Hazards of the Lifestyle

As anyone who is married to a travel hacker knows, this pastime involves lots of churning of credit cards. In fact, you may start to wonder if cards are breeding in the dusty corners of your office.

(Churning = Getting a card with great benefits or bonuses, using it until you spend enough to meet the requirements to get the benefits, then canceling it before you get hit with fees.) 

Other things that people married to travel hackers know:

-You can expect your spouse to own multiple wallets to hold all their cards, leading to the frequent odd question: "Have you seen my wallets?"

-You will grow used to stashes of credit and gift cards popping up in various nooks and crannies in your house, including but not limited to the underwear drawer.

-Expect frequent requests at very inconvenient times to find "One of your three American Express cards that all look exactly the same," or something along those lines.

-At times you may feel like your spouse has lost their mind--for example, when they tell you they really need to buy hundreds of dollars worth of 1-800-Flowers gift cards.

Generally, you should be fairly organized in order to keep track of what you're doing with all these cards for travel hacking. I was flipping through my journal the other night and found this gem: "Austin lost 4000 dollars worth of gift cards he bought to pay for his government stays in hotels!!" Yikes. We never did find them, but it was the first time I deep-cleaned my house after having baby #3, so there was that. We think the cards may have gotten accidentally recycled, but I guess we'll have to wait until the next life to find out for sure.

Fortunately the Lost Gift Card episode ended well, with Hyatt agreeing to replace them, and valuable lessons learned for the future. It just goes to show the hazards of this lifestyle, though.