As some of you may know, I'm currently working on my doctoral degree. My hope and prayer is that I and my now dear friend Vee finishes in December. I meet Vee through classes since the beginning in April 2013, and we have been on this journey together ever since. Well we have been discussing how we are going to reward ourselves for coming this far. Even if we don't finish in December, we will be pretty close and seeing how we are both single parents, we decided we both need a well deserved break so we are going to reward ourselves either way. So from 31 Dec - 7 Jan we are going on a 7-day cruise!!!! We leave out of Fort Lauderdale, heading to Grand Turk (Turk and Caicos Islands, San Juan(Puerto Rico), St. Thomas(U.S. Virgin Islands) and Amber Cove (Dominic Republic). The cost of the cruise only portion is $1008 each and that already includes taxes. While I already have the money available in my vacation fund, I will still try and find snowflakes to lessen how much I will have to touch my vacation funds.
So far, I opened a card with Hilton Honors(received yesterday) that's currently offering 75,000 bonus points if you spend $2000 within 3 months. This is no problem becuase I have quite a few annual expenses that's coming due next month, so this will cover I know for sure at least 1 night, maybe both at the Embassy Suites in Miami. I love staying at Embassy Suites because every night from 5-8, they offer a free happy hour!! Also they offer free full breakfast as well.
Also a couple months back I took advantage of the Capital One QuickSilver card that paid $100 bonus after spending $500. Well I just check my account and the bonus has already been applied. Normally some companies wait until that statement closes to apply rewards but not in this case so that's great!!
Projected travel cost:
Cruise: $1008 (already paid $250 for deposit so new balance is $758)
Hotel: done, will pay for using cc points
Airfare: appx $400, looking into current points and more cc promotions
Cruise Snowflakes so far:
$100
**Disclaimer, I am completely debt free including a paid for home. I don't recommend credit cards if yo don't have the capability to pay them in full every month.
Cruising into 2017!
March 13th, 2016 at 05:54 pm
March 13th, 2016 at 06:15 pm 1457892918
March 13th, 2016 at 06:18 pm 1457893097
March 13th, 2016 at 07:10 pm 1457896222
March 13th, 2016 at 09:30 pm 1457904646
March 14th, 2016 at 03:14 am 1457925260
March 14th, 2016 at 03:18 pm 1457968709
March 15th, 2016 at 11:00 am 1458039627