Seven continents. Six kids. One income. Here’s exactly how we made the math work.
The most common question we get, after “how do you keep track of six kids in a foreign country?” is: “How on earth do you afford it?”
It is a fair question. Eight plane tickets to anywhere is not cheap. Taking eight people to Antarctica is a different category of not cheap entirely. And yet, over six years, we traveled to all seven continents without taking on debt, without selling our house or a business, without making any money outside of our normal day job, and without an inheritance or a windfall or anything that would mark us as financially unusual.
Here is the honest answer, broken into the three things that actually made it possible.
Part One: The Choices That Came First
Before we talk about travel funds and credit card points, we need to talk about the choices that preceded all of it. Because the financial foundation for our travel came not from anything clever we did about travel, but from how we had always chosen to live.
We have lived in our first house since we bought it. When friends and peers were trading up for larger homes in fancier neighborhoods, we stayed. We love our neighbors – they are much like us. We decided there was nothing wrong with six children sharing bedrooms – and we have come to believe, genuinely, that the closer quarters made our family tighter rather than more strained.
We drive a minivan and a used sedan. We do not have a boat, a side-by-side, a camper, or the other recreational vehicles that many of our peers have accumulated. We have nothing against any of those things and do not judge the choice to purchase those things. We simply made a different choice about what we wanted the money to become.
To be clear, we are not saying the boat is the wrong answer. For many families, it is exactly the right answer. The water is where their family connects. The weekends on the lake are the memories their children will carry. We have friends for whom this is absolutely true and we respect it completely. And for some families, it is not an either/or proposition.
But it is worth doing the math before you decide, because most people do not. The question is not “can we afford the boat?” The question is: “what else could this money become?” For our family, the answer turned out to be every continent on Earth, and shared memories that we will carry with us forever.
We operated on a strict debt-free philosophy from the beginning of our marriage – paying down student loans, then the mortgage, at great sacrifice to other comforts or upgrades. We choose to live in a way that many do not. The principle we came back to: if you live differently than most people for long enough, eventually you get to live differently than most people in the way that you want. For us, that meant travel.
The foundation: No amount of travel hacking replaces the underlying discipline. Credit card points and smart booking strategies are multipliers — they amplify a travel fund that already exists. They cannot create one from nothing. The choices we made about housing, cars, and lifestyle came first. Everything else built on top of that.
Part Two: The Family Travel Fund
We treat travel as a budget category the same way one budgets for a mortgage, home improvement, or 401(k) contributions. Every month, a set amount goes into what we call the Family Travel Fund. It is not glamorous. It is not a complicated system. It is a line item that has been there since our first trip to Europe, built on the recognition that the trips we wanted to take were not going to happen by accident – they required deliberate, consistent saving.
A few principles that made it work:
- Consistency over size. Start smaller than you think you need to. The first deposit into a travel fund does not have to be large. The habit of putting something aside consistently matters more than the amount.
- Name it. Name the fund something specific. “Family Travel Fund” is better than “savings.” When money has a name and a purpose, it is harder to spend on something else.
- Protect it. Treat it as non-negotiable as a utility bill. It goes in every month before discretionary spending decisions are made.
- Make it specific. Let it grow toward a specific goal. “Save for travel” is abstract. “Save for Costa Rica in June” is a real trip that pulls money toward it.
Part Three: The Flight Deal Service
Here is the piece of our funding strategy that will save you as much or more than any other strategy – and the one that has arguably made the biggest single difference in whether a trip happens or doesn’t.
We subscribe to flight deal alert services. Two in particular have been in our inbox for years:
Going (going.com) — formerly known as Scott’s Cheap Flights, going.com monitors airfare across thousands of routes and sends alerts when prices drop dramatically – typically 30–90% off typical fares. You register your home airports, and Going does the watching. When a $200 roundtrip to Europe or a $400 fare to Tokyo appears, you get an email immediately.
Pomelo Travel (pomelotravel.com) — pomelotravel.com operates similarly, with a team that scours the web daily for mistake fares, price wars, and unadvertised discounts on international flights departing from U.S. airports. Subscribers report saving $300–$800 per ticket — numbers that, multiplied across eight passengers, are transformative.
Both services are free to start, with premium tiers that unlock more deals and the ability to filter by your specific departure airports. We use both. The deals they send are different. Subscribing to both means more chances to see the fare that changes everything.
Here is why this matters so much for a large family, specifically. When eight people are traveling, every dollar saved per ticket is multiplied by eight. If a flight deal alert saves you $800 per person on a transatlantic fare – which happens regularly – that is $6,400 back in your family travel fund. For most families, that is the difference between the trip happening and not happening. Full stop.
The examples are not hypothetical. We have booked $200 roundtrip fares to Europe. $400 fares to Tokyo. $700 fares to New Zealand. These deals exist. Airlines make pricing mistakes. Price wars break out between carriers. Unadvertised flash sales open and close within hours. The services exist entirely to catch these moments and put them in your inbox before they disappear.
But here is the critical thing: you have to be ready. Being ready means two things.
- Know your destinations. You need a shortlist of destinations you have already decided you would love to visit, so that when the right deal comes across your inbox you do not spend four hours researching whether you want to go. You already know. The only question is whether the timing works.
- Have the money ready. You need a travel fund that already exists, so that when eight $400 tickets to Tokyo appear at 7am on a Tuesday, the money is not a barrier. The deals do not wait for you to transfer money from one account to another. They are gone within days, sometimes within hours.
When you have planned for both of those things, you can act. When they are not, you watch the deal disappear and tell yourself you’ll be ready next time.
The Katie rule: If you have saved the funds and a deal appears for a destination that has always been a dream, if the timing is at least theoretically possible, say “whoops!” and buy it. You have 24 hours to cancel a flight after purchase and receive a full refund – this is a U.S. Department of Transportation requirement for flights booked at least seven days before departure. Use those 24 hours to figure out whether the trip is truly workable. If it is not, cancel. Your money comes back. Another deal will come along. But if you wait to decide before you buy, the deal will almost certainly be gone by the time you make up your mind.Sound familiar? It should. It is exactly how we ended up in Europe the first time.
Getting cheap flights – through deal services, through points transfers, through timing and flexibility – has been the single most important financial factor in our ability to visit all seven continents in six years. The credit card points system is powerful. The family travel fund is essential. But it is the flight deals that have repeatedly been the trigger: the thing that converted a dream into a reality.
Part Four: The Credit Card Points System
This is where most people’s eyes light up, and rightfully so. We estimate that over six years, we received approximately $40,000 in free travel value through a consistent credit card points strategy. That number includes flights, hotels, and rental cars that we would otherwise have paid full price for.
We want to be clear about what this is and what it is not. It is not a loophole. It is not financially dangerous if approached correctly. It is a system that rewards people who already spend money on everyday purchases – groceries, utilities, insurance, gas, and everything else a family of eight spends money on – by converting that spending into travel currency. But the system must be followed carefully.
Here is how our system has worked.
The Core Principle: Transferable Points Over Airline Miles
The single most important decision in a points strategy is choosing the right “currency.” Airline-specific miles — Delta SkyMiles, United MileagePlus, American AAdvantage — are useful if you fly that airline exclusively and consistently. For most families, they are a trap: you accumulate miles in one program, but when you want to go somewhere that airline doesn’t serve well, you’re stuck.
We built our strategy around transferable points currencies — specifically Chase Ultimate Rewards, American Express Membership Rewards, and CapitalOne Miles. Chase and American Express points can be transferred to dozens of airline and hotel partners, which means one pool of points can become a Delta flight to Europe, a United flight to Asia, a Hyatt hotel in Tokyo, or a Southwest companion pass for domestic travel. Flexibility multiplies value. CapitalOne Miles can be used flexibly to cover most travel costs as well.
The Cards We Have Used
We are not financial advisors, and the card landscape changes regularly – welcome bonuses shift, annual fees get adjusted, and the best offer on any given card is different month to month. What we can share is what has worked for our family and why.
- Chase Sapphire Preferred / Reserve — Strong welcome bonus (typically 60,000–100,000 points after a spending threshold). Good category bonuses on dining and travel. Points transfer to United, Hyatt, Southwest, and other partners. The “Trifecta” pairing with the Chase Freedom Unlimited and Ink Business cards maximizes earnings across all spending categories (as well as multiple large welcome bonuses).
- American Express Gold Card — 4x points per dollar on groceries and dining. For a family of eight, grocery spending alone generates a significant points total annually. Points transfer to Delta, British Airways, Air France, Marriott, and Hilton, among others.
- Capital One Venture X — Earns 2 miles per dollar on every purchase with no category restrictions. Miles transfer directly to airlines or can be redeemed as a statement credit against travel purchases. Lower complexity than the Chase or Amex ecosystems, which makes it a good entry point.
The strategy that has worked best for us: one primary card for everyday spending, one premium travel card for travel purchases and lounge access (Chase Sapphire Reserve or Amex Platinum), and one or two business cards for welcome bonuses and to accelerate earning on larger purchases. The points flow into two or three transferable currencies, and we book travel through transfer partners rather than through the card’s own travel portal whenever the math favors it.
The Welcome Bonus: The Most Efficient Points
The single most efficient way to accumulate points is through welcome bonuses – the large points deposits cards offer when you meet a spending threshold in the first few months. A 80,000-point welcome bonus on a Chase Sapphire Preferred, for example, is worth approximately $800–1,200 in travel value depending on how you redeem it. That’s more than most families earn in months of everyday spending. And if you and your spouse both qualify, you can double that, provided that you will meet the minimum spend with your normal expenditures.
We have been strategic about opening new cards in the months before a large planned trip, using the welcome bonus spending threshold against expenses we would have made anyway – insurance renewals, property taxes, home repairs, back-to-school supplies, holiday gifts. The key rule: never spend money you would not otherwise spend just to earn points. The interest you pay on carried balances will eliminate every point you earned and then some.
⚠️ The non-negotiable rule: Pay your balance in full every month, every time, without exception. A credit card points strategy only works if you treat the card as a debit card with rewards attached – never spending more than you have in the bank, never carrying a balance. If you are not in a financial position to do this reliably, the points strategy is not for you yet. Get to that position first.
Where to Learn More
We are enthusiastic amateurs at this. There are people who have spent years studying the points landscape in extraordinary depth, and their resources have saved us thousands of dollars. Three we recommend without reservation:
- The Points Guy (thepointsguy.com) — thepointsguy.com – The most widely-read points and miles resource in the US. Comprehensive card reviews, transfer partner guides, and deal alerts. A good starting point for anyone new to the points world.
- Million Mile Secrets (millionmilesecrets.com) — millionmilesecrets.com — Excellent step-by-step guides on earning and redeeming points, with particular strength on family travel. One of our longest-running go-to resources.
- Doctor of Credit (doctorofcredit.com) — doctorofcredit.com — The most granular and data-driven resource in the space. Less beginner-friendly than the others, but indispensable once you’re ready to optimize. Particularly useful for tracking current welcome bonus offers and understanding card application rules
Putting It Together: What $40,000 in Points Actually Looked Like
Over six years, our credit card points contributed to:
- Business class flights to Europe for two adults for our 23rd anniversary trip
- Eight economy flights to multiple destinations across four of our six major family trips
- Hotel stays in London, Paris, Tokyo, and Auckland that would otherwise have cost $300–$500 per night
- Rental car coverage through card benefits that eliminated the need for separate insurance
The $40,000 figure is an estimate, not an accounting. It is based on the redemption value of points at the time we used them, not on any particular valuation methodology. Your results will differ based on your spending patterns, the cards you choose, and how you redeem. But the principle scales: a family that spends more on groceries, utilities, and recurring expenses than a single person will accumulate points faster and benefit proportionally more.
The one-line summary: Put every possible purchase on the right credit card. Pay it off every month. Let the points accumulate toward something specific. Repeat for six years. The results will surprise you.
For a deeper look at the specific mechanics of our strategy — which cards, which transfer partners, and how we book award travel – see our full credit card system guide coming soon.
Families Who Travel • familieswhotravel.com • How We Fund Our Trips
