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We’re back with another amazing readers success story. Today Shannon is going to tell us how she used miles and points to take a dream vacation in Bali, Indonesia. If you’ve been wondering how you can use make credit cards work for you, this is a must-read.

If you have your own dream vacation story that you’d like to share, send Bryce a quick email and you could see your story on the blog next time!

With that we’ll turn it over to Shannon!

Hey 10xTravel Friends!

If you’re anything like me, you’ve probably looked at your points balances and thought, “ugh, there’s no way I’m going to have enough for a round-trip!” Fortunately, that doesn’t have to derail your dream vacation.

I knew I didn’t have enough miles in any of my accounts to for a round-trip flight from Minneapolis to Bali, Indonesia, so I decided I would book one-way flights on two different airline programs. I did a little research and decided to use United miles for my flight to Bali and Delta SkyMiles for my return flight.

I booked my flight to Bali on United with thanks to the points I received from the Chase United card. A one-way flight from Minneapolis to Bali only cost 40,000 miles and $52 (taxes and fees), so my  United miles were more than enough to take care of this flight.

I used my CapitalOne Venture card to pay for the fees and was able to erase all $52 of these taxes and fees. A free flight to Bali? Yes, please!

I earned 30,000 miles with a Delta card, however a flight from Bali back to Minneapolis on Delta and its partner Garuda Indonesia was 40,000 plus $45.46 in taxes and fees. This wasn’t a problem though, as I had a stash of SPG points just waiting to be used. I transferred 10,000 SPG points to my Delta account and just like that I had the miles I needed to get home.

In addition to the 30,000 miles from the Delta Amex, the card included a $50 dollar statement credit when using the card for a Delta purchase. Thanks to that perk, I was able to take care of the taxes and fees on this flight too! That’s right, another free flight!

I signed up for an Captial One Venture card to earn some more flexible miles that can be used for any type of travel. Once I met the minimum spend, I had enough points to cover my entire six-night stay at Bali Dive Resort and Spa.

I also signed up for the Barclaycard Arrival Plus card with a 50,000 points sign-bonus in hoping that I would be able to charge all my meals and drinks to my room and use that card to erase the costs. The resort did me one better and, not only was I able to charge my food and drinks to the room, I was even able to charge my scuba diving and spa services to the room! All in all, I spent a total of $755.72 for all my food and drinks, 11 dives (including a Manta Ray Dive!), three massages, one facial, and a body scrub and flower pedal bath. Thanks to the Arrival Plus card, $500 of the $755.72 were erased with points.

While I don’t know what the exact cost for my specific flights would be, on average a round-trip flight from Minneapolis to Bali is about $1,200. Using that as a baseline, my total cost for this trip should have been about $2,412 and I will be paying a whopping $255 for EVERYTHING!

There’s nothing like reading about an adventure to get you motivated to book your next adventure Thanks for the motivation, Shannon!

If you would like to learn how you can take amazing trips like this one, check out our free e-book.

And don’t forget, if you have your own amazing story, let Bryce know so we can share it with the 10xTravel family!