I love that we have friends that can relate to the value of earning and using airline miles and hotel points to help Save Money, Travel More! Recently, our friend’s twin sister moved to South Africa to relocate for her husband’s career. When I heard the news months ago, I was really envious, as it sounds like an extraordinary experience. They will be living in South Africa for the next three years with their toddler, and I imagine it being an incredible growing opportunity for all of them.

So I knew it would only be a matter of time before our friend and his wife traveled to Africa to visit his sister. Fortunately, they have been in the travel game for quite a while, and have really come to appreciate the real potential of using reward programs to see the world.

Both our friend and his wife were able to each open up a Chase Sapphire Preferred card and United Airlines card to rack up a ton of free miles at their disposal. In total, they had 105,000 miles EACH at their disposal, all for opening up some credit cards and purchasing things they were going to do anyways.

Our friends do not have kids, allowing them to build some very elaborate awards into their plans. They were able to turn 80,000 miles each into roundtrip tickets between Cleveland and South Africa. The best part though is that by using a 23-hour layover technique, they were able to include stops along the way in Frankfurt (Germany), Doha (Qatar), and Dubai (stopover), with an open jaw leg between Cape Town and Johannesburg. Now that I have kids, I could never do what they are doing as I think my mind may explode just thinking about all the logistics, but in my childless days, I would have loved to go on this complicated adventure. I picture scenes out of The Amazing Race in our friends future.

Scott, at Mile Value, issued a new post highlighting the experience of ticketing this complicated itinerary. After reading the article, are you inspired to see the world?

Save Money, Travel More!