 When I just moved to the United States from Morocco, I would talk to immigrants who have lived in this country for so many years just to help me understand the ins and outs, the dos and don'ts and things that I should avoid in order to have a decent living in this country. And everyone seemed to agree on the fact that I should not be spending money that I don't have, which I think is a great tip, but that made me stay away from using credit cards. I avoided them like I would avoid the plague. There are so many times where I only used a debit card. And then at some point of time, I started opening my mind to using credit cards. And I don't think I ever had more than two credit cards at a time, which kind of helped me become financially responsible and just be aware of where my money is going. But at the same time, I stayed away from using travel cards and leveraging points from travel cards to travel for free. And I can't believe that I was missing out on so much. I only started using travel cards about two years ago. So if you are like me, I'm going to explain to you how you can leverage points from travel cards and how the whole thing works. If it's something that you are already familiar with, you can skip to the next segment. So how does it work? How can you obtain or accumulate points to travel for free? There are some banks here in the United States that would offer you to open a credit line or a credit card with them. And they will ask you usually to spend a certain amount of money within a specific amount of time. And in exchange, they will give you a signup bonus. So for example, if you open this credit card with this bank, they're going to give you 60,000 points that you can redeem and use for air travel or hotels or cruises, so many options to choose from. And then in return, they expect from you to spend, let's say $3,000 in the first three months or something like that. And I know that it might sound like a lot of money, but if you look at your monthly expenses and then you use that card just to pay for whatever you usually pay money for on a monthly basis, like your groceries and some of your bills, you can easily get to that amount of money. And then as you continue using that card, you will accumulate points. So technically you are accumulating points on purchases that you would normally make regardless of whether you have a travel card or not. So why not take advantage of the points? And as you continue accumulating points month after month, year after year, you will have a considerable amount of money that you can use to redeem and buy your flights or at the very least can use them to reduce the cost on some of the flights or accommodation or cruises and things like that. There are two travel cards that I started experimenting with. The first one, and I highly recommend this one if you are just getting into using travel cards and that is the Chase Sapphire Preferred. They have an annual fee of $95 and I can put more details in the description box where you can read about how much money you have to spend on it. But I think it's a great card. I'm really happy with the perks like they have delivery in DoorDash for free. You get extra points if you are using Lyft and things like that. So a lot of good perks. And then the other one that I started also using is the American Express Gold Card. I'm really enjoying this card as well. So many important perks. I will have both of them in the description box if you are thinking about starting to experiment with travel cards. And if you use the link in the description box, I might end up getting some bonus points from their referral program. And if you do the same, if you open your own travel card and then you refer your friends or your family, you can also obtain some bonus points from this referral program, which is pretty nice. So as we speak right now, I think between these two cards, I already have just from this China bonus, I probably have $1,500 just sitting there that I can use to book a flight to Europe or just fly somewhere here in the US or go on a cruise, which is amazing. So I really can't believe that I've been missing out on using points and leveraging points from travel cards. And that is the first bad travel habit that I wish I changed early on in my travel career. Staying in hotels when I don't really need to early on in my travel career, I would go or travel to a new state, for example, and I'm going there to explore and do some hiking and backpacking a lot of times. The first night and the last night, I would stay in a hotel just to have a comfortable bed or have a nice shower, which there's nothing wrong with staying in a hotel if this is what you want and this is the type of experience that you are interested in. But I'm starting to learn right now that there are so many alternatives, especially if you don't want to spend that much money on travel. Definitely having your car, investing in some camping gear and relying on car camping can definitely reduce the cost of this travel. So it's something that I wish I had changed early on. And that is to not stay in hotels when I don't really have to because sometimes I felt like I was just spending so much money for one night. I'm not really enjoying being in the hotel. I'm just there to crash and sleep while I can be taking advantage of some free camping around the area in state parks or some Bureau of Land Management land or even pay for campgrounds because you can still pay for campgrounds as minimal as $15 a night or $20 a night. And that's a travel habit I wish I changed early on. Buying snacks on the road. Oh my God, so many times I would roll to the airport and just go in there and buy whatever meals I want whatever snacks I want. And then same thing, if we are going on a road trip stop at every gas station, get all of the snacks and all of the food that I need. It's that type of expenses that keep adding up slowly and slowly and slowly and slowly and then towards the end of your trip you just ask yourself, where did all of my money go? So instead right now, I try to plan everything in advance try to meal prep at home or at the very least buy my snacks from the grocery store from Costco and have everything ready so that I don't have to spend so much money on the road. It's something that I wish that I changed early on. Along the same line is buying water from airports and gas stations too. Oh my God, I've done it so much in the past and I'm the type of person who drinks a lot of water so I would go to the airport and if we are waiting I will end up buying two bottles of water three bottles of water and the same thing on the way back and if we are going on road trips I would buy so much water from gas stations and while right now I try to always carry my analogy water bottle and I try to carry my hydroflats can then just go to the refill stations at the airports and sometimes even when we are road tripping in national parks and states parks and more established campgrounds there are so many water refill stations where you can just fill as much water as you need so I am getting better at it right now but I wish I had stopped it earlier because not only it's a waste of money that keeps adding up quickly but also it's not friendly for the environment most of these water bottles are plastic and I'm just happier to have my reusable water bottle that I can use right now relying on air travel rather than road trips there are so many pros and cons of choosing air travel over road tripping obviously if you're gonna go on road trips you want to make sure that you have a reliable car that can take you from one place to the other without breaking it's definitely something that I didn't have early on but now that we have a car that's more reliable we're trying to explore more road tripping rather than catching an airplane to get to and from places and I'm really starting to find that road tripping or going on road trips is definitely making travel a lot cheaper and a lot more accessible not tracking flight prices I've always been good when it comes to taking my time to book a flight ahead of time and do my research and make sure that I'm finding that optimum sweet price but the one feature that I didn't take advantage of and by the way, I always use Google flight it's my go-to platform to find my flights I did a live stream in which I talk about the whole process and you can find that right here that's what I use to find cheap and reasonably priced flights but the one feature that I didn't take advantage of is tracking the changes in flight so this feature in Google flight allows you to go in you choose a specific flight, destination what dates are you interested in and then they start sending you notifications on a weekly basis to tell you this is how the price is changing so if you have like six months or seven months that you can play with to choose the right time to book your flight these notifications are going to show you how the prices are changing they can be very helpful to make a very well informed decision before you book your flight and finally buying souvenirs it's definitely a travel habit that I wished I stopped early on I used to buy so many souvenirs especially postcards not just postcards that I would send to family and friends because I still do that but buying postcards for myself or magnets for the fridge I used to do that a lot but now I feel like I'm more content to just take photos and save photos or maybe print them and put them on the fridge but I wish I stopped buying souvenirs in the past because A, it's more money that you are spending and then B, you just end up with a lot of clutter around your house and then it's not enough space on the fridge and it's a lot of things that you have to think about so these are some of the bed travel habits that I wish I had changed early on in my travel career I hope that you guys found some of them to be useful and I'm curious to hear from you what are some of the habits that you would like to change or some of the habits that you already left behind you let us know in a comment and if you found this video to be useful please give it a thumbs up consider subscribing to the channel my name is Habiba this is Trekking Pal and I will see you very soon on a new adventure