How We Paid for a Dream Trip to England Without Spending a Dollar on Hotels or Flights

Hi, Crafty Fox readers! I’m Weston, Amanda’s husband and if you’ve been following along on Instagram lately you’ve probably seen the photos from our trip to England. Castles on clifftops. A tidal island that disappears into the sea. A Tudor castle hotel where Henry VIII actually honeymooned. What you probably didn’t see is the part where used credit card points to pay for most of the trip (all airline travel, hotels and rental cars).

Amanda has been getting a lot of questions since she mentioned that I used points to pay for this trip, so I’m here today to share our strategy.  The short answer is credit card points. The longer answer, and the one that actually took us years of trial and error to figure out, is that most people are using the wrong cards and leaving thousands of dollars in travel value sitting on the table. So lets get into it, here is our story and how we use credit cards to travel almost for free.

We Used to Do It the Wrong Way

The first credit card we had was a Costco card (we got it with our membership).  We just used it as needed and each year we got rewards back to spend at Costco, and we thought it was great.  But as our family (and spending) grew, we wanted to travel more and this card was not doing it for us.  So I made the switch to a Delta Airlines American Express.  This opened up a world of travel, and we enjoyed that.  We later added a Chase Visa Marriott card.

For years, Amanda and I collected points the way most people do: brand-specific cards. We had the Marriott card and the Delta card. At the time, it seemed to make sense.  We stayed at Marriotts, we flew Delta Airlines, so why not earn points on that specific airline or hotel chain?

The problem revealed itself slowly. The Marriott points were only valid at Marriott properties. The Delta miles were only useful if Delta flew where we wanted to go at the price point we needed. We were constantly constrained by the card. If we found a better hotel, we couldn’t use our points. If a different airline had better availability for the dates we needed, we were stuck. We had accumulated tens of thousands of points and yet somehow still felt like we had almost nothing to work with.

There’s a better way. And once you understand it, you will never go back to a brand card again.

The Switch That Changed Everything: Flexible Points

The key insight, and this is KEY,  is that flexible points beat brand points every single time. Instead of earning points that can only be used at one hotel chain or one airline, flexible points can be transferred to dozens of different airlines and hotel programs. You are not locked in. You can go wherever the best value is, on whatever airline has availability, at whatever hotel makes sense for your trip.

Here’s exactly what we use:

Card One: Chase Sapphire Preferred

The Chase Sapphire Preferred earns Chase Ultimate Rewards points, and these are genuinely some of the most valuable travel points you can hold. This is a personal card that anyone can apply for, you absolutely do not need a business to get it or use it. Here’s what I love about it:

• Shop inside Chase’s travel portal (identical to Expedia) and spend points for any Airline, hotel or rental you want.
• Points transfer 1:1 to major airlines and hotels — including United, Southwest, British Airways, Hyatt, Marriott, and more. There are often incentives to transfer points which can really multiply your spending power (last year, we transferred 50K points to Virgin Atlantic at a 1.5 multiple; giving us 100K points with Virgin and we bought both of our round trip ticks to London with that.
• 75,000 bonus points after meeting the minimum spend in the first three months. That’s a meaningful amount of travel right out of the gate. (*note, this is the current into offer but it changes often)
• 3x points on dining and 5x on travel booked through Chase — so points accumulate quickly on spending that happens naturally in everyday life.
• No foreign transaction fees — which matters the moment you step off the plane in another country.
• Primary rental car insurance — underrated and genuinely valuable. It covers most rentals so you can confidently decline the expensive coverage the rental desk pushes on you.
• Trip cancellation and interruption protection up to $10,000 per person if something goes sideways.
• The annual fee is only $95 — one of the best value propositions in travel cards, full stop.

For our recent trip to England, the Chase points covered our hotels on the England trip. Every single one — including the night at Thornbury Castle, a genuine Tudor castle turned Relais & Châteaux hotel. Points. No cash, because of points we’d been earning on everyday purchases like dining and groceries.

Card Two: American Express Gold Card

The Amex Gold earns American Express Membership Rewards points, equally flexible and equally powerful. Again, this is a personal card, no business required (but we do use it for our business), no special credentials needed. What makes this card particularly effective:

• AMEX travel portal (just like with Chase) you can shop right there and spend points for any Airline, hotel or rental you want. It’s so easy to use.
• 4x points at restaurants worldwide and at U.S. supermarkets — if you cook, eat out, or both (and I’m guessing you do), the points accumulate extraordinarily fast. This is one of the highest earning rates available anywhere for those categories.
• 5x points on prepaid hotels booked through Amex Travel — a newly elevated benefit in 2026, and it’s excellent. If you don’t have the point, book trough the portal with cash and 5x your points for your next trip.
• 3x points on flights booked through Amex Travel.
• Transfer to 20+ airline and hotel partners — just like Chase, you’re never locked in to one program. We transferred points to both British Airways and Virgin Atlantic for this tip as well as booking directly on the AMEX portal for Delta and JetBlue.
• $120 annual dining credit, $100 Resy restaurant credit, and $120 Uber Cash — these credits alone offset a significant portion of the $325 annual fee if you use them consistently.
• Up to 100,000 bonus Membership Rewards points as a welcome offer.  This is a great perk and really helps get your travel started right away! *note, this is the current into offer but it changes often.

The Amex points covered all of our airfare from Salt Lake City to London. We flew Business Class on British Airways from New York to London Heathrow and back on Virgin Atlantic. Having the universal points allowed me to select the least expensive airline for each direction and maximize my points usage.

The Part Nobody Talks About: Stacking Two Cards

Here’s where it gets interesting. We run Chase points and Amex points simultaneously, and the two programs complement each other beautifully. Chase transfers to certain partners that Amex doesn’t, and vice versa. Having both means we can almost always find the best redemption option for any trip, on any airline, at any hotel. We’re never stuck.

For England: Amex points → all of our flights (4 different airlines). Chase points → every hotel and both rental cars. The total out-of-pocket cost for flights and hotels? Essentially zero.

Having Points Is Only Half the Battle — Here’s How We Find the Best Deals

This is the part most people skip, and it’s where real money gets left on the table. Just because you’re spending points instead of cash doesn’t mean you’re automatically getting a good deal. Points have wildly different values depending on how and where you redeem them. The same 60,000 Chase points might get you a $600 flight through one partner, or a $1,800 flight through another. Knowing the difference is everything.

The tool that changed how we search is point.me. It’s a search engine specifically built for points travel, and it is genuinely the best thing I’ve found in this space. Here’s why it’s so useful:

• You tell it your points balances (Chase, Amex, or both) and your travel dates, and it searches across all the partner programs simultaneously to surface the best redemption options available.
• It shows you the value of each option — so you can see that one itinerary is worth 1.2 cents per point while another is worth 2.8 cents per point, and make an informed decision rather than just guessing.
• It finds availability across partner airlines that you’d never think to search on your own. We would never have known to book our British Airways Business Class through Chase Ultimate Rewards at the rate we got without a tool like this surfacing it.
• It’s particularly powerful for international travel, where the spread between a good redemption and a great one can be enormous.

Think of it this way: accumulating points without knowing how to redeem them well is like having a closet full of beautiful fabric and no pattern to make something gorgeous with it. Point.me is the pattern. It takes what you’ve built and turns it into something really worth having.

The habit we’ve developed is to check point.me before we ever book anything. Even if we end up not using points for a particular trip, knowing the redemption value helps us decide whether paying cash makes more sense or whether we should save the cash and spend points instead. It’s a five-minute step that has saved us thousands.

The Simple Version, If You Want to Start Today

I know this can feel overwhelming if you’re new to it. Here’s the simplest possible version:

1. Stop using non-travel or brand-specific cards. If you have an airline card or a hotel card, it’s almost certainly not your best option for building real travel value.
2. Pick one flexible card to start. The Chase Sapphire Preferred is where I’d start. The annual fee is low, the points are enormously flexible, and the welcome bonus alone covers a significant trip.
3. Put everything on it. Every dinner, every grocery run, every online purchase, every Amazon order. The points compound faster than you’d think when you use the card consistently for everyday life.
4. Don’t redeem for cash back. This is where most people dramatically undervalue their points. The same point worth 1 cent as cash back can be worth 1.5 to 2+ cents when transferred to an airline partner. Always redeem for travel.
5. Use point.me before you book anything. It takes five minutes and will consistently show you options you wouldn’t have found on your own.
6. When you’re ready for the second card, add the Amex Gold. The 4x on restaurants and groceries alone makes it a points-earning machine for daily life, and having both programs open up redemption options that neither card offers alone.

A Note on Discipline

I want to be straightforward about one thing: this strategy only works if you pay your balance in full every month. Points travel is not a reason to carry credit card debt; the interest charges would wipe out any value the points provide many times over. We treat our credit cards exactly like debit cards. We only spend what we have, we pay in full every statement, and the points are pure upside. If that’s not a system that works for you right now, that’s okay. Build the financial foundation first.

But if you’re already doing that and you’re using a brand-specific card or a cash-back card, I genuinely encourage you to look at what you’re leaving behind.

England was a dream trip for Amanda;  nine days, Tudor castles, a Northumberland coastline that made us both stop breathing for a second, and Edinburgh at dawn off a sleeper train. It was all possible ONLY because of the points we had saved up. Amanda has been sharing every detail of where we went over on her Instagram and in our Roses & Ruins travel guide. But when people ask how we afford it, this is the honest answer: we’ve been building these points quietly, for years, every time we had dinner out, every time we ordered something online, every time we bought fabric for a quilt or supplies for a shop order. And one spring, we cashed them all in for the trip of a lifetime.

It’s a patient game. But it is absolutely worth playing.

I’m by no means an expert, but if you have questions, leave me a comment.  Or tell me where you would travel first with your new Chase points!

— Weston

This post contains referral links for both the Chase Sapphire Preferred and the American Express Gold Card. If you apply and are approved through my links, I may receive referral points at no cost to you. I only recommend cards we personally use and believe in.