How to Turn Your Wedding Budget Into a Free Honeymoon
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Getting married is the most exciting, stressful, and exhausting thing that most people will ever do. Everyone wants a beautiful wedding with great food and drinks, but most couples today are left with a hard choice when it comes to the ceremony and honeymoon: they can either have the dream wedding they want, or they can take the dream honeymoon they want. Everything is just so expensive that many feel they can't afford both.
There’s a website that helps solve this problem in a major way, and best of all, the website is FREE! The website is IDoLetsGo.com, and it helps you turn the money you are spending on a wedding into hotel and airline points that you can use for a dream honeymoon.
How Does It Work?
In order to get your business, credit card companies offer fantastic sign-up deals. It’s not uncommon for hotel credit cards to give 4–5 free nights and airlines to give out enough miles for 2 travelers. In order to qualify for these deals, you have to spend a certain amount of money over a few months (known as a minimum spend requirement). IDoLetsGo.com daily searches the internet for the best sign-up bonuses and publishes them on the website.
How Does the Website Know What Cards I Need?
The website asks a few questions about your dream honeymoon destination, how much money you are planning to spend on your wedding, and your credit profile. It then recommends a tailored plan that will help fund your honeymoon.
Can I Really Get a FREE Honeymoon by Using Credit Card Sign-Up Bonuses?
Yes, with a few small caveats. Weddings are very expensive, and credit cards are constantly competing for new customers by upping their sign-up bonuses. By placing $10,000+ of your planned wedding expenses onto strategic cards, you can easily get the honeymoon of your dreams for free or very cheap.
Is There a Catch?
The website states that they sometimes receive a referral bonus when you sign up for a card through their links, but you will never pay them to use their travel planner.
The main key is financial discipline: you must pay off your credit card balance in full every month. If you carry a balance, high interest rates will quickly wipe out the value of your free travel.
Give Me a Real-World Example
Mark and Susan from Ohio spent $12,000 on their wedding expenses. They were able to spread this spending across 3 credit cards over a few months:
Credit Card | Welcome Bonus Earned | Minimum Spend | Annual Fee |
|---|---|---|---|
Airline Card | 160,000 Delta SkyMiles | $4,000 | $95 |
Hotel Card | 175,000 Marriott Bonvoy Points | $4,000 | $95 |
Travel Cash Card | $500 Statement Credit | $4,000 | $0 (Waived 1st Year) |
Total | 160k Miles + 175k Points + $500 | $12,000 | $190 Total Fees |
How They Used Their Rewards:
Flights: Used the 160,000 Delta SkyMiles to book two round-trip flights from Ohio to Paris, France (paying only ~$160 total out-of-pocket for mandatory international flight taxes).
Hotel: Used the 175,000 Marriott Points to cover 5 nights at a hotel in Paris (taking advantage of Marriott's 5th-night-free perk on point redemptions).
Transportation: Used the $500 statement credit money to pay for their rental car and transit.
Instead of closing the cards immediately (which can hurt your credit score or lead issuers to claw back points), they kept them for a full year and then downgraded the fee-based cards to no-annual-fee cards. Because they paid their credit card statements off completely every month, they paid zero interest.
The entire 5-day Paris trip (minus food and activities) cost them just ~$350 out-of-pocket (covering the $190 in annual card fees and ~$160 in flight taxes)!
This is just one example of real world couples getting dream vacations by carefully planning out their prespending. Before your next vacation, head over to IDoLetsGo.com and start planning your dream vacation!