Recently, my wife and I went to London, Rome, and Paris for free. Business class flights that should have costed $40,000. We got for free, including 10 nights in luxury branded hotels. We did it, and I'm going to show you how to do it too. Well, hey, what's up YouTube? My name is Ed, and this channel is all about using credit cards to get free travel. And that's exactly how we did this trip to Europe. We did it max out these credit cards, spending money we do not have. No, we strategically use cards to earn points, specifically welcome bonuses. And then we apply those points towards maximum redemption value, usually transferring to travel partners and redeeming that for free flights and hotels. And so that's exactly what we did. But it starts with planning. And for us, it started about two and a half years before we went on this trip. So it was early 2020 when we were saying, we want to go somewhere great for a 10-year anniversary in August of 2022. And we said, man, wouldn't it be amazing if we went to Europe? And so honestly, I get on the computer, and I'm like, OK, what is the best flight redemption to get to Europe? And I found a points guy article, and it was talking about American Airlines rewards points. And so that quickly led me down a rabbit hole to start searching, OK, what would it cost me? How many points is it going to cost me to get from where I'm at in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to Rome? And it was really easy to find that there was availability, business class flight availability for 57,000 points one way. And so that's one person one way, 57,000 points, times two people, times round trip, that added up to 228,000 points. So I knew two and a half years ahead of time, I needed 228,000 American Airlines points. And so we set out to do that. And so for us, that looked like getting four specific credit cards between the two of us. And so over the next year and a half, here's the cards that we got. I got the Barclays, American Airlines, Aviator cards, 60,000 points. We got the City American Airlines Platinum, 50,000 points after 2,500 and spend. I got that card, and my wife also got that card. And then the fourth card we got was the City American Airlines Business card, 65,000 points after 3,000 and spend. When you take into account the spend requirements that we had to get to earn the points, by the end of having all four of these cards over the next 18 months, we had earned 233,000 American Airlines points. I booked our tickets on Americanairlines.com exactly 364 days out for the lowest price possible of 57,000 points per one leg. And we were able to book business class flights from JFK to Rome and then from London back to Pittsburgh, all for 228,000 points. I'll do a whole other video on our experience with Iberia Business Class and American Airlines of Business Class, sneak peek. We had an amazing time on both of those airlines. But that just got us to Europe. Now we had to figure out a place to stay. So our original itinerary was three nights in Rome, two nights in Venice, two nights in Paris, one night in Disneyland Paris, and three nights in London. And while we were there, there were train strikes in Italy that truly prevented us from getting from Rome to Venice. And so our trip got the rail to be able to go to Paris early, which included a last minute points redemption at the park high at, I will get to that. But the itinerary shifted and our final itinerary was three nights in Rome, four nights in Paris, one night. So at Disneyland Paris, which I did have to pay for, was unable to use points there, and three nights in London. And so through some simple searching of looking up some of the best redemption for IHD, Hyatt and Marriott in all three of those cities, I was able to find hotels, mainly actually just for IHD and Hyatt that I could get phenomenal redemption value from now for my wife and I, we have cards, co-branded for all of those different hotels. So we each have the Chase Hyatt card, we each have the Chase IHD card. We also have a variety of Chase cards that earn us ultimate rewards points, which, man, one of the best transfer partners from Chase is Hyatt. And so we were able to get more than enough points, including use some of our free night certificates from IHD to make this trip possible. And so here's where we ended up. In Rome, we stayed at the Tribune Hotel, part of the Hyatt Group. We used 78,000 Hyatt points for three nights redemption. We then went on to Paris, where we stayed at the Kimpton St. honor, part of the IHD hotel group. This was 129,000 points. They had points plus cash redemption model, so we did actually have to spend $264 cash at that hotel as well. We had the book Two Nights at the Park Hyatt in Paris. Now, this redemption was high value. We spent 40,000 points each night and listen, I'm not necessarily recommending that, but man was it the best hotel we have ever stayed at. And this redemption came after the fact that our train schedule got ruined. I lost money out of our plans to stay in Venice, and we had to change all of our plans. We were going to Paris early, and I thought, I am going to have the best stay of my life. And so 80,000 points, Hyatt, Park Hyatt, Middle Paris, it was stunning. I'll do independent reviews of all of these hotels, by the way, those will be coming up. Make sure you subscribe for those. And finally, in London, we stayed at the Crown Plaza Kings Cross, part of the IHD group. There we were able to do two nights using free night certificates that my wife and I had earned for having the Chase IHD rewards card, Premiere card, and then we also use 42,000 points for the third night. Listen, I don't know your spending situation. You might have those points just by having some Chase cards, or maybe you're interested in getting some of these cards. Right now, the Chase IHD Premiere, the same card that Katie and I used to book two of these hotels with the points that we needed, have the highest bonus ever right now in February of 2023, currently 175,000 points after 3,000 spend in three months. This is a great card to have. IHD has a lot of overseas redemption opportunities that are phenomenal. Obviously, we use the Impares in London. You might be able to use it somewhere else. And if you do not yet have the Chase Hyatt card, man, I can't recommend it enough, you might be able to wait to see if the bonus gets a little bit higher. Right now, they're marketing 30,000 sign on bonus with the minimum spend. But then you get $2X per dollar for the first six months. So that's a pretty good deal. If it's you're going to use that as your main card for those six months, you'll easily be able to max out that $15,000 cap, possibly earning up to 60,000 high at points just from getting that card. We also use high at points to go to Hawaii a few years back. I'll link to that video here. All right, so I promised you in the beginning that I would help you take the same exact trip. And so if you want to do exactly what we did, you can. And starting with flights. I went on Americanairlines.com. I'm looking in September of 2023, because we went in September of 2022. We thought it was a great time to visit all of those cities. We, I looked up a flight from New York to Rome on Tuesday, September 19, 2023, $57,500 points with only $23.80 in tax. This is through Royal Air, Mirac, one of the partner airlines through the One World Alliance. I saw some amazing reviews about their business class products from the points guy. I'll link that in the description. I've never flown it. It's not Iberia like we did, but it seems like a great option for some points values. And then on the way back, I found two different flights, one from Rome to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, which is where I'm at. And one from London, the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, both 57,500 points. There's some different taxes and fees because these are operated by British Airways and British Airways have some of the highest taxes and fees possible, but still very, very minimal for what you would typically pay for this flight. Those Iberia flights that I took that I described at the beginning were $20,000 one way, $10,000 per person one way, meaning they were $40,000 worth of flights we got through points. And so yes, this is a lot of points, but you're getting an incredible product flying business class from the United States to Europe. If you want to do it cheaper, you can. You can go economy that's totally up to you and you can get even better redemption options available for flights. But if you want business class, I think that's some of the best you can do. And then once you actually get to those places, I found amazing options in all three cities. I'm going to save you the trouble, stick to Hyatt because I found the Hyatt Tribune in Rome in September for 24 to 30,000 tonight. I found two different Hyatt's in Paris. I'll put them on the screen because I can't print out ranging from 21 to 25,000 per night. And I found tons of Hyatt's in London between 15 and 25,000 per night. This is an easy option to get to those three cities using Hyatt. You can get the Hyatt Chase cart or get in the Chase ecosystem. And you can get Chase ultimate rewards points from the Sapphire Preferred, the Sapphire Reserve, the Freedom Unlimited, the Freedom Flex, do a multi-card system, save up over a few years and you'll be able to transfer points out to American Airlines to Hyatt, wherever you need. And you can do a similar trip. Takes a little bit of planning, but you can do it. I can believe in you. If you want more help and more tips on how to use credit cards to get maximum value, I need you to hit the like button and hit the subscribe button and stay tuned for more information on this trip and our experiences at these hotels and these flights. I'm going to help you take more trips like this in the future. I'll see you next time.