Name
Madeline Sall
www.instagram.com/madelinesall
How long have you been in the travel hacking game? Briefly describe how you got started.
I got started travel hacking in 2013 with a CapitalOne Venture Rewards card where I put most of my consulting business expenses. Eventually, I made my way to a Chase Sapphire Preferred & Chase Sapphire Reserve (including that coveted 100K bonus RIP). In the early days, I was traveling 2-3 weeks a month, so it was easy to rack up a lot of points just with business expenses. It wasn’t until I left the consulting job that I got more strategic since I couldn’t rely on regular travel to make the hacking magic happen anymore!
What is your day job/ side hustles? Are you able to incorporate travel hacking into this? If so, how?
In my day job, I’m a Scrum Master (basically a team coach) for software services teams. I don’t travel for work much anymore, but I’m big on paying for any reimbursable expenses with the appropriate card for the moment! My P2 is also kind enough to let me handle most of our shared household expenses. Let’s hope he’ll be kind enough to open up credit cards with my referral links once we combine finances!
No side hustles but I regularly pay for large expenses on group trips or excursions. I’ll pay for every group dinner at a bachelorette party if you let me!
What’s your favorite points and miles redemption story?
My favorite points & miles story was when my lovely P2 & I went to Belgium, France, and the Netherlands in October 2019. I originally had opened a Delta Gold Amex for a 60,000 point bonus to combine with my existing butt-in-seat Delta balance to purchase our flights, but when the time came to book – the redemption didn’t make sense anymore. We ended up booking a cash flight on United from our home base of Madison because somehow, it was less expensive than we had any right to expect.
We only booked our first 3 nights and our last night for this 12-day trip. For every Airbnb, I bought gift cards on my Chase Sapphire Reserve through the United MPX app and booked through the Delta portal for additional stacks. Two days before going, we decided to visit Paris & were able to stay in the Hyatt Paris Madeleine for 3 nights for a total of 75,000 points (transferred from my Reserve). It’s so much easier to find this kind of availability when you travel in the off-season! For our final night, we booked the Marriott Brussels Hotel Grand Place for 35,000 points (including some I transferred from my Reserve). I also enjoyed taking my P2 into nice airport lounges for the first time – it’s easy to take a quiet resting place before a flight for granted. For the parts of our trip where we did pay cash, we were able to earn a lot for our next vacation while saving on hotel accommodations where it made sense while maintaining travel flexibility & staying in the places that most interested us.
Sometimes it’s easy to forget that travel hacking rewards you with tremendous flexibility. You don’t need to book everything 10 months in advance to get great deals, and if points give me the option to be more flexible – I’ll take it.
Give a travel hacking shout-out to someone whose content you find particularly helpful for someone trying to level up their game.
There’s a woman named Megan Heister who’s a contributing team member for 10xTravel, and she is downright surgical in her approach to maximizing every purchase and redemption. Initially, it was intimidating until I realized just how much I could learn from her & even learn from her responses to other folks with questions. I don’t think she’s on Instagram, but she’s in many of the major travel hacking groups on Facebook.
Where can we find you on the internet?
Probably easiest to get in touch with me on Instagram. It’s a personal account, but I’m always happy to connect with folks and chat travel hacking! Most of the people in my life are tired of hearing me talk about it. 🙂 I believe it’s best to redeem on the flight/hotel etc. that matters to you and not just go premium cabin because you think that’s the only way to travel hack “correctly.” I much more frequently will redeem for single hotel nights after concerts or before morning flights than for big & flashy redemptions. You make your own path!
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geobreezetravel
Julia Menez is a travel hacking coach, speaker, and founder of Geobreeze. Through her content and coaching services, she aims to spread travel hacking to underrepresented communities by featuring the points and miles stories you won't normally find on the first page of Google or in the bigger blogs. Julia has been a speaker for FinconX and has led a travel hacking workshop for thousands of registered attendees at the SHEFACTOR 2020 Launch Your Life Summit, an event that featured speakers such as Bethany Hamilton, Kaitlyn Bristowe, and Missy Franklin. She has also been featured in numerous business and travel podcasts.
