How Much Does ‘Free’ Cost?

I love paradoxical statements, because on the surface, they don't make a whole lot of sense, but when you dive deep into them, often times they carry more truth to them than the black and white logic we use on a daily basis. I wanted to start here, because I often get the question, "How can you afford to go all these places?". Maybe it's for shock value, maybe it's because the real answer is much longer as you will see, or maybe it's because I believe it too, but my answer is usually, "It was free". I am sorry to disappoint you, but the truth is, it wasn't. Not really. No more free than the $20 in Kohl's Cash you got for spending $75 when you went Christmas shopping, and no more free than the last "free" drink you got at Starbucks for scanning your rewards. The truth is, you spent more than you probably otherwise would have spent at that store. You paid a premium at Starbucks yearning for the day that free drink would show up on your app, in lieu of brewing coffee at home or visiting a local coffee shop. Starbucks paid for your loyalty with a free drink. And it worked. The same rules often come into play in my world of "free" travel.

I spent a little bit of time mulling over various domestic flights, hotels, and other vacation expenses, and determined the average vacation for a family four costs about $4,600. This figure varies wildly depending on where you go, and what you do, and how you eat. Here's how it all breaks down.

First, we will take into account the average cost of a domestic economy ticket at $350, which only increases when you travel abroad. Four tickets will cost you $1400

After flights, you start looking at hotels, which can go for as little as $120/night in destinations like Orlando, or as much as $340/night in New York City. Let's settle in the middle at $230, and let's settle on the average length of a typical vacation of six days. Your hotel bill will be $1,380.

Next: ground transportation. You will need to get around somehow if you flew, so factor in either a rental car, or ride-share/taxi. Let's peg this at $500

This last part could be calculated so many different ways and still not come close to your actual cost, so you get to determine what you will spend on food, activities, and shopping. If you plan on eating protein bars, and foregoing the rest, I guess you could skip this one, but let's just say at the bare minimum, that you eat at McDonalds (my favorite) or something similar everyday. Your food for a family of four would run about $450 for lunch and dinner, assuming you're staying at a hotel that offers a free breakfast of some sort. Obviously this is on the low end and there are tons of expenses that will get you to (at least) the $4,600, such as pet boarding, passport applications, baggage fees. The list goes on.

My point is to defend what I am about to say, and that is that I spend somewhere in the ballpark of several thousand dollars each year on expenses such as annual fees for credit cards, gift card fees (more on that later), and taxes on award tickets, all of which pay for my "free" travel. That exact number varies but has always been well under the $4,600 figure I gave above. I also know that even if I did not do any of this travel hacking, I would still end up spending at least that on a single family trip per year to Texas to visit family, and several long weekends in Minneapolis, Fargo, and so on. There is an additional cost I haven't mentioned yet. That cost is time. I have spent numerous hours researching the best deals, travel hacks, and additional time creating spreadsheets to organize the sheer amount of credit cards we currently have. Since this is the first time I have mentioned credit cards on this blog, I just want to say that we pay them in full every month, and that under no circumstance would I ever recommend running a balance on your credit card to pay for a vacation, or anything else you can't afford for that matter.

So there it is, my first disclaimer before I dive into the world of travel hacking in future posts. If you plan to try this, know that there is some legwork and research that will take up some time but I hope to reduce that and bring together some of that knowledge into one place on this site.