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I recently completed my goal of visiting every country in the world. In all likelihood, I might have eventually completed this goal in the future, years from now, though at a much slower and more expensive pace. Instead, learning about points and miles greatly accelerated the number of countries I could afford to visit every year.
True, not every country has a flight you can book by transferring your credit card points to an airline and then booking a redemption ticket to get there. Instead, I learned about partners and how to use points when you think you can't use points to get somewhere.
Here's how points and miles helped me visit every country in the world.
Page Contents
My First Rewards Card and First Redemption
I opened my first credit card in college, and the short version of the story is that I didn't pay the bill responsibly — like many college students, unfortunately. Fast forward a few years, and I had paid off my debts. I was in the army at this time and stationed in Germany. In 2012, I opened a U.S. Airways co-branded credit card to earn the miles, thinking I could use these on vacations or visiting family back in the U.S. around holidays.
Instead, I wound up redeeming those miles to fly a really interesting woman I'd met online and was keen to meet in person from New York City to Frankfurt. We had a great two weeks together, including hiking in Norway. That woman became my wife a few years later.
The value of those miles proved incredible. I decided I'd apply for a Delta credit card next, helping to fund further travels. However, I was under the impression that I had “gotten one over” on someone with this idea of opening a few credit cards to earn miles from these bonuses. I (rather wrongly) thought I'd be limited to one from this airline and one from that airline.
I also had consumed a steady diet of the “credit cards are inherently bad” information that's quite common in the U.S. Thus, I was quite naive about how this all worked.
Related: A Beginner's Guide to Building Healthy Credit
Learning That You Can Do This on Repeat
At a hostel in China in 2016, I was talking to a random person about how I'd wanted to visit China for a long time, but it was so far away and so expensive to get there. I'll never forget someone chiming in, not involved in the conversation but overhearing what I said. “I flew here for free on points.” My mind was blown.
I had forgotten about my experiences with redeeming miles in the past, as I assumed I couldn't earn credit card bonuses often and that trying to do so would be bad for my credit score.
After hearing from others that I could indeed earn new credit card sign-up bonuses repeatedly by opening a new card whenever I'd finished earning the bonus on the last one, I was hooked. It matched my love for travel.
I was also at the point where I realized I'd been to nearly half the countries in the world. While living in Germany for 2.5 years, I'd made it a goal to visit every European country. Since I'd been to almost half the world's countries and already completed a full continent, why not go for every country on earth?
Learning I could drastically reduce my travel costs through credit card rewards and frequent flyer miles meant I could afford to travel more.
Related: What Flights Can I Book With Miles?
Getting Serious About Points and Miles
In 2016, I was working online just part-time. My wife and I had moved back to her hometown in Brazil so she could attend vet school, but I didn't speak much Portuguese. So I struggled to find what work I could do online, but that didn't leave much money for traveling around the world.
Enter points and miles.
With the support of my wife, I dove head first into the world of credit card rewards. We looked for every available opportunity to increase the number of cards we could open, such as paying bills for others (who then repaid us) and paying my wife's school bills by card (luckily, without an extra fee). If we could pay for an expense by credit card, we did. Doing so helped us accelerate the number of credit cards we could open to earn a welcome bonus.
Related: How to Use AwardWallet's Travel Summary Tool
If I could travel without increasing our monthly spending or using money that we needed for our living expenses, my wife was OK with me traveling while she was in class. And we could travel together during her school breaks. She's a keeper.
Luckily, I asked questions before applying for my first credit card. Facebook groups like Award Travel 101 taught me about the value of flexible points and why starting with Chase credit cards is the best if you want to get the most credit card bonuses over the long term.
I learned how to use partners and alliances to fly on airline A when my miles were in the account of airline B. I studied award charts and sweet spots to maximize my redemptions, using benefits like the United Excursionist Perk and free stopovers multiple times to stretch the value of my rewards.
At the time, I was mostly staying in Airbnb rentals or budget hostels during my trips. Airbnb rentals were nice because I'd found a job teaching English online, so I had a quiet space for my lessons — something a hostel with many people in a small amount of space doesn't regularly afford.
But then I expanded my knowledge to include hotel rewards programs, and things really took off. I was able to book my flights for pennies on the dollar, redeem points and free night certificates for my stays, and still have the quiet space I needed to teach online. But as well all know, not every city has a chain hotel for redeeming your points and free night awards.
Related: AwardWallet's Roundup of Airline and Hotel Program Sweet Spots
The High Value of Fixed-Value Rewards
What happens if there's no good option at your destination for redeeming your points through a rewards program like Marriott Bonvoy or Hilton Honors? Enter fixed-value points.
While transferable points can (not always, but can) provide the greatest value when measuring “cents per point” on your redemption, they can't do it all. There are some spots on the map where you won't find a major hotel chain and can't get there with a major airline alliance. Or maybe there's no availability for award seats on that flight. What now?
Learning how to maximize fixed-value rewards was the next step in my travel evolution. If I could find a decent hotel or a flight that took me from point A to point B, fixed-value points allow me to wipe that charge off my credit card bill.
Fixed-value rewards aren't ideal for trying to book a $5,000 business-class flight over an ocean (you'd need a jaw-dropping number of fixed-value points here), but redeeming rewards at 1¢ apiece for those other travel expenses proved invaluable. I've fallen in love with Capital One miles for this reason, thanks to the ability to redeem my rewards against recent travel purchases. Paying for an independent hotel near Machu Picchu with my Capital One Venture Rewards Credit Card and then redeeming miles to cover the purchase meant we could redeem credit card rewards for this stay, even though there was no hotel I could book directly with points or free nights.
Similar options exist with Bank of America, U.S. Bank, and Wells Fargo.
Putting It All Together
At this point, the number of countries I could afford to visit each year had seriously multiplied. I took several trips per year, attempting to visit three or four countries on each trip.
While my wife was in class, I took solo trips to countries she wasn't interested in. Or I visited some places for a minimal visit of less than 48 hours, knowing I'd be back with my wife — saving the highlights to experience together.
On school breaks, we took extended trips where we could pair goals together. We found veterinary internships for my wife in South Africa, Laos, Florida, and New York City. We used those as jumping-off points for our travel plans afterward, such as visiting Taiwan, Nepal, and the Maldives after my wife's internship in Laos. And we were able to fly her halfway around the world to a school internship because we could leverage our credit card rewards.
We visited places of my wife's choosing on joint trips, and I visited other countries on solo trips. By the time we left Brazil at the end of 2021 and returned to the U.S., I knew that I was getting close to achieving my dream of visiting every country in the world. It was time to get strategic.
Early on, I had visited countries in order of preference or finding the cheapest flight to any other country for an onward journey. This had left several gaps on my map that weren't convenient to fill in. For example, my final three countries in Africa were Libya, Equatorial Guinea, and Madagascar — nowhere near one another. By analyzing route maps and where I needed to go, I was able to buy cash tickets when necessary (redeeming my fixed-value rewards after the fact) or maximize flight redemptions through airline programs.
I even booked my first round-the-world ticket in 2022, visiting South Korea, the Philippines, Vietnam, Iran, Israel, and Palestine. You wouldn't normally book these countries into a single trip due to how spread out they are. But I redeemed Cathay Pacific Asia Miles to book a round-the-world ticket that visited them all for less than if I'd booked a bunch of tickets separately.
And part of being strategic also meant saving some easy countries for the end. I'd seen a few friends miss a flight to their final country to complete their goal. Others had flights canceled when fighting broke out at their destination. And still others had issues with visas. Plus, seeing people accomplish this major feat alone, half a world away from friends and family, incentivized saving two countries in the Caribbean as my final nations to visit.
And that's where I finished: Visiting Dominica and then St. Vincent and The Grenadines in December of 2023. And I was lucky that friends and family were able to come along, thanks to redemption options on the thrice-weekly nonstop American Airlines flight from Miami, the relative proximity of St. Vincent to the U.S., and the fact that U.S. citizens don't need a visa to visit St. Vincent.
Bottom Line
Not everyone has the goal of visiting every country in the world. For those who do, especially in my situation, learning about points and miles made the task faster and cheaper.
I learned how to maximize every dollar I spend, trying to get as many points and miles as possible from all of my expenses. This way, I can book that next flight or hotel stay sooner. Rather than budgeting for a single trip each year, I was able to start taking multiple trips. And I had the support of an incredibly understanding wife who tolerated my many trips, leaving her as a single mother to our pets a few times a year, so I could chase my dream.
When you look at the map to see where your points and miles could take you, some destinations are more obvious than others. But learning to use airline and hotel programs in tandem with fixed-value points means you really can go to every country in the world through credit card rewards.
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