expenses because most of them are tools that enable us to make money.

The main reason we had a huge increase in business expenses this month is because we paid for a 1-year subscription to our email service provider. Normally, we pay monthly, but they offered a huge discount on Black Friday if we paid for the year upfront.

Partnerships Manager – $1,625
In addition to being our Strategic Partnerships Manager, Benji is also an expert travel hacker. In Q4 he wrote a few new travel hacking posts for the blog.

Travel Hustle Editor – $600
Claire is the organizer and editor of our Travel Hustle interview series on the blog! She does an awesome job. She works full-time as a freelancer.

Convert Kit – $1,536.55
The great email platform that we use to send emails to our email list of 13,000+ people

Teachable – $297
The platform where I host my course “30 Days to Becoming a Travel Hacker” and “The Mistake Fare Manual”

Premiere Pro – $98.28
The program Kara uses to edit our videos.

Google Service – $45.00
This is the money we pay Google for our email address every month so that we can look semi-professional.

Touchnote Postcard – $223.71
This is the service we’re using to send postcards to our patrons!

Epidemic Sound – $45
We used free music from SoundCloud forever, but we’ve started paying $15 per month to Epidemic Sound for more access to royalty free music.

TubeBuddy – $57
This service allows us to bulk edit the cards and end cards across all of our videos on YouTube. Basically, we pay $19 to avoid spending hours of our lives monotonously changing cards on our channel.

GoDaddy – $39.51

We use Godaddy to host our website, but I don’t recommend you do the same. If you’re interested in starting a blog, I recommend going with Bluehost.

Fixel – $99

We’re going to be using this software to create some awesome content for Instagram! This was a one time purchase, not a monthly expense.

Fixed Costs – $1,204.13 ($47.14 more than Q3)

T-Mobile Phone Plan – $463.54

Health Insurance – $528.88

Car Insurance – $211.71

It would be irresponsible to travel without health insurance, so we pay what feels like too much money for an international health insurance plan every month. We’ve been happy with our T-Mobile International Unlimited plan for the past two years, but we’re getting tired of having our data limited to 2G speed while we’re traveling. In 2018 Nate is going to be trying out Google’s Project Fi. We’ll definitely report back on our findings!

Miscellaneous – $601.16

This category is made up of small things that didn’t fit into any of the categories above. Our miscellaneous expenses were a lot higher since we were at home for 7 weeks this quarter.

Total Q4 Expenses – $9,925.05 ($1,902.55 less than Q3)

Summary

Total Profit$10,598.50
Income
YouTube Ad Revenue$8,217.75
Patreon$3,845
Course$4,420
Affiliate Income$1,388.80
Video Licensing$1,500
Total Income$20,532.55
Expenses
Transportation-$2,133.91
Accommodations-$0
Destination-$1,468.52
Business Expenses-$4,515.33
Fixed Cost-$1,204.13
Miscellaneous-$601
Total Expenses-$9,925.05

“Savings”

This is how much money we saved this month thanks to partnerships, frequent flyer miles, and referrals. This is just a fun vanity metric to calculate. If you love numbers like me, it’s fun to look at how much money this month “should have” cost us.

Frequent Flyer Miles – $438.80

Before Kara and I left to travel full-time, we saved up almost 2 million miles and points! We’ve used these miles and points to save over $25,000 on travel expenses. If you want to learn how to do the same, check out my course 30 Days to Becoming a Travel Hacker!

Barbados to Nashville – $11.20

These flights should have cost around $450, but by redeeming 25,000 AA miles, they only cost $11.20!

Partnerships – $1,670

Now that our YouTube channel is getting over 2,000,000 views per month, we’re getting opportunities to partner with companies for free experiences/accommodations in return for featuring the company in a video. You’ll always know if we’ve partnered with a company because at the end of the vlog we’ll put a message that says either “Accommodations Provided By:” or “This Adventure Made Possible By:” This serves as an advertisement for the company that we partner with, but it also helps us to be transparent about content on our vlog being sponsored.

LHR Yotel – $170

Sandals Barbados – $1,500

Airbnb Credits – $150

When someone signs up for Airbnb using our link, they can save $40 off their stay. Plus, we get between $20 – $40 when that person completes their first stay!

It’s a win-win, and we wanted to say thank you to everyone who has signed up and taken a trip using our link! This quarter we redeemed our credits for 3 free nights on the beach in Barbados!

If you want to save $40 on your first Airbnb stay, click the link below to create an account!

CLICK HERE to save $40 on your first Airbnb

Total “Savings” – $2,258.80

That wraps up our Quarter 4 income report! You deserve a pat on the back if you made it all the way here. I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below!

Filed Under: income reports

70k Giveaway!!! Win Our Favorite Travel Headphones!

December 1, 2017 by Nate 59 Comments

70k Giveaway!!! Win Our Favorite Travel Headphones!

We’ve been using and loving these headphones for the last few months! We can’t wait to give them away to one of you!

Kara and Nate 70k Giveaway

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Income & Expense Report | July – September 2017

November 17, 2017 by Nate 31 Comments

Income & Expense Report | July – September 2017

Before we jump in, let me give you the “why” behind this report. It is NOT to brag about how much money we’re making. Trust me, when we first started sending out these reports, we were actually losing a lot of money!

There are three major reasons we started sending out these income and expense reports:

1. I (Nate) am a business nerd! I always wonder how much money people are making and exactly how they’re making it. I wish more people would transparently share their entrepreneurial journey; so that’s why I do it! When other people do it, I find it inspiring and incredibly interesting! So I hope you’re inspired or at least entertained when you read this.

2. When Kara and I tell people that we travel full-time, the response we get the majority of the time is, “I wish I could do that.” At this point in the conversation I usually just bite my tongue. I realize that, for some, full-time travel truly isn’t possible. But for most of the people who say “I wish I could do that,” they could if they really wanted to. Yes, some people would have to work harder than others to make it happen, but most people could make it happen if they were willing to make travel a priority.

A couple years ago, Kara and I made travel our top priority. We saved up money for over a year, we moved out of our apartment, we sold our cars, and we quit our jobs. Now we put in the work (almost) every day to be able to afford to continue traveling. We hope that by sharing this report each month, it will inspire some of you to go from “I wish I could” to “How could I.”

3. We’re not special, and we want you to remember that fact no matter where this journey takes us. I feel like once people become “successful” it’s easy to think they’re “special” and that’s why they were able to achieve success. But in reality, (almost) every successful person started out as a “regular” human. At this point in our lives, Kara and I are pursuing this crazy dream of turning our passion for travel into a sustainable business. If we do achieve success one day, we hope that by sharing this journey from the beginning you’ll be able to see that two regular people had a dream, went after it, and achieved success. In turn, we hope this will inspire you (a “regular person”) to dream a big dream and go after it!

Thoughts on Quarter 3 of 2017

Well, we are back in the red for Quarter 3 of 2017. I’m going to blame it on Iceland and our Trans-Siberian Railway adventure. My sister and her husband talked us into going to Iceland with them this summer, and while it was really expensive, it was a blast and I don’t regret spending the money to go! I have similar feelings about our Trans-Siberian trip.

Even though we took a couple expensive trips, we were able to save a lot of money in several other areas. We saved on transportation using frequent flyer miles, accommodations using Airbnb credits and staying with friends, and on “experiences” thanks to partnerships were able to line up. So while we lost over $1,000 this quarter, it could have been way worse without the money saving techniques mentioned above.

On the income front, we owe a big thank you to our PATRONS! Pledges from our patrons on Patreon.com accounted for the largest chunk of our income in Q3. Every month over 500,000 people watch our videos on YouTube for free. Around 100 of them choose to support us financially. Without these 100 individuals, we wouldn’t be able to continue making videos for everyone else! So on behalf of us (and everyone who watches our videos for free on YouTube) we’d like to say a special thank to our patrons!

Outside of Patreon, we didn’t see a substantial amount of growth in any of our income streams. However, we broke $10,000 in income for a second quarter in a row! If we continue to sustain this level of income, we should be able to continue traveling and making videos indefinitely as long as we keep our expenses in check!

With that said, we don’t plan on growing content or complacent. We’ll continue to do our best to increase our current income streams, in addition to adding new ones!

So without further ado, let’s jump into the income and expense report!

Income Report

1. YouTube Ad Revenue – $2,137.79 (Change from Q2 +$311)

Our YouTube ad revenue increased slightly this quarter! The amount of money you make from YouTube ads is correlated with the number of views you receive and which countries those views come from. However, YouTube doesn’t show an ad every time a viewer clicks on a new video. They have some algorithm that determines how many ads you get shown during your viewing session. For example, this quarter we had around 1.7 million views, but ads were only shown on about 500,000 of those views.

I found the increase in ad revenue interesting this month because in Q2 we had almost the exact same amount of views that we had in Q3 (1.7 million). However, last quarter they only showed ads on 400,000 views as opposed to 500,000 this quarter.

I’ve given up on trying to figure out the YouTube system. I’m just reporting the facts 🙂

2. Patreon – $3,814 (Change from Q2 +$1,130)

YouTube ad revenue can be fickle, which is why we’re so grateful for the patrons that choose to support our work! This second year of full-time travel wouldn’t be possible without them!

We continue to be blown away by the generosity of our patrons! The fact that people spend their hard earned money to support our work is super humbling!

For those of you who aren’t familiar with Patreon, it’s an online platform that allows you to support the work of your favorite creators giving them a chance to continue working on their creations without having to worry about where their next meal is going to come from!

CLICK HERE to learn more about becoming a patron!

3. 30 Days To Becoming A Travel Hacker Course – $3,224 (Change from Q2 -$2,760)

In Q2 I officially launched 30 Days to Becoming A Travel Hacker! I did a lot of promotion around the launch and generated over $5,000 in sales! Since I did so much promotion for the course last quarter (and very little this quarter), the drop in sales was expected. I’m actually really happy with the Q3 sales numbers.

In the last income and expense report, I said “I don’t expect to make $5,000 every month, but I’m hoping I can sell 5 or 10 every month at the full price of $147. That would be a nice bump in our consistent monthly income!”

I averaged approximately 7 course sales per month! 5-10 sales per month was a total guess, but apparently it was pretty accurate! Hopefully we can continue to average 7 sales in the coming months! As of now, I’m doing very little promotion for the course besides linking to it in our YouTube videos, but I’m planning to put together an email drip sequence that promotes the course to new people who subscribe to our email list. So, maybe we can even bump up the average next quarter!

If you’re interested in learning how to earn and redeem frequent flyer miles to travel around the world for pennies on the dollar, check out 30 Days to Becoming a Travel Hacker!

6. Affiliate Income – $739.26 (Change from Q2 +109.83)

  • Amazon – $440.56
  • Audible – $30
  • Epidemic Sound – $240
  • Gleam – $20
  • Convert Kit – $8.70

As usual, Amazon was the main driver of our affiliate income. It’s pretty awesome that we made over $400 just by recommending products we use and love. The majority of our Amazon affiliate income is generated by people who visit the following pages.

Our Vlogging Gear
Our Packing List
Keep Us On The Road

We also added a few additional affiliate income streams to the mix this quarter, Epidemic Sound being the big one! We get all the music for our YouTube videos through Epidemic Sound. It’s so hard to find good music for YouTube videos. Kara used to waste hours of her life searching for music, now she has a huge library of royalty free songs to choose from! We love the service, so we’re telling everyone about it, and we’re getting paid to do it!

If you need music for YouTube videos, click here to check out Epidemic Sound!

5. Sponsored Videos & Video Licensing – $578 (Change from Q2 -$122)

We aren’t proactive about seeking out sponsored videos or video licensing deals. However sometimes they fall into our lap, like the licensing deal we received from a Dutch public broadcast organization. They reached out to us and offered to pay us $578 to be able to use footage from our Peru Sky Lodge video.

They have non-exclusive rights to the video to use it for 1 broadcast and 2 re-runs. I honestly have no clue if this is a good rate to be paid for licensing a video, but it’s great for us. All we had to do was send over a video file that we had already created and receive a check!

Total Q3 Income – $10,493 (Change from Q2 -$1,587)

Since the beginning, we’ve been trying to develop multiple income streams that will combine together to fund our travels. The pie chart above gives you a quick breakdown of how each revenue stream is contributing to our total income.

Expense Report

Transportation Expenses – $3,548.79

This quarter our transportation expenses are a little higher than usual because we paid almost $2,000 for our Trans-Siberian train tickets. We knew this trip would stretch our budget, but it was something we really wanted to do, and the experience did not disappoint! Plus, the videos have done suprisingly well on our channel!

OriginDestinationTransportUSDMisc.
Total3,949.49
NashvilleOmanPlane$4485,000 UA Miles
OmanOmanRental Car$306.56
OmanDubaiBus$42.20
DubaiDubaiCruise$2,302.91
DubaiNashvillePlane$201.4280,000 AA Miles
NashvilleArubaPlane$31.2030,000 AA Miles
ArubaDelhiPlane$184.82100,000 UA Miles
DelhiVrindavanTrain$40
VrindavanDelhiTaxi$60
Delhi VaranasiPlane$297
VaranasiAgraTrain$80
AgraJaipurTrain$100
JaipurMumbaiTrain$140
MumbaiBangkokPlane$033,824 Citi Points
BangkokYangonPlane$119.38

Accommodation Expenses – $1,886.29

Thanks to Airbnb credits we’ve received from referrals and staying with family and friends, we were able to keep our accommodation expenses really low this quarter! We averaged $21 per night for the quarter, and that number would be much lower if we hadn’t spent 8 nights in Iceland where everything is really expensive.

CityAccommodationsNightsCostMisc.
Total$1,886.29
NashvilleHome10$0Thanks Mom & Dad
Florida KeysHotel4$0Partnership
RomeApartment4$0Partnership
RipatransoneFriends12$0Thanks B&G
BrusselsAirbnb4$65Airbnb Credits
ParisAirbnb4$35.38Airbnb Credits
IrelandAirbnb & Hotel5$173.23
IcelandAirbnb0$621
LatviaAirbnb5$119.16Airbnb Credits
EstoniaAirbnb4$204.80Airbnb
MoscowAirbnb5$284.60Airbnb
SeoulAirbnb8$383.12Airbnb

Destination Expenses – $2,694.49

This category is the money we spent while on the ground in each destination. This includes things like food, local transportation, and entertainment. Let’s be honest though, most of this spending probably went towards delicious local food.

DestinationDatesExpenses
Total$2,694.49
NashvilleJuly 1 - 10$271.89
Key WestJuly 10-14$0
RomeJuly 17-21$219.96
RipatransoneJuly 21 - August 2$0
BrusselsAugust 2 - 6$74.97
ParisAugust 6 - 10$130.34
IrelandAugust 10 - 15$224.98
IcelandAugust 16 - 24$397.06
LatviaAugust 24 - 29$458.97
TallinAugust 29 - Sept. 2$132.49
MoscowSept. 2 - 7$222.33
Trans SiberianSept. 7 - 18$94.44
SeoulSept. 18 - 26$407.11
RipatransoneSept. 26 - 30$59.95

Business Expenses – $2,458.04 ($166.97 less than Q2)

Each month we pay for several online subscriptions and other things to keep the vlog, blog, online course, and email list running smoothly. I look at most of these expenses as “investments” instead of expenses because most of them are tools that enable us to make money.

Partnerships Manager – $1,200
This quarter we gave Benji some additional responsibility. In addition to being our Strategic Partnerships Manager, he’s also started writing a weekly series on the blog called Frequent Flyer Friday. Each week he covers a travel hacking topic that will help you save money on your next trip!

Travel Hustle Editor – $300
This quarter we hired Claire to help us start our new Travel Hustle interview series on the blog!

Convert Kit – $373.03
The great email platform that we use to send emails to our email list of 9,000+ people

Teachable – $297
The platform where I host my course 30 Days to Becoming a Travel Hacker and The Mistake Fare Manual

Premiere Pro – $98.28
The program Kara uses to edit our episodes

Google Service – $45.00
This is the money we pay Google for our email address every month so that we can look semi-professional.

Touchnote Postcard – $42.73
This is the service we’re using to send postcards to our patrons!

Epidemic Sound – $45
We used free music from SoundCloud forever, but we’ve started paying $15 per month to Epidemic Sound for more access to royalty free music.

TubeBuddy – $57
This service allows us to bulk edit the cards and end cards across all of our videos on YouTube. Basically, we pay $19 to avoid spending hours of our lives monotonously changing cards on our channel.

Fixed Costs – $1,157 ($194 less than Q2)

T-Mobile Phone Plan – $425

Health Insurance – $522

Car Insurance – $210

It would be irresponsible to travel without health insurance, so we pay what feels like too much money for an international health insurance plan every month. We’ve been really happy with our T-Mobile Unlimited International plan for the past 18 months. However, last quarter extra charges started showing up on our bill, and we paid a bit more than usual which is frustrating. I also forgot to cancel our car insurance when we left, so our car was covered while it set in my parents driveway for 3 months :/

Miscellaneous – $82.99

This category is made up of just a few small things that didn’t fit into any of the categories above.

Total Q2 Expenses – $11,827.60

Summary

Total Loss-$1,334.60
Income
YouTube Ad Revenue$2,137
Patreon$3,814
Course$3,224
Affiliate Income$739.26
Video Licensing$578
Total Income$10,493
Expenses
Transportation-$3,548.79
Accommodations-$1,886.29
Destination-$2,694.49
Business Expenses-$2,458.04
Fixed Cost-$1,157
Miscellaneous-$82.99
Total Expenses-$11,827.60

“Savings”

This is how much money we saved this month thanks to partnerships, frequent flyer miles, and referrals. This is just a fun vanity metric to calculate. If you love numbers like me, it’s fun to look at how much money this month “should have” cost us.

Frequent Flyer Miles – $3,567

Before Kara and I left to travel full-time, we saved up almost 2 million miles and points! We’ve used these miles and points to save over $25,000 on travel expenses. If you want to learn how to do the same check out my course 30 Days to Becoming a Travel Hacker!

Nashville to Rome – $1,389

We redeemed 60,000 American Airline frequent flyer miles to fly from Nashville to Rome for only $11.20! We booked this flight about 2 weeks before leaving. I love the flexibility that frequent flyer miles give you!

Reykavik to Riga – $304

These flights should have cost around $400, but by redeeming 30,000 UA miles we reduced the cost to $96!

Vladivostock to Seoul (Business Class) – $785

These fligths should have cost around $800, but instead we redeemed 18,000 British Airways miles and flew in business class for only $15. We normally wouldn’t fly business class on such a short flight, but there were no economy seats available. So thanks to British Airway’s distance based award chart, business class was still a great deal.

Seoul to Bologna – $109.60

We had to fly back to Italy to plan our Vespa tour. Without frequent flyer miles these flights would have been really expensive. Probably somewhere around $1,200. We redeemed 90,000 UA miles and only paid $109.60

Partnerships – $3,402

Now that our YouTube channel is getting over 750,000 views per month, we’re getting opportunities to partner with companies for free experiences/accommodations in return for featuring the company on the vlog. You’ll always know if we’ve partnered with a company because at the end of the vlog we’ll put a message that says either “Accommodations Provided By:” or “This Adventure Made Possible By:” This serves as an advertisement for the company that we partner with, but it also helps us to be transparent about content on our vlog being sponsored.

Florida Keys Road Trip – $1,000

Italia Rail Rome Adventure – $800

Burssels Chocolate Tour – $140

Paris Vespa Tour – $300

Yotel x2 – $240

Silfra Snorkel – $300

Moscow Food Tour – $150

Lake Baikal Walking Tour – $70

DMZ Tour – $184

Airbnb Credits – $946

When someone signs up for Airbnb using our link, they can save $40 off their stay. Plus, we get between $20 – $40 when that person completes their first stay!

It’s a win-win, and we wanted to say thank you to everyone who has signed up and taken a trip using our link!

If you want to save $40 on your first Airbnb stay, click the link below to create an account!

CLICK HERE to save $40 on your first Airbnb

Total “Savings” – $7,916

That wraps up our Quarter 3 income report! I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below!

Filed Under: income reports

9 Things You MUST Do on Your First Trip to Seoul – A Kara and Nate Travel Guide

October 28, 2017 by Nate 6 Comments

9 Things You MUST Do on Your First Trip to Seoul – A Kara and Nate Travel Guide

If you’re new here, my name’s Nate. My wife (Kara) and I are full-time travel YouTubers on a mission to visit 100 countries by 2019. South Korea was our 62nd country, and it is without a doubt one of our favorite countries we have ever visited!

If you’re making plans to visit Seoul, South Korea, we want to make sure you have an incredible experience just like we did. That’s why we’ve put together a guide of 9 Things You MUST DO on Your First Trip to Seoul. Even if it’s not your first time visiting Seoul, I bet there are one or two things on this list that you’ve never done before!

The Top 9 Things to Do in Seoul, South Korea

1. Visit the Noryangjin Fish Market AND Fish Auction

seoul fish market

Our favorite experience in Seoul was visiting the Noryagjin Fish Market! If you visit the market you’ll see hundreds of different types of LIVE sea creatures that you never knew existed. Plus, you can buy the fresh seafood from any of the vendors, and have it cooked at the market.

I believe the market is busiest in the morning and early afternoon, but it’s open 24 hours a day. We visited the market around 6 p.m. There wasn’t a lot of action going on, but there were still plenty of fish to be seen and eaten.

One of the most unique dishes that you can try when visiting Seoul is live octopus. They cut it up right in front of you, and you eat it while the tentacles are still moving. If you’re brave enough, it will be one of your most memorable moments of your trip!

The best place to try live octopus is definitely the Noryangjin Fishmarket. You can purchase your live octopus straight from one of the vendors and pay around $5 for one of the small restaurants in the market to prepare it for you! If you’re really brave, you can purchase a penis fish to accompany your Octopus…

Click play on the video to know what to expect when visiting the market and eating live octopus!

(video coming soon)

In addition to visiting the market, you should also go to the HUGE fish auction that happens inside of the market every morning starting at 3 a.m.. Kara and I showed up to the auction around 3:30 a.m. and it was still going when we left at 5:30 a.m..

Unfortunately, the metro doesn’t run between 12 a.m. and 5:30 a.m., so you need to find an alternative form of transportation to get to the auction. If you don’t mind shelling out some money, the easiest way to get to the market would be a taxi. Being budget conscious travelers, Kara and I decided to take the night bus. You can learn more about the night bus routes here.

Admittedly, waking up at 3 a.m. and taking a bus or taxi across town is a bit of pain. However, I can guarantee you that the experience will be totally worth it! We didn’t see any other tourists the entire time we were there! It was one of the most authentic travel moments we have ever experienced. From an outsider’s perspective, the market looks like sheer chaos with live fish flopping around everywhere, but after watching for a little while you’ll come to understand the system and you’ll be impressed by the organized chaos!

2. Go to a Riverside Park for Fried Chicken and Beer

Picnic in Seoul South Korea

We had been told that it was “a thing” to go to a park along the Han River in the evening and have a picnic made up of fried chicken and beer. We really didn’t know what to expect, but one Friday night we decided to go check it out for ourselves. We showed up to the river around 7 p.m., and boy were we surprised! As soon as we emerged from the metro exit closest to the park, we were immediately bombarded with ladies handing us paper fliers promoting (what felt like) every fried chicken restaurant in Seoul. No joke I ended up with 15+ flyers less than a minute after exiting the subway.

I believe most of the locals use these flyers to order their chicken and get it delivered to the river. Unfortunately, we didn’t have a Korean sim card so we couldn’t call. Even if we could have called, we don’t speak Korean. So we ended up wandering a few blocks away from the river to order our chicken directly from a restaurant.

Once we arrived back at the massive park, we were shocked to see literally thousands of people picnicking in the park. They take their picnicking seriously in Seoul. Many groups had full-blown camping tents set up! We found a small patch of grass close to the river and spent the next couple of hours people watching and enjoying our delicious chicken. Korean fried chicken is seriously good stuff!

This is another super local experience that you can’t have anywhere else in the world. I highly recommend devoting one of your evenings to eating fried chicken the park!

(video coming soon)

3. Gyeongbokgung Palace & Bukchon Hanok Village

Top palace to visit in seoul

Admittedly, Kara and I are not history buffs. Most of our travel experiences focus on food and adventure. However, we can highly recommend visiting the Gyeongbokgung Palace! The palace is actually one of the few places that I would recommend going to on the weekend when it’s most crowded.

If the weather is good, everyone rents traditional costumes and walks around taking pictures in the palace. I can only assume that this is a new tradition that has become increasingly popular with the rise of social media. Either way, watching people walk around in traditional dress really adds to the experience.

There is also a changing of the guards ceremony that happens at the palace. It’s a reenactment of old traditions, but it’s quite impressive and definitely worth seeing! We caught the 2 p.m. ceremony, but you don’t have to go at 2 p.m. They do it multiple times per day. You can learn the times of the ceremonies here.

When you plan your visit to the palace, you should also set aside an hour or two to walk around Bukchon Hanok Village. It’s a traditional village a short walk away from the palace.We had read a lot about Bukchon Hanok before visiting, so we had high expectations. But if we’re being completely honest, we were a little underwhelmed by the village. However, it’s definitely worth visiting if you go into with the right expectations. Go expecting to walk around this picturesque neighborhood for 30 minutes to an hour and take some good pictures!

(video coming soon)

4. Visit Two of Seoul’s Most Popular Markets (Namdaemun Market &  Gwangjang Market)

top food market in seoul

The Namdaemun Market is the largest traditional market in South Korea! It’s huge! You can find all sorts of stuff at this market ranging from kitchen supplies to cheesy souvenirs. If you like to shop, or you just have a few people at home expecting souvenirs, this open-air market is definitely worth a visit. Kara and I love walking around local markets, and Namdaemun did not disappoint. Even if you don’t need to buy anything, it’s worth going to walk around and experience the vibe.

If there’s one thing the Namdaemun market is missing, it’s food. But don’t worry, the Gwangjang Market has you covered. This market is dedicated to delicious food, and unlike the fish market most of the food here is cooked!

The Gwangjang Market is a covered market made of at least 100 food stalls! The biggest issue you’ll face when visiting the market is deciding what to eat, so I’ll help you out! Don’t leave the market without having a bowl of chopped noodle and dumpling soup and at least one deep fried Korean pancake! If you’re really feeling brave you can try the pork foot!

(video coming soon)

5. Go to One of The Oddly Themed Cafes

Seoul Cat Cafe

Seoul has a plethora of unique cafes! I had a list of several that we wanted to visit, but unfortunately, Kara and I ran out of time to visit any of them! Hopefully, you can go check out at least one of them and let us know what we missed out on. Below is a list of the 5 most interesting cafes I came across when researching online!

Blind Alley Cafe – If drinking coffee with a raccoon sounds fun, this is the place for you! 

Thanks Nature Cafe – If you’d rather pet a sheep while you sip your cappuccino, go here.

Hongdae Meerkat Cafe – Maybe you prefer enjoying your latte with a meerkat?

Poop Cafe – Enough with the animals, if you’d rather drink your coffee out of tiny toilet, you can do that too. 

6. Visit The Korean War Museum

korean war museum top thing to do in seoul

Once again, Kara and I are not into history, but the Korean War Museum was awesome! It’s one of the best museums we have ever been to, and it’s completely free! If you want to gain a deeper understanding of Korea’s past and learn why the Koreas are separated into two countries, I highly recommend devoting at least a couple hours to the Korean War Museum!

Plus, outside of the museum they have over 50 retired military vehicles on display, and they’ll even let you climb inside a few of them!

(video coming soon)

7. Spend The Night at a Jimjilbang (A Korean Spa)

Where to start… to enter the spa you have to be completely naked, so this experience is not for the self-conscious. However, if you’re willing to embrace the awkwardness of being naked with a bunch of Korean strangers, this could the most memorable experience of your entire trip. But wait! It gets weirder. It’s actually really common in Korea to spend the night at the spa. On the tile floor… After eating smoked eggs…

One night Kara and I spent 5 hours at the jimjilbang from 10 p.m. to 3 a.m., so instead of trying to explain the bizarre experience in words, I’ll just let you watch the video!

(coming soon)

If you’re brave enough to try to recreate our jimjilbang experience for yourself, we visited the Dragon Hill Spa, but the Siloam Spa is also very popular. Do your research to decide which one to visit. I’m sure you’ll have a good time at either place!

8. Visit the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) Between North and South Korea

Seoul Day Trip to the DMZ

The DMZ isn’t technically in Seoul, but it’s an easy day trip so I’m including it in this guide! The DMZ is a 4 km wide stretch of land that runs the length of the North and South Korean border. When you visit the DMZ you’ll have the opportunity to actually step into North Korea. There is a neutral conference room that sits on the border between the two countries. When you enter the conference room you’re in South Korea, but once you cross the table in the middle of the room you are “technically” in North Korea.

You can’t go to the DMZ alone. You have to go with a guided tour (make sense). There are a ton of companies reselling DMZ tours, but from what I understand there are only three companies who are actually allowed to operate tours in the DMZ. One of those companies actually running the tours is Koridoor Tours. We had read a ton of good reviews about the company, so we ended up booking a tour with them, and we’re glad we did! We had a great experience! If you want to see what the tour was like, you can watch the video! In addition to getting to stand in North Korea, we also got to visit a secret tunnel that North Korea dug under the border, and we went to an observation deck where we could look into the North Korean Propaganda Village with high powered binoculars.

(video coming soon)

If you’re worried about safety, you should know that over 100,000 tourists per year visit the DMZ. Obviously, I can’t guarantee your safety during the tour, but they wouldn’t let that many people visit the DMZ if bad things were happening!

9. EAT EVERYTHING 

best dumplings in seoul

The food in South Korea is INCREDIBLE! Seoul is our new favorite “food city” in the world! Besides the live octopus, we didn’t have a bad meal the entire week! Everything we put in our mouth was delicious!

This definitely is not a comprehensive food guide to Seoul. We were only there for a week, and I’m pretty sure you could eat at a different restaurant every day for the rest of your life in Seoul. However, I did want to share with you a few of the meals and restaurants we really enjoyed!

One of our top foodie experiences in Seoul was eating our way through the Myeongdong Night Market. At 5 p.m. every evening over 100 street food vendors converge in the Myeongdong District rolling their carts into the streets and setting up shop for the night! We did our best to try all of the delicious foods in one evening, but we didn’t even come close. The highlight of the evening was a mixture of thinly sliced pork belly and green onions on a skewer cooked on a grill, topped with spicy sauce, and finished off with a blow torch! It was incredible!

There are two other restaurants in the Myeongdong District that we can highly recommend. The first is called Myeongdong Kyoja. If you’re looking for the most delicious dumplings and noodle soup in Seoul, you just may find it here.

We also recommend checking out Yoogane in Myeongdong. They serve a spicy chicken dish called Dak Galbi that is prepared right at your table! Your waiter will bring raw meat, veggies, and spicy sauce to your table, mix them all together, and cook the delicious concoction on a griddle that sits in the middle of your table. Apparently, there’s a version that comes with cheese, we didn’t know about this until after we ate, but that would have been a great addition to the dish!

Of course, no trip to South Korea would be complete without eating Korean BBQ. This is a hands-on experience. You cook the meat yourself right at your table. Then, they’ll bring you 5+ side dishes and a plate of lettuce leaves. We learned that you’re supposed to use the leaves like a taco shell. You lay your cooked meat and a few sides on top of the lettuce leaf and then roll it up and eat the whole thing in one bite. At least I think that’s how you do it. You can watch us struggle through the experience in the video below.

(video coming soon)

Soju isn’t a food, its an extremely popular drink! It was rare to see a dinner table without a bottle (or three) accompanying the meal. It’s rice liquor that is steeped in tradition. Watch the other tables carefully and you’ll notice that no one pours their own glass, and as soon as someone’s glass is empty, it won’t stay empty for long. A friend is always there to fill it up! 

Unfortunately, we weren’t able to try everything we wanted to while in Seoul, but maybe you can! Things we didn’t make it around to trying but came highly recommended by our viewers include:

Bingsu – Super Fancy Shaved Ice

Bokkumbop – Fried Korean Rice

Bulgogi – Some type of beef/rice hotpot dish

Hotteok – A deep fried dough stuff with savory or sweet filling

What to Expect When Visiting Seoul, South Korea

That about wraps up our top things to do in Seoul! If you’re getting ready to travel to Seoul for the first time, and you want to get an idea of what to expect on your trip, I highly recommend checking out our Seoul video series!

(coming soon)

I hope this guide makes your trip to Seoul better one way or another! If it did, be sure to let us know on YouTube or Instagram!

 

 

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The Ultimate Guide to Riding the Trans-Siberian Railway

October 28, 2017 by Nate 52 Comments

The Ultimate Guide to Riding the Trans-Siberian Railway

 

The Ultimate Guide to Riding the Trans-Siberian
The Ultimate Guide to Riding the Trans-Siberian

Welcome to the Ultimate Guide to Riding the Trans-Siberian Railway! Kara and I just completed our 11 day Trans-Siberian journey from Moscow to Vladivostok. Our entire journey covered over 9,280 km. We spent 7 nights sleeping on the train, 4 nights sleeping in cities a long the way, and consumed far too many instant meals to count.

We have traveled to over 60 countries, and the Trans-Siberian has been one of the hardest trips I have ever planned. First, we had to sort out our Russian visas. Next, we had to figure out our route. Then, we had to figure out how to buy the train tickets (without getting ripped off), and that was just the beginning of the planning. 

Before leaving for this trip, I really struggled to find all of the information I needed to plan and book this trip independently. It was even harder to get a feel a for what the trip itself would actually be like. 

So, I’m hoping this blog post can serve as a practical guide to help you plan your trip, and our YouTube videos will give you an idea of what to expect day in and day out. If you’re wondering why you’d ever want to spend 11 days riding across Russia on a train, check out some of our YouTube videos from the trip!

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TRANS-SIBERIAN RAILWAY JOURNEY BEGINS! First Class Wagon Tour
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TRANS-SIBERIAN DAY 2 | Exploring the rest of the train!
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74 HOURS ON THE TRANS-SIBERIAN! Day 3 Restaurant Car & Wipees
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TRANS-SIBERIAN DAY 4 | Deepest Lake in the World!
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DIY FOOD TOUR Trans-Siberian Day 5 | Russian & Mongolian Foods!
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THIRD CLASS TRAIN TOUR | Trans-Siberian Day 6
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TRANS-SIBERIAN DAY 6 | Almost in Mongolia!
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OUR FAVORITE STOP ON THE TRANS-SIBERIAN! Day 7
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WE ALMOST MISSED IT! FIRST Class Wagon Tour (Trans-Siberian Railyway Day 8)
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BUSINESS CLASS Vladivostok to Seoul | S7 AIRLINES
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Hopefully after watching our videos you’re ready to book your trip! So, without further ado, let’s jump into the nitty gritty stuff – starting with Visas.

Getting a Russian Visas

RUSSIAN VISA
How to get a Russian visa for the Trans-Siberian Railway

Kara and I both hold passports issued in the U.S.A., so this section is going to be written from the perspective of an American citizen. If you don’t have an American passport, you’ll need to do some additional research. However, I’ve heard the process is similar in most countries. 

There are actually three steps in the visa process:

  1. You need to get a letter of invitation.
  2. You need to get a visa.
  3. You need to register your visa once you get to Russia.

If you already know the exact dates of your travel, and you can pre-book your accommodations, this will make the visa process much easier. Kara and I rarely plan more than three weeks in advance, so we did not have our accommodations booked and did it the more challenging way.

Step 1: Getting a letter of invitation. 

If you are able to pre-book your accommodations, choose an accommodation that will provide you with a letter of invitation. Most large hotel chains will offer this service free of charge.

If you won’t be pre-booking your accommodations, you’ll need to get a letter of invitation by other means. Most visa service companies will offer this service. However, I found that most visa service companies drastically overcharge for this. For example, we used VisaHQ to obtain our visa (more on that further down the page) and they were going to charge us $50 per person for a letter of invitation.

However, I did some additional research online and found that Fortuna Travel offered letters of invitation for only $12. I wasn’t sure whether or not to trust a random website I found online, but I figured worse case scenario I would only lose $12. 

Fortuna Travel turned out to be completely legit. They sent me an invitation in less than an hour, and when I sent the letter of invitation to VisaHQ they had no trouble using it to process my visa.

Side note: In order to get a letter of invitation (and your visa), you’ll need to let them know where you’ll be staying during your trip.

Kara and I had no clue, so we booked a refundable hotel in Moscow through Booking.com.

Get $20 off your first stay on Booking.com

You don’t actually have to stay where you say you’re going to stay on your visa. Kara and I actually ended up canceling our stay at the hotel we booked, and we instead spent 5 nights in an Airbnb in Moscow. That turned out to be a big mistake, but we’ll get to that later in the post. 

Step 2: Applying For Your Russian Visa

After you’ve secured your letter of invitation, you’re ready to apply for your visa.  In order to apply for a Russian visa in the U.S.A., you (or another human) must personally deliver your visa application to one of the Russian consulate offices located in the United States. You CANNOT mail in your visa application. 

Below is a list of the cities where Russian consulate offices are located.

  1. New York, New York
  2. Washington D.C.
  3. Seattle, Washington
  4. Houston, Texas

If you don’t live close to one of these cities you are left with two options.

Option 1: You can drive a long way and personally hand in your application.

Option 2: You can use a visa service to hand in your application on your behalf.

The first option is cheaper but will take a lot of time. The second option is much easier but more expensive. 

We live in Nashville, Tennessee,. The closest Russian consulate office is in Washington D.C. which is a 10+ hour drive. So, we opted to use a visa service company. 

Once you start researching online, you’ll find tons of visa service companies willing to help you secure your Russian visa. The service fee each company charges varies substantially. 

We needed a rush visa because we were leaving the U.S. in 10 days and wouldn’t be back before starting our Trans Siberian trip. VisaHQ offered the best prices for a rush visa so we decided to try them out, and I’m so glad we did! 

I can highly highly recommend VisaHQ. I called them on the phone multiple times for help filling out the visa application, and they were always super helpful! 

Plus, they have an automated system that sends you updates throughout the process so you know the exact status of your visa the entire time.

A few pro tips for filling out your Russian visa:

  1. You don’t have to enter the country on the day you say you’re going to on your visa. However, that is the day your 30 day window will start. Therefore you don’t have to be exact when you enter your arrival date on the application, but you should be close if you want to spend the maximum amount of time in Russia.
  2. You don’t have to stay where you say your staying on your Visa, so don’t stress about booking your accommodations before submitting your Visa.
  3. The application asks for every country you’ve visited in the last 10 years. Thankfully, you only have to list the 5 most recent!

If you have any other questions while filling our your visa, I highly recommend calling VisaHQ!

Step 3: Registering your visa

Now that you have your Russian visa, you have everything you need to legally enter Russia. However, once you get to Russia you must register your visa within 7 working days. You only have to register your visa if you’re going to be in Russia for more than 7 business days. I’m going to assume most people who are riding the Trans-Siberian will need to register their visas. 

The easiest way to get your visa registered is to stay in a hotel that offers the service free of charge. Most big hotel chains will offer this service, but make sure you ask before booking. This is another reason why it’s better to have your hotel booked ahead of time.

This is where Kara and I really messed up. I booked an Airbnb without asking about the registration process. On the day we checked in I asked our host about registering our visa, and she tried to charge us $100 per person. Knowing that most hotels offered this service for free, I had a pretty good feeling were getting ripped off.

It’s supposed to be your host’s responsibility to register your visa no matter where you are staying, but we were determined to find another way besides paying our host too much. However imagine explaining that to a Russian police officer who only speaks a few words of English. Our visa registration was never checked, but we heard that you end up paying a very large fine if caught without it, so I don’t think it’s worth risking.

Thankfully, we ended up making a local friend who offered to register us at her address free of charge. Otherwise, I guess we would have been left with no choice but to pay our Airbnb host $200. 

So, the moral of this story is either book a hotel that offers the service, or negotiate with your Airbnb host before you book a stay at their property. 

In addition, I’ve heard that most hostels and cheaper hotels offer the service for a small fee between $5-$10. This could also be a good option, just make sure you know the fee before you book! 

There you have it! It’s a bit complicated, but it shouldn’t be too painful if you follow my suggestions. That should be everything you need to know in regards to getting your visa sorted for riding the Trans-Siberian!

Planning Your Route

choosing a route for the the trans-siberian railway
How to choose a route

There are two main routes that you’ll most likely be choosing between. The first route is the Trans-Siberian which runs all the way across Russia from Moscow to Vladivostok and vice versa. The second is the Trans-Mongolian which runs from Moscow to Beijing (through Mongolia) and vice versa.

Our Route

trans-siberian-route
Our Trans-Siberian Railway Route

We took the Trans-Siberian because we ran out of time to get our Chinese visa. I would highly consider doing a second trip just to experience the Mongolian and Chinese portion of the trip.

Since we rode the Trans-Siberian, that is the route I am going to focus on in this post. First, I’ll tell you about our exact route, and then I’ll tell you what we would have done differently looking back.

The first leg of our trip was from Moscow to Irkutsk. This was 74 hours of non-stop train travel.

We stopped in Irkutsk for two nights. Then we hopped back on the train for a short 6.5 hour ride to our second stop of Ulan-Ude.

We stayed in Ulan-Ude for two nights before beginning the final leg of our journey to Vladivostok which was another 64 hours of non-stop train travel.

Our trip lasted 10 days and 11 nights. Four days were spent on land and 6 days were spent on the train. We spent 7 nights sleeping on the train, two nights in a hostel, and two nights in a hotel.

To be completely honest, we really enjoyed the long legs (74 & 64 hours) of the journey. But keep in mind that we travel full-time, and it was nice to be stuck in the same spot for 6 days while getting to catch up on work and experience different views out the window. With that said, I think we missed a couple interesting stops that you might want to consider when planning your journey.

What We Might Have Done Differently

We met several local Muscovites when we were in Moscow for 5 days before the trip. They all recommended that we stop in the town of Kazan. It’s a predominately Muslim city, and they all seemed fascinated by it. At this point, our tickets were already booked so we didn’t have the option to stop. However, we try to take advice from locals anytime we can. So, I’d highly recommend doing some research on this city when you’re planning your trip.

If you have any appreciation for Russian history, you’ll want to stop at Yekaterinburg. It’s the town where the last tsar of Russia and his family were executed. I saw this stop listed on many itineraries when I was booking our trip, but at that point I didn’t have a good appreciation for Russian history. However the longer I stayed in the country, the more fascinated I became by its history. So you may want to book this stop ahead of time and assume you’ll be more into learning about the last tsar when you arrive.

The next change I would make to our itinerary would be stopping in Irkutsk for 3 days instead of 2. The main draw of this stop is seeing Lake Baikal, which is the deepest lake in the world. 

Irkutsk is the closest major city to the lake; it’s still a 2-hour drive away, though. There is a popular island on the lake called Olkhon Island that most tourists take a ferry to and stay overnight.

However, you need at least 3 days for this trip. It takes 7 hours by the time you drive to the lake and ferry to the island, so you’ll need one full day of travel for each leg of the journey, and you’ll want one full day to explore the island. So, I highly recommend scheduling at least 3 days in Irkutsk.

Ulan-Ude, on the other hand, could definitely be seen in a day. There really isn’t a lot to see in the city. The main attractions include the world’s largest statue of Lenin’s head, the main walking street in the center of town, a beautiful church that sits near the end of the walking street, a monastery that sits on a hill and overlooks the city, and another monastery that’s located 45 minutes outside of the city. So, you could easily see all of the major sites in one day if you planned ahead.

There’s no harm in spending more than a day in the city. We enjoyed having a day of rest. I just wanted to let you know that you don’t need to schedule more than one unless you want to. 

In all of my research, I didn’t come across much to do between Ulan-Ude and Vladivostok. So I don’t think there are any additional stops I would suggest adding on to the last leg of our trip.

The last change I would have made on our journey would be the amount of time we spent in Vladivostok. Unfortunately, the flight we needed to get to our next destination left the morning we arrived. We didn’t get to see any of the city which was really sad because it looked really cool. At the same time, when first booking this trip, we had no idea how much we would enjoy Russia. We were kind of hoping we would be sick of it by the end and ready to get to the airport, but that wasn’t the case!

When to ride the Trans-Siberian

The time of year you decide to ride the Trans-Siberian is going to totally depend on personal preference. However, after having completed the trip, I wanted to give you my thoughts on when to go.

Personally, I think there are two seasons you should consider for your trip, fall or winter. We got lucky and planned our trip in the fall because that’s when Russia fit into our travel schedule.  In the fall the weather is mild, and the leaves are changing colors which made the scenery even more beautiful.

Russia has no shortage of trees. In fact, you’ll be staring at trees through your train window for the majority of the Trans-Siberian journey. So I recommend going in the fall when the trees are most beautiful. We started our trip on Sept. 7th, and the trees were just starting change colors. I think a couple weeks later would have been absolutely perfect. Assuming the leaves change colors at a similar time every year, I would recommend booking your trip towards the end of September, maybe even early October.

After doing this trip in the fall, I really want to do it again in the winter. I think it would be a totally different experience. Sure it would be cold, but I feel like the Trans-Siberian is meant to be experienced in the winter.

The countryside would be incredibly beautiful covered in snow, and you would have an excuse to buy one of those awesome fur hats that they seem to be selling in every city. 

If you enjoy nature, Lake Baikal will definitely be one of the highlights of your Trans-Siberian journey. I think visiting the lake in the winter (when it’s frozen) would be even better than the fall when it’s just water like any other lake. 

If you visit in the winter, your excursions could be way more epic! They have hover boats that will take you around the frozen lake, and you could even go dog sledding! If you live somewhere where these activities are normal, maybe you should stick to fall. But we live in Tennessee where it rarely snows, so we get super excited about the snow and everything that goes along with it.

My last argument for going in the winter is that you’re going to be eating and drinking hot things on the train, and it’s way better to eat and drink hot stuff when it’s cold outside. Each train car has a free hot water dispenser, so if you bring supplies you can have unlimited tea, coffee, and instant meals during the entire trip. It would be way more enjoyable to sip tea and coffee all day if it were freezing cold outside.

This section was obviously just a personal opinion. I think the most popular time to go is actually summer, but I really don’t understand why. I don’t see how the summer heat would make this trip any more enjoyable.

Trans-Siberian vs. Trans Mongolian

I’ll keep this section brief because we haven’t experienced the Trans-Mongolian, so we can’t do a true comparison. With that said, I think the Trans-Mongolian would be an overall better experience. During our 144 hours on the Trans Siberian, the scenery outside our window didn’t change drastically. 

There was a giant lake, some mountains, small towns, big cities, and a ton of trees. So while I definitely enjoyed getting to see the countryside of Russia, I would have loved some more variation in the views, which you would get on the Trans-Mongolian.

The most beautiful section of the Trans-Siberian is the section where the tracks run beside like Baikal for a few hours. You’ll ride this section of the tracks on both the Trans-Siberian and the Trans-Mongolian. Plus, if you ride the Trans-Mongolian, you’ll also get to see the Gobi desert and the Chinese countryside.

The Trans-Mongolian turns south to Ulan Bator, the capital of Mongolia, after passing through Ulan Ude. So you could do all of the stops I mentioned in our itinerary. Plus, you’d get to stop in the capital of Mongolia and end in Beijing where you could see the Great Wall of China! 

Again, I really don’t know enough about the Trans-Mongolian to speak knowledgeably on it. But I do know that you basically get to experience the best of the Trans-Siberian plus Mongolia and China on the Trans-Mongolian. So it seems like the clear winner to me. 

The only thing that may stop you from choosing the Trans-Mongolian over the Trans-Siberian is what stopped us, visas. As an American citizen, you don’t need an additional visa for Mongolia, but you will need one to enter China. Chinese visas aren’t cheap and you’ll need to send your passport off to a visa service company like we did for our Russian visa.

With that said, I think the added cost and annoyance of the additional visa would be totally worth it if you have the time! 

Choose your class or train

Class of service on the trans-siberian
Which Class of Service Should You Choose?

After you’ve chosen your route, it’s time to choose which class of ticket you’ll book for the trip. Your options include 1st, 2nd, or 3rd class.

The biggest difference between each class of service is the number of people who share a cabin. In first class, there are only two people in a cabin. In second class there are four people, and in third class there are no cabins. Instead, there are 50 people in the train car, and all of the beds are open to the rest of the car.

If you want a tour of a first class cabin, watch this video [starting at 6:45]

If you want a tour of a third class cabin, watch this video [Starting at 7:40]

We didn’t stay in a second-class cabin, but you can catch a glimpse of one at 1:22 in the video below. They look similar to the first class cabin except there are four beds instead of two.

One important (and possibly obvious) thing to point out is that unless you’re riding the Trans-Siberian without stopping, you’ll be on different trains during each segment of your journey. 

After you get off your train at your first stop, that train will continue to its final destination, and you will be catching a different train a few days later whenever you decide to leave. 

So you don’t have to choose one class of service for the entire journey because you’ll technically be booking separate tickets for each segment. 

For example, Kara and I booked first class for our 74-hour journey from Moscow to Irkutsk. We booked 3rd class for our second segment because it was only 6 1/2 hours from Irkutsk to Ulan-Ude, and we booked first class again for our 64-hour journey from Ulan-Ude to Vladivostok. 

Hopefully, you now have a decent understanding of your booking options. Now let’s look at how you actually purchase these tickets.

Buying Tickets

Where to buy your Trans Siberian train tickets
Where should you buy your Trans-Siberian train tickets?

There are two different ways you can buy tickets for the train. You can buy your tickets through one of many online brokers, or you can buy them directly from the train company through their website. 

Buying through a broker is easier but more expensive while buying from the train company’s website is more confusing, but substantially cheaper.

If you buy through a broker, you’re basically paying someone to guide you through the purchasing process. To be fair, booking through the train website can be confusing. However, you’ll pay quite a bit of money for this middleman service, and the fees from each broker vary considerably. 

If you decide to go through a broker, I’ve heard that TuTu has some of the lowest fees.

One of the most popular online brokers is RealRussia.com. Their site has a great tool for planning your trip. You can put in where you want to stop and how many days you want to spend at each stop. Then, the website will show you all of the available trains for each segment of your journey.

I was super close to purchasing my tickets from RealRussia.com. However, right before I was going to purchase the tickets I discovered that the official Russian train website has an English version that I could use to purchase tickets!

So, I compared the prices between RealRussia.com and the train company’s website, and I was shocked to learn that the exact same tickets on RealRussia.com were marked-up over $300 EACH!

Even though the train company’s website was more confusing, I booked the tickets that way and saved over $600! 

My advice would be to do as I did (on accident). Use RealRussia.com’s online tool to plan your journey. Then, buy your tickets directly from the train company’s website.

One important thing to note: If you ride the Trans-Siberian all the way across, you will transit through 5 time zones. This makes planning your journey a bit more challenging. Thankfully, RealRussia.com takes the time change into consideration on their online planning tool. When you are planning your trip on their website, it will give you all of the times in local times. However, when you search for tickets on the train company’s website, all of the times will be listed as Moscow time. 

Pretty much everything that has to do with trains is listed in Moscow time. For example, the clocks on the trains stay on Moscow time. The clocks at each train station are on Moscow. The schedules both on the trains and at the train stations are listed in Moscow time.

To make sure that you’re booking the same tickets on the train company’s website as you found on RealRussia.com, it’s helpful to use an online time converter such as TimeZoneConverter.com 

Searching for Trans-Siberian Tickets on RealRussia.com

Below I’m going to show you exactly how to search for your route on RealRussia.com. Then, I’ll show you how to actually book the tickets on the train company’s website.

You can start planning your journey on RealRussia.com by following these four easy steps.

Step 1: Select “Trans-Russia” at the top of the journey planner and enter your estimated departure date.

trans-siberian-journey-planner

Step 2: At this point, you should see all of the possible stops along the Trans-Siberian listed in the journey planner. Select each city you want to visit and specify how long your stay will be using the drop-down menu. Once you have entered your selection click “search for available trains”

choose your train stops

Step 3: On the next page you’ll see all of the trains that are available for the first segment of your journey. This is where you have the opportunity to choose which train you want to take, and which class of service you want to choose. Repeat this step for every leg of the journey.

first class second class third class

Step 4: Once you have entered your train selection for each leg of the journey, you’ll be presented with your “journey summary”. You’ll also be given the opportunity to purchase your tickets. I recommend not purchasing your tickets through Real Russia because you’ll pay a premium for using their service. Instead, you should record all of the details in your journey summary and book your tickets on the train company’s website.

journey summary

Buying Trans-Siberian Tickets Through Rzd.ru (English version)

Now I’ll show you how to save a substantial amount of money by booking your train tickets on the English version of the rzd.ru website.

Step 1: In order to buy tickets on the website, you must create an account. It doesn’t take long, it’s pretty straightforward, and it’s free. You can click here to get started creating your account.

Step 2: Once your account has been created, you’re ready to start booking your tickets. You’ll need to book each leg of your journey separately, so start by entering the origin and destination of the first leg of your trip. Make sure to refer back to your journey summary from Real Russia and enter the appropriate dates. At this point, you don’t need to worry about the time. You will have the option to select your time and class of service on the next page.

rzd booking page

Step 3: On this page, you’ll be presented with all of the available trains on the day you chose. Refer back to your summary from Real Russia and choose the train that matches the journey you created. You need to be especially careful about the times on this step. The times on the rzd.ru website will all be listed in Moscow time, and the times on your journey summary will be listed in local time. Make sure to convert the times to ensure you’re booking the exact train you wanted on your original itinerary.

selecting-your-class-of-train-service

Step 4: After you’ve selected your class of service, you’ll need to choose a compartment. Once you’ve chosen a compartment, you’ll be presented with a seat map of the compartment. The seat numbers that are already taken will be grey, and the ones that are still available will be black. I recommend looking for a compartment that has open seats near the middle. I would especially avoid booking seat in the compartment next to the toilet. After you’ve found a suitable compartment, click “Go to Passenger Data Entry and Seat Selection”.

Step 5: Once you’ve chosen your compact, the next step is to fill in your personal information and choose your seat. Filling in your personal information is pretty straightforward, but there is one tricky part. When you are choosing your “Document Type” DO NOT select Foreign Passport. Instead, you should choose “Foreign Document”. You’ll still enter your passport information as usual, but for some reason, the site only works if you choose “Foreign Document”.

entering passenger information

Next, choose your seat. If you would like a specific seat, just enter the seat number in both boxes of the seat range. In the example below I have chosen seat 29. After you’ve selected your seat click “reserve places” and you’ll be taken to the payment page.

seat selection

Step 6: Purchase your ticket. This step should be pretty straightforward! The only thing you should know is that most U.S. banks tend to block purchases from Russia unless you have notified them ahead of time. I recommend calling your bank to let them know that you’ll be purchasing from Russia so they don’t block the transaction.

Step 7: Repeat this process for each leg of your journey.

Purchasing your tickets through the RZD website is a little extra work compared to purchasing your tickets on Real Russia, but with this guide you shouldn’t have any issues, and you will save a lot of money!

Packing

Packing for the Trans Siberian
What Should You Pack for the Trans-Siberian?

Now that you have your tickets booked, it’s time to think about what you’ll pack. This isn’t going to be a comprehensive packing guide because what you pack will depend on the season you ride the train and your personal preference. 

Instead of a comprehensive list, I’ll give you some overarching guidelines and a few essentials you should definitely pack regardless of the season.

My biggest piece of advice when packing for the Trans-Siberian would be not to pack too much! Especially if you plan to travel in second or third class. If you’re traveling in first class you’ll have a little more storage space, but either way, the less you can pack the better.

In second and third class you’ll only have one storage compartment under or above your bunk depending on if you choose the top or bottom bunk. The space is big enough for two carry-on sized suitcases. In our case, we were able to fit our carry-on bag and backpack under the seat with plenty of room to spare.

It’s important that you don’t pack in a big suitcase otherwise it won’t fit in the storage compartment. I would recommend packing in a carry-on size bag, or an unstructured duffle bag that you can cram into small spaces. 

Another important thing you should take into consideration is that you don’t need new clothes for every day you’re on the train. You’re pretty much just laying in your bed all day. There’s no reason to get dressed up or even change clothes from day to day. You probably won’t have the opportunity to shower anyway. So one or two pairs of comfortable clothes for your days on the train should be plenty! 

Now let’s talk about the items that are worthy of taking up precious space in your carry-on sized bag.

  • Shoes – You’ll want to make sure that you have a pair of shoes for the train that are easy to slip on and off. You’ll probably want to take your shoes off when you’re inside your cabin, and you won’t want to walk around the train without shoes on, so you’ll do a lot of taking your shoes on and off. Comfortable slip-on shoes are essential!
  • Lounge clothes – You don’t need to look nice when riding the train. As I said before, you’ll be sitting on your bed for most of the day so make sure to pack comfy clothes! 
  • A Bag Lock – If you’re riding in first class you won’t need one, but you’ll definitely want to be able to lock up your stuff when you leave the train and sleep if you’re sharing a space in second or third class. 
  • Body wipes – Kara used wipes to freshen up every morning. She basically just used wipes to clean her whole body. She calls it a wipey bath. 
  • Dry Shampoo – Kara says it keeps your hair from getting greasy and it gives it more body. Which I guess is what you need if you’re not showering for a few days.
  • Converter & Power strip – Unless your electronics have European plugs, you’ll need a converter. If you ride in first class you’ll probably only have one outlet in your cabin. So if you want to charge more than one thing at a time, a travel power strip will come in super handy! If you ride in 2nd or 3rd you’ll have to share an outlet with a lot of people, so you can easily make friends by having a power strip that other people can use! 
  • Audiobooks and Podcasts – I recommend audiobooks and podcasts over books or a kindle because you can enjoy the scenery while listening. If you spend your whole trip with your head in a book, you’ll miss the best part, the views. CLICK HERE to get your first audiobook for free on Audible! 
  • Stuff for Sleeping Better – Melatonin/Eye Mask/Ear Plugs/Head Phones – If you have trouble sleeping, the items listed above may make it a little easier for you to sleep on a bed that is constantly moving and in a room that never quite gets all the way dark or quiet.

I think that about does it for my packing tips and necessities. Obviously, you’ll need to take into consideration what excursions you have planned when you’re off the train to complete your own packing list.

Grocery List

Buy groceries for the trans siberian railway
Should you buy groceries for the train trip?

When it comes to eating on the train you have four options.

Option #1: You can buy food from the restaurant car on the train. The restaurant is the only place you’ll be able to get a proper meal while riding the Trans-Siberian. However, it won’t be cheap. We only ate in the restaurant once on our trip. A small bowl of soup and a small plate of fried potatoes cost us over $10. If you want a proper meal it will cost between $10 & $20 per person. The prices aren’t crazy expensive, but the cost of food would really add up if you ate every meal in the food car.

Option #2: You can buy snacks, drinks, and instant meals from your cabin attendant. The lady in charge of your car has a small supply of food that she’ll be happy to sell you at a premium. You’ll pay double what you would pay for the same thing in the grocery store. However, most of what they sell in the cabin is cheap so you’ll be paying $1 for your instant ramen noodles instead of $0.50. So, it’s really not a big deal.

Option #3: You can buy snacks, drinks, and instant meals at the train stops. The train will stop 3 – 5 times per day. You’ll have a few minutes to jump off and buy a few things. The stuff at the train station is cheaper than what you’d buy on the train, but still more expensive than the grocery store. If you don’t want to go grocery shopping before the trip, this is probably your best bet for purchasing food. At some of the stops, there will also be ladies selling home cooked food like dumpings and some sort of fried bread. However, I’ve heard they’re putting a stop to this because a lot of people were getting sick from the food.

Option #4: Bring your own food. This is the option we chose, and in our opinion, it was the right decision. It’s definitely the cheapest. Before each long leg of our trip we went to the grocery store and stocked up on all of the food we’d need for the next few days. Since there is unlimited hot water on the train, everything we bought could either be cooked with hot water, or didn’t need to be cooked at all. Also, there are no refrigerators on the train, so don’t buy anything that needs to be refrigerated. 

Below is a list of foods I’d recommend picking up at the store before getting on the train.

  • Ramen Noodles
  • Instant Coffee
  • Tea
  • Chips
  • Instant Oatmeal
  • Instant Mashed Potatoes
  • Plastic Cutlery
  • Fruit
  • Veggies

A normal day of eating on the train for us started with oatmeal and an apple for breakfast, instant potatoes for lunch, and ramen noodles for dinner. We also consumed way too much coffee, tea, and snacks on a daily basis. To be fair, our diet wasn’t healthy, but it was cheap and easy! 

The optimal eating solution would probably be to have a balance between bringing your own food and eating in the restaurant car. For example, you could bring enough instant food for breakfast and lunch each day. Then, you could treat yourself to dinner each night in the restaurant cabin. How you decide to handle the food situation really depends on your personal preference and your budget. If you want to spend the least amount of money, bring your own food! If you consider eating the local food part of your travel experience, you should have at least a couple meals in the restaurant car.

What daily life is like on the Trans-Siberian

what to expect on the trans siberian
Want to know what to expect on the Trans-Siberian?

If you want to see what life is like when riding the Trans-Siberian Railway, I highly recommend watching a few of our videos. We documented almost every day of our 11 day journey. Click the play button below to binge-watch the series.

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TRANS-SIBERIAN RAILWAY JOURNEY BEGINS! First Class Wagon Tour
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TRANS-SIBERIAN DAY 2 | Exploring the rest of the train!
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74 HOURS ON THE TRANS-SIBERIAN! Day 3 Restaurant Car & Wipees
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TRANS-SIBERIAN DAY 4 | Deepest Lake in the World!
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DIY FOOD TOUR Trans-Siberian Day 5 | Russian & Mongolian Foods!
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THIRD CLASS TRAIN TOUR | Trans-Siberian Day 6
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TRANS-SIBERIAN DAY 6 | Almost in Mongolia!
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OUR FAVORITE STOP ON THE TRANS-SIBERIAN! Day 7
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WE ALMOST MISSED IT! FIRST Class Wagon Tour (Trans-Siberian Railyway Day 8)
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BUSINESS CLASS Vladivostok to Seoul | S7 AIRLINES
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Filed Under: Uncategorized

Income & Expense Report | April – June 2017

July 23, 2017 by Nate 8 Comments

Income & Expense Report | April – June 2017

Before we jump into the income report, let me start by saying the purpose of this income report is not to brag about how much money we’re making. Trust me, when we first started sending out these reports, we were barely making any money.

After 18 months of travel, this is the first time we have ever reported a profit on an income report!

There are three major reasons we started sending out these income and expense reports:

1. I (Nate) am a business nerd! I always wonder how much money people are making and exactly how they’re making it. I wish more people would transparently share their entrepreneurial journey, so that’s why I do it! When other people do it, I find it inspiring and incredibly interesting! So I hope you’re inspired or at least interested when you read this.

2. When Kara and I tell people that we travel full-time, the response we get the majority of the time is “I wish I could do that.” At this point in the conversation I usually just bite my tongue. I realize that, for some, full-time travel truly isn’t possible. But for most of the people who say “I wish I could do that,” they could if they really wanted to. Yes, some people would have to work harder than others to make it happen, but most people could make it happen if they were willing to make travel a priority. A couple years ago, Kara and I made travel our top priority. We saved up money for over a year, we moved out of our apartment, we sold our cars, and we quit our jobs. Now we put in the work (almost) every day to be able to afford to continue traveling. We hope that by sharing this report each month, it will inspire some of you to go from “I wish I could” to “How could I.”

3. We’re not special, and we want you to remember that no matter where this journey takes us. I feel like once people become “successful” it’s easy to think they’re “special” and that’s why they were able to achieve success. But in reality, every successful person started out as a “regular” human. At this point in our lives, Kara and I are pursuing this crazy dream of turning our passion for travel into a sustainable business. If we do achieve success one day, we hope that by sharing this journey from the beginning you’ll be able to see that two regular people had a dream, went after it, and achieved success. In turn, we hope this will inspire you (a “regular person”) to dream a big dream and go after it!

Thoughts on Quarter 2 of 2017

Wow! Kara and I just did a little dance here in our Rome hotel room to celebrate the first ever profitable income and expense report! With that said, I almost feel like this shouldn’t count. These past three months have been VERY different from the previous 15 months of full-time travel.

For starters, we actually spent the majority of our time at home during this quarter. We didn’t really plan it that way, but it just kind of happened. The main reason we were home was for Kara’s sister’s wedding, but we used being in one place for two months as an opportunity to get caught up on work and pursue a lot of businessy things we’ve been wanting to do for a long time, which brings me to my second point.

While we were home, I officially launched my course 30 Days to Becoming a Travel Hacker! In just one week I made almost $6,000 launching the course!

Lastly, my computer broke when we were in the Amazon, so we had to buy a new computer. Instead of me getting a new computer, I took Kara’s old one and she bought a 15″ MacBook Pro. She desperately needs the increased computing power to edit the vlogs, so I happily took her old one and let her get a new one.

So to sum up why this quarter was so different than others, we spent the majority of the time at home (staying with our parents), so we were able to save a lot of money that we would have spent on accommodations had we been traveling. We bought Kara a new computer that cost almost $3,000. We don’t make big purchases like that often, and I launched my course and made almost $6,000 in a week. While that was awesome, it’s not something that can easily be repeated in the future.

The main point of this intro is to say, yes, we made money for the first time. However, I have a hard time celebrating because the circumstances aren’t repeatable. The goal is to make consistent monthly income that sustains our travels, and there were many things about this month that were not consistent.

With that said, I’m super glad our bank account was in the black (not the red) this quarter!

So without further ado, let’s jump into the income and expense report!

Income Report

1. YouTube Ad Revenue – $1,826.86

We saw a slight dip in our YouTube ad revenue this month. Normally, changes to our YouTube ad revenue are a mystery, but I have a pretty good feeling this decline was due to only publishing 41 videos during the months of April – June. That averages out to less than 4 per week (shame on us). Our goal is to get back to 6 days per week ASAP!

2. Patreon – $2,684.73

YouTube ad revenue can be fickle, which is why we’re so grateful for the patrons that choose to support our work! This second year of full-time travel wouldn’t be possible without them! For the second quarter in a row, our income from Patreon exceeded our YouTube ad revenue!

Our pledges on Patreon have grown substantially this quarter! Patreon says we’re up to $110 pledged per video. We’ve learned from past experience that Patreon over-estimates pledges. So, our actual average per video is probably closer to $90 or $95! Either way, we’re still blown away every day that people spend their hard earned money to support our work!

CLICK HERE to learn more about becoming a patron!

3. 30 Days To Becoming A Travel Hacker Course – $5,948

At the end of June I officially launched 30 Days to Becoming A Travel Hacker!

To celebrate I gave everyone a big discount and threw in a bunch of fun bonuses such as a free t-shirt, free decal, and life time access to my flight deal notifications! The goal was to create a lot of hype around the launch and give people a reason to buy the course during the first week.

It worked! The discount and bonuses were only available for the first week, and that week we had almost 60 people enroll. The course launch actually rolled over into the first few days of July, but I included all of the launch sales in this report just to keep everything in the same place.

I also went ahead and subtracted the cost of the t-shirts and decals, so the number that you see above is actually the profit I made from the launch of the course! I’m excited about how the launch turned out, but I’m even more excited to see if I can build a sales funnel that will allow me to make consistent sales each month.

I don’t expect to make $5,000 every month, but I’m hoping I can sell 5 or 10 every month at the full price of $147! That would be a nice bump in our consistent monthly income!

4. Mistake Fare Manual – $234

The Mistake Fare Manual has continued to sell the occasional copy on auto pilot. This e-book doesn’t make us a ton of money every month, but it is truly passive income. I expected sales to drop off during the launch because I included the Mistake Fare Manual as a free bonus to anyone who purchases 30 Days to Becoming a Travel Hacker! However, sales actually went up! I think people who aren’t ready to commit to the full course may be purchasing The Mistake Fare Manual as a starter because the price point is much lower.

If you want to learn how I’ve been able to find and book CRAZY CHEAP flights around the world, check out the Mistake Fare Manual!

5. Flight Deal Notifications – $57.82

The Flight Deal Notifications are another income source that doesn’t make us a ton of money each month, but it is completely passive. Once I add someone to the notifications list, there’s no additional work to be done! You can get 6 free months of flight deal notifications when you purchase the Mistake Fare Manual, or a year for free when you purchase 30 Days to Becoming a Travel Hacker. However, you can also sign up for the Flight Deal Notifications separately! If you want the best flight deals from around the web sent straight to your phone as soon as they’re posted, sign up for my Flight Deal Notifications!

6. Affiliate Income – $629.43

  • Amazon – $495.33
  • Audible – $75
  • The Paradise Pack – $59.10

This quarter we made almost $500 through the Amazon affiliate program (which is about average) by recommending products we use and love. The majority of our Amazon affiliate income is generated through people who visit the following pages.

Our Vlogging Gear
Our Packing List
Keep Us On The Road

Other miscellaneous sources of affiliate income are include above as well.

5. Sponsored Videos & Video Licensing – $700 (new category)

For the first time ever we created a sponsored video for a company, and we licensed two videos to another company.

In May skillshare.com reached out to us to make a sponsored video promoting their platform to our audience. They offered to pay us $400, and give our viewers two free months of access to their learning platform. It seemed like a win-win so we took them up on their offer! You can watch the video here.

Then The Matador Network reached out to us and offered us $150 to license 45 seconds of footage from two separate videos (The Elephant Jungle Sanctuary & The Bolivian Salt Flats). Licensing basically means we gave them permission to use our videos. They used this footage to create viral videos posted their Facebook page. Both videos did well, but the one from Elephant Jungle Sanctuary did REALLY well! It currently has over 14 million views! (watch it here)

Total Q1 Income – $12,080.84

Since the beginning, we’ve been trying to develop multiple income streams that will combine together to fund our travels. The pie chart above gives you a quick breakdown of how each revenue stream is contributing to our total income.

Expense Report

Travel Expenses – $2,610.08

Peru – $517.77

  • Accommodations $146
  • Credit Card Charges $100
  • ATM Withdraws $271.77

Myrtle Beach Road Trip – $409.44

Home (Nashville, TN) – $1,682.87

Business Expenses – $2,625.01

Partnerships Manager – $1,200
An awesome guy named Benji is our strategic partnership manager. He’s the one who lines up the majority of our partnerships!

Facebook Ads – $50
I experimented with Facebook ads leading up launching the course. I don’t know if they actually paid off, but I was able to get new email subscribers at around $.80 each. I plan to continue experimenting with Facebook ads as an attempt to build a sales funnel around 30 Days to Becoming a Travel Hacker.

DJI Spark – $545.16
To celebrate 40k subscribers (and to get a lot of new email subscribers before the course launch) we gave away a DJI Spark! We had over 7,000 enter the giveaway! I’d like to assume that several of those people bought the course, so the giveaway paid for itself through extra course sales. Unfortunately, my tracking isn’t that good so I really don’t know.

Convert Kit – $259.59
The great email platform that we use to send emails to our email list of +9,000 people.

Teachable – $164.08
The platform where I host my course 30 Days to Becoming a Travel Hacker and The Mistake Fare Manual

Premiere Pro – $98.28
The program Kara uses to edit our episodes.

Gleam.io – $78.00
The software we used for our 40k Giveaway. The built in sharing features helped us get over 7,000 entries!

Upwork – $10.00
We hired a virtual assistant off Upwork to help us grow our Instagram account. It was a complete failure. We basically paid him $10 to go away.

Google Service – $45.00
This is the money we pay Google for our email address every month so that we can look semi-professional.

Touchnote Postcard – $102.90
This is the service we’re using to send postcards to patrons!

Epidemic Sound – $15
We used free music off SoundCloud forever, but we’ve started paying $15 per month to epidemic sound for more access to royalty free music.

TubeBuddy – $57
This service allows us to bulk edit the cards and end cards across all of our videos on YouTube. Basically, we pay $19 to avoid spending hours of our lives monotonously changing cards on our channel.

New Toys – $3,383.89

15″ Macbook Pro – $2690.75

Sony 16mm f 2.8 lens – $145.98

Wide Angle Converter – $158

Drone Insurance – $79

New Hard Drive – $120.16

New Credit Card(s) Annual Fee – $190

Fixed Costs – $1,351.20

T-Mobile Phone Plan – $350

Health Insurance – $522

Car Insurance – $276.00

Short Term U.S.A. Health Insurance – $203.20

Our phone plan and international health insurance are necessities. We also had the pleasure of paying for car insurance while we were home, and we had to tack on short term health insurance plan because our International Health Insurance plan doesn’t cover us if we’re in the U.S.A..

Total Q2 Expenses – $9,969.87

Summary

Total Profit$2,110.97
Income
YouTube Ad Revenue$1,826.86
Patreon$2,684.73
Course$5,948.00
E-Book$234.00
Flight Deal Notifications$57.82
Affiliate Income629.43
Licensing & Sponsors$700.00
Total Income$12,780.84
Expenses
Peru-$517.77
Myrtle Beach-$409.44
Nashville-$1,682.87
Business Expenses-$2,625.01
New Toys-$3,383.89
Fixed Cost-$1,351.20
Total Expenses-$9,969.87

“Savings”

Frequent Flyer Miles – $1,200

Lima to Nashville – $1,200

We redeemed 40,000 American Airline frequent flyer miles to fly from Lima, Peru to U.S.A. for only $100 each! I love the flexibility that frequent flyer miles give you!

Before Kara and I left to travel full-time, we saved up almost 2 million miles and points! We’ve used these miles and points to save over $20,000 on travel expenses. If you want to learn how to do the same check out my new course 30 Days to Becoming a Travel Hacker!

Partnerships – $5,950

Mountain Lodges of Peru (5 Day Lares Trek) – $4,800

Kuoda Travel (2 Day Sacred Valley Journey) – ~$1,000

Delectable Peru – ~$150

Total “Savings” – $7,150

We had far less “savings” this quarter than usual because we were home in Nashville the majority of the time. This number would be a lot higher if I included the money we saved on rent by living with our parents for a couple of months. However, mooching off our parents is not something we’re proud of so it’s not included here. Thanks mom & dad 🙂

That wraps up our Quarter 2 income report! I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below!

Filed Under: income reports, the travel hustle, Travel Hacking

Income & Expense Report | January – March | 2017

May 12, 2017 by Nate 1 Comment

Income & Expense Report | January – March | 2017

We’re trying something new this month. In the past we’ve only sent these income reports out to our email list. This is the first income report that’s been published on our website for the world to see! Normally these income reports are sent out monthly. But since I was way behind, I’ve combined January, February, and March into the “Q1 Income Report” in an attempt to get caught up!

Before we jump into the income report let me start by saying, the purpose of this income report is not to brag about how much money we’re making. Trust me, when we first started sending out these reports, we were barely making any money, and we still have yet to cover our travel expenses with the income we’re bringing in! However, after 16 months, we’re getting really close!

There are three major reasons we started sending out these income and expense reports:

1. I (Nate) am a business nerd! I always wonder how much money people are making, and exactly how they’re making it. I wish more people would transparently share their entrepreneurial journey, so that’s why I do! When other people do it, I find it inspiring and incredibly interesting! So I hope you’re inspired or at least interested when you read this.

2. When Kara and I tell people that we travel full-time, the response we get majority of the time is “I wish I could do that”. At this point in the conversation I usually just bite my tongue. I realize that, for some, full-time travel truly isn’t possible. But for most of the people who say “I wish I could do that,” they could if they really wanted to. Yes, some people would have to work harder than others to make it happen, but most people could make it happen if they were willing to make travel a priority. A couple years ago, Kara and I made travel our top priority. We saved up money for over a year, we moved out of our apartment, we sold our cars, and we quit our jobs. Now we put in the work almost every day to be able to afford to continue traveling. We hope that by sharing this report each month, it will inspire some of you to go from “I wish I could” to “How could I.”

3. We’re not special, and we want you to remember that no matter where this journey takes us. I feel like once people become “successful” it’s easy to think they’re “special” and that’s why they were able to achieve success. But in reality, every successful person started out as a “regular” human. At this point in our lives, Kara and I are pursuing this crazy dream of turning our passion of travel into a sustainable business. If we do achieve success one day, we hope that by sharing this journey from the beginning you’ll be able to see that two regular people had a dream, went after it, and achieved success. In turn, we hope this will inspire you (a “regular person”) to dream a big dream and go after it!

Thoughts on Quarter 1 of 2017

First, I’d like to start by thanking all of our patrons on Patreon! At the beginning of the year a handful of you stepped up to make sure that we could financially continue this adventure for a second year, and for that we’re truly grateful! One of the most exciting aspects of this income report is that our patronage has more than doubled since the beginning of the year. Another thing I’m really excited about is the successful pre-launch of my 30 Days to Becoming a Travel Hacker course. Even though it was only a pre-launch, it’s already become our largest income stream!

In terms of expenses this quarter, I’m pretty happy with how we did during these first three months. The ability to stay around our budget was thanks (in no small part) to the number of partnerships we were able to line up during the first quarter. Thanks to these partnerships, we received over 30 free nights of accommodations and many free meals and activities! With that said, we definitely spent a little more on airfare because we weren’t able to be as flexible since we had scheduled partnerships. We found ourselves traveling to more off the beaten path destinations. We definitely could have spent less, but the goal isn’t to spend as little as possible. The goal is to have the best experiences possible without spending irresponsibly so that we’ll have enough money to continue this adventure! So without further ado, let’s jump into the income and expense report!

Income Report

1. YouTube Ad Revenue – $2,069.25

During the first three months of the year our YouTube ad revenue hovered around $700 per month. Depending on the day, we made anywhere from $12 to $45. YouTube ad revenue is fickle and hard to understand. An increase in views doesn’t necessarily lead to an increase in ad revenue. However, I’ve learned that anytime we have a spike in new subscribers we also have a spike in ad revenue. Our spike in ad revenue on February 6th was due to a correlating spike in subscribers. During this time, we were holding our 30K Giveaway picking someone to win a Priority Pass and free access to my travel hacking course. More people than usual were subscribing to our channel for extra entries into the competition!

2. Patreon – $1,738.05

We set up our Patreon page last August with no clue how it would be received. Seven months later, in the month of February, the money that we were earning from our Patreon page officially surpassed our YouTube ad revenue! We are so grateful for all of our patrons! This second year of full-time travel wouldn’t be possible without them! Seriously, there’s a good chance Kara and I would not still be making YouTube videos if it wasn’t for each one of our patrons who make it financially possible!
CLICK HERE to learn more about coming a patron!

3. 30 Days To Becoming A Travel Hacker Course – $3,344.24

This is the first time my new course 30 Days to Becoming A Travel Hacker has made an appearance on this income report! I’ve wanted to create this course ever since we hit the road. After saving up almost 2 million frequent flyer miles and saving over $10,000 on flights during our first year of travel, I get TONS of questions about earning and redeeming frequent flyer miles. I hesitated to create this course for a long time because there’s so much information already online. Over the past four years, I’ve taught myself everything I know about travel hacking from free blogs on the internet. However, I eventually came to the realization that not everyone has four years to sit around the internet to teach themselves everything they need to know about travel hacking. So, I had the idea to create a course that would condense my four years of travel hacking into a 30 day intensive course that would teach a person everything they needed to know to start earning and redeeming miles and points for free flights and hotels around the world.

However, before I spent weeks of my life devoted to building this course, I wanted to gauge interest and demand. So in January I pre-sold the course with a $50 discount for anyone who was willing to pre-buy the course before it was created. Over 30 people purchased early access to the course! If 30 people were willing to buy a course that wasn’t even created yet, I had all of the proof of demand I needed to start building the course.

Creating this course took longer than anticipated, but I’m excited to announce that the it is finally complete! I’m currently making tweaks based on feedback from our founding members that purchased early access to the course, and the final version will be available to everyone starting in June!

4. Mistake Fare Manual – $237.51

The Mistake Fare Manual has continued to sell the occasional copy on auto pilot. This e-book doesn’t make us a ton of money every month, but it is truly passive income. However, I do expect it to drop off in the future because I’m giving away the Mistake Fare Manual as a bonus to anyone who purchases 30 Days to Becoming a Travel Hacker!

If you want to learn how I’ve been able to find and book CRAZY CHEAP flights around the world, check out the Mistake Fare Manual!

5. Flight Deal Notifications – $130.67

The Flight Deal Notifications are another income source that doesn’t make us a ton of money each month, but it is completely passive. Once I add someone to the notifications list, there’s no additional work to be done! You can get 6 free months of flight deal notifications when you purchase the Mistake Fare Manual, but you can also sign up for the Flight Deal Notifications separately! If you want the best flight deals from around the web sent straight to your phone as soon as they’re posted, sign up for my Flight Deal Notifications!

6. Affiliate Income – $1,273

  • Ultimate Photography Bundles – $659
  • Amazon – $523.99
  • Audible – $90

The Ultimate Photography Bundle was a week long sale of the best photography courses on the internet. They sold at a crazy discount! During the sale you could get $5,000 worth of photography stuff for only $79! Kara and I purchased the deal for ourselves, and then I decided to send you guys an email about this awesome deal, because I didn’t want the photographers on this email list to miss out. Before I sent out the email, I became an affiliate of Ultimate Bundles, so I could earn a commission for any referrals that purchased the course. I took two hours to type up one email about the deal. Since the deal was so good, 17 people purchased it! As an affiliate, I earned a 40% commission from every sale. In total, I earned $659 just from sending out one email! That’s crazy!

One of the best things I did when we started this adventure was to create an email list. I’m not always great at sending out the Sunday Summary, but we’ve been able to grow our list to over 4,500 subscribers! Our email list has become one of our most valuable resources. Not only did one email result in over $600 of income, but the reason I was able to pre-sell 30 copies of the course is because we have direct access to over 4,000 people’s email inbox!

There are a lot of email providers to choose from when you decide to build an email list. We highly recommend ConvertKit! If you’re serious about creating income through an email list, I’m confident there’s no better tool available than ConvertKit!

Last but not least, we made over $500 through the Amazon affiliate program by recommending products we use and love. The majority of our Amazon affiliate income is generated through people who visit the following pages.

Our Vlogging Gear
Our Packing List
Keep Us On The Road

Total Q1 Income – $8,792

Since the beginning, we’ve been trying develop multiple income streams that will combine together to fund our travels. The pie chart above gives you a quick breakdown of how each revenue stream is contributing to our total income.

Expense Report

Transportation – $2,546.70

OriginDestinationTransportUSDMiles & Points
Total$2,546224,143 Miles & Points
NashvilleBuenos AiresPlane$11.6060,000 AA Miles
Buenos AiresMontevideoFerry + Bus$150.00
MontevideoLa PalomaBus$33.50
La Paloma MontevideoBus$33.74
Montevideo SantiagoPlane$209.00
SantiagoAtacamaPlane$147.00
AtacamaAntofagastaBus$31.00
AntofagastaAtacamaBus$31.00
AtacamaSantiagoPlane$174.00
SantiagoBuenos AiresPlane$358.00
Puerto NatalesPunta ArenasBus$30
Punta ArenasLa PazPlane$41.0025,000 AA Miles
La PazUyuniPlane$300.00
La Paz QuitoPlane$181.9479,143 Citi Points
Quito GalapagosPlane$503.52
GalapagosQuitoPlane$25.0020,000 United Miles
QuitoIquitosPlane$275.4820,000 AA Miles
IquitosCuscoPlane$10.9320,000 AA Miles

The table above includes all of the major forms of transportation that we paid for during the first three months of the year. Smaller forms of transportation like local bus, taxis, and Ubers are included in the general expense section.

Accommodations – $1,968

CityAccommodationsNightsCostMisc.
$1,968
Buenos AiresAirbnb6$263.00
MontevideoAirbnb4$197.00
La PalomaAirbnb4$430.00
SantiagoAirbnb & Hotel9$542.00
AtacamaAirbnb3$184.00
AntofagastaHotel4$0IHG Points
PatagoniaHotel12$0Partnership
La Paz BoliviaAirbnb5$143.00
UyuniHotel3$0Partnership
GalapagosYacht8$0Partnership
QuitoAirbnb & Hotel16$209.00Marriott Points
IquitosBoat & Lodge7$0Partnership
CuscoAirbnb3$0Referral Credits

As you can see from the table above, we were able to save a lot of money on accommodations during the first three months by partnering with tour companies! We also cashed in some hotel points when we needed a few days to rest our heads in nice places and catch up on work!

General Travel Expenses – $2,708.55

  • Credit Card Charges – $1,278.76
  • ATM Withdraws – $1,429.79

Unfortunately, I didn’t do a good job of meticulously tracking every penny during the first three months of the year. Instead, I calculated this section by looking back through our credit card statements and seeing how much money we withdrew from ATMs. It would have taken days of my life to go through these and try to break them into categories like I normally do…

Business Expenses – $1,685.75
Partnerships Manager – $600.00
We hired an awesome guy to help us develop partnership opportunities, and he’s lined up some amazing partnerships for us!
Priority Pass – $225.00
Convert Kit – $199.76
The email platform that we use to send you these emails.
Teachable – $117.00
The platform I used to build build and sell my course.
Premier Pro – $65.52
The program Kara uses to edit our episodes.
Gleam.io – $39.00
The software we used to make our 30K Giveaway go semi viral
PTBA – $75.00
We joined the Professional Travel Blogging Association. It’s yet to be determine whether or not this was a good use of our time and money.
Accountant – $250
Upwork – $56.52
We’ve hired a virtual assistant off Upwork to add subtitles to the occasional YouTube video and upload some of our episodes to Facebook.
Google Service – $23.00
This is the money we pay Google for our email address every month so that we can look semi-professional.
Touchnote Postcard – $34.95
This is the service we’re using to send postcards to patrons!

Fixed Cost – $1,172.79
T-Mobile Phone Plan – $372.81
Health Insurance – $522
Car Insurance – $277.98

Our phone plan and international health insurance are necessities. Unfortunately, there was a miscommunication with our insurance agent and we paid for pointless car insurance for while our car just sat there for three months…

Summary

Total Loss-$1,289.08
Income
YouTube Ad Revenue$2,069.25
Patreon$1,738.05
Course$3,344.24
E-Book$237.51
Flight Deal Notifications$130.67
Affiliate Income$1,273.00
Total Income$8,792.71
Expenses
Transportation-$2,546.70
Accommodations-$1,968.00
Credit Card Charges-$1,278.76
ATM Withdraws-$1,429.79
Business Expenses-$1,685.75
Fixed Cost-$1,172.79
Total Expenses-$10,081.79

“Savings”

Frequent Flyer Miles – $5,100

Origin DestinationFrequent Flyer ProgramMiles UsedValue
NashvilleBuenos AiresAmerican Airlines60,000$1,600
Punta ArenasLa PazAmerican Airlines25,000$400
La PazQuitoCiti ThankYou79,143$1,800
GalapagosQuitoUnited Airlines20,000$500
QuitoIquitosAmerican Airlines20,000$400
IquitosCuscoAmerican Airlines20,000$400
224,143$5,100

Hotel Points – $2,078
JW Marriott – $1,393
Holiday Inn Antofagasta – $460
Airbnb Credits – $225

Before Kara and I left to travel full-time we saved up almost 2 million miles and points! We’ve used these miles and points to save over $20,000 on travel expenses. If you want to learn how to do the same check out my new course 30 Days to Becoming a Travel Hacker!

Partnerships – $31,920
Polo Day – $340
Santiago Cooking Class – $190
EL Tatio Geysers – $100
Southern Explorations – $5,390
Chile Tour – $1,000
Gustu – $200
Kuoda Bolivia – $3,000
Galapagos $13,000
Otorongo Lodge – $900
Delfin Amazon Cruise – $7,800
Total $31,920

Total “Savings” – $39,098

We partnered with a TON different companies during the first three months of the year! This enabled us to go on adventures that we would otherwise never be able to afford. The majority of these partnerships were lined up over our Christmas break. When I was initially planning out all of these partnerships, I thought these epic adventures would help us create episodes that everyone would love. It turns out some of you prefer our old style of videos where we just wander around and create our own adventures on a budget. We’re not going to stop participating in epic partnerships. In addition to really cool experiences, partnerships also allow us to keep our travel cost down and afford traveling and making vlogs. However, we are going to try to strike a better balance the second half of the year. We definitely want to spend more time traveling around on our own. To be honest, partnerships are amazing but also exhausting. That’s because we have less time to work and usually end up shooting twice as much video as we would during a regular day of filming.

If you have thoughts on partnership videos vs. watching us wander around on the cheap, feel free to shoot me an email and share your thoughts! Please keep in mind that these partnerships are helping to fund our travels, so cutting them out completely is out of the question, unless a lot more of you want to become patrons 🙂

That wraps up our Quarter 1 income report! After this, it’s back to our regularly scheduled monthly income reports! I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below!

Filed Under: income reports

October Income & Expense Report | 2016

May 11, 2017 by Nate Leave a Comment

October Income & Expense Report | 2016

Yes, this is OCTOBER’s Income and Expenses. Sorry for the delay! This is the closest we’ve ever been to breaking even, thanks to our merchandise sales this month. I hope you enjoy the October edition of Income & Expense Report!

Since these emails tend to get really long, I’ve included a table of contents below.

1. Income Report

2. Expense Report

3. Summary

4. “Savings”

Why Do We Send Out A Monthly Income Report?

This section is the same as last month – so this is for new people who are receiving the income report for the first time. If you read it last month, scroll down until you read “Income Report” and start there!

Let me start by saying, the purpose of this income report is not to brag about how much money we’re making from our YouTube channel. Trust me, when we first started sending out these reports, we were barely making any money!

Kara and I began this crazy adventure of full-time travel on January 10, 2016. When we originally started, the plan was to take a year off to travel the world. We had saved up enough money (plus a lot of frequent flyer miles) to get us through the end of the year.

About midway through the year we decided that we were really enjoying this full-time travel thing, and we were both going to be really sad if this adventure has to end in December. Plus, we’ve developed an amazing community of people on YouTube who have become a part of the adventure. It’d be a shame if all the fun had to end so soon!

Since we had only saved up enough money to travel for a year, we needed to find a way to make money on the road so we could continue traveling. For the last four months we’ve been on a journey to see if we can turn our YouTube channel into a little business that supports our travel. The reason we’ve decided to publish these income reports is because we want you to be a part of the journey.

We’re getting close to the point where we’re able to fund our travels through our YouTube channel! Traveling and sharing our adventures on YouTube is something Kara and I are both really passionate about. We feel super fortunate that we’re (almost) able to make a full-time living doing something we enjoy so much!

Our hope is that by transparently sharing our journey from the start, we might inspire you to go after one of your biggest dreams. So without further ado, here is the October income report.

1. Income Report

Kara and Nate Merchandise – $1,505.16

We sold apparel and coffee cups for the first time during the month of October, and it went way better than expected. Over 130 items were purchased in just 10 days! We sold t-shirts, hoodies, long sleeved t-shirts, and coffee mugs. Each item had a different profit margin, but in the end it averaged out to about $11.50 of profit per item sold.

We used the TeeSpring platform to sell our merchandise. We had a great user experience! If you plan to sell custom apparel, I recommend using TeeChip.com. I had originally planned to use TeeSpring.com, but I found the user interface on the back end of TeeChip to be much more intuitive. Plus, TeeChip offers higher margins, which allowed Kara and I to offer our apparel at a lower price!

My only complaint about TeeChip is that their analytics – which is why there’s no pretty graph at the bottom of this section.

YouTube Ad Revenue – $736.62

Change from last month – (October $736.62) – (September $725.79) = $10.83

Our ad revenue increased by over $200 in the month of September – mostly due to our capsule hotel getting a lot of views (randomly) bringing in a lot of new subscribers. While we didn’t have any videos go semi viral during the month of October, I’m happy to see that our ad revenue stayed between $20 – $30 almost every day of the month!

Patreon – $345.17

Change from last month (October $345.17) – (September 280.09) = $158.95

Before we jump into the business side of things, we’d like to say a belated special THANK YOU to our new October patrons: Andrew, Jessica, Kris, and Beatrice!

Patreon is the easiest way to support our channel. If you’d like to help keep us on the road producing new content, click the link below.

Click Here to Visit Our Patreon Page

Patreon is a platform that allows creators to receive reoccurring funding from fans. We’re excited about Patreon because, like the YouTube ad revenue we receive, it allows us to focus completely on creating awesome YouTube content.

Below is a screen shot of our pledge growth since launching our Patreon page in August. The green bar represents new pledges and the blue bar stands for the cumulative amount, and the red bar stands for decreased pledges.

Amazon Affiliate Income – $96.92

Change from last month (October $96.92) – (September $109.35) = –$12.43

Our Amazon affiliate income slipped below $100 for the first time in two months, but $96 is pretty close :). Thank you so much to everyone who takes the time to make an extra couple of clicks in order to give us a small commission from your Amazon purchases!

We haven’t added any new resources to our website in the last two months, so that’s probably why our income dipped a little bit this month. However, the three resource pages below still drove over 2,000 visitors to Amazon! I love that we were able to make over $100 this month just from recommending products we already use and love.

1. Travel Essentials – This page lists all of the packing gear we’re lugging around the world with us.

2. Vlogging Gear – This page lists all of the gear we use to create our vlogs on a daily basis.

3. Keep Us on the Road – This page explains all of the ways people can help financially support our travels.

Just so you know: We get paid for ANYTHING you buy off of Amazon within 24 hours of clicking our link! It doesn’t have to be the product we recommended. If you click through to look at our camera, and then get distracted and buy toilet paper, we still receive a commission for the toilet paper!

Mistake Fare Manual Sales – $151.00

Change from last month (October 151.00) – (September $158.82) = –$7.82

I’m amazed at how consistently the Mistake Fare Manual sells without any promotion. The past three months, we’ve made 5 – 7 new sales each month. Although $150 isn’t a ton of money, it’s completely passive income!

If you’d like to learn how to find and book mistake fares, click here to learn more about the Mistake Fare Manual

Below is a graph that shows our sales of the Mistake Fare Manual since it was published in June. Spoiler Alert: It’s already December so you can see our November sales as well.

The Mistake Fare Manual sells for $29. We use the Teachable platform to deliver the book. After they take out their fees, our profit is $26 per book.

Audible Partnership – $60

Change from last month (October $60) – (September $30) = $30.00

Last month, I was disappointed with the results from our Audible partnership, and I said:

“We’re going to continue promoting the free trial for another month. If only a few people sign up this month, we’ll reevaluate whether or not it’s worth promoting.”

We doubled our Audible Affiliate income this month, but it still wasn’t near as much as I expected. You’ll still be able to sign up for a free trail through our Keep Us On The Road page, but we won’t be promoting at the end of our videos. That screen real estate is too valuable to waste on something that’s only going to bring in $60.

I figured a graph with four bars on it was kind of pointless… So onto the next section!

Flight Deal Alerts – $13.96

Change from last month (October $13.96) – (September $8.97) = $4.99

The flight deal alerts are an easy way to get the best flight deals from around the web sent directly to your phone. Having these alerts set up is key to finding and booking mistake fares. They are sold as a companion to the Mistake Fare Manual.

Normally, flight deal alerts cost $2.99 per month. But when you purchase the Mistake Fare Manual, you can get 6 months of alerts for only $1.

We have over 50 people receiving amazing flight deal notifications on a daily basis, but the majority of our subscribers have paid $1 for six months after purchasing the Mistake Fare Manual, which is why we don’t make a ton from our flight deal alerts each month.

Other Affiliate Income – $31.40

Change from last month (October $31.40) – (September $5.98) = 25.42

Our additional affiliate income this month came from a course we promote called The Pitching Master Class. It’s a course that teaches you how to partner with travel companies for free and have paid experiences like we’ve been doing for the last few months. We found their advice very helpful, so we always link the course in our “Vanity Metrics” section at the bottom of this monthly email.

The course retails for $157 and we make about a 20% commission, so the $31.40 we made this month came from one person clicking on our link and purchasing the course!

Hopefully we’ll be able to find more affiliate links to work into our site and emails. However, we’ll never force affiliate links. We only recommend sites and products we use and love, so the addition of new affiliates will have to be organic.

Total Income for October – $2,940.23

Change from last month (October $2,940.23) – (September $1,319.18) = $1,621.05

Below is a graph that shows the make up of our income by revenue source.


Wow! We got really close to hitting our goal of $3,000 in a month, which is awesome! Unfortunately, over half of our income came from our apparel sales which isn’t a source of sustainable income that we can count on month to month.

We’re grateful for the extra money we earned this month, but in the coming months we’ll need to work on increasing revenue streams that can produce a consistent income for us each month.

2. Expense Report

Business Expenses

Convert Kit – $49

Business Email From Google – $5

Adobe Premiere Pro – $19.99

Teachable – $39

Traverse Mingle Tickets – $24.22

Total Business Expenses = $137.21

Fixed Costs

GeoBlue Health Insurance – $161

T-Mobile Phone Plan – $148.75

Kindle Unlimited – $10.94

Get a 30 Day Free Trial of Kindle Unlimited (Tons of Free Lonely Planet Guide Books!)

Total Fix Costs – $320.69

Travel Expenses

Dubrovnik, Croatia – $357 [Oct. 1 -5]

  • Airbnb (4 Nights) – $176
  • Other – $181.02

Kotor, Montenegro – $423.50 [Oct. 5 – 9]

  • Airbnb (4 Nights) – $216
  • Other – $207.50

North Cyprus – $257.41 [Oct. 9 – 18]

  • Hotels – $0
  • Other – $257.41

Athens, Greece – $481.34 [Oct. 18 – 22]

  • Airbnb (4 Nights) – $187
  • Other – $294.34

Santorini, Greece- $961 [Oct. 22 – 25]

  • Airbnb (3 Nights) – $567
  • Other – $394.10

Ziest, Netherlands – $164.89 [Oct. 25 – 31]

  • Accommodations – $0
  • Other – $164.89

Transportation

Flights

Montenegro to North Cyprus – $0

North Cyprus to Athens, Greece – $0

Athens, Greece to the Netherlands – $352.40

Private Taxi

Dubrovnik to Montenegro – $60

Total Spent on Transportation – $412.40

Total Expenses for October – $3,515.26

Change from last month (October $3,515.26) – (Sept. $3,027.62) = -487.64

Below is a graph that shows the break down of our expenses by category.

 

3. Summary

Total September Income

YouTube $736.62

Patreon $345.17

Mistake Fare Manual $151.00

Amazon Affiliate Income $96.92

Audible Partnership – $60

Flight Deal Notifications $13.96

Other Affiliate Income $31.40

Merchandise Sales – $1505.16

Total = $2,940.23

Total September Expenses

Business Expenses – $137.21

Fixed Expenses – $320.69

Travel Expenses – $3,057.36

Total = $3,515.26

Total Monthly Loss – $575.03

Change from last month (October $575.03) – (September $1,708.44) = 1,133.41

Before I sat down to write this income report, I was pretty confident that the month of October was going to be our first month to break even. Unfortunately, we didn’t quite make it, but this is the least amount of money we’ve “lost” in a month while being on the road.

We would have been even closer to breaking even this month if it wasn’t for a couple splurges in Santorini. We rented an amazing Airbnb that was way above our normal budget, and we paid to spend a day cruising around the island on catamaran. While we’re disappointed we didn’t break even for the first time this month, we don’t regret our splurges. Santorini was an amazing experience that we got to share with two of our closest friends. Some things are worth the extra money, and Santorini was one of them!

4. Savings (Vanity Metrics)

This is how much money we saved this month thanks to partnerships, frequent flyer miles, and negotiating. This is just a fun vanity metric to calculate. If you love numbers like me, it’s fun to look at how much money this month “should have” cost us.

Money Saved by Using Hotel Points & Frequent Flyer Miles!

This is the first month out of the entire year that we didn’t use a single frequent flyer mile or hotel point! It’s nice to keep those stashed away in the bank for times that we really need them!

Total Saved with Frequent Flyer Miles – $0

Partnerships

Now that our YouTube channel is getting over 500,000 views per month, we’re getting opportunities to partner with companies for free experiences/accommodations in return for featuring the company on the vlog. You’ll always know if we’ve partnered with a company because at the end of the vlog we’ll put a message that says either “Accommodations Provided By:” or “This Adventure Made Possible By:”. This serves as an advertisement for the company that we partner with, but it also helps us to be transparent about content on our vlog being sponsored.

During the month of October, we had our biggest partnership ever! It was also the first time we had a been approached by a company instead of us reaching out to them.

RT Flights to North Cyprus – ~$400 (Our Cost Free)

8 Nights of Accommodations in North Cyprus – ~900 (Our Cost Free)

7 Day Rental Car in North Cyprus – ~$200 (Our Cost Free)

Athens Food Tour – $110 (Our Cost Free)

Total Partnership Savings – ~ $1,610

99% of the time we’re the ones who initiate these partnerships. Rarely do brands reach out to us. We learned how to pitch brands for partnerships from Tommo and Megsy at Travel Master Class.

If you have a travel platform and you’re interested in learning how to partner with travel brands, we highly recommend checking out their course Pitching Master Class!

Negotiation – $50

When we stay in an Airbnb for an extended period of time, I try to negotiate the price down by contacting the host directly. This month I was only able to negotiate one of our Airbnb stays for a savings of just over $50.

Total Savings for September – $1,660

Filed Under: income reports

September Income & Expense Report | 2016

May 5, 2017 by Nate Leave a Comment

September Income & Expense Report | 2016

This month’s income report went much better than last month’s. It will take you 10-15 mins to read. Grab a cup of coffee and enjoy 🙂 If you don’t have time to read it now, flag it so you can come back and give it a proper read later!

Since these emails tend to get really long, I’ve included a table of contents below.

1. Income Report

2. Expense Report

3. Summary

4. “Savings”

Why Do We Send Out A Monthly Income Report?

This section is the same as last month – so this is for new people who are receiving the income report for the first time. If you read it last month, scroll down until you read “Income Report” and start there!

Let me start by saying, the purpose of this income report is not to brag about how much money we’re making from our YouTube channel. Trust me, it’s nothing to brag about!

Kara and I began this crazy adventure of full-time travel on January 10, 2016. When we originally started, the plan was to take a year off to travel the world. We had saved up enough money (plus a lot of frequent flyer miles) to get us through the end of the year.

Now that we’ve been on the road for 9+ months, we’ve decided that we’re really enjoying this full-time travel thing, and we’re both going to be really sad if this adventure has to end in December. Plus, we’ve developed an amazing community of people on YouTube who have become a part of the adventure. It’d be a shame if all the fun had to end so soon!

Since we only saved up enough money to travel for a year, we’re going to need to find a way to make money on the road so we can continue traveling. So we’re currently on a journey to see if we can turn our YouTube channel into a little business that supports our travel. The reason we’ve decided to publish these income reports is because we want you to be a part of the journey.

We’re no where close to being able to support ourselves through our YouTube channel, and it’s going to be a huge challenge to get there in the next 3 months. However, traveling and sharing our adventures on YouTube is something Kara and I are both really passionate about. It would be amazing to make a full-time living doing something we enjoy so much, so we’re going for it!

Our hope is that by transparently sharing our journey from the start, we might inspire you to go after one of your biggest dreams. So without further ado, here is the September income report.

1. Income Report

After running YouTube ads for three full months we’ve learned there’s no way we were going to make enough money from YouTube ads in the next 3 months to support our travels. So we’re in the process of developing additional sources of income. Below are the six ways we made money related to our YouTube channel in the month of September.

YouTube Ad Revenue – $725.79

Change from last month – (September $725.79) – (August $514.26) = $211.53

After watching our YouTube ad revenue slowly creep up over the past few months, we saw a big jump this month! This was also our first time to break half a million views in a month!

Our average number of views per video are definitely up this month, but we also had a video go semi-viral. Our capsule hotel video got over 50,000 views this month. One day YouTube just decided it should be popular and started promoting to a lot of people. To be honest, I have no clue why this happens. The capsule hotel video brought us a lot of new subscribers, and I believe the new subscribers are to thank for the increase in ad revenue. THANKS GUYS 🙂

Patreon – $280.09

Change from last month (September $280.09) – (August 93.87) = $186.22

We created a Patreon page mid way through August, so this was our first full month on Patreon. We’re SO GRATEFUL for the support that we’re receiving through this platform. Thanks to our patrons, we’re receiving almost $20 per video published.

We’d like to say a special THANK YOU to our new patrons: Sara, Savanna, Cara, Jim, Lisa, Barbara, Xandrios, and Will!

Patreon is the easiest way to support our channel. If you’d like to help keep us on the road producing new content, click the Patreon link below.

Click Here to Visit Our Patreon Page

Patreon is a platform that allows creators to receive reoccurring funding from fans. We’re excited about Patreon because, like the YouTube ad revenue we receive, it allows us to focus completely on creating awesome YouTube content.

Below is a screen shot of our pledge growth since launching our Patreon page in August. The green bar represents new pledges and the blue bar stands for the cumulative amount. Unfortunately, Patreon only lets you show growth by month so the graph looks a little silly.

Amazon Affiliate Income – $109.86

Change from last month (September $109.35) – (August $102.86) = $6.49

Wow! Our Amazon affiliate income broke $100 two months in a row. Thank you so much to everyone who takes the time to make an extra couple of clicks in order to give us a small commission from your Amazon purchases!

We didn’t add any new resources to our website this month, but the three resource pages below still drove over 2,000 visitors to Amazon! I love that we were able to make over $100 this month just from recommending products we already use and love.

1. Travel Essentials – This page lists all of the packing gear we’re lugging around the world with us.

2. Vlogging Gear – This page lists all of the gear we use to create our vlogs on a daily basis.

3. Keep Us on the Road – This page explains all of the ways people can help financially support our travels.

Just so you know: We get paid for ANYTHING you buy off of Amazon within 24 hours of clicking our link! It doesn’t have to be the product we recommended. If you click through to look at our camera, and then get distracted and buy toilet paper, we still receive a commission for the toilet paper!

Mistake Fare Manual Sales – $158.82

Change from last month (September 158.82) – (August $158.82) = $0

$158.82 in passive income is great, but I’m way more excited about the testimonial I received this month! Gena was able to book a mistake fare from Las Vegas to London for $271. Below is the email I received from Gena.

“I used the tips and tricks taught me in the book to get text message alerts from a number of sites, and when I caught wind of the $271 deal from Las Vegas to London I quickly hopped online (found issues, but then an hour or two later it was back) and booked two tickets. I live in LA so it’s a quick cheap extra ticket away. I cannot wait to fly Virgin Atlantic nonstop over the ocean for this highly discounted fare. My boyfriend has been dying to go and now I can make that trip happen for him all under the price of what would not even be one ticket price and on a full-feature, food-included, airline! #winning“

This email made my day. It’s fulfilling to know that my book is helping people travel to their dream destinations for pennies on the dollar!

Quit shopping for airfare like everyone else If you’d like to learn how to find and book a mistake fare like Gena, click here to learn more about the Mistake Fare Manual

Below is a graph of Mistake Fare Manual sales in the month of September.

The Mistake Fare Manual sells for $29. We use the Teachable platform to deliver the book. After they take out their fees, our profit is $26 per book. This month with sold six books (the same as last month). $158.82 isn’t a ton of money, but it’s completely passive income which is really nice!

Audible Partnership – $30

Earlier this month we scored a partnership with Audible. These lucrative partnerships are usually reserved for podcasters, but they made an exception for us. We were super excited to be accepted to the Audible Partnership program because they offer a lucrative commission when a new user signs up for a free Audible trial using your link.

To be completely honest, I thought this was going to be a huge a financial win for us this month because we make $15 for each person who signs up for a free Audible trial using our link. However, after promoting the trial in our videos and on our website, we only had two people sign up.

We’re going to continue promoting the free trial for another month. If only a few people sign up this month, we’ll reevaluate whether or not it’s worth promoting.

If you’d like to receive a free audiobook and help make this section look better in the income report next month, click the link to sign up for a FREE 30-day Audible trial. You’ll receive a free audiobook, and we’ll get $15. 🙂

Click Here to Get a FREE Audiobook!

I figured a graph that showed two people signing up was kind of pointless… So onto the next section!

Flight Deal Alerts – $8.97

Change from last month (September $8.97) – (August $17.95) = $8.98

The flight deal alerts are an easy way to get the best flight deals from around the web sent directly to your phone. Having these alerts set up is key to finding and booking mistake fares. They are sold as a companion to the Mistake Fare Manual.

Normally, flight deal alerts cost $2.99 per month. But when you purchase the Mistake Fare Manual, you can get 6 months of alerts for only $1.

We have over 50 people receiving amazing flight deal notifications on a daily basis, but the majority of our subscribers have paid $1 for six months after purchasing the Mistake Fare Manual. The $8.97 we made this month came from the three people who are paying full price for the subscription.

Other Affiliate Income – $5.98

Change from last month (September $5.98) – (August $18.22) = $12.24

Our additional affiliate income came from two sites.

Momondo.com – $5.64

Skyscanner.com – $0.34

This small commission we received from these two websites came from The Score Cheap Flights resource page we added to our website last month. The page lists the two main websites we use to search for cheap flights along with a couple other resources. I still have no clue how the commission structure works with the flight booking websites…

Hopefully we’ll be able to find even more affiliate links to work into our site. However, we’ll never force affiliate links. We only recommend sites and products we use and love, so the addition of new affiliates will have to be organic.

Total Income for June – $1,319.18

Change from last month (September $1,319.18) – (August $905.98) = $413.20

Below is a graph that shows the make up of our income by revenue source.


Increasing our income by over $400 this month is really exciting, but we’re going to need to do even better next month if we want to reach our goal of $3,000 per month by the end of December!

The thing that excites me most about this month’s income report is that we saw a big jump in both YouTube and Patreon revenue. These two sources of income allow us to focus all of our effort on uploading quality content. So it’s exciting that they’re both growing and account for over 75% of our total revenue!

2. Expense Report

Business Expenses

Convert Kit – $49

Business Email From Google – $5

Adobe Premiere Pro – $19.99

Teachable – $39

Total Business Expenses = $112.99

Fix Costs

GeoBlue Health Insurance – $161

T-Mobile Phone Plan – $135.91

Kindle Unlimited – $10.94

Get a 30 Day Free Trial of Kindle Unlimited (Tons of Free Lonely Planet Guide Books!)

Total Fix Costs – $307.85

Travel Expenses

Barcelona, Spain – $86.64 [Sept. 1 – 2]

  • Airbnb (1 Night) – $55.71
  • Other – $30.93

Krakow, Poland – $490.39 [Sept. 2 – 9]

  • Airbnb (8 Nights) – $181
  • Other – $309.39

Bratislava, Slovakia – $132.53 [Sept. 9 – 12]

  • Hostel (2 Nights) – $107.62
  • Other – $24.91

Budapest, Hungary- $242.61 [Sept. 12 – 15]

  • Airbnb (3 Nights) – $99
  • Other – $143.61

Munich, Germany- $317.16 [Sept. 16 – 20]

  • Holiday Inn Express (4 Nights) – $0
  • Oktoberfest Attire – $49.41
  • Other – $267.75

Ljubljana, Slovenia – $390.33 [Sept. 20 – 24]

  • Airbnb (4 Nights) – $200
  • Other – $190.33

Split, Croatia – $293.70 [Sept. 25 – 29]

  • Airbnb (4 Nights) – $131.33
  • Other – $62.37

Mostar, Bosnia & Herzegovina – $119.53 [Sept. 29 – 30]

  • Hostel (2 Nights) – $43.69
  • Other – $75.89

Wow! I did not realize we had been in eight different countries this month. No wonder September feels like a blur!

Transportation

Flights

Barcelona to Krakow – $195.02

Buses

Krakow to Bratislava (Overnight) – $38.71

Budapest to Munich (Overnight) – $60

Munich to Ljubljana – $31.40

Ljubljana to Split (Overnight) – $69.14

Trains

Bratislava to Budapest – $38.54

Rental Car

Split to Mostar – $101.08

Total Spent on Transportation – $533.89

3. Summary

Total September Income

YouTube $725.79

Patreon $280.09

Mistake Fare Manual $158.82

Amazon Affiliate Income $109.35

Audible Partnership – $30

Flight Deal Notifications $8.97

Other Affiliate Income $5.98

Total = $1319.18

Total September Expenses

Business Expenses – $112.99

Fixed Expenses – $307.85

Travel Expenses – $2,606.78

Total = $3,027.62

Overall Monthly Gain/Loss = $1,708.44

Change from last month (September $1,708.44) – (August $4,149.83) = -2441.39

In last month’s Income report I said “I’m hopeful that we’ll be able to keep Sept. under $3,000!”. We went over by $27.62. While we didn’t quite meet our goal, I’d say we did pretty good to spend just over $3,000 while visiting 8 countries in a single month!

After blowing out the budget last month, Kara and I made a strong effort to save a much money as possible this month. The biggest sacrifice we made to save money was taking three different overnight buses. Not only are buses the cheapest form of transportation around Europe, but we also save on a night of accommodation.

I’m feeling much better about this month’s income and expense report than I was about last month’s. Reaching break even by December actually feels like an attainable goal!

4. Savings (Vanity Metrics)

How much money we saved this month thanks to partnerships, frequent flyer miles, and negotiating. This is just a fun vanity metric to calculate. If you love numbers like me, it’s fun to look at how much money this month “should have” cost us.

Money Saved by Using Hotel Points!

We used 80,000 IHG points to stay four nights in Munich during Oktoberfest. Using hotel points was the only way we could afford to stay in Munich during the festival without completely breaking the bank. Since we were staying at the hotel during Oktoberfest, the cost per night was almost $200.

Total Saved with Frequent Flyer Miles – $800

This gave us a per point value of 1 cent per point!

I learned most everything I know about Frequent Flyer miles from Trav’s Frequent Flyer Boot Camp course. If you’re ready to start traveling the world for pennies on the dollar, I highly recommend checking out Trav’s course to fast track your travel hacking success.

Partnerships

Now that our YouTube channel is getting over 500,000 views per month, we’re getting opportunities to partner with companies for free experiences/accommodations in return for featuring the company on the vlog. You’ll always know if we’ve partnered with a company because at the end of the vlog we’ll put a message that says either “Accommodations Provided By:” or “This Adventure Made Possible By:”. This serves as an advertisement for the company that we partner with, but it also helps us be transparent about content on our vlog being sponsored.

When we travel with other people, we usually seek out less partnerships. We ended up partnering with two companies during the month of September.

Bratislava Food Tour – $146 (Our Cost Free)

Ljubljananjam Food Tour – $124 (Our Cost Free)

Total Partnership Savings – ~ $270

We were the ones who initiated all of these partnerships. We aren’t to the point where brands are reaching out to us, yet 🙂 We learned how to pitch brands for partnerships from Tommo and Megsy at Travel Master Class.

If you have a travel platform and you’re interested in learning how to partner with travel brands, we highly recommend checking out their course Pitching Master Class!

Negotiation – $100

When we stay in an Airbnb for an extended period of time, I try to negotiate the price down by contacting the host directly. This month I was able to negotiate two of our five Airbnb stays for a savings of just over $100.

Total Savings for September – $1,170.00

Filed Under: income reports

August Income & Expense Report | 2016

May 3, 2017 by Nate 1 Comment

This income and expense report took me at least 8 hours to put together. It will take you 10-15 mins to read. Grab a cup of coffee and enjoy 🙂 If you don’t have time to read it now, flag it so you can come back and give it a proper read later!

These income and expense reports have been getting really long lately. Like so long that they need a table of contents. See below.

1. Income Report

2. Expense Report

3. Summary

4. “Savings”

5. Tragic Losses

Why Do We Send Out A Monthly Income Report?

This section is the same as last month – for new people who are receiving the income report for the first time. If you read it last month, scroll down till you read “Income Report” and start there!

Let me start by saying, the purpose of this income report is not to brag about how much money we’re making from our YouTube channel. Trust me, it’s nothing to brag about!

Kara and I began this crazy adventure of full-time travel on January 10, 2016. When we originally started, the plan was to take a year off to travel the world. We had saved up enough money (plus a lot of frequent flyer miles) to get us through the end of the year.

Now that we’ve been on the road for 8 months, we’ve decided that we’re really enjoying this full-time travel thing, and we’re both going to be really sad if this adventure has to end in December. Plus, we’ve developed an amazing community of people on YouTube who have become a part of the adventure. It’d be a shame if all the fun had to end so soon!

Since we only saved up enough money to travel for a year, we’re going to need to find a way to make money on the road so we can continue traveling. So we’re currently on a journey to see if we can turn our YouTube channel into a little business that supports our travel. The reason we’ve decided to publish these income reports is because we want you to be a part of the journey.

We’re no where close to being able to support ourselves through our YouTube channel, and it’s going to be a huge challenge to get there in the next 4 months. However, traveling and sharing our adventures on YouTube is something Kara and I are both really passionate about. It would be amazing to make a full-time living doing something we enjoy so much, so we’re going for it!

Our hope is that by transparently sharing our journey from the start, we might inspire you to go after one of your biggest dreams. So without further ado, here is the August income report.

1. Income Report

We’re quickly learning that unless our channel goes viral, there’s no way we were going to make enough money from YouTube ads in the next 4 months to support our travels. So we’re in the process of developing additional sources of income. Below are the six ways we made money related to our YouTube channel in the month of August.

YouTube Ad Revenue – $514.26

Change from last month – (August $514.26) – (July $486.67) = $27.59

August was our third full month of running ads on our YouTube channel, and it was our first month to make over $500! The graph below shows our daily views overlaid with our daily ad revenue. This graph should give you an idea of the daily views need to make $500 per month on YouTube. We ended the month with just over 450,000 views (our best month yet!)!

Patreon – $93.87

Change from last month (August $93.87) – (July $0) = $93.87

Patreon is a new source of income for us. Kara and I agonized for months over whether or not we should launch a Patreon page. Launching our page was not a decision we took lightly, I explain our full thought process on our Patreon page, so instead of explaining it again here, you can read it on our Patreon page if you’re interested.

Kara and Nate Patreon Page

Patreon is a platform that allows creators to receive reoccurring funding from fans. Since launching the page, we’ve had five people sign up as patrons and we’re now receiving $9 for each video we publish on YouTube! This means that next month we should earn $270 from Patreon, which will most likely make it our second largest income source.

We launched our Patreon page midway through this month, and people have been signing up at different times so this month we made $93.87!

Patreon is an exciting source of income for us because, like the YouTube ad revenue we receive, it allows us to focus completely on creating awesome YouTube content. The additional income we earn from affiliate sales and the e-book is great, but the effort I’m investing in building those revenue sources is effort that could be spent planning bigger and better adventures to share with you on the vlog.

We are beyond grateful for the people who are supporting our adventure through Patreon! Below is a screen shot of our pledge growth since launching our Patreon page. The green bar represents new pledges and the blue bar stands for the cumulative amount. Unfortunately, Patreon only lets you show growth by month so the graph looks a little silly.

Amazon Affiliate Income – $102.86

Change from last month (August $102.86) – (July $6.07) = $96.79

Last month was our first month to include Amazon Affiliate income on the income report. We had just signed up for the Amazon Affiliate program, and we were doing very little to promote our affiliate links.

This month we implemented several strategies to promote our Amazon affiliate links and our income shot to over $100 in just one month! Last month I said:

“I don’t think Amazon will ever be a big money maker for us. However, it’s a huge e-commerce that a lot of people already trust so it was an easy place to start!“

Honestly, $100 per month is more than I thought we’d be making with Amazon by the end of the year!

Our increase in Amazon affiliate income can be attributed to three new resources we added to our website at the beginning of August.

1. Travel Essentials – This page lists all of the packing gear we’re lugging around the world with us.

2. Vlogging Gear – This page lists all of the gear we use to create our vlogs on a daily basis.

Both of these pages are resources for our viewers to answer the questions we get asked most often, “What kind of camera do you use?”, “How do you pack for year of travel?”. In addition to helping our viewers by answering these questions, I also included Amazon affiliate links to all of our gear. This means anytime someone clicks the link and buys something off Amazon in the next 24 hours, we receive a small commission!

3. Keep Us on the Road – I believe this is the page that had the biggest impact on our Amazon affiliate income! This page explains all of the ways that people can help financially support our travels. People can’t help you if they don’t know how, right? That was my motivation behind creating this page.

On this page I list our four ways that you can help fund our travels at no additional cost to yourself. Buying through our Amazon link is the first option listed on the page. I believe people are intentionally using our link to make purchases on Amazon in order to help fund our travels, and this is why we saw such a large increase in affiliate income this month!

We’re so grateful for everyone who takes the time to make an extra couple of clicks in order to give us a small commission for your Amazon purchases!

Just so you know: We get paid for ANYTHING you buy off of Amazon within 24 hours of clicking our link! It doesn’t have to be the product we recommended. If you click through to look at our camera, and then get distracted and buy toilet paper, we would still receive a commission for the toilet paper!

The Amazon Affiliate Program pays a maximum of 10% for each sale. Last month we were in the 4% bracket, and this month we made enough sales to make it to the 6.5% bracket! Below is a graph of our sales in August.

Mistake Fare Manual Sales – $158.82

Change from last month (August 158.82) – (July $104) = $54.82

The Mistake Fare Manual sells for $29. We use the Teachable platform to deliver the book. After they take out their fees, our profit is $26 per book. This month with sold six books. The only “promotion” we did for the book were the links included on our website and in the description of our YouTube videos.

Last month I said that we were planning to do a big promotion for the book in the near future. I had hoped to start the promotion in August, but we spent three weeks of this month traveling with friends which means I was much less productive than I should have been. Basically, nothing changed this month, but we still sold two additional books!

I’m hoping to start doing a fair bit of promotion this month. We’ve already rewritten the sales page which is a big step in the right direction (the website will be updated soon). Now I just need to sit down and put some sales emails together! Hopefully this number will be much larger in next month’s income report!

In the meantime, if you want to learn how to find and book Mistake Fares that will help you fly around the world for pennies on the dollar, click here to learn more about the Mistake Fare Manual

Below is a graph of Mistake Fare Manual sales in the month of August.

Flight Deal Alerts – $17.95

Change from last month (August $17.95) – (July $2) = $15.95

The flight deal alerts are an easy way to get the best flight deals from around the web sent directly to your phone. Having these alerts set up is key to finding and booking mistake fares. They are sold as a companion to the Mistake Fare Manual.

Normally, flight deal alerts cost $2.99 per month, but when you purchase the Mistake Fare Manual you can get 6 months of alerts for only $1.

The $17.95 we made this month was from a mixture of people who had purchased the book and taken advantage of the 6 months for only $1 (3) and a few people who signed up for the notifications at full price (4).

Even though it’s not a lot of money at this point, the exciting aspect of the flight deal notifications is that they provide us with reoccurring revenue. We now have 5 people signed up to receive the notifications at full price which means as long as they don’t cancel their subscription, we’ll make $14.95 again next month, plus any new subscriptions we receive! I’m excited about the future potential of these notifications!

Below is a screen shot of our sales in the month of August

Last month I said we were going to redo the sales page for the Flight Deal Notifications. I was reading through last month’s income report before writing this one, and I realized I hadn’t followed through on it. So I literally just updated the sales page before hitting send on this email.

You can check out the new sales page here!

Other Affiliate Income – $18.22

Change from last month (August $18.22) – (July $0) = $18.22

Our additional affiliate income came from two sites.

Booking.com – $16.28

Momondo.com – $1.94

Other Affiliate income is a new section being added to the income report this month. After seeing a little success with the Amazon affiliate program I was encouraged to sign up for a few more affiliate programs!

We added two additional resources to our website this month. The Score Cheap Flights page lists the two main websites we use to search for cheap flights along with a couple other resources. To be completely honest, I’m not exactly sure how the commission structure works with the flight booking websites, but we made $1.94 from Momondo (somehow) this month.

We also added a Book Accommodations page to the site. This page lists the websites we’ve used to find accommodations in 20+ countries. The commission structure with the accommodation booking sites is more straight forward. We make somewhere between 3% – 4% of the total cost the booking. While that’s a small percentage, hotels can be expensive, so if multiple people started using our links to book their hotel stays it could add up to a substantial amount of money.

Hopefully we’ll be able to find even more affiliate links that we can work into our site. However, we’ll never force affiliate links. We only recommend sites and products we use and love, so the addition of new affiliates will have to be organic. It’s not something we can force.

Total Income for June – $905.98

Change from last month (July $905.98 ) – (June $603.26) = $302.72

Below is a graph that shows the make up of our income by revenue source.


While we missed our goal of making $1,000 this month, it’s exciting to see our income increase over $300 this month. What’s even more exciting to me is the addition of two new sources of income, Patreon and “Other Affiliate Income”.

Amazon Affiliate income was our new source of income last month, and this month it accounted for over $100 revenue. We’re hoping to see both of our new sources of income grow in Sept. like Amazon did in the month of August!

2. Expense Report

Business Expenses

Convert Kit – $49

Business Email From Google – $5

Adobe Premiere Pro – $19.99

TubeBuddy Lifetime Subscription (One time fee) – $39

Teachable – $39

NEW Canon G7x Mark ii – $724.98

New External Hard Drive – $89.95

GoPro 3-Way Knock Off – $21.98

Total Business Expenses = $988.90

Fix Costs

GeoBlue Health Insurance – $161

T-Mobile Phone Plan – $159.23

Kindle Unlimited – $10.94

Get a 30 Day Free Trail of Kindle Unlimited (Tons of Free Lonely Planet Guide Books!)

Total Fix Costs – $331.17

Travel Expenses

Mauritius – $133.93 [August 1 – 4]

  • Food – $7.93
  • Accommodations – $127

Zanzibar – $772.23 [August 4 – 13]

  • Visas – $200
  • Food – $92.48
  • Accommodations – $466
  • Misc – $13.75

Portugal – $1,241.83 [August 14 – 24]

  • Visas – $0
  • Hostel (2 Nights) – $113
  • Airbnbs (with Kayla and Barrett) – $381.50
  • Other (Probably Food) – $627.33
  • Rental Car – $120

Barcelona, Spain- $956.80 [August 24 – 31]

  • Visas – $0
  • Hostel (2 Nights) – $110.34
  • Airbnb with Charlie & Gel (5 Nights) – $270
  • La Tomatina Day Trip – $208.76
  • Other – $367.70

Other Travel Expenses – $40.61

JNB Airport Hostel – $40.61

Flights

The Mauritius to Zanzibar flight was part of a ticket I booked in July. I accounted for that expense in last month’s expense report, so that’s why you don’t see that plane ticket listed here.

Dar Es Shalam to Zanzibar – $120

Taxes and Fees on Zanzibar to Lisbon flight (cost of frequent flyer miles listed below) – $195.80

Lisbon to Barcelona – $274.54

Total Spent on Flights – $590.34

Frequent Flyer Miles

United MileagePlus Miles – 35,000

It cost us 17,500 United MileagePlus Miles each to fly from Zanzibar to Lisbon. It should have cost double this amount, but let’s just say we were sneaky 😉

Total Travel Expenses – $3,735.74 & 35,000 Frequent Flyer Miles Spent

3. Summary

Total August Income

Summary of Income Sources:

YouTube $514.26

Mistake Fare Manual $158.82

Flight Deal Notifications $17.95

Amazon Affiliate Income $102.86

Patreon $93.87

Other Affiliate Income $18.22

Total = $905.98

Total August Expenses

Business Expenses – $988.90

Fixed Expenses – $331.17

Travel Expenses – $3,735,74

Frequent Flyer Miles Spent – 35,000

Total = $5,055.81

Overall Monthly Gain/Loss = $4,149.83

Change from last month (August 4,149.83) – (July $3,208.95) = $940.88

The expenses this month got a little out of hand. I’m honestly cringing looking at the numbers, but I’ll do my best to justify them. First our “business expenses” were much higher this month because we purchased a new camera that cost over $700.

Second, we spent most of August traveling with friends and family. Unfortunately, traveling with other people ends up costing us quite a bit more. When we have to meet up with people in a certain place on a certain day we can’t be flexible as we’d like with our flights so we end up a paying a bit more.

Then, when we meet up with people who are in “vacation mode” they tend to spend more money because it’s their one vacation of the year and they want it to be awesome.That means we end up tagging along and spending money with them. We go out to eat a lot more than we would if we were on our own, and we end up paying for activities that we probably wouldn’t have paid for otherwise.

Sure we could not go eat with our friends and family, and we could not do the same activities, but what’s the point in having people come meet you if you’re not going to spend as much time together as possible together.

I’m not complaining about meeting up with friends and family. We absolutely LOVED having Kayla and Barrett meet us in Portugal, and meeting up with Charlie and Gel in Barcelona was awesome! I’m just trying to explain why the expenses this month were much higher than usual.

We’ll be in Eastern Europe the entire month of Sept., and we plan to travel by bus and train. I’m hopeful that we’ll be able to keep Sept. under $3,000!

4. Savings (Vanity Metrics)

How much money we saved this month thanks to partnerships, frequent flyer miles, and negotiating. This is just a fun vanity metric to calculate. If you love numbers like me, it’s fun to look at how much money this month “should have” cost us.

Money Saved with Frequent Flyer Miles

We used 35,000 United miles and paid $195.60 in taxes and fees to fly from Zanzibar to Lisbon. Flying from Africa to Europe proved to be quite expensive when I was searching for flights. These numbers won’t be exactly right because the time frame is different, but I just went to Momondo.com and priced out the flights. The total cost for two people to fly from Zanzibar to Lisbon would have been $1,400.

Total Saved with Frequent Flyer Miles – $1,204.20

This gave us a per point value of 3.4 cents per mile!

I learn most everything I know about Frequent Flyer miles after taking Trav’s Frequent Flyer Boot Camp course. If you’re ready to start traveling the world for pennies on the dollar, I highly recommend checking out Trav’s course to fast track your travel hacking success.

Partnerships

Now that our YouTube channel is getting over 400,000 views per month, we’re getting opportunities to partner with companies for free experiences/accommodations in return for featuring the company on the vlog. You’ll always know if we’ve partnered with a company because at the end of the vlog we’ll put a message that says either “Accommodations Provided By:” or “This Adventure Made Possible By:”. This serves as an advertisement for the company that we partner with, but it also helps us be transparent about content on our vlog being sponsored.

Since we traveled with other people during the second half of August we sought out less partnerships than usual. We ended up partnering with two companies during the month of August.

Barcelona, Spain