How we flew the family to Europe on points

Four round-trip seats to Italy in summer is the kind of number that ends a trip before it starts. On points, it’s a rounding error. We’ve flown the whole family to Europe more than once without paying anywhere near cash fare, and none of it is complicated once you see the shape of it.

The welcome bonuses are where the free flights actually come from — not the 2x-on-groceries grind. The move is opening the right cards in the right order, clearing minimum spend on things you were going to buy anyway, and banking flexible points you can move to an airline later.

Flexible points are only worth what you redeem them for. The whole game is transfer partners and sweet spots — the specific redemptions that turn 60,000 points into a flight worth $2,000. We’ll walk through the exact ones we use in the full Travel Hacking guides.

And kids change the math in your favor, not against it: lap infants, family award space, free-night certificates that sleep four. The full playbooks are coming — get on the list and they’ll land in your inbox first.