when i just moved to the united states from morocco i would talk to immigrants who have
lived in this country for so many years just to help me understand the ins and outs the do's and
don'ts and things that i should avoid in order to have a decent living in this country and everyone
seemed to agree on the fact that i should not be spending money that i don't have which i think is
a great tip but that made me stay away from using credit cards i avoided them like i would avoid
the plague there are so many times where i only used a debit card and then at some point of time
i started opening my mind to using credit cards and i don't think i ever had more than two credit
cards at a time which kind of helped me become financially responsible and just be aware of where
my money is going but at the same time i stayed away from using travel cards and leveraging points
from travel cards to travel for free and i can't believe that i was missing out on so much i only
started using travel cards about two years ago so if you are like me i'm going to explain to you how
you can leverage points from travel cards and how the whole thing works if it's something that you
are already familiar with you can skip to the next segment so how does it work how can you obtain or
accumulate points to travel for free there are some banks here in the united states that would
offer you to open a credit line or a credit card with them and they will ask you usually to spend
a certain amount of money within a specific amount of time and in exchange they will give you a sign
up bonus so for example if you open this credit card with this bank they're going to give you
60 000 points that you can redeem and use for air travel or hotels or cruises so many options to
choose from and then in return they expect from you to spend let's say three thousand dollars
in the first three months or something like that and i know that it might sound like a lot of money
but if you look at your monthly expenses and then you use that card just to pay for whatever you
usually pay money for on a monthly basis like your groceries and some of your bills you can
easily get to that amount of money and then as you continue using that card you will accumulate
points so technically you are accumulating points on purchases that you would normally make
regardless of whether you have a travel card or not so why not take advantage of the points and
as you continue accumulating points month after month year after year you will have a considerable
amount of money that you can use to redeem and buy your flies or at the very least you can use
them to reduce the cost on some of the flights or accommodation or cruises and things like that
there are two travel cards that i started experimenting with the first one and i highly
recommend this one if you are just getting into using travel cars and that is the chase sapphire
preferred they have an annual fee of 95 and i can put more details in the description box where you
can read about how much money you have to spend on it but i think it's a great card i'm really happy
with the perks like they have delivery indoor dash for free you get extra points if you are
using lyft and things like that so a lot of good perks and then the other one that i started also
using is the american express gold card i'm really enjoying this card as well so many important perks
i will have both of them in the description box if you are thinking about starting to experiment
with travel cards and if you use the link in the description box i might end up getting some bonus
points from their referral program and if you do the same if you open your own travel card and
then you refer your friends or your family you can also obtain some bonus points from this referral
program which is pretty nice so as we speak right now i think between these two cards i already have
just from the sign up bonus i probably have 1 500 just sitting there that i can use to book a flight
to europe or just fly somewhere here in the us or go on a cruise which is amazing so i really
can't believe that i've been missing out on using points and leveraging points from travel cards
and that is the first bad travel habit that i wish i changed early on in my travel career staying in
hotels when i don't really need to early on in my travel career i would go or travel to a new state
for example and i'm going there to explore and do some hiking and backpacking a lot of
times the first night and the last night i would stay in a hotel just to have a comfortable bed
or have a nice shower which there's nothing wrong with staying in a hotel if this is what you want
and this is the type of experience that you are interested in but i'm starting to learn right now
that there are so many alternative especially if you don't want to spend that much money on travel
definitely having your car investing in some camping gear and relying on car camping can
definitely reduce the cost of this travel so it's something that i wish i had changed early
on and that is to not stay in hotels when i don't really have to because sometimes i felt like i was
just spending so much money for one night i'm not really enjoying being in the hotel i'm just
there to crash and sleep while i can be taking advantage of some free camping around the area in
state parks or some bureau of land management land or even pay for campgrounds because you can still
pay for gram grams as minimal as fifteen dollars a night or twenty dollars a night and that's
a travel habit i wish i changed early on buying snacks on the road oh my god so many times i would
roll to the airport and just go in there and buy whatever meals i want and whatever snacks i want
and then same thing if we are going on a road trip stop at every gas station again all of the snacks
and all of the food that i need it's that type of expenses that keep adding up slowly and slowly and
slowly live slowly and slowly and then towards the end of your trip you just ask yourself where
did all of my money go so instead right now i try to plan everything in advance try to meal prep at
home or at the very least buy my snacks from the grocery store or from costco and have everything
ready so that i don't have to spend so much money on the road it's something that i wish that
i changed early on along the same line is buying water from airports and gas stations too oh my god
i've done it so much in the past and i'm the type of person who drinks a lot of water so i would go
to the airport and if we are waiting i will end up buying two bottles of water three bottles of water
and the same thing on the way back and if we are going on road trips i would buy so much water from
gas stations and while right now i try to always carry my analogy water bottle and i try to carry
my hydro flats can then just go to um you know the refill stations at the airports and sometimes even
when we are road tripping in national parks and states parks and more established campgrounds
there are so many water refill stations where you can just fill as much water as you need
so i am getting better at it right now but i wish i had stopped it earlier because not only it's
it's a waste of money that keeps adding up quickly but also it's not friendly for the environment
most of these water bottles are plastic and i'm just happier to have my reusable water bottle that
i can use right now relying on air travel rather than road trips there are so many pros and cons of
choosing air travel over road tripping obviously if you're gonna go on road trips you want to make
sure that you have a reliable car that can take you from one place to the other without breaking
it's definitely something that i didn't have early on but now that we have a car that's
more reliable we're trying to explore more road tripping rather than catching an airplane to get
to and from places and i'm really starting to find that road tripping or going on road trip is
definitely making travel a lot cheaper and a lot more accessible not tracking flight prices i've
always been good when it comes to taking my time to book a flight ahead of time and do my research
and make sure that i'm finding the optimum sweet price but the one feature that i didn't take
advantage of and by the way i always use google flight it's my go-to platform to find my flights
i did a live stream in which i talk about the whole process and you can find it right here
that's what i use to find cheap and reasonably priced flights but the one feature that i didn't
take advantage of is tracking the changes in flight so this feature in google flights
allows you to go in you choose a specific flight destination what dates are you interested in and
then they start sending you notifications on a weekly basis to tell you this is how the price is
changing so if you have like six months or seven months that you can play with to
choose the right time to book your flights these notifications are going to show you
how the prices are changing they can be very helpful to make a very well informed decision
before you book your flights and finally buying souvenirs it's definitely a travel habit that
i wish i stopped early on i used to buy so many souvenirs especially postcards not just postcards
that i would send to family and friends because i still do that but buying postcards for myself
or magnets for the fridge i used to do that a lot but now i feel like i'm more content to just take
photos and save photos or maybe print them and put them on the fridge but i wish i stopped buying
souvenirs in the past because a it's more money that you are spending and then b you just end up
with a lot of clutter around your house and then it's not enough space on the fridge and it's a lot
of things that you have to think about so these are some of the bad travel habits that i wish
i had changed early on in my travel career i hope that you guys found some of them to be
useful and i'm curious to hear from you what are some of the habits that you would like to change
or some of the habits that you already left behind you let us know in a comment and if
you found this video to be useful please give it a thumbs up consider subscribing to the channel
my name is hadiba this is trekking pals and i will see you very soon on a new adventure